4x1km

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Mar 24 2018

Travel Week

Monday

This was supposed to be a steady state day, but I bailed out. It was a long working day, and then in the evening I got stuck working on integrating the rowsandall.com site with Amazon Web Services. We’re now using AWS Simple Email Services for sending out mail from the site. This helps to prevent notifications ending up in people’s Spam boxes. As often, I was a bit more ambitious than I should and tried to revamp the email messages in one go. I had everything working on my local notebook, but when I tried it out on the development test server, the damn thing didn’t load well. I managed to fix it but that took the entire evening.

Tuesday

Travel to Brussels. This was a planned rest/travel day and I respected it. There is some summit going on in Brussels, so all the hotels have crazy room prices. I ended up in a hotel near the Jubelpark where I had never stayed. Turns out the hotel doesn’t have a gym.

Wednesday

Hotel room workout. I lacked the motivation but still got out of bed. However, in this old building the wooden floors were quite loud, and I didn’t want to wake the guest in the room beneath me, so I just did one series of what was supposed to be a much longer session.

After a long meeting I headed to the airport and flew back to Vienna, then took a company car to Brno. Arrived at 22:30.

Thursday

First day of a two day visit of our China and India labs, so spent the entire day in meetings and doing a lab tour. I had already anticipated and planned for something a bit stingy but not too long. I also allowed myself to be slow on this 4x1km session:

Heart rate belt behaving strange in first interval

My heart rate belt behaved strange in the first interval. I think it is a bit sensitive when you’re not fully sweating yet, and I hadn’t noticed during the warming up. Only during the first 1k, I noticed that my heart rate stayed at 110 bpm. Between strokes, I moved the sensor by 1mm, and that did the trick.

Not very impressive intensities. On the water, I was pushing towards 300W last season. On the erg, I did a 4x1km on January 6 but that was a full out 1k, followed by 3 sub par 1k intervals.


Workout Summary - media/20180322-1931080o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06769|34:30.0|02:33.0|152.9|20.8|146.0|179.0|09.4
W-|04000|14:29.0|01:48.7|273.4|28.1|149.0|178.0|09.8
R-|02771|20:02.0|03:36.9|065.7|15.6|143.9|178.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01000|03:36.6|01:48.3|272.2|27.8|110.3|129.0|10.0
01|01000|03:39.2|01:49.6|271.3|27.8|160.4|176.0|09.8
02|01000|03:37.2|01:48.6|271.7|28.4|160.9|177.0|09.7
03|01000|03:36.3|01:48.1|278.5|28.4|164.3|178.0|09.8

End of the (travel) week effect.

Friday

Second day of visitors, but they were heading towards the airport around 2pm, and I planned to leave for the rowing club around 3pm. This would be the first OTW row of the year!

Things worked out differently. We had a situation to attend to at home, so at 3pm I went home to take care of it, allowing Romana to go rowing. By 11pm everything was relatively under control again, but I skipped training of course.

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E538B62D-BA43-4AC3-BFC1-C8FE57F11A5D

Jan 6 2018

Four Minutes is not that long

Thursday

I didn’t do any workout, because I felt tired after the hard 2k and my morning pulse was getting higher.

Friday

A 2km swim in th morning. I like the swimming because it is a new element in my training. I have no expectations on how hard or fast I “should” be. It is a great workout, covers the shoulders which I will need when I get back to OTW rowing, it is easy on my back and it involves breathing and water resistance.

I have noticed that I have to pay attention to how I breathe, which enables me to concentrate. I have also noted the similarity with OTW rowing, in the sense that rhythm is quite important and with good timing you can increase the distance you cover per stroke.

This being the first two weeks of a new year, the pool was crowded, and every lane that was reserved for endurance swimming had its slow swimmers. I just coped with it, knowing that I am not a particularly fast swimmer, and three weeks ago I was probably just as slow as this week’s beginners.

The only thing that bothers me is not having any heart rate data. I may try out the Tickr X next time. It has internal memory, so it can record a workout without needing a watch. The problem is that I don’t see anyone wearing any wearables in the pool.

