Mar 11 2018
Two runs and saving Mona Lisa
Saturday
On Friday, I opted for no training. I did, however, go to the rowing club (another ride to break in my new Honda and get used to riding it before taking it into the rush hour traffic), and ended up helping the younger age group. The boys, including my two sons, were helping cleaning up the club house, carrying boxes with stuff to a temporary storage. I did the heavier boxes, full with old prizes, big glass bowls and other stuff.
I was a bit scared when I saw our youngest son carrying our “Rowing Mona Lisa”, a painting that was won by our 1942 eight in the Prague Primatorky race. This was probably the best 8+ ever produced by our club. They competed on the European Championships in Amsterdam, but then the war prevented them from representing their country.
Here is the crew that won in 1942:
You see the painting in the coach’s hands? That is the one my youngest son was waving around while carrying it down the stairs.
Luckily, it survived.
For Saturday, originally I had planned a rest day, because there would be a lot of work to do at the rowing club. However, the work wasn’t scheduled to start earlier than 11am, so I decided to go for a short run. Unfortunately, I didn’t check that my heart rate belt was pairing correctly with the Garmin Forerunner, so I didn’t record any heart rate data.
We went for lunch in Cafe ERA, another one of Brno’s “functionalist” buildings (also known as “white cubes”).
Built in 1929, the building was nicely renovated recently, and it is a great coffee house. The special occasion was that my daughter and her classmate had won the third prize in a contest for art by high school students, and the exhibition of winning art was in this cafe.
And to top off our cultural day, Romana and I went to the theatre in the evening.
The Mahen theatre was built in 1882, so in a slightly different style. See the picture gallery below. But don’t be fooled. In the light of modernism, this theatre was one of the first public buildings to be entirely lit by electric light.
We went to see the Brno National Theatre doing a very interesting ballet evening. They have an interesting choreographer, and the two hours flew by.
Here’s the trailer:
Sunday
I am still rebelling against the training plan I wrote myself. Yesterday’s run wasn’t easy, but the weather was so beautiful that I decided to ignore the erg training that was planned, and go for a longer run. I started at the rowing club and ran along the lake, then up the hill and into the forest.
It was a great run, although in some parts of the forest the trail was a bit muddy and mushy. The snow has melted just recently.
The great thing about running in this time of the year is that you can really enjoy the views. In the summer, you are just running under the green trees. Now you can see the villages below.
The ice on our lake is melting fast. I am hoping to be able to do my first OTW session of 2018 in about a year from now.
How-To Notes
I am adding some How-To notes to my training blog. People have asked me to create a how-to of how I am recording my trainings. I will do a winter version this week and a summer version once I am definitely rowing OTW again. On this training blog, I will just record brief notes, which I will then work out in more detail and publish as a separate blog post on analytics.rowsandall.com
- I recorded this run on a Garmin Forerunner watch which was connected to a Wahoo Tickr X heart rate belt through the ANT+ protocol
- After the run, I connected the Forerunner to my iPhone using bluetooth.
- I fired up the Garmin Connect app to get the run on Garmin Connect.
- In GC, I have set automatic sync to Strava, so a few seconds later, Strava alerted me that the run was done.
- For the pictures in this blog, I used the Strava “share on blog” function.
- I also downloaded a GPX to import in Google Earth
- The workout makes its way to SportTracks, TrainingPeaks, Runkeeper, Endomondo and Dropbox through tapiriik.com.
- On rowsandall.com, I use Strava Import to import the row and pair it to my training plan.
- For the running training, I look mainly at my heart rate vs time, plotting elevation in the same chart. I also use Stravistix to look at some of the additional metrics. Stravistix estimated today’s run to be an average of 190W, which is very interesting. In terms of how hard it was, it was comparable to a 190W erg steady state of the same duration (90 minutes).
Mar 14 2018
Easy threshold training – does it exist?
Monday
A day off. We had business visitors over and I took them to a restaurant. I needed the rest day. Lots of DOMS after the enthusiastic but unplanned longish run of Sunday, and my HRV data didn’t look too good either. Here you have the data from the HRV4Training app.
Unless this is shear coincidence, the HRV4Training app is starting to produce some convincing evidence that it is able to give me a heads up on accumulated fatigue, which is great.
Tuesday
Although I still had DOMS from the running, and I felt tired after a long day of hosting some business visitors, I felt motivated to work out. However, I was aware of the advice that HRV4Training had given to take a light day. The session was:
That doesn’t sound too taxing, and I was even wondering if it is really a threshold session, or more like a “black hole” session, or a slightly more intensive steady state. Well, it turned out that my heart rate got quite high. I was glad that the final 2 minute and 1 minute parts were over fast, and with every interval I had more difficulty holding good form and posture in the 20 and 22 spm bits.
