Tag: fitness center

Marathon Training – Korean Style

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I’m in Seoul, staying at the JW Marriott.  The hotel has a fantastic fitness club, it has tons of treadmills, stair climbers (some with real stairs), banks of those machines with straps that vigorously vibrate your muscles, machines that you stand on that wiggle to and fro, and the famous electric horse.  But no rowing machine.

The training plan called for this session…

M1 4 x 15′ / 4′ 6′ @ 5KP, 9′ @ MP 92.5% (172)

Often when I travel, I just use the fitness center and do maintenance type aerobic training.  But since I’m on the road a lot, and I have less than a month to my race, I thought it would be better to try to replicate the HR response of this workout, even if it wouldn’t be on a rowing machine.

Here’s the HR response of this workout in a boat.  I was pretty happy with this workout at the time.

myimage (72)

So, on a treadmill, the objective would be to get my HR up into the TR zone reasoably quickly during the 6′ portion of the piece, and then slow down enough so that my HR settled into the high UT1 or LT range.

On the treadmill, I decided to set the incline to a 5% grade.  This would hopefully allow me to work my lungs harder and put less strain on my knees.  During the first interval I did the fast bit at 10km/h, and the slow bit at 7km/h.  In the subsequent intervals, I slowed down by about 0.5km/h for each one to try to fine tune my HR.

It was pretty hard work.  The gym was a reasonable temperature, but quite humid.  The treadmill was drenched by the end, and so was I.

6-27a

It took a little while for my HR to climb in the first interval, but after that, I think it worked out pretty well.  I certainly was praying for the end of each 6′ piece and the time was crawling.

During the rests, I set the incline to zero and walked at about 5km/h.

Tomorrow:  I will attempt to adapt this workout

M2 3 x 20′ / 2′ MP, 10KP, HMP 90.0% (167)

To the elliptical trainer.

The goal is to have it look like this…

myimage (73)

Long, slow burn in the fitness center

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Still in Seoul.  At the JW Marriott (the fitness center with the mechanical horsey, but no rower)

I had time to kill this morning.  I woke up around 5:30AM, and I didn’t need to leave for the airport until 10:30.  So, I did some email, did a crossword, surfed the web, and around 7, I decided to head to the gym.

The plan for today

  • 4 x 20′ endurance
  • 20 minutes max incline treadmill
  • 20 minutes flat incline treadmill jog
  • 20 minutes elliptical (intervals, level 15)
  • 20 minutes stationary bike (rolling hills, level 8)

Holy hell it was boring.

4-26a.png

4-26b

Now I’m at the airport waiting to get on my flight.  I’m connecting through Hong Kong and getting back to Boston around 10:30PM.  Ugh.

I just sync’ed up StravastiX.  I’m certainly not putting a challenging load on myself these days.  I think I need to ramp up the volume AND the intensity if I want to make much progress.  It says that my fitness is improving, but I think it is deceived by the fact that I only started logging after my return from my knee operation.  It had my fitness starting from zero, but it was actually pretty good prior to my layoff.  I bet that I would be hovering versus slowing improving if that was the case.  I think I need to get a good 6 months of activity recorded before I really trust the trends.

It’s almost time to restart the marathon plan.   Except this time on the water!

A fitness center sprint Tri…3×15′

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I landed in Korea about 9:30 last night and I was in bed by 11:30pm.  I didn’t sleep much on the flight over, maybe 2 hours between Boston and Tokyo and another hour or so between Tokyo and Seoul.

I got bored sitting around Narita, so I went for a walk.  I walked the whole terminal, it took about 40 minutes and it was a much better way to waste time than surfing the web.

So, from a training perspective:

Monday: 40 minute walk (with rollerboard suitcase dragging behind)

Tuesday:  I woke up at 6am.  My legs were sore from Sunday’s run, and I was feel jetlagged and tired.  But I suited up and headed down to the gym.  I was getting picked up at 8am, so I had a little bit less than an hour.

My plan:

  • 15 minutes, stationary bike, easy, rolling hills
  • 15 minutes, max incline treadmill, 15% grade, speed set to stay in UT1 zone
  • 15 minutes, elliptical, short intervals (1’15” on/1’15” off), around the top of the UT1 zone.
  • enough time to clean equipment between 15′ pieces.

4-25a

4-25b

Well that worked out just fine.  The bike was hard.  My thighs and legs were complaining loudly, but my HR was not going up.  I guess that’s from the run.

Tomorrow morning, I have more time.  I will probably do a 3 x 20′ and some strength training.

Then I head out to the airport for a 1:35 departure for home.

Thursday: San Diego. Recovery Session

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I’m here in San Diego, and one of the things I like about it is that there is nearly constant military air traffic in the area.  I had lunch outside and we had trouble carrying on a conversation because F/A-18s were tearing up the sky above us.  It’s a beautiful plane.

Back to training.

  • 20 minutes elliptical (level 15, rolling hills)
  • 20 minutes treadmill (15% grade, 3 mph)

I wanted something easy, and that’s what I got.

