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May 22 2017

Saturday Race Day – Masters 1x in Hodonin

My race was scheduled for 5:30pm, but I attended the Race Meeting at 8am, hoping we would form a Masters 4-. This discipline had just one competitor, from Brandys rowing club (close to Prague), and they had asked if there could be an ad hoc opponent. I would have loved to row this race, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out this way.

No problem. Hodonin is a fun place to sit on the river bank and watch the racing. Most of the disciplines are in the various youth age categories, and this is usually very exciting to watch.

I didn’t have to wait very long to see my youngest son Robin finish his first race in the single. In Piestany, a few weeks ago, he flipped before the start, but this time he rowed a decent race and crossed the finish line in fourth place.

An hour later, it was time for my other son, Dominik, and he scored his first win in the single. His proud mother took a picture after he got his medal and a little present:

dominik

Also my daughter Lenka rowed a great race in the Juniors 2x, coming in second place.

Then it was time for me to get ready for my race. I was up against Mr Burda and my old friend Vojtech Cernak, who recently came in second place rowing at the World Masters Games in Auckland. I chatted a bit with Vojtech before the race and discovered that he had spent 6 weeks in Australia and New Zealand, paying rowing coaches to work with him and training 2 or 3 times a day.

In these slightly unregular races, I was up in lane 1 on the Moravian bank, Mr Cernak in lane 2, Mr Burda in lane 3 and my friend Martin “Turkey” Krocil, from my own club, in lane for on the Slovak bank. In this “international race”, that means that I would spend the race in the Czech Republic, Martin would row across the border in the Slovak republic, and Mr Cernak and Mr Burda would be crossing the border several times. Rowing is a water sport and bodies of water are often international borders. Even after a few years of racing at this venue I find it fascinating to launch the boat next to the border sign.

The advantage of lane 1 is that you row in the inner turn. The disadvantage is that you are the last boat in a stacked start, and the disadvantage (excuse number 2) is that there is slightly weaker stream than in lanes 2 and 3.

So here is the race report:

In the stacked start position, I was a length behind Mr Cernak. Immediately after the start strokes, I was still a length behind. In line with my plan, I started to reduce the power to about 350W, but immediately after the first buoy (and turn) I upped the power to try and pass Mr Cernak. At this point, Mr Burda and Martin Krocil were not so relevant any more. I closed to about half a length, but I failed to push my bow ball next to his.

In theory I had the advantage of the inner turn, but I didn’t really steer the ideal line. I passed the second buoy line with the buoy dividing lane 2 and 3 under my right oarlock, still a length behind.

With 500m to go I was still a length behind.

myimage (6)

 

In the final straight part, Vojtech was smart enough to move a little closer to lane 1, effectively letting me row in his puddles and making it difficult for me to pass him. About 300m before the finish I passed through an area with lots of debris in lane 1. I actually felt a tree branch hit my fin really hard. At this point I saw my power drop to below 300W, I heard the regatta speaker say something about the World Masters Games and I was unable to bring the power back up.

So Cernak won.

bokeh plot (33)

 

So over 1000m I scored 320W. I need to work on increasing that number.

bokeh plot (34)

Looking at wash, the number is a bit skewed because I rowed the inner turn, so my left (Empowered) oarlock registered a few strokes where I lightened up to steer. Still, the final 400m of the race are not nice in terms of the Wash numbers, although Kleshnev’s latest newsletter suggests that my values are not bad at all.

I was disappointed, mainly because I wasn’t able to surprise Mr Cernak and pass him in the first turn, then because I let technique get worse as I got tired, and finally because I didn’t even try to raise the stroke rate on the final straight stretch. I was also disappointed when I saw how deep Mr Cernak had to go. He had to lie flat in his single for a few minutes and was unable to carry his single from the dock without help.

I finished the day by taking Romana out for dinner in a nice restaurant, after which we returned to the Hodonin rowing club for a party with wine tasting. We didn’t go to bed too late, because we had important racing on Sunday, for example a mixed double row against Mr and Mrs Cernak (who managed a second place in this discipline in the Auckland World Masters Games).

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May 22 2017

Friday: Boat transport and a light training

At work in the morning. I took vacation for the afternoon, drove to the rowing club to pick up the small trailer and off we drove to Hodonin.

IMG 1461

The big trailer had already left. This is one of the reasons why we bought our cute little trailer, to help the club get all the boats to these local regattas, where we want even the beginners to race.

