H'Okay. A new year, a new start. We at the Indoor Rowing News know very little; in fact, we got fired from our last job at an M&M's factory for throwing away all the Ws. Or for nicking Des O'Connor's joke book, one of the two anyway. Fortunately, however, we do know plenty of smart cookies. As well as three times Olympic rowing coach Terry O'Neill, we also have various top flight sport psychologists, sport scientists, engineers and doctors on hand to answer any question you might have. Just pop it in an e-mail and send it to [email protected] or [email protected], it's all gravy.John Brooks: Looking back at my training diary I realise that I'll be competing at the British IRC not having trained at faster than my intended race pace (1:37.5) for distances over 500m. This is because the rest intervals I've been using for my two minute (750m) and four minute (1250m) intervals have been too short (i.e. two minutes or four minutes only). I'm confident I could do multiple 750m or 1000m at faster than 1:37.5 but I would need to take a longer rest interval (possibly as much as four or five minutes between the 750m intervals). I was wondering how important you think it is to row 750m or 1000m intervals at faster than race pace. If you think I should be doing this, I would extend the rest interval and do say 4x4minutes with six or eight minutes rest. I presume my target would then be to reduce the rest interval over time whilst maintaining sub race pace?Terry O'Neill: The benefit of training above race pace at both stroke rate and race pace is to create Headroom. If your maximum rate and pace during training are race pace then, as soon as you start you are already rowing on your limit. By introducing elements of training at above race pace, you can determine your absolute limit. From this, you can then row at a lower percentage of this maximum, which not only gives you a big psychological boost, but is also a more effective way to train. I don't think you would need to extend your rests to eight minutes. Once your heart rate has dropped to warm up level (approximately twice resting pace) you should be ready to go.