Today’s rowing session in the Pete Plan was supposed to be any distance of at least 5K or more done at a “hard” effort level. The only guidelines I’ve found that Pete provides for the “hard distance” are guidelines which give you a lot of room for interpretation, which makes sense because everyone is different and the Pete Plan is not a personalized plan.
Pete’s guidelines for hard distance are “Hard distance doesn’t have to mean flat out every week, just that you can go faster than the steady days and over the 25spm limit.” If you visit that link, you’ll find those words about 1/3 from the top of the web page, under the paragraph with the subtitle of “Distance / endurance work:”
So… today’s choice of what to do was a 5K. The target pace I chose was 1:57.6/500m. The reason I chose that target pace is because I recently did a 5K at that pace and it was comfortable without getting into any painful exertion, so I thought it should be perfectly ok to target that pace again and then sprint a little faster during the last few hundred meters. It worked out well and was pleasantly invigorating.
If anyone who is experienced in serious, competitive rowing notices and bristles at or objects to the words “comfortable” and “pleasant(ly)” in this context, I should explain that I’ve never reached for the truly competitive experience of “embracing the pain.” I’ll leave that to those who are trying to squeeze every last drop out of the tank during world championship races etc and be content to enjoy watching them race, when possible and trying to imagine what they are putting themselves through.
There was a 2K warm up finished about 5 minutes before the 5K and a 3K warm down, for a total of 10K today.
What else? Oh yes – DF was 135.
Happy trails to you.