Well, that was a very difficult workout.

I wanted to mimic the intensity of this workout, but I didn’t have an erg at my disposal, so I decided to do it on the treadmill at max incline.  I really want to avoid “real” running for now because I don’t want to cause inflammation in my newly repaired knee.

But even a slow jog at 15% grade is enough to really be really taxing.  The question was how much was enough.

I decided that I would work from HR.  I wanted the 6′ sections to bring me up into the range of 165-172 bpm, and the 9′ sections to bring me back down into the 150-160 range.  I used the first interval to experiment.  In the first 6′ interval, I started at 4.5 mph and within a minute, I knew that was way to aggressive.  I backed off to 4mph and even that was a genuine struggle.  My HR monitor picked the wrong day to act up.  You can see in the plots that there were dropouts and lags.  It might be time for a new battery.  The 9′ sections were fine at about 3.1 mph

By the last interval, I was really tired.  I slowed down to about 3.8 on the fast bit and ended up dropping the 9′ pace to around 2.8mph.  Pitifully slow, but effective.

I think that was pretty effective.  Sure was less fun on a treadmill than on the erg though.  I’m rower not a runner, that’s for sure.

Tuesday:  I’ll hit the gym to do my regularly scheduled workout.  I’ll do it by HR on the elliptical.  For MP, I will aim at having my HR around 150 by the end of 20′, for the 10KP, I will aim at 167 by the end, and for the HMP, I will split the difference.