Dec 9 2017

An Icy Run

I longed for outdoors activity so I went running. It turned out to be a slow run. The snow had melted, and then frozen again.

I took a new shortcut near the end of the run. That turned out to be a bad decision. I ended up above the road I wanted to get to and the only way to get there was to slide down a very steep slope.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: running

Dec 8 2017

Tough day at work. Some bad news that sucked the last bit of energy out of me. I had a two hour gap between lunch and a call with a colleague in Washington, so I drove home through the rain and sat on the erg.

I had optimistically planned a sprinterval workout and decided to do it. There was definitely a HD risk, but I feared that swapping this one for a steady state session would be a recipe for boredom, frustration, which also would lead to the undesired HD.

So I decided to do a 3km warming up and then the workout, doing at least 15 intervals but aiming for 20. I dialed up the following sufficiently dark and monotonous sound track on SoundCloud. Dark and monotonous but I like to row to it:

I decided to row the intervals at 2k PB speed and focus on technique. That turned out to be a good choice. I was focusing on pulling a relaxed, gentle stroke at 29 SPM, sitting in a strong position from half way the recovery, then just sliding towards the catch, and hang on the handle during the first half of the leg drive. When I do this correctly, it feels like I get 2 splits for free. (Which reminds me of Ranger, the infamous erg blogger back in the days of Concept2.co.uk.)

Every fifth interval is supposed to be a max out, just to make sure that I was doing the others in a controlled way.

First fifteen intervals went by without any incidents, and then it was just a question of hanging on, and emptying the tank in interval #20. Followed by a 2km cooling down.

A quick shower and on to my calls. An unexpectedly good training. Made my day.

By sanderroosendaal • rowing • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, rowing, sprintervals, training

Dec 7 2017

Hamburg

Monday

A light hour of steady state on the erg, right after breakfast. Still hurting a lot from the Saturday and Sunday sessions, so I took it a lot easier than I would normally do on these steady state sessions.

Then I headed to the railway station, took the 11:38 train to Hamburg via Prague, Dresden, Berlin. I usually travel by plane, and this train trip was a very nice variation. I love that you have enough leg space, power, USB plugs, and can go to the restaurant wagon whenever you like. I spent most of the time making notes for my speech, then writing out my speech, then condensing it to notes again. It’s how I have learned to prepare and memorize. If I do it well, I can throw away the notes, but I usually like to have them around.

On the train, I also looked at my erging data for the past few sessions.

The Saturday session sticks out. I didn’t split up this session in rest and work strokes, so the averages are pretty skewed, but the top values in the box chart are definitely different than those for a normal session. I was expecting that for “work per stroke” and average and maximum force, but apparently also the stroke length was distorted. Interesting …

Arrived at Hamburg pretty late, took the S-Bahn to my hotel, called my wife, crashed in bed.

Tuesday

Slept too long to do any exercise, and spent the little time I had to have a good breakfast and go through my speech one more time, delivering it to my hotel room. The hotel room didn’t say much, so I guess it was OK. It was a bit short, about 10 minutes shorter than the 40 minutes that I was expected to speak. I guessed that the audience being more interactive than the bed and empty chairs in my hotel room, and leaving a couple of minutes for questions and answers, I would be fine.

Joined the conference, listened to a couple of interesting talks, had lunch, and then it was time for me to deliver my part.

I had just asked a critical question to the previous speaker, and the chairman made a lengthy introduction. To break the ice, I expressed the fear that the chairman (and myself, with my question) had raised the expectation a little too high, and then I started with my intro.

Getting some nods and comments, and expanding a bit on a couple of points that were already raised by previous speakers, I filled the 40 minutes easily. A guy form Alitalia had a few interesting questions and comments, and that was it. Job done. I like to talk about the work that my guys do, but I have to have the time to prepare well.

In the evening, we were invited to drinks and dinner, and I had a good time. The drinks were served inside the airport, on one of the upper levels. This was approximately the view from where we were having our drinks:

Because I had been a speaker, people would come and talk to me, and comment on my talk, which was nice. Met a few of our suppliers. Sneaked out of the party around 10pm, walked back to the hotel through the rainy and windy Hamburg weather, and went to bed.

Wednesday

Set alarm clock for 6am so I could get in some exercise before breakfast. For such an expensive hotel, the Radisson Blu Hamburg Airport, the gym wasn’t much. A few elliptical and a few stationary bikes. Spent 15 minutes on each, then went back to my hotel room and completed the session with 20 minutes of body weights exercises.

I have started to use an app called HRV4Training, which supposedly measures Heart Rate Variability (HRV). You use it each morning. It measures your pulse through the smartphone camera and derives HRV, and something called “Recovery Points”, which I can sync to SportTracks. It also asks questions about travel and alcohol consumption.

For three days I have used it, and my scores have been constantly improving, while I traveled to Germany, trained and slept irregularly, and there was alcohol consumption. Still, my resting heart rate and my “recovery points” keep improving.

Will continue to use it a bit longer to see if it discovers any trends.

I spent the rest of the day at the conference, including an evening workshop.