There was a strong crosswind driving south over the D2 highway, but otherwise the drive was uneventful. After 50 minutes, we arrived at our destination. The bus with the kids arrived about 10 minutes after us, so we unloading the trailers was done very quickly. Romana and I took the double for a quick spin on the river Morava:

myimage (4)

Romana and I tested our race pace stroke and start sequences. You can see from the pace difference in the first vs the second half that we were rowing on a river. I tried to estimate the wind and stream effects in this plot (using the Physics Department services on rowsandall.com):

myimage (5)

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May 18 2017

An exercise in fading

Wednesday

I did a short outing in the double with a new rower. I heard about this new colleague who had been an excellent rower in the past. Talked to him and got him enthusiastic to try rowing again.

The caveat. He had a severe motorbike accident 8 years ago, has an arm and shoulder full of titanium, and has spent 100% of his energy on working since then. This was his first row since the accident.

It was a fun experience. The guy clearly knew what he was doing, but he will need a few rows to get back his former level of technique. Also, he was quite exhausted after just the warming up. I guess that calibrates my level of fitness. It’s a good reminder. Sometimes I think my fitness is dropping, but I guess I am always far from the absolute minimum.

By the way, it is my experience that base fitness comes back very quickly with bodies that have been exposed to intensive training when they were young. If you have such a body (which I do), congratulations!

Thursday

A morning row. I was supposed to take the bag with boat and scull covers to the club, because Romana wants to ride her bike this afternoon, and she would prepare the boats for transport to Hodonin, where we will be racing, coming weekend.

At 6am I am capable of getting up, getting my rowing bag and my work stuff, get a rudimentary breakfast in my stomach, and drive to the rowing club. At the last traffic light before the club, I realized I had forgotten the bag with boat covers. Oh well. Romana will just remove the riggers this afternoon, and I will have to come earlier to put the shells in the covers and load them on the trailer.

I forgot to read my training plan, so I headed over to the announcement board to read the Juniors/U23 training.

My training plan called for 6x250m/2′-3′ pause. The U23 training plan called for 4x start plus 15 strokes, plus 2x500m/500m, with the first 500m at 30spm, and the second one at 35spm.

I liked that. So, I did it.

The warming up plus a 2k with 4 practice starts followed by 15 strokes:

myimage (2)

 

The end of the practice starts brought me to the finish line of the 2k course. I rowed back to the start, focusing on technique. So that brought me to 5k of distance covered.

Now it was time for the 500s. Here is the result:

myimage (3)

The first 500m was performed well. The second one, I don’t know. I probably hit too high power values for this one, and I faded dramatically. Looking at the metrics charts below, I am not pleased with how the effective length drops in the second half of the second interval. It was really a dramatic exercise in fading.


Workout Summary - media/20170518-0735410o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|01500|06:28.0|02:09.5|245.8|27.1|165.0|186.0|08.6
W-|01000|03:46.0|01:53.5|328.3|31.9|177.4|186.0|08.3
R-|01000|05:06.0|02:33.4|150.3|21.4|150.7|186.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00500|01:55.8|01:55.8|312.2|29.9|175.5|182.0|08.7
02|00500|01:51.2|01:51.2|345.2|34.0|179.3|186.0|07.9

And a few charts with comments:

I also had fun looking at the lack of improvement in my metrics over the past weeks. No conclusions yet, except that it was fun to do it and I am glad rowsandall.com gives the opportunity to use this type of charts to monitor your athlete’s (lack of) progress. I filter away all strokes marked as “rest” and I also took the liberty to remove all strokes below 450 Joule per stroke, as they are either (unmarked) rest paddle, technique work, or short stroke exercises.

Tomorrow: Boat trailer loading. Boat trailer drive to Hodonin, then a mixed double row with Romana.

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May 16 2017

Sunday – Wednesday: Starts in the double and steady state in the single

Sunday

The international youth regatta continued, but Romana and I had some time to get in the double after we had sent the girls quad off to their start. Of course we only had part of the lake to row, because we didn’t want to get too close to the racing action.

Coming Sunday, we’ll row our first Mix Masters 2x race of this year, and we haven’t really done starts practice. So that is what we did. I did the 4x250m mini session, doing the first and third 250m interval from standind starts. Wow, we have some work to. On starts, and also on the higher rate stuff.


Workout Summary - media/20170514-175645-Lenkas SpeedCoach 20170514 0854amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|01000|03:41.0|01:51.0|000.0|32.8|160.0|178.0|08.2
W-|01000|03:42.0|01:51.1|000.0|32.8|160.0|178.0|08.2
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|178.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00250|00:57.1|01:54.2|000.0|31.1|147.6|167.0|08.4
01|00250|00:55.7|01:51.5|000.0|33.5|163.4|176.0|08.0
02|00250|00:53.6|01:47.2|000.0|34.0|159.4|174.0|08.2
03|00250|00:55.8|01:51.6|000.0|32.6|169.8|178.0|08.2

myimage (1)

After the 250m intervals, we did a few more starts and then we positioned ourselves at the 1500m mark to watch the final 500m of the girls quad. They came in fourth place in the A final, kind of where we expected them to be.

