Anyone had any SEASON's bests recently?

[strider77]

Cheers Paul, not as impressive as yours though earlier this Season =D>

I am steadily getting there.

SB for HM yesterday, rowing with one of my gym buddies Pete

1:25:45.6-2:01.9-27 Using DF137
17:42.0-2:03.4-27
17:32.1-2:02.3-27
17:30.2-2:02.1-27
17:33.3-2:02.4-27
15:28.0-1:59.0-29

+ 9 Nonathlon points too

[Paul Victory]

Nice HM Alan. =D> =D> =D> Don't forget to enter your time on the Crazy Bear challenge. Then again, maybe not - it's over 25 seconds faster than my time.

[strider77]

Cheers Paul, I see you had to nip in and beat me with another HM, I was hoping I was closing the huge gap between us as you very helpfully got injured and had loads of time off the erg and I am STILL behind you-grrrr

[Paul Victory]

Cheers Paul, I see you had to nip in and beat me with another HM, I was hoping I was closing the huge gap between us as you very helpfully got injured and had loads of time off the erg and I am STILL behind you-grrrr

Sorry, Alan. Couldn't help myself.

[dr3do]

I don't know if it fits here, but I had this afternoon a PB…
Did a HM (21097m) which took 1:27:47.9.
It was a UT2 session (1.6mmol/l, HR 144, SPM 20, DPS 11.3, Watt 179.8 ).
Compared to my beginning nearly 2.5 month ago a huuuuge step forward.

[Paul Victory]

I don't know if it fits here, but I had this afternoon a PB…
Did a HM (21097m) which took 1:27:47.9.
It was a UT2 session (1.6mmol/l, HR 144, SPM 20, DPS 11.3, Watt 179.8 ).
Compared to my beginning nearly 2.5 month ago a huuuuge step forward.

Well done Boris. Very impressive HM for someone who's only been rowing for a few months.

[Rodger]

Very nice PB on the HM, Boris! Especially since you have done it as a UT2 row and with 20 spm. I'm curious what you will achieve at full speed.

A PB is a SB too, so yes, it fits here.

[dr3do]

Thanks Paul and Rodger!

[strider77]

Well done on your PB and SB Boris =D>

[Shang-Chi]

YES!

[strider77]

Season's Best for the Half Marathon yesterday in the gym

1:24:55.3-2:00.7-28
17:30.1-2:02.1-27
17:18.7-2:00.7-28
17:24.6-2:01.4-28
15:23.1-1:58.4-30

Chuffed with that, closing in on my good mate Paul Victory

[Paul Victory]

Season's Best for the Half Marathon yesterday in the gym

1:24:55.3-2:00.7-28
17:30.1-2:02.1-27
17:18.7-2:00.7-28
17:24.6-2:01.4-28
15:23.1-1:58.4-30

Chuffed with that, closing in on my good mate Paul Victory

Well done Alan. =D> =D> =D> You beat my Crazy Bear best time. Now what am I going to do? I'm still doing the December Facebook challenge, but you've just thrown down the gauntlet. Decisions, decisions, ....

[strider77]

Paul Victory wrote:-
Well done Alan. =D> =D> =D> You beat my Crazy Bear best time. Now what am I going to do? I'm still doing the December Facebook challenge, but you've just thrown down the gauntlet. Decisions, decisions, ....

Paul, the Facebook challenge has got you back into amazing form, I have been watching your progress and I am in awe of what you are doing on it, I am nowhere near that sort of form =D> ..................yet

I improved my HM by 50 secs in just over month -Nov 17th -1:25:45.6-2:01.9-27

So in another month I hope to beat your SB

[plummy]

Nice HM Alan - well done =D> (sub 2:00 splits next time then?)

[Paul Victory]

Paul, the Facebook challenge has got you back into amazing form, I have been watching your progress and I am in awe of what you are doing on it, I am nowhere near that sort of form =D> ..................yet

Thanks Alan. I don't know about physical condition, but I think the Facebook challenge has really strengthened my mental form. It's got me back into the habit of digging in and keeping going when I feel like slowing down.

I would really, really like to take a day off, but I'm determined to keep a 'clean sheet' for as long as possible - hopefully until the end of the month. I keep expecting to have a blow up one of these days, but it hasn't happened yet, thankfully. About to go off to do 22 minutes shortly. I'm not really looking forward to it.

I didn't get a chance earlier as I was collecting my daughter Elaine from the airport. She's home from New Zealand for a couple of weeks.

[dr3do]

I would really, really like to take a day off, but I'm determined to keep a 'clean sheet' for as long as possible - hopefully until the end of the month.

Sounds mentally strong. Great!

[Paul Victory]

I would really, really like to take a day off, but I'm determined to keep a 'clean sheet' for as long as possible - hopefully until the end of the month.

Sounds mentally strong. Great!

Thanks Boris. I had a bit of a train wreck today. OK, that's a slight exaggeration, but it was the first time in this challenge that I blew up and I had to ease back by around 3 seconds per 500m in order to finish today's challenge.

I think it was partly tiredness (we had an extended family Christmas gathering at home yesterday and it was a long day with lots of food and drink consumed and lots of tidying up afterwards). Then I ended up hanging around the airport this morning for ages while my daughter's boyfriend waited for the immigration queue to deal with glacial slowness with the 5 non EU passengers who arrived on their flight from Zurich. The celebratory glass of wine at lunch probably didn't help, either.