In the evening, Romana and I went to a theater performance in the center of Brno. I took a few pictures on the way between the tram stop and the theater.

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The performance was great, and afterwards we tried out a new “hipster” pub. The owner is very brave, selling Canadian and US craft beers (and no local beers) in the center of Brno. But I had a nice darker ale, and we had a great time.

The pub is on the first floor of the “modern but doing on the left of the photo above this blog post.

Saturday

Today was a “third” day, so time for the next ranking piece: the four minute effort.

First, a long and thorough warming up:

warming up chart

Then, on to the main event:

four minute ergometer rowing

Workout Summary - media/20180106-1510540o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|01172|04:00.0|01:42.4|323.1|31.2|166.1|183.0|09.4
W-|01176|04:00.0|01:42.0|323.0|31.2|166.4|183.0|09.4
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|183.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00149|00:30.0|01:40.4|285.0|29.5|110.6|126.0|10.1
01|00144|00:30.0|01:44.2|313.4|30.3|149.1|165.0|09.5
02|00145|00:30.0|01:43.2|316.0|30.5|170.1|174.0|09.5
03|00146|00:30.0|01:42.5|325.2|31.1|176.9|179.0|09.4
04|00145|00:30.0|01:43.2|320.6|30.4|179.0|179.0|09.6
05|00147|00:30.0|01:42.0|328.0|31.1|180.8|181.0|09.5
06|00149|00:30.0|01:40.9|339.6|32.1|182.0|182.0|09.3
07|00150|00:30.0|01:40.1|356.2|34.4|182.9|183.0|08.7

Based on my Critical Power Chart, I decided to start at 310W, then increase to 320W with 2:30 minutes to go, to 330W with 1:20 to go and go all out with 40 seconds to go. Again, a conservative approach, but one where the first 2 minutes are a good taste of how my 2k race of next week will go.

The summary on Rowsandall.com didn’t capture the first 30 seconds correctly. I had set the PM to 30 second splits and monitored the split averages during the row. I was never below 310W.

That was a pretty exhausting row, but I managed a good update to my Critical Power values. Here is before:

CP chart 1

And after:

CP chart 2

Now I need to remove the low values in the “dip” between 1and 4 minutes. In three days, I will do a 1k, and then in the few days before the race, the remaining short ranking pieces (500m, 1 minute, and 100m).

After a few moments of breathing hard and being content with the result, I started the cooling down. However, during the first 1000m I discussed with myself that this wasn’t a real training. How about adding three 1k efforts to make this something similar to a 4x1000m/5min workout?

I decided to add three 1k segments at any power that I could hold, at 1000m of paddling in between.

intervals

In the first interval, I “felt” I could hold 300W, but was brutally corrected by reality, about 500m into the row. In the second interval, I decided to hold 280W and succeeded, and in the final interval I started at 270W but then gradually increased the pace, emptying the tank in the final 150m.

I followed up with a 2k cooling down. Now this feels like a complete workout, and my muscles are sore.

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Aug 14 2017

Monday: 4x1km/5min – 16 minutes of pain

I didn’t do my weekend homework – so I had to get to work early and do it in the morning. Visits from the US and I got to play my boss. It all went very well, except that the A/C broke down in our building and it was 28 degrees in the meeting room. We should have moved to the patio, where it was just 26 degrees.

So after a long day I waved goodbye to my guests and headed to the rowing club. I was going to do a 4x1km and tried to get some of the Masters crews to row it alongside me, but nobody fancied this training. I don’t blame them. It is quite hard. But I am doing a mini cycle with threshold training and intensive distance, hoping it will move my anaerobic threshold a bit, which should help me at the Masters Worlds, if I manage to convert that to boat speed.

That’s the theory. Besides that, the 4x1km is just a hell of a session. The big advantage of rowing with a power meter is that you can take the average power of the last time as a target, and then try to improve. There is still a weather influence. It will be harder in choppy conditions, but it is still a lot more quantitative than trying to row to feel or a target pace.

