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Jul 1 2017

Saturday: A Bike Ride

Train to Tisnov. Then following the railroad tracks for a few km. Some very nice bridges over the valleys. Finally along the Bily Potok again. 50km in total.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: bike, crosstraining, rowing

Jun 30 2017

Yesterday evening I read the book “How bad do you want it?”, which caused me to think about mental toughness and my rowing. I have always been more of a training animal than a racing animal, meaning that I regularly beat guys in training, who were able to beat me in races. The theory laid out in the book is that the conscious mind decides at what percentage of your true potential you work. In contrast to the “central governor” theory (which is about the unconscious), the theory promises that you can influence this. From my observations, there is a lot of truth in that. I improve by getting more fit, so my “comfort zone” shifts to higher power, but I don’t get as far out of my comfort zone as some other rowers.

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In 1k sprint racing, “comfort zone” being a relative thing. If you would climb the stairs at home and suddenly feel the pain you feel 600m in to a full out 1k, you would drop to the floor, start crying and think you are dying. (I am only exaggerating a bit, here.) In a 1k race, you don’t, because you anticipate the pain, which helps you coping with it. I think yesterday’s failure was a combination of being tired and expecting everything to go easy.

The book focuses on “flow”, a state where you are just doing what you do, instead of constantly judging what you are doing. Logically, but unfortunately, there isn’t a simple 5 step plan that will guarantee to improve your mental toughness if you follow it.

Now, let’s apply it to my training. I have two weeks to go to the Masters Nationals. I haven’t fully finished reading the book, so my recommendations may be premature, but what I took away from it for now is the following:

Mental toughness is a large factor in endurance performance
Mental toughness can be trained, mainly by doing a lot of the taxing endurance performances
The best way to cope with the perception of hard exercise is to find a state of flow, where the attention is focused outward, as opposed to judging and inward

Today, I was able to leave work early and get to the lake for an afternoon session in the single. So how to apply the lessons from the book?

I was scheduled for a steady state session, but I was also unhappy with yesterday’s 1k effort. At the same time, I want to avoid falling in a trap of focusing too much on 1k trials. Here is what I came up with:

Replace steady state with fartlek. Do race pace pieces as I feel
Enjoy the strong, gusty crosswinds. Build mental toughness by ignoring the weather and trying to put out a good effort despite it
Focus on “feeling” the boat, try to work in such a way that the boat moves forward in the most efficient way. Focus on the rhythm.

I also decided that in these final two weeks before the Masters Nationals, I would not focus on Wash and Effective Length any more during the row. I reprogrammed the SpeedCoach to show Stroke Rate, Power, Time, and Average Power.

No more wash! No more effective length! Over with technique metrics. Just feel the boat!

Being the quantitative guy, I was still obsessed with trying to improve my CP curve, though. I had to find a way to combine that with all of the above.

After a bit of thinking, I had it. I would just row on time (as opposed to distance), trying to hold an average power. So, I would for example row at 300W, and try to hold the average above 300W as long as possible. Note the time when I stop. Then, next time, try to add at least 10 seconds. And all of that in the worst possible conditions. Cross winds. Chop. Wind gusts. Trying to get the best out of the boat in all these conditions.

So here is how it went:

The first 18 minutes I rowed a warming up with three pace/spm bursts. Then I turned around and rowed back to the start of the 2k.

From the 2k start, in a nasty crosswind, I did a 300W effort from a standing start. After 4 minutes of rowing at 300W, seeing 307W on the SpeedCoach Average Power window, I bailed out. I rowed to the 2k finish, turned around, and rowed back to the start. Half way, I did a 30 stroke burst with 10 strokes at 300W, 10 strokes increase power by increasing length (at same stroke rate), then 10 strokes increase power by increasing stroke rate. I was imagining passing an opponent. First, I would creep on him by increasing only power (by increasing length), then I would increase the stroke rate and quickly pass him.

From the 2k start, I did a piece at 400W from a standing start, again in heavy crosswind and a lot of chop. After 1 minute, seeing an average power close to 400W, I decided to stop. I rowed to the finish of the 2k again, then turned and rowed another 1k.

There, I reset the SpeedCoach and did a standing start and then tried to hold 350W. I managed 2 minutes in the head/crosswind.

Then, it was time for a cooling down, but I was excited, and started from a standing start for a 325W effort. After 2 minutes, I had enough of it.

I am not sure how this training affects my physical fitness, but I liked it. It was fun to do, and funny enough rowing against time had a liberating effect. That may change now that I have some benchmarks.

Here is my CP chart before:

And here it is after the row:

I didn’t get any of the “Wow! A breakthrough workout!” message that I programmed into rowsandall.com, but I did manage to move the green curve. You get the “Wow” message when you row an effort above (or to the right) of the red curve. All I managed was to bring the red dots and the green curve closer to the red one.

