B2B Week 2 – 10 x 600m / 1r

The second week of the BIRC to Boston training plan begins tomorrow officially, but I decided to double up on the training sessions today to get the first core session of the week out of the way. The first session last week was 10 x 500m, and I went with a target of 1:42 as a starting pace. I said then that I was backing off the target marginally with the Cardiff 2k coming up at the weekend, and so always intended to start this session a little faster. The 2k race yesterday gave me a kick up the ass though, so rather than go for a 1:41.5, or maybe even a 1:41 starting pace I decided it is time to put some real effort in if I’m going to make my goals in the next 11 weeks.

10 x 600m / 1min rest:
1:59.9 / 1:39.9 / 30
1:59.8 / 1:39.8 / 30
1:59.8 / 1:39.8 / 30
1:59.8 / 1:39.8 / 30
1:59.7 / 1:39.7 / 30
1:59.8 / 1:39.8 / 30
1:59.8 / 1:39.8 / 30
1:59.7 / 1:39.7 / 30
1:59.7 / 1:39.7 / 30
1:57.4 / 1:37.8 / 31

6k = 19:55.4 / 1:39.6 / 30

A good effort for the second session of the day after the 3 x 20mins this morning. Tomorrow morning is another nice and steady 3 x 20mins, set up on rowpro beginning at 0940. Hopefully someone will join at least one of the reps this time with a bit more notice.

Welsh Championships and onward to Boston

I won’t over-analyse here where I went wrong with the 2k race in Cardiff yesterday. I rowed a 6:26, came third (as predicted by the seedings), but overall it was a poorly rowed 2k. I didn’t really go into it with a firm race plan, went off too hard in the first 150m, backed off too much over the next 600m or so, and from there simply rowed for 3rd place rather than either rowing my own race, or looking what was going on ahead of third (I was in fourth until 150m or so from the line). Had I looked ahead I would have seen that the guy in second was slowing (as I knew he would), and I should have pushed on from further out to try to catch him (and ignored the badly paced first 1500m of the race). Instead I only looked at my own monitor, kept around 5m behind 3rd place, pushed on from 250m out, and as I moved into 3rd within the final 150m saw then that second was only another 11m ahead – too late at that point, but had I looked at the big screen 300m earlier? Every race is a learning experience anyway.

Easy distance work this morning on rowpro. Deliberately pretty easy as I would normally have a rest day the day after a 2k:

3 x 20mins / 5min rest:
5062m / 1:58.5 / 19
5118m / 1:57.2 / 20
5174m / 1:56.0 / 20