A great day out and it was wonderful meeting so many Free Spirits either again or for the first time. It was particularly good to see Mike Channin and Tanya who unexpectedly turned up to spectate.
I am now glad that I chose to enter 2 smaller races at Evesham and Cardiff this year. The experience gained at these events was invaluable and helped me control my nerves. I had the good fortune to meet Anna Bailey just before my race and we had a quick chat about Malvern and a moan about the race being 5 minutes late.
The start went well for a change and I am sure Roger Bangay would have been happy to see I hit my target pace (1:49) within a few strokes. I found it difficult to maintain a consistent speed. Occasionally I would be hitting 1:47 which panicked me so I would then slow down too much and the speed would drop to 1:51/1:52. After 500m I became more settled but the dry atmosphere was beginning to bother me and at 1000m I was beginning to doubt whether I could finish. There was no way I was going to handle down at BIRC though so I just carried on. By 1500m I was looking at about 7:20 and didnt know if I had a sprint finish. At 250m to go the doubts disappeared and I started to crank up the pace hitting 1:37/1:38, finishing in 7:13.7 a pb by 1.2 seconds.
Rowing at about 1:50 for 1500m and relying on my sprint finish is not going to get me much further now and I really need to speed up the first 1500 if I am going to progress towards sub 7. So its back to the Pete Plan this week with the horrible 4x2000 planned for Thursday. I will then take Friday off and have another go at my seasons best 10k (40:12) and maybe even push for a pb (sub40).

I was browsing Thomas' and Max's blogs this evening and thought it was time to restart my burblings again. My last blog was just before Evesham back in July. A fabulous day out, meeting Thomas, Roger, Wolfie, Spamuel, William, and Philip. The training paid off and I removed almost 10 seconds from my mile pb to finish in 5:46.2 The most pleasing aspect was my finish where I momentarily hit 1:33.
Evesham was followed by a rather mediocre fortnight and diabolical August where I seemed to suffering from hay fever or dust mite allergy. Whatever it was my breathing was badly affected and it was disturbing listening to a "death rattle" in my lungs.
Things began to improve steadily in September which rather handily had 10k as the ctc. From an appalling 44 minute effort at the beginning of the month, I finished with a more respectable sub 40:30. I must have another go soon as I think I may be approaching sub 40 form again.
The improvement continued throughout October with my return to the Pete plan and culminated in a new 2k pb set during the Welsh Indoor Rowing championships in Cardiff of 7:14.9, a 6.4 second improvement. It was great to see Roger there and meet Brian Critchley for the first time.
My form has continued to look good in the week following Cardiff and I have finally broken my longest standing pb in the 30 minutes as well setting a new pb for 30r20, which I continue to hate with a passion. Hopefully this run of form will continue to BIRC in a couple of weeks time. I have tentatively set myself a target of 7:10 but that may be a little ambitious. I will need to get my start right and try and hold a 1:49 split and then hope there is enough left in the tank for a sprint finish. I plan to do a few 1500m sessions to see how holding that split feels

Well less than 2 weeks to my debut race and until yesterday I was pretty worried about it. Not in terms of winning and losing. I know I have no chance of winning and the chances are I will come last. I was worried about not doing myself justice - especially in view of all the handling down I did last month.
However in the last week I have felt that my form is beginning to come back and I have had several good sessions. Yesterdays 1500 time trial answered a lot of questions for me and allayed those nagging doubts. Now looking forward to it. I will come off the Pete Plan until after Evesham in favour of more specific speed work with a couple of longer recovery rows in between.

Well the first 3 week cycle of the Pete Plan is now finished and tomorrow the whole thing starts again. It will be interrupted next week by a trip to China but maybe the rest will do me good. While I feel the intervals have been going well, the hard 10k on day 6 has been a real struggle. The last 2 have resulted in handling down, and although I tried again and did better later in the day its still a bit demoralising. Maybe at 43 it requires longer to recover from hard sessions and I need to substitute in a couple of UT2 sessions to aid that recovery. The PP07 seems to recommend steady sessions at pb+5-7 rather than pb+3.
To summarise the first cycle interval sessions:

8x500 @ 1:54.2 (too slow and I will be aiming for sub 1:49 tomorrow)
5x1500 @ 1:55.3
4x1000 @ 1:51.9 (horrible session)
4x2000 @ 1:56.4
Short pyramids @ 1:49.9
Long pyramids @ 1:57.9

The aim now is to do all but the last interval at the above pace and then go faster on the last one to set a new target.

I decided to get down the gym early this morning so I skipped breakfast. Not a good idea and the hard 10k was curtailed to 4k. I decided to go home, have something to eat and try again later. Early in the afternoon I went to see 28 weeks later in the somewhat vain hope that it would be better than 28 days later. Wrong. On the way home I decided to try an all out 6k at 24 spm so thats what I did. I was very pleased with the time of 24:09.5 - a 16 second improvement on my first attempt. The row seemed easier as well - hopefully this a sign that I am getting stronger. The pacing was very even all the way:

1000 in 4:02.8
2000 in 4:02.2
3000 in 4:01.6
4000 in 4:02.0
5000 in 4:02.3
6000 in 3:58.6

Avg Pace 2:00.7
Next time I hope to hit 2:00 min splits all the way.

Cool down 10 minutes 2321. Days metres 12321.

Week 2 of the Pete Plan begins with the infamous 4x1000 intervals which initially I thought did not sound too bad. Wrong again - it was complete torment. I am reminded of an old saying - that which does not kill you makes you stronger. Well I am still alive and currently feeling weaker. Hopefully that feeling will not last. This particular piece is meant to be completed at 2k pace which for me is 1:50.3. I managed an average 1:51.9 on this occasion but I guess the aim is to work your way towards the 2k average. Once you exceed it then its probably time to look at your 2k time again. To understand why this session is so difficult, my heart rate exceeded 156 on all 4 sets which is TR zone for me. The description for TR is gasping and sweating profusely. This is a pretty accurate description.
The next 2 days are meant to be steady rows of 8-15k which are unlikely to throw up anything interesting so I will probably report again on Friday with the results of the rather unpleasant sounding 4x2000.

Day 4 of the Pete plan and another interval session. This time 1500x5 with 5 minutes rest and boy did I need them. The first 3 intervals were reasonably but comfortable but it began to hurt on the 4th one. The 5th was very hard and I was unable to wind up the pace much. Nevertheless the target pace of 5k-1 was achieved and now I have a target of 1:55.3 to aim for next time I do this session. I came away feeling I had achieved something and looking forward to the next interval session - these interval sessions are great fun and make a welcome change from the long steady rows necessary for marathon training.
Todays session began with a 10 minute warmup covering 2345 metres and a 10 minute cooldown covering 2250 metres. Total distance 12196m.
It is good see other Free Spirits will be trying this plan and I look forward to comparing notes.