Your favourite distance - why - target

[webberg]

There's a thread below from @Mike Channin saying that he's done 100xHM in this calendar year.

That's impressive.

We all perhaps have a favourite distance or interval piece that is our "go to".

This might be because of the time we have available to use the C2 or because it suits us physically/CV wise or because it appears in a regular training program.

It may vary according to time of day, year, weather, etc.

But what is yours?

For me, because I have limited time but also lucky enough to have a machine at home and it's a 20 second walk from house to C2, I try to do an HOUR as my main piece.

I have a natural tendency to start conservatively and to negative split and so a longer piece where the "negative" is modest in each sector, suits me.

Because I'm a numbers geek, I know that I'm "on pace" if my distance over 5 mins is at or just over 1,100m. I confess that I then check metres covered each 5 mins to make sure that I'm going a little further each time.

The last 10 minutes will be time to empty the tanks.

I've improved my hour distance this season from around 11,600 to a shade over 13,500 so whilst I accept it's not very scientific or efficient in terms of training, it gets results.

In the summer when it's (allegedly) warmer (not this year) I'll often do 2 x 30 minutes with a cool down between them.

My target when I'm back in January will be a 14k hour long session at least two/three times a week. Perhaps as part of a HM effort.

I do sometimes do the workout of the day and will also in my longer sessions do what I call one minute efforts where I'll target perhaps 7 to 10 second improvement per 500. SO usually from circa 2:14 to around 2:06 to 2:04 per 500.

However my heart belongs to the hour.

[Iain]

Personally I like to break down SS sessions into separate intervals. I set these with 0 recovery between. What I like is that I can add extra intervals at will (never got close to the PMs 30 maximum). I like to set the length at something that is significant without being daunting. It has been 1k, 2k and 10', but for some time now I have used 15'. For a long time I tried to go 1M further on each interval. This followed one of Pete's suggestions to stop overly rushing SS, that is to ensure that every interval is faster than the last. When I know I have 6 or 7 intervals to do, this incentivises me to not go too fast too soon. But now that I have become better at pacing, I try and get as close to OCD as possible.

Recently I started doing "UT1"(ish) intervals at FM pace. I increased the distance by 5m / 15' / week. The intention was to be rowing at <2:15 so that I can break 3:10 for an FM at the beginning of next season.

That said, I do like to go quicker and revert to the PP intervals when I am up to it and don't have another challenge to attempt.

[bierik]

For the longest time, the HM was my favorite distance. I currently stand at 357 rows, my record for a rowing season is 136 (season 2012). I used to watch a lot of sports when rowing, and the HM was a good distance for that. Later on, I became obsessed to reach a pace average of below 2:00/500m for the HM, which I reached at around the 300 mark.
In the last couple of years I haven't had that much time to row anymore. Currently my favorite row is the half hour. This fits into a busy day and can be quite demanding. Once a season I want to beat 8000m, but I was unable to do so the last two years. Since my pulmonary embolism my strong rowing days are sadly over.

[JtheDad]

One thing I love about the erg is I get to the gym and I don’t have to make any decisions. I just sit down and most of the week, I do the same thing: 10min intervals with 15s rest for water and sweat. I like to drink a lot of water while I row so I don’t have so much to recover when I’m done.

Most days I do 80min because the Y gives me 2 hours of childcare and that’s the most rowing I can squeeze in with stretching and changing. Some days I run out of time and I have to change and keep my 2yo from getting into anything.

This summer I was up over 19k for those pieces, but now I’m just hoping to get back to 18.5k. Seems like the 4x2k has given me the most ground on that historically so I try to do those once a week too.