At home. Static erg.
A little more work than I was hoping it would be.
Thursday: 8 x 2′ / 2′ rest
On slides
Target pace 1:48 (I wish it could be faster, but I’m trying to be realistic)
Started off with a Fletcher warmup. HR was a bit high.
Then on to the main event. I had a brief, little break down during the first rep. Basically, it started to bite a little and I needed to do a gut check to decide if I was willing to “go there” today. I was.
Annoying HR dropouts from the Wahoo TIKR again. It only happens when I do short intervals. I have no idea why. I kind of enjoyed the last rep.
After that I did a 2K cool down.
Tomorrow: 3 x 20 / 1′ rest (static)
Wednesday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ rest
I wanted to keep up my momentum, so instead of shortening the session, I got up extra early, so I could do the full hour, and still get to my 8am meeting on time.
The session was a carbon copy of yesterday’s. Constant 20 spm, constant power, around 184W. On slides. HR was a little bit higher today, but only marginally. In terms of RPE, it was exactly the same.
Tomorrow: A bit of spice. A short interval session. 8 x 500.
Tuesday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ rest r20
The objective was an easy session. Stay in UT2 and UT1 HR bands.
I decided to just stick to r20 and around 180W (on slides) and see what happened with my HR. I hit the top of the UT1 band with about a minute to go in the session.
It was, all in all, very relaxed.
Tomorrow: Shorter session. I have an 8am meeting. Probably a 10K (UT1) or something.
Monday: April CTC – 2/4/6/8
The original plan for today was for another steady state session, but I felt like something with a bit more bite to it. So, I decided to give this month’s Cross Team Challenge a try.
Here is the description…
To say I had low expectations is an understatement. Back in January, when I was in good form, I was able to crank out a 5K with a 1:46.4 pace. From what I had read, this challenge was doable at faster than 5K pace. But there are a number of mitigating factors that would cause me to set my sights considerably lower.
- My training has been intermittent and erratic since the end of January. I’m accumulating meters at less than half the December/January rate in February, March and April.
- I have had 2 multiple day layoffs due to travel in the past three weeks.
- I am now working on slides, which kill me for middle distance pieces for some reason.
With all of that, I decided that I would be happy with a 1:50 pace. It turned out to be a pretty accurate guess and a big ask in the final rep.
I started with a fletcher warmup.
Then into the main event.
Then a 2K cool down
So, 5468m puts me in Free Spirits Boat #1 for the moment. I should really be at least a couple seconds faster than this on pace, but I’m glad to at least have posted a score.
Tomorrow: 3 x 20′ steady state
Sunday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ rest L4
At home. Static erg.
Nothing fancy, just trying to maintain some endurance. Trying to keep the session basically in UT2 and UT1.
Tomorrow: More of the same, but on slides.
Saturday: Windy outing in a 2x
Out on Lake Quinsigamond with Bob in a double. Quite windy. Here’s the weather data from the station nearest the south end of the lake.
So, wind speed 10 to 15 mph from the NNE, which is a head wind heading up lake. The gusts were impressive, basically boat stoppers. Bob was in bow and he tried to hug the easter shore of the lake when we were heading north. This helped a bit and gave us flatter water to work with.
The north end of the lake was off limits because of racing. So we did a loop to the south end of the lake, and then a shorter loop just down through the narrows.
Because the conditions were a bit challenging, we basically just did it as a steady state row. We were out with a two quads. The only time we really pushed it was when we were going south on the first leg and were in a position to pass one of the quads. That was the boost in heart rate in the first section. The blank bit from 6000 to 7000 meters was while we were rowing up lake into the wind and my phone got splashed just right to fool Crewnerd into thinking I wanted to go to the setup screen.
The conditions were not ideal, but I had a good time. I enjoyed rowing with Bob and frankly, anytime I get to get on the water right now is a welcome change.
Friday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ rest L4
It feels good to have a couple of days back in my normal routine. Today I did another low intensity endurance session. I started very tame (18 SPM, 170W). On slides. The next 20 minutes I alternated 18 and 20 SPM. Then for the last 20 minutes I added some 22 and 24 SPM bits. HR was disappointingly high throughout, but at least I’m on the erg.
Tomorrow: OTW on Quinsigamond.
Fluidesign: Battered, but unbowed
I went and removed the tree from my poor boat. Then I gently removed the cover. I tried to massage it back into a boat like shape. With a loud pop, it started to look like a boat again.
A ton of damage, but at least it looks like a boat. Remarkable resilience really.
The before picture
The after pictures
So, the fine folks from Fluidesign will be picking it up on April 20th and taking a shot at repairing it. If they succeed, I now have a great boat name “Phoenix”, or maybe the french version “Fenix”.
Thursday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ on slides
Sunday: Red Eye to munich, arrived in the afternoon. Straight into meetings. No training
Monday: Breakfast with customer, then prep meetings, then big customer meeting. No training
Tuesday: Unable to sleep Monday night due to jet lag. Up at 4:30 to get to airport for flight home. Arrived home at 1:30PM local time, straight to work. Meetings until 6pm. No Training
Wednesday: Appointment for home inspection for place that we are buying on Cape Code first thing in the morning, then straight to work and meetings until 6pm. No Training
Thursday: Finally, a morning when I can train! Up at 5:15, into the gym at 7. Plan was to do an L4 session on slides and maintain a HR cap at the top of my UT1 zone. I expected that my fitness would be negatively impacted by the lack of training. The session fulfilled those expectations. I needed to slow down continually to keep my HR from going way above the top of the UT1 zone.
One interesting feature in the graph is in the last 20 minute piece, I decided to consciously work on increasing my drive length. I really reached at the catch and exaggerated my layback. This was from about 10 minutes to 15 minutes in the piece. No magic speed from it, but it is good to see the change reflected in the data because I was working on a changing the stroke.
Same basic idea tomorrow morning. I might tack on a little bit of power training at the end just to make it a little more interesting. I’m basically just trying to keep plugging away as much as I can when can squeeze in the training. The plan is pretty much out the window without a boat, I don’t really have a good objective to shoot for.
Quantified Rowing 