Rowsandall

Oct 16 2016

Saturday – Long, Windy Steady State OTW

I felt guilty for taking an unplanned rest day on Friday, although it probably wasn’t bad to take an additional rest day.

Saturday was a windy day. First time in the single since Tuesday morning. In the mean time, the manufacturer of my boat (mr Růžička from “Roseman”) had come by to fit my single with back stays. Or are they called front stays? They extend from the top of the oarlock to the “front” of the boat (looking in the forward rowing direction, behind my back). Well, what is the forward rowing direction, anyway. To me, forward is the usual direction of motion, with the rower facing backwards.

Anyway, I got a new wing and those stays for free, so I have to tell Roseman’s service is excellent.

It was very windy. The forecast was 4 m/s, and I believe on the lake part of the outing it was just that. Rowing in tailwind, I felt the wind blowing into my face, which means that the wind speed was higher than my 12km/h rowing speed. There were big waves on the lake, so I decided to go up to the castle.

Workout Summary - media/20161016-161625-Sanders SpeedCoach 20161015 0946amo.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|15242|82:17.0|02:42.0|20.0|156.9|171.0|09.3 W-|15231|82:40.0|02:42.8|20.0|156.5|171.0|09.2 R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|00.0|000.0|171.0|00.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|01000|05:05.0|02:32.5|22.1|131.9|151.0|08.9 - warming up - tailwind 02|00990|05:00.0|02:31.6|17.7|149.8|154.0|11.2 03|01000|06:16.8|03:08.4|20.8|148.3|162.0|07.7 - remove layer 04|01000|04:33.9|02:16.9|20.1|162.0|165.0|10.9 - tailwind 05|01000|04:39.4|02:19.7|20.5|163.8|166.0|10.5 06|01000|04:50.8|02:25.4|20.9|163.8|167.0|09.9 07|01000|05:38.4|02:49.2|20.3|156.8|167.0|08.8 - turn 08|01000|05:07.3|02:33.6|20.8|166.9|171.0|09.4 - headwind 09|01000|05:06.1|02:33.0|20.7|165.4|167.0|09.5 10|01000|05:17.2|02:38.6|20.1|164.5|169.0|09.4 - strong headwind 11|01000|05:38.7|02:49.3|20.1|161.1|165.0|08.8 - back on lake 12|01000|06:53.2|03:26.6|18.4|154.8|162.0|07.9 - unrowable part 13|01000|06:00.7|03:00.4|19.2|158.5|162.0|08.6 14|01000|05:47.1|02:53.5|19.4|159.1|161.0|08.9 15|01000|05:27.6|02:43.8|19.7|146.8|163.0|09.3 16|00242|01:18.0|02:41.5|18.5|144.8|149.0|10.0

After 6.5km, I was catching up with a big ship, so instead of trying to pass him on a part of the river where I am not supposed to be, I turned around and decided to add an extra lake loop to the end of the workout.

On the river, you are shielded. The headwind was a bit less strong, and there was no chop. Arriving at the lake, I found myself in trouble. The wind has 3000m to get to maximum speed and sweep up the waves. The waves were of the kind that wipe over the stern, and every fourth or fifth wave would dump some water into the cockpit. There was an extra layer of clothes in that cockpit, which I had removed at the end of the warming up, so those clothes got soaked and there wasn’t a lot of bailing going on.

Buoyancy enough, so I decided to not be a Sissy and row all the way to the south end of the lake. After about 1.5km of really bad water, the chop became slightly lower and my motions started to resemble rowing again.

Heart rates were slightly higher than expected and there was some DOMS, especially shoulders and chest.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: crosstraining, lake, OTW, river, rowing, steady state, training

Oct 16 2016

Wednesday – Friday: Business Trip

Wednesday

Flight to Brussels and a planned rest day. Preparation of the Thursday meetings and a solo dinner in Hanedan, a Turkish fast food close to the hotel. Fast food sounds awful, but to be honest I think this place serves healthier food than the hotel restaurant. You don’t have to eat all the meat, and there is a lot of vegetables and salad around it. The problem, of course, is that all the meat gets eaten.

Not bad for fast food. The starter was a nice salad with olives.

Thursday

Workout: A mini hotel triathlon, i.e. 10 minutes elliptical, 10 minutes treadmill, 10 minutes spinning. Then a 45 minute weights workout.

Then a full day of meetings, and a late flight home.

Friday

My planned exercise for the day was 2×45 minutes of easy cycling, the ride to work and back. Unfortunately, I discovered my tire was flat. So I changed to normal clothes and drove to work in the car, planning to return in time to get in a 90 minute erg.

