A week of training

Thursday, January 31

Weight training. The usual drill. Still a heavy impact workout in terms of DOMS and not being able to do hard erg sessions in the days after. Especially the lunges with 25kg are pretty devastating.

Saturday, February 2

The schedule called for an hour of steady state, but I had also registed for a 500m online challenge. With a 1000m race scheduled a week later, I decided that I would do a 30 minute steady state, then a 500m at “1000m race pace”, then a 30 minute steady state.

I did the 30 minutes steady state.

I rowed the 500m at 1:39 pace.


Workout Summary - media/20190202-1511360o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|00499|01:33.0|01:33.8|369.9|33.7|163.0|182.0|09.5
W-|00500|01:33.0|01:33.9|369.9|33.7|163.0|182.0|09.5
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|182.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00089|00:13.0|01:12.7|365.2|32.4|125.2|127.0|12.7
01|00094|00:18.5|01:38.5|369.4|33.9|143.2|155.0|09.0
02|00093|00:18.1|01:38.0|372.8|32.6|168.5|173.0|09.4
03|00108|00:21.1|01:37.7|375.7|34.2|178.1|180.0|09.0
04|00116|00:23.1|01:39.4|365.4|34.8|181.8|182.0|08.7


It was a good preparation. It’s also interesting how I am reaching the red heart rate zone in 400m of rowing .

After that, I started the second 30 minute steady state, but I didn’t finish it. I stopped after 10 minutes. Fatigue from the weights session, plus the cross country skiing. Perhaps also being back in my erg cave after having done splendid outdoors activities for a few days.

Sunday, February 3

A workout done on the rowing club with our Masters group. The plan was 8x500m but I transformed it to a time based interval workout so we could do it together despite age and fitness differences, and I took the average pace of the Masters Ladies, so it became 8x2min, which is a bit more than 500m for us Masters Men.

Martin “the Turkey” Krocil was sitting on the erg to my left, and he took the first two intervals at his 1k pace. He regretted that for the six subsequent intervals. He didn’t stop talking about the session for 6 days …


Workout Summary - media/20190203-1021050o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06696|32:00.0|02:23.4|173.1|24.5|159.7|179.0|08.5
W-|04536|16:00.0|01:45.8|292.6|30.5|162.6|179.0|09.3
R-|02166|16:00.0|03:41.6|053.6|18.6|156.9|179.0|06.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00584|02:00.0|01:42.8|313.6|31.6|149.7|174.0|09.2
01|00578|02:00.0|01:43.9|313.0|30.2|167.3|177.0|09.6
02|00574|02:00.0|01:44.5|304.0|30.4|166.7|177.0|09.4
03|00566|02:00.0|01:46.0|291.6|30.4|164.6|177.0|09.3
04|00567|02:00.0|01:45.9|292.0|30.2|164.2|179.0|09.4
05|00557|02:00.0|01:47.6|278.3|30.1|163.6|177.0|09.2
06|00553|02:00.0|01:48.5|270.1|30.3|161.8|177.0|09.1
07|00558|02:00.0|01:47.6|278.1|30.4|162.7|178.0|09.2


And here’s the chart:

I ended up at a 1:46 second average, and I am wondering how that relates to my current 2k form.

This session was also the first session that I shared with my new online “training group”. My old rowing buddy Arjan (we started rowing together in 1992) announced that he was in need of a training plan, and I quickly pulled him into rowing with data and rowsandall. So now we are training together, and I have additional motivation to finish my sessions and produce better numbers than Arjan.

Monday, February 4

The instructions: 3km warming up, then 20min/3min + 15min/3min + 20min at 20/21 SPM

The execution: 3km warming up, then 15min/3min + 20min/3min + 15min at 20/21 SPM

I had wrongly remembered the instructions and rowed 10 minutes less than planned. Still a good session. Too bad PainSled decided to boycot it and not record anything. I do have a screenshot, but why would I post a screenshot of 50 minutes of steady state rowing? Average heart rate was 165 BPM. Normal for me.

Tuesday, February 5

Same weights training as on January 31st. Five rounds of a pretty heavy circuit. This time it was complicated a bit by a guy who was combining weights training with heavy chatting/messenger/tweet/whatsapp social networking on his cellphone. So he would sit on a workout station being focused on his chat app, occupying the machine for minutes doing nothing. At one point I asked him if he could free up the machine, which he did eventually.

Not sure why you would pay gym membership to spend the time only training your thumbs.

The session duration was 70 minutes, as opposed to 60 minutes normally.

Wednesday, February 6

A home erg session. The training plan was 30×30″/30″, but I did only 20 intervals. It was the day after the weights training and I was tired. I was also conscious of my Saturday race.

With these winter erg races I am always hesitating between tapering and not tapering. On the one hand, the races are a podium where the Masters rowers in our region meet and a good results helps you get into the right crews in the OTW racing season. On the other hand, a serious taper will reduce intensity for three or more days in a period of the year when you want to build on volume.

So doing 20 instead of 30 intervals seemed a good compromise. I decided to go to the upper limit of the 32-34spm rate instructions and row “at 1k race pace”.

Happy to record 1:39.x or faster pace for all intervals. This really is a fun workout. Thirty seconds on and thirty seconds off. The on bit is short, but so is the off bit. I stopped at a point where it was still enjoyable. I am sure 10 more intervals would have been much harder, but still this is a doable training. And good race prep indeed.

I did a nice long 20 minute cooling down and that was it for the week. Thursday was too busy at work, and I also canceled the planned swimming workout on Friday morning. Too much work to do, and I also wasn’t sure slow swimming would anything to my race fitness.