I was tired and worried that I would have low grit to complete the session, but everything turned out better than expected. The target power was a bit lower than the first three intervals of last week (because the overall average was lowered by a dramatically slow fourth interval), so it was tough but doable, and I was able to focus on technique as well.

A slight additional difficulty was the fact that the place I chose to row the workout brought me in near collision course with big tourist boats on all intervals except the first one. In the second interval I managed to cross in front. In third and fourth interval I had to row through the wake. That explains short drops in power.

myimage (21)

Interesting that my heart rate graph shows more red in the third interval. The fourth one was definitely a harder one.


Work Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|-Pwr-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01000| 04:12 |02:06.2| 29.2| 293 | 169 | 180 | 8.1 - headwind
03|01000| 03:58 |01:59.0| 30.5| 294 | 173 | 181 | 8.3 - tailwind
05|01000| 04:08 |02:04.4| 30.6| 292 | 173 | 182 | 7.9 - headwind
07|01000| 03:57 |01:58.5| 31.1| 296 | 172 | 183 | 8.1 - tailwind

I set average pace on the lower right of my SpeedCoach and rowed this like an ergo training. Static start. Off you go, a few start strokes, then drop the pace immediately. Row slightly under the target until the average power hits target, then keep holding target power.

Here are the metrics charts. I include all of my regular ones this time. You can click on one of them to see a bigger version and then browse through the image gallery. The point I am trying to make is that it looks like pretty consistent rowing.

I am still fascinated by the trend flex charts. Here is this row, pace vs power, split by stroke rate:
For comparison, here is the power/pace behavior with every individual workout stroke:

Most of those high stroke rate strokes are from the final 250m in the final interval:

Those 250m really really hurt. I think I haven’t been that deep in the pain box in training, recently. Again, that is the power of training with a power meter. Having a target and wanting to improve is what really kept me going.

I improved by 1 Watt. One tiny Watt. In terms of energy expended, that is 1/200th of an Apple. The progress is that the way I rowed it, it felt easier.

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Aug 8 2017

Tuesday – a tough 4x1km on the water

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I am reading the book “Peak” by Ericsson and Pool. Interesting stuff. They talk about “deliberate practice”. In summary, deliberate practice involves practicing with well-defined, specific goals, getting constant feedback, and constantly moving a little outside your comfort zone to avoid stagnation.

I think that having a power meter makes it a lot easier to implement “deliberate practice” in rowing.

So for Monday, the training schedule asked for the good old “Pete Plan” classic: The 4x1km at 5 minutes rest. On the erg, I haven’t done this one in a long time. The last one was in September 2015. On the water, I have done a few. Here’s a summary:

So, OTW, should I aim for 2:01 pace? Really, this depends a lot on the weather. Now that I have a power meter, I should really row these workouts to a power target. So, I looked at my CP Chart. A 1k should take me around 4 minutes, roughly, but I was going to do four of them. On the other hand, there was going to be a 5 minute rest period between the 1k efforts. Now, the CP chart tells me that on the water, I should be able to hold 345W for 4 minutes, and 250W for 16 minutes. I “guesstimated” that I should aim for a value in the middle: 300W. I also wanted to row at Work per Stroke (“WpS”) values below 600J. The hypothesis is that this is the most efficient Work per Stroke value for my rowing.

That fixes the stroke rate to 30spm and higher. So, the targets were clear. Now, the execution.

There was some wind when I arrived at the rowing club, and the wind was increasing in strength. During the warming up, I quickly decided to do the 4x1k in the gorge, because if the wind would get any stronger, I would be testing my rough water skills rather than my fitness and rowing efficiency.

Then, it was time to start the series of 1000m intervals. The straightest part of the gorge is about 900m long, and with a slight turn at the end you can call it a 1k effort. The wind would be a straight tailwind and headwind, for the alternating intervals. My first interval was a tailwind one, towards the castle.

As in the previous OTW versions of this workout, I would do all intervals from a static start. I started the first interval way above target power, stroke rate and WpS and had to work hard to reduce them. The average WpS was 614 J, and the interval did get make me tired.

