Double-Pole

Jan 22 2017

Out on the lake again

On skis.

We slept in late after a very good “Olympians Ball” in Hotel International. We had great fun at the ball. As usual, rowers were the largest and loudest contingent, arriving first, eating the most, and leaving the dance floor last. In bed around 3am.

The weather was sunny again. Beautiful winter weather, so there was no way I was going to do an erg workout. Romana and I headed down to the lake. Today we would go on skis. The 2km skating lap is too crowded on Sundays to be going at my speed skate training speed safely.

How crowded it was can be seen from this photo. We rowers are lucky to have our own parking on the club, behind a gate.

Many people risking a parking fine to go skating

There was quite a strong south wind blowing, so on the way from the rowing club to Rokle we perfected our double poling technique. Sort of like doing a workout on the Concept2 SkiErg. That got us nicely warmed up.

At Rokle we turned around and ski skated the 3km to Sirka, the south end of the lake.

See the similarity with the rowing stroke?

Turning around and 3km of double poling all the way back to Rokle. Double poling is really difficult to do well, but at some points I got the hang of it and was going as fast as the people who ski skated. It’s also a great workout for your shoulders.

Arriving at Rokle, I was so tired from the double poling that I just did a slow classic skate back to the rowing club.

I am giving myself some slack from the training program, just doing what I like and what time allows me. Still, I am going to plan the coming week. I want to fit in speed skating and cross country, because the weather is still looking great and freezing. I sport for fun and being outdoors is a big part of it.

At the same time, I am doing a 2k race on the erg, coming Saturday, so I need to prepare somehow. I was thinking of doing a 1500m at race pace to check that I am where I think I am. I think I am around 7 minutes pace and unless the 1500m tells me otherwise, that’s how I am going to row the 2k.

So for planning the coming week, I have clear requirements and constraints which will make the planning easily.

After that, I will spend a full week in the mountains. Basically 2 cross country ski workouts per day. Lots of volume.

After that, it is either going to be back to my own training plan, or I may jump to our club’s official training plan for the Masters rowers. Our head coach writes this training plan. It is basically a watered down version of what he prescribes for the juniors, at paces derived from your 2k pace. There is a bit too much weight lifting for my taste, but I could fine tune that. The good thing is: NEW WORKOUTS, (and quite challenging ones at that), and doing the same workouts as the local Masters group.

The downside is losing the ability to plan and play with my own plan.

But maybe I can find some compromise.

And, maybe, I am just impatient. Looking at my training load in SportTracks, I am returning from a high load phase where I accumulated a lot of fatigue. Perhaps another free wheeling week and I will be back on track again.

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Jan 21 2017

How I set a Course Record

Thursday and Friday – business travel to Toulouse. I did hotel room workouts. Nothing to report.

While I was in France, a great thing happened on our lake. Two local business decided to join forces and prepare a skating oval on the lake. Here is the video:

 

AKTUÁLNĚ 20.1.: NOVÝ 2KM OKRUH PRO BRUSLAŘE NA PRÝGLU 👍

⛸ Bruslaři na přehradě využívají asi 2 km dlouhý okruh přibližně oválného tvaru, který v těchto dnech pomocí fréz a kartáčů budují pracovníci firmy AVE CZ (techniku zdarma zapůjčuje Garden studio). Okruh začíná přibližně před hrází a táhne se směrem k Sokoláku. Přístup je možný buď z bystrckého přístaviště nebo z Kozí horky.

🎿 Dobré podmínky nadále panují i pro běžkaře. Sníh je přemrzlý a velmi rychlý. Některé stopy jsou ledové, některé ale velmi kvalitní. Výborně si zaběžkujete i na golfovém hřišti Kaskáda (viz minulé video) a na medláneckém letišti.

ℹ️️ Podle dnešního měření má led u přístaviště tloušťku již 29 cm (přičemž za “přijatelně bezpečnou” se považuje již 12 cm). Stále však platí výstraha na nebezpečný led se vzduchovými kapsami v oblasti Sokoláku, Osady, Rokle a dále směrem k Bítýšce a městská policie sem radí nevstupovat. Stejně jako příliš daleko od břehu i v široké části přehrady. Včerejší utonutí bruslaře na Vranovské přehradě je jistě silnou výstrahou ostatním před nerespektováním těchto doporučení.

