1/12
C4D1 - 4x1000m/5:00r
14:21.6/1:47.7/29 spm/175 HR
1000_1 - 3:29.5/1:44.7/29 spm/174 HR
1000_2 - 3:36.0/1:48.0/29 spm/177 HR
1000_3 - 3:36.6/1:48.3/29 spm/181 HR
1000_4 - 3:39.6/1:49.8/30 spm/182 HR
r13336 (15:00 warmup + interval rests + 25:00 cooldown)

Not even close to having it today; not sure if it was a ****ing hitting me of fatigue as an aftermath from the shot or something else entirely, but my legs were dead and my work capacity wasn't much better. Once I bonked out on the second one, I just tried to cruise in, but even the reduced pace was hard. Hopefully just a one off.

Started the Armstrong Pull-up program again; arm still a bit sore from the shot, but got through it easily enough.

Was your heart rate higher than usual too?

It was relatively higher, in the sense that it was essentially identical to the last time I ran this workout while going 2.5 splits slower. I'm just annoyed because I was so close to sub-1:45 last time, and now I have to wait another month before I run this again.

On the plus side, I took the kids out for an hour of touch football afterwards, so outside of the fact my hands almost froze off, it was a great time, so hard to be too upset about it.

1/13
C4D2 - 70:00
16052m/2:10.8/18.4 spm/130 HR/141 ending HR

Did some math and realize I need a bit more steady state for 5 million to be feasible, so increasing 6-7 minutes per session seems doable; unfortunately, my legs are still dead so I felt like I was in quicksand. I've cut calories a bit so maybe that's a factor.

1/14
C4D3 - 70:00
16466m/2:07.5/18.3 spm/138 HR/152 ending HR

Feeling better today.

1/15
C4D4 - 90:00
20681m/2:10.5/17.1 spm/140 HR/151 ending HR

Felt pretty good again today.

1/17
C4D5 - 3000m, 2500m, 2000m/5:00r
7500 m/28:06.8/1:52.4/26 spm/177 HR
3000_1 - 11:09.6/1:51.6/25 spm/174 HR
2500_2 - 9:21.0/1:52.2/26 spm/179 HR
2000_3 - 7:36.1/1:54.0/26 spm/177 HR
r10089 (15:00 warmup + interval rests + 15:00 cooldown)

Kind of meh; this is the session I quit on last month, so that I pretty much kept pace with November's pace on the first two pieces was k enough. After that, I just didn't have enough in my legs to finish the final 2k at all strongly, but I still finished.

1/18
C4D6 - 70:00
16219m/2:09.4/17.3 spm/143 HR/154 ending HR

Standard slightly fatigued steady state session that comes after an interval day. Bit of a slog, but fine.

I just realized I said I was going to be updating weights weekly for the Arjun body comp bet, so:

1/4: 188.2
1/11: 189.0
1/18: 185.6

Did 200-240 pushups per day (frequency style, so a set of 20 every 20 minutes in the morning) for the first few weeks after Christmas, and restarted the Armstrong Pull-up Program last Monday. I'm doing the morning pushups with five minutes rest between sets, and the program as described. Certainly lost a fair bit of strength since this fall, but improved a fair bit even in the last week so onward and upward and all that.

curious what the bet is?

1/19
C4D7 - 70:00
16020m/2:11.0/16.9 spm/132 HR/146 ending HR

Tired; stayed up too late last night and paid for it.

lozen,

Nothing too specific, just a friendly body comp/n00d off on April Fool's Day. Both looking to slough off 10 or so winter pounds and stop eating nightly infinidessert.

the metres you're grinding through is insane to me!

apologies if I've missed it but...are you specifically training for a certain distance time/goal or is it 'get fitter and faster at all distances?'

You ever thought of doing the Rowd Royalty comp. Kind of like the games every year?

https://rowdroyalty.com/

1/20
C4D8 - 30r20 (UT1)
7604 m/1:58.3/20 spm/169 HR
3:00 - 763 m/1:57.9/20 spm/153 HR
6:00 - 766 m/1:57.4/20 spm/163 HR
9:00 - 760 m/1:58.4/20 spm/166 HR
12:00 - 762 m/1:58.1/20 spm/169 HR
15:00 - 761 m/1:58.2/20 spm/170 HR
18:00 - 754 m/1:59.3/20 spm/170 HR
21:00 - 759 m/1:58.5/20 spm/173 HR
24:00 - 756 m/1:59.0/20 spm/174 HR
27:00 - 759 m/1:58.5/20 spm/176 HR
30:00 - 763 m/1:57.9/20 spm/177 HR
r10540 m (15:00 warmup + 30:00 cooldown)

Kind of meh day; I went into it soft targeting 7750, but it was pretty apparent I'd have to redline it to get there, so I just decided to stick to "mildly uncomfortable" and live to fight another day. Hopefully the day off will help me get ready for Friday's 8x500.

