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wk43

Oct 31 2018

Catching Up with my Training Diary – plodding along

My last training diary post was on October 15th. It’s been a bit busy since then. I have released two major upgrades to the rowsandall.com site: The redesign, and Training Planning.

Since I released those two upgrades, most of my free time was consumed by bug fixing (despite a month of testing in the group of beta testers, there are always bugs that are discovered only by “real” users). So here’s what’s happened after October 15th:

Week 44 is not complete yet, but you can see I am struggling to put in the training that I had planned. Here’s a detailed look at each of the weeks:

Week 42

So in week 42 I was supposed to doing a volume week, but I had to go on an unexpected business trip. Skipped the swim planned for Monday, the bike to work and back planned for Friday and a run planned for Sunday. I did put in my weights training, two steady state erg rows and that disastrous 4x2k. A positive thing to mention is that I am succeeding at making my steady state erg sessions longer. It was a shock being back on the erg after spending the entire spring and summer in the boat, but I am slowly succeeding in finding a way to “enjoy” 75 minutes and longer of steady state ergometer plodding.

Week 43

Swim – done

Weights – done

Steady state – one 85 minute session duly done, one missed.

Twelve km run – done

5x1500m session – done

After the 4x2km debacle of week 42, I set out very conservatively on the 5x1500m row. I targeted 215W or higher. In the end, the average was around 230W:


Workout Summary - media/20181025-1826280o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10728|53:32.0|02:29.7|148.4|21.0|150.0|181.0|09.6
W-|07500|28:31.0|01:54.1|232.9|26.0|161.4|181.0|10.1
R-|03229|25:00.0|03:52.3|052.0|15.2|137.1|181.0|10.3
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01500|05:36.6|01:52.2|228.0|25.4|154.8|170.0|10.5
01|01500|05:47.8|01:55.9|225.1|25.4|158.6|172.0|10.2
02|01500|05:45.3|01:55.1|229.5|26.0|162.8|176.0|10.0
03|01500|05:47.5|01:55.8|228.0|25.7|164.1|176.0|10.1
04|01500|05:34.5|01:51.5|254.4|27.7|166.5|181.0|09.7

Here’s the chart:

It’s interesting to compare this ‘good’ row with that disastrous 4x2km row:

It seems that the difference really just is in the 4x2km biting in the final 500. Maybe also a question of getting used to the erg.

Week 44 so far

Nothing to see here. I did my weights session on Tuesday and I am going to do another 5x1500m today. I am also racing a 4x+ in Amsterdam on Sunday, over 4 km.

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head1

Oct 15 2018

From One Extreme To The Other

Title will become clear later. But first, race pictures:

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Sunday – Quad Heaven

Half of our Head of Prague eight decided to go out as a mixed quad on Sunday afternoon. I sat on three seat instead of my usual stroke position and I loved it. Because of the heavy wind, we chose to go into the gorge and enjoy the autumn colors and the castle. It was absolutely gorgeous. As it was the day after the race, it wasn’t a very taxing row.

Recorded with the Garmin because I left my SpeedCoach as well as my phone at home. So no stroke rate data.

 

Monday – Erg Hell

This week is supposed to be a volume week, but I have to represent my boss at a meeting in Brussels, which cuts out almost 48 hours. Not knowing exactly how the rest of the week will unfold training and energy wise, I decided to take the heavy session today, even though I had raced just two days ago. I thought I could consider Sunday’s row as a recovery row.

Not.

I thought 240W would be a good target power for this 4x2km/5min row.

Not.

After one interval, I was convinced I was doing fine.

After the second interval, I knew the third one was going to be hard.

After the third interval, I negotiated a lower power for the fourth one with myself.

After 100m in the fourth interval, I broke down completely and just rowed a 2k cooling down.


Workout Summary - media/20181015-1845320o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|16262|51:38.0|01:35.3|150.0|20.5|149.4|179.0|15.4
W-|07975|31:36.0|01:58.9|214.0|24.2|159.4|179.0|10.4
R-|08291|20:01.0|01:12.5|049.1|14.5|133.6|179.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01975|07:22.4|01:52.0|240.8|25.6|159.8|175.0|10.5
01|02000|07:37.3|01:54.3|240.1|25.5|167.7|179.0|10.3
02|02000|07:34.9|01:53.7|240.5|26.0|170.6|179.0|10.1
03|02000|09:02.1|02:15.5|147.9|20.5|142.8|149.0|10.8

I forgot to pull a stroke in the fourth rest interval, which messed up the stats a bit. The total distance was a lot less than 16km.

Oh, I rowed with the Quiske pod and RowP app  during the warming up.

I may have inserted the pod the wrong way under the slide, because I got 0 score for “Seat Stopped” and “Leg Speed”. Will try next time. I like how the app gives feedback during the row.

