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Nov 16 2016

Monday/Tuesday – Bulgaria

Monday

A long day. I left for Brno airport just before lunch time, to take the flight to Munich, expecting to take a lunch at the layover in Munich.

The flight to Munich had a 3 hour delay. We were offered money to buy refreshments at Brno airport, but the choice of healthy food is not exactly overwhelming there. Anyway, with work to do, documents to read, and internet connection, the three hours of quiet working time was definitely not wasted.

Arrived in Sofia at 10pm, which means I missed the business dinner with our local partners that we were invited to. A good start!

The taxi from the airport to the hotel drove 140 km/h on a road with a speed limit of 80 km/h and signs warning for speed cameras. Crashed into hotel bed and slept.

Tuesday

Headed to the hotel gym and did an aerobic warming up (or was it a waking up). Ten minutes on an elliptic, ten minutes on the treadmill, and 10 minutes on a spinning bike. The elliptical fitness trainer was of an interesting make. It was constructed in such a way that you could vary the stride length, which meant you could vary between something resembling stairs walking (short stride) and cross country skiing (long stride). It was fun, actually, to vary this.

Then it was time for weights. The problem was that the 25 square meter gym was by now filled with about 7 people, which made it a bit difficult to work out. On top of that, the hotel was the venue for some kind of military conference, so the weights stations were quite popular. I did some bench presses, and then I headed back to the hotel room, where I completed the workout with sit ups, reverse push ups across the bed and the cupboard, and back exercises.

This morning’s taxi driver was even more interesting than the one of Monday night. This time it was a bipolar guy with an economics degree, who took the outcome of the Bulgarian elections very seriously. At one crossing he got fed up of waiting to turn left, crossed over to the opposite side of the street, drove 150m into upcoming traffic, exclaiming that he didn’t care any more, passing police (who didn’t seem to care), and turned left. Then he started to talk about moving to Germany to take a cleaning job.

Meetings were good. At the end of the day I took a taxi ride to the airport and a flight to Vienna, and after two hours in the car I arrived home. The taxi ride to the airport was extremely boring (for Bulgarian standards).

Interestingly, the Garmin Forerunner seems to have captured speed from the treadmill:

https://www.strava.com/activities/775807378

Joe Friel’s blog is relevant: http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2016/11/travel-and-training.html

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: business travel, hotel fitness, hotel gym

Nov 13 2016

Ignored training plan and went for a trail run

The training plan prescribed another steady state erg, but the sun was shining and it was just such a beautiful winter day that I had to go out running.

There’s a little running event that I will participate in coming Thursday. It’s a 10k run starting in the next village, which is organized every year on the “struggle for freedom and democracy” holiday (celebrating the velvet revolution of 1989). That 10k run is on the same trails that I train on, so I can start running from home and check the trails.

Here is the run on Strava.

The run was beautiful (and slow). The small lakes in the forest were covered with a very thin layer of ice.

When I arrived back home and closed the gate, I slammed it on my right index finger. It didn’t hurt much initially, because my hands were frozen, but when everything started to thaw it was quite painful.

Well, I can type this now, so that’s a sign that it’s not so serious. Finger is a little thick and there are interesting colors under the nail.

Just for fun, and because I love maps, I am showing the run overlaid on a few different maps:

map3 — The 19th Century map. I like how the tree rows are indicated on both sides of the big road

map1 — Finally, the hiking map. You can see the abundance of hiking/running trails. Running in these hills is never boring

Tomorrow: A travel day. Then a hotel gym in Sofia, Bulgaria on Tuesday.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: trail running, training

Nov 13 2016

Some Meditation on a 6k, and a run

Some Meditation on a 6k

This first plot is a comparison (made on rowsandall.com) between Friday’s 6k and the PB I set in February, which was 7 seconds faster. You can clearly see that on Friday my heart rate rose faster than on that PB. Actually, on Friday I was rowing faster than my PB schedule for the first 4 km. Just slightly, but looking at the February row, I allowed myself to pull more 1:52 strokes than I did last Friday. The difference is very very small, just 0.2 seconds in average.

But it’s interesting to look at “the scribbles”. The plot below looks like something your 1 year old daughter might draw, but it’s actually quite interesting. At least for me.

The red scribble is Friday’s row. The blue one is my PB. You can clearly see that the bulk of the row (the first 4 to 5km) is very similar. The difference is that in February I didn’t drop the stroke rate so low. I must have rowed more forceful strokes last Friday, and I wonder if that wore me out somehow.

After 4.5km it starts to become really interesting. In February I managed to climb to the top right of the graph (high watts at high stroke rate), while last Friday I climbed just a little and dropped the watts.

