Zone 2 feels too easy. That is the point.

Ask a room of new members to row at an easy pace and watch the wall. Within two minutes half the room has crept into Tempo and a few are flirting with Thres. Nobody thinks they are working hard. Their hearts disagree.

The grey zone

Coaches call it the grey zone: too hard to build your base, too easy to raise your ceiling. It feels productive because you are tired afterwards. It is also why so many people train for a year and plateau after three months.

Zone 2, or Base, is the effort you could hold while talking in full sentences. It trains your body to use fat for fuel and to clear the by-products of harder work. It is the foundation the other four zones stand on.

How to tell if you are really there

• You can speak a whole sentence without gasping in the middle of it.

• Your heart rate sits between 60 and 70 per cent of your maximum.

• You finish feeling like you could do it again. That is not failure. That is the session.

What happens if you stick with it

Give it six weeks. The same pace will cost you fewer beats, and the beats you save are the ones you get to spend on Wednesday night when the intervals start. Easy days are not the opposite of hard training. They are what pays for it.