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Mar 13 2016

3×20 minutes

Instead of running, I went on a strawl with my wife Romana and my son Robin. We took the bus to Ořešín and hiked back. It was a very nice walk, through the village of Jehnice, then through the forest and along a few ponds back to our house.

So, enough outdoors and nature to be able to tolerate the 3×20 minutes on the erg, which by this time in the preparation phase are really becoming boring.

Nothing special to report about this session. Sat down. Rowed 3×20 minutes and listened to a course. Stroke histogram and heart rate plot are below. After the third interval, I measured lactate: 1.4 mmol/L. It felt “medium”. I wouldn’t call this a “Watts came easy” session and I had to play a few mind games to negotiate with myself and keep the 200W, but it wasn’t too hard.

This was the last session of a high volume week. The target was missed by a whopping two hours because of the travel and the show. Still, I am looking forward to a lighter week. I am planning it now. Need to take note of the wind forecast too, so I can plan my OTW sessions on the low wind days.

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

Mar 12 2016

First OTW session of the new season

Pretty tired after a 5x1500m on Thursday and the 9x300m CTC of yesterday, but so much looking forward to this session.

First OTW session after a January 1 New Year’s gimmick row. I planned to do a 2x3km. There was some wind, so I chose to row towards the castle.

First, the joy of a normal rowing dock instead of the terrible thing we have used for a few decennia:

Here’s a picture of the new dock:

The water level is still low. When the Brno reservoir is fully filled, the concrete cubes and the dock will be at about the same level.

During the row, I discovered I have a lot of attention points for the coming month. I had difficulty getting the rate up during my 2x3000m/2min rest session. Especially in the headwind sections I couldn’t get above 24spm. I need to sit more straight and reduce the pressure immediately after the catch, and not dip my blades so deep.

|Dist_|Time_|Pace__|_SPM__|avg HR|max HR|DPS|Remarks |02142|14:17|03:20.0| 18.6 | 158 | 169 |08.0|WU |02977|14:06|02:22.1| 24.8 | 177 | 181 |08.5|head wind |00190|02:00|05:15.4| 18.2 | 158 | 180 |05.2|rest |02969|13:04|02:12.0| 25.1 | 177 | 181 |09.1|tail wind |02133|13:17|03:06.8| 17.6 | 145 | 181 |09.1|CD

and summary:dist_____|time_____|_pace___|_HR__|_SPM__|_DPS|comment 2142_____|_14:17____|_3:20.0|158|18.6|8.0|warmup 5946_____|_27:10____|_2:17.1|177|24.9|8.8|Main set 2133_____|_13:17____|_3:06.8|145|17.6|9.1|Cool down 0190_____|_02:00____|_5:15.4|158|18.2|5.2|rest meters 10412____|_56:44____|_2:43.5|165|21.2|8.6|_Total

I wanted this to be around 2:13 pace, so still some work to do. Here’s a short video taken with the GoPro:

Here are the colorful heart rate graphs. Even though I didn’t manage to rate up, my heart rate was quite high and I think it was a good threshold session:

This is how my hands looked after the row:

Great to be on the water again. I hope I can persuade Romana for an outing on the double tomorrow.

This is also the weekend of the Heineken Roeivierkamp, a very interesting race in The Netherlands. Over two days, the crews race over 4 distances, 250m, 750m, 2500m and 5000m. The overall ranking is calculated by converting all times to 250m times. The sum over the four distances forms the final score. Everything is rowed in the centre of Amsterdam:

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: crewnerd, OTW, rowing, training

Mar 11 2016

Concept2 Cross Team Challenge @ 2k pace

Working from home today, but don’t think I am lazy.

Still tired from all this, but I have to complete the final reviews of 11 project proposals:

CdHW2LbUMAQouVY — Picture from Honeywell Aero Twitter (https://twitter.com/Honeywell_Aero)

CdBGcc1VIAAsAYA — Picture from Honeywell Aero Twitter (https://twitter.com/Honeywell_Aero)

CdH9zmmWAAMUUZ6 — Picture from Honeywell Aero Twitter (https://twitter.com/Honeywell_Aero)

So sitting behind my desk, reading and commenting.

