Dec 21 2016
The plan was to do 20km of steady state. I didn’t even get to half way. I woke up early after a short night, and there is so much stuff to do before Christmas.
So I did a 5km at steady state pace. Heart rate way to high and perceived effort as well.
Then I tried to film myself in order to reveal something about my stroke force profile.
And here is the video. I am afraid I don’t have a better quality right now.
Dec 20 2016
For OTW rowing, I am not even convinced a force curve should be looked at independently from boat speed and acceleration. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be great if we could extract a few meaningful parameters from the force curve to help analyze technique?
The approach Nielsen-Kellerman have taken is using “Slip” and “Wash” parameters, which basically tell give you a reduction in effective stroke length. Slip is basically the stroke length (or oar angle difference) it takes to get to 100N of force from the catch, and Wash is the oar angle difference (or stroke length) near the finish at which the force drops below 100N. The figure shows this well (from the brand new “stroke profile” plot on rowsandall.com).
It turns out that the schematic stroke profile is pretty close to the real one. When I calculate the area under the curve and compare with the average stroke force, there is pretty good consistency.
The ratio of average/peak force is a value between 0.5 and 1, the latter value just being a theoretical upper bound for a perfect block shaped force profile and the former the value for a triangular force profile. My values are pretty consistently around 0.57, but Greg Smith’s values are significantly higher (above 0.65 if I remember well).
So in the name of science, I did the following experiment on the erg. I must say using Painsled for iOS made it very easy to capture stroke profiles. I rowed a just row 150m off, 10 strokes “on”, varying stroke rate between 20 and 36spm. During the “on” strokes I tried to row what I consider good technique. Immediately after the 10th stroke, I grabbed the phone, did a screen capture, and took a picture of the PM5. I went up to 36spm, and back down, to see if there was consistency.
Before I show you all the raw data, here are the aggregate plots made on Rowsandall.com:
As you can see, my Average/Peak force ratio correlated positively with stroke rate, being 0.56 below 24spm, and 0.60 above 32spm. Drive length was pretty constant. I didn’t see a difference between going up the ladder or going down. Work per stroke correlated positively with the stroke rate, as did both average and peak force.
So here are the raw data, one set of stroke rates per picture gallery:
20 spm
24spm
28spm
32spm
36spm
The graphs from Painsled show the last stroke of the set of ten in bold, and a few of the strokes before in a lighter line. The pictures of the PM5 show the final stroke. I was struck by how different the pictures look from the graphs, but I guess that’s an effect of the vertical scaling.
I will have to think about this a bit more. Here is a link to the article by Kleshnev who has numbers between 0.5 and 0.6, with 85% of the rowers at the higher end.
I guess the next step will be to film my stroke.
At the least, I think this post is a good demonstration of the power of a good data analytics site, combined with the excellent erg data capture of Painsled.
Post Scriptum
Discussing the stroke profiles, Greg and I made the cumulative plots of the Average/Peak force ratio on rowsandall.com. Here are the two plots. Interesting to see the differences.
Dec 20 2016
Another week where I allow myself one Anaerobic Power workout. Today, I repeated the 13×45″/1′ workout of last week. After that, I did something special to capture stroke power curves, but more about that in the next blog post.
Here are the rowsandall.com plots for this workout. It was hard work. Somehow, I didn’t have the energy to go deep.
The workout editor has a little difficulty getting the averages right for these short intervals. On the PM5, I saw around 220-225 meter for the full 45 seconds, so I believe below statistics are underreported.
