12/28
LD42 (UT2) - 80'
19003m/2:06.3/16.3 spm/161 HR/172 MHR
r2273m (10' warmup)

First scheduled 90' for quite a while; wasn't feeling especially excited for this one, but managed to grind through. Got my next set of training today and there are some doozies in there; going to be entering the pain cave reasonably often it seems

80 mins at this time of year is no joke.

Re the pain cave, I was just thinking about how my appetite for going to the dark place has receded over the past few months and contemplating how to get it back.

You seem to have really regained your mojo the past 3 months or so - are you enjoying it?

I am enjoying it now, yes; not sure if it was just the heat of the summer or general burnout, but taking a bit more time to recondition and get back to close to where I was has been motivating. I'm also going a little less hard on UT2, which may be helping? Not really sure. In any case, training motivation probably can't stay high forever; were I to do it over, I'd just do perpetual UT3 with a few working days per week if I was really feeling rundown. Taking 6+ weeks off was obviously not programmed by TG, but I tend to fall off the wagon quickly if I'm not at least doing something most every day.

12/29
UT3 - 45'
10169m/2:12.7/14.0 spm/142 HR/160 MHR

That makes sense and I’m glad you’re into it again. Standard fw gripe incoming about how I wish your coach programmed the occasional time trial so we could see where you’re at - I’d guess you’ve got some really robust 5 and 10k PRs in you if you’re allowed to escape out of his schedule once in a while

Re your perpetual UT3 with a few working days…if the POV is continuing to row without going hard so as to limit the damage for when you hopefully get the mojo back then I think that is a good strat too and is basically what my ‘off season’ has morphed into

Re: perpetual UT3 as a deload, I don't work very well when a deload is just zero activity, so hopefully this is more sustainable. I'll talk to TG about timing some pieces for potential PRs

12/30
LD43 (UT2) - 35'
8273m/2:06.9/15.7 spm/145 HR/155 MHR
r2297m (10' warmup)

Easy-ish day today that felt harder than it should have; was surprised by the low HR.

12/31
UT3 - 45'
10163m/2:12.8/14.0 spm/129 HR/141 MHR

1/1
UT3 - 45'
10149m/2:13.0/14.1 spm/130 HR/141 MHR

Tied one on last night, so did an unloading day. Probably time for a booze free month to reset things a bit.

Summer holidays and party season here for the rest of Jan, so it’s a pipedream for me sadly but I could use one too.

Feb is more realistic and also shorter

1/2
LD44 (UT1/AT) - 3x10'/6'r (4' @24, 3' @26, 2' @28, 1' @30) @100df
30:00: 7864m/1:54.4/26 spm/184 MHR
10'_1: 2619m/1:54.5/26 spm/177 MHR
10'_2: 2627m/1:54.1/26 spm/183 MHR
10'_3: 2619m/1:54.5/26 spm/185 MHR
r11982m (25' warmup + 18' interval paddle + 10' cooldown)

Broadly similar piece to the last 3x10', but the intent is a more aerobic and tappier UT1/AT hybrid piece with a higher stroke rate. I was told to target 1:57 at 24 spm and knock two seconds off the pace each time I rated up; I think I pretty much did that. The HR data reflected how it felt - challenging but not crushing.

This piece was well timed because the one note TG had from my last round of training was that my UT1 was slightly too fast - he wants it at 1:57-1:58 for now, and this helped me get a good feel for that.

1/3
UT3 - 45'
10192m/2:12.4/14.0 spm/135 HR/151 MHR

1/4
LD45 (UT2) - 50'
11869m/2:06.4/16.1 spm/158 HR/172 MHR
r2305m (10' warmup)

Wasn't feeling especially peppy today, but this was my first day back in the office in a while and my sleep schedule hasn't quite reset yet.

1/5
UT3 - 45'
10223m/2:12.1/14.2 spm/145 HR/159 MHR

1/6
LD46 (UT2) - 50'
11873m/2:06.4/16.1 spm/158 HR/169 MHR
r2301m (10' warmup)

Legs feeling heavy; the next loading day looks rough, so I'm going to take tomorrow completely off and give it a go on Saturday.

