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Aug 30 2017

SUP (or SUB?) PEAK

The last week of the summer school vacations and beautiful weather.

I knew rowing in the afternoon was going to be asking for trouble. More windy conditions, and, mainly, lots of recreational boats. So I drove to the lake in the morning, forgetting that I had given the boat house keys to Lenka and she hadn’t returned them. I did open the gate with the phone, but then I had no way to enter the boat house. So I lost 25 minutes of driving through Brno, took my loss and drove to work, arriving there at 7am. I left a little earlier. What a luxury. On Tuesday I had a 6 hour call and then another call, ending after 8pm and no time for rowing.

On the way to the lake I picked up a more permanent way to mount the phone to the boat:

It’s a mount made from three RAM elements and it allows to clamp the mount to the tube behind the footstretcher, putting the phone behind the wing rigger in a place where I can comfortably see it during the entire stroke.

The workout for today was

“1-3x(10×30″/15″ full out). Pace may fade.”

A fade it did. Of course, that was the purpose of the workout. Get deeper and deeper into the pain cave, muscles full of lactate, and get “used” to this, and row hard despite the pain, as you have to do in the final 300m of a 1k race.

I programmed this as irregular intervals in the SpeedCoach, but that limited the number of repeats to 10, so I altered this to two or three sets of 10. (In hindsight, I could have taken a slightly different approach to programming the intervals and arrived at 2 or 3 sets of 12. But optimizing my SpeedCoach workout programming skills is not really my goal.)

As there was a lot of chop and pretty strong wind, I rowed these in the gorge. The first set (top chart) with tailwind, and the second set with headwind. This is a tough workout, and it was complicated by the fact that I had to constantly check the position of hordes of Stand Up Paddle (SUP) boarders. I did manage that in the first session. In the second session, a SUP caused a late start of the second interval. The dip in power in the third interval is rowing through a turn. In the seventh interval there was a lady in an electric rental, on the wrong side of the river, steaming straight towards me. I counted on her seeing me, but when I did check behind me, six strokes later, she had managed to turn around her little boat and was rowing in the same direction as I, completely unaware of the fact that I was going much faster. I managed to stop just before my bow ball hit the back of her boat. You can see how the power fades.

Work Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|-Pwr-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00141| 00:30 |01:46.3| 36.0| 283 | 154 | 173 | 7.8 03|00140| 00:30 |01:47.1| 34.0| 308 | 177 | 181 | 8.2 05|00137| 00:30 |01:49.4| 34.0| 371 | 180 | 183 | 8.1 07|00133| 00:30 |01:52.7| 34.0| 341 | 180 | 183 | 7.8 09|00130| 00:30 |01:55.3| 34.0| 252 | 181 | 183 | 7.6 11|00134| 00:30 |01:51.9| 34.0| 363 | 181 | 183 | 7.9 13|00132| 00:30 |01:53.6| 34.0| 223 | 181 | 183 | 7.8 15|00125| 00:30 |01:59.9| 34.0| 216 | 180 | 182 | 7.4 17|00119| 00:30 |02:06.0| 32.0| 220 | 180 | 181 | 7.4 19|00119| 00:30 |02:06.0| 32.0| 282 | 179 | 182 | 7.4 Workout Summary --|01773| 07:30 | 2:6.9| 26.9| 254 | 178 | 184 | 8.8

And Series II:

Work Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|-Pwr-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00132| 00:30 |01:53.6| 34.0| 222 | 159 | 172 | 7.8 03|00114| 00:30 |02:11.5| 28.0| 222 | 168 | 172 | 8.1 05|00119| 00:30 |02:06.0| 34.0| 217 | 177 | 181 | 7.0 07|00114| 00:30 |02:11.5| 34.0| 316 | 179 | 182 | 6.7 09|00117| 00:30 |02:08.2| 34.0| 318 | 181 | 184 | 6.9 11|00108| 00:30 |02:18.8| 30.0| 188 | 181 | 182 | 7.2 13|00085| 00:30 |02:56.4| 26.0| 168 | 179 | 181 | 6.5 15|00110| 00:30 |02:16.3| 32.0| 084 | 176 | 180 | 6.9 17|00116| 00:30 |02:09.3| 34.0| 284 | 179 | 182 | 6.8 19|00121| 00:30 |02:03.9| 32.0| 314 | 181 | 183 | 7.6 Workout Summary --|01536| 07:30 | 2:26.4| 26.5| 205 | 177 | 184 | 7.7

As the intervals are just a few strokes short, the average power and pace are influenced a lot when you miss the start of the interval by one stroke. Here are two charts taking only the strokes above 30spm.