 

Saturday: 40 minutes at the Spoarts Club

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Not a typo.

I was staying in a hotel in Incheon called The Charis.  It did not have a fitness center, but they had a deal with the sports club across the street to let their guest go work out there.

I headed over and there was a sign for the Spoarts Club on the door.  Some clever indication that they focus on rowing…Sp..oar..ts?  Afraid not.  Not a rowing machine in sight, and the place was a bit shabby.  They had a bunch of working tread mills and I managed to make one of the ellipticals to work, but I could not find a working stationary bike.  So, I ended up doing 2 – 20 minute pieces.

  • 20 minutes treadmill (15% grade, 5.1 kph)
  • 20 minutes elliptical (random profile, level 15)

2-25a

2-25b

As boring as it looks.

 

Trapped in San Diego – 60 minutes in the Fitness Center

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So, my flight to Boston last night was cancelled because of winter storm “Niko”.  A huge Nor’easter that is pummeling the northeastern United States.

(side note:  One of the main online weather services in the US, weather.com has taken to naming major storms, not just hurricanes.  I like it.  It solves a referencing problem and it’s fun to talk about storms by name…back to the narrative)

So, I am stuck in San Diego until my rescheduled depart, tonight around 9pm.  I had a conference call at 6am, so I was unable to go to Crossfit Del Mar today.  I was relegated to using the hotel fitness center.

I decided to just do 60 minutes of aerobic maintenance.

  • 30 minutes treadmill (15% grade, 3.1mph…slowed to 3.0 at about 20′, and then 2.9 at 26′ to keep HR below 145)
  • 30 minutes on the elliptical (rolling hills, level 14 of 25), HR cap < 155.

2-9a

2-9b

The treadmill felt like hard work, the elliptical felt easier, but my HR was a bit higher.

Tomorrow:  I arrive (hopefully) around 8 am.  I plan to work from home and get in a marathon plan workout.

M1 4 x 15′ / 4′ 6′ @ 5KP, 9′ @ MP 92.5% (172)

 

Tuesday: 3 x 20′ / 2′ rest (MP,10KP,HMP)

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Still in Korea.  I’m writing this in the KAL Lounge prior to my flight to Tokyo, and then on to LA.

I had a conference call at 2am local time this morning, I slept from 10pm to about 1:45, so almost 4 hours (plus almost 30 minutes in the car on the way home from the restaurant).  After the call, I did some email and called some other folks to get some work going while I am on my flights.  I wrapped this stuff up around 5:00 or so, and decided to head down to the gym.

The objective today was to do another marathon training session, this one is 3 – 20 minute intervals at different intensities.  I decided to do them on the elliptical to avoid too much stress on my knees.  I also didn’t really feel like doing this session on the bike.

Since the power ranges on the erg are not applicable, I did this session to heart rate.  The HR cap is 167, so I wanted to stay under 150 for the MP piece, get my HR up in the mid 160s for the 10KP piece, and then choose a level between those two for the HMP.

This turned out to be level 17 (of 25) for the MP section, level 21 for the 10KP and level 19 for the HMP.  The 10KP felt very heavy, like I was working in molasses, but it sure was hard work.  My HR ended up a little below target, but not too far off.

The last 20 minutes felt like forever.  I guess that’s the whole point.

I will now fly east, so I’m going to land at LAX about the same local time that I’m leaving behind in Seoul.  I will probably hit the hotel fitness center Wednesday morning, but I might get ambitious and drop in at a local crossfit to use an erg for a 2×30′ MP session.

 

Monday: 4 x 15′ / 4′ (6’/9′ step down) on Treadmill

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Well, that was a very difficult workout.

I wanted to mimic the intensity of this workout, but I didn’t have an erg at my disposal, so I decided to do it on the treadmill at max incline.  I really want to avoid “real” running for now because I don’t want to cause inflammation in my newly repaired knee.

But even a slow jog at 15% grade is enough to really be really taxing.  The question was how much was enough.

I decided that I would work from HR.  I wanted the 6′ sections to bring me up into the range of 165-172 bpm, and the 9′ sections to bring me back down into the 150-160 range.  I used the first interval to experiment.  In the first 6′ interval, I started at 4.5 mph and within a minute, I knew that was way to aggressive.  I backed off to 4mph and even that was a genuine struggle.  My HR monitor picked the wrong day to act up.  You can see in the plots that there were dropouts and lags.  It might be time for a new battery.  The 9′ sections were fine at about 3.1 mph

By the last interval, I was really tired.  I slowed down to about 3.8 on the fast bit and ended up dropping the 9′ pace to around 2.8mph.  Pitifully slow, but effective.

I think that was pretty effective.  Sure was less fun on a treadmill than on the erg though.  I’m rower not a runner, that’s for sure.

Tuesday:  I’ll hit the gym to do my regularly scheduled workout.  I’ll do it by HR on the elliptical.  For MP, I will aim at having my HR around 150 by the end of 20′, for the 10KP, I will aim at 167 by the end, and for the HMP, I will split the difference.

3 x 20′ / 2′ MP, 10KP, HMP 90.0% (167)