I did a 20′ test as part of a battery of 4 tests back at the beginning of November. At that time, I struggled with the test, aborted an attempt, and then tried again at a slower pace on the next day.

The first attempt, I tried to hold a 1:51 pace and I lasted 6 minutes.  In the second attempt, I backed off to 1:53 and it was close to a maximum effort, but I managed to hold that through the piece, finishing with a 1:52.7 pace (5233m, 244W)

Today, based on my recent workouts, especially Monday’s 6x(5’@28,5’@18) workout, I thought that I might have made enough progress to attempt 1:51 again.  At least I thought I could give it a shot.

I ended up heading to the gym in the late afternoon.  I warmed up with an easy 2K.

Then into the main event.  Pretty simple plan.  Row at r25 and 1:51 pace.  Count strokes in sets of 100 and hope for the best.

It went as well as I could have hoped.  I kept the display bouncing back and forth between 1:50 and 1:51 through the first 4 sets of 100 strokes.  With 100 strokes left, I was struggling, but the displayed average was 1:50.3.  At this point, I gave myself permission to let the splits dance between 1:51 and 1:51.  That was just enough relief  to get me refocused on rowing well.  I got down to 50 strokes to go and I wound back up the speed and counted down to the finish.

End result: 5430m, 259W, 1:50.4 pace

Workout Summary - media/20171213-2225590o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|05432|20:00.0|01:50.5|258.7|25.1|167.2|180.0|10.8
W-|05435|20:00.0|01:50.4|258.7|25.0|167.1|180.0|10.9
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|180.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01092|04:00.0|01:49.8|257.3|24.4|144.9|162.0|11.2
01|01087|04:00.0|01:50.4|259.9|25.0|165.9|168.0|10.9
02|01085|04:00.0|01:50.6|258.2|25.0|170.5|173.0|10.9
03|01082|04:00.0|01:50.9|256.8|25.2|175.9|180.0|10.7
04|01089|04:00.0|01:50.2|261.2|25.7|178.4|180.0|10.6

I compared the row in detail to my last attempts.

First, comparing it to the 1:52.7 attempt.

• Pace: this one was faster!
• Rate:  Identical
• Power:  better  today!
• HR: close to identical, but I didn’t push it as high today.

Then I did a cool down.

I’m very happy with this.

Tomorrow:  4 x 20′ / 3′ at 2:06/r18