95BCB08F-E53E-4300-94D2-8ED53140BAC5

Feb 25 2018

Hard Work

Saturday

Saturday wasn’t hard, just a normal hour of steady state.

steady state

Sunday – intervals at 26spm

This was the hard day.

2x(500m/70″)/5min

I rowed this with Romana in the erg room of our rowing club. It was a great sunny day, just a little cold. Maximum temperature -7 degrees C and below -15 during the night. I had to Row this with sunglasses because the sun was shining in my face.

With Romana, we agreed to replace the 500m with a time based interval of 1:50 duration. This would allow us to Row this next to each other in the same stroke rate. Unfortunately, it was only during the workout Execution that we thought of rowing this on slides as a double, two ergs behind each other. Next time.

Romana confirmed my suspicions that she is in great form to break 8 minutes. I managed to row each interval above 500m.

screenshot

screenshot

The Power values in the chart are a bit weird. I rowed this on an erg with PM3 monitor, attached to PainSled running on the iPhone through the usb cable. The PM3 Power values during rest intervals are not updated, which confused PainSled.,

erg chart

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Capture

Feb 24 2018

Last Week

I didn’t have time to blog, but I did train.

Sunday

Steady State

Monday

Fifty five minutes of swimming. Good recovery workout. There weren’t many people in the pool on Monday morning, which was nice. This was originally planned for Wednesday, but I had a business dinner on Monday evening, so I chose to move the 5x1500m erg workout to Wednesday.

Tuesday

5x1500m/5min. A classical Pete Plan workout.


Workout Summary - media/20180220-1921420o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10912|52:54.0|02:25.4|193.4|24.7|155.5|179.0|08.4
W-|07500|27:52.0|01:51.5|252.5|26.9|166.5|179.0|10.0
R-|03414|25:01.0|03:40.0|082.0|17.4|142.3|179.0|00.9
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01500|05:34.5|01:51.5|249.0|26.3|160.3|173.0|10.2
01|01500|05:36.5|01:52.2|252.0|26.5|167.9|178.0|10.1
02|01500|05:32.8|01:50.9|256.1|26.9|169.8|179.0|10.1
03|01500|05:33.1|01:51.0|254.5|27.4|167.5|179.0|09.9
04|01500|05:35.4|01:51.8|250.9|27.3|167.0|177.0|09.8

I was aiming for “1:52 or better” and had to play concentration games to manage that. The best intervals were the third and fourth ones, where I managed to accelerate slightly and see many 1:50 pace strokes around the 1200m to go point. In the final interval, I was too tired to manage anything else than staying slightly ahead of a 1:52 average pace.

Wednesday

Any plans to work out went out of the window because of a 8pm conference call. I hate it when my calls line up in such a way that I have 1 hour or 30 minute breaks, which are just too short to do anything.

Thursday

Now I had a choice to do either the Wednesday workout (steady state) or the Thursday one (4x2km). I chose the steady state, thinking that it would be a better time investment with regard to preparing for the season.

I limited the row to the minimum to make my training plan happy. I wasn’t feeling to well and there is a flu going around at work, so I didn’t want to go too deep.

Friday

Friday, Sprinterval day. I worked out my training plan for the next 9 days, and because next week ends with a business trip to Finland, I have to pack the high intensity erg workouts in the beginning of this microcycle.

I am coming out of a threshold training block, so it’s been a long time since I have done sprintervals and I wasn’t really sure what to expect. This session of 20x45sec/75sec is supposed to be rowed at a pace from which you can still accelerate, so not full out. I tested this by going faster every fifth interval.

The interval stats don’t work too well for these short intervals, but I was at 340W average for the “easy” intervals, and above 400W for the “hard” intervals. It was very well manageable. The final sprint was a full out one. It shows that I had something left in the tank.

So that was the week in summary. One missed workout. One run which was short because of time pressure. A few pretty good sessions.

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IMG_5095

Feb 18 2018

Saturday – Enjoying the Winter Olympic Games

We woke up to the fantastic news that Ester Ledecka had won the women’s Super G. A total surprise, and she couldn’t believe it herself.

I managed to get in just a very short run from the rowing club.

Three reasons why I returned so early:

  1. It was extremely slippery. On one point, I had to stop because it was too slippery to be safe, and I couldn’t stop. This was on a slight downhill slope, and it was very hard to stop running.
  2. There was the assembly meeting of the rowing club starting at 10am, which I had to attend
  3. I was definitely in overload after the past few days of training so I gave myself permission for this to be just a short warming up of the muscles.

