Pyramids to Castle (and back)

Heavy day at work. We had the “regional” (Europe, Middle East, Africa and India) president of Honeywell visiting us and I had to present Advanced Tech to him. I think it worked out well but I found myself in my office at 4:30pm not able to do anything productive any more. Energy draining.

It was windy again and the lake was full of waves, so I decided to do the workout on the river part. More people had that idea. I ended up chasing, then being chased by our 16 year old single sculler and two pairs.

The workout was the Pete Plan Pyramid. I have a 2km race in a week and a half, so I thought a bit of 2k speed work would be appropriate:


|Dist_|Time_|Pace__|_SPM___|avg HR|max HR|DPS|Remarks
|02613|15:13|02:54.7| 19.2 | 142 | 154 |09.0|Warming up
|00251|01:05|02:09.4| 28.5 | 166 | 175 |08.1|250m headwind
|00249|01:24|02:49.0| 20.1 | 166 | 176 |08.8|rest
|00499|02:09|02:09.2| 28.1 | 175 | 180 |08.3|500m headwind
|00500|02:46|02:46.1| 20.0 | 164 | 180 |09.0|rest
|00750|03:17|02:11.3| 28.4 | 177 | 181 |08.0|750m headwind
|00751|05:04|03:22.3| 19.3 | 147 | 180 |07.7|rest; turn
|00998|04:10|02:05.2| 27.8 | 173 | 181 |08.6|1000m tailwind
|01003|05:27|02:43.0| 19.0 | 150 | 181 |09.7|rest
|00749|03:05|02:03.5| 28.2 | 174 | 179 |08.6|750m tailwind; twisty
|00750|03:56|02:37.4| 19.4 | 158 | 179 |09.8|rest
|00501|01:59|01:58.7| 29.0 | 174 | 181 |08.7|500m tailwind
|00498|02:41|02:41.7| 19.5 | 161 | 181 |09.5|rest
|00245|00:58|01:58.5| 29.4 | 166 | 175 |08.6|250m tailwind
|00909|06:35|03:37.2| 17.8 | 137 | 175 |07.8|cooldown


Since I have my new wing rigger, I had the feeling my left scull has a slightly too large blade angle. Something was not feeling right and I felt that I ended up holding the left handle with a too tight grip. So on Monday I measured the oarlock angle and indeed found it to be at 5 degrees instead of 4. So I corrected.

During the first 750m I suddenly found myself wondering about my left oarlock again so I looked. To my horror I discovered something worse. The pin had come slightly lose and was wiggling slightly.

That made it hard to do the rest of the workout at full pressure.

On the other hand, I thought, I need to train not to dig too deep and too strong, so this would be good exercise. Still, one ends up a little insecure, so I was going at slightly slower stroke rates.

For real 2k speed work I need to get the rate up to 32spm.


dist_____|time_____|_pace___|_HR__|_SPM__|_DPS|comment
2613_____|_15:13____|_2:54.7|142|19.2|9.0|warmup
3994_____|_16:43____|_2:05.6|174|28.3|8.4|Main set
0909_____|_06:35____|_3:37.2|137|17.8|7.8|Cool down
3750_____|_21:18____|_2:50.4|155|19.4|9.1|rest meters
11266____|_59:49____|_2:39.3|155|21.2|8.9|_Total


Here is the castle at the turn around point:

So after the training I spent some time tightening the pin, measuring the outboard and setting (back to were I started) the oarlock angle. Apparently, when I got my new wing and mounted the oarlocks, I didn’t tighten this one enough, and it started to work with the first row, slowly getting more and more wiggly …