November 2016

Nov 19 2016

Friday – 12.5km Steady State / force curve

Friday was a bridge day between a Bank Holiday and a weekend. I decided to take a holiday and catch up with some maintenance on the site, as well as preparation for a workshop on Monday. I ended up taking more time on the website, and will have to prepare the Monday workshop today.

At the end of the afternoon, I descended to my rowing cave. First I played a bit with the official Concept2 smartphone app “ErgData”, and then I reverted to my beloved Painsled app to crank out a 12.5km steady state. I wanted to do more, but I ran out of time.

Here are a few new plots. I am still looking for the “signature” set of plots for a workout.

I have added a new metric to Rowsandall.com. It is the ratio of the average drive force vs the peak drive force, and it tells you something about the force curve. For a perfectly “flat” stroke profile, this ratio would be 1.0. For any sort of triangular profile, the ratio would be 0.5. The higher the value, the longer the force plateau during your drive. It seems from the plot above that I am pretty constant throughout the 19 to 22spm stroke rates I rowed in this session.

Here is a study by Kleshnev on the force curve in rowing. Here is a key plot from the study. “Classical style” would give you a force ratio close to 0.5. “Simultaneous style” is significantly higher (looks like 0.7 by eye). Kleshnev is not making conclusions on what is better. It is interesting that the tables in the study show force ratios between 0.4 and 0.6, but not much higher, for the rowers that he has in his database.

This plot shows work per stroke and power output. The average power was 174W (yes I have added annotations to the plots), and the work per stroke was 600 J. However, the plot clearly shows that it is dropping slowly but steadily during the workout.

Stats:

Workout Summary - media/20161118-1610052o.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|12508|52:38.0|02:06.3|174.0|19.7|151.3|163.0|12.0 W-|12508|52:38.0|02:06.3|174.0|19.7|151.3|163.0|12.0 R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|163.0|00.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|02500|10:23.6|02:04.7|178.3|19.3|141.9|153.0|12.4 02|02500|10:24.5|02:04.9|180.0|20.2|150.5|159.0|11.9 03|02500|10:37.6|02:07.5|169.1|19.3|150.2|159.0|12.2 04|02500|10:29.1|02:05.8|176.2|20.3|156.0|163.0|11.8 05|02508|10:43.9|02:08.3|166.5|19.5|157.6|162.0|12.0

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Nov 17 2016

Jehnice running event 2016

A holiday today, the celebration of the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Czechs fall in a few categories in this day:

Those who go to their cottage for a long weekend
Those who go shopping
Those who participate in a sports event
Those who go to the main square to listen to political speeches

Then there is also a loud minority who take part in extreme right or extreme left demonstrations.

As every year, I chose option 3.

Same run as a year ago, but the weather was different. A year ago it was sunny and dry. Today, it was wet and misty, and 2 degrees above 0. In the past few days we’ve had this bad weather. Snow alternated with rain, and the temperature oscillating around the freezing point.

My goal was to beat last year’s effort. I had written down last year’s passing times for a few key points along the route, but during the run I failed to remember them. In fact, I was thinking that I was one minute ahead of my target time for most of the run, where in fact I was a minute behind.

A year ago, I ran 47:07 on dry ground. Today, it was 48:17 on muddy ground.

Strava link.

In terms of relative effort, this year I was 158th of 346 (56% percentile), 12:03 minutes behind the winner. A year ago, I was 170th of 422 (60% percentile), 12:19 minutes behind the winner. I conclude that the results are probably very comparable. Average heart rate was 171 bpm this year, vs 173 bpm a year ago.

The nice thing about these running events is that they’re so massive. As a rower who runs occasionally, you end up in the middle of the pack, but there are hundreds of people, and there is always someone slightly ahead to pass.

I also discovered that none of the running sites offer a comparison between two workouts. I would have loved to compare a pace vs distance plot for the 2016 run compared to the 2015 run. It’s so simple to make one plot with two runs overlaid.

A few pictures from the event:

Yours truly almost invisible (yellow cap behind bearded man). Mr “Always One Step Ahead” was one step ahead of me until the second climb where I passed him

Oh, and this, the first Empower Oarlocks are shipping. This is very exciting:

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: event, race, running

Nov 16 2016

New Painsled beta, steady state erg and mind games; and playing with data

Painsled iOS published a new beta version of their Concept2 data capture app. It’s really a very promising application and it has now gotten even better. Of all the ways to capture erg data, Painsled is the most complete. Now they have added stroke force profile feedback to their app, so besides safely capturing all your strokes for post workout analysis, there is also a useful screen to see how consistent you are from stroke to stroke, while you are doing the workout.