Workout Summary - media/20161220-1850090o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|05159|22:45.0|02:12.3|241.0|26.4|164.6|179.0|08.6
W-|02796|09:45.0|01:44.6|335.1|29.2|163.8|177.0|09.8
R-|02376|13:00.0|02:44.1|141.1|23.5|166.5|177.0|02.5
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00228|00:45.0|01:38.5|341.2|30.8|138.5|162.0|09.9
02|00215|00:45.0|01:44.9|333.4|28.7|161.6|170.0|10.0
03|00214|00:45.0|01:45.2|348.6|28.6|166.8|174.0|10.0
04|00218|00:45.0|01:43.0|348.8|29.6|164.3|174.0|09.8
05|00217|00:45.0|01:43.8|347.3|29.3|164.0|175.0|09.9
06|00216|00:45.0|01:44.3|336.7|29.8|165.0|175.0|09.7
07|00223|00:45.0|01:41.1|342.2|29.4|169.1|176.0|10.1
08|00220|00:45.0|01:42.2|322.2|28.9|167.1|175.0|10.2
09|00209|00:45.0|01:47.6|307.7|28.2|165.2|173.0|09.9
10|00216|00:45.0|01:44.2|339.3|29.3|167.0|175.0|09.8
11|00209|00:45.0|01:47.8|321.2|29.2|167.0|174.0|09.5
12|00207|00:45.0|01:48.6|316.9|28.2|166.6|174.0|09.8
13|00205|00:45.0|01:49.9|351.3|29.8|167.2|177.0|09.2
However, a week ago I had more than 200m less, so apparently I worked harder today!
Click on the images to open the gallery. Also, according to the images, I did 15 Watt more.
Dec 18 2016
This famous 10 minutes song by Nina Simone is part of one of my go-to playlists for long erg pieces. I always cheer up when this song starts, because I know the next 10 minutes will go by in a blink. It is really good erging to this song.
And the repeated call for “Power”, where Nina probably didn’t have erg power in mind, is a good reminder of what rowing is about.
Today I did 4x5km at one minute rest. I played a bit with stroke rates following the 1000/750/500/250m sequence that is my favorite of this fall.
Measured lactate after 15km: 1.7 mmol/L.
Measured lactate after 20km: 1.8 mmol/L.
Workout Summary - media/20161218-1120080o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|20300|86:20.0|02:07.6|187.1|20.5|157.8|169.0|11.5
W-|20000|82:21.0|02:03.5|189.2|20.5|158.0|169.0|11.9
R-|00303|04:00.0|06:36.4|129.3|20.4|152.6|169.0|00.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|05000|20:37.1|02:03.7|184.5|19.6|150.0|165.0|12.3
02|05000|20:20.9|02:02.1|193.0|20.3|162.1|169.0|12.1
03|05000|20:28.2|02:02.8|190.1|21.1|161.5|168.0|11.6
04|05000|20:54.9|02:05.5|189.3|21.0|158.5|166.0|11.4
I didn’t row the last interval slower. It took 58 seconds to do the lactate testing after interval #3, and I sinned and took a drink and another 20 seconds rest before I set off for my final 5k.
The now officially released version of Painsled, (link to iOS App Store) behaved well, except for one small glitch. Even though in the settings I have not activated Sync to Strava, when hitting “Export” in the app, it exported my workout as a “ride” to Strava.
I had to delete it there, because when I take the route through Rowsandall.com, the stroke data are exported better (leading to more meaningful graphs on Strava), and the session is exported as a row, not as a ride. Otherwise, I strongly recommend this excellent app for anybody who rows with a PM5.
Dec 18 2016
Thursday. A long version of the hotel gym workout.
15 minutes elliptical
15 minutes treadmill
15 minutes spinning
Followed by 45 minutes of weight lifting. It left me quite sore on Friday and Saturday, but that’s good.
Here is a photo of the view from the hotel gym. Exactly what I am staring at during the elliptical and treadmill part of the workout. There is a traffic light in front of the hotel, so one can study cars and trams driving past and waiting for the traffic light. Sometimes, fruit and vegetable delivery to the Carrefour Express on the corner coincides with my hotel workout. This time, such a highlight did not occur. I must have studied every detail of those roofs and of the brown building on the right during the past 7 years.
