First OTW session of the new season

Pretty tired after a 5x1500m on Thursday and the 9x300m CTC of yesterday, but so much looking forward to this session.

First OTW session after a January 1 New Year’s gimmick row. I planned to do a 2x3km. There was some wind, so I chose to row towards the castle.

First, the joy of a normal rowing dock instead of the terrible thing we have used for a few decennia:

Here’s a picture of the new dock:

The water level is still low. When the Brno reservoir is fully filled, the concrete cubes and the dock will be at about the same level.

During the row, I discovered I have a lot of attention points for the coming month. I had difficulty getting the rate up during my 2x3000m/2min rest session. Especially in the headwind sections I couldn’t get above 24spm. I need to sit more straight and reduce the pressure immediately after the catch, and not dip my blades so deep.


|Dist_|Time_|Pace__|_SPM__|avg HR|max HR|DPS|Remarks
|02142|14:17|03:20.0| 18.6 | 158 | 169 |08.0|WU
|02977|14:06|02:22.1| 24.8 | 177 | 181 |08.5|head wind
|00190|02:00|05:15.4| 18.2 | 158 | 180 |05.2|rest
|02969|13:04|02:12.0| 25.1 | 177 | 181 |09.1|tail wind
|02133|13:17|03:06.8| 17.6 | 145 | 181 |09.1|CD


and summary:
dist_____|time_____|_pace___|_HR__|_SPM__|_DPS|comment
2142_____|_14:17____|_3:20.0|158|18.6|8.0|warmup
5946_____|_27:10____|_2:17.1|177|24.9|8.8|Main set
2133_____|_13:17____|_3:06.8|145|17.6|9.1|Cool down
0190_____|_02:00____|_5:15.4|158|18.2|5.2|rest meters
10412____|_56:44____|_2:43.5|165|21.2|8.6|_Total


I wanted this to be around 2:13 pace, so still some work to do. Here’s a short video taken with the GoPro:

Here are the colorful heart rate graphs. Even though I didn’t manage to rate up, my heart rate was quite high and I think it was a good threshold session:

This is how my hands looked after the row:

Great to be on the water again. I hope I can persuade Romana for an outing on the double tomorrow.

This is also the weekend of the Heineken Roeivierkamp, a very interesting race in The Netherlands. Over two days, the crews race over 4 distances, 250m, 750m, 2500m and 5000m. The overall ranking is calculated by converting all times to 250m times. The sum over the four distances forms the final score. Everything is rowed in the centre of Amsterdam: