A BONEHEAD MOVE! I (once again) learn a lesson in humility and respecting the erg

I was a bit overzealous this particular afternoon and thought it'd be a good idea, rather spur of the moment, to try and establish a "baseline" 6k (with the goal of peaking for a true 6k test in ~8 weeks time). This was a poor decision for reasons that I touch on in the video, but apparently I needed to learn another lesson on the importance of training smart and respecting the erg!
View my and Hien's Google Sheets-based training logs here (and feel free to make a copy of the template if you'd like!): shorturl.at/acrDV
#rowing #indoorrowing #indoorrowingmachine #dadbod #fitnessfreak #fitnessjourney #fitnessmotivation #fitnesslifestyle #fitnessgoals #ergometer #concept2 #6kergtest #beginnerrowing

[@ianbarnett6027]

Hi Justin. I know you follow the Pete Plan but just to clarify your training ideas. Do you go more or less a full effort ( say 95% plus effort ) to get a base guide on the particular race distances you are training for and then from this ( 500m splits ) you base all your harder interval sessions around the same pace or faster? Do you ever go at a slower pace in your harder interval sessions or is the idea to go race pace speed or close to at every interval session. Hope this makes sense.

[@dadboddadvlog]

I use a combo of Pete Plan guidance as well as my own experience from years past to guide my target pacing for any given workout or test distance. In general, very roughly, I know that 6k pace is 6-8 beats higher than 2k pacing, 10k pacing is roughly 10-11 beats higher than 2k, HOP is roughly 12-14 beats higher, etc… as for the Pete Plan specific workouts, I’ve done each of them enough times now that I have a pretty good sense of what a realistic, but aggressive, target split should be. There’s always an element of trial and error of course, but spend enough time on the machine and repeat the same workouts often enough and you start to become surprisingly accurate at predicting splits during training.

[@ianbarnett6027]

I think that marathon effort may have taken more out of you than you realize and you are still recovering from that. Your steady state sessions seem pretty solid going and I always thought they were meant to be a recovery session.

[@dadboddadvlog]

Hey Ian, I agree that there may be some lingering effects from last weeks marathon. To be expected I suppose 🤷🏻‍♂️. There’s a difference between “steady state” and “recovery” if done correctly. For the former I let my heart rate and RPE guide me, making sure to never go above a ~140 average heart rate in my case, and often deliberately keeping it below 135. Pace is irrelevant as some days it’ll be a 1:57, others it may be a 2:03, depending on how tired i am and a variety of other factors. While you certainly don’t want to overdo the intensity on steady state, I think there’s a bit of a misconception that it should be “easy”. There’s a minimum level of intensity and “work” needed during steady state sessions to drive the physical adaptations required to increase aerobic capacity. Too light or easy and it ends up becoming active recovery which doesn’t build fitness, but does help of course with stimulating blood flow and the repair needed after hard training. True recovery sessions are ones I’ll do from time to time the day after an especially tough workout, could be 8-10k on the erg at a 2:05-2:10 split, or a 30 minute light spin on the bike, for example. Regardless of the modality, the intensity should be markedly lower than steady state.