Rowsandall

Aug 31 2016

Tuesday – Bike & Lactate step test

Morning

Commute to work on the bicycle.

https://www.strava.com/activities/693940250/analysis

Average heart rate 132 bpm so definitely a regeneration workout. Although, at one point, at the beginning of what Strava calls the “Olomoucká I” segment, a 500m long climb of 27 meters elevation difference (5% average grade, 10% max grade), another cyclist was just behind me, and I had to push a bit harder to avoid him taking over. That pushed my heart rate up to 176 bpm.

Evening

The post summer vacation / pre winter season lactate step test on the Concept2 erg. I did 6 intervals of 10 minutes at increasing power, taking a finger prick lactate measure after every step.

Workout Summary - media/20160830-194351-sled_2016-08-30T20-14-40ZGMT+2.strokes.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|14906|70:04.0|02:21.0|21.6|153.4|176.0|09.9

Workout Details
#-|SDist|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|Lactate|Power
00|02494|21.1|138.0|153.0|09.9| 1.7 | 170
01|02540|21.4|148.9|162.0|09.9| 1.6 | 180
02|02520|21.6|156.5|165.0|09.7| 1.7 | 190
03|02552|21.9|160.9|172.0|09.7| 2.0 | 200
04|02554|22.5|166.7|176.0|11.2| 4.6 | 210
05|02246|21.0|149.1|159.0|08.9| 3.1 | 160

I started at 170 W and increased with 10W after each interval. After reaching 4.6 mmol/L at 210W and feeling like you feel at 4.6 mmol/L, I didn’t continue to 220W but took the last interval as a cooling down.

The goal is to determine the threshold, under which lactate is flat. For me, this seems to be just under 200W, but I will confirm this next week by rowing 6x10min at a constant power of 195W, taking a lactate measurement every 10 minutes.

Here is the graph:

The “Model” line is a line that I “fitted” through last year’s data. For comparison, here is the graph that I compiled in November 2015.

So in comparison with November 2015, my steady state lactate level is higher, the step is more pronounced and seems to be shifted to the left. I guess that corresponds to being in a worse shape, fitness wise. Vacation effect, I think.

We’ll see if this is confirmed next week, but it looks like my steady state should not go above 195W.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: concept2, lactate, OTE, rowing, test, testing, training

Aug 29 2016

Sunday: Training & Racing

Sunday breakfast in the beautiful garden of our friends’ house in Břeclav. Their garden is really a miracle. I am afraid we will never even approach this level of perfection. I am too sloppy and not really interested in gardening, and Romana doesn’t have enough time. Still, my doubles partner Radek, who is a garden architect, has redesigned our garden and we will implement the new design. But having breakfast looking at this garden in Břeclav, with nice people, was a treat.

My first race was in the afternoon, and I decided to do a light steady state session in the morning. There is a canal branching off the river, so I figured I could do the training there without hindering the ongoing races.

Of course I managed to mess up this plan a bit. Instead of doing a steady state as a “just row”, I decided to try out the 4x(4/3/2/1m)/3m rest that I had programmed into the SpeedCoach. That was OK but on the first interval I found out that the canal is a dead end, shorter than 10 minutes. So I had a turn in the first interval, and the second interval brought me back on the river for three minutes.

Luckily they were doing 500m races at that point in time, so I had the river for myself.

The third and fourth interval were on a quite narrow and windy part of the river, and paces were all over the place, mainly because I had to steer a lot. Also, wind and current varied a lot. I tried to do some estimates of the current on rowsandall.com, but I am not sure if I got it right. Still I can say that I rowed between 150W and 220W, and that is also how it felt, 3 on a 10 point Borg scale of Rate of Perceived Exertion. Or is it Perceived Rate of Exertion? Or Perceived Exertion?

The “Training with a power meter” book says that you should use the Borg scale at the beginning of the earlier intervals, so I guess that means that you have to estimate how hard it feels, not how tired you are.

