What Was Your Work Out Today?

A walk and yoga

Did 5 minute warm up on the rower, then 5 minutes as hard as reasonably sustainable. Repeat for an hour. Went deep in the pain cave today. Around 1000 calories burrned in an hour. Haven't done a row that hard in a while. Was fairly brutal. Took my foot off the gas on the last interval a bit. I was at 90% of max HR on all the intervals and started drifting above (something that they tell masters rowers not to do with Covid-19 as working out too hard can lower immunity), so I took it a bit easier on the last one. Roughly 2:08 to 2:10 paces on the intervals and 2:38 paces on the easy paddling. Over 12K meters for the hour.

ajb2261 wrote: »

Looking at all these workouts, I have only ran around in my garden with my children and then done a 10min HiiT workout that was on YouTube

That sounds like a fun and active day to me!

BlG_FN_ROB wrote: »

Logs today👌🏾

Get after it!

Cherimoose wrote: »

Did my usual workout today. Average workout, no personal records.

- 37 mile run
- 942 pull-ups
- 8 mile swim in the ocean
- Wrestled crocodile in the Everglades

Just checking if anyone reads these

Just another "ho hum" day! I knew it was fake news, because only alligators live in the Everglades.

Did my p90x30 work-out this morning! LOVING it!

MikePfirrman wrote: »

Djproulx wrote: »

Today's recovery bike session was scrapped in favor of a 3 mile walk with my wife. Reason is that my June 70.3 distance triathlon has been postponed, which was not completely unexpected.

I've had a particularly good training block going over during the last 8 weeks, after spending the winter rebuilding my base fitness lost due to injury. My current fitness is approximately one month ahead of the same period in 2018 during an Ironman build.

So the question is, what to do? I'd hate to simply give up cycling and run fitness, but I will drop back volume a notch while deciding whether to sign up for a fall race. It's hard to maintain enthusiasm for another16-20 more weeks of a periodized build, even for a long course race, but Ironman has cancelled most (if not all) races until then.

That would be devastating. I couldn't compete this past Winter because I wasn't recovered all the way yet (enough) to have competitive times for the few events I targeted, way less competitive and demanding than what you do.

I'm not sure what I'd tell you but perhaps there's a virtual Ironman that you can find and compete in. I know some really talented OTW (over the water) rowers that are losing the entire season that are replacing with indoor erging on videos, virtually.

Is this a possibility for you?

https://www.ironmanvirtualclub.com/

@MikePfirrman - Thanks for the suggestion. So far, I've resisted the virtual racing that some others in my tri club have joined. Im not quite sure why, so I'll have to rethink it.

I"ll probably take a few weeks of "downtime" to do some other things I enjoy, such as trout fishing and turkey hunting, while just maintaining some base fitness and deciding what fall races look like fun. By mid May I'll probably be very ready to enter a build phase again. I'm also sure that I'll jump into a few low stress, fun events with my friends during mid summer - a Sprint distance tri, a Mass-RI-CT team relay race, etc.

Speaking of training, I"m guessing that you follow a periodized training plan for rowing. If so, I"m curious to know how long your typical builds and/or training blocks are? e.g. 16 weeks, in 4 week blocks, etc?

Nothing for me today. Day 2 of flu symptoms. Attempted yoga, but ultimately still hate it 🙄

8.5mile bike transition into 3.6mile run transition back to bike for 8.5mile again. 1,114 cal burn.😁

Djproulx wrote: »

MikePfirrman wrote: »

Djproulx wrote: »

Today's recovery bike session was scrapped in favor of a 3 mile walk with my wife. Reason is that my June 70.3 distance triathlon has been postponed, which was not completely unexpected.

I've had a particularly good training block going over during the last 8 weeks, after spending the winter rebuilding my base fitness lost due to injury. My current fitness is approximately one month ahead of the same period in 2018 during an Ironman build.

So the question is, what to do? I'd hate to simply give up cycling and run fitness, but I will drop back volume a notch while deciding whether to sign up for a fall race. It's hard to maintain enthusiasm for another16-20 more weeks of a periodized build, even for a long course race, but Ironman has cancelled most (if not all) races until then.

That would be devastating. I couldn't compete this past Winter because I wasn't recovered all the way yet (enough) to have competitive times for the few events I targeted, way less competitive and demanding than what you do.

I'm not sure what I'd tell you but perhaps there's a virtual Ironman that you can find and compete in. I know some really talented OTW (over the water) rowers that are losing the entire season that are replacing with indoor erging on videos, virtually.

