Friday – hard distance

During one of the flights, I took some time to lay out a training plan until my Head Race early October. I plan to do a three week mesocycle of threshold training, i.e. spending a lot of time in my hard workouts at 25-29spm. I am actually looking forward to this. After the sprint racing it is a big change, and it is a range of stroke rate where you can work on technique and boat efficiency a lot.

I also want to try out 9 day long microcycles. I have been used to do a weekly plan, but the 9 day cycle allows to balance workouts better. In each microcycle, I want to do two hard distance workouts and one interval workout with short rests. The rst is steady state, cross training and recovery. Regarding the hard distances, I plan to start at 10km and work systematically down to 6km. So it starts at the intensive endurance part of the spectrum and ends with threshold rowing.

So, at the end of a work week with business travel, I headed towards the lake for my first training after the Masters Worlds. Yay!

The task was a 10k but with our lake and traffic pattern, it would be an approximate 10k. Rokle to Sirka is a little over 3km and Sirka to Rokle is a little less than 3km. In the end I managed to do 9.5km.

It was hard work
Workout Summary - media/20170915-133036-Sanders SpeedCoach 20170915 0514pmo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|09500|43:56.0|02:18.8|225.2|25.2|177.5|183.0|08.6
W-|09500|43:57.0|02:18.8|225.2|25.2|177.5|183.0|08.6
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|183.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00500|02:17.8|02:17.8|222.9|24.7|156.1|174.0|08.8
01|00500|02:25.8|02:25.8|239.6|24.7|174.3|176.0|08.3
02|00500|02:25.9|02:25.9|229.5|24.5|175.5|178.0|08.4
03|00500|02:24.3|02:24.3|231.6|24.3|178.3|180.0|08.5
04|00500|02:22.8|02:22.8|236.7|24.4|178.9|180.0|08.6
05|00500|02:21.0|02:21.0|242.1|25.0|180.2|181.0|08.5
06|00500|02:32.5|02:32.5|233.6|25.6|178.1|181.0|07.7
07|00500|02:09.2|02:09.2|228.0|25.4|177.4|179.0|09.1
08|00500|02:10.1|02:10.1|223.6|24.8|178.8|180.0|09.3
09|00500|02:09.6|02:09.6|237.0|25.3|180.1|182.0|09.1
10|00500|02:10.5|02:10.5|224.9|25.1|180.6|182.0|09.2
11|00500|02:12.5|02:12.5|222.9|25.3|179.9|181.0|09.0
12|00500|02:34.9|02:34.9|200.5|26.0|177.6|182.0|07.5
13|00500|02:15.4|02:15.4|201.9|25.4|176.6|179.0|08.7
14|00500|02:16.3|02:16.3|217.0|25.2|178.9|181.0|08.7
15|00500|02:17.1|02:17.1|215.2|24.9|180.1|182.0|08.8
16|00500|02:20.2|02:20.2|209.4|25.2|179.1|181.0|08.5
17|00500|02:18.5|02:18.5|227.2|26.1|180.3|182.0|08.3
18|00500|02:13.1|02:13.1|235.5|27.1|182.0|183.0|08.3

Yes, it was hard work. My heart rate is high, but I blame that on the travel and not being fully recovered from Bled. In the first Rokle to Sirka segment, there was a heavier headwind and chop, which you can clearly see from the splits. I aimed at 24spm but didn’t have difficulties going above.

Rokle on top, Sirka on the bottom. I rowed Rokle-Sirka-Rokle-Sirka

Power wise, I was very happy to see me holding a power between 220 and 250 W constantly, and it felt OK. Checking my CP chart, I should be able to hold 225W without difficulty over 45 minutes OTW. My limit is around 250W, but that would be after a good taper. Not after a week with air travel, business dinners after an exhausting regatta.

Also, this row was done with two turns …

here are some of the metrics charts:

The second part, from Sirka to Rokle, was the best in my mind. This was in mild tailwind. At the end of the first section, the wind suddenly calmed down and after that the lake was very easy to row. I was rowing strong and had a tendency to go up in stroke rate. I had to actively push the stroke rate and power down, knowing that there was another 3k to go.

In terms of metrics, I need to decide if I keep using Work per Stroke or switch to stroke length and average force. I think I will stick to setting a Work per Stroke target range like I have done so far. My stroke length doesn’t vary too much, so WpS is essentially determined by average handle force, as is clear also from the charts above. Also, 600 is an easy number to remember, which is important when you do checks while you are working at heart rate above 180.

As I had Quiske running, I thought it interesting to average over the three sections.

Blade angle vs time
Boat acceleration
Horizontal and vertical blade angles

What surprised me most is how close the curves are, where I really had the feeling that the first segment was sloppy and the second one (tailwind) was the best.

 

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