Well, I thought about doing a steady state session and I probably should have, but it seemed kind of boring and I didn’t have a ton of time this morning.  So, I reverted back to the plan, which was for a 10K threshold session.

I wasn’t in the mood to try to push incredibly hard, and I am still a bit mystified by the whole middle distance thing on slides.  I mulled it over as I drove to work, and ultimately decided to do a 10K push.  Start at a 2:00 split and go 1 second faster for each 1K.

It didn’t go so well.  I started with a nice 10 minute warmup.  Then I got myself psyched up and dove into the piece.  The slower paces felt a lot ore taxing than I was hoping but I held it together until I hit the 1:54 pace with 4K to go.

My HR was really high and I was really hurting, so I paddled for a few seconds and restarted at a slower rate.  I just kind of rowed until I go to 1000m left, and for that I tried to finish with the planned 1:51 split, but it wasn’t to be.  The best I could do was 1:53, and my HR was well into the Anaerobic zone at that.  I am seriously slower on slides.  I did a whole HM, more than twice the distance at 1:54.7 pace.  No way I could hold that on slides, even for 10K.  More directly comparable.  I did a 10K push on a static erg on October 25th.  I feel like I am in better shape now than I was then, and for that session, I nailed every pace and had enough to do the last 1000m at 1:44!

Perversely, I am glad.  The whole point of rowing on slides is to get to be a better OTW rower.  If I can close the gap between static and slides on the erg, then I think I can close some of the gap between my current predictive OTW speed and my current OTW speed.  My predictive OTW 2K pace is 1:55.  My race results are closer to 2:05.  If part of that gap is a technique issue, and I can improve it, then that’s terrific!

I also don’t see how getting better on slides will impact my rowing on a static erg in a negative way.  So, for now, I will do as much of my endurance work on slides, and do high intensity sessions there as well, but I will do time trials on a static erg, and I will back off on my expectations.

Tomorrow:  4 x 20.  180W.