Is this a possibility for you?

https://www.ironmanvirtualclub.com/

@MikePfirrman - Thanks for the suggestion. So far, I've resisted the virtual racing that some others in my tri club have joined. Im not quite sure why, so I'll have to rethink it.

I"ll probably take a few weeks of "downtime" to do some other things I enjoy, such as trout fishing and turkey hunting, while just maintaining some base fitness and deciding what fall races look like fun. By mid May I'll probably be very ready to enter a build phase again. I'm also sure that I'll jump into a few low stress, fun events with my friends during mid summer - a Sprint distance tri, a Mass-RI-CT team relay race, etc.

Speaking of training, I"m guessing that you follow a periodized training plan for rowing. If so, I"m curious to know how long your typical builds and/or training blocks are? e.g. 16 weeks, in 4 week blocks, etc?

My training doesn't need to be nearly as formal as yours, but yes, I do try to switch it up around every 12 weeks or so. I'm just finishing a 4 month block of lots of meters, building the engine. I'll typically do a short interval workout once a week and an AT type of workout (more or less a Fartlek or similar, maybe a TT) once a week.

The main difference with rowing is the strength element, which is my weakpoint right now. I'm struggling, at present, to get the lifting in while maintaining the rowing volume. I might have to cut down the volume to get some heavy lifting in soon.

Prior to races (I only do Indoor races) in the Winter, I'll go through a phase of 6 weeks where I do 3 hard workouts a week to build more stress. At 55, I can't handle more than that.

Until I hurt my back last year, I don't think I was really respecting how polarized my workouts needed to be. I've put all pride and ego away trying to rebuild. Knowing how hard that has been for me makes me especially sensitive to you having your race cancelled. Minor in the scheme of things, but it take a massive amount of work to get where you are in your training. Massive discipline.

Amazing Peloton ride for 45 minutes, Arms and Intervals (PR'd for my 45 minute ride output) also took my sweet puppy for a 1.65 mile walk

Yesterday was a day off. I got 22,000 steps in, mainly through incompetently gardening. I am more destructive than constructive in my garden.

Today, I did an hour's yoga in the morning at 10 a.m. I overslept, so had barely enough time to have a coffee before this.

Then in the evening I did 4x750 metres on the rower, in 2.03 pace.

I may do a max effort pull up session after dinner, but I may defer that until tomorrow.

5.2 mile run this morning!

An hour easy row today followed by splashing in the cold pool and hot tub (hot and cold therapy the nice way to do it!).

@Djproulx -- I know exactly what you mean. The training/journey for me is just as important as the performance on the few race days I have -- mine seem a lot more trivial and kind of silly when you look at what I do -- 2K race is the standard in indoor rowing. It takes 7 minutes (if you're in top form). Some guys over 50 are crushing my times now, one guy nearly got a sub 6 time over 50 last year -- only done once before ever.

So in the scheme of things -- I train 11 months out of the year for 14 minutes or racing. That seems really silly unless you enjoy it and love to challenge yourself.

Djproulx wrote: »

MikePfirrman wrote: »

Prior to races (I only do Indoor races) (1)in the Winter, I'll go through a phase of 6 weeks where I do 3 hard workouts a week to build more stress. At 55, I can't handle more than that.

Until I hurt my back last year, (2)I don't think I was really respecting how polarized my workouts needed to be. I've put all pride and ego away trying to rebuild. Knowing how hard that has been for me makes me especially sensitive to you having your race cancelled. Minor in the scheme of things, (3) but it take a massive amount of work to get where you are in your training. Massive discipline.

Gotcha. Makes sense. So you get to focus on different energy systems at different phases of training.

Regarding bolded #1: Three key (hard) workouts per week will certainly provide a lot of stress over six consecutive weeks. A few guys I know in the 55& age group have moved to a 9 day training "week" in order to build in more recovery days between hard workouts. Its a balancing act between the need to go hard in order to build speed & power and the need for longer recovery as we age. In my case, its ALL about getting to the starting line healthy.

Re #2: Polarized training: "The hard days should be HARD and the easy days should be EASY".

re: #3: While there are some people who take a "one and done" approach to triathlon, the repeat offenders stay in it because we love training. Otherwise the payoff is typically too small in long course racing. Ten months of training for one or two race days per year doesn't make sense, unless you enjoy the training and make it part of your lifestyle. (sad, I know, lol).


.

I hope you'll forgive me popping in when I haven't been participating in the thread for a while, with - sigh - something that may or may not be interesting in context.