1/8
LD47 (AT) - 3x2000m/12'r @110df
2k_1: 7:28.2/1:52.0/25 spm/175 MHR
2k_2: 7:23.4/1:50.8/27 spm
2k_3: 7:19.5/1:49.8/28 spm
r15301m (24' warmup + 24' interval paddles + 20' cooldown)

Stroke rate targets:
2k_1 - 1000m @24, 1000m @26
2k_2 - 500m @24, 1000m @26, 500m @28
2k_3 - 500m @24, 500m @26, 500m @28, 500m @30

Pace targets: 24 spm - 1:54; 26 spm - 1:52; 28 spm - 1:50; 30 spm - 1:48

Combined together, those targets translate to expected paces of 1:53 for the first piece, 1:52 for the second, and 1:51 for the third, so I went out a little faster than prescribed.

This one was pretty tough; TG told me it was going to be hard, but I assumed that since I'd done the Pete Plan 4x2k/5'r without that this wouldn't be terrible. The first two pieces were hard, but the last 1k of the last piece was pretty tough and just involved me unfocusing my eyes, counting to 10, and trying to figure out how many strokes over 200 I was on pace for for that piece (it was 5). My HRM died in the middle of this, but I got up to almost 180 on the first one so I'm assuming I got to 190+ by the third piece. Good workout, though.

That looks like a math problem. Nice row though.

Thanks!

1/9
UT3 - 45'
10128m/2:13.2/14.0 spm/140 HR/151 MHR

Took this pretty easy; put a fresh battery into the HRM, but it messed up the first 10-15 minutes so I just kind of guessed to come up with the "average" HR. Finishing at 151 is decent enough for me, especially the day after a hard interval session and 6+ drinks.

yeah wow, that looks like tough sledding with all the rest metres as well and as Arjun says...quite a lot to think about while the heart rate is high. Big respect for the discipline and fitness to cool down for 20 mins after all the working sets were over

on the subject of huge volume...a 57yr old dude on the C2 board did a 24 hour team row with 3 buddies. basically they did 30 mins each every two hours...you'll see two of his first 3 intervals would beat my current 30 min PR!


Time Meters Pace Watts Cal/Hr S/M
30:01.8 7,977m 1:52.9 243 1136 25
29:21.9 7,475m 1:57.8 214 1035 18 160
29:24.2 8,023m 1:49.9 263 1206 25 173
29:44.6 7,517m 1:58.7 209 1020 18 154
29:30.7 7,660m 1:55.5 227 1080 25 154
29:43.0. 7,546m 1:58.1 212 1030 20 151
29:47.6 7,574m 1:58.0 213 1032 25 151
29:38.1 7,520m 1:58.2 212 1028 25 153
29:30.9 7,467m 1:58.5 210 1022 25 148
29:33.9 7,439m 1:59.2 206 1010 26 146
29:40.5 7,431m 1:59.8 204 1000 26 144
29:29.1 7,108m 2:04.4 182 925 25 134

Total
5:55:26.4. 90,737m. 6,150 calories

Thanks man. Keeping track of it wasn't really that bad, mostly because getting to the next rate up meant my slightly lower effort per stroke and being closer to finishing even though the overall pain level was higher because of the cardio. This is one piece when having accurate HR data would have been pretty useful/interesting.

On the other hand, here's my last 4x2k/5' from a year ago:

Hard to say I've really improved at all, and given the increased rest interval, I'm likely worse; the quoted piece was a PR, and even though I kind of loafed it in the last interval, I had less than half the rest between pieces (though the fact that the most recent piece was rate capped maybe mitigates things somewhat).

Ultimately I think this is as likely to be a specificity issue as anything else; I don't think it's really possible to keep increasing my volume of aerobic work and not improving, but (shockingly) taking three months off doesn't exactly lead to progress. I think I need to sack up and pick a competition to train for; I'll resolve to have that done after the move.

Lol at everything about this, though my light UT2 eventually getting under a 2:00 pace would be nice. The high stroke rates are definitely interesting, though; not sure if that's just an individual thing or a difference in training philosophy, but definitely not what I'd have expected. Maybe intentionally done so the strokes are all extremely light pressure so you don't go full CrossFit and self-rhabdo?

he's 6-5/220 as well so yes, the stroke rate does seem very high, although he's a believer in higher stroke rate. When I posted my 5k pr with a sr of 23 he basically said 'what a shame, if you'd rated at 26 or 27 you'd have gone below 18 mins'

He logs his training every day and he does most of his UT2 sessions at r22. He's not alone with that approach tbh - quite a few of the top tier volume junkies rarely rate below 20 and believe that rating lower can increase the risk of injury.

and yes, I'm guessing his stroke rate is strategic in the sense that he's prolly more confident in his cardio than his muscles over such a long period and so is rating higher to lessen the load on his legs and back.