Perhaps I should change the algorithm that determines if the workout is “WoW!”?

oh, here is the summary of today’s fartlek row in terms of power vs time:

Anyway, it was a great workout, and I think it helps me being this guy:

And I am looking forward to two weeks of sharpening and enjoying it, Sophia style:

Well … Sophia style but the Daddy’s Army Masters Rowing version of it. I happened to listen to the Dean Martin version of this song on the radio and I loved the careless, silly happiness that it radiated. So I searched for it on YouTube and found the version with Sophia. It made me very happy.

Tomorrow: Cycling with the boys.

Sunday: To Ostrava for a session in the double with Vojta. It’s gonna be fun!

The collective analysis plots from rowsandall.com for today’s session are fun too:

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: crosswind, Fartlek, lake, OTW, rowing, single

Jun 29 2017

Thursday – Failing to break through

Wednesday

It’s a busy week. Lots of things going on at work, including customers visiting and a business dinner on Tuesday evening. On top of that, temperatures are reaching > 30 degrees, already for more than a week, and on Tuesday it was 35 degrees with extreme humidity. At home, the thermostat in the living shows 28 degrees, and in the bedrooms it is warmer. This severely impacts my sleep quality.

On Wednesday morning, I rode to work. It was a dusty, high ozone affair, but I was glad I did it, knowing that the repair of my single hadn’t started, there was strong wind predicted due to cooler air nearing our region, and the fact that I still hadn’t found time to prepare my quarterly Town Hall meeting.

The mailman delivered “How bad do you want it? Mastering the psychology of mind over muscle”. I read just the foreword, because I had a presentation to prepare.

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Thursday

With the Masters Nationals in two weeks, I wanted to know where I stand. I got up early to get the workout in before work, and the plan was to do a trial 1k. I had originally planned to do this one on Friday, but it seemed smart to do it today. When I arrived at the lake, I was greeted by very choppy water. While the coolness has still not arrived (it was 21C at 5am), this is already the second day with strong wind.

I decided to row to the castle and row the 1k on the “straight kilometer”. The wind isn’t weaker on this stretch, but because the river is a lot narrower than the lake, the chop is reduced.

Usually I try to row these trials in calm weather, but this time I thought it doesn’t matter. I have a power meter, right? I am just measuring my max power over a certain duration. So, I thought, I might as well row the 1k in the headwind. Who knows when I will have to row a race in headwind, so I might just as well try to find out how hard I can pull over, what, 4 minutes and a bit? Just 1k. How hard can it be?

Before the row, I looked up my CP chart:

For a competitive person, there is a problem with this chart: It looks like a challenge. I want to move the data points to the right, or up. And as a bonus, if you set up notifications on rowsandall.com, you get a congratulatory email for every time you break through the red line.

For a four minute effort, the green line is at 305W, while the red line is at 326W. So, the plan was to do a start, then drop back to 320W, then try to increase in the final 250m, all the while monitoring technique. I was already composing the blog post with a before and after CP chart. I was also looking forward to rowing this 1000m “smart”, and not fly and die.

The reality was different. I had forgotten how hard 1k rows are, especially in the morning, alone, in non-ideal conditions.

I crossed the lake in heavy chop, then into the gorge. I did a few 10 stroke bursts on the straight kilometer, and a few practice starts after I turned around at the castle. I had the impression that the wind was getting stronger. I lined up for the start, dialed up a 1k, took a deep breath, and got started.

The plan fell apart after 200m. I didn’t know it immediately, though. I came out of the start strokes with 400W, and then I lowered the power by lowering the stroke rate, which probably was a mistake. I should have lightened up the stroke but not allow the stroke rate to drop below 32spm. It is very hard to recover from a low stroke rate. At that moment, I wasn’t aware of these risks. I just saw that there were strokes where the power was getting close to 300W. I tried to get the power back to decent values but it was very hard. Drifting a bit to port, I also had to turn slightly, which doesn’t help with the recorded power on the starboard oarlock. The gusty wind didn’t help either.

