Watching the sporadic efforts of the other club members who have now formed their own impenetrable little clique, I've realised that leaving it to January with its unpredictable weather will be leaving it too late. Going on the last two years experience I can't rely on the weather at the start of the year. Although I haven't yet reached my mileage target I need to get the more rigorous training underway and on a more regular and formalised regime.
Up to now I've been building mileage with what I hope has a bit of quality built in. Other than the paddling I've been devoting a session on the Ergo, one short run and one dedicated session to stretching and upper body exercises each week. It's not enough but seems to have worked well enough to get my distance up to managing ten to fifteen mile club outings quite well, although they are at a leisurely club outing pace with lunch thrown in and nowhere near fast enough to be sure of getting inside the ten hour cut-off times.
Guru Brian Greenaway's training plans predominantly feature Interval sessions and I know from my previous incarnation as a jogger that intervals give the best return for effort expended. Strangely though he doesn't recommend going beyond sessions of one hour duration, as after that performance drop off becomes counter productive. BG would have me do intervals 5 days a week, but If I tried that I'm pretty sure I'd break down sooner rather than later. So, I have to incorporate intervals, intervals and even more intervals but initially at least, it's going to have to be in a modified form with rest days so that I can cope with the effort.
In pursuance of that, last week I tried marking off two half mile stretches of a conveniently long, straight stretch of the canal. Just to try it out to see if it would work, after the five mile paddle I did 4X half mile efforts at a speed I could just about maintain, though the last one was eyeballs out. It probably wasn't very pretty to watch as style and rhythm went out the window as the pace increased but I suppose it went well enough for a first attempt, despite a houseboat forcing me into a weed patch and collecting most of the canal's weed on my paddle.
The intervals went:
1) 6:18 (with added houseboat)
2) 5:47
3) 5:36
4) 5:29
What can one say: it was slow, and can only get better.
Aside from the paddling, the things that seem to be bringing about the greatest improvement is the Ergo and the Bungee, so it seems reasonable that they are going to have to feature large in the scheme of things. I'm basing my Ergo session on sets of eight, six and four minute intervals to get into prolonged periods of continuous paddling. Eight minutes continuous paddling is easy enough to maintain as it doesn't require the intensity of shorter efforts. It's rather akin to Long Slow Distance. BG's sets are mainly pyramids starting at six minutes which is about the time my half mile distances take to cover. At the moment eight minute intervals on the Ergo are good enough as long as the intervals on the water are six minutes.
So I've laid out a plan for August that's going to take me out on the Thames a bit more often instead of the Wey by using their Wednesday evening and Saturday morning sessions and concentrate on intervals on the canal together with the Bungee on the five mile stints.
Well, it's a plan such as it is. It's reasonably flexible and I can add to it as and when necessary.
At the end of August the Saturday club trips are a little longer than usual so with that and a bit more effort I might just pass my original mileage target of 500 miles by the end of the month and we'll see then just what sort of form I've got.
No comments:
Post a Comment