A 5 minute paddle, 2 minutes towards the castle, 30 seconds to turn and drink, 2 minutes back, 30 seconds to align for the start. This time it was a bit easier to hit the WpS values, but about 100m in I was in trouble. I heard a hissing sound right next to my boat, and when I looked, I saw a very angry parent swan and four young swans. I ignored the swans and carried on. Luckily, the swan decided not to charge. Then, 300m into the row, I was in trouble. Deep trouble, that I could not row away from. Pain. Hard breathing. The feeling that this was not a sustainable pace. With 400m to go I had to start counting strokes, and I somehow managed to make it to the end. WpS: 570 J.

In the third, tailwind interval, I decided to ignore the tiredness and rate up. My time equalled that of the first 1k, but I rowed this one at a WpS of 557 J. I also think that the wind was helping me a bit more than in the first interval.

For the last interval, I carefully lined up as far from the swan family as possible, which would make me row a bit more of the turn at the end of the 1k, and started. My suspicions about the wind strength were confirmed immediately as I settled down for 32spm.

I wasn’t able to hold 32spm. I somehow made it to half way rowing slightly under target, power wise, but at that point I had a very serious fight with the “handle down daemons”. If I wouldn’t be a blog writing rower who was rowing to meet a clear target for this session, I doubt if I would have completed this interval. I did dial down the power though, and only in the last 10 strokes did I rate up and power up a bit. I wish I could say that the power drop in this interval is due to the turn in the end, but I am afraid that that is only partly true. Still, kudos to myself for finishing the session. What did I write above about comfort zone? WpS result: 518 J.


Work Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|-Pwr-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01000| 03:53 |01:56.8| 30.0| 311 | 170 | 180 | 8.5
03|01000| 04:12 |02:06.3| 30.9| 294 | 174 | 182 | 7.7
05|01000| 03:53 |01:56.9| 31.8| 296 | 171 | 180 | 8.1
07|01000| 04:20 |02:10.3| 30.9| 270 | 172 | 179 | 7.5

So in the end, I managed 293W. Slightly below target, and a good starting point for the next time. Comparing that to the erg, I think it is a good score. The 1k on the erg lasts 30 to 50 seconds shorter than the OTW 1k. Also, the OTW and OTE power values do not correspond 1:1, and it is usually estimated that they are about 15% lower OTW. For my analysis, I use 6%, so the erg equivalent is doing 4x4min/5min at 1:44 pace.

A good starting point for the next time.

Here are a few plots that tell the story:

The cooling down was a slow affair in a heavy headwind and significant waves:

Edit

I used rowsandall.com’s Physics Department to do an estimate of wind corrected pace. I used 1.5 m/s as the wind speed. At that time, Brno airport reported 7.7 m/s, and the wind prediction for the Brno lake was increasing from 2 m/s to 4 m/s at that time. But I was in the relatively shielded gorge. Here is the result:

Wind corrected pace

So in the end the data for the first three intervals seem to hover around 2:00 pace, perhaps even slightly faster if I assume that the wind was increasing. I hope so, because I was really depressed by the slow average pace.

The last interval is still dramatically slow.

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Prehrada 004

Jun 18 2016

4x1km – good enough

So today was a 4x1km with 5 minutes rest. On the water. In the single. Target pace 2:01 in “neutral” weather, or the equivalent of that in whatever weather I would get.

There was a light SouthEast wind. Enough to reach great paces during the tailwind warming up. Enough to slow me down to 2:04 in the first headwind 1000m effort.

But I would have 2 headwind and 2 tailwind 1000m intervals, right? Well, no. During the third interval the wind turned and the final interval was with some headwind as well.

It’s funny. No chop, but still a significant slowing down. Here’s the video.

Even though I row on our lake regularly, I still find it very beautiful. Now with dark green leaves. Also watch my newly painted blades!