➡️ DALŠÍ INFO průběžně na fb.com/prygl.

Díky za vlastní zkušenosti v komentářích.

Posted by Brněnská přehrada a okolí on Friday, January 20, 2017

A “2km” (actually more like 1700m) “oval” on my own rowing lake! Heaven! So I packed my skates and headed to the lake.

I forgot the Garmin Forerunner in my travel bag, so I had to record the workout using Strava on the phone. Unfortunately, my iPhone hates cold weather. It goes from 80% to 20% in 15 minutes, and then says “bye bye”. When I plug it in to charge afterwards, it wakes up with a 60% full battery. This makes the phone totally unusable for winter sports.

Anyway, here are the first 20 minutes on Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/839084453

It turns out that someone has defined the skating loop as a “segment” on Strava and I turn out to be the Course Record holder from that first warming up round. I did a few of the subsequent rounds faster, but who cares. A course record is a course record! 😀

The skating itself was quite slow. There were lots of people on the ice, enjoying the nice weather. Here is a video from last week:

Zimní sezóna na Prýglu

❄️ PRÝGL ZAŽÍVÁ PARÁDNÍ ZIMU! ❤️

Využijte zamrzlé přehrady a výborných sněhových sněhových podmínek k zimním radovánkám.

Informace o stavu ledu a sněhu v předchozích příspěvcích na Brněnská přehrada a okolí.

Posted by Brněnská přehrada a okolí on Tuesday, January 10, 2017

The ice was also pretty bad. Lots of cracks and a few places with very rough, uneven ice, basically you couldn’t skate there. So I sped up whenever there was some empty space in front of me, but I had to put on the breaks quite a lot.

In the second hour, I met many friends, so it was more standing and chatting than skating. At some point I got cold, so I headed back to the rowing club.

I think it was a good Steady State effort.

By the way, the cover picture is from another year. This year, there is much more snow, as you can see from the videos.

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Jan 18 2017

So – and what now?

On Monday I took a rest day. Something told me I should be rowing, but I didn’t. I was tired after the skiing exercise of the weekend, and in the evening I was struggling with a nasty software bug that prevented a user of rowsandall.com to import ErgData interval workouts from the Concept2 logbook and then export them to SportTracks.

It took a while to figure out the culprit, because it was an exotic bug, which only occured at some interval workouts, and only when recorded with ErgData, and only when imported through the Concept2 logbook, and only when exporting them to SportTracks. And when I had isolated the data path that led to failure, I had to follow it, line by line through the code, and compare with the working paths. In the end I found it, but I spent some time on Monday evening doing that.

On Tuesday I just had a very long day. I am on a business trip from today to the end of the week, so my regular work gets compressed in two days. On top of that, the trip preparation has to be done in those two days as well. And it’s the time of the year when we finalize performance assessments and compensation planning for our employees. That is a very important task. And not an easy one. So on Tuesday evening I arrived late from work and spent the rest of the evening with my family, rather than isolating myself in my rowing basement.

So, the idea was that after two rest days it would be a good idea to do a 5k test before heading to the airport.

I set off at my target pace of 1:51 (my PB being 1:50) and just tried to hold it, rating up and lightening up the strokes rather than increasing the drive force.

After about 5 minutes I knew I was going to blow this 5k attempt.

So I came up with a plan B. I would row a 4x(6min+9min)/4min workout that Greg Smith had rowed yesterday, with the 6min part of the 15 minutes interval at 5k pace and the 9min part at “Marathon pace”. I would finish the 5k like that, and then set up the proper 15 minute intervals on the PM. So here is the plot for the 5k row.

And here are the esoteric plots, including a new one looking at drive rhythm.

After that, I set up the 15 minutes, wondering if I had time to do all three remaining intervals plus a cooling down before I would have to go to the airport.

I didn’t have to worry. After a few minutes, I just dropped the handle, very unhappy with myself. I rowed out the rest of the interval as a cooling down and stopped.

