In an effort to get back to basics, I have been thinking about getting away from fancy training plans and just get back to doing the Wolverine Plan.  It was my mainstay for the run up to my first CRASH-Bs and it has the advantage of simplicity and flexibility.

My life is too hectic to try to implement meso-cycle based training, and while I might tailor my sessions a bit to focus on head race distance instead of 2K performance, doing the basic WP would probably get me in much better shape.

Over the past 6 months I have been trying to follow the Eddie Fletcher Marathon Training Plan.  I haven’t been very successful with it, but that is not the plan’s fault.  My lack of success is directly related to not having enough time to do the sessions, and having travel disrupt the progressions built into the plan.  Nevertheless, my endurance is much better than my sprinting ability right now.  It’s been a long time since I pulled any sessions at a pace faster than 1:50.

So, today was going to be a shock to the system.  At least I had the advantage of going in with very low expectations.

Here’s the CTC definition.

I added a 2K warmup (with some power10s at 1:45 or faster), and a 2k cooldown at 2:15 pace.

Warmup:  The 1:45s were hard!  And I had a lot of trouble getting the rating up.  I haven’t really had my stroke rate much above 25 for the last 6 months.  It showed.

The into the main event.  I decided to target a 1:45 pace.  Mainly because I had no idea what else to do.  That proved a little too spicy in the 1000m piece, but otherwise it was a fine target.  Based on the HR data, I didn’t phone this one in.  I was working at very close to my limits.

My total time added up to 13:53.1 (1:44.1 pace), which puts me in Free Spirits Boat 3 and at 127 of 370 entries.  The last guy in Boat 2 is significantly ahead of me in the rankings (13:38.7, 1:42.3 pace), so that is not a good motivation to take another shot at this.  The other is that I probably won’t see another erg until I’m back in Boston.  Notice how horribly low the stroke rate is.  I guess sprinting is something you need to actually train for.  Who knew?

I was pretty shattered at the end of it, and I dialed up a 2k cool down.  I was originally thinking that I would do a happy ending cool down with 500m at 2:00, then 500m at 2:05, 500m at 2:10 and 500m At 2:15, but I got the feeling I might pass out or throw up during the first 20 strokes at 2:00 pace, so I backed off and just tried to hit exactly 9:00 for the whole thing.  I missed by 0.4sec.  Another thing I’m out of practice at, I guess!

Here’s the HR data for the whole workout.  That’s a whole lotta red!  Nearly 6 minutes of it.

I still felt a bit funny after the cool down.  I went to my room, and lay down for about 30 minutes.  After that I was feeling much better and was ready to start my day.

Tonight I fly to Taiwan.  I’m there for a day, then fly on Saturday to Macau.  My plan is to do a 60 minute endurance session tomorrow morning at the hotel.