Workout Summary - media/20160618-131748-2016-06-18-0906.CSV
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|08793|44:33.0|02:16.1|25.5|161.0|174.2|09.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|02858| 16:32 |02:52.2|18.2|143.0|171.0|09.6
02|01000| 04:09 |02:04.6|28.9|171.0|178.0|08.3
03|01000| 03:54 |01:57.1|29.4|170.0|180.0|08.7
04|01000| 04:12 |02:06.0|29.5|171.0|179.0|08.1
05|01000| 04:01 |02:00.6|29.6|169.0|181.0|08.4
06|01935| 11:45 |03:02.2|17.5|142.0|156.0|09.4

So 2:04.6, 1:57.1, 2:06.0, 2:00.6, that’s a 2:02.8 average pace. Not 2:01, but not bad.

Looking at the video, I should do two things:

  1. Not dig too deep at the catch
  2. Row a longer stroke. Get length

It was beautiful weather. Nice little clouds. Here’s a few pics I took after the row:

Prehrada 001 Prehrada 003 Prehrada 004

And here is the entire row in graphs:

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May 17 2016

Busy Days

Monday

Busy days. Self-inflicted busy of course. Still, so busy that I had difficulty arriving at out Masters Eight practice on time, on Monday evening. We will race the Masters 8+ in the first weekend of June, and our result of last weekend shows that there is a lot of work to do, so I really had no excuse. It’s just that my solo rowing makes me very flexible, and I now have to get used again to fixed starting times for team sessions.

We have won that particular race three times in a row, but this year will be difficult. We have a couple of Masters who did less than the ideal amount of training work during the winter. To put it mildly. There’s also rumor of a couple of good Masters putting together a composite eight with all the Masters. I was indirectly approached but I refused immediately and I don’t know the details. One of the requirements seems to be that you have to be on Facebook, because that is where all the team formation happens. Anyway, even though we have some challenges, I prefer to row in a club eight.

The observant viewer could have spotted two of our eights on the lake simultaneously, because the Men’s eight have started practicing as well. And there were some observant viewers, because a couple of members of “the other club” on our lake were busy putting out the Albano lanes for coming weekend’s international Youth regatta. Actually, when we were turning the boat on the finish line, they couldn’t resist to comment us.

And we deserved that. We arrived at the finish line, and immediately eight Masters started to talk about what was wrong and how – in their opinion – we need to row to go faster. We are an eight without a leader. And without a coach. And with a very quiet cox. We need to change a few things.

The fact that the Men’s eight was on the water also meant that we had to row in our old, wooden eight. This boat is not good. While the upper four rowers complain that it falls on bow side, the lower four rowers complain that it falls on stroke side.

Personally, sitting in 2 seat, I had no difficulty. We did a couple of technique drills and then a lot of steady state in 22 and 24 spm. On Thursday evening, when we will do 30 seconds on / 30 seconds off, this will be a different thing. That’s the workout that can potentially ruin your back. Luckily, we will be able to take the new eight.

I have rambled for six paragraphs without a picture. That is because I rowed with the Garmin Forerunner instead of with CrewNerd and didn’t notice that the HR belt hadn’t paired with the Forerunner. So no HR data. 🙁

So here’s a picture of our boat hangar, freshly painted:

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The blue text says “Czech Rowing Club Brno – established 1912” and the best thing is that it is clearly visible from the other side of the lake: From the club house of “Lodni Sporty Brno”. The hangar doors used to be green. Now they are in blue club colors. Unfortunately some of my fellow club members spoiled the Latin numbering for the hangars and put “IIII” instead of “IV” which will probably make us the laugh of the local rowing world for a long time. We also re-numbered, so what used to be “hangar 3” (my single is there) is now “hangar IIII” (IV), because our boat workshop has been added to the numbering.

Enough complaining. I love the text and I hope it brings many new rowers to the club. I am also proud of our nice new dock (in the foreground in the picture) and in general of all the improvements we have been made in the club in the past 4 years.

Tuesday

Today I had to go out in the morning, because of my work schedule. That’s normally not a big deal but when it’s just one day after returning from Arizone (-9 hours), it’s quite tough. The session was a 4x1km with 3 minutes rest, and I thought I could row that at 29spm and a decent pace.