Very unhappy with that. Normally, around this time of the winter, I am in PB form for longer erg rows. Not now.

Not sure how to continue. Reduce the volume? Reduce the intensity? Throw out all the test rows and just train? Give up Cross Team Challenge participation and other stuff that is fun but sometimes interferes with the training plan?

For the rest of the week, I will be out in France, on a business trip. Next week, I will have to train somehow. The week after that I am going to be in the mountains to do cross country skiing with a large group of rowers. Perhaps I will find my mojo there.

But right now, I find it hard to motivate myself to do workouts at all. And I find that really disappointing.

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Jan 15 2017

A Nordic Weekend

Friday

It was brought to my attention that there is a speed skating club in Brno, and I started exchanging some emails with their trainer on sharing the work to sweep speed skating ovals on the Brno lake. So on Friday afternoon I left the office a bit earlier and joined them on the ice, in front of the “Lodni Sporty” rowing club. I changed clothes at my own rowing club (CVK Brno) and ran the 1km across the ice in running boots.

Their oval was a bit shorter than mine and with a bit tighter turns.

The turnout wasn’t too big. I was there. The trainer was there, and two girls aged 4 and 6. But it was fun. I did my loops and we even did a race with the two girls. Three loops. I came in last, unfortunately. 😀

The “trainer” turned out to be the father of one of the Masters rowers at our club. Before retirement, he had been the sports redactor of one of the main daily newspapers, and now he has started to help out Czech Speed Skating.

Strava log

It was nice, but it was a bit claustrophobic doing all those loops on that tiny oval.

Saturday

So for Saturday, I chose the cross-country skis. This was the normal “Saturday 10AM run” with the rowing club, but we turned it into a classic cross country training.

I am much slower using classic technique, and I did a lot of back and forth ski running because I skied part of the training with my youngest son Robin. He was learning to ski, and made good progress. There were a few falls, of course, but he was determined to ski to the place we call “Rokle” and back. So he did about 4km where I did 9.5km in 1h15.

Strava log and (fun to watch) Strava Flybys.

I like to look at the flyby map. It shows how many people were out on the lake.

Here’s a picture of my son at lunch, after his successful first 4km run.

His cheeks were nice and red.

Sunday

XC skiing again, but this time using skating technique. My sons Dominik and Robin played ice hockey in front of the rowing club and Romana and I set out to ski towards the castle and back.

Ice hockey in front of the rowing club. The “Main Street” of the lake is in the back, on the opposite bank

As you can see from the picture, with the temperatures slightly above zero, the ice quality is starting to degrade.

From the club, we used classic technique to get to the “Main Street”. From there it was skating all the way to the castle and back. It was pretty busy, as you can also see from the Flyby Strava chart.

Strava link.

It took us an hour to ski to the castle and back, but after three days of skating and skiing, that was just enough. Skiing is hard work.

It was a nice distraction from the erg, but now it’s time to go back to rowing specific training.

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Jan 12 2017

Steady State

Just 14km of steady state. And working on technique. By the end of the workout, I was shortening my stroke a bit, trying something I discussed with Jeroen, the guy behind Row Analysis.


Workout Summary - media/20170112-202757-sled_2017-01-12T19-55-38ZGMT+1.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14000|57:31.0|02:03.3|192.4|21.2|160.8|174.0|11.5
W-|13500|54:40.0|02:01.5|195.5|21.3|161.2|174.0|11.6
R-|00500|02:51.0|02:51.2|116.8|19.3|150.5|174.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|02500|10:03.6|02:00.7|198.0|21.1|146.6|164.0|11.8
01|02250|09:01.2|02:00.3|201.6|21.2|162.6|170.0|11.8
02|02500|10:09.1|02:01.8|194.1|21.6|162.1|172.0|11.4
03|02250|09:05.9|02:01.3|196.5|21.3|167.5|172.0|11.6
04|02000|08:05.3|02:01.3|196.1|21.6|163.6|171.0|11.5
05|02000|08:15.4|02:03.9|185.8|21.3|166.9|174.0|11.4

Temperatures are up to +1C. A heatwave of sorts.