I was worried a bit about drive length. It averaged out to 102 degrees for the “on” strokes. Not too bad, but about 4 degrees shorter than normal. For the headwind series. For the tailwind series, I reached my usual 106 degrees.

With the Android phone in the new holder, I took the opportunity to record Quiske boat and seat acceleration. In the warming up, I had to wait for the phone to allow me to unlock it. With iPhones, I had no issues with fingerprint recognition, but the Samsung is terrible. And the problem is, after a couple of attempts, it locks up for five minutes. I have to remember to switch off the fingerprints and use a pass code only.

What I was curious to see is how seat velocity coincided with a few characteristic (for my rowing) acceleration wiggles in the middle of the drive/recovery cycle.

So this is boat acceleration for 6 selected intervals (first, fifth and last of each set).

And here is the average seat velocity:

You can see that the wiggles start when the seat comes to rest, so that means it is the back swing, arm pull, arms away, back swing part of the stroke that is causing it. If you look careful, you can also see that the acceleration wiggles are stronger when the seat speed is high for a longer duration. That happens when I have a more pronounced “legs first, then back” stroke. I wish there was a way to extract a metric describing this. Then I would use rowsandall.com’s Trend Flex and other tools to find correlations with rowing efficiency. Now, I can look at pretty charts and wonder which of the two styles is the more effective.

To get an impression of reproducability, I also took charts with all individual strokes.

During the cooling down, I rowed straight through about 30 SUPs, and I almost collided when I tried to row around a wind surfer who suddenly changed course. Let’s hope that this season is the peak of the SUP hype.

Although I have to say that I haven’t met a person on a SUP who isn’t enjoying himself, is happy and friendly, and doesn’t mind the splash when I do an emergency stop.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: Anaerobe power, anaerobic power, ANP, lactate, OTW, rowing, single

Aug 28 2017

Monday – Speed work in the double

A short training in the evening. When I made it to the rowing club after work, Romana had already rigged the boat and cleaned it after transport.

Going into the taper for Bled, I wanted this one to be an intensive but short training. I chose my beloved 45″/R75″ format. I personally think our boat moving skills are good, but Romana is unsure about some of the technique changes I have made. Due to rowing with the power meter and analyzing the metrics that the Oarlock has revealed, I have been making gradual changes in my technique, and the issue is that Romana hasn’t changed with them, as she was not rowing for a few weeks in June/July due to back issues.

After a 2k warming up with some 10 stroke bursts, we did 6 intervals. After the fourth one we had to do a quick turn because there was too much traffic ahead. Paddle boards, wind surfing, sail boats, and a pair from the other rowing club, who are also preparing for Bled. Actually, that ladies’ pair was rowing in the wrong direction, against the traffic pattern. I did point that out to them after we had completed our intervals. Told them a crash would have damaged two boats and ruined our plans for the World Masters Regatta.

Here is the summary:
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|-Pwr-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00200| 00:45 |01:52.5| 33.3| 000 | 140 | 166 | 8.0 02|00209| 00:45 |01:47.6| 33.3| 000 | 164 | 175 | 8.4 03|00206| 00:45 |01:49.2| 34.7| 000 | 162 | 173 | 7.9 04|00211| 00:45 |01:46.6| 33.3| 000 | 165 | 174 | 8.4 05|00189| 00:45 |01:59.0| 32.0| 000 | 168 | 176 | 7.9 06|00195| 00:45 |01:55.3| 33.3| 000 | 165 | 176 | 7.8 Workout Summary --|01210| 04:30 | 1:51.5| 33.3| 000 | 161 | 176 | 8.1

After my “friendly” chat about the traffic pattern, we turned around and rowed a “500m” against the pair. Actually, we were leading by several boat lengths after about 400m when Romana had enough of constantly turning around to check the position of paddle boarders, pedalos, sailing boats, and wind surfers, and we continued to row slowly.

I had put the Quiske sensor on Romana’s scull. So here are some charts, from all the 45″ intervals as well as the 500m.

When I put the sensor on the scull, Romana joked that she hoped that I wouldn’t remove her from the selection based on her rowing data. Of course, I praised her great rowing style. (And I don’t think there is anything wrong with these curves.)

What is interesting is to compare the scull horizontal/vertical angles of a stroke between the single and the mixed double. I don’t realize it any more, but we do row a shorter stroke, as Romana is a bit shorter than I am. And here are the data:

The outlier curve is me in the single.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: ANC, double, lake, OTW, rowing, sprintervals, training

Aug 28 2017

Race Weekend

One of the two trailers departing from Brno

Saturday

A four races day with the following program, first two editions of rowing in the single (Masters and Open), then on to the Masters 8+, and finally the Masters 4+. Yes, a coxed four.

But before that, it was time for my sons to collect the first medals for the Roosendaal family. My son Dominik won his race in the boys 2x, beating the competition by 7 seconds, in a race over “1000m”. My son Robin won his “Boys 11 years” single over “500m”, beating the competition by 10 seconds. That was an important win, his first win in his first season of racing.

The racing in Breclav is difficult. It is not at all about going as fast as possible over a straight course. Here is a map of my race in the single:

There are three “lanes” on this narrow river, and you row through a turn. To compensate for the turn, the start alignment is stacked, with lane 1 (outer) in front, and lane 3 in the back, by about a (single) boat length. At the start, you try to aim at a buoy which is in the first turn. You must row around “your” buoy. It is okay when it passes under your rigger, but you are not allowed to have it to the other side of your boat. When that happens, you are immediately disqualified. The problem is that the buoy is hardly visible.

So you end up trying to find a balance between looking over your shoulder to avoid missing the buoy and looking behind and rowing straight. The race feels like three straight segments, separated by almost 90 degrees turns. It looks easy on paper, but I have seen numerous boats disappearing into the side canal.

My 1x Masters race was quite uneventful. I didn’t row in my own single, because my daughter Lenka had her heat almost immediately after me. Instead, I took one of our bow wing rigger club Wintechs. Not a bad boat, but I do like rowing in my own single better. I guess it is just a question of being used to and being comfortable with my rigging parameters, as well as the fact that the Wintech is for slightly heavier weights than me.

Anyway, I started in lane 1, with a furious start which brought me comfortably into the lead, and after that I just watched out for passing the buoys on the correct side.

I finished in 28spm, not interested in trying to maximize my power over this race. I won a nice medal and a cool beer.

Meanwhile, my daughter Lenka finished second in her heat, but she qualified for the final because the winner of her race was disqualified for passing a buoy on the wrong side. My wife Romana got beaten in the Women’s Masters Double, by a local crew who could row the turn with their eyes closed.

An hour and a half later, it was time for my heat in the Open 1x. I was trying to hold 310W for this row, in my own single, this time. I was up against one guy from my own club, and a fast looking guy from Slovakia. The winner would go to the final, and the second place finishing closest to the winner, of the two heats. This is an interesting way to do it, because it opens the door for agreements. If I would be second behind Ondrej, he could make sure to finish just before me to minimize the difference, while “our” guy in the other heat would try to row away as much as possible from the field.

Things didn’t turn out that way, of course. The Slovak guy was much too fast for both of us, and the confused referee told Ondrej to move to the left when she should have moved to the right, so he ended up rowing part of the race in my lane 1, adding about 100m to his total distance, and finishing just ahead of me.

Anyway, it was a good race simulation. Here are the two races compared:

After the Open 1x heat, I had just enough time to get some fresh water in my bottle and then I had to run to the eight. Three boats, so a full field, but the average age of the third boat was about 20 years older than us. At this regatta, in these kind of situations, we sometimes agree to row gently for the first 800m and only race the final straight stretch, and we expected to do the same.

The problem was that the starter’s megaphone wasn’t working, so we were caught by surprise when the Slovak eight next to us started, and we immediately forgot our gentlemen’s agreement and went to race mode.

It was a very tough race but in the second part of the turn we managed to pass them (we were doing the outer turn) due to our coxswain’s steering genius. We took the sharpest line we could get without rounding our buoys on the wrong side. Blades were overlapping with the Slovak eight in one place, but that was due to their steering mistake, and they overcorrected and steered too close to the bank and overhanging branches.

My final “win” of the day was the race in the 4+ Masters. This time we kept our promise and rowed this like a steady state training, beating the two other boats easily.