It’s a pity that it was so slippery. I did enjoy the slow run.

Before the rowing club meeting started, we viewed Ester Ledecka’s golden run again (and again – I think I have seen it more than thirty times now).

After a long meeting and a big lunch, we went to the Brno Fair Grounds to attend the Olympic festival. This is a great event. Every time there are Olympic (summer or winter) games, a few Czech cities organize a big Olympic park, where there are sports exhibitions, big screens to watch the events, food and drink, and mainly the opportunity to try out a few.

We tried out the curling, and it was great.

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Now watching the Czech Ice Hockey team beat Switzerland 4-1 and qualifying straight to the quarter finals.

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Feb 18 2018

Wednesday – Friday – Scores, Scores, Scores

Wednesday – Swimming

An hour of swimming in Brno’s only 50m pool. Nothing more to say about it, I think. These sessions are very pleasant. I do them before work and have the feeling I am being very efficient with my time. The 60 minutes in the pool amount to about 85 minutes of gross training time. It is a different movement than the erg, but it is still quite taxing, and it is about the only way to prepare my shoulders for the transition back to OTW rowing.

Oh, and I did 21 laps if I counted well. One more than normally.

Thursday – Steady State

A quick steady state before switching on the TV and watching back the recordings of the 10k Olympic speed skating.

I did row this on Zwift (taking the mountain route as you can see from the screenshot) to make the time go faster, but I have found an irritating bug on using Zwift and Painsled, at least in combination with Rowsandall.com. After 50 minutes, my “Just Row” started saving on Painsled, and then automatically started recording the second part.

Luckily, rowsandall.com allows to glue workouts together, so here is the full row:

The speed skating was very exciting to watch, although it is a pity that Sven Kramer didn’t win.


Workout Summary - media/df_20180218-090847.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14475|60:29.0|02:05.4|181.3|22.4|159.9|175.0|10.7
W-|14477|60:29.0|02:05.4|181.0|22.4|159.9|175.0|10.7
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|175.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|02427|10:00.0|02:03.6|184.1|22.1|127.4|157.0|11.0
01|02421|10:00.0|02:03.9|187.2|22.2|161.3|164.0|10.9
02|02412|10:00.0|02:04.4|183.0|22.2|164.4|169.0|10.8
03|02397|10:00.0|02:05.2|185.2|22.8|168.4|174.0|10.5
04|02406|10:00.0|02:04.7|184.2|22.7|170.9|174.0|10.6
05|02413|10:29.5|02:10.5|163.2|22.3|166.5|175.0|10.3

Here is the chart:

I had estimated this training to give a TSS score of 50, but it turned out to be 66. I am still learning to plan my training according to TSS.

Friday 

Driving to work on Friday morning:

I really need this winter to end. The lake is covered partially with a thin layer of ice. I hope that once the winter finally goes away (in March?) and not just for a week, light in January, we will be able to return to OTW rowing pretty soon.

Friday’s workout was  a repeat of the workout I did on January 18, but instead of 2×10 500s, it was reduced to 2×800:

2x(8x500m/70″)/5′ at stroke rate 26-27spm

I didn’t look up the results of January 18 (1:51 pace). Instead, I just did a 3k warming up with some speed bumps and then just settled into a pace I thought would be sustainable. I ended up my first interval in just 1:50, and so the challenge was to get under 1:50 for each next interval, while respecting the stroke rate guidance.

In the first series, I was able to sustain a sub 1:50 pace, but it broke me in the second series.


Workout Summary - media/20180216-1550450o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|05273|24:01.0|02:16.7|208.2|24.6|159.3|177.0|08.9
W-|04000|14:38.0|01:49.8|260.5|26.5|158.1|176.0|10.3
R-|01277|09:23.0|03:40.7|062.8|17.1|164.4|176.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00500|01:49.2|01:49.2|257.0|26.6|142.2|165.0|10.3
01|00500|01:50.4|01:50.4|263.4|27.3|157.4|171.0|09.9
02|00500|01:50.2|01:50.2|259.5|26.2|156.9|173.0|10.4
03|00500|01:50.4|01:50.4|262.0|27.0|160.4|174.0|10.1
04|00500|01:49.9|01:49.9|261.0|26.3|160.5|175.0|10.4
05|00500|01:48.7|01:48.7|264.8|26.4|161.8|176.0|10.4
06|00500|01:49.8|01:49.8|257.9|25.8|162.0|176.0|10.6
07|00500|01:50.0|01:50.0|258.2|26.4|163.7|176.0|10.3