Workout Summary - media/20180313-1925580o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10856|48:00.0|02:12.6|174.5|20.5|156.9|176.0|11.0
W-|09994|40:00.0|02:00.1|202.5|22.1|157.7|176.0|11.3
R-|00871|08:00.0|04:35.7|034.6|12.7|153.2|176.0|24.1
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00968|04:00.0|02:04.0|180.5|20.2|133.7|146.0|12.0
01|00748|03:00.0|02:00.3|201.2|22.0|154.1|158.0|11.3
02|00514|02:00.0|01:56.6|220.4|23.5|159.9|164.0|10.9
03|00269|01:00.0|01:51.5|251.6|25.9|166.0|169.0|10.4
04|00965|04:00.0|02:04.3|183.3|20.5|145.1|155.0|11.8
05|00748|03:00.0|02:00.3|200.7|22.1|160.4|164.0|11.3
06|00516|02:00.0|01:56.2|222.7|23.9|169.2|172.0|10.8
07|00269|01:00.0|01:51.7|250.6|25.6|172.3|174.0|10.5
08|00966|04:00.0|02:04.2|183.2|20.3|151.0|162.0|11.9
09|00751|03:00.0|01:59.9|203.1|22.2|166.4|169.0|11.3
10|00515|02:00.0|01:56.5|220.9|23.8|171.4|172.0|10.8
11|00267|01:00.0|01:52.3|247.3|25.5|172.7|174.0|10.5
12|00966|04:00.0|02:04.2|182.5|20.3|152.0|167.0|11.9
13|00750|03:00.0|01:60.0|202.4|22.4|167.8|171.0|11.2
14|00516|02:00.0|01:56.3|222.1|24.3|173.3|176.0|10.6
15|00264|01:00.0|01:53.5|239.4|25.6|174.9|176.0|10.3
Looking at Work per Stroke is interesting:
Ideally, in these rate ladder sessions, you should row at constant Work per Stroke, but somehow I was increasing the work slightly at higher stroke rates. Should I have pushed harder at 20 spm?
Wednesday
I managed to motivate myself to make a stop at the pool on the way to work. I hit the water a bit later than normal, around 7:20am, and as I always leave the pool at 8:00, no matter how long I have been swimming, in order to arrive at work at 8:30, today I had only 45 minutes of swimming, or 1500m.
In my hurry, I had forgotten to take a towel, which I discovered while walking to the pre-swim shower. I spent a few seconds hesitating in front of the 28C shower, wondering if I should give up and just go to work. No, I was going to take that 28C shower (fresh) and start swimming, and in the first few lanes I would figure out a plan.
It turned out to be pretty easy. My cloth swimming bag proved to be a pretty effective towel.
How-To
On Tuesday, I took lots of screenshots to explain how I do the data on this workout. Here are the details. First, a picture of my erg basement:
No, that is not a very glamorous environment. It’s a small room in our basement. The black hole in the back is a door, which I open to let in fresh air. In the right corner, on the water pump box, you can see a Raspberry Pi. It is not in use at the moment. An abandoned project.
More important are the box close to the erg, with a radio/USB speaker combo, and the iPad.
The iPad is running SoundCloud in the background with appropriate workout music which is coming out of the radio speakers through the BlueTooth connection. In the foreground, I am running Painsled, which is not yet connected to the PM5. Here’s a series of pictures showing me connecting the Polar OH1 and Painsled:
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You need to repeat these steps at the start of each session.
Now you’re good to go. Start pulling and the iPad with Painsled will show a copy of your parameters. This picture taken during one of the rest periods:
You can use the PM as normal. Each time you press the Menu button to start a new workout or Just Row, Painsled will save the data, but you can safely ignore this and just focus on the PM5.
After the session, it is time to get the data out of Painsled and to Rowsandall, Concept2 logbook, SportTracks and other places.
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There is one thing I forgot to screengrab. In Settings, you must select “CSV file” under the Painsled Export settings. When writing the email, notice that the From address is the one I use for my rowsandall.com account, that the email Subject will be copied as the workout name, and I use email commands to synchronize my data to the Concept2 logbook (“C2”) and SportTracks (“st”), and make a time chart. A few minutes later, I receive the following email:
Now, I can start looking at the workout data on rowsandall.com. Here is what I look at.
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For the swimming session of today, I use the Polar OH1 in standalone mode, and then sync it with the Polar Flow app after the swim. This will get the data on Strava, from where I can import them into Rowsandall.com. The only thing I do is link it to my planned session, and that’s it.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: concept2, ergometer, OTE, rowing, swim, threshold, training