I managed to sneak back to the rowing club just before the 1500m races would start. Got a friendly reprimand from one of the umpires for rowing on a course that was closed for training. He was right of course, but I just wanted to do some steady state.
Work Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00817| 04:00 | 2:26.8| 18.5| 140 | 150 | 11.0 02|00649| 03:00 | 2:18.6| 20.7| 153 | 159 | 10.5 03|00368| 02:00 | 2:43.0| 20.5| 153 | 161 | 9.0 04|00231| 01:00 | 2:9.8| 23.0| 160 | 165 | 10.0 05|00828| 04:00 | 2:24.9| 18.8| 144 | 152 | 11.0 06|00646| 03:00 | 2:19.3| 20.7| 158 | 162 | 10.4 07|00423| 02:00 | 2:21.8| 22.0| 162 | 165 | 9.6 08|00218| 01:00 | 2:17.6| 23.0| 166 | 168 | 9.5 09|00779| 04:00 | 2:34.0| 19.0| 145 | 153 | 10.2 10|00596| 03:00 | 2:31.0| 20.7| 153 | 157 | 9.6 11|00400| 02:00 | 2:30.0| 22.5| 159 | 162 | 8.9 12|00206| 01:00 | 2:25.6| 23.0| 162 | 165 | 9.0 13|00815| 04:00 | 2:27.2| 19.0| 139 | 148 | 10.7 14|00635| 03:00 | 2:21.7| 20.0| 152 | 156 | 10.6 15|00421| 02:00 | 2:22.5| 22.0| 157 | 161 | 9.6 16|00222| 01:00 | 2:15.1| 23.0| 164 | 168 | 9.7 Workout Summary --|08254| 40:00 | 2:25.3| 20.3| 151 | 168 | 10.2

In the afternoon I rowed two races in the eight. I rowed the mixed Masters eight, where we had the pleasure of rowing in Břeclav’s new Empacher and won. At the end of the afternoon I was drafted for a 300m sprint in a Men’s eight. We were up against the locals (with seats 7 and 8 taken by the Czech Pair who came 7th in Rio) in their new boat, and our boat was a mix of Juniors and Masters from various clubs, in the heavy 1987 Hudecek. Of course we came second (they beat us by a length over 300m), but we got a few nice bottles of wine for giving the Břeclav men competition.

In other races, daughter Lenka rowed two finals. They came third in the girls quad Final in a race that was re-started when they were leading after 500m and the two other boats clashed (umpire being the trainer of one of the quads in the clash). They also came third in the doubles Final.

My son Dominik enlarged his medal collection by steering a winning boys quad and winning a boys double final.

That was the end of a nice small regatta. While I was out sprinting in the eight, the kids had loaded the trailer, and apart from a small Sunday afternoon traffic jam into Brno the trip home was uneventful.

Dinner on our terrace, still 30 degrees at 7pm.

Břeclav rowing club. Finish "tower" and final straight part of the course — Břeclav rowing club. Finish “tower” and final straight part of the course

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 3 • Tags: eight, OTW, race, river, rowing, single, steady state, training

Aug 29 2016

Saturday – racing in single and eight

Friday

Rowing related activity: Driving the “small” trailer to Břeclav.

Břeclav is a small town in the middle of the Moravian/Austrian wine region. It has a long rowing history and the club is very active and successful. Lukas Helesic of the Czech Pair who came 7th in Rio, winning the B final, rows for this club. I drove the trailer there with Romana, then we headed for the nearest “Vinoteka”, where we found one of the local rowing coaches in the middle of a wine tasting. So we were welcomed and “were forced” to taste a few different bottles. The Czech Republic has a zero tolerance alcohol and driving law, so as the driver, I had to do the wine tasting proper, so just tasting and not drinking (ok, two sips), but we bought a few bottles to take home.

