Discovered that I had an 8 am meeting, so I needed to cut this morning’s workout short. I just did a 30r22. I am really beginning to feel the increase in volume. It was hard work this morning.
Temp: 68F, Humidity: 41%
Then after work, I headed down to the gym to do my proper session. The plan was for 4 x 5K / 5′ rest. It occurred to me that this would take a lot of time. Figure 19 minutes for each 5K, so that’s 76 minutes, plus 20 minutes of rest, plus a warm up and cool down. That’s like 2 hours!
So the first change was cutting back the rests to 2 minutes. I was also pretty sure that I would cut off this little adventure after 3 reps instead of 4. Who the hell designed this workout anyway? (oh yeah, that’s me.)
I decided to target a 1:55 split. I did a quick 1000m warmup speeding up from 2:10 to 2:05, 2:00, and 1:55 in 250m chunks.
Then it was into the first rep. I had trouble hitting 1:55. It was like trying to stay on a balance beam. I would end up at 1:53 or 1:57. Of course I decided to stick with 1:53. By the time I got through 4000m, I knew that I was in deep trouble for the next rep.
I sure was! I started off trying to ht 1:55 again, but within the first 2000m, I gave up the ghost. I slowed down to 2:00, then sped back up, then kind of settled around a 1:57 pace and miserably ground out the rest of the meters. It was awful.
After that I was done. I did a cool down in the last 5K. Starting at 1:55 for the first 1000m, then slowing down to 2:00, then 2:05. It wasn’t until I was rowing at 2:10 pace that my HR started to come back down to a normal kind of rate.
What went wrong?
- Too aggressive pace, should be 1:56 or slower
- Slides. I think I am less efficient on slides for middle distance work. I either need to slow down and work out the kinks or get the erg off the slides.
- Big volume increase with 4 sessions in the past 48 hours.
- Probably pushing the 30r22 too fast. They are meant to be low intensity recovery sessions. I’ll do them at 180W.
Tomorrow: 30r22 at 180W in the morning, 3 x 20′ at 185W in the afternoon
Quantified Rowing 
Nothing went wrong. You were at threshold pace, I am sure. Just, some days … I think it was #3 and #4 from your list that did it.
Think about recovery and rest, too. Did you consciously plan that out in your training plan? You may want to revisit it with that in mind.
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I’ve been fiddling with the plan as I go, and not making good decisions. I originally planned the 30r22 sessions as a same day active recovery after the hard sessions, but with the holidays and work, I haven’t been able to make that happen. So instead they turned into just another 30 minutes of steady state, effectively reducing recovery and adding to training load. I need more recovery. I was really wiped out last night and decided to skip this am session and sleep instead. 9 blissful hours of glorious sleep! I feel much improved.
I do think that I’m working harder on slides. Probably about a second slower on slides vs static for middle distance stuff. I’m going to keep working that because I think it relates to why my erg to boat speed gap is bigger than it should be.
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Interesting. Every time I get a chance to use slides I find it very pleasant. As a LW I happily zip along (or rather back and forth, or rather the erg zips back and forth, happily … Well you get the point) at high stroke rates. I find big pace jumps very easy on them.
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At this point, I like slides for slow stuff and for fast stuff. It’s the middle distances, where stroke efficiency makes the difference that I’m struggling. I think I need to rate up more and row with a lighter stroke, but I’m not sure. I might try a 3′ on / 1′ off interval session at this middle distance pace and different rates to see what works best. If nothing else, it will be a good threshold workout and I might learn something.
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Another thing to look at is fueling the muscles accurately. I have been miserable at this with the exception of races. Did you see the article on muscles as sponges on worldrowing.com?
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Great point. I have been doing just about all my morning workouts in a fasted state. This is fine for endurance sessions, but probably not ideal for hard sessions.
I had not seen this article. It looks like a great, well balanced approach. I’m gonna post a link to it to make it easy to find again.
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I haven’t checked them but there are links to the presentations from the coaches conference on the site.
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