Work was longer than expected and I arrived home late and tired. No energy for a workout.

On a day after a business trip you have to have the little tricks ready to make sure you do the workout. This time, the tricks didn’t work because of the flat tire.

Also: DOMS.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: crosstraining, hotel gym, rowing, training, weights

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Oct 11 2016

Steady State and some memories

Today’s session was planned as 80-90 minutes of steady state, but it wasn’t to be. When I arrived at the club just before 7am, I had some business to do with the head coach, which took more than I expected, so I didn’t launch before 7:30. After the workout, work would be waiting and there was much to do, so I decided to shorten the session to 12km. As the lake was getting choppy, I decided to take the gorge to the castle and back. In this time of the year, that is always a great choice. The trees are now more colored every day, and the water in the gorge is flat and easy to row with less wind than on the lake.

It’s going to be 15 degrees and sunny on Saturday. Maybe I should take some pictures.

This being the first row after a race also meant that things were a bit improvised. Packing my stuff, I had concentrated on getting enough clothes into the bag to have a good choice of layers depending on the weather. That meant that I had forgotten to pack my Wahoo Tickr, which is usually a part of my rowing bag, but was left outside after Sunday’s bike ride. So, no heart rate data today. I estimate it to be the usual steady state stuff, average heart rate somewhere between 150 and 155bpm.

Today I read a nice blog post by Jeff Bolster, Keeping it Simple. I found this piece because of a blog by Göran R Buckhorn on Hear the Boat Sing.

Reading about the rowing boats of the past I was reminded of my mother’s parents, who lived as vegetable farmers in Sloterpolder, a part of the world that has literally disappeared under the post-war expansion of Amsterdam. At my grandparents’ well-attended birthday parties, we grandchildren played in one part of the room while the old people were sharing old memories in the other part of the room. I found the interesting website “Geheugen van West” (Memory of West Amsterdam) which seemed as a continuation of these birthday parties, minus the cigar smoke and the “Jonge” (Dutch gin). The site collects stories from old people in “West” and “pre-West”, and has old documents and pictures.

I am sharing this because rowing boats was an integral part of the Sloterpolder. To get to your house from the public road, you had to row. To bring vegetables to the markets in Amsterdam, people rowed. To go to the library in the city, you rowed. Here are some pictures.

sloterpolder_1946-jpgd9ed62b2d0c131030d6577fdca9a46df — The person on the right is identified as “Piet Sickman”, which is a name I remember from the stories, and some of the Sickmans are my distant relatives. Boy is unidentified.

jan_harte-jpg811612fb111b2f7b157e54a0e656215e — The polder. Amsterdam in the background

het_huis_aan_de_slotervaart_in_sloterpolder-jpg5c48f60d876c211cb53984f7a76afcaf — My parents have some pictures of my grandparents’ house. It looked pretty similar to this one. The greenhouses in the back of the “garden”

The guy on the left is "Ome Han", also a name that rings a bell — The guy on the left is “Ome Han”, also a name that rings a bell, but it could be coincidence as it is a very common name

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: OTW, river, rowing, single, steady state, training

20161010-193949-sled_2016-10-10t20-06-43zgmt2-strokes20161010-194019

Oct 10 2016

Steady State 4×15 minutes

A long day at work. Also, I didn’t really want to spend time driving to and from the lake. Too much other stuff to do.

So it was a steady state session on the erg. I decided to try a 4x15min format instead of 3x20min, and I liked it. At 185W, the 15 minute intervals gave me a predicted distance of just above 3600 meters, so I could mentally split all the intervals in 6 pieces of 600m. I need to do these mind games to avoid stopping rowing out of boredom. I need to download something interesting to listen to.

Workout Summary - C:/Downloads/4x15minb.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|14996|63:29.0|02:07.0|21.4|150.1|168.0|11.0 W-|14546|59:51.0|02:03.5|21.4|150.7|168.0|11.3 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|03629|14:56.4|02:03.5|21.1|138.9|149.0|11.5 02|03645|14:58.0|02:03.2|21.5|149.8|158.0|11.3 03|03636|14:58.2|02:03.5|21.6|155.4|168.0|11.2 04|03636|14:58.9|02:03.6|21.5|158.8|163.0|11.3

Good statistics, I think. Heart rate behaved nicely. It felt hard at the beginning, but that was gone after five minutes. I also had some good music from the “Music to erg” blog and spotify channel, which made it easy to fall into a rhythm (or a trance).

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Oct 9 2016

Hradiště Head Race and a Wooden Eight from 1934

Friday

No training. In the evening, Romana and I made the program for Hradiště, i.e. the instructions where everybody would be at any given point in time. It’s not easy.

