Uncategorized

img_1426.jpg

Apr 10 2017

Monday – Steady State with Focus

IMG 1426

Today, I quickly packed my rowing bag before going to work. Actually, it was more throwing out than packing in. I admit that I didn’t touch my sports bag on Sunday and enjoyed a nice day off. I got messages from the lake about the perfect flat water, but I successfully ignored them. I had some work around the house, some groceries, some blog writing, and some other work to do.

But today I would get the boat from the trailer and take it for a steady state row. So that is why I packed that bag.

At the rowing club, I discovered I had forgotten to pack my Tickr X heart rate belt. This belt usually stays in the red rowing bag, except when I travel for work or, as last weekend, I travel with two bags. I picked my “broken” Tickr to use it with the Garmin watch (over ANT+) and then do data fusion later. However, it turns out the heart rate data were so erratic that I decided not to use them.

myimage (22)

 

During the row, I focused on minimizing “Wash”. For this metric, lower is better, because it is essential the length of the final part of the drive where the force falls below 100N. For me, this has a lot to do with sitting in a strong, straight position at the catch. When I get that right, I have a powerful stroke which goes all the way to the finish. When I have a more bent back, a “C”, it is more difficult to hold the force/power and thus my “wash” value increases.

bokeh plot (47)

 

The graph shows the values over the entire duration of the row. It is quite erratic, but on the SpeedCoach direct feedback, I could concentrate and get numbers below 14 degrees, and when I didn’t focus, the number went up to above 14 degrees. I really like how you can use the technique metrics to add focus to your workout.

By • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: , , , , ,

dsc_1095

Apr 9 2017

Czech Rowing Long Distance Championships – Race report

Woke up at 7, well rested. First trip to the bathroom, then to the scale.

71.8kg

Why am I rowing this race when I have to row in the Men’s (age unrestricted) lightweight category? I have no chance of winning this event. But I guess it is because I enjoy head racing. I think the 6k is one of the most difficult distances. There is a lot of room for errors like going out too fast. There is a technique aspect, and I guess I am closer to the elite on longer distances than on the 2k.

Above all I love doing it. Almost 25 minutes of high quality race rowing. Where can you get that?

Yes, on a canal near a muddy field north of Prague. Among others.

So breakfast was limited to coffee and one bun with jam.

And the amount of water I could drink was capped to 500 ml until the weigh-in. Not fun.

The weather was slightly better than on Friday. It was dry, and there was even some sun now and then. Here is a picture I took of the preparation area. The muddy field with all the boats is to the left. The start is 2km away from this place.

IMG 2143

I arrived at this place at 9:30, with the club’s minivan. My starting time was at 2:18pm.

At twelve o’clock I went to the weigh-in area to join a small crowd of lightweights. The young guys seem to have accepted my place in this crowd, after 3 years of participating, and a few of them started chatting with me, the crazy Masters rower who rows this race for fun, and not to achieve a qualifying time to be considered for the national team.

I weighed in at 71.8kg, exactly 2 hours before the race start time. So now I had a small window to get some food in (a bun, a banana, and some energy bars and nuts) and drink some water.

Romana was busy with Iva, who had to place 18th to be invited to the “control” races in a couple of weeks. She came in 21st, 7 seconds behind 18th place. In a head wind, she would have made the limit easily. Iva told me afterwards that she had stopped at one point, because a girl flipped. She stopped rowing to ask the girl if she was all right and instruct her dad (who was cycling on the bank) to help the girl. I didn’t know what to say when she told me that. I guess she is right and “qualification” is not so important as making sure that nobody gets hurt.

Then it was time for me to launch. In contrast to Iva, I was looking forward to rowing in a tail wind. Of course, now it was my race time, the wind had stopped. Oh well.

I had my “digital rowing” plan thought out quite well. No heart rate strap (to avoid the risk of the dreaded SpeedCoach hangup), new battery in the Empower Oarlock, the Garmin watch to monitor my start time, and a second stroke meter to monitor the distance, because I had set the SpeedCoach to show SPM, Power, Work per Stroke and Effective Length. However, one of our elite rowers was short of a stroke meter, so I gave him that device for his race. No problem, I could manage. I do want to see the elapsed distance, because even though there are markers on the bank for every 1k and I sort of know the course, it is easy to miss the marker and it is even easier to get confused when heavily fatigued.

So, one minute before my start, I switched the Garmin from showing time to recording and showing distance, and set the SpeedCoach to “ready”.