I had no races on Sunday, so I spent most of the day in the shadow under a tree, watching the kids race. Here’s a picture of my daughter after winning the Junior’s double:

Verca, the girl on the left, is very happy. It’s her first win in rowing.

And here are two videos that capture the atmosphere of the races. From my place under the trees I filmed first a girls’ singles race, and then a boys’ quad race (with my son Dominik as the cox’n). In the quad race, the boat with the blue blades is from our club.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: eight, four, OTW, racing, rowing, single

Aug 24 2017

According to Stravistix, I should be Fresh

Wednesday

This was supposed to be one of the last “hard” weeks before the World Rowing Masters Regatta. So after a complex day at work I drove to the rowing club. I was determined to do the 4x2km / 5min session. It hadn’t been so hard doing it a week ago.

But I was still feeling tired, even though Strava told me I am Fresh:

I think Strava being geared to endurance sports has some difficulty to estimate muscular fatigue that happens during a weekend of sprint racing. The other thing Stravistix doesn’t account for is driving a trailer, work related stress and lack of sleep. I am guilty of all three.

The Masters rowers made fun of me when I showed up with the Quiske gadget, a phone, and a SpeedCoach. They told me I should also take a battery pack with me to charge all that equipment.

They were right. When I set off, the SpeedCoach battery was 0/5. Luckily, the Garmin Forerunner was all charged up. But it wasn’t fun, because if the SpeedCoach would die during the 4x2k, I would have to switch to an alternative distance measurement.

There was a lot of wake and chop going on but despite being tired, I actually enjoyed the two first intervals. It’s fun to go at 26spm and just try to let the boat run. However, the third interval started out difficult. I was feeling the tiredness.

Then the SpeedCoach battery died on me and that was it. I decided to slowly row back to the dock.

Today, looking at the heart rate, I can see I was really tired, despite what Stravistix says. Look at the comparison with a week ago:

This morning, I woke up in time to go to the rowing club before work, but I decided to sleep for another ten minutes. I woke up an hour later. Well, I guess a rest day was due. Sometimes the plans don’t work out.

I did look at the Quiske boat acceleration and oar angle measurement:

I took samples from the beginning and end of each interval. Looks pretty consistent to me.

Tomorrow: A gentle row before work. After work, back to the club to pick up the trailer and drive it for Breclav. Another weekend of racing.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: 4x2km, HD, rowing, single, training

Aug 22 2017

New Sensor Test – Boat and Seat Acceleration

Monday was a rest day which I really really needed. I just walked around at work, had a good lunch, and happily worked while my body (hopefully) worked on repairing muscle damage, repleneshing energy stores, and all the good stuff that causes the training effect.

This morning I had a Steady State row scheduled, but I allowed myself a bit of Play Time with New Rowing Gadget. I have been playing with the Quiske System since I received it a week ago, but due to racing I hadn’t gotten around trying the Quiske sensor under the seat. I do have a strict “No New Gadgets During Races” rule, you know. I only add electronics with proven benefits. Also, this Masters rower cannot process more than 2 numbers, maybe three, during a race, so sticking with stroke rate and power, and perhaps one additional variable, is my mantra.

What is the Quiske System? Here’s a picture of the elements, taken just before this morning’s outing:

Ignore the big blue SpeedCoach. Behind my footstretcher you see an Android phone running the RowP app. This app does a similar thing as RowinginMotion. It measures all the usual rowing parameters (pace, stroke rate, etc) but it also records boat speed and boat acceleration curves. After the row, you can see your sessions on the web portal, and select ranges of strokes to look at acceleration curves. The innovation is the sensor pod under my seat. Yes, that little white thingy with the Quiske logo. The red part is a piece of tape. The holder for the sensor pod was slightly damaged, so I added some reduncancy. That sensor pod connects to the RowP app through Bluetooth and it measures the seat acceleration. If you put the sensor on your oar, which can also be done, you can measure your stroke length, oar angular acceleration, and the oar vertical movement.

Very cool.