This being a beta, it comes with very little explanation, but the graph looks like a standard stroke force profile, but it is overlaid on the past few strokes. Also, during the recovery, there is a bar which moves across the screen to a second bar. I think that when you take the catch exactly when the two white bars match, you are exactly copying your previous stroke (or perhaps the average over the past few strokes). I need to ask the developer what it does exactly, but I think it is very powerful, especially for steady state, where working on technique and stroke consistency is a big sub-goal of each workout.

Having data captured in painsled, I send them by email to workouts @ rowsandall.com, where they automatically end up in my account. Here are the stats of the workout as they arrived.

Workout Summary - media/mailbox_attachments/2016/11/16/aa5e11a267c142448e0aaedb6cd95eea.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|14999|63:31.0|02:07.0|176.6|20.2|158.9|174.0|11.7 W-|15005|63:31.0|02:07.0|176.4|20.2|158.9|174.0|11.7 R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|174.0|00.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|01179|04:57.9|02:06.4|170.4|20.1|130.1|150.0|11.8 02|01196|05:00.4|02:05.6|176.8|19.5|149.4|154.0|12.3 03|01204|04:54.7|02:02.4|191.6|20.4|158.1|165.0|12.0 04|01212|05:01.8|02:04.5|182.0|19.9|160.8|163.0|12.1 05|01196|05:00.6|02:05.6|177.9|20.0|160.4|167.0|11.9 06|01214|05:02.4|02:04.6|182.3|20.5|164.2|168.0|11.8 07|01124|05:09.0|02:17.4|160.1|19.8|155.4|168.0|11.0 08|01216|04:59.8|02:03.3|188.0|20.8|165.4|170.0|11.7 09|01192|04:59.1|02:05.5|177.6|20.0|166.6|170.0|12.0 10|01202|05:01.0|02:05.2|180.1|20.3|167.5|171.0|11.8 11|01203|05:00.2|02:04.8|182.3|20.5|169.3|174.0|11.7 12|01139|05:10.6|02:16.4|167.3|20.5|164.1|174.0|10.7 13|00726|03:13.9|02:13.5|147.3|19.9|152.0|159.0|11.3

That’s basically an hour of “Just Row” at steady state. But wait, to break the boredom I had some structure in the workout. After the business travel and another long day at work (and a “Monthly Operations Review”, a 4 hour marathon meeting) I arrived home empty, tired, and not motivated to work out. I had dragged myself to the erg and after 2k of warming up I came up with a mind game that might motivate me to row a full hour.

I decided to row 8x1500m, with each 1500m divided as 750m at 18spm, 500m at 20spm, and 250m at 22spm. Somehow, distance based rowing always makes the time go by faster to me, compared to time based intervals.

I paddled the final 250m of the fourth interval and drank some water. Finally I completed the workout without problems. On rowsandall.com, I can add this interval information after the fact. The workout summary then becomes:

Workout Summary - media/20161116-20100719o.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|15004|63:30.0|02:07.0|176.6|20.2|158.9|174.0|11.7 W-|14755|61:59.0|02:06.1|177.9|20.2|159.2|174.0|11.8 R-|00250|01:31.0|03:03.3|094.0|18.8|142.7|174.0|00.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|02000|08:23.5|02:05.9|173.6|20.0|137.6|151.0|11.9 - Warming up 02|01500|06:09.9|02:03.3|187.5|20.0|156.0|165.0|12.2 03|01500|06:11.0|02:03.7|185.9|20.2|161.6|167.0|12.0 04|01500|06:15.1|02:05.0|180.3|20.4|161.0|168.0|11.8 05|01250|05:13.0|02:05.2|179.3|20.1|164.3|168.0|11.9 06|01500|06:12.0|02:04.0|184.5|20.4|162.4|170.0|11.8 07|01500|06:12.8|02:04.3|183.6|20.5|167.4|171.0|11.8 08|01500|06:13.9|02:04.6|182.7|20.5|168.1|173.0|11.7 09|01500|06:15.3|02:05.1|180.2|20.5|168.2|174.0|11.7 10|01005|04:53.6|02:26.1|134.1|19.3|152.2|172.0|10.7 - Cooling Down

And here are the plots:

The Work per stroke for all strokes (except the 250m of paddling in the middle):

Same plot, but only for the 8x1500m (excluding the 250m of paddling):

Ah, so the “structured mind game” helped to make the strokes more consistent! Just for fun, peak and average force for the same stroke selection:

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, painsled, rowing, steady state, training

Nov 16 2016

Monday/Tuesday – Bulgaria

Monday

A long day. I left for Brno airport just before lunch time, to take the flight to Munich, expecting to take a lunch at the layover in Munich.

The flight to Munich had a 3 hour delay. We were offered money to buy refreshments at Brno airport, but the choice of healthy food is not exactly overwhelming there. Anyway, with work to do, documents to read, and internet connection, the three hours of quiet working time was definitely not wasted.

Arrived in Sofia at 10pm, which means I missed the business dinner with our local partners that we were invited to. A good start!

