Last entry was on March 12th.  Holy cow, that’s a long time ago.

Monday, March 13th:  No Training, Doctor’s appointment in the morning.  My BP is running higher than it should be, and he increased the dosage of my meds.

Tuesday, March 14th: Apparently no training, but I have no idea why.  This is why I need to do this daily!….  Oh wait.  It’s coming back to me.  We had a blizzard and I slept in instead of training.  I did shovel the walk for about 20 minutes of light aerobic exercise, but otherwise I didn’t have time to train.

Wednesday, March 15th:  I had an 8 am meeting, so I needed to be quick.  I just did a 10K at 180W.  The ANT+ interface on my HR monitor gave up during the row and took down ergdata with it.  Luckily, I still had the the wahoo app running on my phone!  Hooray for redundancy.

Conclusion from this row.  I need to turn down the intensity for steady state.

Then On Wednesday evening, I headed off to the airport to fly on the redeye to London, and then on to France for a meeting.    I felt quite ill on the flight, and a bit under the weather the whole time I was in France.

Thursday, March 16th:  Arrived in Marseille around 11am, internal meetings all afternoon.  Conferece calls until  2:30am. No Training

Friday, March 17th: Up at 7:3oam to head to meeting at customer site.  Meeting concluded around 12:00pm.  Straight back to airport, caught a flight to London, and then back to Boston.  Arrived home at about midnight.  No Training.

While I was on the road, and a bit unsettled by how bad I felt on the flight over to France, I decided to take a step back from my current training plan.  I was not happy with how my HR has been so high in my endurance sessions.  I am also traveling too much to keep pace with the plan right now.  Finally, my job stress is basically through the roof.

I decided that I will bring the intensity down a notch.  I think it is critically important to my stress level and health to workout as many days as I possible can.  But I want the workouts to be more relaxing and less demanding.  I think it could actually be quite beneficial to focus on building my aerobic endurance for a few weeks, and then hop back on the plan.  The plan would be to row with a strict 155 HR cap, and turn the pace way down to 2:10.  I should be able to see incremental improvement in the power that I can hold with this heart rate constraint over a period of a few weeks.

Saturday, March 18th:   My Birthday!  I turned 54.  A relatively non-descript birthday.  Not much of a milestone.  Very weary from the travel.  Slept about 10 hours.  Late afternoon, settled in for a very easy session.

Plan:  3 x 20′ / 1′ rest @ 2:10 (160W)

It was a very pleasant workout.

Sunday, March 19th: More low intensity stuff.  I slept like a log for another 10 hours.

Plan: 4 x 20′ / 1′ rest at 160W

This was the opposite of the Saturday workout.  It felt like hard work and my HR was very high.  I slowed down like a good boy and just ground out the meters.

Workout Summary - media/Import_29209848.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|18234|80:00.0|02:11.6|153.5|20.0|152.0|000.0|11.0
W-|18234|80:00.0|02:11.6|153.5|20.0|152.0|000.0|11.0
R-|00329|04:00.0|06:04.7|007.2|00.0|000.0|000.0|00.0

Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|04621|20:00.0|02:09.8|159.9|19.0|000.0|0.0|00.0
01|04565|20:00.0|02:11.4|154.1|20.0|000.0|0.0|00.0
02|04515|20:00.0|02:12.9|149.1|20.0|000.0|0.0|00.0
03|04533|20:00.0|02:12.4|150.9|21.0|000.0|0.0|00.0

Here is the comparison of Saturday and Sunday.

It’s like I’m two completely different people.

Monday, March 20:  Back to work.  Back on a static erg.  Only about 6 hours of sleep.  I did about 90 minutes of emails before I hit the gym.

Plan: 3 x 20′ / 1′ rest at 160W (2:10)

This was very a nice easy coast.  I’m letting my rate float a bit higher these days and it makes for nice fluffy strokes.

 

Almost the same as the Saturday session.  My HR response was a bit better.

Tuesday, March 21: About 6 hours sleep.  2 hours of email and then hit the gym around 8am.  Feeling pretty energetic.

Plan: 3×20/1′ rest at 168W (2:08)

I decided to push the power up a bit since my HR was nice and low, and I decided on a HR cap strategy for these rows.  I will try to cap the first rep at 145, the second at 150 and the third at 155.  Seems like a reasonable allowance for drift.

Another good workout.  Higher HR with the faster pace, but a nice plateau in the last 20 minutes.  I feared I would have to slow down, but I didn’t.

Comparing Monday and Tuesday.

Wednesday, March 22:  Whew, we’re up to today.  6 hours of sleep.  90 minutes of email, then hit the gym at 8am.

Plan;  3 x 20′ / 1′ rest at 168W (2:08)

Same deal as Tuesday.  I’d like to see the HR plateau a bit lower before I ratchet up again.

I really enjoyed the workout.  Just nice easy strokes.  I can feel my aerobic endurance returning a bit (probably entirely in my head)

This was bit better than yesterday.

Now I am off to San Jose for an all day meeting on Thursday.  Fitness center triathlon for me tomorrow, then a red-eye tomorrow night.

I think this is a good change.  I could feel myself burning out.  By focusing on base aerobic endurance, I feel like I have more energy and I’m more focused at work.  I’m also sleeping well.