myimage-3

Nov 20 2016

More Steady State & Bad Technique

Just a 15km Steady State row, partitioned as 6x2500m, with the first 3 intervals rowed as 1000/750/500/250, and the final three intervals as 250/500/750/1000. In the first interval, I rowed at 18/19/20/21spm, in the second one 19/20/21/22spm, and in the third one 20/21/22/23spm. In the second half of the row I climbed down those same ladders in reverse order.

Bad Technique

On Friday, I introduced a new parameter, the ratio of the average and peak drive force, and I found a study by Kleshnev that links this parameter to rowing style. Going one step further, I wanted to know if the value could be used to fingerprint bad technique. I set up a 250m intervals with 20 seconds rest and rowed. In the first and final intervals, I rowed my “normal” stroke, which I believe is decent, technique-wise.

In the other intervals I rowed exaggerated versions of common examples of bad technique. Here is the resulting table. I don’t see a correlation.

Fratio Ldrive
Good 0.58 1.40
Bad 1 0.56 1.38
Bad 2 0.59 1.38
Bad 3 0.57 1.45
Bad 4 0.59 1.41
Good 0.56 1.38

By • Uncategorized • 3 Comments • Tags: , , , , , ,

bokeh_plot-11

Nov 19 2016

Saturday – more Steady State

It was rainy and dull, so no good weather to go out running. Today, I programmed 20k in the PM5 and rowed it down to zero. A few sessions ago I came up with a 750m/500m/250m sequence and Greg Smith, the quantified rower perfected that to 1000m/750m/500m/250m which gives you a nice 2500m interval. The fun part is to try and row each part of the 2500m at a prescribed stroke rate and work on consistency. It really makes long workouts fly by.

I also had a little fun with the interval editor on rowsandall.com and created these monster stats:

Workout Summary - media/20161119-1200070o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|20000|86:14.0|02:09.4|174.5|19.5|153.7|166.0|11.9
W-|20000|86:16.0|02:09.4|172.9|19.4|153.0|166.0|11.9
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|166.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01000|04:23.7|02:11.9|163.1|18.0|130.3|140.0|12.6
02|00750|03:08.6|02:05.7|176.2|19.1|142.9|149.0|12.5
03|00500|02:02.9|02:02.9|188.3|20.2|151.5|154.0|12.1
04|00250|01:00.7|02:01.5|195.4|21.4|154.3|156.0|11.6
05|01000|04:12.8|02:06.4|173.4|18.7|149.4|155.0|12.7
06|00750|03:08.9|02:05.9|175.4|19.3|148.0|151.0|12.4
07|00500|02:02.7|02:02.7|189.4|20.1|154.2|157.0|12.2
08|00250|01:00.7|02:01.4|196.5|20.9|158.9|161.0|11.8
09|01000|04:11.8|02:05.9|175.5|18.7|155.1|158.0|12.8
10|00750|03:06.9|02:04.6|180.8|19.3|156.3|158.0|12.5
11|00500|02:03.2|02:03.2|187.1|20.3|160.0|162.0|12.0
12|00250|00:58.1|01:56.2|192.4|21.1|161.7|163.0|12.3
13|01000|04:15.0|02:07.5|175.1|19.4|157.7|163.0|12.1
14|00750|03:05.4|02:03.6|185.5|20.3|160.6|163.0|11.9
15|00500|02:01.6|02:01.6|195.1|21.3|163.9|166.0|11.6
16|00250|02:43.4|05:26.7|111.2|18.0|129.3|165.0|05.1 - drink + 1.6mmol/L
17|01000|04:46.8|02:23.4|166.4|18.6|148.2|159.0|11.2 - playlist issue
18|00750|03:11.2|02:07.4|168.7|19.4|153.4|159.0|12.2
19|00500|02:04.8|02:04.8|180.2|20.4|157.2|159.0|11.8
20|00250|00:59.7|01:59.5|186.9|21.3|158.2|159.0|11.8
21|01000|04:16.7|02:08.4|169.3|18.6|156.3|160.0|12.5
22|00750|03:10.7|02:07.1|170.5|19.3|157.8|159.0|12.3
23|00500|02:05.3|02:05.3|178.1|20.5|158.5|160.0|11.7
24|00250|01:00.6|02:01.2|192.1|21.4|161.0|164.0|11.6
25|01000|04:18.0|02:09.0|163.8|18.4|157.3|163.0|12.6
26|00750|03:12.6|02:08.4|165.4|19.5|154.9|158.0|12.0
27|00500|02:05.8|02:05.8|175.5|20.2|156.3|158.0|11.8
28|00250|01:01.3|02:02.7|185.2|21.3|158.9|161.0|11.5
29|01000|04:20.8|02:10.4|159.0|18.8|154.2|160.0|12.2
30|00750|03:10.9|02:07.3|169.6|19.6|156.1|160.0|12.0
31|00500|02:04.5|02:04.5|181.5|20.7|160.3|162.0|11.7
32|00250|01:00.1|02:00.1|182.8|21.5|160.5|162.0|11.6 - 1.0 mmol/L

