Weather:  Sunny and Hot 75F, 75% RH.  Light breeze 1-2mph from the NW.  This was basically a cross wind, although it was at it’s strongest and a bit of a head wind during the final rep.

I have used the same taper plan for racing for the past couple of years and I really like it.  It’s documented here.   It’s very simple. The theory is to maintain intensity, and reduce volume as you approach the race.  Today, I did 4 – 500m intervals, tomorrow I’ll do 3, then 2 on Friday, one on Saturday, and race on Sunday.  The approach was shown in the linked study to improve the time to exhaustion at 1500m running pace by 22% (from 250 seconds to 320 seconds) when compared to taking rest days and 14% compared to a low intensity taper.  I like it because it gives me the chance to keep practicing starts and work on race pacing.

So today’s plan:

• Long Rojabo style warmup finishing with 20 strokes at faster than race pace.
• A few practice starts
• 4 x 500m intervals
  • 1:55 pace
  • 30-32 spm
• Long rests
• Cool down

Here’s a map view of the whole session.  The river level is quite low and the water is getting really murky.  There are a lot of floating weeds, but I didn’t have any issues with them today.

The warmup was uneventful.  I was hitting some sweet paces, and I felt like I was rowing clean.  I was having some intestinal troubles.  These continued through the whole session.  I hate that.

After the warmup, I did 4 practice starts.  None of the four were disastrous, none of them were great either.  The last one was the best one.

Then into the intervals.  I pushed the first one really hard, and really smashed into the lactate wall at about 50 strokes, the last 15 really hurt.  I had massive shivers after I finished.  On CrewNerd, it was a 1:57 pace, upstream.  On the speedcoach, it was a 1:54.1.  That was definitely a bit too fast.

I was an idiot on the second interval.  I got all set up, did my start and settle, and then looked at the iphone.  That’s when I noticed that I didn’t set up a 500 interval and I didn’t know where I was.  I bailed out around 250m.  It was a pretty good 1:55 pace though.

I took a couple minutes to get my breath back and then setup CrewNerd for another 500m.  Off I went, and I was determined to get a good start and settle aggressively to my target rate at 30 spm.  This one was another 1:57 on CrewNerd, but 1:55.8 on Speedcoach (still upstream, but less current here).  The lactate wave was less debilitating in this interval.  In think this is a better pace target for me.

Then I paddled around, had a drink, spun and setup for interval number 3.  This one was downstream, and what wind there was, was a bit of a tail wind.  I had high hopes.  This one was a disappointing 1:59 on CrewNerd because I stopped about a stroke too soon.  On Speedcoach it was a 1:57.5.  Good rate discipline.

I setup for the fourth interval, now heading up river.  The breeze was a little fresher and was a headwind about 30 degrees off the bow.  I got a good start, and then settled.  The boat felt heavier even though the headwind was light, only about 2mph.  The settle took my pace above 2:00.  I tried to focus on holding the rate and taking long strokes.  Around the 40 stroke point, I noticed that I was a bit off course and needed to do some steering.  I counted out to 60 strokes and looked at the iphone to see how much distance I had left, expecting to see about 30 meters or so.  Instead, I saw 112 meters and the display was not updating.  The frigging thing had frozen!  I took another 2 strokes and guessed that I had finished the 500m.  Turns out I was off by about 30m.  This interval was at 2:00.5 pace.  Part of it was head wind.  Part of it was fatigue.  It was close to a maximal effort.

It looks like Crewnerd kept working in the background, despite the display being frozen.  And once I brought up a Just Row and started it, the display was live again.  I was pretty irked.  This kind of freeze had not happened to me unless I was using the Dual GPS before.  I am edging closer and closer the buying a Speedcoach GPS.

After the last interval, I pulled my feet out of the shoes and rowed back to the dock concentrating on trying to get perfect finishes.

Tomorrow:  Same thing, but 3 intervals.

Finally, apropos to nothing, but while I was driving to the lake on Saturday morning, the sun was rising behind me and the shadow of my boat on my car was kind of cool.