Anyone had any SEASON's bests recently?

[spidermac]

Plummy 8s improvement on 1k - very impressive a return to form.
Alan that looks VERY painful!!!

[strider77]

Thanks Plummy and Spider, still trying to calibrate my pacemaker ! The Fall Challenge gave me a "Base" to work from, onwards and upwards !

[plummy]

I've got a lot of holidays to use up so I'm off today, tomorrow and Monday. As its the works xmas do tonight time won't be on my side so I decided to have a row in the middle of the day for a change. I tend to set for 5k and almost always fail (took me 3 separate goes on Tuesday just to get to 5k total because my cardio is so bad) but today I went off steadier and used every distraction antic I could think of to not quit and managed to take 17.1s off my previous SB - so now 22:12.0 (hardly anything to write home about but at least it's some level of progress). Started at 22spm, then 3 lots of 1k at 23 spm and the last 1k at 24spm.

[plummy]

Yet again failed to get to 5km with a HD but felt I was at least well warmed up to attack my "softer than a soft thing" 500m SB. It was more protection and fear of hurting my back that's stopped me pushing the pace but that recent minute plus the fact that my 1k pace was a 5s faster split than my 500m made me thing that this must be in the bag bar injury. Turned out to be the case so 2:05.5 became 1:53.3 now. Next stop <1:50...

[Iain]

That's a huge chunk Plummy although still some way from 1:50. What rating did you use?

[plummy]

That's a huge chunk Plummy although still some way from 1:50. What rating did you use?

Thanks Iain. Had to go and look that up - it was 31spm average.

[strider77]

Well done on your 500m SB Dave, more to come I suspect !!

[plummy]

For the Jan CTC I did a short (500m) warm up for a change as I think just jumping on the machine has been my downfall for quite some time. Managed to take another 7s off my SB, down to 22:05.0 ( @ 23SPM average ). Looking back, this is only 11s slower than my best since May 2023!

[Mike Channin]

ALWAYS warm up. Especially as you get older. All of my on-the-machine injuries in the last 10 years have been the result of not warming up (except one, where I somehow pulled something at 2k to go on a HM).

I confess that I tend to do relatively light warm-ups compared to some, but I will still make sure the muscles are turning and warmed up, and most definitely before attempting anything fast/maximal, as would be needed for an SB (which brings us back to the topic!)

Warming up is probably a subject worthy of its own thread!

I'd also extoll the virtues of cooling down by some light paddling _after_ a major session too - definitely improves recovery.