lactate

Nov 23 2018

Lactate Test Results – Did I get fitter?

Lactate Step Test Results

I received the Lactate Step test results. Here’s a chart comparing them with results from the 2017 test:

So my 2.0 mmol/L level is fitted to be at 202W (HR 164) and my 4.0 mmol/L level is fitted to be at 237W (HR 174). A year ago, the results were 212W (HR 164) and 247W (HR 178) respectively. Here’s the fit curve from this year’s measurement report:

Here’s 2017 for comparison:

So, did my fitness decrease or is this identical within the measurement error?

It’s actually not so important. A year ago, I concluded that 211W was a high value and I decided to do my steady state rows below 200W. This year I will draw a similar conclusion: Steady state not above 200W.

From data on rowsandall.com, I estimate I can hold a pace of 1:55 to 1:57 for one hour (220 to 230 W):

On Rowsandall.com, I will lower my FTP value to 220W. At this point in my training, a 1:57 pace for an hour feels more realistic (and was what I achieved when I last did it, but that was almost a year ago).

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Nov 17 2018

Another year, another ANP test

Monday

I took a day off to give my back some rest.

Tuesday

I went to the pool before work, expecting to do a shorter, lighter swim, but things went so well that I did the full hour. Almost came late for my first meeting.

Wednesday

A weights session. This time I did the full workout prescribed by our club coach. Most exercises at 4×30 repetitions, some at 4×15 or 4×20. It was a good session. I felt it for two days.

Thursday

My back was recovered enough to try one of the erg sessions. This was 3x15min with each 15 minutes as 4 minutes at 20spm, 1 minute at 24spm. Of course with a nice 2500 warming up and a 5 minute cooling down.


Workout Summary - media/20181115-2001130o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11628|53:59.0|02:19.3|164.2|18.7|161.3|177.0|11.5
W-|10998|44:52.0|02:02.4|190.2|21.0|164.0|177.0|11.7
R-|00632|09:00.0|07:06.9|037.0|07.3|147.8|177.0|24.6
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|03709|15:00.0|02:01.3|193.7|21.1|159.1|173.0|11.7
01|03648|15:00.0|02:03.3|187.1|21.0|163.7|174.0|11.6
02|03640|14:52.5|02:02.6|189.7|20.9|169.2|177.0|11.7

Friday

An easy erg session on the day before the lactate step test.

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Saturday

ANP Test day. I was in the 8:30 group so I didn’t have a lot of time for erg test anxiety. I had to go to the club immediately after breakfast, got changed, signed the mandatory GDPR form, paid for the test, and started warming up.

The protocol was the same as last year, 5 times 5 minutes with two minute sessions of rest. I also rowed the exact same target wattages: 160, 190, 220, 250 and 280W. The scientists had some difficulty getting blood from my ear. Perhaps because my ears were a bit frozen (it was -2C outside).

I was curious if I would succeed in the last session, not having done a lot of erging at that power level. In the end it was all right. It was tough of course, but it was doable, especially with the coaches cheering behind us. Of course our men go a bit faster than us Masters. Tomas next to me ended at 410W.

On Rowsandall.com, it was easy to compare with last year’s test:

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I was surprised how close the values are between last and this year. It only seems I have started to Row a bit shorter (but with higher average and peak force). Not sure I am pleased with that.

After the erg testing, I rowed a short cooling down, and then I helped getting some eights and fours off our trailer and into the boat house. After that, I did a 5km slow run. From our boat house to the boat house of the other rowing club, turn around at their entrance gate, and run the same way back. It’s almost exactly 5k.

My sons were doing stairs running at the dam:

Fifteen times in various ways (skipping one step, one one leg, jumps, etc). It’s a hellish workout.

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myimage (18)

Nov 11 2018

An expensive shirt?

In the morning, Romana, Robin and I visited the Sport Life fair in Brno. At the stand of Gogen, a manufacturer of headsets who sponsors Ondrej Synek, there were Concept2 ergs and there was a challenge, for men to row under a 500m under 1:45 and for women to row under 2:00. If you made it you won a T-shirt. Romana and I sat down (in jeans) and Romca rowed a 1:50 and I did 1:32, which brought us to the top of the rankings and we got our shirts.

Not sure it was a good idea. I still had to do a steady state row afterwards, and of course we hadn’t done any warming up or anything.

I bought new hiking shoes and we got Robin a new winter coat. Then we headed to the rowing club, picking up Martin “Turkey” Krocil on the way.