There were 24 lightweight men competing, and I started as the 23rd of them, with only Mr Hrstka from Brno behind me. Jan Hrstka is a sympathetic young guy who rows at Lodni Sporty, the club on the other side of my “home” lake, and we see each other regularly when training. Before the start I chatted a bit with him, commenting that we had traveled 250km to look at each other again.

Last sip of water to empty the bottle. Set SpeedCoach to record. Switch Garmin Forerunner to show elapsed distance, watch the two other scullers before me get started, paddle to the starting position.

5-4-3-2-1-GO

I was off. A race start and ten hard strokes and then try to settle for the 240W that I thought was a good power target for this race. This is very hard. On fresh legs, settling for a certain power value is much harder on the water than on the erg. The numbers I saw were above 300W, and I had to consciously lighten up and reduce the stroke rate to get to the 250-270W range.

Exactly 30 seconds after me, Jan Hrstka started. I looked at him. I was doing 28spm and it looked like he was doing 35spm. He quickly closed in on me.

After about 1km, he was just a few lengths behind me.

I stuck to my script and rowed at 230-250W, 500-600J per stroke, and keeping the effective stroke length above 90 degrees. I was curious to see what would happen.

It turns out we continued to row like this for most of the race.

At the half-way point, he had closed in to one length behind, but it had taken him 2km to do that. At that point, Romana and Adam, our head coach, were cheering. I put on a little more pressure.

At 2km to go, Mr Hrstka seemed to make a move. We were closing in on a bridge where the canal is a bit narrower, so I shouted at him that he should finally pass me, which he finally did. When he passed me, I noticed he looked quite worn out.

These 4th and 5th km were quite hard. I saw the power drop, occasionally to 210W, and had difficulty keeping the effective length high. Also, now I had to row in Mr Hrstka’s puddles. I was wondering if I should have tried to increase the power and stay ahead of him.

The last bridge, 1.5km before the finish, and the start of a long and slow turn in the canal.

When I saw 5km on the Garmin, I started counting strokes. With 500m to go I tried to squeeze out everything and empty the tank, which I think I succeeded in doing.

In the end result, I came in 19th place out of 24 rowers, in a time of 24:48.8 minutes, beating 5 guys (among them 3 U23 rowers). If I had started with the heavies, I also would have beaten quite a few rowers. Jan Hrstka came in 13th place. Our club’s second best lightweight (the best guy had a race in Italy) beat me by a minute. Complete results here.

So, I am pretty happy with that result. A minute faster than a year ago, but then it was in headwind, while today there was a very very light tailwind (when I rowed). A year ago I came 15th out of 16 (and Jan Hrstka was 90 seconds faster than I). In 2015, I was 14th out of 17 in a time of 25:05. My gap with the winner is constant around 2 minutes and 40 seconds. Quite a gap!


Workout Summary - media/20170409-073849-Sanders SpeedCoach 20170408 0217pmo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|05918|25:09.0|02:07.6|243.6|27.8|0.0|000.0|08.4
W-|05918|25:10.0|02:07.6|243.6|27.8|000.0|000.0|08.5
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|000.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00150|00:51.8|02:52.7|237.9|27.6|000.0|0.0|06.3
01|00500|02:05.9|02:05.9|266.1|27.8|000.0|0.0|08.6
02|00500|02:04.4|02:04.4|251.3|27.1|000.0|0.0|08.9
03|00500|02:06.1|02:06.1|249.9|27.4|000.0|0.0|08.7
04|00500|02:08.0|02:08.0|242.6|27.6|000.0|0.0|08.5
05|00500|02:05.9|02:05.9|249.5|27.7|000.0|0.0|08.6
06|00500|02:05.5|02:05.5|250.2|28.3|000.0|0.0|08.5
07|00500|02:04.8|02:04.8|238.8|28.1|000.0|0.0|08.6
08|00500|02:06.9|02:06.9|232.9|27.6|000.0|0.0|08.6
09|00500|02:08.2|02:08.2|229.4|27.2|000.0|0.0|08.6
10|00500|02:07.3|02:07.3|232.1|27.7|000.0|0.0|08.5
11|00500|02:08.2|02:08.2|246.5|28.4|000.0|0.0|08.3
12|00268|01:07.8|02:06.3|230.5|30.0|000.0|0.0|07.9

myimage (20)

 

After the finish, there was only a few minutes on the water to relax. After that there was a lot of work to do. Carrying the boat to the trailer (which is extremely hard after such a 6k race). Preparing the boat for transport. Walking to the car to get dry clothes.

Here are a few pictures from the official race photographer.

Then it was time to drive home. I didn’t have to travel with the trailer, because Romana had arrived with our car. We caught up with the trailer at one gas station, so I took a quick picture.

IMG 1425

 

Race Data Analytics

Here are the detailed graphs of my race, for the data junkies (including myself)

And here is the key graph from the entire row.

Both slip and wash became gradually worse as I got fatigued, and especially seemed to suffer from rowing in the puddles of Jan Hrstka.

By • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: , , , ,

myimage19.png

Apr 9 2017

Friday: Travel to Hořín and reconnaissance row

I traveled with the other rowers in the minivan that towed the boat trailer. We left Brno at 1pm in rainy weather. It rained a lot during the 4 hour drive.

Arrived at Vranany, the village that is closest to the start of the race, and where the boats are stored on a muddy field where the canal splits off from the Vltava (Moldau) river. It was about 6 degrees, but it was dry.

I rigged my single and launched for a quick row to check the conditions. A strong tailwind in the race direction. I did 15 strokes at race pace on the start of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th kilometer.

myimage (19)

 

You can see from the difference in pace that the wind was quite strong.

When I was ready with my row, the second wave of our rowers launched (some of us share boats). I instructed Iva to do 10 to 15 stroke intervals in the tailwind direction. She has more technique problems in tailwind conditions.

I waited in the minivan for the second wave of rowers to return. Then we had to drive to the finish area in Hořín and park the trailer among the other trailers, which involved some manual trailer manipulation in heavy rain.

It was 8pm when we arrived in the hotel. Luckily, I had anticipated this and prepared some sandwiches, so I didn’t have to go to the restaurant for a 9pm dinner. Instead, I had one beer and then I went to bed.

I weighed 71.8kg when going to sleep. I usually weigh in after my morning bathroom visit around 200-300g lighter than before going to bed, so all was fine, given the 72.5kg weigh-in limit.

By • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: , , ,

img_1420.jpg

Apr 7 2017

Thursday: Head Race Prep done Indoors

I rushed from work early to be in time for the loading of our trailer and get in the last serious OTW workout before Saturday’s race.

The lake played one of its famous tricks. Today it looked really like the high seas. I took a picture of our new club car, but I don’t think the waves are clearly visible. Believe me, they were big enough to make any outing just dangerous.

IMG 1420

 

So I started to prepare my boat for transport, when the head coach came around telling me that he had to exchange my rower’s registration card for a new one and the Czech Rowing Association hadn’t copied the expiration date from my old car to the new one. So, before Saturday’s race I had to get a signature and a stamp from a doctor. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to start the race.

I had planned to do a full sports medical test, but you have to make an appointment well in advance for that. Now I was stuck. I called my GP and she agreed that she would sign. Not having visited a doctor for treatment in years, I guess she was fine.

Then I went home and got ready to do the race prep workout on the erg.

Funny. My PM5 wouldn’t connect to Painsled wirelessly. I switched to ErgData. Same thing. ErgData gave me a -56dB warning. It would connect for a second, and then it would drop the connection. Not sure what is going on here. Is the Bluetooth broken on my PM5? I found the iConnect cable and set it up with the cable.

The workout was:

Warming up

3000m @ 22spm

5 minutes rest

3000m rowed as 1000m @ 24spm, 1000m @ 26spm, 500m @ 28spm, 500m @ 30spm

Cooling Down

On the Static Erg, I decided to lower the stroke rates by 2.

myimage (15)


Workout Summary - media/20170406-1815230o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07136|29:55.0|02:05.8|191.9|21.8|161.1|184.0|10.9
W-|06000|23:53.0|01:59.5|203.9|21.9|163.3|184.0|11.6
R-|01137|06:01.0|02:39.0|112.7|20.1|144.6|184.0|07.7
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|03000|12:23.4|02:03.9|180.8|19.9|154.0|162.0|12.2
01|01000|04:01.0|02:00.5|204.4|21.9|164.8|171.0|11.4
02|01000|03:49.6|01:54.8|228.7|24.1|174.8|178.0|10.8
03|00500|01:50.3|01:50.3|255.9|25.9|179.5|181.0|10.5
04|00500|01:49.4|01:49.4|255.9|26.6|182.5|184.0|10.3

Today: Travel to Horin, the race venue, and a quick row.
Saturday: 6km head race in the single

By • Uncategorized • 5 • Tags: , , , , ,

myimage (14)

Apr 4 2017

Head Race Prep Rate Ladders – and: To Program Workouts or not to Program Workouts?

