Uncategorized

Dec 27 2016

Erg training with a sparring partner

We are on our way to Berlin for a short vacation. We left a day earlier and spend a day at my mother-in-law’s place. After lunch, my brother in law invited me to do an erg session and I grabbed the opportunity.

It is a light training week, and I plan to do some running in Berlin. But an unexpected chance to do an erg session is great.

Even better. There was another guy on the erg next to me, one of Tomas’s students, and he wanted to row my 20×45″/1:15 rest.

I was already looking forward to showing off Painsled on the PM5, but it seems that not all PM5 have wireless connectivity? Or is it a firmware issue?

Anyway, it was great to have a sparring partner. This session greatly benefits from it

No nice graphs today. Just the pictures.

By • Uncategorized • 0

Syrovice_2016_4_

Dec 26 2016

Mud Baths

Sunday

Just a short 12k on the erg. Related to sports, I spent a considerable amount of time with the Polar A360 that Lenka got for Christmas. It’s a cool watch, with optical heart rate measuring at the wrist, but the first synchronization and actualization takes ages. In the leaflet, they say you can get up and running directly from the Android Polar Flow app. No way. The initial sync and update takes so long that the bluetooth disconnects. In the end I had to do it through the USB cable.

We had quite a lot of snow on Christmas Eve. Robin made a Darth Vader snowman:

On Christmas, temperatures were suddenly much warmer, and during the day all the snow disappeared.

Monday

With Lenka and Iva, we participated in the Christmas run in Syrovice. The girls ran the 5k (one loop) and I did the 10k. As you can see from the pictures, it was quite a muddy event.

A village run event

You should have seen the girls’ faces when I sent them of for the warming up run. They clearly weren’t happy that they had to run in this mud with their clean pink running shoes and matching running clothes. 🙂

This is nothing. Behind those trees it got really muddy. Note the Trabbi on the left

I didn’t have very big plans for this run. I was just there as a chauffeur for the girls, and planned to take it easy. Of course, this plan was discarded when I met Eduard, a Masters rower from my club, at the start line.

I had to finish ahead of him.

Still, I managed to take it easy in the first round. In the muddy ascent through the vineyards, I managed to get a bit ahead of him. With his big posture, he has more difficulty than I taking over in the crowd.

After the muddy vineyards, the run continues on asphalt. During the short climbs I was much faster than the people surrounding me.

The run then loops back towards the village, where you get to run the steps towards the church, a short but pretty steep climb. Then immediately down again, and on to the second loop.

I knew Eduard was somewhere behind me, but I had no idea if he was ten seconds or two minutes behind. That kept me running at quite a high pace. In the vineyards, a couple of runners passed me, and every time I was worried it would be Eda. It wasn’t him. On the asphalt part, I took back the runners who had passed me in the vineyards.

The second time to run the church steps. Now it really hurt, but luckily, after that it’s just a few hundred meters to the finish.

I crossed the line in 42:25 and not long after that I heard the speaker announce the fastest woman. Oh, that’s good! It doesn’t happen very often in running events that I don’t get chicked. 🙂

So, what was supposed to be an easy run may have turned out to be one of my better runs of this winter.

https://www.strava.com/activities/811673254/overview

By • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: , , ,

challenge

Dec 23 2016

Holiday Half Marathon

My last erg row of the Concept2 Holiday challenge. I thought about doing a full marathon, but I realized I have some other stuff I need to get done today. So just a HM. At Steady State pace.

I dialed up 21097m and just rowed free rate, listened to the radio, and took long water breaks at 14km and 7km to go. One great thing about rowing in the basement in winter is that the water gets nice and cool, and after a long row it tastes so good.