The workout was easy. A 2×25 minute steady state with mild rate ladders (19-20-21-20-19 for the first and 19-20-21-22-21 for the second interval). It all went nicely. It was good to row next to each other. We rowed in sync, and time goes faster and I find myself pulling better scores when in company.

With five minutes to go I suddenly felt a sharp pain in the right side of my lower back. I stopped for a few strokes, then tried to pick it up again, but the pain was too … painful. I guess I am going to take a few days of forced rest. I wonder if the 500m effort without warming up triggered this? The other thing was that in our rowing club erg room, there is a distinct draft over the back when you erg with the window open and the ventilation on.

So it will be a forced rest day tomorrow, perhaps swimming on Tuesday, and then we’ll see. Dang.

Well, I may be exaggerating this. I rarely have any sports injuries, so when something like this happens I tend to dramatize.

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Nov 10 2018

Saturday – 5x5min/3min

An erg training from our club’s Masters group.

5x(3min+1min+1min)/3min at 22/24/26spm.


Workout Summary - media/20181110-1426040o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|08626|39:59.0|02:19.1|162.3|20.6|154.0|177.0|10.4
W-|06399|24:46.0|01:56.1|224.6|23.2|159.3|177.0|11.2
R-|02237|15:00.0|03:21.2|060.7|16.4|145.5|177.0|08.7
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00761|03:00.0|01:58.2|207.3|22.2|144.6|161.0|11.4
01|00263|01:00.0|01:54.0|234.4|24.0|163.1|167.0|11.0
02|00270|01:00.0|01:51.1|260.7|26.4|169.2|172.0|10.2
03|00760|03:00.0|01:58.5|210.4|22.3|151.5|165.0|11.4
04|00264|01:00.0|01:53.5|238.3|24.4|165.9|166.0|10.8
05|00240|00:53.0|01:50.4|259.7|26.2|170.1|174.0|10.4
06|00751|03:00.0|01:59.8|206.4|21.9|152.7|166.0|11.4
07|00263|01:00.0|01:54.0|234.8|24.0|168.9|173.0|11.0
08|00270|01:00.0|01:51.3|252.9|26.1|173.9|176.0|10.3
09|00758|03:00.0|01:58.7|210.2|21.9|155.7|169.0|11.5
10|00263|01:00.0|01:54.0|235.0|24.2|171.0|173.0|10.9
11|00243|00:53.4|01:50.0|261.6|26.1|174.3|175.0|10.4
12|00757|03:00.0|01:58.9|216.8|21.6|155.9|169.0|11.7
13|00264|01:00.0|01:53.6|238.0|24.3|172.4|175.0|10.9
14|00271|01:00.0|01:50.9|254.9|25.9|175.9|177.0|10.4

It was an OK session. Not extremely taxing. Pretty consistant also in terms of Work per Stroke:

With a 2500m warming up and a 2000m cooling down this session had a “rScore” of 63, which is a little lower than the 75 that I usually score when doing a 5x1500m. Here is the session compared to my last 5x1500m:

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Nov 10 2018

Snow Shoeing and other alternative trainings

I spent Monday thru Thursday of this week in France. Monday and Tuesday were a short vacation with my old boss and our old team. The boss is going to retire, and we spent two days around his log cabin in the Pyrenees.

So my exercise on Monday was three hours of hiking with snow shoes, which is great fun by the way.

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After that, we enjoyed some hot springs in another part of the valley and we finished the day with an excellent dinner in a nice small restaurant in the Spanish town of Llivia (a Spanish exclave surrounded by France).

On Tuesday morning we woke up in a mixture of drizzle and snow, so we decided to move to the Mediterranean close to Perpignan for another hike.

At the end of the day we returned to Toulouse, where I checked in to my hotel and joined a business dinner with our Navigation group.

On Wednesday, I worked out in the hotel gym. There was a funny rower, a “Matrix”:

I did my warming up on it and it wasn’t as bad as I expected. It works with a metal flywheel with magnetic resistance. What impressed me was that the simple display displayed watts and pace that were quite comparable to the Concept2 erg. Of course I was working on feel, but pulling 2:09 at 160W and 2:00 at 203W felt like it should feel.

After the warming up I did my strength training. I am now doing 4×30 repeats. I improvised a bit based on the limited equipment I had but it was a good one hour workout.

On Thursday I flew home and didn’t exercise. On Friday, I spent an hour in the Brno Luzanky (Olympic size) pool.