I paddled the final 250m of the fourth interval and stopped to take a lactate measurement: 1.6 mmol/L.

Then in the first 1000m of the second 10k, my playlist stopped, so I had to get off the erg and restart it.

At the end of the row, I measured lactate again. By now, that was very tricky because sweat was dripping from all my body parts. I was wearing a moisture wicking long-sleeved shirt. The moisture wicking combined with the high humidity in my rowing cave resulted in me being covered in “dew”, which steadily dripped off the sleeve ends. Hard to not contaminate the lactate strip. Anyway, I measured a low value of 1.0 mmol/L. I think it is time to man up and go 10W higher.

bokeh_plot-7

bokeh_plot-8

Stroke power distribution
Stroke power distribution

For the period between September 1 and today, my Power histogram on the erg looks like this:

bokeh_plot-11

So 80% of my strokes below 200W (which is steady state). The peak is around 185W, and 50% of the strokes are at a lower power.

Also this interesting plot is available for everybody who uses rowsandall.com.

 

By • Uncategorized • 4 Comments • Tags: , , , , ,

capture

Nov 19 2016

Friday – 12.5km Steady State / force curve

Friday was a bridge day between a Bank Holiday and a weekend. I decided to take a holiday and catch up with some maintenance on the site, as well as preparation for a workshop on Monday. I ended up taking more time on the website, and will have to prepare the Monday workshop today.

At the end of the afternoon, I descended to my rowing cave. First I played a bit with the official Concept2 smartphone app “ErgData”, and then I reverted to my beloved Painsled app to crank out a 12.5km steady state. I wanted to do more, but I ran out of time.

Here are a few new plots. I am still looking for the “signature” set of plots for a workout.

bokeh_plot-9

I have added a new metric to Rowsandall.com. It is the ratio of the average drive force vs the peak drive force, and it tells you something about the force curve. For a perfectly “flat” stroke profile, this ratio would be 1.0. For any sort of triangular profile, the ratio would be 0.5. The higher the value, the longer the force plateau during your drive. It seems from the plot above that I am pretty constant throughout the 19 to 22spm stroke rates I rowed in this session.

Here is a study by Kleshnev on the force curve in rowing.  Here is a key plot from the study. “Classical style” would give you a force ratio close to 0.5. “Simultaneous style” is significantly higher (looks like 0.7 by eye). Kleshnev is not making conclusions on what is better. It is interesting that the tables in the study show force ratios between 0.4 and 0.6, but not much higher, for the rowers that he has in his database.

capture
Copied from Kleshnev

bokeh_plot-10

This plot shows work per stroke and power output. The average power was 174W (yes I have added annotations to the plots), and the work per stroke was 600 J. However, the plot clearly shows that it is dropping slowly but steadily during the workout.