It had snowed the whole night, so in the morning I had to clear away a lot of snow. After that it was quite fun to drive to work through the snow, 50km/h on the highway. Czech drivers are pretty used to this weather though. In the Netherlands, everything would have come to a standstill. In the afternoon, the temperatures got above the freezing point and everything started to melt.

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Capture

Jan 11 2017

Speed Skating

I tried to leave work in time to be able to skate on the lake in front of the rowing club.

I succeeded partly, arriving at the rowing club just after four. I quickly changed clothes and went on the ice in the -7C.

https://www.strava.com/activities/828567489

After 45 minutes of doing loops on my mini oval, it was too dark and I had to stop. Most of the time, I did 2 loops steady and one loop slightly faster.

It was a great training, although it was a bit short. I think I improved my skating technique in the process, maintaining the same speed but achieving it at lower heart rate and with longer strides. The Garmin Forerunner wasn’t really able to measure cadence, except in the sprinty bits where I used my arms. For the rest of the time, my arms were firmly on my back.

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Jan 10 2017

January CTC: 4x4min/4min rest

I have taken it easy last week, even though it was supposed to be a hard week. Too much sniffing and sneezing going on to do any hard workouts.

So, today was the first real hard workout in ages. I chose to do the CTC. It is somewhere in between the shorter stuff I have been doing before Christmas and the “long intervals” that I am supposed to do in this mesocycle of my training plan.

Row 4 times 4 minutes with 4 minutes rest between reps

Use the same damper setting for all reps.

Record your distance for the sixteen minutes of rowing.
Don’t include any resting metres.

The first 4 minutes must be a standing start. All others can be standing or rolling starts.

In the 2k warming up I did a few 10 stroke sprints at slightly faster paces than I normally do them. Then I set up the 4x4min.

I was warned that it would be a tough workout, so I set myself a target to row 28spm and higher, a “light” stroke and watch stroke length and technique.

Every interval was the almost same, except that they got slightly harder each time. The first minute flew by and I would have thoughts of doing a fast interval at 1:46. The second minute was slightly harder. The third minute was endless and I was struggling to keep 1:48. The light at the end of the tunnel got me through the fourth minute.

Today, the graphs from Rowsandall.com are very interesting. First, the summary plot:

and the summary:


Workout Summary - media/20170110-195135-sled_2017-01-10T19-42-09ZGMT+1.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06613|32:00.0|02:25.2|212.1|25.3|158.0|177.0|08.2
W-|04466|16:00.0|01:47.5|281.5|27.8|167.5|177.0|10.1
R-|02149|16:00.0|03:43.4|074.1|20.7|144.9|177.0|01.3
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01114|04:00.0|01:47.7|279.0|27.1|162.9|173.0|10.3
01|01120|04:00.0|01:47.1|284.4|27.9|169.5|177.0|10.0
02|01117|04:00.0|01:47.4|282.3|28.0|169.1|177.0|10.0
03|01115|04:00.0|01:47.6|280.4|28.1|168.5|177.0|09.9

And here are the interesting plots:

There is a lot of things going on here (at least in my perception).

  1. I am clearly trading stroke length for stroke rate. I should focus on staying long when I get tired.
  2. In the beginning of the row, I was focusing on technique, especially on a couple of the weak points that I discovered in the video analysis. This leads to a slightly higher Average to Peak force ratio. In the second half of each 4 minute interval, and more so in the 3rd and fourth intervals, I just focus on surviving and my technique flaws come back. The ratio drops.

I was wondering if this is due to the peak force or the average force. Guess what? There is a chart for that:

After a few months of spending some of my free time on rowsandall.com, I have something that is really useful, at least for myself. I use painsled to record the data. I get them onto rowsandall.com. I have set of “favorite” charts defined that I browse through. Rest paddling is automatically filtered out, and the result is a set of data that give me a quick overview of what I did, and some observations that are hard to get without a coach sitting next to and observing you.

The temperature in my rowing basement was +1.5C. Outside temperature -8C.

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