Aug 6 2017
Saturday: Sprintervals in the double – minus one GoPro camera
Friday
Another heat wave day. I decided to cross train, cycle to work (15km) and, after only half a day of work, cycle home (15km), which was a good endurance workout in the heat. I took the afternoon off and did some work around the house, helped by my son Dominik.
I didn’t know the route through the city center is shorter:
Saturday
We drove to Pardubice, where we celebrated my youngest son’s eleventh birthday at my mother-in-law’s place. Big lunch. Then coffee with birthday cake. Then unwrapping of gifts, followed by a refreshing hour of splashing in the pool.
At 5pm, my brother-in-law Tomas and I, as well as my daughter Lenka and her boyfriend took off to the University rowing center in Pardubice (where Tomas is coaching). Tomas and I took a double, and Lenka and Vasek would row a quad with two Pardubice student girls.
I fitted the double out with my GoPro camera, because I wanted to film this workout.
Then we were busy getting the girls (+ one boy) out on the water, and in the hassle I forgot to put on my heart rate belt. I only noticed that after the row.
I also forgot to record the cooling down on the SpeedCoach (because I was pretty exhausted by the time we started the cooling down). So for the entire row, I only have the Garmin Forerunner recording:
The workout was great. The only minus was that we got terribly waked three times by a waterskier. Normally water skiing happens on a lake not far from Pardubice, but this guy decided it was a good idea to do water skiing.
I also noted that Stand-Up Paddle boarding has reached Pardubice. There was a SUP rental station 500m upstream from the rowing club, so there we would row through about 15 paddle boarding beginners. Exciting!
One of the wakes must have washed my GoPro off our front deck. We ended the row without camera. It’s a pity I don’t have the footage, because it was a good workout and we wanted to look at some technical flaws. I am not too depressed about losing the camera. I was a very early adopter of the GoPro, so I am due for an upgrade! 😉
The workout was 2x(8×45″/1:15″)/5min. The 8 intervals were chosen to fit nicely into the 4km stretch of river that we rowed on. It was an interesting experience. There were intervals where Tomas was perfectly in sync with my rhythm, and there we hit 35spm easily with good pace. But about half of the intervals were “miss”. We were slightly out of sync, which means that the boat suddenly feels heavy, you have difficulty getting the stroke rate up, and about 20 seconds into the interval you feel the lactate rush to your legs.
Work Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|-Pwr-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00206| 00:45 |01:49.2| 32.0| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.6
02|00222| 00:45 |01:41.3| 33.3| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.9
03|00217| 00:45 |01:43.6| 33.3| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.7
04|00226| 00:45 |01:39.5| 36.0| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.4
05|00210| 00:45 |01:47.1| 33.3| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.4
06|00218| 00:45 |01:43.2| 33.3| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.7
07|00215| 00:45 |01:44.6| 33.3| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.6
08|00219| 00:45 |01:42.7| 34.7| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.4
09|00205| 00:45 |01:49.7| 32.0| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.5
10|00198| 00:45 |01:53.6| 32.0| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.2
11|00204| 00:45 |01:50.2| 33.3| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.2
12|00201| 00:45 |01:51.9| 34.7| 000 | 000 | 000 | 7.7
13|00183| 00:45 |02:2.9| 30.7| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.0
14|00189| 00:45 |01:59.0| 32.0| 000 | 000 | 000 | 7.9
15|00220| 00:45 |01:42.2| 36.0| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.1
16|00227| 00:45 |01:39.1| 36.0| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.4
Workout Summary
--|03360| 12:00 | 1:47.1| 33.5| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.4
Aug 6 2017
Sunday – Wonderful Steady State in the double
We drove home from Pardubice in the morning, arriving home around lunch time. It was raining in Brno. Temperatures have dropped by 15 degrees C overnight.
But Romana and I found a window without rain by carefully studying the online weather radar and we used it to the max. It was quite windy and choppy but that didn’t stop us from doing a lot of technique drills. As a result, we managed to row well in the chop and when we reached the quiet areas of the lake, we were flying (at steady state pace).
We got enthusiastic and did a race start, and two race pace intervals of 15 strokes each.
A nice row. When we were cleaning the boat, it started to rain again.
The two rows in the double of this weekend were both great, and they confirmed one thing. As a result of rowing with the Empower Oarlock and the constant direct feedback, combined with the analysis done at rowsandall.com, I have gradually made small incremental changes on my technique, trying to make the boat go faster. Both Romana and Tomas confirmed that I have made a fundamental change in my stroke, and they had to get used to it. But both confirmed that when they managed to fall into the same groove as I, we were going relatively fast.
Rowing in the double without the Empower Oarlock, I set up the SpeedCoach to show meters per stroke. I find that this metric really shows effectiveness of rowing, with two pitfalls:
It is a useful metric to monitor stroke to stroke differences at constant stroke rate. In the headwind intervals, we were rowing well when we reached just over 10 meters/stroke at 21 spm. In the tailwind intervals this was about a meter further.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: 2x, double, OTW, rowing, steady state, training