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Capture

Oct 14 2018

Saturday Race Day: Head of Prague

We arrived in Prague at 8am. Actually, we were the first to order coffee at the bar of the Prague rowing club Blesk (“Lightning”). Coffee and cake, and then getting our boat ready for the race.

Again, we were competing in the Mix 8+ category. No age restrictions, so we were up against combined Juniors crews as well as other Masters crews. For us, the Head of Prague is more a nice autumn experience than a “must win” race.

We had great fun rowing up to the start and enjoying the fine, sunny autumn weather along with 50 other eights waiting for the first boat to start.

We had some difficulty in the middle part of the race. Some tourists on a motor boat were going on in the middle of the river, at about the same speed as us, and for about 1500m we were surfing on their wake. I think we took about 100 Liters of water in that stretch. Sitting on 6 seat, both my oarlock and the stroke’s were under water a couple of times and we got a good share of cold water.

Then, “The Turn”. Our club president cheering on the bridge gaves us a 6 out of 10, with most other crews being slower but some remarkably faster.

The Roosendaal’s were well represented in our crew, named “Zrejme Dobrej Oddil” (= “Apparently a good club”). Romana rowed in 4, Sander on 6, and Dominik (13) was our coxswain. I think the following 10 minute video captures the race atmosphere well:

The video was my first experiment with a GoPro chest strap. I think that a head mount will be better next time. The main protagonists of the video are coxswain Dominik and our stroke man and walking encyclopedia of Czech Rowing Martin “The Turkey” Krocil.

My heart rate monitor had some issues in the first part of the race. Otherwise the stroke rate and pace is accurate.

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myimage (6)

Oct 14 2018

Week 41

Week 41, that’s how this week was called in my training plan.

On Sunday, we did a practice row in the eight. We were missing a couple of our strongest guys, and when we did a trial 3km at head race pace, we felt it. Eda and I had heavy legs from the Hradiste Head Race of the previous day, and our stroke Martin was doing his second workout of the day.

On Monday, I took a rest day.

On Tuesday, I went to the gym and did an hour of weights.

On Wednesday, I had my first full erg workout since April (ignoring 10 minute warming up and cooling down pieces in the gym). It was a 60 minute steady state row and I used Zwift to make it less boring, so it was in fact a “ride to the Radio Tower and back”. Zwift users will understand.

I was quite positive in the beginning of the workout, seeing nice power numbers. However, in the second half, I had to reduce the power and pace in order to stay within reasonable heart rate values. I had forgotten how sweaty a steady state erg can be.

On Thursday, I went for an hour of swimming in our nearby 50m pool. First swim in a long time and I enjoyed it.

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20181006_155927

Oct 7 2018

Head Race Video with Rowing Data

Here’s a (shortened) video of my head race in Hradiste. It’s cool to have the Empower oarlock data integrated in the video.

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20181006_155935

Oct 7 2018

Hradiště 6km head race – race report

Saturday, October 6, 2018

Head Race Day! I was up early, far too early. The town of Uherske Hradiště is an hour drive east of Brno and our race wouldn’t start until 2pm. We left Brno at 9:30 after picking up my club mate (and competitor) Eduard. The early departure time was to allow Romana to coach one of her Junior girls.

Arriving in Babice, at the place of the start of this 6km race, we found sunny weather, fair temperatures and a nasty head wind. The race is down stream on the river Morava, but the river was low because of the draught and there was very little flow. Actually, it would be wiser to stick to the middle of the river to avoid rowing into shallow parts. Still, a head wind blowing against the stream could potentially lead to some chop.

I contemplated setting the sculls a bit lighter, but then thought through the consequences and decided to not do it.

The race went pretty well. I started off and settled on my target 230W, not worrying about the stroke rate too much. I knew the stroke rate would be a bit lower in the head wind, and focused on hitting the power and work per stroke target. I also counted series of 30 strokes, 10 strokes focus on sitting straight at the catch, 10 strokes on legs, 10 strokes on back swing.

The course has a few turns and it was always a surprise what the wind would do after the next turn. At one point, about 1600m into the race, the wind really kicked up some waves. I hit a wave with the bottom of my right blade and nearly capsized. It stopped me for one stroke, then I continued to struggle into the head wind. I had no pace information on my SpeedCoach, and kept trying to hit my power targets, but in the middle 2km, the roughest bit, this was pretty hard.

I was rowing away from the guy behind me (David Ulc) and catching up on someone in front of me, but I wasn’t sure if that was Tomas Zeman or Andrej Hudec. Only at the finish line I found out that Tomas had taken over Andrej very early in the race.

I was worried most about Tomas Zeman and my double buddy Kazimir Nedoba. In the sprint season, Kazi had been faster, but he is fast mostly in direct confrontations and has difficulty rowing in the loneliness of a head race with 1 minute start intervals. Tomas, I had beaten him numerous times in a direct 1k confrontation, but he’s a big guy, a fire fighter, and the “indestructible man” body type. I feared that he could be fast into the head wind.

