I'm taking a bit of a break from running at the moment to let my lower legs repair and recover a bit. I've been going a bit mashuga recently and haven't really given my feet and legs a chance to recover properly. As a result the little niggles one can expect from first starting running barefoot (or almost) are not clearing up completely between runs. I don't want these to develop into full on injuries, so I'm taking another enforced break from running.

Now I don't want to just stop exercising completely and sit on my arse, however I do still want to keep my cardio levels up and use this time to burn off as much fat as I can. Moving to barefoot (or almost) has meant I've had to keep my mileage quite low, so I don't really get a chance to burn much of my excess weight off. I've been putting in some time in the gym between runs, but it's not been enough - I've noticed my weight creeping back up.

So I'm using this enforced break from running to try out this "Tabata technique/protocol" I've read about in various places on the net.

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I know what you're thinking: this blog is about running barefoot, why on earth am I mentioning rowing? Well, simple really: as you'll recall from my previous post, I'm not running at the moment and am using rowing to keep fit instead.

This month's UK edition of Runner's World (January '09) has an article on a method of training devised by Veronique Billat. The basic principle is you determine your vVO2 max and then train at that level using varying intervals. I'm a big fan of intervals (I know, I'm insane) and was quite eager to try this out however due to my self-imposed running "embargo", this is currently off the cards.

Fear not, I turned to my good friend - t'Internet - to see if I could find details on using this approach for rowing. Well, the best source of info I could find was this one which provides quite generic instructions, but doesn't explicitly mention rowing, and here which provides a bit more info and a handy calculator. As the instructions are quite generic, I couldn't see any reason why it shouldn't be possible.

So I've decided to see if I could apply the principles to rowing.

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