Mar 31 2018
Two Trail Runs (and one Not So Trail run)
Tuesday
Hotel room in Phoenix. Up at 2:30. Spent some time reading emails, then decided it was time to hit the trails. On this trip, I was prepared. I had brought a head lamp and thus was able to fit in desert trail runs before dawn. It wasn’t particularly warm outside, about 9 degrees C, so I put a shirt with long sleeves over my T-shirt, got in the car and drove to the trailhead, arriving there at 5:45.
I saw a closed gate and was confused. Perhaps this part of the desert was closed for some reason? I drove back to the hotel, parked the car and started running, back to the trailhead.
When I arrived there, the gate was open, and I was able to see the sign saying that the trails opened only at 6AM.
Unfortunately, by that time it was time to run back to the hotel, take a shower, eat a breakfast and go to the office.
So no trail running on Tuesday. To-the-trail-running.
Wednesday
This time I was better prepared. I had discovered that the Apache Wash trailhead, a bit further away from the hotel, opened at 5AM. Same routine. This time I woke up at 3am. I did some email reading, some real reading, and then I got in the car and drove to Apache Wash.
It was a great run. It was pretty dark during the first 25 minutes, but the head lamp helped a lot. Better than trying to use the torch function on the iPhone.
Then, there is this moment when birds start to sing, and then the sun rises above the mountains to the east.
I was running on the Apache Wash (“AW”) loop, but from a quick glance at the trailhead map I estimated that doing the entire loop would take too long. I hesitated at a sign that said “Connector to AW”, about 25 minutes in, but then I continued, and after exactly 30 minutes, I turned around and ran back to the car.
Another “there and back” run. I tend to have a strong preference for loops, but on a new trail, in the desert, I didn’t want to risk. It didn’t matter much, because the experience was great. It’s also pretty much the only time I am outside. My company’s offices are bunkers without direct daylight, and I don’t count a quick run across the street to get lunch.
Thursday
Up at 4:30 this time. Same routine. A bit of emailing with the team back in Europe. Then in the car for a 15 minute drive to the AW trail head, putting on the head lamp and run.
I took a second quick glance at the map and learned that that “connector” trail after 25 minutes would be ideal, and I would be able to run a loop!
Strava told me I was 10th overall on this loop. Yay! I didn’t run that fast. I was able to get into what I call my “fifth gear” and run effortlessly, but I stopped to take pictures.
Sunrises (and sunsets) are beautiful in Arizona.
Friday
This morning, I packed and checked out from the hotel. I had a 8AM meeting in Tempe, so there was no time to go running. (Also, I woke up at 5:30 today.)
My 8AM in Tempe was followed by a 9AM meeting at the Sky Harbor Circle office (my company has many offices in Phoenix) was lasted until lunch time. I had lunch with a colleague, and when he had to go to the airport, I drove over to the botanical gardens. That was my exercise for the day, a 2 mile strawl through the botanical gardens.
Now I am at the gate, an hour before boarding my flight to Heathrow. In Heathrow, I will connect to Prague, followed by a 2 hour drive to Brno, which brings me home late Saturday night. I predict that I will not be able to fit in a workout on Saturday.
Apr 3 2018
Second OTW row of the season – rating up!
Sunday
No training. Too jetlagged and also having a cold. We did make a nice excursion to a nearby Chateau.
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Monday
Too strong wind for rowing. I did a one hour swim in the indoor 50m pool.
Tuesday
I created my new training plan for the coming period today, and I was able to weave in quite a lot of the sessions suggested by our club’s head coach. This is not always the case, but this time it worked out.
We’re going out in the eight tomorrow, and I am going to strongly suggest that that will be a steady state session. Some in this Masters rowers group have a tendency to want to do speed work on every outing, but I think that a nice technique row is more appropriate for our first row of the season. That was the reason for me to do the 4x5min/4min at 28/30spm today, so I could claim having it already done, and needing a steady state session.
It was pretty windy and choppy when I launched, so I sought shelter in the gorge. There is a stretch that is a little longer than 1km and pretty straight, so there is where I would be doing my 5 minute intervals.
I still haven’t found my OTW rowing routine. Today, I forgot to pack the heart rate belt.
Workout Summary - media/20180403-1715420o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07503|39:59.0|02:39.9|181.0|22.9|0.0|000.0|08.2
W-|04527|19:52.0|02:11.8|256.0|26.6|000.0|000.0|08.6
R-|02979|20:00.0|03:21.4|106.9|19.2|000.0|000.0|07.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01186|05:00.0|02:06.5|272.5|26.2|000.0|0.0|09.1
01|01106|05:00.0|02:15.6|251.5|26.8|000.0|0.0|08.3
02|01146|04:52.8|02:07.8|267.0|26.9|000.0|0.0|08.7
03|01089|05:00.0|02:17.7|233.1|26.5|000.0|0.0|08.2
I am pretty happy with the achieved boat speed. There was a big difference between tail wind (first and third intervals) and head wind (second and fourth intervals) and in the fourth interval I was both tired and steering, as I ended up doing the 28spm bit in the first part of the windy stretch.
In the Flex charts, you can see how I got tired, and especially the Wash number deterioriated (or was it the steering).
I also had a problem with the Empower Oarlock disconnecting and reconnecting several times during the row.I just upgraded the firmware Perhaps it will help.
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Today was also the first row with the Quiske pod. I used the sensor pod under the seat. I was curious to see if there would be any differences between the head wind and tail wind intervals and between the first ones when I was fresh and the last ones. Let’s first look at boat acceleration for the 26spm and 28spm bits.
That looks pretty consistent. No big differences between the intervals. A bit more spread in the data in the recovery part of the 28spm acceleration curves, compared to 26spm. These bits, two minutes which I counted as 8×7 strokes to survive them, were pretty hard. I conclude that I was able to row 26spm consistently, but have to work on the recovery at higher stroke rates. The acceleration from the minimum speed (left part of the chart) looks OK to me, but I am curious to see what the Quiske crew thinks of it. In 26spm, you see a slight acceleration (or reduced deceleration) in the very final part of the recovery. I was paying attention to accelerating slightly up the slide in that final part, and taking light catches.
Now, let’s look at the Seat Speed:
Funny, I can not see that acceleration on the recovery which I could very distinctly feel as a slight leg pull. I guess one would have to compare with a baseline of people who don’t do this.
Another fun thing is that the Quiske file can be exported to a CSV which is compatible with Rowsandall.com. I imported that file and was able to do a couple of nice charts.
I am expecting that seat speed is more or less linear in boat speed and that the seat recovery speed is more independent. This chart is seat speed (drive & recovery) vs boat speed. Here, I am really just exploring the data, to see if I can make sense of it and possibly derive a useful technique metric.
It is difficult to make sense of these charts now, but perhaps after a couple of rows I will start to understand.
I have also created a data set with all the data from the two rows. If I find time tomorrow, I will do some correlation analysis. Big fun!
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: 1x, intervals, OTW, rowing, single, training