So how can all this make you faster? I personally think this is a multi step process. You can look at the curves while rowing, but chances are you have no clue about what is a “good” curve. The way out, I think, is to just record, upload the data to the portal, and look at the results. Then, try to correlate them back to per-stroke metrics like stroke length, work per stroke, etc, and look at the influence on boat speed. Video analysis has a role as well. Only by combining these analysis methods you can find what the curve means. Then, if you’re lucky, you will find that a certain characteristic wiggle or spike in your boat acceleration curve is related to a jerky hands away movement. And only after you have established that link, you can start using the in-boat display of the curve for direct feedback. (By the way, on the picture above, I could not even use the display for direct feedback, because it was out of the field of view, hidden behind the wing rigger. I have a better mount on order to solve that problem.)

Another thing that I like about the Quiske system is that it enables you to measure “actionable” metrics. Things like “catch efficiency”, “check”, “catch duration” are interesting numbers, but they are hard to relate to something that you can feel and control in the boat. I prefer things like stroke length, handle speed and acceleration or seat speed and acceleration. I can imagine working on speeding up or slowing down the seat during the recovery, or eliminating bum shoving during the drive. They are things rowers can feel and coaches can see.

So, to play with the system, I added a few 20 stroke bursts to my steady state training, and the end result looked like this:

Just about 8% of the workout time was thus spent somewhere else than in the UT1/UT2 power band. The bursts were short enough that perhaps the only metabolic thing would be a temporary lactate spike, which then would be nicely burnt in the subsequent UT1 interval.

And … here are the charts:

I am not going to go into deep analysis at the moment and I am not going to make any statement about impact on boat speed. The boat speed numbers are impacted by the wind anyway, as 22, 26, 30 and 34spm were rowed in headwind and 24, 28, 32 and 36spm were rowed in tailwind conditions.

Just a few observations:

Peak accelaration at the start of the drive becomes more pronounced with increasing stroke rate, as does a second peak towards the end of the drive, when my body is slowing down on the slide and the momentum is transferred to the shell
A lot of small acceleration peaks at the end of the drive, start of the recovery. I hypothesize that they are related to back swing, arms away, recovery back swing.
The clear division between slow and fast stroke rates in the recovery acceleration profile. They are totally different rowing strokes, as rating up involves speeding up on the recovery, which leads to a boat surge
A period during the drive where the seat speed is negative. Back swing, probably. Good, or bad? I am making a note to reread Kleshnev to see if he mentions this.
In the recovery, I am trying to accelerate slightly into the catch. I think I see that in the data, but it is not very pronounced at higher stroke rates. Again, I have no idea how strong an effect to expect, so I am not going to say if these curves are good or bad.

I think it is great that we have both Quiske and RowinginMotion. At first glance they are similar, but the details are different. RiM can be expanded through a 1.000,- EURO sensor box, while Quiske is expanded through the 299,- EURO sensor pod. The pricing for the Analytics platform is similar. I am not going to make a full comparison table, as I think that both solutions have a roadmap of new features that are going to be added continuously, so let’s see how the systems evolve.

Oh, and this is how our rowing club and lake presented themselves this morning. Long sleeve temperatures, but o so beautiful.

Yes, that is morning mist over the water.

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By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: OTW, quiske, rowing, single, steady state, training

Aug 22 2017

Sunday – more racing

The weather had changed from calm to windy. A nasty crosswind.

My first race was the Masters mix 2x with Romana. We weren’t sure what to expect, but we agreed that we would row it as a test race to Bled. Row our own race.

We launched early to get a few practice starts in and to get used to the chop and the crosswind. Then it was time for our start. The locals from Trebon to our right side looked dangerous, and we were also nervous for the trainer from Lodni Sporty, the other club in Brno, who rowed with her son who was over on vacation from Norway. He looks big. Also, I am convinced that the fastest mix Masters combinations are young guys with a “average age compensating” lady. That was it. Just three boats in the C category.

Aligning boats in a strong crosswind is not an easy task. We moved all the way to the stroke side buoys, hoping that the aligning would be fast enough to prevent us from moving over to the other side of the lane and having to row the first race strokes in the buoys. We managed that, but the last boat to be aligned was ours, so Romana was busy paddling, and the boat was not set, when the starter called “GO”.

We were second out of the start. Trebon was in front by a meter. Lodni Sporty were falling behind fast. Bye bye guy from Norway.

But with a 500m race, not leading out of the start, you’ve got a problem.

Tried to solve the problem by just keeping the stroke rate high. No settle, just furious 37/38spm strokes in the chop. “Row our own race” plan went out of the window.

