Jul 28 2016
A few more pictures from Czech Masters
Jul 27 2016
Munich here we come
Tuesday and Wednesday: Too busy to do a training. Trying to get everything tied out at work before we leave to Munich.
I managed to move a few meetings to the morning, creating a longer time gap to load the trailer. It turned out to be a good move. Lots of thunderstorms. We managed to get everything done without getting too wet but it took time.
We are leaving tomorrow morning. There will be time for a training in the afternoon, although I will have to dial in to some teleconferences as well.
Jul 25 2016
Speed work in the single
Sunday
No training. Well, a sort of strength session. We had some work to do on the rowing club. The work consisted of stapling a big mountain of interlocking concrete tiles on pallets. The reason why we needed to do this is a long story that goes beyond the topic of this blog. After three hours of work in 30 degrees we had 23 neat pallets of tiles. At the cost of a few members’ backs.
The dive into the lake was ever so refreshing. So was the cold beer.
Today, I was supposed to have a rest day, but I had to go to the rowing club anyway, because a guy from another club was bringing two boats. My trailer seems to be the only Czech trailer going to Munich. We loaded the boats on my trailer and then we chatted a bit about Munich, and about the Olympics, and the upcoming changes in rowing Olympic disciplines. It was interesting to listen to this guy who is the president of the Czech Rowing Federation.
By the way, if any of my readers wants to row a quad with three fast Czech guys, including the guy I just talked about, let me know. We’re in for a quad. The caveat is: You have to bring the boat. 
Then I went for another ultra-short workout. In these last two weeks I am cutting back on the volume. Today was the “small pyramid” workout, in the single. The weather was extremely humid and hot with a threat of thunderstorms, but almost no wind during my outing.
After 3km of warming up I did the small Pyramid on the straight 2km.
Workout Summary - media/20160725-163344-2016-07-25-1621.CSV
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07409|39:55.0|01:59.4|29.5|148.7|163.3|09.4
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|02927| 15:42 |02:41.1|18.4|125.0|139.0|10.1 warming up
02|00094| 00:20 |01:45.0|33.3|116.0|142.0|08.5 20" @ 36spm - from standing start
03|00183| 00:40 |01:48.5|33.3|166.0|173.0|08.3 40" @ 34spm
04|00271| 01:00 |01:50.0|32.2|172.0|177.0|08.5 60" @ 32spm
05|00174| 00:40 |01:53.5|33.5|165.0|172.0|07.9 40" @ 34spm - wake
06|00097| 00:20 |01:39.9|37.1|162.0|169.0|08.1 20" @ 30spm
07|03663| 21:13 |02:53.7|18.9|135.0|171.0|09.2 cooling down
During the second 40″ interval I had a choice between trying to sneak in front of one of the big tourist boats, or to adjust my course and go behind him, rowing through his wake. I couldn’t really judge well if I was going to make it in front of the boat with a comfortable safety margin, so I chose the safer option. Rowing through the wake slowed me down of course. Otherwise I am quite happy with the paces, especially since I was rowing them with a nice “light” stroke.
The summary data above are from CrewNerd. I am not sure how it calculates average SPM, but looking at the plot below I do not agree with the 33spm it reports for the first interval.
Jul 23 2016
Munich & Steady State in mixed double
I woke up early and spent some time going through the news on my phone. Of course I found out about the shooting in Munich.
Munich. On Thursday we will go to Munich for the Euromasters 2016.
Munich. A beloved city. Fantastic museums. A very nice old town. Great airport. Nice regattas.
After breakfast, Romana and I drove to the rowing club for a short outing in the double. Steady state and a few practice starts.
At 9:30 it was already warm (around 27 degrees C). The water was perfect. Flat, as if the lake was filled with oil instead of water.
The 3km between 2000m and 5000m on the graph above was like a dream. Every stroke was perfect. Perfect sync. Nice 18spm. Effortless rowing.
Average power is a bit lower than what I perceived. Of course, in the mixed double, power is an average for the entire crew. Also, I calculate power from OTW pace, so any technique deficiencies will reduce the power.
Jul 22 2016
40″/40″ in the double with Romana
Warm, but damp after rain during the night. Twenty degrees. Almost no wind.