Workout Summary - media/20161223-1420110o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|21097|88:46.0|02:06.2|190.8|22.4|167.0|177.0|10.6
W-|21097|88:47.0|02:06.3|190.2|22.3|166.7|177.0|10.6
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|177.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01000|04:04.0|02:02.0|186.7|21.1|136.7|152.0|11.7
02|01000|04:05.5|02:02.8|199.8|21.8|157.7|163.0|11.2
03|01000|03:55.4|01:57.7|202.9|22.2|165.2|169.0|11.5
04|01000|03:59.2|01:59.6|204.7|22.3|168.5|172.0|11.2
05|01000|03:58.0|01:59.0|207.6|22.7|171.3|173.0|11.1
06|01000|04:00.2|02:00.1|201.8|22.5|172.4|175.0|11.1
07|01000|03:58.3|01:59.2|206.8|23.1|174.8|176.0|10.9
08|01000|05:17.8|02:38.9|193.6|22.4|163.9|177.0|08.4
09|01000|04:03.1|02:01.6|195.0|22.4|173.0|175.0|11.0
10|01000|04:02.9|02:01.4|195.3|22.5|173.1|175.0|11.0
11|01000|04:02.3|02:01.2|196.7|22.9|174.1|176.0|10.8
12|01000|04:05.3|02:02.7|189.7|22.7|172.5|174.0|10.8
13|01000|04:03.4|02:01.7|194.0|23.1|173.2|174.0|10.7
14|01000|04:03.5|02:01.7|194.3|23.2|173.5|175.0|10.6
15|01000|05:22.3|02:41.2|175.7|21.9|160.6|173.0|08.5
16|01000|04:11.3|02:05.6|176.7|22.0|166.0|167.0|10.9
17|01000|04:09.6|02:04.8|179.8|22.1|166.8|169.0|10.9
18|01000|04:05.6|02:02.8|188.9|22.5|168.9|171.0|10.9
19|01000|04:06.0|02:03.0|187.9|22.6|169.3|171.0|10.8
20|01000|04:01.2|02:00.6|199.4|23.3|171.6|173.0|10.7
21|01000|04:44.2|02:22.1|138.2|20.8|154.5|173.0|10.1
22|00097|00:27.7|02:22.8|127.6|20.0|149.2|150.0|10.5

And here are the great pictures that tell you all about the row.

You can see quite clearly how stroke rate goes up and drive length goes down when I get tired. Not good.

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

myimage (47)

Dec 21 2016

Short Steady State and stroke video attempt

The plan was to do 20km of steady state. I didn’t even get to half way. I woke up early after a short night, and there is so much stuff to do before Christmas.

So I did a 5km at steady state pace. Heart rate way to high and perceived effort as well.

Then I tried to film myself in order to reveal something about my stroke force profile.

And here is the video. I am afraid I don’t have a better quality right now.

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

IMG_1190

Dec 20 2016

The mysteries of the force curve

For OTW rowing, I am not even convinced a force curve should be looked at independently from boat speed and acceleration. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be great if we could extract a few meaningful parameters from the force curve to help analyze technique?

The approach Nielsen-Kellerman have taken is using “Slip” and “Wash” parameters, which basically tell give you a reduction in effective stroke length. Slip is basically the stroke length (or oar angle difference) it takes to get to 100N of force from the catch, and Wash is the oar angle difference (or stroke length) near the finish at which the force drops below 100N. The figure shows this well (from the brand new “stroke profile” plot on rowsandall.com).

Schematic Stroke Profile from an NK Empower Oarlock

It turns out that the schematic stroke profile is pretty close to the real one. When I calculate the area under the curve and compare with the average stroke force, there is pretty good consistency.

The ratio of average/peak force is a value between 0.5 and 1, the latter value just being a theoretical upper bound for a perfect block shaped force profile and the former the value for a triangular force profile. My values are pretty consistently around 0.57, but Greg Smith’s values are significantly higher (above 0.65 if I remember well).

So in the name of science, I did the following experiment on the erg. I must say using Painsled for iOS made it very easy to capture stroke profiles. I rowed a just row 150m off, 10 strokes “on”, varying stroke rate between 20 and 36spm. During the “on” strokes I tried to row what I consider good technique. Immediately after the 10th stroke, I grabbed the phone, did a screen capture, and took a picture of the PM5. I went up to 36spm, and back down, to see if there was consistency.

Before I show you all the raw data, here are the aggregate plots made on Rowsandall.com:

As you can see, my Average/Peak force ratio correlated positively with stroke rate, being 0.56 below 24spm, and 0.60 above 32spm. Drive length was pretty constant. I didn’t see a difference between going up the ladder or going down. Work per stroke correlated positively with the stroke rate, as did both average and peak force.

So here are the raw data, one set of stroke rates per picture gallery:

20 spm

24spm

28spm

32spm

36spm

The graphs from Painsled show the last stroke of the set of ten in bold, and a few of the strokes before in a lighter line. The pictures of the PM5 show the final stroke. I was struck by how different the pictures look from the graphs, but I guess that’s an effect of the vertical scaling.

I will have to think about this a bit more. Here is a link to the article by Kleshnev who has numbers between 0.5 and 0.6, with 85% of the rowers at the higher end.

I guess the next step will be to film my stroke.

