Just want to say, what a fantastic set of workouts everyone has been posting! Iain well done on the 40km, and some very interesting discussion on the whole rowing technique in the context of Hydrox/heavily pre-exhausted state, etc.
Ian wrote:I recall comparing notes with a fell runner and they were very much of the opinion that perceived effort was much more important than HR/bands or otherwise. I’m on the fence to be honest, and would rather know that my HR is spiking/not recovering etc so I can do the sensible thing and stop, irrespective of whether I happen to “feel“ fine.
In my mind the authoritative answer is that they're not mutually exclusive, but in fact you need both. The "old-school" athlete that does it by feel has a very important characteristic/skill that perhaps the modern trainer who has grown up and never exercised without using HR/monitoring equipment (which we can now imagine is entirely possible for say a 20-30 year old person of today; HR watches/equipment has been mainstream and pretty cheap for a long time now), since it is vital to know
when to "ignore" the data and listen to your body; but equally, the old-school athlete who never uses modern training data is also missing out on analytical depth that no amount of feel will substitute for. Sometimes data/knows you better than your own body, or at least, gives you an entirely new "window" you otherwise don't have...
The update
...case in point, the Covid interruption/impact on my training was a bit more significant and has taken longer to completely recover from that I anticipated. The short-term effects were relatively brief/acute illness that quickly subsided. What lingered, however, was a persistent sense of fatigue, and just feeling a bit off, and excessively tired. My HRV (heart-rate variability) data shows this (see attachment). Incidentally, though the graph does not yet show it going green "balanced" yet, based on feel and the way I'm now sleeping/recovering again, I am almost certain it will be back balanced shortly. For the first time in two weeks I feel like I'm just about back to where I was an can resume the upward curve in fitness.
Pleasingly, despite the enormous struggle, I managed to keep the momentum going. I can see why some people get sucked into a so-called "long covid" torpor/malaise; the natural inclination is just to rest/sleep all the time, but this has an extremely detrimental effect on overall fitness/health (since you can actually detrain quite a bit in a few weeks; now imagine the case for someone who does this from a state of already poor fitness), when actually the opposite is necessary to make a speedy recovery: you need to fight through it and get the regenerative effects of deep breathing/metabolic benefits of exercise going as soon as possible. There are some interesting recent scientific papers basically establishing as much. So the feeling/difficulty was as per the following: not "ill", but generally a) feeling very tired, b) not able to push to the same intensity in workouts, not getting the good "energised" feeling about 10-20 mins into a work, d) not really feeling properly "recharged" after a night's sleep. My Garmin was explicitly telling me such as well, and it was 100% correct in terms of correspondence to how I felt. Combine this with lots of work demands, and it has been a tiring couple of weeks. Minor nosebleeds and weakness led to a secondary infection/minor cold/blocked nose, which further disrupted sleep quality. Interestingly, doing a nearly identical hard-ish effort a week or so ago confirmed an elevated average HR/apparent loss of fitness, but this was more indicative of the stress on the autonomic system.
Anyway, I still managed to do nearly 300k metres in November, almost identical to September, and actually more if we just exclusively talk about the RowErg metres component of that (BikeErg was close to ~50%, with a small-ish contribution from SkiErg), and in the last couple of days I'm feeling back to myself. All of this did bring one useful side benefit: a reduced appetite and enthusiasm for food (a golden sign I'm not 100%), meaning that the combination of my regular exercise, relatively clean eating, plus not much desire for any desserts, meant that I've trimmed down nicely and picked up momentum, and am now well under 75kg again, and I should remain perpetually "lightweight" again provided I keep logging in about 250km / month. I suspect I'd probably be at peak shape at about 68kg-ish, as at that weight it is a sustainable/healthy leanness and not looking gaunt. So at 74kg I've got a way to go yet.
As a result I left the CTC to the last possible moment, and ideally could have done with another couple of days. See other thread for details on this.
Few recent selected mainly RowErg workouts, since obviously I'm not going to attempt to catch up on 2+ weeks of workouts here, as I still kept exercising throughout:
December 2nd:
30:00.0 6,514m 2:18.1 133 756 20 138
6:00.0 1,173m 2:33.4 97 633 19 126
12:00.0 1,326m 2:15.7 140 781 20 136
18:00.0 1,336m 2:14.7 143 792 21 143
24:00.0 1,336m 2:14.7 143 792 20 143
30:00.0 1,344m 2:13.9 146 801 20 144
Sore DOMS meant that this was a deliberately easy recovery workout. Felt GREAT, finally, the feeling I am after that confirms 100% health: the steady ~Z2/UT3-UT2 effort that leaves you feeling more energised that when you started.
December 1st:
Long-ish trail run (1 hour). First time running in a couple of months, and my legs thanked me with massive DOMS afterwards; not surprising. Rowing is not running and vice-versa.
November 28th:
1:06:11.3 14,000m 2:21.8 123 722 21 142
6:18.8 1,000m 3:09.4 52 477 32 110
53:33.7 12,000m 2:13.9 146 801 20 151
6:18.8 1,000m 3:09.4 52 477 20
Main interval was at 70% FTP, this very regenerative. In hindsight, I should have scrapped all of my other workout types and just focussed on doing sessions like this over the last two weeks instead; I'd have made a significantly faster recovery, probably a few days if not a week earlier.
November 21st:
50:58.9 11,721m 2:10.4 158 842 23 150
5:31.1 1,000m 2:45.5 77 565 28 115
2:16.7 500m 2:16.7 137 771 20 140
2:03.4 500m 2:03.4 186 941 22 152
2:02.2 500m 2:02.2 192 960 24 154
2:00.7 500m 2:00.7 199 985 25 160
r: 1:00 88m
8:00.0 1,994m 2:00.3 201 990 23 166
r: 2:00 32m
8:00.0 1,995m 2:00.3 201 991 23 168
r: 2:00 21m
This was supposed to be 5 x 8 minutes AT, you can see I did 2.5 intervals. Pace/watts are correct targets, but were not when I was in a state of not 100% health. So too much enthusiasm/eagerness, but still an effective workout though. I deliberately stopped it short as I felt that the effort was enough given my current recovery status. Anyway, a half-workout was still progress so I could feel I was on-the-mend by this point.
. Especially impressed on quick recoveries while rowing sub 2:04 on FM sections 
. Seriously interested in your HR response. When I cut warm up I frequently find HR stays lower for longer. I suspect 1.7S/500M faster may be more in point.
May have another go on Sat!
- the system on the PM3 very unreliable!!
Managed to -ve split but legs tiring towards end of the pirces & not by much in 26 & 28 spm rounds.