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Nov 8 2018

Novembervieren Race – battling on old battle grounds

Our CVK Brno/Naarden coxed quad was racing in block 3, so there was time enough in the morning. We arrived in Amsterdam around lunch time.

The water was nice and flat. I watched the races of Block 2 from the banks at the Omval, close to rowing club RIC.

The weather was nice, although humid and cold, but it wasn’t raining and there was a light tail wind.

Finally, it was time to launch. As we were the last boat in our division, we also launched last, so we received some comments from the umpires to not lose contact with the other boats steaming up to the start and receive an official warning.

As we were a relatively fast boat, there was no problem whatsoever. We steamed up to the start line in our usual 24 spm, about 10 minutes before the start of the first boat in Block 3. We quickly found our position among the large crowd of fours and quads, and waited.

The sun getting lower, and we ended up having to wait in the shadow. That made it a little colder, especially when we removed our turtle shells and prepared to race.

The chart shows only the race part, plus perhaps 100m of getting up to speed. As you can see we settled into 31-32spm and never lost that. The heart rate values are not correct for the first part of the race. I was fiddling with the Polar OH1 before the start, and I think it didn’t make good contact, until it snapped into place in the second kilometer.

It was hard work but at the same time I really enjoyed racing on my old battle ground. I was curious to see if I would still know every turn and every bridge, and I wasn’t disappointed. With every stroke, I knew exactly where I was and where the cox would turn the boat to. We had a great cox, by the way. Look at the line he took:

You can’t really steer this course any sharper. Here is us heading down the course:

I am not sure at which point this picture was taken. I guess from one of the bridges. The water was a bit rougher than I had expected. I think this had a lot to do with rowing as the last boat in our division, with 80 or more boats ahead of us.

Immediately from the start, our coxswain started encouraging us, letting us know that we were making ground on the crews ahead of us. Eventually it took until the Omval (1.5k to go) when we started to pass crews, but now we were passing them fast. We gained contact, quickly rowed through a crew, and sprinted to the next one. About 200m before the Berlage bridge I told Dennis that we could rate up a bit, which he did. I just wanted to let him know that I was ready to start emptying the tank. Now we had 800m to go. Rating up brought some unrest in the crew, so we stuck at 32/33spm. It was a long stretch rowing from the Berlage bridge to the finish at De Hoop rowing club.

Immediately after crossing the finish, our coxswain got his phone out of his pocket and announced that we were in the first 20.

In our division, we were 19th out of 63 boats. Not bad. Funny that we finished on a shared 19th position. The first 6 boats of our division were all rowing with formed elite rowers (mostly Olympians).

Happy faces after the race. In the background the Berlage bridge and the high rise office buildings at the Omval

We spent an hour preparing the boats for transport, and then it was time to get warm by taking a shower. I had some time for a quick coffee before I was headed to the airport. Took a flight to Munich, where I arrived at 1am, slept for a few hours and then continued with the 6am flight to Toulouse.

What a great race day!

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kaart

Nov 4 2018

Coxed Quad Training – Race Prep

That was an intensive experience.

The one and only training of the Masters C 4x+ Naarden/Brno combination, Richard, Jos, Sander and Dennis. I was on 3 seat following the stroke Dennis.

It was a glorious but cold November morning. In the warming up we started at 24spm straight away, zipping around the Fortress of Naarden. This was tough for me on three, as my main job was to copy and reinforce the stroke rhythm of the Dennis, but I was a tad slower on the tap down. These guys row an aggressive tap down!

After about a kilometer, we arrived at the beginning of the Muidertrekvaart and that’s where we used the 4km to do various drills. Fixed seat, quarter slide, full slide at various pressures and stroke rates. It was fun.

Passing under the Hakkelaarsbrug we started the final stretch of the “there” part of the row, starting gently but then pushing up the stroke rate to finish at 30spm after two kilometers. I was working hard, and you can see it from my heart rate response.

On the “back home” part we started with a drill again, alternating full length strokes with quarter sliding. At the Hakkelaar it was announced that we would do the next 4km in steady state, 28 spm. Okay!

Here’s a video taken at the end of the 4k and during the warm down:

The facts in graphical form:

That was the race prep! On Sunday (this afternoon) we’re racing in Amsterdam.

On Saturday afternoon, I gave a rowing data clinic. I will post about it later on the Analytics Blog. After the training I went for a walk through the fortress. I grew up here and learned to row at this club:

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