The session was a 40″ on / 40″ off. Similar to the session of Wednesday, but 10 seconds longer work and 10 seconds longer rest. Trying to work on relax during the recovery at the higher stroke rates, which led to a slightly lower stroke rate for some of the intervals.
http://rowsandall.com/rowers/workout/531/interactiveplot
Workout Summary - media/20160722-072853-2016-07-22-0723.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07105|39:25.0|01:58.8|29.4|159.6|174.9|09.6
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|02896| 16:28 |02:46.7|18.0|129.0|167.0|10.0
02|00181| 00:40 |01:50.4|34.6|137.0|168.0|07.9 - standing start
03|00187| 00:40 |01:46.1|31.8|171.0|177.0|08.9
04|00187| 00:40 |01:45.7|33.3|172.0|178.0|08.5
05|00187| 00:40 |01:45.7|34.9|173.0|180.0|08.1
06|00181| 00:40 |01:49.2|33.4|172.0|177.0|08.2
07|00181| 00:40 |01:48.8|31.9|171.0|177.0|08.6
08|03105| 18:57 |02:59.8|16.9|152.0|175.0|09.9
I have been mystified by the “equivalent erg pace” on the plots on rowsandall.com. I was running the exact same algorithm as when I calculate it off-line, but the equivalent erg pace looked weird. Turns out I did one averaging step too much after the calculation of the result. So here is the proud result of today’s row, Power and Erg pace calculated by rowsandall.com, from the OTW pace and stroke rate, using the 2x rigging and weight parameters:
You can play with the original (interactive plot) here: http://rowsandall.com/rowers/workout/531/interactiveotwplot
So pushing around 1:39 – 1:40 Concept2 erg pace, which sounds about right. It is also interesting to note that the often heard phrase “erg pace is a four” is not true. It depends a lot on the crew weight, and it also depends on the actual pace. Looks like in sprint races our mix double is slightly slower than the erg.
Received some great photos of our friends/competitors in the Mixed Double, Karel and Vendula. They had the bronze, we had the silver :
Aug 1 2016
Thursday – Driving to Munich and test of new SpeedCoach GPS Model 2
The drive to Munich was without incidents. We left Brno around 9am and arrived at the regatta course at 3:15pm. The weather was nice and the site was bustling with activity. Romana went off to do her training in the quad and I went to the accreditation to get registered.
Then I walked to the other side of the canal to see Daniela and Dave from Rowline. These guys from Prague were the official Concept2 reps at the regatta, but they also sell NK electronics. I picked up my pre-ordered NK SpeedCoach GPS 2 (and received a 20 seconds introduction on how to operate it) and then proceeded to prepare my single for a row.
The row was a short one. The plan was 3x250m at race pace, with 500m rest. I did a 2k warming up which unfortunately wasn’t captured on the SpeedCoach, because I couldn’t find Just Row in the list of workouts. It turns out you just press the on/off button to get the device ready to record your Just Row and that’s all. This rugged piece of electronics with a simple monochrome display (which is excellent in sunny weather, by the way) works by pressing buttons, in contrast to CrewNerd where everything is done on your phone’s touch screen. I have to get used to that.
At the 2km mark I turned and went into the workouts menu to program my 3x250m workout. That turned out to be pretty intuitive. I like that you can program rest in meters or seconds, whatever you want. I set a 10 seconds countdown, started the workout and waited to see what happened. To be honest I did expect an audio signal at the workout start and end, which didn’t happen. I did the first 250m from a standing start, and looking down at a small screen doesn’t go with sitting in the ideal start position. I am not sure if the clock starts ticking after the end of the countdown or only when it registers your first stroke. Need to look into that. For now it seems that the countdown is more suited to pieces with running starts.
Anyway, I successfully recorded this session. I also was able to look at the session details on the device itself. I liked that.
The graphs were made on rowsandall.com, after I exported the data from the SpeedCoach to a FIT file, which I could upload to Strava, which enabled me to import the data into rowsandall.com. There is something fishy about the data though, so I will need to look into that.
The export of data works through LiNK, an application that runs on your computer. That is nice, but one doesn’t always have a computer at hand, and I think it would be good to be able to sync data to a tablet computer or smartphone directly from the device. Especially for self-tracking athletes, it is quite nice to be able to share workout data immediately through Strava or similar websites.
Here is the session information from the CSV file export:
The CSV file export also has a stroke by stroke table with time, stroke rate, pace, and heart rate information. Rowsandall.com cannot yet process this CSV file but I will work on that. Should be straightforward. It’s a pity that GPS coordinate info is missing from that file, though. I will need to look into a way to upload the FIT file to rowsandall.com directly.
So all in all I am happy with the device but I see a few points to improve (in a next firmware upgrade?):
I guess there is work to do to free the NK SpeedCoach data a bit more.
After the row we went off to our hotel, had a dinner and then went bed. Friday – racing day.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 Comments • Tags: euromasters, OTW, race preparation, rowing, single