Thursday

Up at 5 to catch the S-Bahn to the railway station. I had noticed that there was an entrance to the S-Bahn right in front of the hotel, but when I wanted to take it, I noticed the sign that this entrance was closed. Had to walk a long distance to another entrance to the same station, and missed my train. Luckily, I had built in quite some reserve, so even with the next train, twenty minutes later, I had plenty of time at the Hamburg station to take a coffee and some pastry.

Now, I am in the train, between Berlin and Dresden. I hope to arrive to Brno around 5pm, and I hope to get in a steady state erg session. Probably not one with impressive splits, though.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, rowing, steady state, training, travel

Dec 3 2017

5x5min

At the rowing club. Using a beta version of PainSled, which stores incorrect data during the rest intervals. Well, that is the risk of using beta software. I have notified the developer and trust it will be fixed in the next version.

The training was 5x(3min+1min+1min)/3min, at 24, 26, and 28spm.

Workout Summary - media/20171203-184557-sled-2017-12-03T16-27-50ZGMT+1.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|08483|40:00.0|02:21.5|262.3|24.8|0.0|000.0|08.5
W-|06702|25:00.0|01:51.9|254.2|25.9|000.0|000.0|10.4
R-|01790|15:00.0|04:11.3|284.4|22.4|000.0|000.0|00.6
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00792|03:00.0|01:53.6|233.2|24.6|000.0|0.0|10.7
01|00276|01:00.0|01:48.8|272.2|26.4|000.0|0.0|10.5
02|00287|01:00.0|01:44.7|302.0|28.4|000.0|0.0|10.1
03|00751|03:00.0|01:59.8|220.1|23.7|000.0|0.0|10.6
04|00276|01:00.0|01:48.8|268.8|26.3|000.0|0.0|10.5
05|00285|01:00.0|01:45.3|298.0|28.2|000.0|0.0|10.1
06|00777|03:00.0|01:55.9|230.6|23.5|000.0|0.0|11.0
07|00273|01:00.0|01:49.9|261.6|26.1|000.0|0.0|10.5
08|00284|01:00.0|01:45.6|296.5|28.1|000.0|0.0|10.1
09|00770|03:00.0|01:56.9|224.4|24.0|000.0|0.0|10.7
10|00271|01:00.0|01:50.6|259.2|26.2|000.0|0.0|10.4
11|00288|01:00.0|01:44.0|311.1|28.8|000.0|0.0|10.0
12|00810|03:00.0|01:51.2|262.6|27.0|000.0|0.0|10.0
13|00278|01:00.0|01:48.0|279.3|29.2|000.0|0.0|09.5
14|00284|01:00.0|01:45.6|293.6|31.9|000.0|0.0|08.9

This I should pretty close to the 5x1500m standard that I do regularly, but without rate restrictions I would rate it higher.

Rowed in company and it was slightly competitive. Did empty the tank in the final interval.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: erg, intervals, OTE, rowing, training

Dec 3 2017

Rowing training or strength training?

Strength or rowing training?

It has been snowing and below zero for most of the week, so I didn’t even bother going to the rowing club. I would have difficulty finding a free erg.

Instead, I took some time after breakfast to plan out my December training mesocycle. I also reviewed our club Masters rowers training plan for the past week and looked at what I have done during the trip to Belgrade, and what I had planned for this week, and tried to find the two missing trainings, for Saturday and Sunday.

I did this, because on Sunday I will be training with the Masters group, so I want to do the same training they do. That turned out to be a 5x5min at fairly high intensities.

So, for Saturday, I had the choice between steady state and something that looked … interesting. I know I don’t get enough strength training and I am a skinny aerobic freak. Perhaps this was worth a try:

5x(6×15 strokes / 10 strokes)/4min at 17spm at 140 drag

So what is that? You do bouts of 15 strokes at max force, with 10 strokes of light paddling. You do this 6 times, then paddle for 4 minutes, and repeat until you have done a total of 5 sets.

If I liked, I might start doing more of these.

I tried the Painsled Beta again during the warming up. I wasn’t able to connect to Zwift because Zwift insisted on installing a 16 minute update download, and I didn’t want to wait for it. I also struggled with the app crashing on CSV data export, but managed to get out my data eventually.

But for the main event, I switched the iPhone for the iPad (with the regular Painsled), because I didn’t want to risk losing data. Here they are:

I found it difficult to count the sets of 15 and remember where I was. If you look carefully, there is one set of 7 intervals. Well, I am glad I didn’t discover a set of 5. Each set turned out to last about 12 to 13 minutes, so it was easy to calculate if I was doing set 4 or set 5.

This was interesting. I found it difficult to hold 17spm and found myself driving to 18spm, even 19spm sometimes.

I was going somewhere between 1:54 and 1:57 pace. As the PM averages over three strokes, it was hard to estimate the exact power. I also think that Work per Stroke is the correct metric to use in this workout. There should be a Work per Stroke display on the PM. But perhaps it doesn’t matter much, as long as you are giving it the maximum per stroke.