Most on-the-water rowing electronics units (SpeedCoach, CoxMate) and smartphone apps (CrewNerd) offer programmable workouts. This looks attractive for complex interval workouts. You don’t have to keep an eye on time or distance, and in the resulting report your sets and intervals are clearly marked. It also eases up the processing after the row.

There are also disadvantages, though. The first one is that programming the workouts in the app/unit is a hassle and it is prone to errors.

If you are coaching a group of boats doing the same workout, you would have to make sure that they all start at the same time, and, in case you are doing distance based intervals, you have to hope that the recorded GPS or impeller distance will remain similar between the units in the various boats.

And even when rowing single, you sometimes have to abandon a workout because of traffic, because you are running out of lake, or other reasons. Finally, if you want to set up your unit/app in such a way that it shows other parameters than time or distance, you have a problem (unless the app has audio signals, such as CrewNerd).

It just takes away the much needed flexibility.

So, lately I have started to just record everything as a “just row”. I start recording when I push off the dock, and I finish recording when I arrive back at the dock. This gives me the maximum flexibility, but I do need two devices for some workouts (to see time and distance on the Garmin, when the SpeedCoach is set to stroke length, power, stroke rate, and work per stroke). The other problem is that it makes it a bit more work to figure out when the intervals start and stop, when I want to create a workout summary, like this one:


Workout Summary - media/20170404-104046-Sanders SpeedCoach 20170404 0741amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11114|57:54.0|02:36.3|183.3|22.2|157.8|186.0|08.6
W-|08523|40:42.0|02:23.3|200.5|22.6|160.2|186.0|09.4
R-|02598|17:12.0|03:18.6|109.0|19.1|142.5|186.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01855|10:00.0|02:41.8|156.6|18.0|137.4|150.0|10.3 - WU
01|01118|05:00.0|02:14.1|201.6|22.2|161.1|167.0|10.1 - tail
02|01019|04:50.0|02:22.4|224.5|23.8|170.0|175.0|08.9 - head
03|01178|04:56.0|02:05.6|244.0|26.1|174.6|181.0|09.2 - tail
04|01106|04:58.0|02:14.7|248.4|26.9|179.7|186.0|08.3 - head, w coach
05|01191|04:54.0|02:03.5|266.0|28.2|178.5|185.0|08.6 - tail, w coach
06|01057|06:04.6|02:52.5|125.8|18.9|146.8|163.0|09.2 - CD

I do have to mention that tidying up an interval summary from a “just row” workout is one of the advanced features of rowsandall.com. The interval editor allows you to “insert” the intervals after the fact. It takes a bit of time to figure out what exactly the durations are if you didn’t exactly stick to the script of your training plan, but it is worth it.

This training was 5x5min/4min at 22,24,26,28 and 30spm. During the fourth interval I caught up with our head coach training one of our men in the single. This guy was doing the 24spm while I was doing 28spm. So I shortened the break between interval 4 and 5 and after 2.5 minutes did the 30spm next to the guy (rowing the 26spm).

He did beat me. I am also convinced that if I want to row the head race at 30spm, I should lighten up my stroke much more. I don’t think I will row faster than a 240W average, coming Saturday. Still, at 30spm, I find it incredibly difficult to keep the Work per Stroke and the Power in the right ball park. In the beginning, I just push too hard, and towards the end of the set, I get fatigued and am working below the average.

myimage (12)

In the fourth interval, I was struggling a bit with the coach launch’s wake, until the coach noticed, and waited for me to pass him. This was great, because he gave me some valuable feedback on my rowing. Basically, when I get tired, my chest collapses on my knees at the catch, whereas I should be pushing my belly button to touch my upper legs. So in the final 30spm interval I tried to work on that (and keep up with the guy doing 26spm), which resulted in going out at around 300W. After 2 minutes, I got presented the bill for that. Had to rate down and “survive”, which unfortunately also meant that my “fatigued rowing technique” was clearly visible (too curved back, head not held straight). It is also clearly visible in the metrics plots:

You can very clearly see fatigue in the plot of Work per Stroke and Average Force. I am just not fit enough to keep that 300W effort for that long (at the end of a workout).

Well, that was a very useful workout. And if had “programmed” it, I wouldn’t have had the flexibility that I had today and I wouldn’t have got the coaching.

By • Uncategorized • 6 • Tags: , , , , , ,

myimage (11)

Apr 3 2017

The Wahoo is dead!

The training plan just said: “12km steady state at 20spm”. I decided to do rate ladders with a 20spm average. It’s almost the same but gives a few short sections with a higher stroke rate, just to get used to that head race pace.