Stats:


Workout Summary - media/20161118-1610052o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|12508|52:38.0|02:06.3|174.0|19.7|151.3|163.0|12.0
W-|12508|52:38.0|02:06.3|174.0|19.7|151.3|163.0|12.0
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|163.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|02500|10:23.6|02:04.7|178.3|19.3|141.9|153.0|12.4
02|02500|10:24.5|02:04.9|180.0|20.2|150.5|159.0|11.9
03|02500|10:37.6|02:07.5|169.1|19.3|150.2|159.0|12.2
04|02500|10:29.1|02:05.8|176.2|20.3|156.0|163.0|11.8
05|02508|10:43.9|02:08.3|166.5|19.5|157.6|162.0|12.0

By • Uncategorized • 2 Comments • Tags: , , , , ,

dsc0120

Nov 17 2016

Jehnice running event 2016

A holiday today, the celebration of the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Czechs fall in a few categories in this day:

  1. Those who go to their cottage for a long weekend
  2. Those who go shopping
  3. Those who participate in a sports event
  4. Those who go to the main square to listen to political speeches

Then there is also a loud minority who take part in extreme right or extreme left demonstrations.

As every year, I chose option 3.

Same run as a year ago, but the weather was different. A year ago it was sunny and dry. Today, it was wet and misty, and 2 degrees above 0. In the past few days we’ve had this bad weather. Snow alternated with rain, and the temperature oscillating around the freezing point.

My goal was to beat last year’s effort. I had written down last year’s passing times for a few key points along the route, but during the run I failed to remember them. In fact, I was thinking that I was one minute ahead of my target time for most of the run, where in fact I was a minute behind.

A year ago, I ran 47:07 on dry ground. Today, it was 48:17 on muddy ground.

Strava link.

In terms of relative effort, this year I was 158th of 346 (56% percentile), 12:03 minutes behind the winner. A year ago, I was 170th of 422 (60% percentile), 12:19 minutes behind the winner. I conclude that the results are probably very comparable. Average heart rate was 171 bpm this year, vs 173 bpm a year ago.

The nice thing about these running events is that they’re so massive. As a rower who runs occasionally, you end up in the middle of the pack, but there are hundreds of people, and there is always someone slightly ahead to pass.

I also discovered that none of the running sites offer a comparison between two workouts. I would have loved to compare a pace vs distance plot for the 2016 run compared to the 2015 run. It’s so simple to make one plot with two runs overlaid.

running-11-17-2016-elevation

A few pictures from the event:

Kid's run
Kid’s run
The Weather
The Weather
Yours truly almost invisible (yellow cap behind bearded man)
Yours truly almost invisible (yellow cap behind bearded man). Mr “Always One Step Ahead” was one step ahead of me until the second climb where I passed him

Oh, and this, the first Empower Oarlocks are shipping. This is very exciting:

By • Uncategorized • 0 Comments • Tags: , ,

myimage-2

Nov 16 2016

New Painsled beta, steady state erg and mind games; and playing with data

Painsled iOS published a new beta version of their Concept2 data capture app. It’s really a very promising application and it has now gotten even better. Of all the ways to capture erg data, Painsled is the most complete. Now they have added stroke force profile feedback to their app, so besides safely capturing all your strokes for post workout analysis, there is also a useful screen to see how consistent you are from stroke to stroke, while you are doing the workout.

This being a beta, it comes with very little explanation, but the graph looks like a standard stroke force profile, but it is overlaid on the past few strokes. Also, during the recovery, there is a bar which moves across the screen to a second bar. I think that when you take the catch exactly when the two white bars match, you are exactly copying your previous stroke (or perhaps the average over the past few strokes). I need to ask the developer what it does exactly, but I think it is very powerful, especially for steady state, where working on technique and stroke consistency is a big sub-goal of each workout.

Having data captured in painsled, I send them by email to workouts @ rowsandall.com, where they automatically end up in my account.  Here are the stats of the workout as they arrived.