Tiring work. I was done around 3:30PM and decided to read a bit in a book I bought at the Vienna train station. It’s about the Habsburg family, and very interesting. A family that left an influence in Spain, the Netherlands and central Europe. I just wanted to read for 30 minutes and do my workout.

An hour and a half later I woke up, book on my chest.

So I quickly changed clothes, did a 2k warming up and then straight into this month’s Cross Team Challenge:

Row nine reps of 300m
with just 30 seconds rest between each rep
The first rep from a standing start the others can be rolling starts.
Record the time taken for the 9 reps (2700m total).

I decided to go off at 2k pace (1:44). This way it would be nice intermezzo between two threshold pace workouts, and allow me to train my stroke at 30spm, the intended stroke rate at the Czech long distance championship (April 8th).

It’s an interesting workout. The breaks are extremely short. Somehow it reminded me of an old recipe to improve your 2k pace, which goes like this: Dial up a 2k on the Concept2 rower. Row your new 2k pace (3 seconds per 500m below your PB pace). Stop when you hit three subsequent strokes that are slower than the target pace. Get up, stretch your legs, sit down on the erg and continue at the target pace. Repeat until you’ve completed the 2k. Repeat session until you complete the 2k in one go at the new target pace. (Yes, that sounds like 20th century training philosophy.)

So here’s the result:

Workout Summary - Mar 11, 2016 --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|02700|09:15.1|01:42.8|322.2|30.8|168.9|184.0|09.5 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|Comments 01|00300|01:02.6|01:44.3|308.8|29.7|142.6|163.0|09.7| 02|00300|01:01.9|01:43.2|318.5|30.0|165.2|170.0|09.7| 03|00300|01:02.1|01:43.5|315.7|30.0|167.4|172.0|09.7| 04|00300|01:02.1|01:43.6|315.0|30.9|168.3|173.0|09.4| 05|00300|01:02.1|01:43.6|315.1|29.9|171.1|176.0|09.7| 06|00300|01:01.8|01:43.0|320.1|31.1|172.8|178.0|09.4| 07|00300|01:01.5|01:42.6|324.2|30.2|174.4|179.0|09.7| 08|00300|01:01.4|01:42.4|326.1|31.3|176.7|181.0|09.4| 09|00300|00:59.5|01:39.1|359.7|34.3|180.3|184.0|08.8|

Quite hard work, but in the end I managed 2k pace minus 1 second.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: concept2, ctc, erg, OTE, rowing, training

Mar 10 2016

Flywheel spinning again

A hard week

Training plan said it was a high volume week. At the same time, I was going to spend Monday to Thursday in Madrid, Spain, to represent my employer at a big industry trade show.

Sunday

Traveled to Prague by train, then flew to Madrid. In bed at 1:30 AM. No exercise.

Monday

Not a show day, but I had to review a large number of documents. Slept in a bit, then started working in my hotel room.

In the afternoon I went to the hotel gym (3×4 meters with a few dumbbells, a threadmill and a cycling machine. I did 10 minutes running on the threadmill, 10 minutes of pedaling, then 10 minutes of running. An interesting observation. In the first 10 minutes, my average heart rate was around 140 bpm. In the final 10 minutes, with the same threadmill slope and speed, my heart rate was around 120 bpm. Quite a significant difference.

After that I did 45 minutes of strength training in the hotel room, using body weight and elastic bands. All in all a pretty good session.

I also planned out the exercise for the rest of the week so I would achieve the prescribed volume and type of training.

Late business dinner.

Tuesday

Alarm clock at 5:45 to go running in the park. Woke up and discovered that it is still dark in Madrid at that hour. I hesitated for about 20 minutes, then went for a short run, not in the park but through the city center. The Madrilenos were getting into taxis or staggering home on foot. There were a few other runners. Did just 40 minutes instead of the planned 60 minutes recovery run.

A full day at the show, standing around, having meetings. Quite tiring and some adrenaline involved as well.

Late business dinner.

Wednesday

I had meetings planned from the opening of the show to the closing time, and then a dinner. This was the second blow to my plans. There was simply no time to exercise.

During the day the starting time of the dinner was moved to the right, and I was able to start my final meeting early, so that created a 40 minute slot for running. Took to the park and did two quick rounds. Quite far from the planned 12 km.

Red: Tuesday morning. Blue: Wednesday evening (two rounds)

We had a very nice dinner at La Cocina de Maria Luisa. An excellent restaurant with a very nice atmosphere, delicious food and excellent wines. In bed around midnight.

