Rowsandall

Jun 14 2015

Race course before race

I like to take a look at the race course in the morning.

Racing today M2x, MLW 1x and M8+. Daughter Lenka rows the B final in the double and single, A final in the quad, and son Dominik the A final single (12 year old)

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1

Jun 13 2015

How to prepare for Masters 1km sprints – some ideas

Here are a few sessions that I have used in the past to prepare for sprint racing. The dreaded Masters 1000m is really an exercise in lactate suffering and one has to get used to it.

One part of it is to do standalone 1km trials on the water on a regular basis. Feel the bite at 500m.

But for those who like a bit more sophistication, here are some more ideas. They are not my own. I have inherited them from my coaches and keep returning to these in the building up towards the Masters Nationals and Masters Worlds. I am putting them here because I am tired of searching them in old emails. Enjoy!

Session 1: Lactate is the killer

Adding a new layer of misery on top of the 1km.

Warming up

250m racing start,

stop immediately, check your boat hard.

Line up immediately, 250m race start, stop immediately.

As soon as you have stopped start the stop watch for 2:30mins as that is when you start your 1000m.

You will feel the burn and the mental focus must kick in or you will fall apart.

Cooling down

Session 2: To build up lactate levels early, then work through the set pieces.

Needed: A 2km race course with 500m marks

My Tech Notes:

1. As rating rises, keep ‘long’ & time on the recovery. To put it another way, when rating increases, increase through the water, not by rushing the slide.

2. Keep head very still, do not lift chin at catch, sit tall at finish. Use abdominal strength.

3. Handle path; Keep flat on drive and recovery. As to your comments, only bury the blade under the water, not shaft.

Start:

a) 2km: Standard warm up

b) 2km: Perfect technical rowing 200m off @17?spm, 300m on @21spm,200m off, 300m on,200m off, 300m on,200m off, 300m on.

c) 2km: Running piece 500m off @17?spm, 1000m on @23spm, 500m off @17?spm

d) 2km: Running piece 500m off @17?spm, 1000m on @27spm, 500m off @17?spm

Assess: What was good? What was bad? Refine for next 2km

e) 2km: Running pieces 500m off @17?spm, 500m on @29spm, 500m off @17?spm, 500m on @29spm.

Assess: What was good? What was bad? Refine for next 2km

f) 2km: Warm down, Perfect technical rowing 1000m on @21spm, 1000m off @17?spm.

Ends = 12km for session

The session is specifically designed to assess what ratings you are comfortable at.

Session 3: Small pyramid (for beginning of taper week)

Warming up

All intervals with rolling start.

20´´/20´´ @ 38spm

40´´/40´´ @ 36spm

60´´/60´´ @ 34spm

40´´/40´´ @ 36spm

20´´ @ 38spm

Cooling Down

Note: This session is very nice in a double and adding 2 strokes to the prescribed stroke rates. Needed: Two scullers who row very well together. The idea is that you become comfortable rating up.

Session 4: Race prep (end of taper week)

Warming up

250m at race pace

500m rest

250m at race pace

500m rest

250m at race pace

Cooling down

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 13 • Tags: 1000m, OTW, race, race prep, rowing, taper

Jun 12 2015

Thursday: 1km Time Trial – hot and average

Arrived at the lake late, very late. I just had difficulty leaving work, with all the things going on.

High temperature but very low wind, resulting in a lake which was not choppy but there were these longer waves caused by all the recreation boats, tourist ferries, and police speedboats doing “training”. The police training is quite interesting. I think they specialize in rescuing long-legged blond women, because all I see them do is speeding up and down the lake carrying young, blond women.

I heard an anecdote recently, about a sculler from the other club, who was stopped by the police because he was rowing on the part of the river that is forbidden for “sport”. When asked what he was doing, he said he was a drug smuggler who was carrying a load of crystal meth to Veverská Bityška.

Wrong answer, of course.

He had to row back to the club, police following him a few meters behind in their speed boat. This must have been an interesting scene, a relaxed, slowly sculling single sculler, followed by two guys in a police boat. Back the club he had to show is ID, and was thoroughly lectured. That was it.

Anyway, yesterday I was not going to do any smuggling. I decided to do a 1km trial. My plan is to do these regularly to get used to the pain and be able to rate up through it. The dreaded “500m” bite, as so well described in this blog.

Also a good opportunity to experiment with CrewNerds spoken start command.

Warming up: a few 10 stroke sets at higher rates (25, 30, 32spm). Turning in Rokle. Start practice: first one stroke, then two, then three, etc. Then a slow row along the nude beach to the start.

“Ready – Attention – Row”.

I took off at 35spm but quickly lowered it to 31spm. The plan was to hold 1:50, and increase the rate every time I would see a substantial deviation.

The plan was quickly binned. It was very difficult to hold 1:55.