Compared to other sports (that I admittedly know less well), I think rowing competition and training - maybe particularly at the "engaged amateur" level - is interesting and a little odd.

Most on-water rowers unsuprisingly put priority on the on-water season, and run training plans that peak in sprint season (late Spring to early Fall, generally). Sprints are 2K for open, 1K for masters (sometimes), with an aligned start; whoever crosses the line first wins, generally, though masters races may be age handicapped (depends on whether there are enough participants to run a heat for each age class). Course is usually straight, or close. Race duration is typically going to be in the 5 minutes to 8-9 minutes or so duration (depending on sex, boat class, age). It's too long a time to be a true sprint, but sort of a short strength-endurance thing. Loosely, the usual race plan starts with a sprint off the starting line, settles to the sustainable maximum pace the boat can deliver for the body, while still planning another max-effort sprint in around the last 500 meters. You want to cross the line, and collapse, basically (after getting out of the way of oncoming traffic!). (You'll see elites literally collapse in the boat, sometimes.)

It's common for a club rower, especially at local/regional races, to race in multiple boat classes, which can mean repeating the above process several times in one day. Since you don't get to pick event times - they happen when they happen - the only priorizing possible is deciding whether to hold back a little reserve in some races, to give more to others. Sometimes events are so close time-wise that rowers "hot seat": Race, row back to the dock, hop out of a boat, jump in another boat, and head back to the starting line. This is common enough that races have special provisions to accommodate it.

The full year training plan I did (but do no longer) was a set of fairly complicated cycles (provided to me by a NCAA Div I women's coach), designed to peak at a race of choice (Masters Nationals would be a common race to want to peak for). Depending on phase, there were different lengths and frequencies of workouts described as technique, aerobic, lactate tolerance, race-pace workouts, anaerobic threshold, or power. These were sometimes combined on a particular day. It had 13 4-week cycles, each with an overall focus (aerobic, specific aerobic, sharpening, sprint racing, peak, distance, fall racing. (I also did a shorter plan (IIRC 3 months), same source, designed to peak for a specific regional indoor race; it had a similar structure.)

On-water rowing in the US sort of has two seasons, the sprint season (as described above) and then a Fall "head race" season. Head races are a staggered running start (boats maybe 15 seconds apart) through a "chute" (passing start timing boats), course of varying length, but normally longer than sprints, usually 3.5K to 5K, possibly more. The big one is Head of the Charles Regatta (HOCR), in October, which is 3 miles.

Obviously, head races are slower per kilometer than sprints. The race times determine the winners, with age handicapping for masters. The courses being longer, they're often not straight, and may include bridges that can be a bottleneck (limited number of boats fit simultaneously). This puts a premium on steering a good course, considering wind and current more, etc. (It's the coxswain's time to shine or - not - in the bigger boats.) There are also complicated passing rules, and time penalties for rule violations (something that's minor to invisible in sprints, in practice). HOCR is a bear, in this regard: Tight turns, multiple narrow bridge passages, high participation numbers, continuous stream of boats (supposedly staying in tight bounds) headed up to the start area). Penalties are common. There are videos of national team boats (so excellent but aggressive coxes) sinking in the Charles after collisions.

The sort of general, high-level calendar approach for a lot of on-water rowers is to race through sprint season (with focused training between races, including technical things like starts, plus tapers before races), then devote Fall to early Winter to aerobic base (lots of long, slow distance (LSD)), and to higher than usual levels of strength training in Winter. The Fall head races are a way for teams to test their endurance, check the competition, and stay motivated (plus maybe enjoy racing outdoors in sleet ). The latter half of the Winter season starts to increase the number and intensity of shorter work pieces, prepping for Spring racing. (Obviously, this is a very high-level, generalized characterization of the seasonality.)

Of course, a lot of on-water rowers do some indoor races, where they're competing with people who train exclusively machine rowing. Mike speaks more authoritatively by far than I about how those folks train. The indoor races tend to be more frequent in the late-Winter period as sharpening for on-water season is starting, with the CRASH-B race in Feb/March being the big event. I'd observe that the timing/nature of indoor rowing season has its roots in on-water rowing, but has in recent years expanded well beyond that with the popularity of rowing machines as a focus on their own, not just a form of Winter training for weather-challenged on-water rowers.

After that ridiculously long essay about rowing training that will be boring to most people, possibly everyone, I now return you to your regularly scheduled thread, with apologies. :flowerforyou: