April 27, 2015

This morning’s workout was scheduled for 6:15 AM (defined as time we push off the dock). Lately it is no problem for me to get up this early. I find that after about 7 hours of sleep I wake up with upper back pain. I have no problems whatsoever during the day or during workouts. Only in bed. Perhaps time to buy new mattresses.

This morning had a 20x1min/R1min on the menu. Last week, Boris suggested a 30″/30″ which I mistakenly remembered as “30 strokes on / 30 strokes off”, which is awfully close to 20x1min/1min which is a popular workout at my rowing club.

Tried to talk the Masters double into doing it with me but they had 4x5min or something like that.

The warming up was a bit shorter than normal because I didn’t want to row into a field of debris that was floating around the nude beach area.

I was a bit scared by this workout, and was afraid I would bail out early. Didn’t happen, actually.

It was 6 intervals from the nude beach to Sirka. Then 6 intervals headwind back to the nude beach. After these 12 intervals I was determined to finish the set. Six more intervals with tailwind, then two times one minute into headwind and I would be ready for the day. Somehow I got motivated by trying to better the number of meters for each interval.

It took me 16 intervals to figure out that I could lengthen the stroke a bit at the catch, row 29.5spm instead of 30spm and find quite a lot of boat speed in this way. Of course you have to have the fitness to sustain these long strokes. It doesn’t really show from the numbers but interval 17 was going to the wrong side of 2:00 pace until I slightly lengthened the stroke, which in 3 strokes brought the pace to 1:56. It may of course have been the GPS inaccuracy fooling me.

The weather was OK but the lake was again playing tricks, adding some breeze that created some waves when we started our workout. When we finished, the lake went to calm and flat again.

Here’s the “rollercoaster” picture (HR, speed and position in one Google Maps):

I had to change my spreadsheet to allow for so many intervals. Numbers 7, 13 and 19 were problematic because there I had literally one minute to drink a bit, turn the boat and row out of (or into) the 2k course:

| Dist_ | Time_ | _Pace__ | _SPM___ | avg HR | max HR | DPS | Remarks
| 01934 | 11:44 | 03:02.0 | 18.6 | 123 | 150 | 08.9 | warming up
| 00250 | 00:59 | 01:57.9 | 29.2 | 140 | 155 | 08.7 | #1 tailwind
| 00256 | 01:00 | 01:57.3 | 30.1 | 148 | 151 | 08.5 | #2
| 00264 | 01:01 | 01:55.6 | 29.3 | 150 | 153 | 08.8 | #3
| 00256 | 01:00 | 01:57.0 | 29.0 | 150 | 163 | 08.8 | #4
| 00249 | 00:59 | 01:58.7 | 30.1 | 153 | 154 | 08.4 | #5
| 00247 | 01:00 | 02:01.6 | 28.3 | 156 | 164 | 08.7 | #6
| 00241 | 01:01 | 02:06.4 | 29.2 | 152 | 164 | 08.1 | #7 headwind
| 00241 | 01:00 | 02:04.7 | 29.2 | 158 | 168 | 08.2 | #8
| 00234 | 00:59 | 02:05.9 | 28.7 | 160 | 168 | 08.3 | #9
| 00238 | 01:00 | 02:05.9 | 28.7 | 163 | 171 | 08.3 | #10
| 00238 | 01:01 | 02:08.4 | 28.9 | 161 | 169 | 08.1 | #11
| 00234 | 01:01 | 02:10.4 | 27.7 | 160 | 167 | 08.3 | #12
| 00249 | 00:59 | 01:58.4 | 29.2 | 157 | 166 | 08.7 | #13 tailwind
| 00250 | 01:00 | 01:59.8 | 29.1 | 160 | 168 | 08.6 | #14
| 00255 | 01:00 | 01:57.6 | 29.2 | 163 | 171 | 08.7 | #15
| 00260 | 01:01 | 01:57.5 | 29.3 | 158 | 169 | 08.7 | #16
| 00251 | 00:59 | 01:57.6 | 28.9 | 162 | 171 | 08.8 | #17 found stroke length
| 00255 | 01:00 | 01:57.6 | 29.4 | 163 | 173 | 08.7 | #18
| 00232 | 01:00 | 02:09.1 | 28.5 | 159 | 167 | 08.2 | #19 headwind & turn
| 00250 | 01:01 | 02:02.2 | 30.7 | 168 | 176 | 08.0 | #20
| 02143 | 12:35 | 02:56.2 | 18.8 | 142 | 176 | 09.1 | cooldown


Short summary:

dist_____|time_____|_pace___|_HR__|_SPM__|_DPS|comment
1934_____|_11:44____|_3:02.0|123|18.6|8.9|warmup
4950_____|_20:01____|_2:01.3|157|29.1|8.5|Main set
2143_____|_12:35____|_2:56.2|142|18.8|9.1|Cool down
3046_____|_18:59____|_3:07.0|159|19.1|8.4|rest meters
12073____|_03:19____|_2:37.3|149|21.1|9.0|_Total


According to Greg’s equation this is a Black Hole workout. I disagree. My legs strongly disagree, and my stroke length is very happy I did this workout.

Pretty graphs: