Here are some stats for you. Over the course of this 500m progression you have rowed 96 500m pieces and 48,000m. That is crazy. And awesome. That is in fact, crazy awesome. But seriously, that is A LOT of 500m pieces. Five hundred meter pieces are now your jam. Sweet. Wrap that up in a little bow and relish in it.
This progression wasn’t actually aimed at making you a 500m champion (although that is a lovely bonus) or even improving that system in isolation (that short duration, high intensity system.) In fact, this was much more of a volume progression. As such, we will be retesting your 15 minute piece. But we will also be retesting your 1k, because why not!? I know there’s at least one human at Verve who is currently out-rowing his 1k pace for this progression, so seems like it’s just a solid idea to sit down to that distance again.
I had a lot of not productive feelings going into the first 1k. I was anxious. I wasn’t sure I could live up to my expectations. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to dig down deep into my soul to make that business happen…So that was the premise. I started rowing and couldn’t manage to get my pace where I wanted it. I was just rowing slower than planned. This would’ve been an excellent opportunity for me to undermine myself.
Maddie, you’re just not good enough. See Maddie, you were totally right. This is going to be awful and gross and disappointing.
But then something else happened. I just decided to pull harder. I wasn’t making the split I wanted – so I pulled harder! And it wasn’t that weird, soul-crushing, defining my self-worth harder. It was just harder. I wasn’t satisfied with my pace so I changed it.
I can be a pro at adding the psychological piece into tests. And often you need to be ready for them. For instance, you need to be ready at the half way point of this for it to start to get interesting. But for this piece: don’t make it complicated. It will be over in about 4 minutes. And if you don’t like your pace: pull harder.
See the full workout & race plan HERE.