Mar 30 2015
Tapering, weight control and wind
This is a tricky week. In the last week before an important head race, I want to taper. However, I will be competing in the Open LW category, so I need to maintain weight. My current weight is oscillating between 71kg and 72kg and I need to make sure I weigh in at 72.5 in rowing clothes on Saturday around lunch time.
My Sunday evening weight is usually a bit higher than my Friday evening weight. It tells something about the quality of the canteen food at work compared to what my wife or I prepare at home. Anyway, I need to maintain a level of easy, steady state kilometers per day or be very disciplined in my eating. I try the middle road. Be slightly disciplined, and row.
A difficult moment today around 3pm when I was reviewing and approving project proposals before they are submitted. I ate a twix bar.
I felt that chocolate bar in my stomach for hours.
The original plan was to row OTW and do 10 to 12 km of technique, with a few bursts at race pace. I wanted to use the RIM app and use the stroke analysis. Unfortunately, we had thunderstorms and heavy wind and the lake was unrowable.
I was uninspired and tired in the evening but I dragged myself down to my basement and started RowPro. RowPro prepared me with a nice surprise, a welcome screen and a first-user tutorial. All my data had disappeared. I was able to load a January backup of my logbook (there was a today’s version but that was corrupted) but at least I hadn’t lost my collection of custom rows.
To overcome my tiredness and uninspiredness, and because I wanted to do “a few bursts at race pace”, I decided to do a nice sequence of 10 stroke bursts followed by light rowing, shortening the distance between bursts by 200m after each burst, until I would have two bursts after each other, then starting to lengthen again. I miss 100m somewhere. Also, I am now going to play with some math equations to see how I can make this entirely symmetric.
The 10km passed very fast in this way.
Looking forward to Saturday’s race. For those who are registered on Indoor Sport Services, here’s last year’s blog: http://indoorsportservices.co.uk/forum/blog.php?u=11066&b=114285
Mar 31 2015
RIM analysis of head race pace
An interesting day, the last day of March.
We had snow in the morning. Then rain, and wind. Then a lot of sunshine, and Romana called that the lake was OK to row on. An hour later she called that there were heavy waves. Sun and rain were doing 30 minute intervals.
I decided to go to the rowing club anyway. It’s a few days before the race and I wanted to do some analysis.
When I was on the water, there was a strong wind and waves, but no rain. I managed to find a few relatively quiet spots to do my testing.
First, the numbers by Garmin. No HR data today, because my HR belt had disappeared in the dirty laundry pile (found it after the training).
|Tstart_|Tstop__|Dist_|Time_|_Pace__|Remarks
|00:00.0|15:51.0|02531|15:51|03:07.9|Warming up
|15:51.0|17:27.0|00412|01:36|01:56.5|standing start, tailwind
|17:27.0|24:50.0|01516|07:23|02:26.1|rest
|25:00.0|25:54.0|00232|00:54|01:56.4|tailwind
|25:54.0|33:51.0|01355|07:57|02:56.0|rest
|33:51.0|35:30.0|00394|01:39|02:05.6|headwind
|35:30.0|50:36.0|02441|15:06|03:05.6|cooling down
The strokes with “headwind” and “tailwind” comment are from today. The two other strokes are from November. In my feeling the top one, marked “headwind”, was the best stroke. Here I concentrated on not making a too deep catch, and I was able to find that good groove stroke.
So let’s say what the analysis says. So from November to March, my stroke efficiency has decreased from >1.5 to around 1. Apparently a bad thing …
Check factor has changed from around 2 to around 1.5, which would indicate a smoother movement of the boat, which is better.
Catch efficiency is roughly the same, higher in headwind (and when I felt I was rowing better) and lower in tailwind, compared to the November data. Catch duration is roughly the same.
I must say the stroke efficiency data are the ones that are thoroughly confusing me …
(For those who have access, here is my blog about the November analysis on Indoor Sport Services: http://indoorsportservices.co.uk/forum/blog.php?u=11066&b=117050 )
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 6 • Tags: head race, rowing, rowinginmotion, training