Aug 13 2017
Saturday – A bike ride instead of a row
On Saturday morning, our usual training time, we had to bring our son Dominik to a summer camp. He wanted to participate in a “Parkour” camp. The place was an hour driving away. I guess it was only when we arrived there, that Dominik realized that he actually doesn’t know anyone at the camp. He was a bit silent. I think he will be OK. The camp staff looked like nice people.
Romana and I drove back to Brno to do a row in the double. Bad luck. There was a really strong wind, and wind surfers were having fun. We wouldn’t be having fun, so we decided to not even go out. With a few other rowers who were present, we agreed to go 6pm on Sunday.
At home, I finished a project with my youngest son Robin. We have been building this garden shed. We were finishing the roof, and I sent Robin up on the roof to fix the roof coverage. He had a lot of fun doing it. At the end he lied down on the roof and proclaimed he was Snoopy. I wasn’t even aware that he knew the Snoopy character.
It was 4pm by the time we were done. I set out for a bike ride to compensate for the missed row. Here is the Google Earth plot of the ride.
The records are broken in two parts. I started recording using my Garmin Forerunner, but after 16km the battery died. So I continued using the Strava app on my phone. Here is the elevation profile of part I:
I am a slow rider and a slow climber. I ride on a mountainbike. The 40 minutes of steady climbing was a good workout, comparable to a hard 10k on the erg. On the Google Earth map, this section starts top middle and goes north (top right) to the top of the village Vranov, where I took this picture:
The church is huge. The climb to the church is long. Then you pass the church, turn, and the climb gets steeper. At the top of the climb I turned left and descended to Adamov. One day I must ride up that climb, because it is pretty long and steep. Nice training. Instead, I decided to continue towards Bilovice nad Svitavou, following the Svitava river.
Here is my heart rate plot for the first part:
This second part was 7km along the Svitava river. Then I stopped to take this picture:
A nice, cold StaroBrno 10, fresh from the tap. A light beer. Nice and refreshing. I am always amazed how good beer tastes after a row or a ride.
I still had to climb out of the Svitava valley and get home, so I only took one beer and then hit the road again.
You can see that I managed to get my heart rate up to quite high values (high for cycling, that is) on the flat first part along the river. I was riving on a bigger gear and I was trying to catch up with a cyclist in front of me.
Strava estimates both rides to be around 200W on average, and that is consistent with how I felt.
Aug 13 2017
Sunday – mix double – training racing
Spent most of the day running errands and doing some work in the garden. I grilled some nice steaks for lunch.
At the end of the afternoon we headed to the rowing club. Romana and I arrived earlier than the Masters Men’s Pair, so we took some time to check the rigging of our double Orca. All OK.
First a warming up and some training starts.
The high stroke rates in the beginning are our usual drill. Starting to row with arms only, then arms+body, then half slide, 3/4 slide, and finally on to full slide.
Pazdi and Krocan weren’t ready yet, so we did the first 500m with race start on our own.
Then a longer rest paddle. A training start with Pazdi and Krocan next to us in the pair, and finally the second 500m. We lined up the boats and off we went. The pair was leading slightly out of the start and they managed to keep the lead all the way to the end. I called “go” with 200m to go and increased the stroke rate.
Romana is a “feel” rower. She doesn’t need any gadgets, is not very interested in looking at graphs and playing with data. But this time she wondered aloud whether the stroke rate increase had increased boat speed. Let’s check the graph.
The static chart is not very easy for reading the stroke rate, so let’s look at the flex chart:
So yes, there seems to be an increase in pace. But what is interesting is that the pace seems to increase even more when we drop the stroke rate slightly after a few strokes of the sprint. Here are the comparison charts for 500m take 1 vs take 2:
The second 500m was 5 seconds faster. We rowed it in identical conditions. Same part of the lake. Same weather (mirror flat water, no wind).
Then we did another loop of the lake together with the pair. On the 3km straight stretch from Sirka to Rokle, Romana and I rowed really well together. We fell into a nice rhythm at stroke rate 23. It didn’t feel hard at all. Our timing was just perfect, and we moved from rowing slightly behind the pair to passing them and finishing about 50m ahead of them. Nice row. Everything just clicked.
You can see how my heart rate nicely stays in the very narrow blue band during the entire 3km stretch (7 minutes to 19 minutes) . I was watching the SpeedCoach during the row and when the timing was perfect, the pace improved from 2:12 to 2:09. A few times the pace dropped to 2:16, but focusing on timing brought that back to 2:12 easily.
The pair were wondering what was going on. They were visibly working hard and we passed them so easily. That 3km stretch was the one that brought out the smiles.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: double, mix, mixed double, race simulation, rowing, steady state, training