Nov 11 2016
6k Season’s Best
My wife Romana told my I was crazy to plan a 6k full out attempt for a Friday. I agree that being tired at the end of the working week is not the ideal preparation. On the other hand, Friday is the only day where I have a chance of getting home early enough to do the 6k before dinner.
The (ambitious) plan was to try and row a 1:51.5 average pace.
First, I did a thorough warming up:
Then on to the main event. The plan was to start conservatively and hold the average pace at 1:52 until I reached 1800m to go.
Of course, trying to hold 1:52, I pulled 1:51 and even 1:50 more frequently than 1:53, and so I reached the half way point with an average pace of 1:51.5. Still, it seemed to take ages to reach 4500m to go. I went by 300m intervals. They go by fast enough to see progress, and there’s “just” twenty of them.
I tried to remind myself to remain conservative, but a few times in the 4500m to 1500m interval I got carried away and started pulling 1:50 strokes.
In the end, I paid for that. With 900m to go I started counting sets of 12 strokes. With 600m to go I was convinced I wouldn’t make the end without going above 2:00 pace. In the end I limped home with 1:54 pace.
Summary:
Workout Summary - media/20161111-17100719o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06000|22:20.5|01:51.7|26.7|177.9|184.0|10.1
W-|06000|22:20.5|01:51.7|26.6|177.8|184.0|10.1
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|00.0|000.0|184.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00500|01:51.8|01:51.8|25.8|154.6|171.0|10.4
02|00500|01:51.5|01:51.5|25.7|173.6|175.0|10.5
03|00500|01:51.6|01:51.6|25.9|176.8|178.0|10.4
04|00500|01:51.6|01:51.6|26.3|177.3|179.0|10.2
05|00500|01:51.2|01:51.2|26.3|179.2|180.0|10.3
06|00500|01:51.2|01:51.2|26.5|180.4|181.0|10.2
07|00500|01:51.5|01:51.5|26.8|180.6|181.0|10.0
08|00500|01:50.9|01:50.9|26.8|182.2|183.0|10.1
09|00500|01:51.1|01:51.1|27.1|182.7|184.0|10.0
10|00500|01:52.2|01:52.2|27.1|182.8|184.0|09.9
11|00500|01:51.6|01:51.6|27.8|182.6|183.0|09.7
12|00500|01:54.3|01:54.3|27.7|180.9|183.0|09.5
I did this “beginning of the winter” 6k exactly a year ago, on November 11, 2015.
Then, I did a 22:28 time with an average heart rate of 177 bpm. Today it was 22:20, with an average heart rate of 178bpm. A year ago, I used a spreadsheet to analyze the row. Today, I can use the power of rowsandall.com and have additional interesting graphs:
In the Work Per Stroke plot, you can see how I used a range of stroke rates to try and remain at the same average pae (the green line). On the site, I can actually select the first half of the row and compare it with the second half:
And here is that dramatic last 1000m:
First, you see me rate down and increase the work per stroke. Then I fall down to a lower force per stroke. In the final strokes I rate up a bit but the work per stroke goes down even more.
After the row, I sat on the erg holding the bar. I was afraid to faint.
I didn’t faint. After five minutes of just sitting there, I had enough energy to do a 10 minute cooling down.
Dec 29 2017
Train rides, reading and a 6k
Tuesday – Steady State
We met at the rowing club. By the time everybody was ready for the 3x15min steady state workout, I had already done a 3km warming up.
Here is the entire workout in one chart combining warming up, main intervals and cooling down.
Heart rate data are slightly offset, because I recorded them separately and didn’t bother to adjust the time offset on the rowsandall.com site.
Wednesday – no training
In the morning, there were some chores around the house. Then we took the train to Pardubice to visit Romana’s mother. The entire trip takes two hours by car, and three hours by train and bus, but in this time of the year I prefer that. I spent most of the time reading. Before Christmas, I plundered the Math/Phys section of the Academia bookstore in Brno. In fact, I bought so many books that the one purchase earned me a lifetime 20% discount card.
The selection is not as great as Amazon.com, but their in-store coffee house has great espresso, and their Physics and Math section is serious, so there you go.
(A note to my American readers, who may be imagining something like the Barnes & Nobles coffee corner when I mention espresso in a bookstore: We are not too far from Italy, and all countries of the former Austro-Hungarian empire have a great coffee house tradition. We are in a different league here. Come over and try yourself.)
Thursday – 6k
Spent the morning at my mother in law, including lunch, and then a bus/train ride home. Again, lots of time for pleasant reading. The car alternative would have involved driving on wet snow and freezing rain. Arrived home around 4pm, so no excuse to skip the next Ranking Distance: 6k.
First, a nice long warming up. For the shorter ranking distances, a good warming up is important, and I have learned that it doesn’t hurt to do 20 minutes including some pretty tough intervals.
Then the main piece. The CP chart gave me the bounds. I was supposed to go faster than 230W (of course, because I had held 230W for 30 minutes just three days earlier) and the stretch target was 245W.
I decided to start at 230W, then accelerate at 3600m to go. I set the PM to record 400m intervals. From 3600m to go down to 1800m, the goal was 235W but I did go slightly higher.
As you can see from the summary, things continued favorably and I managed to finish in 292W, raising the average power to 244W and a total time of 22:32.4. (Somehow, the total time in the summary misses 2.4 seconds, probably because I skipped the final pull.)
So that was a good one, at 96% of my PB power. Looking forward to the 5k on Sunday, actually.
Friday
I did a recovery training in the pool. I swam 2km in about 50 minutes. This time it was slightly challenging, because the pool entrance was free today.
It was nice to see kids from poor families enjoying the water, but it also required a bit of flexibility from the endurance swimmers.
I almost felt like a seasoned swimmer, in this chaos. That was partly because I was swimming with swimming goggles.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: 6000m, 6k, concept2, erg, OTE, ranking piece, rowing, training