I trained in the morning and I was a little time pressed, so when I discovered that the Wahoo Tickr didn’t pair with the SpeedCoach, and also not with the Garmin, I didn’t go back to the locker room to get the new Tickr X, but just pushed the boat off the dock and rowed without the heart rate belt.

It was pretty windy, so there is a lot of difference between the two rowing directions on the lake. In the last ladder I did a ‘head race start’ and tried to find that “light” stroke at 29spm. I think I am still rowing a bit too heavy.

Work per stroke is a bit higher than on my last 6k trial, in the high rate pieces.

I wonder why the Tickr was dead. I recently replaced the battery. Probably, Saturday’s issues with the SpeedCoach were also due to a low battery on the Tickr, so I will revert to my new Tickr X for the rest of the week. Except for Saturday’s race. I will row that one with an unmeasured heart.

Tomorrow: 5×5’/4′ at 22, 24, 26, 28 and 30spm.

By • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: , , , , ,

IMG_1414

Apr 1 2017

Friday & Saturday – Storm

Friday

I had to drive to Prague for a few meetings (and a business lunch). The Friday traffic was so bad that I lost an hour on the way back. Also, I had a dinner appointment. Life is hard.

So I just did a 6k in the double. The lake was a bit choppy. It was a very sunny and windy spring day. Temperature around 22 degrees. Trees are starting to blossom.

I saw this guy in the office park in Prague. One of the highlights of the day

Saturday

The plan was to do a 6k on the water. The clever guys of our club did that at 8am, before the wind starts.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make that. I was quite tired after a week of travel, and wanted to sleep in a bit. Also, Iva, one of Romana’s girls who has a chance of rowing a good result next week, had a party on Friday evening, and didn’t want to row early.

The plan was that we do a 2x3km (a 6k with a quick turn). Iva would start 2 minutes ahead of me. I would row 2 minutes behind her and try to catch up.

All kinds of things went wrong:

  1. Having traveled, my heart rate meters and running watches are in the wrong bags. On Friday I rowed without a strap, because I couldn’t get the SpeedCoach to sync with the Tickr. Today, I rowed with the Tickr (the sync problem was just me not getting the English of the SpeedCoach user interface – with more blame to me than to the SpeedCoach) but it was misbehaving, getting stuck on constant values – or perhaps it’s the Tickr/SpeedCoach combo.
  2. There was a strong wind. I set out on my single to check the waves, leaving Iva at the dock. I actually returned and advised her not to row. I didn’t want to be responsible for her rowing in these high waves, and it definitely wouldn’t be a good race prep.
  3. There is a lot of debris in the lake. Branches and pieces of wood taken by the melting snow in the Czech/Moravian highlands.

Sometimes, I don’t take my own advice, so I set out in the single, struggled through the part of the lake with the highest waves, and sailed on a tailwind to behind the castle. By the time I arrived there I had a few cm of water in the boat.

I also had this annoying problem where the Empower Oarlock magnet was slowly rotating. About 10 degrees per 5km. Enough to be visible. (After the row I discovered that the entire pin was rotating. It wasn’t tightened enough. So that was easy to fix.)

At the 6k point I turned around and got ready to row at least the 4k river part at head race pace.

The first 1k was extremely hard headwind. The kind that feels like you row into a wall. Every time I squared my blades, the wind pushed very hard.

After a bit more than 1km, the SpeedCoach lost contact with the Oarlock. It was still showing the oarlock icon to indicate there was a connection, but the power, effective length and work per stroke fields were not updating.

I stopped and reset the SpeedCoach, then continued. After a minute or so of battling into the head wind, the SpeedCoach stopped updating the data from the Oarlock again. This time I decided that I was going to get some training effect and not fuzz around with electronics, so I just continued to row.

There was a point where my cap blew off, so I had to return and grab it from the water.

It wasn’t really a head race preparation row. I couldn’t get above 24spm in the head wind. At some of the points 22spm was the max.

I stopped for a drink just before leaving the gorge and going on the open lake.

During the headwind struggle through the north part of the lake I had a few waves that reached until half way my back. I was completely soaked. The water in my single was up to the top of the seat reals. On every stroke I managed to get some water floating out of the boat, but then a few strokes later a massive wave would go over me and I would be swamped again. As the boat was low in the water with all the extra water, I had even more difficulty rowing. Luckily, a single cannot sink, so I struggled and struggled and just kept going slowly, at 15-17spm, until I reached the dock. The wind was now so strong that I asked help to carry the single back to the boat house.

 

By • Uncategorized • 3 • Tags: , , , ,

«< 42 43 44 45 46 >»