Anyway, here are the splits:

Workout Summary - media/20170629-063736-Sanders SpeedCoach 20170629 0653amo.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|01000|04:13.0|02:04.4|304.8|31.1|176.1|184.0|07.7 W-|01000|04:13.0|02:04.6|303.8|31.1|176.8|184.0|07.7 R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|184.0|00.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|00100|00:24.4|02:01.4|384.0|34.5|135.9|167.0|07.7 01|00100|00:24.0|02:00.7|328.6|31.2|173.9|177.0|08.0 02|00100|00:25.2|02:05.9|313.7|30.9|178.6|180.0|07.7 03|00100|00:25.1|02:04.5|315.8|30.8|180.4|181.0|07.7 04|00100|00:24.3|02:02.6|303.7|30.9|181.5|183.0|08.5 05|00100|00:25.2|02:05.8|298.4|30.6|182.4|183.0|07.3 06|00100|00:26.0|02:09.8|287.2|30.4|182.6|183.0|07.6 07|00100|00:26.3|02:11.3|283.7|31.1|182.9|184.0|07.4 08|00100|00:26.3|02:08.4|282.6|30.3|183.4|184.0|07.6 09|00100|00:26.8|02:14.0|249.9|30.1|182.1|183.0|08.1

Interesting enough, the average split was very close to what I had estimated before. I was expecting 2:05, based on the wind strength. So even though the power was lower than expected, the pace was in the ballpark.

I had about 3km to cool down and think about my failure. In the headwind, and demotivated, I didn’t go very fast. The lake part, the final 2km, were virtually unrowable. I saw plots around 3:30 per 500m. I eventually made it back to the club.

Of course, I want to set a better record. I even contemplated doing this again tomorrow. I probably won’t do it, but going into the last two weeks before the Nationals, I will have to focus on 1k race preparation, and do at least two more trials.

Anyway, today’s failure should lead to tomorrow’s success, and at least it will motivate me to read in the book about sport and psychology.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: 1000m, 1k, 1km, OTW, river, rowing, single, trial

Jun 29 2017

Monday – intervals in the double

Sunday

Instead of rowing, my son and I took the train to Vlkov, taking the bikes. We then cycled back to Brno, about 45km. It was a great ride. I am planning to do another such ride this weekend. My son is now big enough to ride 45km without big problems or complaining. Of course, I carefully selected a course that is mostly down hill, has nice pubs along the way, and is exciting (riding through rivers).

Here is a picture from the web that gives you an impression of the fun part:

Monday

I picked up Vojtech at the station and we drove to the rowing club. The training we planned to do was intervals of 6 minutes at three minutes rest. Each interval was 3 min @ 26spm, 2 min @ 30 spm, 1 min @ 34 spm.

We managed 5 of those intervals, but we weren’t entirely happy about the session. In the double, 30spm should feel like you want more.

We did the workout in two pieces. Because I didn’t know how many of those intervals we would manage, I first programmed the SpeedCoach to do 3 of them, and then I added two more. That enabled me to do comparisons between sets 1-3 and sets 4 and 5. In the fourth set, we almost bumped into a police motor boat that should have given us right of way. I shouted something ugly at the police guys, and when we continued the row, that was the best part of the entire session.

There was a nasty cross wind, and Vojta had to turn around a lot to make sure we didn’t bump into any paddle boats, swimmers, or other people who are unaware of the traffic rules.

Tuesday

No training. I agreed with the head coach that he would repair my single on Tuesday, and I decided to make that day my rest day, to give the glue and filler time to dry.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: double, hard intervals, OTW, rowing, training

Jun 24 2017

Saturday: Sprintervals

This was supposed to be a heavy week, but I have the feeling that the weeks of business travel and some stressful work issues are taking their toll. I did no exercise on Friday. Partly because I was moderating a full day workshop on strategy, and partly because I needed some rest. Well, if you can’t do volume, you have to make sure there is some intensity. And that was the plan for today.

Meanwhile in Prague, my son Dominik rowed a 1k race in 4:25, coming last in his heat. In two of the four heats, he would have been third and qualified for the semifinals of his National Championships (for 12 year olds).

This morning, we decided to row at 8am. A bit earlier than usually on Saturday, but necessary with this hot weather. The water was great. Mirror flat. A good day to work on race pace and above by doing sprintervals.

I decided for 45 sec sprints, long enough to get into a rhythm and feel how the boat moves, long enough to correct some errors, but short enough to be manageable. I also decided on 1:15min rest, long enough to make sure I would do each interval with maximum focus. A five minute break at the turning points, and you have a 3x(6×45″/1:15)/5′ workout. I also decided to row this at 30/32/34/36/34/32 spm, to make it more interesting.

