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3x20min

Jan 31 2016

3x20min with a big grin

After yesterday’s race I drove to a “vinoteka” to buy some bubbles to celebrate.  I got a Riesling sekt made by a winery about 25km south of Brno, who, in contrast to the big Sekt brands, use the bottle fermentation process. Nice wine to celebrate a PB.

This morning we drove home from Pardubice. I enjoyed the pleasure of updating my nonathlon 2k score (+2 points, yay!), sending a PB notice to the Free Spirits board and entering my score on the concept2 site. Sure I am going to enjoy every minute of a new 2k PB.

During today’s 3x20min row I kept bringing back to mind moments from yesterday. Like this nice fight between two guys in one of the Junior’s heat. With 500m to go the guy on the right is leading. The one on the left wins, though. I filmed them for 30 seconds, then I stopped and just watched the fight. The guy on the left gets his virtual bow ball in front of the other guy with 3 strokes to go.

Today I did a 3x20min, using Painsled to capture the data. It turned out to be  a “Watts come easy” day and I had no trouble to hold the score above 200W. In fact, I tried to row 5000m exactly for each 20 min interval. I guess positive race experiences also helped, because in the end I measured 2.0 mmol/L lactate after the 3rd interval.

3x20min.jpg

Average heart rate 165 bpm. Stroke rate between 21 and 23 spm. Distance covered 15001m (5000, 5001, 5000).

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pardubice 006

Jan 30 2016

Pardubice – 3rd round Czech Indoor Rowing Cup

This weekend, Romana’s brother, my brother-in-law Tomas, organized the 3rd round of the Czech Indoor Rowing Cup.

It was the first time he organizes an erg regatta, so you can imagine the nerves. As Romana’s girls were starting early, we arrived on time. Early enough to catch a bit of nature almost in the middle of the town:

reeen2

The race was ready to be started. First races were the adaptive categories. They were also the test case. There were some delays because the printer didn’t work, and the jury was a bit slow in figuring out the winners in the various adaptive categories, but in the end all was well and winners could be decorated.

tomas
Tomas nervous before the start of the race
zdravotnik
First aid guy – later on the day he would get scared as hell seeing people faint after their race
warmingup
Warming up area
race1
Race erg ready. We had to put one black Concept2 among 11 gray ones

The sports center was much newer and nicer than in Neratovice, and the changing rooms and toilets were perfect. On the downside, the air was much much dryer. Some rowers are sensitive to this, and not everyone was able to show his or her best performance.

CVK Brno girls arriving at venue:

holky

 

Then it was time for the girls 15/16 to row. Lenka rowed 5 seconds slower than her PB, and Iva 10 seconds. Lenka has been ill so I consider it a good row. Iva was super nervous and still wants to row below 8 minutes, but the nervousness actually makes her slower.

Lenka after the race:

 

Some random shots from other races throughout the day:

 

 

Klara, rowing in the 17/18 age group, was rowing her very first erg race. She started rowing in September and managed a good 8:26.

Then it was time for me to change clothes and get ready for my race. I did a 6k Fletcher-style warming up. Then it was time for the main event.

Big focus on Jiri Pfeiffer, from my rowing club, who wanted to beat the Czech record for the 50-59 year age category.

I wanted to be faster than in Neratovice but didn’t know if I had it in me. Also quite nervous about the higher temperatures and dry air.

Went out with ten hard strokes and saw 1:39 when I opened my eyes. Immediately back to 1:44-1:45 pace which I had no trouble holding in the first 500m. Saw the occasional 1:46, but mostly solid 1:44 and 1:45. Second 500m was no different. I even mixed in a few 1:43s. With 1000m to go I did ten hard strokes, which turned out to be 1:42-1:43, but then I got into trouble. I saw more and more 1:46 and Romana behind me had to cheer quite a lot to get me back to 1:44-1:45 pace. With 600m to go I had to count strokes. Then with 500m to go I started counting again. With 250m to go I finally got over the hard bit and started to wind it in. My average pace at that point had dropped from 1:44.0 to 1:44.2. Rating up and even pulling 1:41 and 1:40 strokes, I managed to get it down to 1:40.0 with 5 strokes to go. I pulled as hard as I can and prayed I could see the average pace drop even more, and in the 2 final strokes I saw 1:43.9 average pace.

