This week I have begun a 5 week trial I am taking part in at work assessing cooling garments for military aircrew. This involves doing exercise in a heat chamber for 1 to 2 hours with various temperature readings, heart rate, ECG, and other physiological measurements taken. This will obviously have an effect on my erg training in two ways – I am not allowed to do hard training the day before each session in the chamber, and on the day of a heat session I’m going to be fatigued for training.
Wednesday’s training:
Wednesday’s heat chamber visit consisted of 60mins of continous leg pressing. Not a very heavy weight (obvious if you can do it continuously for 60mins), but at 45 degrees C still fairly fatiguing.
1 hour after finishing it was off to the gym for Pete Plan week 3 distance intervals, with a slower target so I might be able to complete the session:
3k = 10:23.6 / 1:43.9 / 30
2.5k = 8:39.0 / 1:43.8 / 30
2k = 6:52.4 / 1:43.1 / 30
Average = 22:55.0 / 1:43.6 / 30
It felt equally tough all the way though, just general fatigue from the activites earlier.
Thursday’s training:
The day after an interval session means steady distance. I decided to take it really easy today, but in the end gradual negative splits made it a reasonable overall pace anyway.
10k = 37:12.4 / 1:51.6 / 24
2k split = 1:53.9, 1:52.6, 1:51.4, 1:50.7, 1:49.1
Then time just for one quick weights exercise:
Bench press – 60kg, 3 sets of 8
I was due to have my second heat chamber experience tomorrow, but that has been put back so hard distance work can go ahead as normal.
Blog updates:
There was a comment on one of my recent entries that the 5k training section is not currently a lot of use without any explanation of how to follow each plan. It’s really a balancing act when trying to run a coaching business as well as a blog as a useful resource. Too much information and noone will need coaching advice, not enough and the information isn’t worthwhile as a resource. So I will make that a priority to add some explanation to the 5k training page to at least give information on the idea behind each session, and how I intended them to fit in together.