Outside of the kind of half-assed New Year's goals I posted, I'm pretty much just going for general fitness; I'd kind of like to get to 5 million meters in 2021 and get around a 6:30 2k, but I have a ways to go to get there. It's the first I've heard of it; I gave it a quick look and seems like it might be worth doing. Are you doing it? Thanks for the suggestion.

6.30 would be insane. You’re similar age to me?

I’ll focus on breaking my PR first but I have a POV that maybe if I could train consistently for 6 months I could get sub 6.45/40 but I’m not sure I could go below that.

One of my old coaches who was a 3x CrossFit games individual competitor and came top 12 twice had a PR of 6.25 and while he didn’t really train for rowing at all, he was 6-2 with long levers and had both an incredible engine and a 600lb deadlift. I could never imagine getting close to him

I'm 41.

6:40 is the primary 2k goal for this year, with 6:30 the stretch goal; it feels like all the distance I've done has helped me aerobically, but it's hard to say how much that translates because I haven't really devoted any dedicated time to testing (and tapering volume prior to testing). The plan this year is to try to test once per month, but we'll see if I stick with that.

Arjun seemed to think sub-6:30 would be a slam dunk, but given that would be top 50 in the world for my age group, it seems a fairly steep ask given I'm a novice wrt experience and likely have some form leaks, even though I'm at the front end of the age range. I also suspect that the work needed to shave off those extra ten seconds doesn't scale linearly, so truth be told I'd be pretty satisfied with sub 6:40.

Regarding strength, that's a good point; I have to imagine not lifting for almost a year has affected things, and sessions like today's 30r20 (where power per stroke is important) would seem to indicate I'd need to do at least some additional lower body work to continue to improve. Maybe after I get needle number two, I'll venture back to the gym.

Re: your coach, that's the difference between real athletes and perpetual quasi-mediocre ones like me; I'm just trying to focus on process more than results and remain fit enough to keep up with the minis.

Missed the registration deadline. Maybe next year.

Is top times by age group easy to access? Would be a good thing to look at

Hard to know re your times but 1 thing is for sure to my inexperienced eye from looking at your logs - you could do sub 6.50 tomorrow with no taper


My coach was a genetic freak who also devoted his entire life to CrossFit. Highest placing of 9th in the world and huge respect in the community so who’s to say it wasn’t worth it but his body is ****ed and there’s not much $$ on it

Monte, I nearly posted a while back then deleted my post. I wanted to say that on second thought, your shorter distance goals were not that conservative, but the longer ones were. I gave you too much grief for it though, so I have decided to die on the hill I chose. 6:30 it is.

FW, who was your coach?

Chad Mackay

Also had Ben Garard Alethea Boon and Harriet Roberts at the gym plus a Masters athlete called Lynne Knapman who has qualified for the Games 10x in succession

There's tons of cool rowing competitions. The one I nearly entered (with no commitment) is the CTC. It is a monthly challenge and has been going on for 15 years! Pretty cool.

https://log.concept2.com/ranked-workouts/2021

You can select gender, age, etc to narrow things down. Also, if you row a time or distance that's one of the ranked ones, there's a "+rank" button on your main log that you can press and it will rank you (direct uploads from the PM5 are marked as "verified" or something along those lines).

We'll see I suppose; I think I'll just taper after today's off day and try for a 2k on Monday, which would give me a rest/recovery day afterwards.

Yeah that's unsurprising; I'm just saying that, while I certainly feel a bit wistful that there are breauxs and breauxettes that can (among other things) jump on a rower with almost no training and blow me away, it's just kind of the way it is and I'm past really worrying about it or taking offense and just impressed. Sucks to hear that he ****ed up his body for not a lot of money, but given lolCrossFit not exactly a huge surprise; from your log, it sounds like you're where I'm at - putting aside the fact that I couldn't ever and can't now really hope to achieve athletic "glory", pushing for that isn't worth injury affecting my ability to enjoy time with the wife and kids.

Yeah I think the actual answer is that neither of us is experienced enough to really know and I'm too lazy/stubborn to do the one thing that would probably guarantee I get there (get online coaching), so here we are. Seems pretty obvious some of my recent fatigue management issues were at least in part related to eating at a deficit, so I'm going to be a little less concerned about our super serial body comp bet over the next few days so I don't crash with 500 m to go.

If it makes you feel any better, I've lost a pound in 3 weeks. I think I've found that sweet spot of a slow cut, while not being hungry, and not affecting performance. I plan on continuing at this rate, so I'll probably look exactly the same in April.

I would be super excited to see you get coaching and seeing what that they conjure up for you.

I've mulled over hiring Gardner; the intro package seems pretty reasonable so maybe I'll end up doing it at some point.

Ever thought about Dark Horse coaching ? Not sure how good it is but tons of good videos