I did have to watch posture though. I think this is a risky workout for my back, so I did monitor myself to sit straight and push on the legs only in the first half of the stroke.

Here’s a chart of Work per Stroke, Average Drive Force and Max Drive Force:

I have filtered out all the rest paddling in this chart, but still there is quite a large spread on the horizontal axis. Here is how the peak and average force behaved over time:

I also made this beautiful chart, trying to see if the differences in work per stroke were due mostly to differences in drive length or differences in average force. Looks like a mix of both. Drive length is closer to my usual range of values, though. I conclude that this was a rowing specific strength training.

Greg, here is the chart you requested:

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, ergometer, OTE, rate restricted, rowing, training

Dec 1 2017

Tesla & Running in Belgrade

Wednesday

Full day of conference attendance, plus a nagging work related issue back home which made me work early in the morning, have several phone conversations during the day, and return early to my hotel to do some more work.

At the same time, my friend David (who had quoted Tesla in his opening key note speech) and I had a plan to visit the Nikola Tesla museum. I managed to sign us up for the 6pm guided tours in English.

The museum was great and the tour was brilliant. Tesla was really a genius, and I stood in awe looking at his remotely controlled boat from 1898, with two electro motors and a computer! I dare to call a logical “AND” gate a computer. These things are easy for us, who have learned physics and electromagnetism in school, but for those days, this was truly genius.

In the evening, I had the conference dinner at the Belgrade fortress. Spent the evening at a table with some Air Traffic Controllers from Italy and had a great time.

Rolled into bed after midnight.

Thursday

Woke up too late for a full run. It was raining and the temperature was much higher than on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. I wanted to run to the Save river, then follow the bank, but I

had difficulty crossing the concrete jungle of Belgrade, and
ran into a huge building site, I think of what is called the Belgrade Waterfront, and
ran out of time

Then I went to the conference again.

For the entire week, I had enjoyed taking the public transport in Belgrade. I liked traveling between normal people instead of sipping through the streets in a taxi, and with the Balkan driving style, the tram was often faster than taking a taxi, and dirt cheap.

This time, I had an interesting ride. The tram stopped in the middle of Slavija square. We all left the tram and crossed a four lane road with cars (me towing a trolley). Waiting for the bus, I noticed that all trams had come to a standstill. Apparently there was no electric power.

After about ten minutes, I was able to take an overcrowded bus 33 to the university.

A few stops later, a ticket inspector entered the bus. My chip card was OK, but there was a problem with one lady. The controller took her out of the bus at the next stop, and that was when I noticed it was Paula, one of my fellow conference participants. Too late for me to do anything. The bus left and she remained there at the bus stop, with an angry inspector, in the rain.

Around lunch time I headed to the airport. I thought I was lucky to have an emergency exit in the Adria Airways CRJ900, but I ended up sitting next to a very overweight, very tall, elderly man. Luckily, I managed to fall asleep, crushed between the man and the window, and the flight passed by fast.

In the train between Vienna and Brno, I made notes for a blog post about Physics and rowing metrics.

Friday

Trying to do a week’s worth of work in one day, including one on one meetings with all my subordinates and reviewing their goal plans for 2018. Also, it was my son’s 13th birthday.

So. No. Training.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: cross-training, rowing, running, travel

800px-Kalemegdan_-_panorama_Apr-2011wtmk

Nov 28 2017

Running around the fortress

##Monday

Travel to Belgrade. I missed the 8:35 train from the Brno Reckovice station. The problem is that I live so close to the train station, that I usually leave three minutes before the train arrival. This time it was snowing, and that slowed me down just enough to miss the train.

Well, 8:35 was risk mitigation anyway. Taking the 8:50 train, I still had 10 minutes for my connection at Brno main station.

I took the train to Vienna, connected to the airport. Then I took the Adria flight to Belgrade, which is actually a very short flight.

First time in Serbia, for me. Small airport. Taxi ride to hotel, driving typical Balkan style. I had some work to do, so I spent the rest of the afternoon working in the hotel.

The only exercise was a 20 minute walk into the city center, to find a nice place to have dinner. The hotel restaurant was a bit too posh and expensive to my taste.

##Tuesday

I wanted to go running in the morning, but when I checked my phone, it told me that outside it was -1C, “feels like -6C”. I had purposefully packed warm running clothes because of the opportunity to run in an unknown city, but still it took me another 20 minutes to convince myself, and it turned out to be a very nice run.

I ran down towards the center, then continued to the Belgrade fortress.

In an attempt to get to the Sava river, I ended up running over a tram track for a few hundred meters. When cities are on rivers, especially big ones like the Danube and the Sava, I like to see the waterfront.

Somehow the Garmin Forerunner didn’t track the first half of my row on the map. The distance and duration is right, but I did start where I ended.

I wasn’t feeling cold at all. It was a great run.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: cross-training, rowing, running, training

«< 28 29 30 31 32 >»

An Icy Run

Job’s tidings

Hamburg

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

5x5min

Rowing training or strength training?

Strength or rowing training?

Tesla & Running in Belgrade

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Running around the fortress

Calendar