And the second series:


Workout Summary - media/20180216-1550300o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|05109|24:09.0|02:21.9|200.3|24.1|161.0|181.0|08.8
W-|04000|14:49.0|01:51.2|254.7|26.4|159.3|178.0|10.2
R-|01113|09:20.0|04:11.9|038.6|16.8|167.0|178.0|02.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00500|01:48.7|01:48.7|258.3|25.8|151.5|172.0|10.7
01|00500|01:50.3|01:50.3|255.1|25.8|163.3|174.0|10.6
02|00500|01:52.5|01:52.5|264.0|26.4|161.2|175.0|10.1
03|00500|01:53.2|01:53.2|243.2|25.5|161.7|173.0|10.4
04|00500|01:51.8|01:51.8|250.1|26.4|159.4|174.0|10.2
05|00500|01:53.0|01:53.0|234.4|25.8|157.3|171.0|10.3
06|00500|01:53.2|01:53.2|244.2|26.1|157.3|173.0|10.2
07|00500|01:46.7|01:46.7|290.9|29.7|162.9|178.0|09.5

I was so disappointed that in the final interval I forced myself to do a desperate final 250m, which is in itself a good race preparation. There is always a bit more in the tank.

I did a 1250m cooling down at a very slow pace, then had difficulty walking up the stairs. In the evening, I watched the replay of the ladies speed skating 5k, which turned out to be another very exciting race to watch.

Scores

In the new Planning feature of rowsandall.com, I had estimated this session to be a TSS 85 one. I ended up 113 including warming up and cooling down, in just over 70 minutes (rowing about 16km). That means that in terms of suffering this session was almost as hard as a full hour of power. That seems about right.

I think the planning and tracking is very exciting, especially as I learn to plan better in terms of TSS or TRIMP. Both the steady state session and the 16×500 were harder than I planned for, and that means that I may have to turn the dial back for a day or two.

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8902749F-25D1-48C2-A3BD-918CA5CB9DC3

Feb 12 2018

4x2k, struggling

I looked up my previous average time for the 4x2k and it was 1:51.9 pace in December. I decided to target 1:52 split, but I knew it was going to be hard, after a pretty exhausting day at work.

Warming up with some speed bursts at 24, 28 and 30 SPM.

In the first interval, I managed 1:52.1 but I felt I should slow down a bit. I started the second interval relaxed at 1:53 but as I got into it, and by focusing on good technique, I managed to bring down the average split in the second half of this 2k, and scored another 1:52.1.

In the third interval, I focused on sitting straight and only pushing with the legs in the first half of the drive. I also played some mind games, alternating focus between the next 250 marker or the next full minute, whichever came first. In the beginning of the 2k, these two things happen a few seconds apart, but as you continue, the gap becomes wider, and you end the row with something to row towards every 30 seconds. This worked so well that I managed a 1:51.8 split. Much better than expected (I was expecting to fight handle down demons).

I paid for it in the beginning of the final, fourth interval. I had somehow drained my mental energy in that third interval, and suddenly I was looking at 1:56 and 1:57 splits and unable to lower them. The fact that this is pure mental was proven as I passed the 1000m mark. I was focusing again on the next full minute or 250m marker, and suddenly the splits started coming back to the desired values. I kept gradually lowering them and with 250m to go I rated up to 30spm and 1:45 pace to try and bring the total time under 7:30. I missed that target by a second.

Given the exhausting working day and the fact that I am not feeling 100%, I am happy with the result.

interval rowing chart

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A1AED54E-5D2D-4327-8BE0-C4E7B65BD8B9

Feb 12 2018

Sunday – Steady State

At the rowing club. Sat down on the erg. Started pulling. Had some water after 5 and after 10 kilometers. Martin on the erg next to me was pulling a 1:54 steady state pace.

steady state row

I rowed a large part of this with eyes closed, because the sun was shining into the erg room. The lake view was nice for a change, but a little too much ice on the lake to my taste. In total we were 5 rowers doing steady state, and most of the time we rowed in sync. It was nice.

