4x2km

I have the flu. Nothing very serious so far, and I did yesterday’s steady state session without problems.

Today, however, I didn’t feel fully recovered from the intervals. Which is weird.

The training plan asked for a 4x2km session. Haven’t done this one in a while. I went to the erg room with a plan. Take it easy. Just row 26spm and take whatever pace you get. It is more important to complete the session than to row it at PB pace.

That was the theory. I set off at 26spm and used the free speed I got from my erg video analysis advice report. Which got me through the first interval at 1:52 average pace, and half way through the third one. That was the point where my head exploded. Not literally, of course, but this was how it felt.

So let’s see how I feel tomorrow.

The classical 4x2km/5min rest workout has been problematic for me. The last time I did it, on August 31, I managed 1:54.3 with an average heart rate of 164bpm.

There was also a workout in the fall of 2015 which was done after a similar day as today. A bike ride to work in the morning, a long day at work, and then sit down to do a 4x2km.

So, today I set off at a conservative 1:54 target pace. Here is the comparison chart. Today is the blue line, August 31 is the red line:

A huge difference in heart rate. Here are today’s stats:


Workout Summary - media/20161026-191009o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10867|46:07.0|02:07.4|24.9|155.4|182.0|09.5
W-|08000|30:08.0|01:52.9|25.8|164.3|182.0|10.3
R-|02866|16:00.0|02:47.5|22.3|142.6|182.0|06.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|02000|07:35.1|01:53.7|25.3|158.1|167.0|10.4
02|02000|07:36.6|01:54.1|25.2|162.5|170.0|10.4
03|02000|07:33.2|01:53.3|25.8|167.4|175.0|10.3
04|02000|07:23.2|01:50.7|27.0|169.4|182.0|10.0


Just for fun, I created a few other plots:

Power and heart rate vs stroke rate. The stroke clouds around 21spm is from the rest periods.

This next plot is work per stroke vs SPM. This time I have removed the strokes taken during the rest periods. You can see my usual 640J per stroke. Only the strokes from the final 300m of the last interval are significantly higher. Let’s say I was “driving home”. I was wondering if the work per stroke came from a longer stroke length or a more forceful stroke:

Looks like it’s both. A bit of drive length and a bit of force. Driving home. I was glad this workout worked out.

I am in the first week of a 6 week block with a focus on “Aerobic Power” (or AT/VO2 training zone). Today the AEP training was the good old Pete Plan 4x2km, at 5 minutes rest. Here are the training zones I am referring to:

The Pete Plan way of doing this is to take a target power (or pace) and try to hold it, then go all out in the final interval. The session average is the new target pace.

A year ago I read books on rowing training (for Masters rowers) and a book on swimming training (Olbrecht). This year I am reading “Watt-Messung im Radsport und Triathlon” (English original “Training and Racing with a Power Meter”) by Allen and Coggan, the guys behind TrainingPeaks.com. The book is focusing on cycling training. They have a different philosophy on intervals and recommend to continue doing the intervals until you are not able to do it at a minimum percentage (of Power) of the third interval. Yes, the third interval. Not the first or the second, but the third. The idea is that in the first two intervals you are searching for the “right” power and in the third one you have found it. Then you continue until you cannot hold

• 95%-97% of that power for 20 minute intervals
• 94%-96% for 10 minute intervals
• 93%-95% for 5 minute intervals
• 91%-92% for 3 minute intervals
• 88%-90% for 1 and 2 minute intervals
• 85%-88% for 30 second intervals

For rowing on the Concept2 erg, where you can keep your Watts in a very narrow band from stroke to stroke, it is easier to find the “right” power already in the first interval, but I decided to stick to the book’s “third interval” rule. In cycling, the power meter swings much more than in OTE rowing, so I guessed that I needed to row with less constant feedback. To simulate that I covered part of the PM5 so I would only see heart rate and meters left,  then checking the average power during the break.

So a 5% drop signals the last interval. When executing the workout I didn’t reread the relevant section of the book and I wrongly remembered a 10% drop. Here is the result:

So in Watts, this is

1. 244W – 104%
2. 242W – 103%
3. 234W – 100%
4. 219W – 93%

It was a very hard workout. I wanted to stop after 2 intervals.

A few pictures have emerged from last weekend’s regatta:

It’s one thing that we regularly torture our bodies to misery. Let that pass. But torturing it always in exactly the same way, that goes too far.

So even though I keep coming back to the interval sessions from the Wolverine Plan (and the Pete Plan), this year I make an effort to vary how I row them. Today I tried red-lining (or perhaps purple-lining, looking at my heart rate). Next time it may be positive splitting. Or do a full out 2k in the first interval, then try to minimize the damage in the following ones. The method behind the madness is to avoid staleness, and there are even training theories based on physiology that support this. Surprise your metabolic systems …

The target was 1:52.9 which didn’t seem too hard, but I have come to respect these 4x2km sessions. You cross the line and suddenly you are at risk of not finishing the session.

The pictures tell the full story better than the summary table. Basically I went into each 2km with 10 hard strokes at 1:40 pace, then slowed down. From the second interval onward this left me gasping for air with about 1890 meters to go. Then I would try to recover. At the half way point I did 10 hard strokes (1:47 pace), and with 500m to go I would do 50 hard strokes (1:48-1:50 pace). The final interval was of course a special one, with everything one or two seconds of split faster and a crazy acceleration in the final 500m, to squeeze out everything.

Workout Summary - Nov 30, 2015
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-DPS
--|08000|29:40.3|01:51.3|254.1|27.6|167.6|09.8
Workout Details
#-|EDist|-Etime-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|DPS-|Comments
01|02000|07:29.9|01:52.5|246.0|26.3|158.0|10.2|
02|04000|14:56.0|01:51.5|252.3|27.3|167.2|09.9|
03|06000|22:20.7|01:51.2|254.6|27.9|170.0|09.7|
04|08000|29:40.3|01:49.9|263.8|29.1|174.6|09.4|


Average pace: 1:51.3. Nice. Haven’t done this session this fast before. In the 2014/15 winter, I managed 1:51.6.

That brings me to my final thought of the day, on steady state intensity again. Since I started measuring lactate I have started to think I can increase their intensity to 200W. One thing is to stay below 2.0 mmol/L in these sessions, but another requirement will be that the steady state intensity is low enough that I can be sharp for the harder sessions.