New Member - 60 day streak

[Ruin Christmas]

Hello everybody. I purchased a Concept2 rower on March 1 and have just completed a 60 day streak. I have 700 km so far and really enjoy it. I did the March mud challenge (5k) by accident. Then I did the April Fools challenge and kept it up to April 20. I am looking forward to the May (half) Marathon which will be my first one. I am not very fast yet - my TR pace is slower than most posters' UT2 pace - but I'm making good improvements due to all the knowledge in your posts, so thank you. I found this post about Noob errors to be most helpful: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=185257#p465858. I hope to have some accomplishments someday so I can have an impressive signature and participate in online arguments with yall.

[p_b82]

Hi and Welcome,

In your 60 days you've gone further than I have in a year, (I'm only at 676k) so congrats - if you keep up that sort of volume I'm sure your pace will increase in not too long at all!

[Dangerscouse]

Hello everybody. I purchased a Concept2 rower on March 1 and have just completed a 60 day streak. I have 700 km so far and really enjoy it. I did the March mud challenge (5k) by accident. Then I did the April Fools challenge and kept it up to April 20. I am looking forward to the May (half) Marathon which will be my first one. I am not very fast yet - my TR pace is slower than most posters' UT2 pace - but I'm making good improvements due to all the knowledge in your posts, so thank you. I found this post about Noob errors to be most helpful: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=185257#p465858. I hope to have some accomplishments someday so I can have an impressive signature and participate in online arguments with yall.

Welcome to the forum. Don't worry about your current pace, as it's very common that your current PBs will eventually become your steady state pace with enough dedication.

Completing a HM at any pace, is something to be proud of, as it's a long distance that can easily be derailed at ao many points.

[Sakly]

Wow, that's a stunning amount of meters, especially for a newbie
Keep up the work, sprinkle some hard work in and enjoy the ride

[Ruin Christmas]

Thanks for the encouragement, guys!

sprinkle some hard work in

I have started doing a limited amount of TR zone training only recently. (I will add a small amount of AN later as I'm roughly following the Concept2 interactive plan.) Right now I'm at a ratio of 8:4:2:1 UT2/UT1/AT/TR in terms of weekly mileage. Does that seem reasonable?

[Sakly]

Thanks for the encouragement, guys!

sprinkle some hard work in

I have started doing a limited amount of TR zone training only recently. (I will add a small amount of AN later as I'm roughly following the Concept2 interactive plan.) Right now I'm at a ratio of 8:4:2:1 UT2/UT1/AT/TR in terms of weekly mileage. Does that seem reasonable?

All what works for you and your recovery capabilities.
80/20 easy/hard work ratio is always a good point to start with and your ratio is ballpark around that, so - yes

[iain]

All what works for you and your recovery capabilities.
80/20 easy/hard work ratio is always a good point to start with and your ratio is ballpark around that, so - yes

I think the initial idea was that 80/20 was sessions rather than distance. As every TR/AT session should have warm up and cooldown with lower volume at the target pace, I would say that your ratio is a little high on AT / TR. So if you take the Pete Plan and assume 5k w/up, active recovery + C/D for the harder sessions, hard distance is 7.5k AT, 1k at interval pace during W/up & 10k SS. That is about 8:3:1 SS:AT:TR. I would say this is actually low on SS as SS is done at UT1 rather than UT2 and I now struggle doing 3 hard sessions a week. In sessions I try and do about 3:1:1:1 UT2:UT1: AT:TR, but that works out at about 50% UT2: 26% UT1: 20% AT to 4% (TR + AN) by pace for me for 2024/5, I would say the AT is a bit heavy, but that reflects Quite a lot in warm up and getting to AT at start of cooldown.

Please note the above analysis is based on the pace of each interval so this is a long way from what an analysis of the time spent in each HR zone would produce. On AT intervals I will end in TR or even AN while starting in UT2. In addition, I set my bands by experience rather than percentage, so UT1 is below where I see an inflection in my HR curves and TR+ is where HR climbs rapidly at constant pace.

[Dangerscouse]

I think the initial idea was that 80/20 was sessions rather than distance. As every TR/AT session should have warm up and cooldown with lower volume at the target pace, I would say that your ratio is a little high on AT / TR. So if you take the Pete Plan and assume 5k w/up, active recovery + C/D for the harder sessions, hard distance is 7.5k AT, 1k at interval pace during W/up & 10k SS. That is about 8:3:1 SS:AT:TR. I would say this is actually low on SS as SS is done at UT1 rather than UT2 and I now struggle doing 3 hard sessions a week. In sessions I try and do about 3:1:1:1 UT2:UT1: AT:TR, but that works out at about 50% UT2: 26% UT1: 20% AT to 4% (TR + AN) by pace for me for 2024/5, I would say the AT is a bit heavy, but that reflects Quite a lot in warm up and getting to AT at start of cooldown.

Please note the above analysis is based on the pace of each interval so this is a long way from what an analysis of the time spent in each HR zone would produce. On AT intervals I will end in TR or even AN while starting in UT2. In addition, I set my bands by experience rather than percentage, so UT1 is below where I see an inflection in my HR curves and TR+ is where HR climbs rapidly at constant pace.

Wow, this makes me realise how much of a caveman I am with my calculations!!

I never used to warm up or cooldown at all until about a year ago, and I'm very inconsistent with cooldowns. Quite often I won't do it at all, or I might do something, but not too much.

As for ratios, it's never been part of my planning as I just have loose plan and work from that. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating doing it my way, as I'm not convinced it's the best way by any means, but it still amazes me how different we all are and how we attack the same issue from different angles.

[iain]

...As for ratios, it's never been part of my planning as I just have loose plan and work from that.

I have a series of interval workouts I do, try to do one long session every weekend and push the pace on SS when I feel up to it and know I will not be rowing the next day (these being my UT1 sessions). So it is not that structured, but I do collect the stats and analyse the time and distance spent in most 5S pace bands from which I report the above and split by my focus at the time. If I find that there is a pace I am doing less than I would like in the current rowing block then I will prioritise these, but that is as far as the ratio is used.