After the short row, I did a 25 minutes run, and then I tried out the Stand-Up Paddle board for the first time. It was nice, but I didn’t fall in love with it.

Around lunch time the racing was stopped for an hour because of a thunderstorm threat. The threat didn’t materialize luckily but I was happy that it was monitored and the race organization managed clear communication around it. It’s not an easy decision to make and implementing a pause and getting everybody off the lake is not easy, but there really is no alternative. I have witnessed a few races where there was no weather plan, and it is not a nice feeling when wind gusts, rain and lightning start and you have crews on the water. Actually, it is quite scary.

Monday

Too busy to row. The only rowing related activity that I managed was registering a few starts at the 2017 World Rowing Masters Regatta (in Bled, Slovenia, in September). I have registered mix C 2x, C 1x and B 1x. I’d like to row one race in the double as well, but I am a bit unlucky with doubles partners this year, so I will wait a few more weeks before registering those.

On rowsandall.com, I launched some new functionality related to box charts. Team managers can now very easily see progress of key metrics for all their team members. I discussed box charts over on the Analytics blog. I got the idea for this after doing this blog post. The other thing that I implemented is making box plots by picking workouts from a searchable list, as opposed to doing it for all workouts in a date range. This enables you to select steady state rows only, for example.

Here is an example of the result, looking at Wash metric for the past few rows.

bokeh plot (1)

 

Tuesday

Look at that Wash plot above. The last box, that is today’s session. This morning, I did some steady state rowing in the single. I decided to head to the Castle, and the plan was to row 12km of the 14km row on the river. Unfortunately, I had to turn around just past the castle, because there were too many tree branches in the water after Sunday and Monday’s thunderstorms.

So what about Wash? I wanted to use this Steady State row to focus on Wash and record low values. I know some of you are asking why I focus on Wash so much when my values already compare quite well with the benchmark? The reason is that it is one of the few metrics where the stroke by stroke live feedback on the SpeedCoach tells me that I am sitting up tall and doing the back swing correctly. In good conditions, I can consciously row with a Wash value between 9 and 11 degrees. The trick is to continue to do this when I get tired or the water gets rougher. Here is the story of today:

bokeh plot (2)

See how in the first 6km I manage to stay below 12 degrees for most of the time? This was helped by a slight headwind and super flat water. Because I had to turn early, I rowed the final 4km on the lake and the southern end of the lake was getting choppy. Rowing on a restless lake in tailwind, I suddenly found myself unable to produce those 11 degree and lower of Wash strokes. I am still happy that on the box plot it shows as one of the better rows, in terms of a low median, a small box and short whiskers compared to the other rows. It proves that you can focus and improve these metrics.

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I wash pushing a bit harder than I should in the first half of the workout. You can see from power, work per stroke and average drive force how I paid for that. During the workout, the numbers got smaller and smaller.

The Empower Oarlock disconnected during the cooling down and I decided to not try and reset it, so the data are flat in the final 1km. Heart rate drift was 12%.

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May 13 2017

Saturday – Experimenting with footstretcher setting

There was no time for a long outing today. There wasn’t even the possibility, because the Youth regatta was in full swing and the lake was closed for other rowers.

I wanted to test some foot stretcher settings, so I figured that it was OK to use a remote corner of the lake that is outside the main traffic patterns.

There has been some discussion on rec.sport.rowing on how to set the footstretcher, and about speed gains to be achieved by setting the foot stretcher towards the stern (larger catch angle, more efficient stroke, etc). I decided to do an experiment.

Row 2x250m (one in each direction, with 250m “rest” to turn) with each foot stretcher setting. Try to hold 300W as closely as possible. Measure total time over 500m. Running start. Stroke rate free.

Today there was almost no wind and the water was flat.

The 300W is submaximal, which makes it easy to hold steady and focus on technique. So after a few minutes of warming up, I set off for the first set of 2x250m. Then I changed the footstretcher as much as possible towards the bow (where I was limited by my backstops which I didn’t want to change OTW), and repeated the experiment.

I did have the feeling that there was slightly more “light wind” than in the first run, though. This may have destroyed the experiment.

The second set with the bow-wards setting felt weird, and I had a lot of room between my belly and my scull handles at the tap-down. Here are the overview graphs:myimage (37)

 

myimage (36)

Here are the Empower force curves:

 

So only a 5 degree shift in catch and finish angles for what feels very different in the boat. The stroke felt much lighter with the bow-ward setting. Now on to the verdict.