Workout Summary - media/mailbox_attachments/2016/11/16/aa5e11a267c142448e0aaedb6cd95eea.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14999|63:31.0|02:07.0|176.6|20.2|158.9|174.0|11.7
W-|15005|63:31.0|02:07.0|176.4|20.2|158.9|174.0|11.7
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|174.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01179|04:57.9|02:06.4|170.4|20.1|130.1|150.0|11.8
02|01196|05:00.4|02:05.6|176.8|19.5|149.4|154.0|12.3
03|01204|04:54.7|02:02.4|191.6|20.4|158.1|165.0|12.0
04|01212|05:01.8|02:04.5|182.0|19.9|160.8|163.0|12.1
05|01196|05:00.6|02:05.6|177.9|20.0|160.4|167.0|11.9
06|01214|05:02.4|02:04.6|182.3|20.5|164.2|168.0|11.8
07|01124|05:09.0|02:17.4|160.1|19.8|155.4|168.0|11.0
08|01216|04:59.8|02:03.3|188.0|20.8|165.4|170.0|11.7
09|01192|04:59.1|02:05.5|177.6|20.0|166.6|170.0|12.0
10|01202|05:01.0|02:05.2|180.1|20.3|167.5|171.0|11.8
11|01203|05:00.2|02:04.8|182.3|20.5|169.3|174.0|11.7
12|01139|05:10.6|02:16.4|167.3|20.5|164.1|174.0|10.7
13|00726|03:13.9|02:13.5|147.3|19.9|152.0|159.0|11.3

That’s basically an hour of “Just Row” at steady state. But wait, to break the boredom I had some structure in the workout. After the business travel and another long day at work (and a “Monthly Operations Review”, a 4 hour marathon meeting) I arrived home empty, tired, and not motivated to work out. I had dragged myself to the erg and after 2k of warming up I came up with a mind game that might motivate me to row a full hour.

I decided to row 8x1500m, with each 1500m divided as 750m at 18spm, 500m at 20spm, and 250m at 22spm. Somehow, distance based rowing always makes the time go by faster to me, compared to time based intervals.

I paddled the final 250m of the fourth interval and drank some water. Finally I completed the workout without problems. On rowsandall.com, I can add this interval information after the fact. The workout summary then becomes:


Workout Summary - media/20161116-20100719o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15004|63:30.0|02:07.0|176.6|20.2|158.9|174.0|11.7
W-|14755|61:59.0|02:06.1|177.9|20.2|159.2|174.0|11.8
R-|00250|01:31.0|03:03.3|094.0|18.8|142.7|174.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|02000|08:23.5|02:05.9|173.6|20.0|137.6|151.0|11.9 - Warming up
02|01500|06:09.9|02:03.3|187.5|20.0|156.0|165.0|12.2
03|01500|06:11.0|02:03.7|185.9|20.2|161.6|167.0|12.0
04|01500|06:15.1|02:05.0|180.3|20.4|161.0|168.0|11.8
05|01250|05:13.0|02:05.2|179.3|20.1|164.3|168.0|11.9
06|01500|06:12.0|02:04.0|184.5|20.4|162.4|170.0|11.8
07|01500|06:12.8|02:04.3|183.6|20.5|167.4|171.0|11.8
08|01500|06:13.9|02:04.6|182.7|20.5|168.1|173.0|11.7
09|01500|06:15.3|02:05.1|180.2|20.5|168.2|174.0|11.7
10|01005|04:53.6|02:26.1|134.1|19.3|152.2|172.0|10.7 - Cooling Down

myimage
Pie Chart

And here are the plots:

myimage-1
Power Pie Chart

myimage-2

The Work per stroke for all strokes (except the 250m of paddling in the middle):

bokeh_plot

Same plot, but only for the 8x1500m (excluding the 250m of paddling):

bokeh_plot-1

Ah, so the “structured mind game” helped to make the strokes more consistent! Just for fun, peak and average force for the same stroke selection:

bokeh_plot-2

By • Uncategorized • 0 Comments • Tags: , , , , , ,

h03

Nov 16 2016

Monday/Tuesday – Bulgaria

Monday

A long day. I left for Brno airport just before lunch time, to take the flight to Munich, expecting to take a lunch at the layover in Munich.