The taxi from the airport to the hotel drove 140 km/h on a road with a speed limit of 80 km/h and signs warning for speed cameras. Crashed into hotel bed and slept.

Tuesday

Headed to the hotel gym and did an aerobic warming up (or was it a waking up). Ten minutes on an elliptic, ten minutes on the treadmill, and 10 minutes on a spinning bike. The elliptical fitness trainer was of an interesting make. It was constructed in such a way that you could vary the stride length, which meant you could vary between something resembling stairs walking (short stride) and cross country skiing (long stride). It was fun, actually, to vary this.

Then it was time for weights. The problem was that the 25 square meter gym was by now filled with about 7 people, which made it a bit difficult to work out. On top of that, the hotel was the venue for some kind of military conference, so the weights stations were quite popular. I did some bench presses, and then I headed back to the hotel room, where I completed the workout with sit ups, reverse push ups across the bed and the cupboard, and back exercises.

This morning’s taxi driver was even more interesting than the one of Monday night. This time it was a bipolar guy with an economics degree, who took the outcome of the Bulgarian elections very seriously. At one crossing he got fed up of waiting to turn left, crossed over to the opposite side of the street, drove 150m into upcoming traffic, exclaiming that he didn’t care any more, passing police (who didn’t seem to care), and turned left. Then he started to talk about moving to Germany to take a cleaning job.

Meetings were good. At the end of the day I took a taxi ride to the airport and a flight to Vienna, and after two hours in the car I arrived home. The taxi ride to the airport was extremely boring (for Bulgarian standards).

Interestingly, the Garmin Forerunner seems to have captured speed from the treadmill:

https://www.strava.com/activities/775807378

Joe Friel’s blog is relevant: http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2016/11/travel-and-training.html

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: business travel, hotel fitness, hotel gym

Nov 13 2016

Ignored training plan and went for a trail run

The training plan prescribed another steady state erg, but the sun was shining and it was just such a beautiful winter day that I had to go out running.

There’s a little running event that I will participate in coming Thursday. It’s a 10k run starting in the next village, which is organized every year on the “struggle for freedom and democracy” holiday (celebrating the velvet revolution of 1989). That 10k run is on the same trails that I train on, so I can start running from home and check the trails.

Here is the run on Strava.

The run was beautiful (and slow). The small lakes in the forest were covered with a very thin layer of ice.

When I arrived back home and closed the gate, I slammed it on my right index finger. It didn’t hurt much initially, because my hands were frozen, but when everything started to thaw it was quite painful.

Well, I can type this now, so that’s a sign that it’s not so serious. Finger is a little thick and there are interesting colors under the nail.

Just for fun, and because I love maps, I am showing the run overlaid on a few different maps:

map3 — The 19th Century map. I like how the tree rows are indicated on both sides of the big road

map1 — Finally, the hiking map. You can see the abundance of hiking/running trails. Running in these hills is never boring

Tomorrow: A travel day. Then a hotel gym in Sofia, Bulgaria on Tuesday.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: trail running, training

Nov 13 2016

Some Meditation on a 6k, and a run

Some Meditation on a 6k

This first plot is a comparison (made on rowsandall.com) between Friday’s 6k and the PB I set in February, which was 7 seconds faster. You can clearly see that on Friday my heart rate rose faster than on that PB. Actually, on Friday I was rowing faster than my PB schedule for the first 4 km. Just slightly, but looking at the February row, I allowed myself to pull more 1:52 strokes than I did last Friday. The difference is very very small, just 0.2 seconds in average.

But it’s interesting to look at “the scribbles”. The plot below looks like something your 1 year old daughter might draw, but it’s actually quite interesting. At least for me.

The red scribble is Friday’s row. The blue one is my PB. You can clearly see that the bulk of the row (the first 4 to 5km) is very similar. The difference is that in February I didn’t drop the stroke rate so low. I must have rowed more forceful strokes last Friday, and I wonder if that wore me out somehow.

After 4.5km it starts to become really interesting. In February I managed to climb to the top right of the graph (high watts at high stroke rate), while last Friday I climbed just a little and dropped the watts.

It’s a pity I didn’t have Painsled back then. If I had, I could have compared the average drive force for the two rows.

Instead of comparing with my PB row, I should perhaps compare with the row I did on November 11, 2015, exactly a year before Friday’s row.

In 2015, I rowed a 22:28, 8 seconds slower than on Friday, but it looks like the whole graph is shifted to the left by 1spm. In other words, a year ago, I rowed a higher stroke rate to achieve the same watt number.

In terms of heart rate, the numbers are very similar. An interesting drop in heart rate after about 1500m is present in both rows. I wonder what that is.

