Pyramid better than expected

A busy day at work. In the morning a visit from a new Vice President. In the afternoon an interview with a major Czech newspaper. The interview went well, but these things are draining. Our communications guy later told me this lady regularly does interviews with prime ministers and the likes. Glad I didn’t know it beforehand.

Anyway, I arrived at the lake tired and uninspired. This is a problem, because my training plan has a fixed set of workout types per week (steady state, intervals, race prep, etc) but I decide on the spot what kind of workout I will do, depending on how I feel and what I have done earlier in the week. My week starting on Monday, I usually do short intervals on that day, but this week that had been  a fierce low rate row. I was hesitating between “long” intervals and “short” intervals.

First thing I did was checking the juniors and men’s training schedule on the notice board in the changing room. Hm, the Juniors had a 3x2km/2km rest at 24/26/28spm that seemed doable with my level of energy.

Unfortunately, when I launched I noticed that there was a sailing race going on in the bottom half of our lake. Doing 2kms would get me in the middle of the race in the final 750m. Rather not.

So I reverted to “Cheops”, the Pete Plan Pyramid session. But I allowed my self to rate down in the 750m and 1km sections.

No speed bursts during the warming up, just not feeling like it. Also, the weather was a transition between calm/cloudy and rainy,  with random wind speed and direction changes making it difficult to do anything  with decent form. Luckily, there was only a light chop.

The wind was still changing direction every 10 strokes or so, but it seemed to be calmer around Rokle,the upper part of our lake. So I dialled up the session on CrewNerd and started the first 250m with a race start. Start was good at 40spm, then quickly settling down for 30spm. Splits looking good at higher 1:40s or lower 1:50s.

About 15 strokes in I passed another single going in the other direction. It was my double partner Radek coming from Lodni Sporty. I wanted to discuss a training on Friday, so after the 250m I did a hard stop, stopped the session in CrewNerd, quick turn and rowed back to Rokle.

After that I knew of no other way to do the training than to restart the entire session. Well, I kind of enjoy those 250s anyway, so it wasn’t a big problem.

This time, with Radek on my tail, I managed a 1:49.0 average split at 32spm. Not bad.

Then a 500m from a rolling start. I focused on “swing” which enables me to keep the stroke rate high without too much effort. CrewNerd showed paces between 1:55 and 2:05 depending on the wind and reported a total time of 1:56.6 at 30spm, which I was happy with.

A few kids in sailing boats had ventured towards the 1000m mark, so I turned again to do the 750m towards Rokle. Doing this one in a calmer fashion, it turned out to be a 2:02.7 pace in 29spm.

Then the dreaded kilometer. I survived this one by counting strokes. One hundred and sixteen strokes at an average pace of 2:03.7, and 28spm.

The second 750m done in slightly calmer water but headwind. Again a 2:03.7 pace in 28spm.

I was now on the good side of the pyramid and as training usually does, my mental energy was slowly coming back to me. The 500m done in 1:58.6, 30spm and looking forward to the final 250m.

During the training the wind had definitely calmed down, and a few strokes before the start of the final 250m it started to rain heavily. I managed the 250m in 1:49.0 pace at 33spm, counting six sets of five strokes.

The rain was too cold so I had to stop and put on an additional layer before doing a cooling down.

cheops cheops2 cheops1

The spreadsheet gives slightly different paces than CrewNerd, which is caused by rounding errors.


|Start|Stop_|Dist_|Time_|Pace__|_SPM__|avg HR|max HR|DPS|Remarks
|00000|02056|02056|13:42|03:19.9| 17.9 | 123 | 145 |08.4|warming up
|02056|02306|00250|00:55|01:50.2| 31.5 | 146 | 170 |08.6|250m
|02306|02510|00205|04:01|09:49.2| 17.3 | 164 | 170 |02.9|chatting with Radek
|02510|02760|00250|00:54|01:48.0| 31.4 | 144 | 171 |08.8|250m
|02760|03010|00250|01:11|02:22.2| 20.7 | 165 | 172 |10.2|rest
|03010|03508|00499|01:57|01:57.3| 29.1 | 173 | 178 |08.8|500m
|03508|04019|00510|03:12|03:08.1| 18.6 | 149 | 177 |08.6|rest
|04019|04766|00747|03:03|02:02.5| 28.5 | 171 | 181 |08.6|750m
|04766|05540|00774|06:09|03:58.4| 17.2 | 138 | 180 |07.3|rest
|05540|06537|00997|04:07|02:03.8| 27.4 | 172 | 179 |08.8|1000m
|06537|07537|01000|05:38|02:49.0| 18.9 | 147 | 178 |09.4|rest
|07537|08285|00748|03:05|02:03.6| 27.8 | 174 | 180 |08.7|750m
|08285|09034|00749|04:59|03:19.7| 18.6 | 141 | 180 |08.1|rest
|09034|09532|00498|02:00|02:00.4| 28.5 | 166 | 178 |08.7|500m
|09532|10038|00506|02:46|02:44.1| 19.5 | 157 | 179 |09.4|rest
|10038|10287|00249|00:55|01:50.5| 31.3 | 166 | 176 |08.7|250m
|10287|11658|01371|08:45|03:11.5| 19.4 | 140 | 176 |08.1|cooling down

Summary stats:

dist_____|time_____|_pace___|_HR__|_SPM__|_DPS|comment
2056_____|_13:42____|_3:19.9
|123|17.9|8.4|warmup
4238_____|_16:56____|_1:59.9
|168|28.7|8.7|Main set
1371_____|_08:45____|_3:11.5
|140|19.4|8.1|Cool down
3993_____|_27:56____|_3:29.9
|148|18.3|7.7|rest meters
11658____|_07:19____|_2:53.2
|147|20.5|8.5|_Total

Overall happy with having done this workout. Technique wasn’t bad.