I might ask him what his drag was

1/10
UT3 - 45'
10163m/2:12.8/13.9 spm/129 HR/140 MHR

Slept like utter **** last night, so of course I had a great UT3 session. My next two sessions are UT2, so I'll plan to do them tomorrow/Wednesday, then UT1 on Friday.

Interesting, thanks; I'd assume his drag is probably more in your range than mine.

Reading back over my log to find my last 4x2k yesterday, I did note that my long, slow 90' rows were at a slightly higher stroke rate (17ish), so maybe rating up a bit would help. I'll mention it to Gardner and see what his general thoughts are; my guess he's a more "what's comfortable for your body/your natural rhythm" kind of guy.

a few partially related thoughts/questions

- have you always rowed lightly through your rest periods, even when doing PP? Maybe the volume of warm up/rest metres has an impact on your speed endurance?

- the stroke rate amendments must have some kind of disruptive impact on your rhythm?

- did you start the 4x2k with a speed target in mind and just stick to it? And you did something similar this time around...ie, if you'd had a 1.51 average in mind, do you think you could just have done that

last point/question/thought/theory is something that a few of the other competitive guys have spoken about on there that I'm going to adapt my training for as I go towards the World Sprint Champs in March and it's about doing more training at the target pace & heart zone that you're competing at to get comfortable physically and mentally there as competition prep.

so I'm going to be racing the 1k and hoping to get back to shape where I can target 3.08. So I'll be planning on doing at least one and probably two sessions where I'm averaging 1.33 or 1.34 pace...so 8x250m, 500m, 2r at race pace etc

if I look at the Pete's Plan, while he calls it a 2k season prep programme, really the speed intervals are 2k target pace and then the longer intervals are all at or around 5k target pace...it's useful but not ideal for 500s and 1ks and also useful but not ideal for 10k and above...certainly I feel totally unprepared for racing a fast 10k still.

I don't track all your workouts but with all the volume you do...including the volume you do in and around your intervals on the AT days, perhaps your coach is programming primarily to increase your performance for 10k and above? which would be useful for 5k and prolly to some degree for 2k but not ideal for maximising 2k pace?

idk, it's a working theory but it's something I'm going to adapt for the final month of my training for the 1k race

I've always rowed through my rest intervals, yes; on higher intensity pieces, he says he wants you to at least row for the first 30 seconds after an interval ends and the last 30 seconds before the next one starts, but beyond that just keep moving at least a bit. I'd probably just end up pacing around a bit, and I'm certainly not rowing the entire time; that last interval session I was probably gasping for breath for 30-45 seconds and stopped for 15 seconds each a few other times to sip water, so maybe 33 minutes lightly paddling instead of 36. I've been thinking about just lowering the drag during rest intervals, but then I'd have to remember to reset the damper.


Not really; "24 spm" in something like this is translated to "at least 24 spm" when I'm on the erg, so stroke to stroke and minute to minute going from pulling at least a 24 but ticking up into a 25 a third of the time to a 26 isn't that bad or even noticeable. Having to rate up just sucks ass because it's harder because I'm tired.



Yeah, I'm fairly certain I targeted 1:51 across (so 7:24) and just didn't quite get it on the last interval, but I take your point. This was the first time doing this interval, it was somewhat rate capped, and I did end up going as fast as I've ever gone for a 3rd 2k rep in this style piece, so it may be slight catastrophizing on my part. I knew what I was "supposed" to hit on this piece based upon his targets (1:53, 1:52, and 1:51), so that wasn't an issue. Thinking about it a bit more, I think that running sub 1:50 overall when I could only stroke at 25 spm for the first 1k was actually fairly decent. It was also ****ing brutal (I am assuming that the last 1k is, in fact, the main training stimulus of this piece).


He's a long game kind of guy, so he's going to program aerobic base building for someone with very little aerobic experience unless there's a compelling reason not to (like a scheduled competition).

Your plan makes sense; I just don't know where or what I'd be training for. I'd guess I'll find some sort of virtual 2k to train for once I'm moved and settled (excuses, excuses).