Compressed session. Heart rate.

I spent the day in London with Abigail (daugher #2) as a "daddy day". She was brilliant and we managed to cover the London Aquarium "I don't like fish", the V&A "I like that dress" and the Natural History Museum "I'm still scared of that dinosaur!". We had a great day (she's 4).

Then I got sidetracked on the laptop (very common that - this time I was working on film clips to use when teaching "bad movie physics") and when I got to 7:30 MBH asked me how long I was going to row for. Following the sub 7 on Thursday I was feeling a bit like "job done". At 7:45, MBH half asked again and since I was still procrastinating I asked for advice.

"you row better when you row to plan. STICK TO THE PLAN"

Good advice that. By now it was nearly 8pm and a 2 x 18 UT1 looked like we'd be eating at 9pm. So I decided to do a 15' UT1 again. This time I would go hard off the blocks at 1:45 until my heart reached UT1 then settle on that heart rate. I was interested to see if this would result in a better distance than choosing a slower speed and settling to it. The physics suggests that going off hard is slower.

I screamed off the start, and was around 50m ahead after 3 minutes but by the end my "previous row" pace boat was right on my tail. That piece was done not knowing what my UT1 pace was so I think this is pretty conclusive that bombing off the start is a bad idea.

I also checked my heart rate bands today following my recent 196 HR max and checked resting HR of 56. The Free Spirits HR calculator said:

• Your UT2 band is a heart rate of 133 bpm to 154 bpm with a mean of 144 bpm.
• Your UT1 band is a heart rate of 155 bpm to 168 bpm with a mean of 161 bpm.
• Your AT band is a heart rate of 169 bpm to 175 bpm with a mean of 172 bpm.
• Your TR band is a heart rate of 176 bpm to 189 bpm with a mean of 182 bpm.
• Your AN band is a heart rate of 190 bpm to 196 bpm with a mean of 193 bpm.
• Your 70% heart rate is 154 bpm.
• Your 85% heart rate is 175 bpm.

So I will be sticking to those for the next few months.

Finally, though MBH has said "stick to the plan", I am still planning at least one fitness tests in the next two weeks - the C2 step test (pdf) which I am interested to try before I start the 26 week C2 plan.

Metres today: 6,269