The flight to Munich had a 3 hour delay. We were offered money to buy refreshments at Brno airport, but the choice of healthy food is not exactly overwhelming there. Anyway, with work to do, documents to read, and internet connection, the three hours of quiet working time was definitely not wasted.

Arrived in Sofia at 10pm, which means I missed the business dinner with our local partners that we were invited to. A good start!

The taxi from the airport to the hotel drove 140 km/h on a road with a speed limit of 80 km/h and signs warning for speed cameras. Crashed into hotel bed and slept.

Tuesday

Headed to the hotel gym and did an aerobic warming up (or was it a waking up). Ten minutes on an elliptic, ten minutes on the treadmill, and 10 minutes on a spinning bike. The elliptical fitness trainer was of an interesting make. It was constructed in such a way that you could vary the stride length, which meant you could vary between something resembling stairs walking (short stride) and cross country skiing (long stride). It was fun, actually, to vary this.

Then it was time for weights. The problem was that the 25 square meter gym was by now filled with about 7 people, which made it a bit difficult to work out. On top of that, the hotel was the venue for some kind of military conference, so the weights stations were quite popular. I did some bench presses, and then I headed back to the hotel room, where I completed the workout with sit ups, reverse push ups across the bed and the cupboard, and back exercises.

This morning’s taxi driver was even more interesting than the one of Monday night. This time it was a bipolar guy with an economics degree, who took the outcome of the Bulgarian elections very seriously. At one crossing he got fed up of waiting to turn left, crossed over to the opposite side of the street, drove 150m into upcoming traffic, exclaiming that he didn’t care any more, passing police (who didn’t seem to care), and turned left. Then he started to talk about moving to Germany to take a cleaning job.

Meetings were good. At the end of the day I took a taxi ride to the airport and a flight to Vienna, and after two hours in the car I arrived home. The taxi ride to the airport was extremely boring (for Bulgarian standards).

h03

Interestingly, the Garmin Forerunner seems to have captured speed from the treadmill:

https://www.strava.com/activities/775807378

 

capture

Joe Friel’s blog is relevant: http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2016/11/travel-and-training.html

By • Uncategorized • 0 Comments • Tags: , ,

map2

Nov 13 2016

Ignored training plan and went for a trail run

The training plan prescribed another steady state erg, but the sun was shining and it was just such a beautiful winter day that I had to go out running.

There’s a little running event that I will participate in coming Thursday. It’s a 10k run starting in the next village, which is organized every year on the “struggle for freedom and democracy” holiday (celebrating the velvet revolution of 1989). That 10k run is on the same trails that I train on, so I can start running from home and check the trails.

Here is the run on Strava.

The run was beautiful (and slow). The small lakes in the forest were covered with a very thin layer of ice.

When I arrived back home and closed the gate, I slammed it on my right index finger. It didn’t hurt much initially, because my hands were frozen, but when everything started to thaw it was quite painful.

Well, I can type this now, so that’s a sign that it’s not so serious. Finger is a little thick and there are interesting colors under the nail.

Just for fun, and because I love maps, I am showing the run overlaid on a few different maps:

map3
The 19th Century map. I like how the tree rows are indicated on both sides of the big road

 

map2
Geographical map. A modern highway is built next to the old road. 

 

map1
Finally, the hiking map. You can see the abundance of hiking/running trails. Running in these hills is never boring

Tomorrow: A travel day. Then a hotel gym in Sofia, Bulgaria on Tuesday.

By • Uncategorized • 0 Comments • Tags: ,

«< 60 61 62 63 64 >»