It’s a pity I didn’t have Painsled back then. If I had, I could have compared the average drive force for the two rows.

Instead of comparing with my PB row, I should perhaps compare with the row I did on November 11, 2015, exactly a year before Friday’s row.

In 2015, I rowed a 22:28, 8 seconds slower than on Friday, but it looks like the whole graph is shifted to the left by 1spm. In other words, a year ago, I rowed a higher stroke rate to achieve the same watt number.

In terms of heart rate, the numbers are very similar. An interesting drop in heart rate after about 1500m is present in both rows. I wonder what that is.

Saturday’s run

Headed to the lake in the morning. There was a big lactate testing going on. All rowers who are in selections for national teams need to do a lactate step test. The protocol was prescribed by the national rowing federation. Interestingly, it was 5 minutes with 2 minutes rest, 5 steps at prescribed watts. The watts were given by a table for sex and age category. Also, they had to be rowed on ergs on sliders.

The tests were combined with the other rowing club, so the locker room and erg room was full. We cannot row OTW because our summer dock is about 1m above the water level and nobody bothered to put out a winter dock.

I decided to go for a run.

I ran along the lake, then along the river, towards the castle. Just before the castle, I turned right on the blue trail. I was wondering if I could make a loop, but was afraid that that would make the run too long.

Here is my run overlaid on a tourist map of the region. The colored lines are hiking/running trails. My run is the thick light blue line starting on the lake shore in the bottom right corner. Here’s is what I should try and run next time:

Continue on the blue trail, run around the hill, pass Trnůvka, take the green trail at Rozdrojovice and get back to the lake at restaurant Princezna. But I guess it would be a bit longer than the 12km that I ran this time.

Here’s the run on Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/773028819

It was a nice, slow recovery run.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: recovery, rowing, running, trail, trail running, training

Nov 11 2016

6k Season’s Best

My wife Romana told my I was crazy to plan a 6k full out attempt for a Friday. I agree that being tired at the end of the working week is not the ideal preparation. On the other hand, Friday is the only day where I have a chance of getting home early enough to do the 6k before dinner.

The (ambitious) plan was to try and row a 1:51.5 average pace.

First, I did a thorough warming up:

Then on to the main event. The plan was to start conservatively and hold the average pace at 1:52 until I reached 1800m to go.

Of course, trying to hold 1:52, I pulled 1:51 and even 1:50 more frequently than 1:53, and so I reached the half way point with an average pace of 1:51.5. Still, it seemed to take ages to reach 4500m to go. I went by 300m intervals. They go by fast enough to see progress, and there’s “just” twenty of them.

I tried to remind myself to remain conservative, but a few times in the 4500m to 1500m interval I got carried away and started pulling 1:50 strokes.

In the end, I paid for that. With 900m to go I started counting sets of 12 strokes. With 600m to go I was convinced I wouldn’t make the end without going above 2:00 pace. In the end I limped home with 1:54 pace.

Summary:

Workout Summary - media/20161111-17100719o.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|06000|22:20.5|01:51.7|26.7|177.9|184.0|10.1 W-|06000|22:20.5|01:51.7|26.6|177.8|184.0|10.1 R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|00.0|000.0|184.0|00.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00500|01:51.8|01:51.8|25.8|154.6|171.0|10.4 02|00500|01:51.5|01:51.5|25.7|173.6|175.0|10.5 03|00500|01:51.6|01:51.6|25.9|176.8|178.0|10.4 04|00500|01:51.6|01:51.6|26.3|177.3|179.0|10.2 05|00500|01:51.2|01:51.2|26.3|179.2|180.0|10.3 06|00500|01:51.2|01:51.2|26.5|180.4|181.0|10.2 07|00500|01:51.5|01:51.5|26.8|180.6|181.0|10.0 08|00500|01:50.9|01:50.9|26.8|182.2|183.0|10.1 09|00500|01:51.1|01:51.1|27.1|182.7|184.0|10.0 10|00500|01:52.2|01:52.2|27.1|182.8|184.0|09.9 11|00500|01:51.6|01:51.6|27.8|182.6|183.0|09.7 12|00500|01:54.3|01:54.3|27.7|180.9|183.0|09.5

I did this “beginning of the winter” 6k exactly a year ago, on November 11, 2015.

Then, I did a 22:28 time with an average heart rate of 177 bpm. Today it was 22:20, with an average heart rate of 178bpm. A year ago, I used a spreadsheet to analyze the row. Today, I can use the power of rowsandall.com and have additional interesting graphs:

bokeh_plot-1 — Peak and Average stroke power

bokeh_plot — Work per Stroke vs stroke rate.

