Terry O'Neill: The Interactive 2,000 metre Programme is possibly the best training aid we have ever produced. Not only that, I think it is unique in that no other distributor of fitness equipment in the world supplies the advice and support to its customers as Concept 2. In fact we get requests for advice from all over the world and in the vast majority of cases the advice we give is well received.This has been the case with the 2,000m interactive but the associated pace guide has generated a sack full of mail on the message board and a lot of this mail questions the validity of the pace guide so I will explain why I chose this method of pacing through watts rather than simple heart rate.The pace guide takes your current 2,000m time as its base rather than your heart rate. Your 2,000m time on the machine is a measure of useful work only, whereas your heart rate is a measure of your total work. If you are very inefficient you may be getting your heart rate up but your 2,000m time will not improve; often a poor 2,000m time is not just a reflection of fitness but of efficiency as well.Most people that train on the Indoor Rower train alone and do not have a coach to advise on technique. You can bring your split time down without increasing your stroke rate by pulling harder but this will bring an increase in your heart rate. However, if you can hold the stroke and heart rate constant and reduce your split time then this can only be due to an increase in efficiency. This is not something you will achieve overnight, it is something to strive towards.A 2,000m flat-out row is an extremely physically demanding test and if you want to do your best then the training needs to be equally demanding. If you don't want to race, or you intend to race but are not too bothered about your result, then you can use the programme and ignore the pace guide. If you want to race and get a PB then the pace guide will help you.