Saturday

My first race was the Men’s Masters. There were a few entries. The race course has only three lanes, so the race was divided in an “A”, “B/C”, and “D/F” race, with two boats in the A race, three boats in the B/C race and three boats in the D/F race.

The race is on a river. The 1k course is actually 850m long, and there are big differences between the lanes. Lanes 1 and 2 are close to the middle of the river, so they profit from more current, but lane three is on the inside of the turn. Lane three also has a trap, where in the final straight part the river widens and then gets narrower again, so if you follow the bank on your right hand side you end up in the reed.

The organizers try to compensate for the turn by aligning the boats diagonally at the start, but I am not sure if this is really done well. I would have preferred to race in lane 2, but the draw put me in lane 3, against two younger rowers.

Still, I was expected to win this easily. Tonda in lane 1 had rowed 4:10 against my 3:46 a week ago and Michal, who is from the same club as I, is roughly in the same 4:10 area as well.

My son Dominik going for a training on Saturday morning

The weather was hot. The race was at 12:24 and I estimate it was about 35 degrees. At least there was a quite strong headwind, especially on the last straight bit of the course.

We spent some time aligning the boats at the start and I tried to get my bow in the right direction. Then it was time to concentrate for the start. Being in lane three, I was aligned behind the two other boats, and my plan was to try and get them before we would go into the turn, and then the rest of the race would be easy, because I would have the advantage of the inner turn.

I also didn’t want to hug the bank too much because of the stream, so I would push as much towards lane 2 as the turning buoys would allow.

That was the theory.

I executed a very good start and was doing nice high stroke rate.

Bang. I banged my scull into Michal’s, and lost it. This is where perception of time made everything go slow motion:

Grab handle mid air.

Tonda rowing away from us.

Left blade stuck in the water.

My single started to turn towards Michal’s.

My single starting to capsize.

The force on the blade being to strong for me to hold the handle.

Me managing to not let lose of the handle, but the scull now being almost parallel to the boat.

Me capsizing more.

Me somehow recovering from that.

Now I was expecting the umpire to stop the race and re-start. The clash was probably my fault but Michal had a right to a re-start.

No red flag. Nothing.

Having come to a full stop, I did a race start as soon as our boats were disentangled, and started to sprint to catch up with Tonda.

Somehow I managed to do that at half way through the turn. I continued to row hard to get a lead, which I had by the “500m” point. Now rowing into a strong headwind and the water becoming more choppy, I lowered the stroke rate and just controlled for the rest of the race. I clashed my blade on the final turning buoy and started the final straight part. I had to look around a few times to avoid going into the “pocket” and ending up in the bank.

Looking at the data, I think I was running at around 500W in the sprint after the clash, and things were hurting too much to continue rowing any decent race pace. Luckily for me, Tonda didn’t manage to speed up and I passed the finish line.

I was expecting a red flag or a disqualification, but to my astonishment the umpire waved the white flag indicating that according to him the race had been regular.

So I landed the boat, apologized to Michal, and went on to pick up my medal.

In the afternoon there was a boat christening of the Břeclav rowing club’s new Empacher eight, followed by the Masters Men’s 8+ race. Břeclav’s Masters team, with an average age of 70 years, rowed the new Empacher, and I rowed in “the other boat”, consisting of eight random Masters picked from 5 other clubs, rowing a 1987 Hudecek (a Czech brand).

The average age of our eight was around 40, so it was clear we would win. At the start line, it was secretly agreed with the other crew that we would row next to each other through the turn and then just speed up a bit during the final straight part in front of the crowd. This was more an “exhibition” than a race, and for the local crowd (and the members of parliament and local politicians who had been invited) it would be nice to see two eights “racing” next to each other.

The plan was executed as agreed. We rowed next to each other, and at the start of the straight part the cox of the local eight shouted “go” and we took up the stroke rate from 25spm to 27spm. I think we still pushed a bit too hard because we won by a length.