There’s a small bus with all the rowers at the start. One by one they do their warming up, get ready to race, and row the 6km race. Somebody needs to bring their shoes and some clothes to the finish, especially when it’s 9 degrees and chilly. Then there’s three singles that are used in the morning and in the afternoon. So at some point in time we have to drive my small trailer from the finish back to the start for those three singles. Then Romana wants to be at the start to help her girls with warming up and race prep. And I will spend the morning on the bike cheering various athletes. One thing is easy. Head coach will be in the big turn half way with his stopwatch, a pen and a note book. He will record all times and give key info to the guys racing, how they stand respective to their competitors.

So our day was planned from 7am to 5pm with 15 minute precision. Well, it’s an important race for the youth. Their 6km OTW time is measured against a standard, and each participant who scores more than 100% will be invited for a 6k erg race and some further testing. If successful, the youth will be part of the “Youth Sports Center” for rowing, and the club will receive state funding for covering training costs.

Saturday

So alarm clock at 6, leave house at 7, drive to rowing club to get small trailer, drive the 70km to Hradiště, park trailer. Then Romana takes the car to the start and I hop on the bike.

My first task was to cycle with one of the juniors, cheer and give steering instructions. Mr Cermak had the luxury of having his parents on the bike, so I chose to bike with Mr Kuncak. (Sometimes the parents’ steering instructions are counterproductive, but Kuncak is our biggest Ace in the juniors field.)

On the right bank you can cycle the entire 6km. On the left bank you can only do the final 3km. I chose to cycle on the left bank with a better bike path, because I didn’t want to spend my race energy cycling through a stubble-field on the right bank. Picked up Mr Kuncak with 3km to go and started cheering and steering. When I passed head coach we got the information that he was rowing in 2nd place with 2 seconds loss to the fastest guy. So I cheered and cheered. Shouted at him to just keep rowing the same 30spm stroke and hoping it would help.

When Mr Kuncak finished, I cycled back to wait for the race of my daughter Lenka. I saw Mr Cermak in passing, with his father cheering.

Had to spend more than an hour on the 3km point. The autumn sun disappeared and I did a few kilometers of cycling around the local villages just to stay warm.

Lenka arrived on our single. I measured the distance to the girl ahead of her. With 1 minute between starts, Lenka arrived 50 seconds behind that girl, so that was 10 seconds to the good. There was a big gap behind her, so a very positive situation to cheer and steer. Lenka was rowing 26spm, but that didn’t bother me as I knew she had been ill a week ago and the 26-27spm reflected her fitness. I think I cheered her through the tough part between 4km and 5km, and then got her rating up in the final km. Today, she told me she didn’t hear me well, and she didn’t understand what she heard. OK, so far for the coaching. 🙁

Mr Kuncak finished third in the Junior’s field, 5 seconds behind our club’s Mr Cermak, who surprised us all by coming second, just 0.5 seconds behind the winner. Lenka finished somewhere in the middle of her field, but her final time was good for a >100% score, which means she is still in the game!

Our club also won the Men’s single, the Boys 15/16 pair, and got a third place in the men’s lightweight single. Because of the points earned for all youth categories and the U23 rowers, this was a huge success in a race with very strong competion.

It was time to return to the small trailer. Three singles (including my single “Dolfijn” which was rowed by Lenka) were prepared. Romana arrived just in time with the car, and we drove to the start, where we unloaded the single, rigged them, and then drove back with the trailer (and some bags with shoes and dry clothes).

Then we took the car back to the start, and it was time for me to get ready for my own race.

Two years ago, I won, with a few seconds lead. Last year, I lost. Mr Polasek gave me 5 seconds. Unfortunately, I had found out during the morning, that Mr Polasek had cancelled. He had a cold last week and didn’t feel like it. At the start, I also found out that the two guys from Ostrava had cancelled. This kind of reduced the tension of the race. My club mate Eduard was the next fastest guy on paper, with me being the fastest. The other participants were three guys from the rowing club in Hradec Kralove, who looked like newbies in the Masters Rowing field, and Mr Bejbl from Brandys, who I estimated to be slower than me.

I found out it is good that I have pre-race routine with a lot of reserve time. Only when I put the single in the water, I found out that I had forgotten to move the footstretcher from Lenka’s position to mine. That is a problem, because one of the nuts is normal one, and you need a tool to unscrew it. Luckily, Romana was still on the bank collecting our slings, so I could get to the car and get the tool. I still had time enough to do a 2km warming up drill on the water.

