April 7, 2016

liverowing 004

Apr 7 2016

Trying out LiveRowing

You know I have been a bit obsessed with rowing data, and now I have a PM5. So I decided to give LiveRowing a go.

I had some difficulty registering, so I sent an email to their support people. I quickly got a response and they even set up a Premium account for me for one month. Great customer service.

I think the app is well done. A few random screenshots:

It reminds me a bit of RowPro. Instead of programming your workout on the PM5, you use the phone to do it. They have the well-known challenges (CTC, Concept2) integrated, so you can just check out this month’s CTC and fire it up … wow!

I understand you can row against “friends” (yes – it’s a social app too). Not sure if it’s their virtual rows or if it is a live connection.

There is a button that looks like it will contain upload to C2 logbook functionality in the future. Right now it just opens a browers at the C2 logbook page.

By scanning a QR code,  you can set your “affiliation”. I guess that’s a way for Crossfitters to load their workout of the day, or something like that.

I did a short row and then stopped. A few seconds later I had an email in my inbox with some summary statistics. You can also see the statistics when you login to your account on liverowing.com. That’s also the place where you can set goals (achieve a number of strokes in the coming two months, or row a 500m under 1:20, or something else that keeps you motivated).

I didn’t find a graph for my row. Perhaps it was too short? Or perhaps it is future functionality?

To my disappointment, there is no possibility to download a TCX or CSV file … I guess they want you to do all your rowing related admin work on their website.

I have to think about this one. I am sure I can live without it. But I will return as soon as they have upload to Concept2 and an option to download your rowing data … and give it another try.

But as a motivation tool for CrossFitters and other gym rowers, it is not bad. Not bad at all.

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donderdag3

Apr 7 2016

Taper Race Day minus Two

The workout

My plan for today was to do a 50 minute row, and have one “lake” of 30  sec / 60 sec rest at race pace.

Arrived at the club. Had a nice chat with the head coach. He saw the Holland Acht (Dutch 8+) training in Gavirate, and expects them to be very good at the Olympics. Nice. I casually asked him what his guys were doing today. “One lake at 22spm, then one lake 30″/60″ rest”, he answered.

Typical.

So it must be a good training to do two days before the race.

donderdag1.png

donderdag2.png

donderdag3.png


Workout Summary - C:Downloads2016-04-07-1545.CSV
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|04020|18:08.0|02:13.9|28.7|162.9|173.4|09.2
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|03008| 13:38 |02:16.1|22.5|160.0|171.0|09.8 | 3km
02|00124| 00:30 |02:00.7|28.0|150.0|165.0|08.9
03|00000| 00:30 |0000:00|30.0|165.0|173.0|00.0 | GPS failure
04|00125| 00:30 |02:00.1|30.0|156.0|171.0|08.3
05|00124| 00:30 |02:01.3|28.0|163.0|174.0|08.9
06|00125| 00:30 |02:00.2|28.0|166.0|175.0|08.9
07|00127| 00:30 |01:58.3|28.1|166.0|174.0|09.1
08|00128| 00:30 |01:57.5|30.0|166.0|175.0|08.5
09|00128| 00:30 |01:57.3|30.0|165.0|176.0|08.5
10|00131| 00:30 |01:54.9|32.0|172.0|180.0|08.2

The lake was super flat. One would think there was no wind. I thought so. I thought so during the warming up, and during the first 3km stretch at 22spm. I was really excited to see my average split drop below 2:20 for that part. (By the way, I rowed this as a CrewNerd set course, with start and finish lines that you can define in Google Earth and then upload to CrewNerd. Nice feature.)

But when I turned, I quickly realized that there had been a very light breeze pushing me.

On to the 30 second intervals. My GPS device stopped during the second interval and I had to reset it. That causes the peaks in the graph and the absence of data in interval #3.

Otherwise, it was nice. I know what to focus on to row my best head race stroke, so I tried to focus on that, and I think it works. Keywords: Length. Reach. The Distance-per-Stroke (DPS) parameter is what I monitor.

Programming fun

Just for fun, I wrote to Concept2 for the API to the Concept2 logbook. I got an answer today with a link to a description and a form to fill out and get an API key. So, in principle it is possible to change my Python code so it uploads much more row data to the Concept2 logbook, including splits, so the logbook can create the nice graphs that you get with ErgData.

I am very unexperienced with HTTPS requests (in any programming language), so I am probably not going to do this.

What it tells me is that C2 logbook integration is doable. Painsled, CrewNerd, NK, others: You can do it! I would love to see this integration, as well as direct upload to Garmin, Strava, SportTracks, and of course CSV and TCX downloads. That would be very cool.

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horin

Apr 7 2016

Race Day Logistics for a LW Masters rower

I will race in 2 days. In the elite Light Weight category. Just because there is no Masters category on this race.

So this will be one of the few rowing races this year (perhaps the only one) where I will have to make weight. My natural weight oscillates around 72kg, so it should not be a big problem. The challenge is always that I am a few kilograms more on January 1. Well. who isn’t? Here is how my weight has been going in the past few months:

weight.jpg

The blue symbols are measurements. Always measured first thing in the morning, after a visit to the bathroom. The fat orange line is the line I need to be under on Saturday. The blue line is a linear fit to the trend in the data, and the thin orange line is the moving average with a window size of 5 measurement points.

A few things. You can see that the day to day oscillations are big. Almost 2kg sometimes. I strongly suspect that that is mostly water. I was happy I knew this and didn’t worry about those oscillations too much between January and now. The consequence, of course, is that I want to be well under the limit approaching race day, or otherwise I will have to dehydrate myself.

By the way, I didn’t do anything special to lose the weight. Regular exercise, of course. And no fizzy soft drinks. Beer and wine limited to the weekends, with the exception of business dinners.

On race day, I need to make weight between one and two hours before the race start time. After that, there is time for a quick snack and some drinking. I need to buy some bars and sports drinks for that time window. Also, there are no shops in the starting or finish area. In the starting area, there is nothing. In the finish area you can buy softdrinks and grilled sausages. :-/ So, I need to plan carefully and take all my food and drinks with me.

So that was the easy logistics challenge.

This year, my daughter is racing as well in the Girls 15/16 category, and that will make it really interesting. Almost as if I am doing two races. Why?

Here’s is the starting list and time order:

http://www.veslo.cz/17-mistrovstvi-cr-na-dlouhe-draze-s-mezinarodni-ucasti/25043315/startovni_listina_horin_2016.pdf  

Lenka’s start is at 13:08. My start is at 14:33, and that is the time when the officials start my race clock, even when I actually pass the starting line later. There is 85 minutes between that. Let’s say Lenka’s race takes 30 minutes. That leaves 55 minutes to

  1. Take the single out of the water and load it on the trailer. This will involve carrying it through the finish area crowds, because I doubt we will be able to get the trailer any closer than 500m to the finish line. This will take at least 15 minutes.
  2. Drive 10km to the starting area. This will take 15 minutes.
  3. Change footstretcher setting. Launch. This will take 10-15 minutes.
  4. Row to the start line. This will take 5-10 minutes.

There is very little slack in this schedule. 🙁

Luckily I can put the single on the top level of the trailer without actually removing the wing rigger.

Here’s a map of the race. The green polygon is the approximate position of the start line. The red one is the finish. The yellow ones are boat/trailer areas. The race is 6 km long.

horin.jpg

Oh boy. I will have to have a very relaxed attitude to all this, and take it with some lightness. If I miss the start time, I will miss it. Will measure my real time on CrewNerd and then check where I would have been in the results if …

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