In other races, Dominik picked up two medals. One for a singles race where his opponent didn’t show up, so he just rowed the course and got a medal. The second one for a quad race where they won by half a length (over 500m).

In the evening, our local friends took us to an open air cinema in a nearby (wine) village, so we had a great evening tasting wine and watching a movie.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: OTW, race, rowing, single, wine

Aug 25 2016

OTW session reduced to 30 minutes and some more Power Based Training considerations

I couldn’t row in the morning, and I couldn’t leave work early.

So I arrived at the rowing club around 5:30pm. It was a very hot day and the lake looked gorgeous. Colorful sails from a sailing race that was ongoing, and many many paddle boards and pedal boats and swimmers and … The paddle boarders are multiplying rapidly. I admit that I quite appreciate seeing paddleboardettes in bikinis. It is a nice sight, and I am always friendly to them.

I was also friendly to the woman who swam in front of my single when I turned, and didn’t move. She was doing a back stroke but just didn’t move anywhere. To be honest, she looked like she had smoked something, or perhaps took her medicine at the wrong time or in the wrong dose. Completely off the world. Smiling to herself, and when I asked her if she was intending to go or not, she giggled, answered:

“My psychiater has a wet rucksack!” Then she burst out in laughter and almost disappeared under the water surface.

I looked at the paddleboardettes and made the cuckoo sign. They smiled.

But why only a thirty minute row? One reason is that the lake was full with boats and I couldn’t do a decent workout. The other reason was that I had lost precious time because

The wrong boats were loaded on my trailer so I had to move one single to the big trailer to make room for my single.
The lock of hanger nr 4 (“IIII”) was stuck, so I had to go to the back of the hangar through some bushes, crawl through a slightly open window, avoid falling on the scull rack and then open the hangar from inside. I put some vaseline on the lock, which hopefully helps.
Daughter Lenka had used the single earlier that day and forgotten to move the footboard back. As the bottom nut is not a wing nut but a normal one, I had to go to my car to get the tool to move the footstretcher
I needed some time after the session to load my single on the trailer

Well, it’s freewheeling week anyway, so I just did a 6km row.

Earlier today I fixed the “2:11 pace” bug on rowsandall.com. Using the Rowing Physics module on rowsandall.com, it’s premium users can calculate equivalent erg pace from the workout data. This worked fine for faster pieces, but all the slower segments seemed to get stuck to a 2:11 equivalent erg pace. I was looking for errors in the Rowing Physics module but couldn’t find any. At the end of the day, it turned out to be an embarrassing mistake in the Rowing Data module, which called the Rowing Physics module with a stroke rate of 30spm, instead of changing that to the real stroke rate.

I fixed the bug and now I can make a power estimate of my row on rowsandall.com before I export it to Strava or SportTracks.mobi. Here is the row:

Here is the power plot:

The corrected pace is the pace in absence of wind. There was a slight east wind today that was slowing me down for most of the row.

Here is the row on Strava, exported after doing the Power magic on rowsandall.com:

https://www.strava.com/activities/688834586/analysis

And here is one of the plots on SportTracks.mobi:

ST2 — I don’t think this plot is exactly right but I need to dig deeper into Power Based Training to understand what the insight is from this plot

Oh, and in the Desktop version of SportTracks, I could do this plot.

Power Distribution. Not sure about the insight

I personally think it is a pretty cool thing to have Power estimates from OTW data. I will try to do some further descriptions of what I am doing and what rowsandall.com can do in subsequent posts.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: lake, rowing, rowsandall.com, single, steady state, training

Illustration from The Poohsticks Handbook: A Poohstickopedia by Mark Evans (Egmont Publishing). Illustrations by Mark Burgess after E H Shephard. Copyright 2015 Disney Enterprises Inc. Based on the Winnie-the-Pooh works by A.A. Milne and E.H. Shephard.