In April 2015, I had rowed this session in 2:01 average pace and 29.4 spm.

I had to compromise or abandon the session. It was very hard to keep the pace up. I had no energy and no motivation. I don’t know what’s better, to stop and just row, or to at least finish the workout. I opted for the latter.

Workout Summary - 2016-05-17-0754.CSV
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06113|38:21.0|02:20.8|62.4|158.0|165.3|07.1
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00130| 10:43 |03:07.6|247.7|140.0|153.0|00.6 - warming up
02|01000| 04:11 |02:05.4|28.2|168.0|175.0|08.5 - tailwind
03|01000| 04:04 |02:02.1|27.7|168.0|173.0|08.8 - tailwind
04|01000| 04:34 |02:17.4|26.0|167.0|174.0|08.4 - headwind
05|01000| 04:29 |02:14.5|26.5|168.0|173.0|08.4 - headwind
06|01983| 10:20 |02:36.3|18.5|137.0|144.0|10.4 - cooling down

Somehow the GPS didn’t kick in until the end of the warming up, so the numbers are weird and so is the SPM value. In the graphs you can really see (from the stroke rate) how I gave up and settled for a lower pace. Heart rates were pretty high for the paces I was rowing. It must be the jetlag. At least I’ve got something to blame. 🙂

Still I want to point to the start of the fourth interval where I think I was rowing technically quite well. You can see the pace shoot up compared to the previous interval, at relatively low rates. Length. It’s key for me.

figure_1-1

figure_1-11

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4x1km

Sep 24 2015

Building a training plan I – boat training

Training plan considerations

What does Das Buch say? Here’s a quick summary.

dasbuch2

First of all, for a Masters C rower, Das Buch advised that roughly 25% of boat kilometers are Compensation, 50% Extensive Endurance, 10% Intensive Endurance and 5% race specific. Race specific is not going to happen during the preparation period (October – April) that I am planning right now.

Another good remark is that most Masters rowers chose a too high training intensity. I guess we know the syndrome. Let’s do those fun interval sessions. It feels hard so the training effect must be high!

A couple of training examples given in the book:

  • Compensation/Technique training examples
    • 30 – 70 min continuous 18-21spm
    • Intervals 4-10x
      • 1min @ 20spm / 4 min @ 18spm
      • 500m @ 23spm / 250m @ 19spm
      • 5min @ 22spm / 5min @ 18spm
    • Fartlek
  • Extensive Endurance
    • Continuous (100% extensive) @ 18-23spm
    • Fartlek (95% extensive with intensive bursts) 18-26spm
    • Interval training
      • 2-8 min with 1-4 min rest
      • Examples
        • 4-10x1min @ 24spm / 4min @20spm
        • 4x2km @ 21-23spm / rest 2-6 min
        • (3-5)x4/3/2/1 min @ 20/22/24/26spm, 3 min rest
  • Intensive Endurance
    • Red lining
      • 10km @ head race pace
      • 2x5km, rest 10min
      • Fartlek 18-30spm varying
    • Interval training
      • 10sec – 3 min with 2-5 min rest
      • 4x2km @ 24-28spm, 4 min rest
      • (2-5)x4/3/2/1min @ 22/24/26/28min , 3 min rest
      • 5/2.5/1km @ 24-28spm, 4 min rest
      • 1-3x7min / 4 min rest
      • (2-4)x1000m / 4 min rest
      • 10x500m / 4 min rest
      • 2/1/0.5km @ 26-3spm, 4 min rest
  • Strength endurance
    • On ergometer with high drag
  • Threshold training
    • 5km max intensity
    • (2-4)x2000m @ 16-18spm, max power, 2 min rest
    • (2-5)x3/2/1min @ 26/30/34spm, 3 min rest
    • 2/1/0.5km @ 28-34spm, 4 min rest
    • 1-3x5min @ 28-32spm, 4 min rest
    • (2-4)x1000m @ 28-32spm, 4 min rest
    • 2/1/0.5km @ 26/29/32spm, 4 min rest
    • “red lining” 1 min @32spm / 1 min @28spm for 10-30 min

So Extensive Endurance looks quite like what the Wolverine plan calls L4, while Intensive Endurance seems to be a mix between L3 (hard distance), L2 and L1.

