October 10, 2017

Originally, I wanted to go out in my single, but I had an interview candidate at 4pm, and it gets dark early. Also, the weather was quite windy.

So I decided for an erg workout. A pretty hard one as well, because I am entering a training cycle with a few intense sessions. My legs were still not recovered from Saturday’s race, but I will be traveling without exercise for two days, so I am postponing my “rest”. The normal training plan adjustments that you need to do if you want to combine training with work and family.

I did a 2km warming up, selected a good rowing music list on SoundCloud, put the speaker on loud and started off.

         Workout Summary - media/20171009-1901270o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10810|50:03.0|02:18.9|205.1|24.6|156.1|181.0|08.8
W-|08000|30:01.0|01:52.6|245.7|26.0|165.8|181.0|10.2
R-|02813|20:02.0|03:33.7|095.4|21.7|141.3|181.0|00.4
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|02000|07:31.7|01:52.9|241.2|25.2|157.9|169.0|10.5
01|02000|07:33.2|01:53.3|242.3|25.9|166.1|174.0|10.2
02|02000|07:31.2|01:52.8|244.2|26.2|168.7|176.0|10.2
03|02000|07:25.5|01:51.4|255.4|26.9|170.5|181.0|10.0

As usual, the first interval was a bit harder than the second, but they were all pretty hard. I was targeting a 1:53.2 average pace, just because that was the winter season opening pace from the last year I did the Pete Plan session. I still have a piece of paper pinned to a piece of wood (an old door, in fact) next to the erg. So, you could say I was aiming for the score on the door.

Even though the second interval was easier, I went slightly above the target. The way I row this, I row target split plus one second for 800m, then target split, and then accelerate or back down depending on the average, to hit my target split.

In the third interval, I didn’t back down.

In the fourth one, I tried to row the final bit full out. The playlist had ended but SoundCloud followed up automatically with something pretty good. I wonder what algorithm they are using.

Stroke length was pretty consistent.

The work per stroke is an interesting one. On the erg, I pull lower stroke rate and higher work per stroke than on the water. This is a static erg. I guess it is natural.

What intrigues me though is that I currently have the feeling that the power I can hold OTW in steady state or in hard distance workouts is higher than what I can do on the erg. My race of Saturday was at 260W, or 1:50.4 pace, which is pretty close to my best 6k efforts of last winter. When I started using the NK Empower Oarlock, I was pulling significantly lower Watts on the water.

There is a psychological effect as well, in that pulling on the boring erg is harder mentally than zipping around on the lake.

It will be interesting to see how this reverses during the winter.