At the least, I think this post is a good demonstration of the power of a good data analytics site, combined with the excellent erg data capture of Painsled.

Post Scriptum

Discussing the stroke profiles, Greg and I made the cumulative plots of the Average/Peak force ratio on rowsandall.com. Here are the two plots. Interesting to see the differences.

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

myimage (40)

Dec 20 2016

Dirty Dozen and One More

Another week where I allow myself one Anaerobic Power workout. Today, I repeated the 13×45″/1′ workout of last week. After that, I did something special to capture stroke power curves, but more about that in the next blog post.

Here are the rowsandall.com plots for this workout. It was hard work. Somehow, I didn’t have the energy to go deep.

The workout editor has a little difficulty getting the averages right for these short intervals. On the PM5, I saw around 220-225 meter for the full 45 seconds, so I believe below statistics are underreported.


Workout Summary - media/20161220-1850090o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|05159|22:45.0|02:12.3|241.0|26.4|164.6|179.0|08.6
W-|02796|09:45.0|01:44.6|335.1|29.2|163.8|177.0|09.8
R-|02376|13:00.0|02:44.1|141.1|23.5|166.5|177.0|02.5
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00228|00:45.0|01:38.5|341.2|30.8|138.5|162.0|09.9
02|00215|00:45.0|01:44.9|333.4|28.7|161.6|170.0|10.0
03|00214|00:45.0|01:45.2|348.6|28.6|166.8|174.0|10.0
04|00218|00:45.0|01:43.0|348.8|29.6|164.3|174.0|09.8
05|00217|00:45.0|01:43.8|347.3|29.3|164.0|175.0|09.9
06|00216|00:45.0|01:44.3|336.7|29.8|165.0|175.0|09.7
07|00223|00:45.0|01:41.1|342.2|29.4|169.1|176.0|10.1
08|00220|00:45.0|01:42.2|322.2|28.9|167.1|175.0|10.2
09|00209|00:45.0|01:47.6|307.7|28.2|165.2|173.0|09.9
10|00216|00:45.0|01:44.2|339.3|29.3|167.0|175.0|09.8
11|00209|00:45.0|01:47.8|321.2|29.2|167.0|174.0|09.5
12|00207|00:45.0|01:48.6|316.9|28.2|166.6|174.0|09.8
13|00205|00:45.0|01:49.9|351.3|29.8|167.2|177.0|09.2

However, a week ago I had more than 200m less, so apparently I worked harder today!

Click on the images to open the gallery. Also, according to the images, I did 15 Watt more.

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

bokeh_plot (71)

Dec 18 2016

Sinner Man

This famous 10 minutes song by Nina Simone is part of one of my go-to playlists for long erg pieces. I always cheer up when this song starts, because I know the next 10 minutes will go by in a blink. It is really good erging to this song.

And the repeated call for “Power”, where Nina probably didn’t have erg power in mind, is a good reminder of what rowing is about.

Today I did 4x5km at one minute rest. I played a bit with stroke rates following the 1000/750/500/250m sequence that is my favorite of this fall.

Measured lactate after 15km: 1.7 mmol/L.

Measured lactate after 20km: 1.8 mmol/L.


Workout Summary - media/20161218-1120080o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|20300|86:20.0|02:07.6|187.1|20.5|157.8|169.0|11.5
W-|20000|82:21.0|02:03.5|189.2|20.5|158.0|169.0|11.9
R-|00303|04:00.0|06:36.4|129.3|20.4|152.6|169.0|00.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|05000|20:37.1|02:03.7|184.5|19.6|150.0|165.0|12.3
02|05000|20:20.9|02:02.1|193.0|20.3|162.1|169.0|12.1
03|05000|20:28.2|02:02.8|190.1|21.1|161.5|168.0|11.6
04|05000|20:54.9|02:05.5|189.3|21.0|158.5|166.0|11.4

I didn’t row the last interval slower. It took 58 seconds to do the lactate testing after interval #3, and I sinned and took a drink and another 20 seconds rest before I set off for my final 5k.

The now officially released version of Painsled, (link to iOS App Store) behaved well, except for one small glitch. Even though in the settings I have not activated Sync to Strava, when hitting “Export” in the app, it exported my workout as a “ride” to Strava.

I had to delete it there, because when I take the route through Rowsandall.com, the stroke data are exported better (leading to more meaningful graphs on Strava), and the session is exported as a row, not as a ride. Otherwise, I strongly recommend this excellent app for anybody who rows with a PM5.

By • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: , , , , ,

«< 51 52 53 54 55 >»