Taper?

Wow, it’s been a long time since my last post! The reason for the radio silence is that there was just a huge amount of things going on.

On Sunday, July 8th, I did a nice workout in the single, rowing alongside a mixed quad. The mixed quad is one of our irons in the fire for the Czech Masters. We did 15 strokes on / 15 off series.

Of course, they were a bit faster than I, so I had to catch up a bit during the 15 off. In the second series I took a bit of a head start and we finished nicely rowing next to each other. I think the workout helped both of us getting sharp for the racing. Here they are collecting their bronze medal from the Czech Masters Open:

You notice that they are not rowing in our club unis. This quad has been training regularly since winter, and they have their own pink unis, hand made by Darina (bow seat). (There is also a rumor that they call each other “girls” when on the water, but they are not confirming that.)

Here are my data for the workout:

And that, dear readers, was the last training before a long hiatus. On Monday morning, at 3am, I departed to the airport, flying to Brussels for meetings. On Monday evening, I flew from Brussels to Toulouse, arriving in my Toulouse hotel room at 20 past midnight.

I intended to do a workout on Tuesday morning, and selected a hotel with a C2 erg so I could do some (indoor) rowing, but I woke up with just enough time to have breakfast and go to the office. In the evening, I had a business dinner, combined with watching the Belgium – France football (soccer) game. I was rooting for Belgium, but surrounded by French fans.

On Wednesday morning, I headed to the airport at 5am, so again no time for training. Spent most of the day in meetings in Madrid, Spain. At the end of the day, I headed home. The exercise was a sprint from the last D gate to the last C gate to catch my connecting flight at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I was in bed in Brno at 1am, Thursday morning.

On Thursday, I had a full day of meetings.

On Friday, I worked from home in the morning, and then Romana and I drove to Trebon, the place where the Czech Open Masters Championships are held. I did a pre-race workout in the single. The core of the workout was a 4x250m/250m at race pace. I am aiming at 300W of power. The challenge is to not go too far above that in the beginning of the race, because I know it will hit me back in the second half. I didn’t wear a heart rate monitor.

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