I did a short outing in the double with a new rower. I heard about this new colleague who had been an excellent rower in the past. Talked to him and got him enthusiastic to try rowing again.
The caveat. He had a severe motorbike accident 8 years ago, has an arm and shoulder full of titanium, and has spent 100% of his energy on working since then. This was his first row since the accident.
It was a fun experience. The guy clearly knew what he was doing, but he will need a few rows to get back his former level of technique. Also, he was quite exhausted after just the warming up. I guess that calibrates my level of fitness. It’s a good reminder. Sometimes I think my fitness is dropping, but I guess I am always far from the absolute minimum.
By the way, it is my experience that base fitness comes back very quickly with bodies that have been exposed to intensive training when they were young. If you have such a body (which I do), congratulations!
Thursday
A morning row. I was supposed to take the bag with boat and scull covers to the club, because Romana wants to ride her bike this afternoon, and she would prepare the boats for transport to Hodonin, where we will be racing, coming weekend.
At 6am I am capable of getting up, getting my rowing bag and my work stuff, get a rudimentary breakfast in my stomach, and drive to the rowing club. At the last traffic light before the club, I realized I had forgotten the bag with boat covers. Oh well. Romana will just remove the riggers this afternoon, and I will have to come earlier to put the shells in the covers and load them on the trailer.
I forgot to read my training plan, so I headed over to the announcement board to read the Juniors/U23 training.
My training plan called for 6x250m/2′-3′ pause. The U23 training plan called for 4x start plus 15 strokes, plus 2x500m/500m, with the first 500m at 30spm, and the second one at 35spm.
I liked that. So, I did it.
The warming up plus a 2k with 4 practice starts followed by 15 strokes:
The end of the practice starts brought me to the finish line of the 2k course. I rowed back to the start, focusing on technique. So that brought me to 5k of distance covered.
Now it was time for the 500s. Here is the result:
The first 500m was performed well. The second one, I don’t know. I probably hit too high power values for this one, and I faded dramatically. Looking at the metrics charts below, I am not pleased with how the effective length drops in the second half of the second interval. It was really a dramatic exercise in fading.
I also had fun looking at the lack of improvement in my metrics over the past weeks. No conclusions yet, except that it was fun to do it and I am glad rowsandall.com gives the opportunity to use this type of charts to monitor your athlete’s (lack of) progress. I filter away all strokes marked as “rest” and I also took the liberty to remove all strokes below 450 Joule per stroke, as they are either (unmarked) rest paddle, technique work, or short stroke exercises.
Tomorrow: Boat trailer loading. Boat trailer drive to Hodonin, then a mixed double row with Romana.
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May 18 2017
An exercise in fading
Wednesday
I did a short outing in the double with a new rower. I heard about this new colleague who had been an excellent rower in the past. Talked to him and got him enthusiastic to try rowing again.
The caveat. He had a severe motorbike accident 8 years ago, has an arm and shoulder full of titanium, and has spent 100% of his energy on working since then. This was his first row since the accident.
It was a fun experience. The guy clearly knew what he was doing, but he will need a few rows to get back his former level of technique. Also, he was quite exhausted after just the warming up. I guess that calibrates my level of fitness. It’s a good reminder. Sometimes I think my fitness is dropping, but I guess I am always far from the absolute minimum.
By the way, it is my experience that base fitness comes back very quickly with bodies that have been exposed to intensive training when they were young. If you have such a body (which I do), congratulations!
Thursday
A morning row. I was supposed to take the bag with boat and scull covers to the club, because Romana wants to ride her bike this afternoon, and she would prepare the boats for transport to Hodonin, where we will be racing, coming weekend.
At 6am I am capable of getting up, getting my rowing bag and my work stuff, get a rudimentary breakfast in my stomach, and drive to the rowing club. At the last traffic light before the club, I realized I had forgotten the bag with boat covers. Oh well. Romana will just remove the riggers this afternoon, and I will have to come earlier to put the shells in the covers and load them on the trailer.
I forgot to read my training plan, so I headed over to the announcement board to read the Juniors/U23 training.
My training plan called for 6x250m/2′-3′ pause. The U23 training plan called for 4x start plus 15 strokes, plus 2x500m/500m, with the first 500m at 30spm, and the second one at 35spm.
I liked that. So, I did it.
The warming up plus a 2k with 4 practice starts followed by 15 strokes:
The end of the practice starts brought me to the finish line of the 2k course. I rowed back to the start, focusing on technique. So that brought me to 5k of distance covered.
Now it was time for the 500s. Here is the result:
The first 500m was performed well. The second one, I don’t know. I probably hit too high power values for this one, and I faded dramatically. Looking at the metrics charts below, I am not pleased with how the effective length drops in the second half of the second interval. It was really a dramatic exercise in fading.
Workout Summary - media/20170518-0735410o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|01500|06:28.0|02:09.5|245.8|27.1|165.0|186.0|08.6
W-|01000|03:46.0|01:53.5|328.3|31.9|177.4|186.0|08.3
R-|01000|05:06.0|02:33.4|150.3|21.4|150.7|186.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00500|01:55.8|01:55.8|312.2|29.9|175.5|182.0|08.7
02|00500|01:51.2|01:51.2|345.2|34.0|179.3|186.0|07.9
And a few charts with comments:
I also had fun looking at the lack of improvement in my metrics over the past weeks. No conclusions yet, except that it was fun to do it and I am glad rowsandall.com gives the opportunity to use this type of charts to monitor your athlete’s (lack of) progress. I filter away all strokes marked as “rest” and I also took the liberty to remove all strokes below 450 Joule per stroke, as they are either (unmarked) rest paddle, technique work, or short stroke exercises.
Tomorrow: Boat trailer loading. Boat trailer drive to Hodonin, then a mixed double row with Romana.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: ANC, ANC training, OTW, race prep, rowing, training