Training

Well...a PR of sorts I guess, in that I rowed longer that I ever have before.

7500m at 29.59, which is 1.59.9/500m

Approx 22 strokes per minute.
Demper setting between 5 and 6
Drag factor of 109, which is about where I feel most comfortable. (interested in what drag others row at?)
Max heart rate 162

tbh, I think I could have broken 40mins for 10k if I'd had the appetite for pain to keep going. It wouldn't have been easy and if I'd have done it it would have been 39.59ish , but I think I could have held it together if I was in the right headspace and it'll definitely be a time I'll break if I actually do some serious training, rather than what I'm doing right now which is basically just getting on the erg once or twice a week and doing a 2k or 5k.

either way, happy with the effort given I've had between 8 and 15 units of alcohol every day for three weeks with a **** diet.

Activity

40 min walk this morning
1 hour body surfing
Total: 13500 steps.

Nice session! Max HR of 162 (likely) indicates you could do a sub-40:00 right now if you really wanted to, which was my first real rowing goal. Re: drag, it mostly depends on the stroke rate; my UT2 stroke rate is around 16.5-18 spm these days, and a 90 drag factor feels about right these days. UT2 is around 22 spm and I'm generally around 100 or so there. AT/TR work should, in theory, be even higher still but I'm not as diligent about getting the damper set such that's it's more in the 110-115 range as I likely should be.

What's up with all the booze? Any plan to cut back?

thanks!

I was definitely in pain and it would have been a max effort to get to or very close to 40.00 and I just didn’t quite have the intestinal fortitude for it.

I haven’t had a close look at your thread but I’ve seen that you row a lot and saw all your yearly PRs which look vg, so I’ll have to grind through and see what kind of sessions you do

Can you please help me out with your terminology...what do UT2, AT and TR mean?

re the booze, I’ve honestly just picked up bad habits. We’ve been in lockdown and home isolation since mid Dec and wifey and I just got in the habit of having a beer or two and then opening wine (and I would sometimes move on to scotch).

I’ve always enjoyed drinking wine at home but it needs to stop for a whole load of reasons.

Nice 30 minute row! What is your max HR?

I honestly don’t know.

I just started wearing a Fitbit last week and that is the first tough cardio session I’ve done with it. I’m 49 so the standard response would be 171 but I’m guessing it would be higher than that?

Arjun and I both started out running the Beginner's Pete Plan; it's pretty flexible and calls for training 3-5 times a week (as per your schedule/fitness).

Just shorthand for the heart rate zones as normally described by serious rowers; quick explainer and back of the envelope calculator here.

UT2 (utilization training level 2) is "steady state", which is the low intensity aerobic work that should form the majority of your training. UT1, AT (anaerobic threshold), and TR (oxygen transport) are successively more intense (stroke rate goes up, heart rate goes up), and are therefore done less often as they require more recovery. Different coaches have different ideas of where each level should be based upon max HR or heart rate reserve or whatever (and it's individual for everyone), but the basic gestalt of "should be able to carry on a clipped conversation" and "heart rate drifting through the UT2 zone throughout the session, which for many is in the 125-150 bpm range" is as specific as I'd think old guy hobbyists like us need to get for steady state. My UT1 sessions are generally in the 22-24 spm range and on the order of 40-60 minutes. AT is programmed as endurance interval work (4x2k/5' rest is my next one), and TR as speed intervals (8x500 or 4x1k).

Sounds like my last two months, which is all the more lol since I went literally years only having a few drinks a month to having a bottle of wine a night. Bad habits are easy to slip back on, and like you I'm not really a "just have a glass" kind of guy.

Thanks vv much for giving so much detail.

I’m just gonna lift and row and keep walking for the next 10 days and then have a week’s holiday and will then aim to plan my training in more detail. But I think what I’ll probably aim for is a few slow rows per week after my lifting, one interval session which will be the core focus of a day’s training and one ‘competition race’ over 1k, 2k or 5k per week.

The age formula can be wildly off, so I wouldn't go by it. Optical wrist monitors can also be wildly inaccurate. When I wore a fitbit, my HR was somewhat in the ballpark when running, but wildly off when rowing (something to do with the hand movement). So it's hard to tell!

Having said that, if we assume the 162 is accurate and that you could have held that pace for another 2500m and not more, 170 would seem about right. For a true max HR, you need a chest strap and a true 100% effort of a 5k+ or a ramp test.

Yeah, I always thought of the age formula as more of a general guideline.

Interesting stuff.

Yeah I wore a chest strap when I was training for the marathon I ran and found it useful. Then..about 4 miles from the end when I was really struggling I made the mistake of looking at it and saw it read 185 and it totally psyched me out!

Never wore it again and gave it to my friend who has cardio myopathy

How many years ago was this? I think we can safely say 185 was pretty close to your max HR at that time. The one thing we can take from the age HR formula is that max HR declines at around 1bpm for every year you live. So if this was 5 years ago, a current max HR of 180 would be a decent estimate.

Training

Was supposed to be pulling in the gym today but got to my last warm up set of deadlifts and felt a slight tweak in my lower back. Stopped immediately and did a bench session instead.

I think probably the tweak came from yesterday’s 30min row and quite a lot of bodysurfing yesterday and today.

Hopefully it disappears...happens quite a lot - I have a bulging and slightly torn disc and often a nerve tweaks and things tighten up.

Bench 10x3 @ 90kg

Activity

Hour walk before work.
Lunchtime body surf and also went for an ocean swim at the end of the day

(Love working from home in summer time)

19000 steps

Long time ago - 2002 I think..or 03.