Aug 25 2016

About Data Management and Training Insights for Masters Rowers

I have been rowing races (and training for them) for a large part of my life. I started rowing in 1984, and when I was 15 I moved on to race rowing. That also meant my first encounter with a structured training plan. The plan was of course entirely done by my coach, who got professional assistance through the rowing association (KNRB and ARB in my case, this being in The Netherlands). I just executed the trainings.

This continued like that until I was 23. That was the first time I stopped rowing. I stopped entirely.

However, I was bitten by the sports bug, and I continued exercising on my own. Basically without structure. I went running, cycling, swimming, and every session was a fartlek session. Also, the number of times per week varied between zero and “a few times”. I participated in half marathon runs.

When I was 24, I became a member of a rowing club again. I regularly took a single, double or quad for an outing. No structured training plan. From there, though, the situation has gradually changed. First, there was participation in a few races. Then there was more regular training. Then there was following a Plan (Pete plan, to start). Then my training diary started to evolve, from written notes to a spreadsheet, to where I am today. So here is what I use:

Planning Training

Pen and paper and a spreadsheet. Today I do my own training plan, based on my (limited) understanding from reading training handbooks, scientific literature and books on sports physiology. I do not use any online available ready plans or hire coaching support. I have tried Rojabo in the past but wasn’t convinced it was helping me in the long run. Also, I am genuinely interested in the science behind optimizing training.

The spreadsheet has become pretty elaborate, including tabs with favorite workouts and a classification. I use sessions from all the training plans I have used in the past.

The weekly detailed training planning takes about 30 minutes every Sunday evening. Sometimes I remember to write the sessions on my Google Calendar, from where they automatically show up on my smartphone. I tried to use the planning plugin in SportTracks, but was too cumbersome, and the sync with Google Calendar didn’t work.

Data Capturing

I strive to capture Heart Rate, pace and cadence (stroke rate) and weather information for each session, whether it is running, cycling, indoor or outdoor rowing. I use a heart rate belt and various devices:

NK SpeedCoach GPS 2 for OTW rowing. I recently switched from CrewNerd and have used RiM as well. Garmin Forerunner for redundancy.
Painsled, ErgData or RowPro for rowing OTE.
Strava app on the phone for cycling
Garmin Forerunner for running and hotel gym sessions
Wahoo Fitness app for strength sessions at home

Getting all the data in one place

I have a paid subscription to Sporttracks.mobi and have paid for the SportTracks desktop app. I use the free versions of Strava (mainly for the social aspects and for the “segments”), Garmin Connect (sync with my Garmin devices) and TrainingPeaks (syncs with CrewNerd). I have set up Tapiriik to sync between Strava, Garmin Connect, TrainingPeaks, and SportTracks.mobi. SportTracks.mobi syncs with the desktop version automatically.

Through my own site rowsandall.com, I am able to sync my rowing (OTE and OTW) between the Concept2 logbook, Strava, and SportTracks. I can upload SpeedCoach files to that site and send a copy of the data to Strava, SportTracks and the C2 logbook. Same process for Painsled files. With ErgData, I get the data in the C2 logbook. I use the site to pull the data from there and send copies to Strava and SportTracks.

My ideal would be a workflow that does not involve storing FIT, CSV or TCX files on my desktop in any way. Instead, data capturing apps should do online syncing to the mentioned websites directly from the app. Unfortunately, the NK SpeedCoach and Painsled are not there yet, but I think they are working on that.

Data and Training analysis

Being a data geek and very interested in training science, I love plotting my training sessions in different ways, and making graphs of progress (or lack of progress) of various metrics over time. SportTracks Training Load plugin calculates my Training Stress Balance (numbers representing my “fitness” and “freshness”) as well as many other metrics, some more valuable than others. I also like to use excel (and increasingly Python programs) to plot seasonal bests, lactate scores, and I have added most of the standard plots to my rowsandall.com site.

