The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Another week in lockdown. So, what’s happened.

The Bad and the Ugly

This first graph shows the number of people tested positively on COVID-19 in the Czech Republic. The chart starts on January 27 and ends on March 30. The schools closed on March 10, State of Emergency on March 12 and near complete lockdown on March 16. It’s an ugly graph.

Here is a chart with the number of newly positively tested per day. In the period coverer in the chart, test capacity ramped up from 1000 per day on March 17 to 5000 per day on March 30. This is a hopeful chart. Even more hopeful is the day over day percentage growth of the positively tested.

That’s the black line on the chart (axis on the right), which starts on March 8 and ends today. We’re on the second day of single digit growth.

The bad is that 27 people have died, many are fighting for their life, and we’re expecting the deaths starting to peak. We’re also not at the critical level in the hospitals, where the mortality rate makes a step because there simply is no capacity to treat everyone. I am hoping we can avoid that scenario.

Also in the category “bad” and very sad news is the death of a 48 year old nurse. The story is fragmented, but here is what I understood. She admitted one of the first Corona patients to the hospital, got infected and, without knowing it, probably infected more than 40 other hospital staff. She was put in quarantine and made an end to her life a few days ago. What we also know is that a huge crowd of know-it-alls was badmouthing her on social media, and she took this very heavily. Even though the ministry of health and the hospital leadership stood on her side with the message that she was not to blame, we lost her. These people are working under immense pressure, in a very dynamic environment, and should not be judged by people who don’t understand their jobs. Everyone makes mistakes and wrong decisions unknowingly. The news made me angry.

More sad news is that heroin addicts are now without heroin. This is going to lead to additional deaths.

There doesn’t seem to be too much positive news.

So here is one positive picture. It was taken from the center of Prague, and it shows the snow covered Giant Mountains in the background. Yes, that’s a visibility of 140 to 150 kilometers. The cold winter weather combined with very low levels of pollution have made the sky so clear.

Working Out at Home

So, that puts all that is following into perspective. Nothing sad or heroic will follow. Just a Masters Rower working from home, trying to do his daily routines.

On Thursday, 26 March, I did Eric Murray’s 10x1min/1min session.

Unfortunately, BoatCoach stopped recording after a few intervals, so here is the warming up and the first part of the workout:

Here is the workout summary as copied from the PM:

Workout Summary - media/281ddb1e44-20200326-154801-dummy_workout_templateo.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|04347|00:20:00.0|02:18.0|184.8|29.9|190.5|269.0|07.3
W-|02900|00:10:00.0|01:43.4|313.1|29.9|190.5|269.0|09.7
R-|01463|00:10:00.0|03:25.0|056.6|29.9|190.6|269.0|04.6
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00285|01:00.0|01:45.3|300.1|30.0|162.0|162.0|09.5
01|00284|01:00.0|01:45.6|288.2|29.0|165.0|165.0|09.8
02|00286|01:00.0|01:44.9|294.3|29.0|269.0|269.0|09.9
03|00287|01:00.0|01:44.5|297.4|29.0|268.0|268.0|09.9
04|00288|01:00.0|01:44.2|300.5|29.0|170.0|170.0|09.9
05|00288|01:00.0|01:44.2|309.7|30.0|169.0|169.0|09.6
06|00292|01:00.0|01:42.7|322.7|30.0|172.0|172.0|09.7
07|00290|01:00.0|01:43.4|316.2|30.0|175.0|175.0|09.7
08|00291|01:00.0|01:43.1|319.4|30.0|175.0|175.0|09.7
09|00309|01:00.0|01:37.1|382.5|33.0|180.0|180.0|09.4

It was good. I may have been able to go a little faster even. I was thinking 1:44 was a good 2000m pace, and according instructions did the first 6 intervals slightly slower, intervals 7, 8 and 9 at that pace and interval 10 to empty the tank. In the 1min/1min genre of workouts, I am frankly used to doing more intervals.

But it was a sweet little workout.

On Friday, I did a land workout. A week ago, it was squatting and jumping that dominated the workout. This time, it seemed heavy on core work. But overall, it was a bit lighter. It was beautiful weather, so I took some pictures of my improvised gym:

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On Saturday, I was supposed to do a threshold ergometer workout, but I just did a walk in the forest with Romana instead. Escape the cage. We kept social distance.

On Sunday, I did the Eric Murray steady state work (4×8 minutes):

It was a nice and short workout:

It stung a little bit in the end, but not as much as today’s steady state workout:

5km @ 18 SPM, 4km @ 20 SPM, 3km @ 22 SPM, 2km @ 24 SPM, 1km @ 26 SPM.

As you can see, I started the 2km at 24 SPM, but dropped to 20 SPM after 500m. I just didn’t like it that my heart rate was so high. I like my steady state to be rate (and heart rate) limited. This workout was a little too much at the end. Anyway, I got some good meters in here. It was cold weather. In the morning, it had been snowing, but when I rowed there was some sun. When there was a cloud in front of the sun, I found it a little chilly, but in the direct sunshine, it was a little warm. Well, you can’t have it all. It’s good to be outside.

I spend about 14 hours per day looking at this:

As many of you, my only contact with my coworkers is through a screen. It sucks.

But it’s a lot better than all the bad stuff at the top of my post.

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