Last newsletter Tel did a bit about calculating 2,000 metre times from your 500 metre results, saying that over a series of 4 x 500 metre pieces, the average would be 110% of your 2,000 metre time. All very well and innocent you might think. Hah. As innocent as a dog it turned out. Come the Monday the ol' webmaster@vermonthouse.co.uk address was overflowing with e-mails, mostly starting with But what? Huh? I don't...Roger Bangay: Your reply has caused some considerable concern regarding the fact that an individual's 110% and 105% levels are the averages taken over a series of intervals.I personally find that my 110% effort can only be maintained over a single 500m dash. If I take my average over say four it looks a bit sick!As I'm a 'wrinkly' I thought it might be that physically I'm a special case, and cannot use the rules that might apply to younger persons. I have checked with two other younger men and they also reckon that they will be in trouble holding their performance, unless, as one of them suggested, he could take about an hour rest between intervals!Your comments would be most welcome, even if it's that we should forget rowing and take up tiddlywinks.Terry O'Neill: The article I wrote about determining your 2,000 metre time from your 500m time has resulted in more questions than anything else I have written. If you think about it logically, if you row absolutely flat out for 500 metres you cannot sustain this over the 2,000. For 500 metres you will accumulate lactate but, before it builds to a level where it impedes performance, you stop. During 2,000 metres you will have to shunt the lactate out of the working muscles to other muscles where it can be recycled. You will be producing it faster than you can metabolise it so you need a high lactate tolerance. So what then is the correlation between 500 metre and 2,000 metre times? From my experience it is that you can row 2,000 metres at 90% of your 500 metre time. A series brings into play the other factors that are not covered in a one off row. Far from being disappointed with the result, you should take advantage of the fact that the information is telling you where to focus your training.A couple of people have written in to ask where this fits in relation to the French Federation 500 metre test that is published in the Training Guide (http://www.therowingcompany.com/v4/training_prog.htm). Although the French results are interesting, they are for a very small controlled group and would be of no use to the population at large. The main reason we put it in was that we thought the French would be so chuffed when they saw it they would stop disrupting our holiday plans and lift the port blockade, a tactic which appeared to work.