Recently, I have become more interested in “Power based training” and I have considered a few more ways to get insights:

Golden Cheetah. Fantastic program, but geared very much towards triathletes. If you do any sport that is not cycling, running or swimming, you’re out of luck. Still interested in learning how others have tweaked Golden Cheetah for rowing.
Premium version of TrainingPeaks
1. This would mean dumping SportTracks and go to TrainingPeaks. Their metrics look interesting but their price tag is very steep ($20 / month)
2. For now, I have only used TrainingPeaks as an intermediate station for my data. When I started to seriously look into the possibilities of TrainingPeaks, I quickly discovered that it was syncing with Garmin Connect. Because I was using Tapiriik as well for syncing, I had duplicates of most of my sessions. Seriously, I expect a training data website to detect duplicates. I mean, sessions with the same start time, duration, and session name should be flagged and removed. I tried to remove some of the data but it takes three clicks per duplicate session, and my training database has more than 1500 entries.
3. I also figured out that I should first read a bit more about power based training and try to assess what it would bring to me. I suspect it is just an interest for now, and I have no idea if it would have added value on top of what I am doing in terms of planning, executing, and reviewing using the tools I have at my disposal today. In other words, the $20 / month investment probably wouldn’t make me any faster.

So in the end I decided to order a book on Power Based Training and read that first. If I get enthusiastic, I will implement the useful training metrics in Python, and may make them available to a wider public through rowsandall.com. What I am really interested in is a rowing specific interpretation of such a training paradigm, which is extremely interesting given that power meters for rowing are around the corner (with the NK Empower oarlock and other products coming on the market soon).

Hopefully this summary of where I am in terms of training planning, execution and getting insights is helpful for others as well. The triathlon community seems to be miles ahead of the rowing community in this sense, but I believe there a lot of self-coached or otherwise interested rowers who would like to get training insights and improve the way they train.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 7 • Tags: metrics, planning, power based training, rowing, training

20160824-192305-sled_2016-08-24T20-48-53ZGMT+2.strokes20160824-193915

Aug 24 2016

Dusting off the erg – CTC

The plan for today was to do a 6×10 minute steady state step test at 170/180/190/200/210/220W and measure lactate after every 10 minutes. I am eager to pick up lactate testing and erging again after a long summer with zero erg time.

Got my lactate measuring device ready and some test strips. Note to self:

Order new strips.

The current ones are nearing their expiry date. Set erg monitor to 10 min / 1 min rest and took off at 170W.

Wipe. Wash. Wipe. Prick. Ouch. Wipe. Prepare strip. Drop.

Low battery. Ouch.

Note to self:

Order lactate test strips
Buy a new battery for the lactate meter

Well – it didn’t make sense to continue, and I changed to plan B. Do the CTC of this month. I had to skip the July because the 3x2813m session didn’t fit into my plan and I wanted to maximize boat time, so I was keen on getting a score in for this month’s CTC, which is a funny one:

Row four sprints during August.
(They don’t need to be done on the same day.)
One 400m, one 300m, one 200m, and one 100m.
If you row more than one of the pieces as intervals each must be from a standing start.

Find the pace (time for 500m) for each of the four rows from your performance monitor.
Simply add the four paces together to give you an entry for this CTC.

I rowed them in the following order: 400m, 200m, 100m, 300m, with roughly five minutes of active rest in between and of course from a standing start.

During the active rest after the 400m, I noticed that my Garmin Ant heart rate strap behaved funny. It seemed stuck to a value of 130bpm, while I was gasping for air and my heart rate was definitely still higher than that value after an exhausting 400m row.

So I sprinted to my OTW sports bag and grabbed the Tickr heart rate belt.

Note to self:

Order new lactate strips
Buy battery for lactate meter
Buy battery for Garmin HR belt

Here are the plots for the CTC pieces:

20160824-192436-sled_2016-08-24T20-24-25ZGMT+2.strokes20160824-193940 — 400m – HR belt misbehaving

20160824-192606-sled_2016-08-24T20-35-14ZGMT+2.strokes20160824-193934 — 200m

20160824-192736-sled_2016-08-24T20-42-09ZGMT+2.strokes20160824-193926 — 100m

Tomorrow: Steady State. Probably OTW followed by trailer loading.