Saturday’s run

Headed to the lake in the morning. There was a big lactate testing going on. All rowers who are in selections for national teams need to do a lactate step test. The protocol was prescribed by the national rowing federation. Interestingly, it was 5 minutes with 2 minutes rest, 5 steps at prescribed watts. The watts were given by a table for sex and age category. Also, they had to be rowed on ergs on sliders.

The tests were combined with the other rowing club, so the locker room and erg room was full. We cannot row OTW because our summer dock is about 1m above the water level and nobody bothered to put out a winter dock.

I decided to go for a run.

I ran along the lake, then along the river, towards the castle. Just before the castle, I turned right on the blue trail. I was wondering if I could make a loop, but was afraid that that would make the run too long.

Here is my run overlaid on a tourist map of the region. The colored lines are hiking/running trails. My run is the thick light blue line starting on the lake shore in the bottom right corner. Here’s is what I should try and run next time:

Continue on the blue trail, run around the hill, pass Trnůvka, take the green trail at Rozdrojovice and get back to the lake at restaurant Princezna. But I guess it would be a bit longer than the 12km that I ran this time.

Here’s the run on Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/773028819

It was a nice, slow recovery run.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: recovery, rowing, running, trail, trail running, training

Nov 11 2016

6k Season’s Best

My wife Romana told my I was crazy to plan a 6k full out attempt for a Friday. I agree that being tired at the end of the working week is not the ideal preparation. On the other hand, Friday is the only day where I have a chance of getting home early enough to do the 6k before dinner.

The (ambitious) plan was to try and row a 1:51.5 average pace.

First, I did a thorough warming up:

Then on to the main event. The plan was to start conservatively and hold the average pace at 1:52 until I reached 1800m to go.

Of course, trying to hold 1:52, I pulled 1:51 and even 1:50 more frequently than 1:53, and so I reached the half way point with an average pace of 1:51.5. Still, it seemed to take ages to reach 4500m to go. I went by 300m intervals. They go by fast enough to see progress, and there’s “just” twenty of them.

I tried to remind myself to remain conservative, but a few times in the 4500m to 1500m interval I got carried away and started pulling 1:50 strokes.

In the end, I paid for that. With 900m to go I started counting sets of 12 strokes. With 600m to go I was convinced I wouldn’t make the end without going above 2:00 pace. In the end I limped home with 1:54 pace.

Summary:

Workout Summary - media/20161111-17100719o.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|06000|22:20.5|01:51.7|26.7|177.9|184.0|10.1 W-|06000|22:20.5|01:51.7|26.6|177.8|184.0|10.1 R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|00.0|000.0|184.0|00.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00500|01:51.8|01:51.8|25.8|154.6|171.0|10.4 02|00500|01:51.5|01:51.5|25.7|173.6|175.0|10.5 03|00500|01:51.6|01:51.6|25.9|176.8|178.0|10.4 04|00500|01:51.6|01:51.6|26.3|177.3|179.0|10.2 05|00500|01:51.2|01:51.2|26.3|179.2|180.0|10.3 06|00500|01:51.2|01:51.2|26.5|180.4|181.0|10.2 07|00500|01:51.5|01:51.5|26.8|180.6|181.0|10.0 08|00500|01:50.9|01:50.9|26.8|182.2|183.0|10.1 09|00500|01:51.1|01:51.1|27.1|182.7|184.0|10.0 10|00500|01:52.2|01:52.2|27.1|182.8|184.0|09.9 11|00500|01:51.6|01:51.6|27.8|182.6|183.0|09.7 12|00500|01:54.3|01:54.3|27.7|180.9|183.0|09.5

I did this “beginning of the winter” 6k exactly a year ago, on November 11, 2015.

Then, I did a 22:28 time with an average heart rate of 177 bpm. Today it was 22:20, with an average heart rate of 178bpm. A year ago, I used a spreadsheet to analyze the row. Today, I can use the power of rowsandall.com and have additional interesting graphs:

bokeh_plot-1 — Peak and Average stroke power

bokeh_plot — Work per Stroke vs stroke rate.

In the Work Per Stroke plot, you can see how I used a range of stroke rates to try and remain at the same average pae (the green line). On the site, I can actually select the first half of the row and compare it with the second half:

And here is that dramatic last 1000m:

First, you see me rate down and increase the work per stroke. Then I fall down to a lower force per stroke. In the final strokes I rate up a bit but the work per stroke goes down even more.

After the row, I sat on the erg holding the bar. I was afraid to faint.

I didn’t faint. After five minutes of just sitting there, I had enough energy to do a 10 minute cooling down.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: 6000m, 6k, concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, test

1 2 3

November 2016

Friday – 12.5km Steady State / force curve

Jehnice running event 2016

New Painsled beta, steady state erg and mind games; and playing with data

Monday/Tuesday – Bulgaria

Ignored training plan and went for a trail run

Some Meditation on a 6k, and a run

6k Season’s Best

Calendar

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