Here are my own thoughts:

  • I want to extend the quidance (in terms of time spent, not km) to erg and crosstraining. I am currently thinking of 25% compensation (mainly crosstraining), 50% extensive (rowing, erg, and crosstraining), 10% intensive (erg and rowing) and 10% strength training (circuits, weights). I am open to discuss this.
  • When on a business trip, I will have to substitute rowing with running, hotel fitness triathlon, or do a weights training. I have mapped my regular destinations, so I know the hotel in Toulouse with the Concept2, the Crossfit boxes in the US, etc. Should be doable.
  • Strength endurance. I have had good results from rowing with a bungee so I am definitely going to do that. I prefer to avoid the erg with high drag factor. I don’t like to take risks with my back.
  • For the extensive sessions I will vary “just row” steady state, steady state with bursts and “L4” rate ladders. Seems to be in line with Das Buch.
  • For the intensive session I will focus on Pete Plan L2 sessions and hard distance. Will do Pete Plan L1 (short intervals) occasionally, and during sprint season. I also like the red lining idea. You basically go at a pace that you cannot sustain for the entire duration, hold it for a few minutes, then go below, than above. Think of it as hard distance but instead of constant pace you oscillate above and below what you can sustain.
  • I will try to list the sessions per week, but each week I will need to smartly adapt the order to my work and travel schedule.
  • I don’t understand the example trainings under “threshold training”. They all seem like valuable training sessions but I am not sure they fall in one category. The rate restricted 4x2km seems to aim at a completely different training goal than the high rate stuff. Anyway, I will pick a session from that list now and then, to spice up training, but it has to be in the 10% intensive category.

The training plan is not ready. In subsequent blogs I will share more of what I learned in Das Buch and how I try to implement (some of) that in my draft plan.

Today’s Training

As I just said, my new training plan is still not complete, so I am repeating what I did a year ago. Looking in my training log, I did a 4x1km on this day a year ago. So without thinking I scheduled a 4x1km on the erg. However, as a race preparation for the head race on October 17, I decided to row it “at head race pace”.

But first, a little experimenting with compensation cross-training. At the end of the working day I grabbed my bike from the underground parking and rode home.

fiets

fiets2

Think it qualifies as compensation training. At home I had a quick dinner, then a coffee, and then I descended into my erg basement.

Between the warming up and the main set, I looked up last year’s results in my training log. I discovered I had rowed this on the water, and the splits were:


|Dist_|Time_|_Pace__|avg HR|max HR|Remarks
|00993|03:34|01:47.8| 179 | 185 |1km - headwind
|01015|03:41|01:48.9| 181 | 186 |1km - headwind
|01006|03:31|01:44.9| 170 | 182 |1km - tailwind
|01001|03:26|01:42.9| 177 | 184 |1km tailwind

Interesting … in a single? Then it dawned on me that this must have been a double or a quad. I checked now, while writing this blog, and yes, I rowed this in a quad.

Today I really tried to keep this to head race pace, so I lowered the drag factor, rowed with closed eyes and tried to get into the 28-30spm rhythm. Every twenty strokes I quickly opened my eyes to check the stroke rate.

4x1km


Workout Summary - Sep 24, 2015
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS|-SPI
--|04000|14:16.1|01:47.0|285.6|29.4|172.1|184.0|09.5|09.7
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|-SPI|Comments
01|01000|03:32.3|01:46.1|292.7|29.1|165.6|180.0|09.7|10.1|
02|01000|03:34.0|01:47.0|285.7|29.2|173.6|183.0|09.6|09.8|
03|01000|03:34.8|01:47.4|282.5|29.6|174.4|184.0|09.4|09.5|
04|01000|03:35.0|01:47.5|281.7|29.6|174.9|184.0|09.4|09.5|

Perhaps not the smartest training, given all the good advice in the first part of this blog, but definitely fun.

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