Jul 14 2019
Sprint preparation
Saturday
The plan prescribed a 60 minute steady state session. It was a very rainy day, and Romana and I decided to do go indoor swimming. I swam 2000 meters and needed nearly an hour to complete it.
Sunday
Planned session:
20 minutes warming up
750m @ 32spm / 4min
500m @ 34spm / 4min
250m @ 36spm
20 minutes cooling down
It seemed the rainy weather was gone, so after lunch I rode the scooter to the rowing club. Unfortunately, the single rain shower of the day occurred exactly during my scooter ride, so I had to ride slowly and arrived completely wet. The lake was entirely calm after the rain shower, so I was looking forward to an awesome row.
Unfortunately, the wind grew stronger during the row. There was also two motor boats playing catch-up on the lake, creating some irritating wakes, and a few sailing boats to avoid. So I ended up having to do all intervals in quite a heavy chop / wake.
Workout Summary - media/mailbox_attachments/2019/07/14/f147438091254dc0a6a7732d15537f15.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|-Avg--|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|-SPM--|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|02558|14:20.7|02:55.0|204.0| 27.0 |155.0|184.0|09.1
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|-SPM--|AvgHR|DPS-
02|00750|02:51.1|01:54.2| 316.0 | 31.5 | 154.0 |08.3
04|00500|01:54.8|01:54.9| 301.0 | 33.0 | 169.0 |07.8
06|00250|00:54.9|01:49.9| 337.0 | 35.0 | 158.0 |07.8
The map shows the issues. The first 750m, I was able to row pretty straight inside the buoyed lanes. I wanted to continue down the course, but then I noticed the two motor boats chasing each other, so I turned and rowed back, then noticed the motor boats were going up the lake, so I turned again, and even had to take a direction outside the buoyed course to avoid a collision, then returned to the course in a heavy wake. The final 250 was rowed in the buoyed course but with pretty heavy chop.
The peak in power coinciding with a dip in pace is me turning into the buoyed course during the 500 and hitting the motor boats wake.
After the intervals, I did a 4km cooling down. It was a short but intensive row.
Jul 29 2019
Two weeks of sprint training – part 1
The last time I wrote on my training blog was on July 15th. So I have to catch up and quickly cover 2 weeks of being back in the boat.
Week 1
Let’s look at the week overview for the first week:
So on Monday I did Steady State. Looking at the overview, it was a bit more intense than planned, but not by much. On Tuesday morning, Romana and I did some 1 minute intervals in the double.
We did fewer of them than planned (the plan was 2 sets of 6). These were the first sprint training sessions in our mixed double, and there were some technique frustrations that made us decide to take longer rests in the second set, and do fewer intervals.
On Wednesday, I did the first proper strength workout after my vacation, and it was a heavy one. I felt my sore muscles for three days afterwards, especially the upper body.
On Thursday, the only way to work out was to replace the steady state row planned for Friday with a bike ride from work to home. This is about 45 minutes. Here’s the Strava summary:
I use Strava Elevate to estimate power. It tells me this was a 229W normalized power workout. If I did that on the erg, it would be pretty close to a threshold session:
I think Strava Elevate overestimates some of the power values for the uphill parts. I have to say I arrived very sweaty and tired. But I felt that was mainly because I was cycling this with legs that were still not recovered from some pretty heavy deadlifts and squats on Wednesday’s weights session.
So on Friday, I planned to do Thursday’s 3x2k session. Unfortunately, there was a strong wind and thunderstorms around the lake, so it was not safe to go out on the water, and I had to do this session on the erg. This was the plan:
Here’s the result:
You can see that I stuck to the stroke rates, but the power levels dropped from interval 1 to interval 2 and then they dropped even more …
Accumulated fatigue had taken its toll. I decided to skip the weekend sprints session. I had no time to do it anyway. On Saturday I drove to Lipno to drop off my son Robin at a sailing summer camp. Romana and I put the bike rack on the car, and we had a nice bike ride (no data recorded) around the lake, and some swimming. We had dinner in our hotel in Lipno, and drove back home on Sunday – through pouring rain.