Thursday

Alarm clock at 4am to catch the plane. Ouch. This was hard, especially after the late dinner and the excellent wine.

On top of that, Madrid Barajas Terminal 2 is an “old” and inefficient terminal, and this Thursday there were large groups of weekend travelers, people who are not used to the airport security drill. You can’t blame them, but that in combination with super strict checks and very unfriendly and slow personnel, on top of my lack of sleep, made it a not nice experience.

Slept in the plane. Woke up to admire the Mont Blanc Massif, then fell asleep again. Sprinted through Frankfurt to catch the connection to Vienna. Train home. Arrived at three in the afternoon.

At four I sat down to do the planned 5x1500m/R5 workout. First time on the erg in almost 2 weeks.

I knew this was going to be hard. I have done this workout at a pace faster than 1:50/500m, but today I gave myself a soft target of 1:51.5 (i.e. a little slower than 6k PB pace). I managed:

1:50.7 – pretty ok – 0.8 seconds (per 500m) in the bank

1:50.8 – started to be hard – 1.5 seconds (per 500m) in the bank

1:51.5 – 1.6 seconds in the bank

1:52.7 – lost a bit.

The “seconds in the bank” is my number mind game. I basically count how many cumulative seconds (per 500m) I am under the average, so I know how much I can afford to slow down and still make the target pace. After just 4 hours of sleep, I just didn’t have the mental energy to do anything faster than the target pace that I agreed with myself. In the end the average pace for the session was 1:51.3.

I did it. That’s all I can say. Tired now.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: 5x1500m, concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, running, training

Mar 5 2016

XC skiing in Paseky

I have spent the entire past week doing cross-country skiing in Paseky nad Jizerou. A morning “hard” (can’t call it fast, really) workout alone, and an afternoon “slow” workout with either my sister and/or Romana and the girls rowing team. Only on Monday and Wednesday I had to revert to one session a day. On Monday because I had to drive to Prague to pick up my sister. On Wednesday because the fourth day was planned as a “recovery” day.

Over 10 hours of cross-country skiing in 5 days, 11 hours if you count Sunday as well.

Here are two typical runs. It’s a pity that Google Earth doesn’t have “winter” pictures:

Heart rate and elevation for the “hard” runs. I guess this all qualifies as extensive endurance workouts, but as the terrain comes and there are shorter and longer climbs, as well as descents, I would say there is an “interval” element to it as well. Hard to qualify, but definitely good training effort and a lot of fun.

The Friday morning was an extremely short round. I had to dial in to an ad hoc urgent meeting just before the run and didn’t have more time before the next ad hoc urgent meeting started … Sometimes work can’t wait.

Here are a few pictures I made yesterday and on Thursday:

A very nice week. Now everything hurts. Today we drove home and I relax. Tomorrow is a travel day again. Another business trip. 🙁

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: cross country, training

Feb 28 2016

First X country run

Drive to Paseky nad Jizerou. Lunch. Then a first round of cross country.

Temperatures above the freezing point but still perfect snow. Skating about 90% of the way. Nothing hard.

Strava link

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: cross country, ski, training

Feb 27 2016

The usual running

I haven’t run a lot from home lately. I have been doing my Saturday running session together with the girls, and that means running from the rowing club.

Today, the girls go to Olomouc for erg/lactate testing, so I was free to do what I wanted. I chose to run my “traditional” 12k loop. Somebody created a “two season” picture of the little pond next to the old railway station of Jehnice. I like it a lot, and it kind of illustrates why I love running in this area. There are short (but sometimes very steep) climbs, there are ponds and brooks. There are fresh water springs. It’s really a nice place to run.

I have no heart rate data today, because I forgot to “pair” it with the Garmin, after having unpaired it last week.

According to Strava, I have done this loop 15 times, but the last time I did it was in September.

https://www.strava.com/activities/503314803

My fastest ever time was 57:40 (March 2014). Today’s effort was 1:00:14. Not bad.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 3 • Tags: running, training

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Uncategorized

3×20 minutes

First OTW session of the new season

Concept2 Cross Team Challenge @ 2k pace

Flywheel spinning again

XC skiing in Paseky

First X country run

The usual running

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