In the Work Per Stroke plot, you can see how I used a range of stroke rates to try and remain at the same average pae (the green line). On the site, I can actually select the first half of the row and compare it with the second half:

And here is that dramatic last 1000m:

First, you see me rate down and increase the work per stroke. Then I fall down to a lower force per stroke. In the final strokes I rate up a bit but the work per stroke goes down even more.

After the row, I sat on the erg holding the bar. I was afraid to faint.

I didn’t faint. After five minutes of just sitting there, I had enough energy to do a 10 minute cooling down.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: 6000m, 6k, concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, test

Nov 10 2016

Snow!

First snow of this winter. Just a little and all dry and powdery. Nothing big.

Two sessions today. The first one was a gentle 15km bike ride from work to home, which was after the snow had turned into rain, and also after the rain had stopped.

https://www.strava.com/activities/771683402

The second session was a strength training. Also 45 minutes. Just to get into it again. I mainly focused on the upper body.

To add some illustrations, a few random pictures from my local friends on Strava. Everybody seemed to be excited about the snow and eager to go out and do some sports.

For fun, I overlaid parts of my ride over 19th century maps that are available on-line. It is interesting how many of today’s roads are exactly where the roads used to be 150 years ago. I wonder how my bike ride would have looked, cycling through the 19th century.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: bike, crosstraining, ride, rowing, strength, training

Nov 9 2016

Steady State row and bike ride

Monday

Working from the Prague office. Train ride to Prague. Then full day of work, finished by a dinner with my sister who happened to in Prague for business. Then a bus ride home. Got up at 5:20am. In bed at 00:45, technically Tuesday morning.

Tuesday

Notebook switch at work, which meant I was 4 hours without computer, and after that spending a big proportion of my time setting up my environment to my needs. I arrived at home tired and frustrated. Still managed to get down to the basement to do an erg row, but stopped after 10km to continue watching TV (US elections).

The rowsandall.com site now gives two kinds of Pie chart. One is based on heart rate zones and the other is based on Power zones.

The left plot is the power based Pie chart. The right plot is the heart rate based one. I think there is merit in using the power based one. I pushed on the gas from the first minute, and I think the left graph reflects that, with most of the row in UT1 zone and about a quarter of the row in the AT zone.

I contemplated staying up and watching the US elections, but in the end I decided to go to bed.

Wednesday

Well, this is certainly not going to be business as usual!

One of the first things I did this morning was checking the results of the US presidential elections. I can’t say I am surprised, having been in the US often enough, but definitely this will shake things up, and I am not sure whether for the good or the bad. Let’s say it is certainly an impulse for Europe to get its act together.

I cycled to work. It was cold, this morning, -2C according to the weather report, and it felt like that. A cold, sunny winter morning.

https://www.strava.com/activities/770315065/overview

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: concept2, erg, rowing, steady state, training

Nov 6 2016

Velká Baba Run

The title of this post, “Velká Baba Run”, can be translated in many ways. The Czech “Velká Baba” is, depending on the context, either a big old lady or a (slang) “big babe”. Velká Baba is also the name of a big hill close to my house.

Today’s run was not a loop, because I had to run to the rowing club to pick up my car. Yesterday night I was not legally fit to drive, so the car remained parked at the rowing club.

I put car keys, cell phone, rowing club keys in a little waist belt and took off. The climb of the “big babe” hill is quite steep.

After that climb it went downhill along the golf course and into the village of Jinačovice. After Jinačovice there is a nice part where you run through the fields.

Unfortunately, the best hiking trail marking system in the world turned out to have a weak spot at the right turn of the “red” trail. That, or I failed to see one of the markers.

Here is the part where I went straight (faint red line) instead of turning right with the red trail. I realized this pretty soon and had to consult the map on my phone. It was immediately clear to me that running back 100m and continuing on the red trail would have been the sensible thing to do, but that’s not how I am wired. I was running alone, so I was free to follow my twisted personality and try to run across the forest to pick up the red trail. That’s where you see my right turn. First, I ran across some wet and muddy fields. At a few points, I was afraid that my running shoe would stick to the mud, stay stuck, and I would find myself running on socks, but that didn’t happen, luckily.

The part through the forest was wild. There was no path, and it was uphill, so it was more hiking or climbing than running. I found back the red trail, but had to consult the map a few more times to determine the nicest way to run to the rowing club.

A nice 75 minutes of running/hiking.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: rowing, running, trail, training

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Uncategorized

Monday/Tuesday – Bulgaria

Ignored training plan and went for a trail run

Some Meditation on a 6k, and a run

6k Season’s Best

Snow!

Steady State row and bike ride

Velká Baba Run

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