Note to self:

Don’t forget to put the Tickr HR belt back in the rowing bag!!

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, ctc, erg, OTE, rowing, training

Aug 23 2016

The Dog Days of Summer

… winter is around the corner. At least in my mind.

It is still summer, and the weather is beautiful, but I am preparing a training plan for the 2016/17 season, which starts with a preparation for a Head Race in the first weekend of October, and after that it will be back to base building, and probably a lot of erging. I am not changing my plan radically from last year, just refined my planning spreadsheet a bit, and planned out the coming 7 weeks until that head race. This week is a freewheeling week, just doing the sessions that I like (and finally get the August CTC in), but after that I will be doing some lactate testing and then it will be steady state and threshold workouts in a 2×3 week mesocycle.

One or two erg races, one in January and maybe one in December. And then an important head race in the beginning of April.

So this week is free form. I have registered for just the Masters 1x in the local races in Břeclav coming weekend, but I will do the sessions that I like and let the race happen without any special preparation.

Today, I left work slightly early to head to the lake. The session I chose was an “intensive Steady State” from the book about Masters Rowing. It was:

4x(4’/3’/2’/1′)/3’Rest @ 20/22/24/26spm

Actually, “das Buch” calls this an extensive endurance session, but I wasn’t entirely sure if that was the right categorization. The plan was to do the session without a paying too much attention to the paces. Just hit the SPM and focus on technique. As I will explain below, I wasn’t entirely successful.

The other thing I wanted to do was play with my new SpeedCoach by running the workout in parallel in CrewNerd and in the SpeedCoach. In the SpeedCoach I programmed it as a 4×10’/3′ rest. In the SpeedCoach GPS 2, you can actually plan out the detailed workout as I did in CrewNerd, but on the water it turned out that I am too unfamiliar with the interface to manage that. Lesson learned. Program workouts on the shore, next time.

I set both devices to “auto/start” at factory settings, and started the workout with a 30 second count down. On both devices, the sessions started simultaneously, or at least the time difference was less than 0.2 seconds (estimated).

Using the power or rowsandall.com, I could compare the workout results from both tools. There was one caveat. It turned out I could pair my heart rate belt only to one device, and as soon as I started CrewNerd, the SpeedCoach automatically lost heart rate info.

Here is the comparison of the “raw” data:

download (19) — CrewNerd (blue line) raw data vs SpeedCoach GPS (red data) comparison for Pace vs Time. The SpeedCoach doesn’t record data during the rest periods (but I heard that they will add that in a next firmware upgrade)

The raw recorded data look a lot more noisy than what the CrewNerd display actually showed in the boat. On the CrewNerd display, the pace values were jumping around by +/- 5 seconds around the more stable value shown on the SpeedCoach. Rowed distance and time were equal on both devices (within 5m for distance). Using the power of rowsandall.com, I smoothed out the CrewNerd data a bit.

Same plot as above. CrewNerd data smoothed

I think this shows that the smoothing function on rowsandall.com is very useful, especially if you smooth the data before exporting to sports sites such as SportTracks.mobi or Strava.com, and to the Concept2 logbook.

Here is the comparison plot for SPM:

CrewNerd vs SpeedCoach - SPM vs time — CrewNerd vs SpeedCoach – SPM vs time (just a snapshot, not the full session)

On the water, I had the impression that the CrewNerd SPM was jumping around a bit more, and the SpeedCoach GPS seemed to react a bit faster to the stroke rate changes. The SpeedCoach display has a SPM resolution of 0.5 spm, so you can actually get values of 19.5 spm or 23.5 spm. Unfortunately, the export to FIT format rounds this to integer values, because of the way Cadence is defined in the FIT format, I guess.

