January 2, 2017

First, I would like to wish all my readers a happy, healthy, and successful new year, without injuries, and full of quality training and successful racing.

I have spent the past few days in Berlin with the Roosendaal clan (my parents, my two sisters, the children and significant others). Of course this was more about sightseeing, visiting museums and attractions, and eating than about training. Still, one of the best ways of sightseeing in a busy city is an early morning run (Strava link).

Here are a few pictures:

Today, it was back to work. I spent the morning shaking hands and wishing my colleagues a happy new year. I kicked off a few things and around lunch time I took a break to go to the lake.

There is a thick layer of what looks like good quality ice there, and many people were ice skating. I have a slight cold, though, so instead of going on the ice I headed to the erg room of our rowing club.

Before doing a nice hour of steady state on sliders, I took a few minutes to video myself erging. For Christmas, Greg gave me a video analysis from Row Analysis, so today I happily taped markers on various places on the erg and on myself, and then made a ten stroke video. The raw result is here:

I hope the video is high quality enough for the analysis. I have uploaded it to the Row Analysis site and am now waiting for the results. Will keep you posted.

The hour of steady state was very nice. It is so comfortable to do this on an erg on sliders. It is easier on the back, and the stroke is longer (because you pick up the acceleration of the flywheel earlier in the stroke) and for me it is easier to hold a pace than on the static erg. If the row club had PM5 monitors for their ergs, I would work out there more often, even though the time lost driving there and back is not insignificant.

Edit

Adding a few video snapshots.