Sounds like a plan!

I will say that, as you get more experienced rowing, one time trial (presumably close to full effort) per week may be too much to recover from. Seems fine to begin with, though; you should be setting new PRs every time, which is definitely motivating.

Re: the HRM discussion below, it's a nice to have but not a must have; just keep your steady state sessions to a level of exertion as described above and in the posted links and it'll be close enough.

Training

8x500m repeats on the erg. 3 min 30 sec intervals

1.44.6
1.44.7
1.44.6
1.44.6
1.44.6
1.44.7
1.44.6
1.42.7

stroke rate was 28 or 29 for all of them

I wasn't sure what time to aim for so figured I'd just go sub 1.45 and see how that went. I never seriously felt that I was going to miss the time target, although the last interval was close to a max effort so I didn't have a huge amount left in me. I'll do it with 1.44 as the target next time.

I tried to check the heart rate at the end of each interval but annoyingly it didn't always seem to register. The end of interval 1 was 128 and then it had risen to 141 by the end of interval 5. Then I missed 6 and 7. I went appreciably harder for interval 8 and heart rate went up to 164

my first interval training of any kind for many months and I enjoyed it. surprised with my fitness to be honest...guessing the 40-60 min walk each day has built a better endurance base than I'd realised - I honestly really do it just to get out in the fresh air and get my body moving

back felt fine, which was a relief after yesterday but I'm probably not going to deadlift til after my holiday

Activity

40 min power walk before work
40 mins of soccer with my son after training

15000 steps

Sub-1:45 for your first time doing this session at that low of a stroke rate is pretty impressive! Once you rate up a bit, you'll be blowing my times out of the water.

thumb. thanks for the encouragement, but I'm not sure about exceeding your times at all - your volume and consistency is v impressive and I'm truly scared of the pain involved with getting close to the redline when I'm time trialling on the erg.

either way, I just want to commit to and stick to a regular programme of rowing/metcons and see where it gets me. I think if I can get to the end of March with a consistent 3 months of training, I'll be able to hit most of my PR goals

Rest Day

Wasn’t going to rest today but had a shitty sleep and actually got very busy with work. Happy I took the day now though

Activity

60 min walk
Cut the grass
15k steps

Training

2k row time trial. 7.09

then waited 5 mins and did

6k slow row 2.07/500

2k strategy was to go out at 1.48/500 pace to half way and see what I had left. Wasn’t sure if I could keep that pace to the end but figured it was about the right speed. Went through in 1.47.6 and then kept that going to 1500 and then turned the heat up a little. Actually was a little less painful than I anticipated and I wasn’t at the redline but I would guess I was at 98% max effort.

I don’t feel like I ‘know’ how to race a 2k yet - have probably done fewer than 10 time trials at it but I definitely prefer to go negative split - it’s a long and lonely distance if you’re blowing up with 1200m to go. I started feeling a pain in my chest at about 800 but it was manageable.

Heart rate was 181 at the end, albeit I really don’t trust the Fitbit reading. (After the 6k the reading was 105 and there’s no way it was that low). Probably should have done a longer slow row but my wife wanted to go for a walk, so I did that with her instead

all in all though, I was happy with the result

Activity

45 min walk
12000 steps

Nice row! Yeah, the fitbit readings are confirmed nonsense now. You definitely can go quicker if you did a 6k row 5 minutes after! I couldn't move for 30 minutes after my true 100% effort. Sub 7 should be there if you really want it or perhaps after a few weeks of training. The slow row pace seems appropriate as well.

Thanks!

Yep I’m confident sub 7 can come in the next 6-8 weeks. I’ve done 6.59 before and I basically stopped at that point. I’m really surprised and happy at what my cardio base is...(basically from all the daily walking I’ve been doing I guess?)and I’m just gonna stick to the program for a few months and see what I can do

I find slow rowing really hard - I keep going faster without realising it. Honestly think pushing the screen back so I can’t see it may be wiser if I want to stay slow

Sub-7:10 with no specific training is pretty awesome! As Arjun says, sounds like there was a fair bit more there too.

I wouldn't necessarily say you paced it incorrectly; there are (apparently) lots of schools of thought about how to pace a 2k, and negative splitting is certainly one of them. Flying and trying not to die is my "preferred" method, which I don't recommend.

Ty - I don’t think much more tbh..maybe I could have got a 7.06 or 7.07

interesting re your method...that does sound like a recipe for huge pain. So what would that mean at a 7.00 pace? What would your splits be?

I’ve been meaning to ask you something else. Is there a way at the end of a row to see what your average stroke rate was? I don’t have the newest version (I bought it used and don’t know what exact one it is) but I’ve had a quick look through the options and can’t seem to see how to get the average stroke rate. I am an absolute idiot with computers and tech stuff tho

I was making a joke - that was how my last 2k went and I wouldn't recommend it.

The Concept2 website (https://log.concept2.com/log) will allow you to create your own log; once you have an account, download the ErgData app for your phone. Add your login info under the Online Logbook Status under the Setup menu (the gear icon) and your phone is connected to your log. The "Connect" menu on the PM5 will automatically locate your phone if ErgData is open on your phone screen and bluetooth is on; enable the connection, and all of your sessions are automatically updated to your online log (pace, stroke rate, heart rate if you also link your HRM to your rower, etc). Definitely worth doing.

Feel free to ask or PM me specific questions if you're having trouble setting it up.

wow ok thanks, didn’t know that was possible. Will look into it