In the second half I started to have difficulty keeping my line and ended up rowing in the buoys a couple of times. In the final 100m I was rowing in the wake of the tourist ferry.

Excuses. Excuses.

The end time was a 3:52. Still a good result given the heat but not the 3:40 that I am chasing this year. Perhaps it isn’t realistic?

|Start|Stop_|Dist_|Time_|Pace__|_SPM__|avg HR|max HR|DPS|Remarks |00000|03407|03407|21:01|03:05.0| 20.1 | 149 | 178 |08.1|warming up |03407|03507|00099|00:23|01:55.7| 31.3 | 148 | 172 |08.3|1km, split 1 |03507|03605|00099|00:22|01:51.4| 31.5 | 178 | 180 |08.5|1km, split 2 |03605|03707|00102|00:23|01:53.1| 31.0 | 181 | 182 |08.6|1km, split 3 |03707|03804|00097|00:22|01:53.5| 31.0 | 184 | 185 |08.5|1km, split 4 |03804|03907|00103|00:24|01:56.3| 30.5 | 185 | 185 |08.5|1km, split 5 |03907|04007|00100|00:23|01:55.4| 30.3 | 186 | 186 |08.6|1km, split 6 |04007|04108|00101|00:24|01:59.2| 29.9 | 186 | 186 |08.4|1km, split 7 |04108|04204|00096|00:23|01:59.3| 29.5 | 185 | 186 |08.5|1km, split 8 |04204|04307|00103|00:24|01:56.9| 30.4 | 186 | 186 |08.5|1km, split 9 |04307|04405|00098|00:24|02:01.9| 29.7 | 185 | 185 |08.3|1km, split 10 |04405|10798|06393|36:13|02:49.9| 19.5 | 153 | 185 |09.1|steady state / cooling down

dist_____|time_____|_pace___|_HR__|_SPM__|_DPS|comment 3407_____|_21:01____|_3:05.0|149|20.1|8.1|warmup 0998_____|_03:52____|_1:56.3|180|30.5|8.5|Main set 6393_____|_36:13____|_2:49.9|153|19.5|9.1|Cool down 10798____|_01:06____|_2:49.7|154|19.4|9.1|_Total

During the row I was convinced there was a strong headwind. When I stopped, it didn’t seem so strong anymore. Still the Italian flag on the fireworks pontoon was flying evidence that I had been rowing into a headwind.

After the 1km I needed a few minutes to recollect myself, then I did a 6km steady state. After the row I went for a swim in the lake. It was nice and warm in the top 50cm, but below that it is still quite cold. First time swimming in the lake, this season.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: 1000m, crewnerd, lake, OTW, rowing, single, steady state

Jun 11 2015

Textbook graphs

Today I received the results of my VO2 max test on the bicycle. As every year, this slightly old-fashioned Institute for Sports Medicine just gave me a printout printed on a line printer. I am surprised they are still able to purchase the paper for their printer. (Or perhaps they bought sufficient paper for a few decennia at the end of the communist era.) So I spent some time happily typing the values into my spreadsheet.

In contrast to a year ago, the graphs have textbook quality.

So my VO2 max is identical to last year at 56 ml/min/kg. However, I achieved a slightly higher Power at 365W (5.07 W/kg) vs 350W a year ago. The ventilatory threshold seems to be around 150 bpm at 234W. A year ago this looked more like 160bpm at 215W. My max HR during the test was 183bpm, vs 182bpm a year ago. I have seen higher values in races and trainings.

So what’s the conclusion? I guess I optimistically interpret this as a slight improvement. Still, race performance will depend more on being rested and motivated, and on technique, than on my “raw power”.

Not sure how the cycling power correspond to erg power.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 13 • Tags: testing, VO2max

Jun 11 2015

Evening Double

Our lovely lake - view from the rowing club — Our lovely lake – view from the rowing club

Tuesday

I traveled to Brussels on Monday afternoon, arriving at 9pm. No training on Tuesday, just mental endurance training during long meetings. Traveled home in the evening, arriving at 11:30pm.

Wednesday

I had some difficulty to reach the rowing club. It is the annual fireworks festival, and yesterday’s location was our lake. So police was blocking the road to the rowing club, not allowing anyone in, I guess to avoid a traffic and parking chaos. I tried to argue with the police man that I was going to the rowing club and would be parking on private property. He asked if I could prove that … Apparently a bag with sports clothes and rowing club stickers on my car wasn’t enough.

So I had to drive around and use the back road, which took another 25 minutes (because of the traffic chaos created by the police closing off the lake). I was now under time pressure, because it was already past 6pm and I would have a conference call at 7:30.

Steady state in the double with Radek. We just did 2×12 minutes because we didn’t have time for more. The second 12 minute interval was interrupted by a short phone call that I had to take.