My “normal” setting (larger catch angle):


Workout Summary - media/20170513-144854-Sanders SpeedCoach 20170513 0929amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|00500|01:58.8|01:58.7|302.9|29.4|159.1|171.0|08.6
W-|00500|01:58.8|01:58.8|302.9|29.3|159.1|171.0|08.6
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|171.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00250|01:00.8|02:01.6|306.9|29.6|154.5|167.0|08.3
01|00250|00:58.0|01:56.0|298.7|29.1|163.9|171.0|08.9

And the “bow-ward” setting (shorter catch angle):


Workout Summary - media/20170513-144939-Sanders SpeedCoach 20170513 0938amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|00500|01:59.0|01:58.9|304.4|29.4|161.5|174.0|08.6
W-|00500|01:59.0|01:59.0|304.4|29.4|161.5|174.0|08.6
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|174.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00250|00:59.8|01:59.6|304.3|29.7|157.3|170.0|08.4
01|00250|00:59.2|01:58.4|304.5|29.0|165.7|174.0|08.7

For completeness, the SpeedCoach itself reports 1:58.8 time at 29.0 spm and 301W for the “normal” setting, and 1:59.0 at 29.0spm and 306W with the bow-ward setting.

So almost the same total time with a power difference of 1% (5W at most). This is in the order of magnitude that I was expecting, and the question is whether the measurement system is accurate enough to measure such small differences.

But it was fun to do, and I am going to stick with my “normal” setting with the larger catch angles.

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May 13 2017

Friday: A short run

I stayed at work too long, so my window for OTW rowing was gone. I drove home, switched to running gear and set off. It was a nice, warm day, and it was good to be in the hilly forest behind our house, after a long time.

I decided to try out the Wahoo Tickr’s RunFit app, which promises to extract extra running metrics from the Wahoo Tickr X and I was curious to see how it works. Of course, I took the good old Garmin Forerunner 220 as a backup.

I had to make dinner for the family to come back from their race prep (it’s the International Youth Regatta in Brno this weekend), so I didn’t have too much time to run.

The RunFit app was interesting. After every kilometer, a computer lady voice told me “distance x kilometer heart rate 155 pace previous lap 5 minutes 7 seconds”. It annoyed me quite a lot, because the RunFit kilometers were about 100m shorter than the Garmin kilometers. I trust the Garmin more, because it is very consistent with the SpeedCoach, with CrewNerd (running on the same iPhone as the RunFit app) and with other apps. Interesting that an app running on the same hardware can disagree with another app. Funny algorithms. Not enough data smoothing. Something like that. It proves again that doing sports data science is not easy.

After the run, the app offered me the promised stats. Here they are (in screenshot form):

So apart from Cadence we have running smoothness, vertical oscillation and ground contact. So according to RunFit my ground contact was 173ms, and according to this link elite runners are under 200 ms. To be honest, I have no idea whether my running metrics are good or bad (and I honestly don’t care much as long as I don’t get injured while running), and to make matters worse, I don’t trust metrics measured by an app that doesn’t get distance right.

By the end of the run, the Garmin was 1km behind the RunFit app.

When I exported the run from RunFit to Strava, Runkeeper, and TrainingPeaks, I was curious to see if the extra metrics would make it across.

Strava? Nope

TrainingPeaks? The sync didn’t work, so I don’t know

Runkeeper? Nope

So all in all I am not so impressed. I am more impressed by the website VeloViewer, which integrates very nicely with Strava.

http://veloviewer.com/activities/982844482

You can make cool 3D pictures like this one:

3dprofile

 

There are also a few plots and additional statistics to explore, and everything looks very nice and slick.

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wash

May 11 2017

Thursday – Steady State

Every day is different this week. Today it was a nice 21 degrees and sunny. Krocan and I went out in singles and we did a long steady state row. It was choppy when we started and flat when we finished. In the chop, I rowed away from Krocan easily. On flat water, the difference was smaller. I worked on sending the boat at the finish, tapping down clean and keeping the wash metric low.

 

You can see how the total drive length has a much smaller spread than the effective length.

On rowsandall.com, the wash numbers always look a bit worse than what I expect from the numbers I see in the boat.

All this focus on “wash”. Does it really pay off? I decided to filter my rowsandall.com OTW rows on “Steady State” and look at the median value of Wash and its standard deviation. The result is sobering:

I added the average wind strength as reported by the Dark Sky network to the plot. It seems the wind (and probably chop) is the biggest factor influencing the Wash value and its spread.

 

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