Fall 2017 Training Plan – Back to Basics

August 3, 20179 Comments

Here I sit in the ANA lounge in Narita Airport. I’ll be taking off for Los Angeles in about an hour. During this two week trip to Asia, I’ve been lucky enough to have access to an erg for 7 training sessions. Tomorrow, I’ll be in San Diego and hopefully, I can sneak over to Cross Fit Del Mar for another session then.

During this trip, I’ve had plenty of time to think about training routines and rowing in general. I was very disappointed about cancelling out of the Blackburn Challenge. I was, and still am, looking forward to the adventure of such a long race under such unpredictable conditions. I’ll have to try again next year. But I won’t plan my training around it. In fact, I’m going to violate the first rule of training planning. I am not going to plan around my events at all.

I am hoping to do some head races this fall. I want to do the Head of the Charles if I get an entry. And I’m hoping I can do at least one or two other races. But I don’t want to disappoint myself or other people because of my unpredictable schedule.

What I think I need to do is come up with a “chaos tolerant” training plan. So, what does that mean?

Here are the principles

It needs to be simple. I should never be at a loss for what to do in a session
It should be progressive, so I can hold my self accountable for making progress and see how much missed training impacts my fitness
It should be balanced, so that my performance across all distances improves

I’ve decided that using the Wolverine Plan is the best option for me right now. Here are the salient points

6 sessions per week
3 L4 endurance sessions
1 each L1, L2 and L3 session

I have set up a schedule for the core L1, L2 and L3 workouts that I will go through.

L1: 8 x 500 / 2’30”, 4 x 1000 / 5′, Pyramid (250/500/750/1000/750/500/250)
L2: 5 x 1500 / 5′, 4 x 2000 / 5′, Waterfall (3000/2500/2000)
L3: 10K, 30′, 15 x 3′ / 1′
L4: The duration of the L4s will be dictated by the amount of time that I have. When I have time, I will aim for 80′ sessions. I will leave the format open and decide on the day. In general, I will be trying to increase the stroke counts over the next 4 months.

As I have done before, I will substitute workouts in for L1/L2/L3 to keep myself from getting bored. This will include ranking pieces, CTCs, and interesting OTW workouts. I will sub them in in accordance with what type the pace and duration is closest to.

I will follow the same plan on the erg and on the water. The only difference is that i will generally do the intervals in time based format instead of distance. I will follow the plan whether I am on the erg, in my fluid or in my Maas Aero.

As an example, the August workout is a 200m sprint. I think I would probably do that as the first piece of a pyramid in place of the 250 and take a bit of extra rest.

I’ve laid out a rough session plan to get me through the fall.

This link will take you to a google sheet.

As always, comments and feedback are very welcome.

60′ L4

August 2, 20171 Comment

60′ L4

168/172/176/180/168/172

8-2a

Tough sweaty work.

Then I packed up and headed to the airport and flew to Tokyo. I’m posting this from the back of a Tesla on the way to my hotel (in car wifi is pretty cool!)

Tomorrow: We’ll have to see what kind of a gym the hotel has.

L3 – 10K

August 1, 2017Leave a comment

Restarting on the WP has certainly been a humbling experience. I did my best 10K ever in 2014. It was a 36:33, which is a 1:49.7 pace.

Now today was not intended to be a time trial, but still, it is a little daunting how much work it will take to get back to that level of fitness.

I was pressed for time, so I skipped the warmup.

I set my target pace for this session at 1:57. But I could tell by the time I got to 3000m that I wasn’t going to be able to hold it. My legs and lungs were both complaining and I found myself playing with stroke rate to futilely try to find a groove. I told myself that if I could stick it out to 5K, then it would be OK to slow down to a 2:00 pace.

This took off enough pressure that I could get through the piece, but even at a 2:00 pace, my HR plateaued and then started rising again. It was a struggle, counting strokes all the way to the end. It was 460 strokes by the way.

I skipped the cool down too.

But the session got done, and now I have a marker for next time. That’s the magic of the WP. There is no mystery about your goals for the next work. Just try to do a little better than how you did today. I need that simplicity right now.