I think we narrowed the gap to 30 cm, but we couldn’t quite close it. Then the gap opened again, as my legs started to hurt. I was definitely not rested after Saturday’s four races. So we were second. And we were disappointed. During the paddle home I had to explain why I needed to do four races on Saturday. The “Row our own race to prepare for Bled” argument was not deemed valid any more.

We all have our ways to deal with disappointment. It was OK.

I spent an hour in our team van to write up the blog post about Saturday’s races, and then I moved over to where my brother in law Tomas had his boat trailer. I explained to him that we would probably finish last in the Men’s Open 2x race, because I was really tired. We agreed to still row the race “to prepare for Bled” and do it in a leisurely 30spm.

So around 2pm we warmed up and rowed to the start.

Six boats. All young guys … and us in lane 3. The wind was very strong in the first 500m of the race course, because at this point the lake is not shielded by the spa park trees any more. The plan was to just row and survive the first 500, then find good rhythm and row the entire 2k at 30spm.

Attention – GO. Off we went. I did the full power start and first 15 strokes thing, but the five other boats were gone by the time we were finished with that. Ok, too bad, but we wanted to row our own race anyway.

The first 500m were a struggle, but not as bad as I expected, and we managed to find a good rhythm sooner than the 500m mark.

Somewhere around the 500m mark the boat on lane 1 was reappearing in my peripheral vision. I just kept going in 30/31 spm and at this slow stroke rates I felt pretty good.

We passed that boat, and to my surprise we were now in closing distance to the boat in lane 6. “Wow, all these guys go out like crazy and then settle to a really slow middle 1k,” I thought.

We passed the double in lane 6, and to let Tomas know that I was fine, I called “catch the next one”.

By now we had 1k to go. The regular Masters distance, and we were going gently enough to not be scared by that at all. And the first three boats were not so far ahead of us.

Unfortunately, these three boats started to row away from us. We just kept going. Lane 6 was passed by lane 1 as well, and started to fall behind.

Crossing the 500m line, the lane 1 boat did a visible shift in stroke rate. In fact, in that final 500m they managed to get back a lot of the distance Tomas and I had put between them and us. In the end it boiled down to a final sprint towards the finish line. I was really tired by then, but we managed and we finished just ahead of them.

Nice!

What a great race. It’s a pity that the 2k is not the Masters distance.

About 10 seconds after that, I became extremely disappointed, seeing the dreaded word “STOP” in the middle bar of my SpeedCoach. Oh no!

I had reset the SpeedCoach at the end of our warming up row, planning to switch it to “READY” by the time we would start aligning at the start. But of course, with the cross wind and all, I forgot. This was the second time that happened this weekend.

There was a glimpse of hope when I noticed that Tomas had switched on his SpeedCoach GPS. So after the race I took it to the computer and tried to download the data. This is when I found out that Tomas doesn’t have DataPack installed. So then I wanted to use the Recall function and take photos of the screen, but the memory was full with older data. Why can’t the bloody thing just remember the most recent 100 splits, instead of filling up the memory and then just not recording any more!

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: 2k, double, OTW, race, racing, rowing, sprint

Aug 20 2017

Saturday – A storm and a storm of races

On Friday evening, we had a nice dinner at the Regent Beer Brewery, then went to our hotel to get a good night’s rest before the races.

It wasn’t to be like that. Two hours later I woke up because of the storm. It sounded like a hurricane was going over Brno, and I started to get very worried about our boats. We had them outside on the Trebon rowing club grounds. On the one hand, our boats were in a relatively shielded area, under some trees. On the other hand, our boats were under some trees!

I just listened to the sound and worried and wondered if I should go out, drive through the storm, and check the boats. But then, imagining myself under those trees, in the hurricane, … hmm. Luckily, the storm was short and the wind calmed down.

In the morning, I received a picture from my brother in law, who was sleeping in a cabin on a camping about 20 km away.

Not good. Tomas was sleeping in the cabin opposite, but there were people inside when the tree fell. Luckily, nobody got hurt, but it is a small miracle.

On to the races. Luckily, we found all our boats in good order. The first race was for my son Robin, competing in the 500m single scull in the Boys 11 category. He raced to a great second place. Unfortunately, I didn’t see his race, because my single was planned for 10 minutes later.