A new PB of 6:55.6. My splits were 1:44.0/1:44.0/1:44.6/1:43.0. Here are the official results:

vysledek

Pretty good race. I beat only 2 guys in my heat of 9, but who cares. Another PB!

Jiri Pfeiffer did set a new 50-59 Czech Record in a PB of 6:19.8. In my age group I got beaten badly by Vesecky and Nevrala. Funny, I beat Nevrala in the single and Romana and I beat him and his partner (who won one of the Masters Women races) in the mixed double by 2 lengths. 🙂

Anyway, a third place is a podium place, and even  though there are scores of people who beat me in this, I thoroughly enjoyed getting a medal, a kiss from the young lady on the left, and some other goodies:

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img_0676-1

Jan 30 2016

Race prep different

Morning: meetings in Brussels and a late, quick lunch (Japanese ramen). Then to the airport and fly to Prague. Train to Pardubice. Dinner in train (Hungarian goulash soup with dark bread, it turned out to be a soup day). 

Picked up at the station by Romana and immediately taken to race venue to build it up. My brother in law is the organizer. I was still in work clothes (suit and tie) but started to haul chairs immediately. I left the unloading of the truck with concept 2 ergo meters to the others. 

Laid cables. Replaced batteries. Left at this stage:

  
The IT folks were still getting the race software to run at that moment. I think they were there until midnight. 

Racing on Saturday afternoon. 

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img_0675-1

Jan 29 2016

Hotel Gym Double Triathlon

6×10 min, treadmill, elliptical, pedaling, treadmill, elliptical, pedaling. 

Boring as hell. Watched the traffic jams at the intersection of Waterloo and Louise from the 23rd floor. 

Sweaty business. 

  
I didn’t leave the building but the Garmin thought otherwise. Le Confucius on the map is where I had dinner last night. Excellent Chinese food. 

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hotelstairs

Jan 28 2016

Man vs Hotel

Back in the hotel relatively early after a day full of 30 minute meetings at various places in Brussels’ European quarters.

The schedule asked for sprint workouts and I was wondering how to do them. In summer I would find a hill or stairs in Brussels to run on, but traveling light in winter means that you are stuck to indoor exercising in the hotel gym.

Then I realized that my hotel has 26 floors.

So, I did:

  • Warming up on treadmill (20 minutes)
  • 3x(5×5 floors up / 5 floors down)
  • Cooling down 15 minutes on treadmill

I started the watch five minutes into the warming up.

The stairs running was interesting. There are three emergency stairways  in the hotel, one at each end of the corridor and one in the middle. The middle one is really a metal cage hanging on the side of the building, wind blowing through it. It also has these metal staircases with holes in it.

I am not so brave with heights, so this was bad.

Luckily the ones on the front and back end of the building were completely inside. You can imagine how this looks. Concrete and pipes. Dust. Cigarette butts. No need to say more. The five floors up / five floors down routine turned out to be quite close to 30″ active / 60″ rest. First set between floors 10 and 15, second set between floors 18 and 23 (cleaner) and the final set was a special one, all the way from the ground floor to the 25th floor, with 30″ passive rest instead of running down stairs. hotelstairs.JPG

The other people in the gym were quite surprised when I entered the gym through its emergency exit.

Tomorrow: steady state in hotel gym. Fly to Prague.

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urbanfitness

Jan 27 2016

Wednesday: Hotel fitness

Tuesday

Fly to Brussels and a late dinner with a customer.

Wednesday

Putting together a set of important documents to be delivered in Brussels, deadline Thursday 11AM.