Here is the colorful plot of the main workout:

Pie chart:

I wouldn’t call this a “extensive endurance” session. The way I did it today, it’s more a threshold session. Here is the workout summary:

Workout Summary - media/20160823-180537-2016-08-23-1723.CSV --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|08741|40:00.0|02:14.0|23.0|176.1|180.4|09.9 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00867| 04:00 |02:18.2|19.5|154.0|160.0|11.1 02|00688| 03:00 |02:10.5|21.7|168.0|174.0|10.6 03|00477| 02:00 |02:05.3|24.1|178.0|181.0|09.9 04|00238| 01:00 |02:04.7|26.2|181.0|183.0|09.2 05|00839| 04:00 |02:22.5|21.3|176.0|190.0|09.9 06|00615| 03:00 |02:25.8|22.4|183.0|190.0|09.2 07|00442| 02:00 |02:14.9|23.2|181.0|184.0|09.6 08|00234| 01:00 |02:06.3|25.4|185.0|187.0|09.4 09|00873| 04:00 |02:17.4|20.8|167.0|175.0|10.5 10|00672| 03:00 |02:13.1|21.8|176.0|178.0|10.3 11|00467| 02:00 |02:08.6|24.0|180.0|182.0|09.7 12|00237| 01:00 |02:06.4|25.0|182.0|184.0|09.5 13|00780| 04:00 |02:33.7|20.0|166.0|171.0|09.8 14|00638| 03:00 |02:21.0|22.7|176.0|180.0|09.4 15|00442| 02:00 |02:15.4|23.6|181.0|182.0|09.4 16|00232| 01:00 |02:08.0|26.2|183.0|185.0|08.9

And the same data from the SpeedCoach:

Work Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|02267| 600.0 | 2:12.3|21.7| 000 | 000 | 10.4 - tailwind 02|02127| 600.0 | 2:21.0|22.4| 000 | 000 | 9.5 - headwind 03|02244| 600.0 | 2:13.6|22.2| 000 | 000 | 10.1 - tailwind 04|02092| 600.0 | 2:23.4|22.1| 000 | 000 | 9.5 - headwind Workout Summary --|08730| 40:0.0| 2:17.4|22.1| 000 | 000 | 9.9

Looking at the totals, 10 meters difference in recorded distance. I have to look into why the average pace is so different. The correct average pace is 2:17.4 (SpeedCoach) and 2:17.3 (CrewNerd). I guess a bug fix is needed for my processing of the CrewNerd summary file.

Looking at the graph, you notice there is a lot of red in the second (head wind) interval. The reason is the following. During the first interval, I rowed behind a Lodni Sporty (that is the “evil” 🙂 club on our lake) quad. When I turned, they turned as well, and they passed me during the rest period. About a minute into my second interval, a coach launch speeded from the Lodni Sporty club towards the quad, creating an enormous wake in which I rowed my 20spm piece. By the time I had moved a bit to the right to be directly behind the launch and out of the wake, the quad (and the launch) suddenly slowed down.

I passed them and there was the following conversation between the Lodni Sporty coach on the launch and me:

Me: “What’s your name?”

Coach: “Who are you? I don’t have eyes in my back.”

Me: “Try to have a bit more consideration for other people trying to row a workout.”

Coach: “I told you I don’t have eyes in my back.”

Me: “You are supposed to look around. Like rowers do.”

Coach: Told me something I didn’t understand.

The English translation loses a bit of the sharpness. I used the informal (in French “tu”, in German “du”) form, even though this guy was evidently more than 20 years older than I. In the Czech culture, this is a very impolite thing to do without getting permission from the older person to use the informal forms. My questions were not so offensive, but using “tu/du” instead of “vous/Sie” was.

Anyway, apparently the guy was offended, because he threw me a nice big wake at the start of the third interval. For the fourth interval I took a course passing our club house, far away from his launch.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: crewnerd, lake, NK speedcoach, OTW, rowing, single, threshold, training

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