My first race was the Masters 1x. A full field of C rowers. On lane 1, Radek Skodik from Hodonin, a merry chap who combines horse racing with race rowing. He learned to scull a year ago, and this year he is confident enough to race the single. Me, on lane 2. On lane 3, a Mr Lacko from Roudnice. Lane 4, Tomas Zeman from Smichov Prague, bronze medal at the Masters Nationals. Lane 5, a Mr Gerhat from Prerov. On lane 6, Jan Dekanovsky from Tabor, fourth place at the Masters Nationals.

My race plan was well prepared. I consider this a training race, so the plan was to go out hard and fast, then settle to 325W exactly, and hold that to the finish line.

“Lane 2 a little forward. Lane 1 a little forward. Lane 4 back. Attention. GO!”

Well, that caught me a bit by surprise, and my first start stroke was not as planned. Luckily, I managed to correct immediately in the second stroke, and as the adrenalin was kicking in, I hammered 5 hard strokes after the start which brought me to the lead, and then another 2 sets of five hard stroke which gave me a length of lead on the field. Yep, my starts can be fast.

Shift down to target power. This is always very difficult. The risk is dropping the stroke rate too much, and actually that is exactly what happened.

I was approaching the second 250m in 30spm. I noticed, and corrected. The field crawled back a bit. I just continued to hold 325W, slightly raising stroke rate with each 100m gone. With 200m to go I didn’t like that Mr Dekanovsky was moving ahead of the field and starting to close in on me, so I pushed a bit more. I crossed the line in 3:48, three seconds before Jan Dekanovsky. Nice.

What is also nice is that this workout is moving my power-duration curve (also known as CP chart). Here are the before and after pictures. First, before:

Then, after. Check the values on the y axis.

My Silver race at the Czech Masters was 347W over 3:56 minutes. This race was 358W over 3:48 minutes. I guess the 15 hard strokes after the start made the big difference, but I tend to think these are not the ones that punish you in the second 500m.

This win was the start of a series of races. I did four races in total within a two hour time frame.

The first one was the Masters/Child combination with my son Dominik. We battled ourselves to a nice second place on the 500m, in a time of 1:52. I think it is a nice result and a great time, especially given that most of the other Masters took a 14 year old, where I was rowing with a 12 year old. It is fun to scull with Macon blades. You really have to row technical and make sure you get the blade placement right. As a result, I didn’t row this race full out.

Shortly after that, I swapped my son for a fresh family member. My brother-in-law Tomas took his place and we rowed the Masters 2x over 1000m. That was a great race, racing wise. Immediately out of the start, I am told that we were leading. I do not know, because I was busy stroking the double and looking straight back to avoid bringing the boat out of balance. Then, Zeman+Ulc from Smichov took over the lead, with Dekanovsky and his partner, who had a slower start, starting to catch up with us. At the 500m point I started to increase the pressure and we passed Zeman+Ulc. Unfortunately, so did Dekanovsky and co, and in the process they also passed us. With 250m to go I rated up and we started to catch up with Dekanovsky, but they did a great final sprint to secure their win. We were second in a time of 3:33. I consider that not bad for the neutral wind conditions. It will not be a winning time in Bled, but we should be able to beat a few crews.

The closing event of my marathon racing afternoon was a 500m double scull. Again with Tomas, but this time in the Open Men category. Because there weren’t enough boats registered to row heats, the race organizers had replaced the heats with a 500m sprint on Saturday. I was tired already and we didn’t race well. Our first 250m was great, and we were hanging off the end of the field but I even had hope that we would be able to pass the fifth placed boat. Unfortunately, we got thrown out of rhythm by a few waves and never were able to get back into it. It shows that we have not enough meters rowed together.

I have no digital record of this sprint, because I forgot to switch the SpeedCoach to recording.

So we were last, and on Sunday’s 2km I expect to finish last as well, but it will be a good training/race. We need to make meters together.

My son Dominik came third in his Boys 12 race (a 1k event) and my daughter Lenka survived the heats and qualified for the A final in the combined Juniors/Women 2x (over 2k). So Sunday will be an interesting race day.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: 1k, 500m, double, OTW, race, rowing, single, sprint

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SUP (or SUB?) PEAK

Monday – Speed work in the double

Race Weekend

According to Stravistix, I should be Fresh

New Sensor Test – Boat and Seat Acceleration

Sunday – more racing

Saturday – A storm and a storm of races

Calendar

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