Here is the full race video:

I made a terribly bad starting stroke, which made me smile and shake my head. Then I was off. After a few start strokes I dropped to my well-tested 27spm and didn’t dare to go higher. I think I made a wise decision. Looking at the power plot, corrected for the river’s current and the headwind, I more or less rowed a flat row in terms of power (Watt).

Pace helped by the river current, but in a slight headwind from 12 minutes onwards.

The guy starting 60 seconds before me was a 68 year old Masters rower. Just a year younger than my father! I passed him in the first kilometer, and then I had enough space to focus on my own rowing. I think I steered well. Perhaps the big turn at the beer brewery was a bit wider than could have been, but the river was really the fastest in the middle. Whenever I got closer to the banks, the pace numbers started to worsen.

After the big turn I was rowing into a light headwind, and I had to tell myself that it was a headwind, and not worry too much about the pace creeping up above 2:00 minutes per 500m.

In the final 1000m I started counting strokes, and in the final 500m I had company of our friend Ludek on the bike, which was very good because it helped me rate up to 28, 29 and then 30spm.

I did a 1km cooling down and when I was taking the single out of the water, I heard the speaker announce the results. I had won!

Second place was for my club mate Eduard.

It took us about 30 minutes to get the boats ready for transport, and then we walked over to the club house to receive our medals:

We arrived home around 8:30pm.

Sunday

Around 2pm we drove to the rowing club. We unloaded the trailer. I washed my single, and then we watched something very exciting.

Our club was founded in 1912, and in the old hangar at the river club house we have a few very old wooden boats. A few of our older club members have made it a project to restore these old boats. Their first piece was a 1944 clinker eight, one of the few left in this part of the world. Today, after more than 50 years, it was the first row for a 1934 clinker eight, a lighter and faster boat than the 1944 one (and made of better quality wood).

This was no easy restoration. A big part of the middle of the ship was rotten and had to be replaced completely.

By the way, 1934 was also in the time when Czechoslovakia, in the middle of a worldwide economic crisis, warmly welcomed German refugees, antifascists and jews escaping Nazi Germani. A bit of a contrast with the political climate of today. 🙁

My workout of today was cycling home from the rowing club. It was rainy and cold, but it was a nice recovery workout:

https://www.strava.com/activities/739596293

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 4 • Tags: head race, OTW, race, river, rowing, single

Oct 6 2016

Crack – a short session

Arrived at the club at 4pm just to see my daughter taking the single. A little miscommunication. Romana had told me in the morning that Lenka had school late and wouldn’t make it to practice. However, being nervous for the race in two days, Lenka had swapped a class and managed to be in time. Everybody wants to get OTW kilometers in to do some final technique fixes.

So I did 4km of unrecorded erg rowing on one of the rowing club ergs, and then I could get on the water. I wanted to do just a quick 6km round and then load the boat to the trailer.

The two kilometers from the dock to Rokle were uneventful. I did 20 strokes at head race pace into the headwind. At 2:04 pace, so probably a bit too hard. Then I turned around.

In front of the nude beach, I wanted to do another 20 strokes at head race pace. I was interested in the pace in the tailwind. After two strokes, I heard a loud cracking sound.

My wing rigger had cracked. This is not the first time it happened to me. This wing is already a replacement, after the original wing cracked a year and a half ago.

I guess the pictures are not very clear. Here you can see it happen in the session graph. The pace dip at 11 minutes is me turning around. The dip at 15:30 is when the rigger cracked.

So the only thing I could do was row back slowly to the dock, which was quite different because the oar angle had changed and my blades were disappearing under water. Then I called the manufacturer, a local boat builder.

He will bring a spare rigger this evening.

I loaded the boat on the trailer, took a shower and drove home, broken wing in the back of the car. It’s on the kitchen table now. I have measured all the rigging parameters and when the new rigger arrives in an hour or so, I will be able to set it up identically, such that Lenka will be able to do her practice row in Hradiste tomorrow morning.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 3 • Tags: broken wing, OTW, rowing

Oct 4 2016

A short OTW session and some thoughts about “SPI”

The featured image does not reflect today’s weather conditions.

Today’s session started quite dramatic. Seven AM. Rain. The wind didn’t seem so strong but it was creating a big chop. I am not a native speaker so haven’t mastered the 57 or more words the English language probably has to distinguish between different ways of water surface movement. Ripple. Chop. Waves. On the lake part of the outing, I would say it was significantly choppy. Now and then a wave would wash over my stern, and the waves definitely slowed down the rowing.

When I set off, I needed a few strokes to feel comfortable in the rough circumstances, but then I got moving, albeit slowly, towards Rokle, where the river part starts.