Here is a picture of my son from the camp:
He is the cool looking guy on the right. When I see this picture, I wish I had his age and discovered the joy of sailing again. I was lucky to grow up in The Netherlands where we had plenty of opportunity to mess around with (sailing/kayaking/canoe/rowing) boats without adult supervision. Ah, fond memories.
Week 2
Weekend rest over, moving on to the next week.
I also picked up my new Garmin watch on that day. It’s the Vivoactive 3. I will try it out for a few weeks, both for sleep tracking and recording different types of workouts.
On Tuesday, I did Wednesday’s strength session. I used the new Garmin Vivoactive 3 to autorecord exercise types and numbers of repeats. It did a pretty good job, but I felt like a gadget freak in front of my trainer, tapping the watch’s face after every set.
On Thursday, Romana and I did a 6x250m sprint session. Those sprints were supposed to be done 2 at 34spm, 2 at 36spm and 2 at 38spm.
To be honest, I planned to swap this session with Thursday’s one, and move the lighter looking 250m sprints to Thursday, to get some rest for the races. Butwhen I arrived at the lake, Romana had a really heavy day at work and she looked like she really wasn’t into any discussion. She didn’t look to energized for rowing either. This was one of these hot summer evenings when our lake turns into a 3km by 700m large swimming pool. Sailing boats. Standup paddle boards. Swimmers. Pedalos. Small electric boats. Romana hates this. She sits on bow and basically turns her head on every third stroke, and I can sense from the rowing that she’s not fully focused on technique. I guess when rowing in the single, I am worried about crashing into a pedalo or hitting a swimmer with my blade too, but in the heat of the intervals I am maybe a bit more careless. Romana is not.
So. A silent session mainly. I tactically decided to just row on stroke. We somehow did the sprints (changed from 250m distance based to 30 stroke count based so we wouldn’t have to fiddle with the electronics), and we made it a very short session:
Workout Summary - media/20190724-1710520o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07604|00:44:37.7|02:56.1|000.0|22.5|135.8|180.0|07.6
W-|01376|00:05:13.6|01:54.0|000.0|33.4|153.5|179.0|07.9
R-|06233|00:39:24.5|03:09.7|000.0|21.0|133.4|179.0|08.7
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00269|01:01.9|01:54.9|000.0|31.0|158.8|172.0|08.4 - tailwind
02|00238|00:53.4|01:52.3|000.0|31.5|156.8|173.0|08.5 - tailwind
03|00189|00:46.9|02:03.9|000.0|33.1|160.7|177.0|07.3 - headwind
04|00218|00:51.2|01:57.3|000.0|33.8|165.5|179.0|07.6 - headwind
05|00233|00:50.6|01:48.5|000.0|35.6|130.0|138.0|07.8 - tailwind
06|00228|00:49.6|01:48.6|000.0|36.1|148.4|175.0|07.7 - tailwind
I also reduced the stroke rate a bit when the traffic situation demanded it.
On Thursday, Romana and I went out in the double again. Same scenario as on Wednesday, except that this time Romana was in a very good mood, but we were time limited because we needed to load the trailer for this weekend’s regatta.
Workout Summary - media/20190725-1815590o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06729|00:40:34.3|03:00.9|000.0|23.5|140.6|182.0|07.0
W-|01171|00:04:24.8|01:53.1|000.0|34.4|152.3|181.0|07.7
R-|05563|00:36:10.0|03:15.0|000.0|22.2|139.2|181.0|06.1
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00229|00:53.3|01:56.3|000.0|33.9|116.2|131.0|07.6 - headwind
02|00243|00:56.4|01:55.9|000.0|32.9|168.8|180.0|07.9 - headwind
03|00241|00:53.6|01:51.4|000.0|34.7|156.9|181.0|07.8 - tailwind
04|00239|00:54.8|01:54.5|000.0|33.9|166.5|178.0|07.7 - headwind
05|00219|00:46.7|01:46.8|000.0|37.2|151.7|181.0|07.5 - tailwind
Boats loaded. Everything ready for the EURow (Austrian Open Masters Championships) in Linz/Ottensheim. Just need to drive the trailer from Brno to Ottensheim on Saturday. But I will report about that in a separate blog post.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0