Earlier on Sunday, I watched Sven Kramer win the 5k long track speed skating at the Winter Olympics. That was a great event to watch.

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2FA170B3-614D-41CE-8DD0-5EF58D74A018

Feb 8 2018

A light week?

It is clear that doing two sessions a day of cross country skiing results in a bit of accumulated fatigue. So yes, the plan for this week was to take it easy. Add a bit of action at work, where some things had gone south during my absence, plus the fact that I was alone (my wife and children had another week of downhill skiing in our mountain cottage), and the fact that I was eager to implement a few new features for Rowsandall.com and you have a recipe for an interesting week.

Saturday – Zwift in the rain

steady state rowing chart

On Saturday, I did an hour on PainSled/Zwift. I chose a route up to “the volcano”. There were huge crowds of cyclists on Zwift, so it made this steady state workout more interesting,

It was raining on Zwift. It is funny how you are indoor rowing on the erg, your power is transmitted to PainSled on the iPhone through Bluetooth, and then another Bluetooth connection sends it to the Zwift app on the iPad, then over WiFi to the Zwift server and the result is a little cyclist avatar with a green shirt doing the same power as you do in a virtual world. It was raining in that virtual world, and now I have fixed in my memory that I was erging in the rain.

Sunday – running in the sun

I waved goodbye to Romana and the kids when they left for the mountains, changed into running gear and did a hilly run from our house.

It was sunny and that helped because by now I was really feeling the accumulated fatigue, and I decided that Monday would be a rest day.

Somehow, I didn’t record heart rate during the run, using the Polar OH1 and the Polar Flow app.

Tuesday – aborted threshold session

I was actually looking forward to this session, on Tuesday after work. The plan was

Warming up 2.5km
2x(1min+2min+3min+4min+3min+2min+1min)/4min Stroke Rate 26/24/22/20/22/24/26

During the beak, I decided to stop. This was much harder than I had predicted, my heart rate was too high and I couldn’t motivate myself for the second interval. Fail.

rowing workout chart

I decided that Wednesday would be another rest day.

Thursday – swim

A swimming workout in the 50m pool. In lane 3, someone offered free coaching services. Mainly technique advice, so I didn’t dare to enter lane 3. I wanted to work out.

I got a bit over 50 minutes in before I had to leave to be on time for my meeting with my Staff.

SportTracks swimming workout

Saturday – threshold session OTE

Friday was another rest day. My morning pulse and HRV values are already going in the right direction, but I had a long working day, and I wanted to spend the evening with my family instead of working out.

Today, I did another session from the plan:

3km warming up
7x(1min+1min+1min)/3min Stroke Rate 24/26/28spm

This time all worked out well. I tried to row 240W for the first minute, 260W for the second minute and 280W for the third minute. Interestingly, the target was the hardest in the lower stroke rate, but as the session went on I was starting to feel really fatigued in the 28spm bits. Afterards, I looked at work per Stroke for the different stroke rates:

work per Stroke rowing

You can see that I was a bit higher in terms of work per Stroke for the higher stroke rates. This was not due to longer drive length:

drive length chart

No, it was just more force during the drive:

average drive force

Here is the session chart:

rowing workout chart

Workout Summary – media/20180210-1021060o.csv
–|Total|-Total-|–Avg–|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
–|Dist-|-Time–|-Pace–|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR–|-HR–|-DPS
–|09299|42:00.0|02:15.5|191.2|23.5|158.2|179.0|09.4
W-|05700|21:00.0|01:50.5|261.7|25.6|163.8|179.0|10.6
R-|03606|21:00.0|02:54.7|086.3|20.4|150.2|179.0|04.9
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00821|03:00.0|01:49.6|259.9|25.5|157.1|175.0|10.8
01|00811|03:00.0|01:51.0|263.1|25.6|165.3|179.0|10.6
02|00815|03:00.0|01:50.4|264.0|25.6|165.4|179.0|10.6
03|00817|03:00.0|01:50.1|260.5|25.5|166.5|179.0|10.7
04|00814|03:00.0|01:50.6|268.1|25.6|165.3|178.0|10.6
05|00809|03:00.0|01:51.2|256.2|25.6|163.4|177.0|10.5
06|00812|03:00.0|01:50.8|259.9|25.6|163.3|175.0|10.6

Rowsandall.com sneak preview

A first look at new functionality. I am still working the user interface and some of the other stuff, but the picture shows pretty well what this is about:

new functionality

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