We delivered it today at 3PM. The biggest panic was the search for the stamp with the word “ORIGINAL”. The fun part was the initialing of each and every page of the original:

SESAR Membership Application 001.JPG

After that the work was done and as everything went smoothly and I didn’t have any more meetings, it was time to get back to the hotel and do a workout.

This hotel has a nice fitness on the 23rd floor, with a view on the inner ring road.

urbanfitness.JPG

Did a mini hotel gym triathlon (threadmill, ellyptical, bicycle 10 minutes each) and then a weights workout. I chose the weights such that 5 repeats was a challenge and did 3 sets of 5 on each station.

Tomorrow: Meetings meetings meetings, then figuring out how to do a sprinterval workout in a hotel gym.

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5k

Jan 25 2016

5k PB without reserve gas tank

The 5k isn’t a distance I row frequently. I live in a country where all the endurance tests are a 6k. There is always more reason to do a 6k, and the 5k seems too close to do a separate attempt. One could then also do a 7k or a 4k or a 3245m row and keep records of personal best times.

But the 5k is on the list of nonathlon events, so once a winter I row it. And because it is this month’s Cross Team Challenge, I had to do it in January. And because I will be out of town for business for the rest of the week, I had to do it today.

I wasn’t sure about the strategy. My PB was 18:26 and I feel I can go faster. On the other hand, I spent a lot of time snow shoveling and speed skating over the weekend, so I guess my reserves are quite depleted. I decided to aim for a PB anyway, and the plan was to negative split to something between 18:16 and 18:26.

I set up pace boats at 1:50 pace (18:20), 1:51 (18:30) and a final, slow one at 1:52 pace (18:40) to have something to keep behind me in case I would go bust. That’s how certain I was.

Ended up rowing a length behind the fast pace boat, a length ahead of the second one. Tried to create light between me and the 1:51 boat and not lose too much on the 1:50 one. The plan was to then push on the gas in  the last 1500m and get the average down to close to 1:50, row right through and finish a bow ball in front of him.

Reality was different. With 1500m to go I started to push, then with 1000m to go I couldn’t hold 1:49 and started to see the occasional 1:52. I decided to back down a bit and just stay ahead of the 1:51 pace boat. With 500m to go the predicted end time was oscillating between 18:25 and 18:26. That gave me enough energy to push at least a bit and get 18:24 on the predicted end time.

Workout Summary - Jan 26, 2016
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|05000|18:24.9|01:50.5|259.5|27.0|175.7|183.0|10.1
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|Comments
01|00500|01:50.7|01:50.7|257.9|26.6|151.7|169.0|10.2|
02|00500|01:51.0|01:51.0|256.1|26.0|170.1|172.0|10.4|
03|00500|01:50.6|01:50.6|258.9|26.6|174.2|176.0|10.2|
04|00500|01:50.6|01:50.6|258.5|26.6|176.3|178.0|10.2|
05|00500|01:50.0|01:50.0|262.6|26.7|178.5|181.0|10.2|
06|00500|01:50.4|01:50.4|259.9|26.6|179.8|181.0|10.2|
07|00500|01:50.3|01:50.3|261.1|27.2|180.5|181.0|10.0|
08|00500|01:49.7|01:49.7|265.3|27.4|181.2|182.0|10.0|
09|00500|01:51.0|01:51.0|256.2|27.6|181.8|183.0|09.8|
10|00500|01:50.6|01:50.6|258.7|28.8|181.6|183.0|09.4|

5k.jpg

5k_spm.jpg

In the first graph you can see very well the short pace dips around 11 and 13 minutes. That is a sign of trouble.

Happy with the result. Still believe I can go faster when well rested, but I will leave it at this attempt.

Romana registered me for a 2k erg race coming Saturday. I will be up against our club’s fastest Masters rower. He rowed a 6:20.5 2k in December and wants to repeat it now that he is 50, to set a new Czech record for the 50-59 category. I will be flying home on Friday after a week in Brussels, so we’ll see what the 2k brings me.

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