That is where I did my workout. Today it was just a few short bouts at head race pace, 5x3min/3min rest. After 2 intervals, the NK SpeedCoach started flashing “Low Memory”, which caused a bit of a panic. I stopped, abandoned the workout, and went to the list of workouts, intending to delete one or two older workouts to make space. It turns out that on the SpeedCoach, you can only erase all workouts, which clearly I didn’t want to do, because I needed the data of the warming up and the first two intervals. Luckily, the workout list also told me that I was consuming 90% of available memory, so I estimated that I still had about an hour of rowing left before the memory would be full.

Work Details - Part I #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00672| 03:00 |02:13.9| 26.3| 163 | 173 | 8.5 - headwind, turns 02|00536| 03:00 |02:47.9| 19.3| 146 | 172 | 9.2 - rest 03|00709| 03:00 |02:06.9| 27.0| 169 | 176 | 8.8 - headwind 04|00055| 00:20 |03:09.0| 17.3| 173 | 176 | 9.2 - abandoned Workout Summary --|01972| 09:20 | 2:22.1| 24.0| 161 | 176 | 8.8

Work Details - Part II #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00736| 03:00 |02:02.2| 27.3| 168 | 176 | 9.0 - tailwind 02|00554| 03:00 |02:42.4| 18.3| 146 | 175 | 10.1 - rest 03|00730| 03:00 |02:03.2| 27.7| 169 | 176 | 8.8 - tailwind, turns 04|00541| 03:00 |02:46.3| 18.7| 147 | 175 | 9.7 - rest 05|00743| 03:00 |02:01.1| 27.7| 169 | 177 | 9.0 - tailwind, chop 06|00555| 03:00 |02:42.1| 18.0| 145 | 175 | 10.3 - rest Workout Summary --|03859| 18:00 | 2:19.9| 22.9| 160 | 177 | 9.3

Two of the intervals were steering through a couple of tight turns and thus good “mirror practice”:

Here are the plots for the two parts:

I may have overestimated the wind strength a bit, because I think I was working a bit less hard in the headwind intervals and a bit harder in the tailwind intervals than suggested by the power values.

On Quadrant Charts in Cycling and Rowing

Cyclists with a power meter are fond of plotting pedal velocity against average effective pedal force. Here’s a good example:

There are several reasons why this plot is interesting. The power is effectively given by the product of the pedal velocity and the average effective pedal force. Crank length comes into play as well, but this is usually fixed. Cycling speeds and gearing can result in circumferential pedal velocities which are so fast that it limits the average effective pedal force.

An equivalent plot in rowing would be to plot the average handle force as a function of handle speed. There are a few issues with that:

The handle speeds are rarely that high that it limits the amount of force that you can apply
The power is not given by the product, because (especially on the erg) a rower is free to chose the duration of the recovery
We do not adjust the drag factor (OTE) or the rigging settings (OTW) during a race or training. We do however vary the stroke length by shortening up on the slide.

Here is a typical plot (of a recent 15km erg workout):

Not a lot to see.

As Thomas Carter (“Stelph”) has remarked, there is another plot that could be used for what cyclists call “Quadrant Analysis”, and here it is:

Here I plot the amount of Work done during the drive vs stroke rate. I should have not called this “Drive Energy”. “Work per Stroke” is a much better name, and I shall remind myself to change this. As with the cyclists plot, the power is essentially the stroke rate times the work per stroke (divided by 60 if you want power in Watts). Work per stroke is a function of drive length and drive force, and thus the plot doesn’t tell whether I shortened up or reduced force on the 25spm strokes, compared to the 20spm strokes (I did both).

I can imagine two ways of using this plot. For an analysis of a single session, you could see how fatigue influences drive energy and stroke rate. Usually, we go down in drive energy and increase the stroke rate to compensate. For multiple sessions, it could be interesting to see how these plots evolve over time for similar types of workouts. To be continued.

What is interesting is that the “Work per Stroke”, which is in my mind just a physical parameter to measure, is dividing the erg community. Dividing power by the stroke rate, you get something that erg rowers call SPI (Stroke Performance Index) and there are “believers” and “non-believers”. I believe there is some use, as long as we remember that average rowing power is a function of stroke length, handle force, and time taken on the recovery.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 9 • Tags: OTW, power analysis, river, rowing, single, training

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Saturday – Long, Windy Steady State OTW

Wednesday – Friday: Business Trip

Steady State and some memories

Steady State 4×15 minutes

Hradiště Head Race and a Wooden Eight from 1934

Crack – a short session

A short OTW session and some thoughts about “SPI”

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