The first 4km went by pretty fast. The only annoying thing was that my left oarlock started squeaking quite a lot. The fifth 1000m interval started to hurt and the final 1000m hurt a lot.

I had missed all the kilometer markers, but I didn’t really had to look for them, having reset the SpeedCoach just before the start and showing distance rowed in the bottom left bit of the screen. I also saw the first houses of Hradiste, the water got calmer, and I knew it was time to rate up.

The final 500m were really painful but I wouldn’t let myself rate down. I knew it could be a close finish between me and the other contestants, so I wanted to get out as much speed as possible.

I collapsed at the finish line, chatted with Andrej a bit, then did a 2km cooling down row.

Meeting the other Masters rowers in the boat area, we all decided to go for a quick beer before loading our boats on the trailers. On the way to the club house we stopped to look at the results:

Second place for me, “only” ten seconds behind Tomas. Looking at the 2k and 4k times, it is also clear that I lost most in the middle 2k and made up for that in the final 2k.

We had our beer and then we received our prizes in a mini ceremony. I got a nice medal, a T-shirt, and some sweets. Tomas got a cup and a bottle of home made Slivovice. Oh, and we all got kisses from Mrs Tomastikova, the charming club president of Moravia Rowing club.

The winner’s ceremony with the charming club president of Moravia Rowing Club

Here are the race charts. The overview chart and a few comparisons with a year ago. To do justice to the comparison, you have to know that a year ago the river was high and flowing fast. This year, I spent 4 minutes longer on the course.

I have a race video which is uploading to YouTube right now. I will post a separate blog post with the video.

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IMG_0994

Oct 7 2018

More traveling – the voice of the water

Thursday, September 27th

I flew to Brussels and ended up doing some work in my hotel room, too lazy to go find a swimming pool or hit the hotel fitness.

Friday, September 28th

I did hit the hotel gym and it was a good 90 minutes session. Not bad. Weights training mainly but I did a long warming up on the treadmill and elliptical.

After my meetings in Brussels, I took a train to Antwerp and had dinner with my sister. I staid over at her place, taking the opportunity to do some laundry as well.

Saturday, September 29th

No training. I took a train to my parent’s place. It’s quite a long ride from Antwerp. First the Benelux train to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport and then an intercity train to Enschede.

It was a nice trip though. I liked watching the familiar flat landscape, and crossing the big rivers between the South Netherlands and the North Netherlands is always spectacular, especially the wide river at Hollands Diep (Rhine and Meuse estuary).

The familiar flat landscape
Crossing Hollands Diep

It was my mother’s birthday, and we had a good time chatting on the terrace in the autumn sun. We also went for a 2×40 minutes hike, interrupted by a tea break, and we had dinner together.

Sunday, September 30th

I said goodbye to my parents and took a train to Zoetermeer, close to The Hague, to visit Ele Jan, an old rowing friend, and his family. In the afternoon we went to the Rijnland rowing club, now on a new location, and went out rowing. Ele Jan, Ad and myself. We took a C 3x, a boat type that I haven’t seen outside The Netherlands. It’s basically a touring type boat, wider and heavier than a standard shell. These boats are sturdy. They are not exactly coastal boats. Here’s a picture of a typical C boat:

It was good we took the C boat. It was a glorious, sunny Sunday afternoon, and about everyone in Leiden, Voorschoten and Leidschendam were taking their motor boat for a tour. We were constantly washed by their wakes, and we needed the extra stability of the C boat to be able to row through the waves.

Tuesday, October 2

On Monday I took a train to Vught where I would take part in a three day management training course. I went for a run on Tuesday morning but didn’t do anything on Wednesday.

It was quite dark at 6am, so I had to stay on the town streets and couldn’t run in the forest.

On Wednesday evening I took a train to Amsterdam. Took another picture of a river crossing from the train.

“Holland … wide rivers flowing slowly through endless low lands.” That’s from the start of a famous poem by Henri Marsman. Here’s an English translation:

Thinking of Holland

I see broad rivers

languidly winding

through endless fen,

lines of incredibly

tenuous poplars

like giant plumes

on the polder’s rim;

and sunk in tremendous

open expanses,

the farmsteads scattered

across the plain:

coppices, hamlets,

squat towers and churches

and elms composing

a rich domain.

Low leans the sky

and slowly the sun

in mist of mother

of pearl grows blurred,

and far and wide

the voice of the water,

of endless disaster,

is heard and feared.

Thursday, October 4

On Thursday, I traveled back home to Brno. In the afternoon I had time to get in a nice Head Race preparation session. It was more or less free form, but the core part was alternating 30 strokes at head race pace with 30 light strokes.

I had forgotten to change the battery in the oarlock, so the power data stopped about 4km before the end of the row.

After the row I prepared my boat for transport and loaded it on the trailer.

No rowing on Friday. A rest day before race day.

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