Tuesday – 60 minutes Steady State and Stroke Metrics

Steady State was on the menu, and in a lighter form, because this is an easy week. On my commute, I read Greg Smith’s blog about his 4×20’/1′ rest plus stroke metrics session, so I tried to show exactly the same stroke metrics plots for my 60 minutes row. I didn’t take exact 1 minute breaks, but rowed a “Just Row” and took small drinking breaks. Also, I had to interrupt my row a few times (esp in the first 10 minutes) to fiddle with the radio. 20161101-1935061o20161101-195115

My steady state rowing is not at “10 Watt per SPM”, but roughly 15 Watts below that, so at 18SPM, I row 165-170W, etc.

20161101-1935061o20161101-195113

Power versus stroke rate:

download-74

My plot is a bit more fuzzy than Greg’s.  I seem to be driven to 19SPM at these power levels. 19SPM is like a magnet, and I lacked the concentration to try and hit the prescribed stroke rates better.

Drive length:

download-75

On this parameter, I seem to be more constant and in a narrower band than Greg. Now, a metric where I will be significantly weaker. Peak and Average Force:

download-76

Interestingly, my average force is much closer to Greg’s than my peak force. A slightly negative correlation, although not as strong as on Greg’s plot. This may be something to do with drag factor and average flywheel speed as well.

Finally, Work per Stroke:

download-77

Again, the plot is strongly influenced by me gravitating towards 19spm. This was also one of my rows where I was hitting a higher Work per Stroke than on average. Here is a plot of my rows for the month October:

Here

download-78
My October Steady State work (capped at 23SPM)

I have capped the data at 23SPM to filter out the hard distance rows. Here is the same plot with today’s data included:

download-79

To the left, and upward!

It was fun to do this. As the author of rowsandall.com, I spend more time programming additions to the site than using it for data analysis. And when I do use it for analysis, I can’t help but think of the way the data are flowing through the different pipes and filters:

pijpen

There are still many good ideas to implement on the site, so the work is not done!

Follow me in social media