25 Oct
Rowing Machine – 3 x 45 on/45 off @ 1:51.7 pace
Thought I’d give it a bit more oomph in this session and this was in the middle of the pace for 7:40 rowers. Over in no time and able to take a few days completely off to prepare now.
28 Oct
Step Test – 3 mins. 15 sec heart beats = 34
Estimated VO2max = 54.21 ml/kg/min
At 69.8kg this puts my predicted 2k row at 7:41, but having seen my friend beat his estimated VO2max by 2 I looked at 56.2 as well, giving me a range of 7:32-7:41 meaning a 500m pace target of 1:53-1:55 which is where I expected to be…
Rowing Machine – 2000m in 7:29.2!!!
Oh lord this hurt. My only change in tactic was 4 hard strokes at the start instead of 2, and treating it as 4 x 500m, finding a rhythm in the first three then going hard. After four hard strokes I was holding 1:50/500m pace and rather than panic I just went with it. I got through 500m relatively well and my 1k time was something like 3:42. Then with what felt like the same effort I saw it slowly tick up to around 1:53, where I was fighting to stop it going to 1:54 and beyond. The last 370m (precise I know) was horrible, I increased my stroke rate to compensate for the reduced power per stroke and held on for the end. With 150m to go I knew I had it but saw the predicted finish time flick between 7:29 and 7:30, and since the former sounds so much better I dug deep to hold 1:53. When I finished I was on the floor for almost 10 minutes and requested a bucket in case I threw up. Really proud of how hard I pushed myself as I know from previous maximal fitness tests that I wuss out when it gets really hard on the lungs.
You can see split times below and I’ll put a video up on my channel of the whole training program review.