After the row, we quickly washed the boat and put it in the rack. After that I had literally 30 seconds left before the start of the conference call.

Still good to be out on the water, even on such a busy day.

| Dist_ | Time_ | Pace__ | _SPM | avg HR | max HR | DPS | Remarks | 02306 | 12:52 | 02:47.4 | 19.2 | 118 | 140 | 09.3 | WU | 00450 | 01:59 | 02:12.3 | 18.0 | 121 | 132 | 12.6 | 2min @18spm | 00482 | 02:00 | 02:04.4 | 19.5 | 141 | 145 | 12.3 | 2min @20spm | 00492 | 02:00 | 02:02.0 | 21.2 | 157 | 162 | 11.6 | 2min @22spm | 00700 | 03:00 | 02:08.6 | 18.5 | 150 | 160 | 12.6 | 3min @18spm | 00477 | 02:01 | 02:06.9 | 19.8 | 151 | 157 | 12.0 | 2min @20spm | 00235 | 00:59 | 02:05.5 | 20.9 | 159 | 160 | 11.4 | 1min @22spm | 00114 | 01:00 | 04:22.3 | 17.1 | 144 | 160 | 06.7 | turn | 00420 | 02:00 | 02:23.0 | 19.1 | 135 | 152 | 11.0 | 2min @18spm | 00444 | 02:00 | 02:15.1 | 19.4 | 152 | 155 | 11.4 | 2min @20spm | 00276 | 02:01 | 03:39.1 | 19.0 | 132 | 161 | 07.2 | 2min @22spm, phone call | 00614 | 03:02 | 02:28.3 | 18.9 | 133 | 155 | 10.7 | 3min @18spm | 00459 | 02:00 | 02:10.9 | 20.1 | 160 | 164 | 11.4 | 2min @20spm | 00245 | 01:01 | 02:04.5 | 21.8 | 163 | 168 | 11.0 | 1min @22spm | 02229 | 13:37 | 03:03.3 | 18.8 | 136 | 168 | 08.7 | CD

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: double, lake, steady state, training

Jun 11 2015

Remarks at the 2015 150th Yale-Harvard Boat Race Dinner

Great words.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0

Jun 8 2015

Race weekend (as a spectator) and 20 strokes on/20 off

Weekend

On Saturday evening I watched “my” eight win the Masters B title at the Primatorky race. They copied the successful recipe of a year ago. For 750m they rowed in second position, took the lead under the railway bridge, and won by 0.36 seconds.

My name was announced when they collected their medals. I laughed at my replacement apologizingly. Apparently my name wasn’t replaced correctly in the program. To be clear, I was watching the race from the shore, first half on the big screen, then live. Beer in hand.

On Sunday, the main program was on. This is really a prestigious race, but since 1979 it has been won by only one club: Dukla. The reason is simple. The Dukla club is the main training center for the top athletes, and most of the national selection is training there.

Our club has won in 1940, exactly 75 years ago.

This year, we had a chance. On Saturday, we won the semifinals by 2 boat lengths, and Dukla has respect for us.

One could argue that there must be something wrong with the selection to the national team, when a club eight that has trained together for a week, can challenge the Dukla guys. To be honest, we have 2 the national lightweight pair rowing for us, and we have a couple of talented U23 rowers.

First, the Juniors. An eight with three rowers from our club won by 3 boat lengths. Great.

Then the main event. We were watching this anxiously on the big screens. Our guys were slow out of the start, rowing in third position, but about half way they mastered “the turn” very well and with 1000m to go they were half a length behind Dukla.

Unfortunately Dukla managed to keep this lead for 600m, so when they finally turned up under the railway bridge I knew we would be second. It is very hard to take over the lead in the waves in front of the fans.

So CVK Brno came second. Still a fantastic result for a club which has barely 100 rowers.

Monday

Today’s training was the familiar 20 strokes “on”, 20 strokes “off”. The session that was fatal two weeks ago. Again I was rowing against the double. Again the water wasn’t calm.

But this time I wasn’t rowing with the side camera, and the lake was slightly calmer.

It’s hard to get any statistics from this workout. I saw some 1:45 paces in the tailwind section. Rowed the tailwind set at 30-31spm, the headwind set at 32-34spm. Trying to get “swing” and keep the stroke rate high but “effortless”. Hard to explain. I think I succeeded pretty well.

I have also uploaded again the first video from last Thursday. Here it is:

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 5 • Tags: lake, RIM, rowinginmotion, single, training

«< 114 115 116 117 118 >»

Race course before race

How to prepare for Masters 1km sprints – some ideas

Thursday: 1km Time Trial – hot and average

Textbook graphs

Evening Double

Remarks at the 2015 150th Yale-Harvard Boat Race Dinner

Race weekend (as a spectator) and 20 strokes on/20 off

Calendar

Tags