Sep 14 2016
Monday – Wednesday: business trip
Monday
Traveled to Brussels through Munich. Then dinner in the hotel with colleagues. No training.
Tuesday
Hotel fitness at 10am. I am not in my usual hotel. In the Hilton Brussels City, where I had to stay to be with the colleagues from the US, you pay more for a smaller room, and the hotel is further away from normal streets and restaurants. But the gym has an indoor rower. A model C with a PM2 monitor. Just like I had in the old days. I rowed a 2k warming up, then 10 minutes of spinning and then I did 3×15 push-ups, sit-ups, bench pulls, pistol squats and that was it. 45 minutes of exercise before a long day of meetings followed by a 3 hour business dinner.
Wednesday
3×20 min of steady state with 1 minute of rest. A quite sweaty affair in the very hot fitness center. In the first interval I just rowed for 10 minutes, then did a Wolverine L4 4/3/2/1 sequence at 20/21/22/23 spm to break the bore. In the second interval I did 4/4/4/4/4min at 170/180/190/180/170 W. The most successful boredom reduction strategy was the last interval. I started at 190.5 W for one minute and then let the average drop by 0.5 W per minute, which means you row at 170W in the final minute and end up with an average of 180.0W.
Sep 15 2016
September CTC
Around 2pm in the afternoon, my employer sent out a message to all people on the site that the tap water was not drinkable. Due to hot weather, the entire town’s tap water is above the norm for bacteria. The water company’s site is down, so I don’t know by how much we are over the norm and if there is a huge risk. Driving home after work, I stopped at a supermarket to buy bottled water, only to find it was sold out. Luckily, Romana had managed to get hold of 20 liters of bottled water. Well, I guess you can always boil the tap water and then drink it. It’s a pity I didn’t have our own water well tested. We use it only to flush the toilet and water the garden.
Or, I may have to revert to drinking wine and beer. 🙂
Today’s session was planned as a 5x10min/R3, with the first and last 10min intervals as a warming up, respectively cooling down. I would do the second (hard) 10 minute interval from a standing start, so I could claim it as this month’s CTC.
First, I messed up with the PM. Instead of selecting a time based interval session, I dialed up a single 10 min row.
No problem, that was only the warming up. Dialed up the 10min interval session and set off.
The CTC (Cross Team Challenge) is a fun team challenge. You register for a team (I row for the “Free Spirits”) and each month there is a different rowing challenge. You row the challenge and submit your result to the site. You end up in a “boat” consisting of one lightweight rower, one female rower, and 3 “open” seats, i.e. there will be heavies or fast lightweights or female rowers. The competition is between the teams. The more people participate, the more boats are “floating”. The better your boat scores, the higher you end up in the ranking. I really like this challenge and try to row it every month, to the best score that fits into my training plan. This month’s challenge was “row 10 minutes straight, from a standing start, and record the distance”, so my first 10 minute interval would qualify.
Workout Summary - media/20160915-195537-sled_2016-09-15T20-04-20ZGMT+2.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|08325|36:01.0|02:09.8|25.2|165.9|185.0|09.2
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|02727|10:00.0|01:49.9|27.3|170.8|185.0|10.0
01|02609|10:00.0|01:54.8|26.7|174.5|184.0|09.8
02|02283|10:00.0|02:11.2|22.7|157.4|167.0|10.1
I spent some time thinking about my target pace for a 3x10min. My 30 minutes Season’s Best is 1:52.4 pace. According to the fit to Concept2 ranking distances on my own site rowsandall.com, I would be able to do a 30 minute effort (without rests) in 1:52.0 and a full out 10 minutes in 1:46.7 pace. I didn’t think it would be wise to aim for that 1:46.7 pace in the first interval, but I wanted to row 1:52.0 average pace.
My goal was to row faster than the current lightweight in Free Spirits boat #2:Â David Plump (also known as Plummy), who had set an average pace of 1:52.9. I knew I wouldn’t be able to beat John Steventon’s (of Free Spirits boat #1) pace of 1:42.9, so I set off at 1:52, held that for 4 minutes, then 3 minutes at 1:51, 2 minutes at 1:50 and final minute free rate and pace.
I managed to  2727 meters in that first interval which is 1:50.0 pace. This resulted in a few lightweights jumping ship. I managed to enter Free Spirits II (same boat as Greg) and move it from 20th place to 17th place. Plummy moved to Free Spirits III still on 27th place but with a better score, and RGelissen moved to Free Spirits IV, bringing that boat up from 39th place to 18th place. Free Spirits V and VI are still in the boathouse.
Having rowed 1:50.0 in the first interval, I took back the power a bit in the second interval, with the idea to row 1:55 average, and then manage 1:52.5 in the final interval. I managed to execute that second interval according to plan, but I didn’t like my heart rate at all. It went substantially above 180bpm, just as in the first interval. Also, I felt tired and not motivated. So I just paddled the final 10 minute interval and called it a cooling down.
My mental strength always returns late from business trips.
Anyway, the CTC challenge does make indoor rowing more fun.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: concept2, ctc, erg, hard endurance, OTE, rowing, training