Dec 25 2017
Sometimes it is tough
Saturday
First, we spent an hour bringing in the dock for winter storage. As the lake’s water level lowers, our dock comes to rest on stands that we have built, concrete structures with a car tire on top. Like that, it would survive the entire winter, if random people wouldn’t feel attracted to use it as a trampoline.
The lake I see covered with a thin layer of ice. A few cm.
We need about 10 people ideally to do this, but there were only six of us. Only the Masters showed up. The Juniors and the Elite didn’t bother. So it was a pretty hard strength workout. After that, I retreated to the club’s erg room to do a very light steady state workout. A little under an hour at 2:05 to 2:08 pace.
Sunday – Christmas Eve
The biggest holiday in the Czech Republic. First thing in the morning, Romana and I headed to the shop to get fresh fish and seafood. Then we made a stop at the swimming Stadium. I did 2km. Romana outswam me by a lot, but what do you expect from somebody who in her youth held a regional record.
The rest of the day went by in traditional fashion with lots of food, lots of presents, and too much alcohol.
Christmas
Happy Christmas! And time for another ranking distance. The 30 minute.
I did this one before lunch, in the only time slot available. The CP chart suggested 224W as a lower limit and 240W as the upper limit. I wanted to at least row faster than my 10k of 3 days ago, but a few strokes into the row I realized that even that was going to be hard. I decided to row flat, between 225 and 230W, count down 3 minute intervals and hang on as long as possible.
Such rows on bad days are harder than the PB or SB rows on good days!
Workout Summary - media/20171225-1121090o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07824|30:00.0|01:55.0|230.1|25.8|169.1|182.0|10.1
W-|07827|30:00.0|01:55.0|229.9|25.8|169.0|182.0|10.1
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|182.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00780|03:00.0|01:55.4|223.6|25.5|142.4|160.0|10.2
01|00777|03:00.0|01:55.8|225.8|25.1|163.7|166.0|10.3
02|00779|03:00.0|01:55.5|226.8|25.4|167.1|169.0|10.2
03|00777|03:00.0|01:55.8|225.4|25.4|169.1|170.0|10.2
04|00780|03:00.0|01:55.4|227.8|25.5|170.8|172.0|10.2
05|00781|03:00.0|01:55.2|229.3|25.5|172.7|174.0|10.2
06|00782|03:00.0|01:55.1|229.2|25.7|174.0|175.0|10.1
07|00779|03:00.0|01:55.5|227.1|25.8|174.7|175.0|10.1
08|00783|03:00.0|01:54.9|230.3|25.9|175.7|177.0|10.1
09|00807|03:00.0|01:51.5|253.7|27.9|179.4|182.0|09.7
We had a simple leftover lunch. Pasta sprinkled with black truffle.
Now we’re off to get some fresh air. We’ve chosen this destination, a chateau 25 minuted where we live:
Dec 29 2017
Train rides, reading and a 6k
Tuesday – Steady State
We met at the rowing club. By the time everybody was ready for the 3x15min steady state workout, I had already done a 3km warming up.
Here is the entire workout in one chart combining warming up, main intervals and cooling down.
Heart rate data are slightly offset, because I recorded them separately and didn’t bother to adjust the time offset on the rowsandall.com site.
Wednesday – no training
In the morning, there were some chores around the house. Then we took the train to Pardubice to visit Romana’s mother. The entire trip takes two hours by car, and three hours by train and bus, but in this time of the year I prefer that. I spent most of the time reading. Before Christmas, I plundered the Math/Phys section of the Academia bookstore in Brno. In fact, I bought so many books that the one purchase earned me a lifetime 20% discount card.
The selection is not as great as Amazon.com, but their in-store coffee house has great espresso, and their Physics and Math section is serious, so there you go.
(A note to my American readers, who may be imagining something like the Barnes & Nobles coffee corner when I mention espresso in a bookstore: We are not too far from Italy, and all countries of the former Austro-Hungarian empire have a great coffee house tradition. We are in a different league here. Come over and try yourself.)
Thursday – 6k
Spent the morning at my mother in law, including lunch, and then a bus/train ride home. Again, lots of time for pleasant reading. The car alternative would have involved driving on wet snow and freezing rain. Arrived home around 4pm, so no excuse to skip the next Ranking Distance: 6k.
First, a nice long warming up. For the shorter ranking distances, a good warming up is important, and I have learned that it doesn’t hurt to do 20 minutes including some pretty tough intervals.
Then the main piece. The CP chart gave me the bounds. I was supposed to go faster than 230W (of course, because I had held 230W for 30 minutes just three days earlier) and the stretch target was 245W.
I decided to start at 230W, then accelerate at 3600m to go. I set the PM to record 400m intervals. From 3600m to go down to 1800m, the goal was 235W but I did go slightly higher.
As you can see from the summary, things continued favorably and I managed to finish in 292W, raising the average power to 244W and a total time of 22:32.4. (Somehow, the total time in the summary misses 2.4 seconds, probably because I skipped the final pull.)
So that was a good one, at 96% of my PB power. Looking forward to the 5k on Sunday, actually.
Friday
I did a recovery training in the pool. I swam 2km in about 50 minutes. This time it was slightly challenging, because the pool entrance was free today.
It was nice to see kids from poor families enjoying the water, but it also required a bit of flexibility from the endurance swimmers.
I almost felt like a seasoned swimmer, in this chaos. That was partly because I was swimming with swimming goggles.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: 6000m, 6k, concept2, erg, OTE, ranking piece, rowing, training