The plan for Friday was to cycle to work and come back with the car, which was waiting for me in the parking garage of our office. It was too cold and slippery to cycle. There were other priorities in the afternoon, so no exercise took place.
Dec 17 2016
Time for the weekly running event. It was -6C when we started out, three of Romana’s girls/women and I.
We ran along the lake, and then near the castle we took a right turn into the forest. We had a fairy-tale like view on the castle. Something like this. The trees were frozen as in the picture, but there was no snow on the roof:
Running through the forest, we encountered many deer, which was good because the girls started to be tired and spotting the animals was a good distraction.
Only at that stage I found out that Zdiška had been on the rowing club since 8am, doing an erg training that she had missed during the week. So she did a hard interval workout (the Pete Plan Pyramid) followed by a 14km run. Wow!
We finished the run in good spirits, despite one girl having a painful blister, so all was good.
https://www.strava.com/activities/804288506
For me it was a slow run. Not too long in kilometers, but long in time.
Dec 23 2016
Holiday Half Marathon
My last erg row of the Concept2 Holiday challenge. I thought about doing a full marathon, but I realized I have some other stuff I need to get done today. So just a HM. At Steady State pace.
I dialed up 21097m and just rowed free rate, listened to the radio, and took long water breaks at 14km and 7km to go. One great thing about rowing in the basement in winter is that the water gets nice and cool, and after a long row it tastes so good.
Workout Summary - media/20161223-1420110o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|21097|88:46.0|02:06.2|190.8|22.4|167.0|177.0|10.6
W-|21097|88:47.0|02:06.3|190.2|22.3|166.7|177.0|10.6
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|177.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01000|04:04.0|02:02.0|186.7|21.1|136.7|152.0|11.7
02|01000|04:05.5|02:02.8|199.8|21.8|157.7|163.0|11.2
03|01000|03:55.4|01:57.7|202.9|22.2|165.2|169.0|11.5
04|01000|03:59.2|01:59.6|204.7|22.3|168.5|172.0|11.2
05|01000|03:58.0|01:59.0|207.6|22.7|171.3|173.0|11.1
06|01000|04:00.2|02:00.1|201.8|22.5|172.4|175.0|11.1
07|01000|03:58.3|01:59.2|206.8|23.1|174.8|176.0|10.9
08|01000|05:17.8|02:38.9|193.6|22.4|163.9|177.0|08.4
09|01000|04:03.1|02:01.6|195.0|22.4|173.0|175.0|11.0
10|01000|04:02.9|02:01.4|195.3|22.5|173.1|175.0|11.0
11|01000|04:02.3|02:01.2|196.7|22.9|174.1|176.0|10.8
12|01000|04:05.3|02:02.7|189.7|22.7|172.5|174.0|10.8
13|01000|04:03.4|02:01.7|194.0|23.1|173.2|174.0|10.7
14|01000|04:03.5|02:01.7|194.3|23.2|173.5|175.0|10.6
15|01000|05:22.3|02:41.2|175.7|21.9|160.6|173.0|08.5
16|01000|04:11.3|02:05.6|176.7|22.0|166.0|167.0|10.9
17|01000|04:09.6|02:04.8|179.8|22.1|166.8|169.0|10.9
18|01000|04:05.6|02:02.8|188.9|22.5|168.9|171.0|10.9
19|01000|04:06.0|02:03.0|187.9|22.6|169.3|171.0|10.8
20|01000|04:01.2|02:00.6|199.4|23.3|171.6|173.0|10.7
21|01000|04:44.2|02:22.1|138.2|20.8|154.5|173.0|10.1
22|00097|00:27.7|02:22.8|127.6|20.0|149.2|150.0|10.5
And here are the great pictures that tell you all about the row.
You can see quite clearly how stroke rate goes up and drive length goes down when I get tired. Not good.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, Half Marathon, HM, OTE, rowing, steady state, training