Work Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00191| 00:45 |01:57.8| 29.3| 152 | 168 | 8.7 02|00193| 00:45 |01:56.5| 32.0| 168 | 176 | 8.0 03|00199| 00:45 |01:53.0| 33.3| 171 | 180 | 8.0 04|00202| 00:45 |01:51.3| 34.7| 173 | 182 | 7.8 05|00199| 00:45 |01:53.0| 32.0| 173 | 181 | 8.3 06|00195| 00:45 |01:55.3| 32.0| 166 | 177 | 8.1 07|00189| 00:45 |01:59.0| 30.7| 159 | 170 | 8.2 - wake 08|00196| 00:45 |01:54.7| 33.3| 170 | 178 | 7.8 09|00202| 00:45 |01:51.3| 34.7| 172 | 179 | 7.8 10|00207| 00:45 |01:48.6| 36.0| 173 | 181 | 7.7 11|00196| 00:45 |01:54.7| 33.3| 175 | 181 | 7.8 12|00187| 00:45 |02:00.3| 32.0| 173 | 177 | 7.8 13|00190| 00:45 |01:58.4| 30.7| 157 | 168 | 8.3 14|00193| 00:45 |01:56.5| 32.0| 169 | 177 | 8.0 15|00196| 00:45 |01:54.7| 33.3| 171 | 178 | 7.8 16|00200| 00:45 |01:52.5| 36.0| 176 | 182 | 7.4 17|00202| 00:45 |01:51.3| 34.7| 172 | 182 | 7.8 18|00196| 00:45 |01:54.7| 32.0| 171 | 179 | 8.2 Workout Summary --|03533| 13:30 | 1:54.6| 32.9| 169 | 182 | 8.0

In the first series of 6, I rowed a bit too much on power. I corrected that in the second series. I got waked in the first sprint of the second series, but for the rest it was great. Tapping down was good today and reaching high stroke rates was thus very easy.

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

Jun 24 2017

Thursday: Steady State

Instead of rowing in the morning, I had breakfast with the kids. This means I had to row at the end of this hot summer day. When I drove to the rowing club, the thermometer in the car indicated 33 degrees C. The schools are not closed yet, but there are no more exams, so many people are going to the lake to swim and get some coolness.

I put plastic foil over the damaged part of the hull, then put strong, watertight tape around the edges, and finally on top, almost like a gauze. There is no way for water to get into the structure now. The real repair will be done on Monday or Tuesday.

I just rowed steady state, with a couple of interruptions for swimmers and small boats. I was pretty tired after the long row on Wednesday, so I stayed very low in power.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: lake, OTW, rowing, single, steady state

Jun 22 2017

Wednesday – a row in the double

At the end of the afternoon, I picked up Vojta from the railway station. He arrived from Ostrava after a 2.5 hour train ride in a train without airconditioning, in 30 degree C weather. This row was about trying out if we could row a Masters C double at the Masters Nationals.

At the rowing club, the first thing I did was inspecting my damaged single. A few guys had bumped into the single stored above mine, while they were carrying in a coxless four. The other single fell from the rack and it’s wing rigger bumped into my single.

Luckily, it looks like the damage is not structural and can be repaired easily. The guy I trust with the repair is out traveling to the races in Amsterdam, though, so it will not be until Monday before the repair can be done. I am actually planning to take the single out, but before the real repair, I will encapsulate the crack with plastic foil and tape, so no water will enter the structure.

After that inspection, we proceeded to the actual training. The lake was pretty much not rowable. There were white caps and it was windy, and there were tons of boats, swimmers, wind surfers, and other summer distractions going on.

Hell, there was even a rescue by helicopter demonstration. We were paddling out and the AW139 came flying over us at about 10m above the water level, then it hovered at a few meters above water, picking up a simulated drowning. That was fun!

Then we had to row through hords of paddle boarders. Finally, in the gorge, the water became calmer and we did some technique drills. We spent the entire 8km rowing up at steady state pace, except for 3 10 stroke bursts. It was good.

The power in the above graph was not measured by the Empower SpeedCoach, but done by the rowsandall.com Physics module.

On the way back, we tried to do as many “head race pace” sections as we could. We originally planned to do a 3x2km on the lake, but on the river part, with the turns, we had to improvise. We basically rowed hard every more or less straight section. As Vojta on bow was unfamiliar with the river, he of course had to turn around very often, which slightly impacted our rowing. Still, I think the basics are there to make this a fast double.

The second interval was unfortunately interrupted by an incident. Vojta bumped into a swimmer with his oarshaft. The guy was swimming in the middle of the river. We stopped and stayed around for a while to check that he was OK.

After that, we rowed through the beach area with its paddle boarders, swimmers, and other people blissfully unaware of traffic rules. The final interval was interrupted by a tourist boat. It was quite a row!

Vojta had already missed his 7pm train, so we had time to go swimming. Just a dive from our “swimming dock”, staying close to the shore. It was cool and refreshing. There is nothing better than a post-row dive into the lake. Well, perhaps a post-dive ice cold beer.

We decided to start at the Masters Nationals. This could be a fast double.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: double, hard endurance, OTW, river, rowing, training

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Uncategorized

Saturday: A Bike Ride

Wash no more!

Thursday – Failing to break through

Monday – intervals in the double

Saturday: Sprintervals

Thursday: Steady State

Wednesday – a row in the double

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