Anyway, enough excuses. I'm hoping today was just a blip, but I'm comfortably going to beat my overall target of 130,000 meters for the challenge unless I blow up completely, so I'm going to keep plugging away and I'm going to try having slightly easier days in among the more full on days.

Off to have another glass of wine now. It's not every day my daughter comes home from New Zealand to visit us and I plan to make the most of it.

[Paul Victory]

I did 30 minutes today as part of the December Facebook challenge. Initially, I hadn't planned to attempt an SB as I have been rowing fairly 'full on' every day this month for the challenge, but I decided 'what the heck' that I would go for it and be prepared to slow down (rather than HD) if I found the pace to be unsustainable.

My SB was 7994m and my target was to break 8k, with a stretch target of 8050m. My plan was to keep the splits at or below 1:52 for as long as possible and hope that I could muster up a final split. I've been using 4 minute splits for the last several days on the Facebook challenge, so I decided to stick with this. I figured that if I could average just over 1060 meters per 4 minute split, this would leave me within sight of 8k with 2 minutes to go and if I could average 1070, 8050m was on.

I felt really good at the start and managed to keep the split around 1:51 for the first ten minutes or so without feeling totally distressed. At that stage, I was on target to get close to my all time PB of 8109m from August 2011. When I started to struggle to hold onto 1:51, I had to decide whether to go for broke and risk everything in order to get a PB, or ease back slightly and make sure of breaking the 8k mark.

I decided to hedge my bets and ease back a bit, while keeping the splits under 1:52. This was probably wise, as I began to really struggle around the 20 minute mark and saw a lot of 1:53s and a few 1:54s. But I managed to limit the damage and had enough left to pick it up over the last two minutes, with a strong sprint over the last 30 seconds and a kamikaze last few strokes that saw me get the pace down to 1:27 on the final stroke and achieve my second best 30 minutes session with 8076m @ 1:51.44 pace.

Splits were as follows:

Distance Total Pace Rating
1082 04:00.0 1:50.91 29
1080 08:00.0 1:51.11 30
1077 12:00.0 1:51.42 29
1077 16:00.0 1:51.42 29
1072 20:00.0 1:51.94 28
1064 24:00.0 1:52.78 27
1067 28:00.0 1:52.46 28
558 30:00.0 1:47.53 30

8076 30:00.0 1:51.44 28

[dr3do]

When I started to struggle to hold onto 1:51, I had to decide whether to go for broke and risk everything in order to get a PB, or ease back slightly and make sure of breaking the 8k mark. [...] I decided to hedge my bets and ease back a bit, while keeping the splits under 1:52. This was probably wise, as I began to really struggle around the 20 minute

Nice writing, was pleasant to read. Congratulations for acting wise and nailing it down Well done. =D> =D>

[strider77]

Thats an amazing 30 mins Paul-the Challenge got you mighty fit-I may do it next year as the results seem to prove it works =D>

I had not broken 7:10 for 2k since March 2012 the last time I went sub 7 so pleased to report my SB for this year was done on December 31st in the gym

7:07.9-1:46.9-32
1:47.6-32
1:47.4-32
1:47.8-32
1:45.0-35

My strategy was 1:47 to 1500 then give it what was left

Bit of a wussie effort as no cough and I definitely was not dying at the end-will have another go soon

Still a SB by 3.2 secs so chuffed with that

[plummy]

Cracking effort Alan - nice pacing =D>

[Paul Victory]

Well done Alan. Looks like you got the pacing spot on. I'm trying to psyche myself up to do a 2k TT as a benchmark for the two race meetings I'm hoping to attend over the next 5 weeks.

[strider77]

Cheers Paul and Dave

Paul, you are in great shape and will have no problem getting Sub 7 ( No presssure )

Its a goal of mine to go Sub 7 this year, I missed doing it in both 2013 and 2014 - grrrrrrrr

[Paul Victory]

Well, I went ahead and did the 2k. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but felt I should be capable of sub 7 based on my recent performance over 30 minutes.

Applying Paul's Law to my 30 minutes pace gave me a projected 2k pace of 6:45.5, which would smash my all time PB. I knew this would be overambitious as I have not been doing any speedwork over the last month (apart from the first few days of the challenge), but I felt that applying an improvement in pace of 4 seconds instead of 5 for each halving of the distance might just about be achievable. This would give a projected time of 6:53.6 @ 1:43.4 pace.

So I decided to set off at 1:43 pace and see how things went. I had also decided that I would not HD, even if it meant paddling home at well over 7 minutes. I think I started a bit TOO fast and it was tougher than I expected. I slowed down to around 1:45/1:46 pace after around 500m and kept it there until the final 500m. My projected time was showing around 6:57, so I was fairly confident I would go sub 7. I didn't have as much left for a final sprint as I hoped, but managed to finish in 6:55.5 for a 3.2 seconds improvement in my SB.

Splits were as follows:

Split Time Rating
500 1:42.4 33
500 1:45.0 33
500 1:45.6 31
500 1:42.5 33

2000 6:55.5 32

I hope that with a bit of speedwork between now and January 24th, I can get closer to 6:50 and maybe even beat my all time PB of 6:49.8. [-o<

Paul V

[dr3do]

You really have good run, Paul. Grrreat!