Feb 19 2016
Testing continued: end of winter 6k
Here’s my training plan. At the top you can see the dates. Then a the macro and meso cycle (numbered in roman numbers), then a crude bar chart indicating training volume in hours per week. The area with the different numbers refers to the number of sessions of different training types. Finally there is a row with races, and at the bottom the tests and PB attempts.
- 1 minute
- 6k
- 2k
Then, early December I did the 2 speed Lactate test. This week I am repeating the 6k and 1 minute test. Next week, the 2k and the 2 speed test. This 6k test is an indicator of how I come out of winter training, endurance wise. Also, the next to mesocycles will aim at improving my 6k, culminating in the Hořín head race over 6k on April 9.
Originally I wanted to do this 6k on Thursday. However, a full out 6k is a difficult test. In my opinion, there is a huge mental component to it. The 2k starts to hurt and then you have to survice a few minutes of pain. The 6k wears you out. In the beginning you don’t notice it. Then you slowly start to lose form and posture. And suddenly you find yourself thinking: “This is going to be impossible.” You check the monitor and you see:
- 9 minutes gone (so roughly 13 minutes to go still)
- 2400 m rowed (not even half way!)
That’s when you need to be on top of your game mentally. You have to continue pulling the paces you were supposed to pull, until you can start sprinting. That’s when the hard part is over.
The problem was, I wasn’t sure I was up to it mentally. On Thursday evening I wasn’t. The row was too close to dinner. I was tired after a long working day. It was too close to the end of a business trip, and I had DOMS from Tuesday’s strength training. So I just rowed through the 6k at slow pace, with a few bursts at PB pace here and there. Session total: 10k
Today, it had to be different. Unfortunately, I had a difficult night. Went to bed at 11pm. Something woke me up at midnight. Then something woke me up at 3am. I don’t know about other people in my age, but to me waking up at 3am is the worst scenario. I have real difficulty falling asleep again, usually falling asleep at 5am. Then, the alarm clock at 6 is very cruel, leaving you feeling lousy for the rest of the day.
On top of that it’s the period of the year when we have to do performance discussions. Luckily, I have been able to build a well performing team, so for me this shouldn’t be so stressful this year. Still, it is draining.
Luckily, I was able to stop early and row this row at 3:30pm, an ideal time between meals. Did a 2k with speed bursts. Started my favourite rowing SoundCloud playlist, and set up a few pace boats in RowPro. My row from November, a 2014 row which was a PB back then, and a 1:51.2 quick pace boat, which turned out to be quite prophetic.
Here’s the colorful graph:
And here are the raw data:
Workout Summary - Feb 19, 2016
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06000|22:13.1|01:51.1|255.3|27.1|175.1|184.0|10.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|Comments
01|00500|01:51.4|01:51.4|253.0|26.4|148.8|164.0|10.2|
02|00500|01:52.1|01:52.1|248.5|26.2|167.3|169.0|10.2|
03|00500|01:51.8|01:51.8|250.3|26.3|170.7|173.0|10.2|
04|00500|01:51.9|01:51.9|249.9|26.3|173.4|174.0|10.2|
05|00500|01:51.4|01:51.4|252.8|26.4|175.8|177.0|10.2|
06|00500|01:51.2|01:51.2|254.9|26.5|177.2|179.0|10.2|
07|00500|01:51.1|01:51.1|255.0|26.5|179.1|180.0|10.2|
08|00500|01:50.7|01:50.7|258.0|27.1|180.1|181.0|10.0|
09|00500|01:50.3|01:50.3|260.6|27.2|181.0|182.0|10.0|
10|00500|01:50.3|01:50.3|260.6|28.3|182.0|183.0|09.6|
11|00500|01:50.5|01:50.5|259.1|28.2|182.5|184.0|09.6|
12|00500|01:50.2|01:50.2|261.3|29.4|182.1|184.0|09.3|
In November, I rowed a 22:28.3, and my heart rate was in the red from 10 minutes into the row (average 177 bpm). Today, I rowed a (personal best) 22:13, and my average heart rate was 2 beats lower.
Here’s the comparison in power vs time:
The fall row was also after a long working day, so I am not sure if the graphs show an improvement in endurance or an improvement in mental fitness. I tend to believe it’s the former.
My PB calculator tells me I should be able to row around (or slightly under) 22:10. I believe that. In the coming 6 weeks I shall improve my 6k performance, OTW and OTE. I may sneek in a 6k hard distance training session just to see if I can do it.
Tomorrow will be a work day at the rowing club. We need all our “strong men”, and then a few weak lightweights like myself to build our new dock. Very exciting. That doesn’t mean I will go OTW from tomorrow on. There will still be some work to do on the dock after tomorrow.
For now, I will celebrate a PB improvement from 22:19.4 to 22:13.1. More than 6 seconds!
Feb 21 2016
Sunday: 3x20min
Saturday
The plan was to do some running training. This was a work day at the club. At 9, a few members would take our new dock out of storage. Then there would be a window of two hours during which there would be some preparation work for only a few people, and then we would be building our dock.
It turned out differently. The turn-up was so high, that it actually made sense to do some garden work in the “forest” behind our club house. So we cleaned up plastic bottles, cigarette packs, and other junk that people throw over our fence, then collected dead wood and leaves. That turned out to be a two hour quite physically heavy exercise. Sort of a very long circuit training. Raking the leaves on piles. Putting the leaves in big bags. Hauling the bags around the club house, empty the big bag on a big pile. Start again.
The two hours training window was filled with this exercise. At least we got our job done.
Then we concrete arrived and we could start building the pontoons. Unfortunately, everybody was busy and nobody was taking pictures. We bought very nice Easyfloat pontoons from Belrive, three two by six meter pontoons, each weighing 243kg and with a buoyancy of more than 2000kg (150 kilo per square meter). Here’s a picture from the easyfloat website, to give you an idea:
The work proceeded amazingly quick. Last week, we have built two concrete “cubes” for the ramps. As we approach our water from a very steep hill, we had to build ramps leading to the dock. Because we are on reservoir with varying water levels (winter level being 6 to 10 meters lower than summer levels, and plus or minus one meter easily during the rowing season), the entire design had to allow for the different water levels. The way this was designed left very tolerance for misplacement of the ramps. Luckily, everything turned out to fit with millimeter precision.
Now we only have to wait for the water level to rise. From Friday to Saturday, we measured a 40cm rise. We have another 3m to go. That meant we could build the dock with dry feet, but we have to wait one or two weeks to start using it. I guess we wish for rainy weather. The dock is now resting on pillars which we built from old car tyres.
I am so much looking forward to rowing from a normal, low dock. Our old one was a horrible steel and barrels construction that scratched boats, and was way too high for launching a single.
Sunday
A 3x20min on the erg. I had planned for a 4x20min session, but I measured 1.9 mmol/L after 3x20min at 195W, so I called it a day. It’s supposed to be a light week.
Funnily, until the start of the third interval, I had the feeling I was OK and would do 4 intervals. Then, in the beginning of the third interval, I had difficulty holding 195-200W without going to too high perceived effort. That improved during the interval, but resulted in the mentioned relatively high lactate level (my target is to be between 1.2 and 1.5 for these sessions).
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training