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May 5 2018

Friday – a hard 6k

Wednesday – Thursday

I traveled to Brussels on Wednesday. No training.

On Thursday morning I did an hour of weights in the hotel fitness. I wanted to go at 6am, but the hotel has changed the opening times to 7am. It’s not good. Now I had to share the weights room with some chatty Dutchmen who occupied the stations but didn’t do much, and I had less time after the session to get ready for my meetings.

After an interesting meeting, I headed to the airport and traveled home. Arrived at 8pm.

Friday

A morning row, because the afternoon would be busy with calls. Also, the  forecast said that the wind would be less strong in the morning.

After 2km of warming up, I noticed I had forgotten to start the SpeedCoach. Bummer.

After 5km of warming up, I turned and got ready to start. The lazy bastard that I am had decided to row this as a 6k without a turn, starting under Veveri Castle, rowing back to the lake, then crossing it and finishing at the south end. I would avoid the turn and I would get to row this with tailwind on the lake part.

Here’s the row’s chart:


And the summary:


Workout Summary - media/20180504-0700510o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06000|25:54.0|02:09.5|224.2|26.5|172.9|183.0|08.7
W-|06000|25:54.0|02:09.6|224.2|26.5|172.9|183.0|08.7
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|01000|04:28.6|02:14.3|232.9|26.2|146.7|176.0|08.5
01|01000|04:17.5|02:08.8|228.5|26.3|176.8|178.0|08.8
02|01000|04:16.0|02:08.0|228.5|26.8|178.3|179.0|08.8
03|01000|04:15.6|02:07.8|218.3|26.1|177.9|180.0|09.0
04|01000|04:20.7|02:10.3|211.2|26.1|177.9|181.0|08.8
05|01000|04:16.2|02:08.1|225.5|27.8|181.0|183.0|08.4

Not sure why the summary claims my first 1k to be so slow. I checked the pace a few times (on my Garmin Forerunner) and it was around 2:09. Perhaps the first turn slowed me down.

The power bumps and valleys in the first 3k are really turns. Same with the power dip around 4.5km in.

The average power is a bit lower than I am used to, but that is mainly due to the fact that until this day, I was looking at inflated power numbers. A bug in the NK SpeedCoach that gave me about 9% more power than I deserved. So, in terms of my “old reference”, this was around 240W, which I think is good for a training row after business travel.

A 1k cooling down, a quick boat wash and shower and then I had to hurry to the office.

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Mar 18 2018

Sunday – All worked out well

All worked out well.

I planned a “hard 6k” for Saturday, anticipating that I would be able to do it on the water, in the single. So, although it was supposed to be a hard 6k, I never intended it to be a full out one, this being my first or second OTW row of 2018.

It all worked out differently. It snowed on Saturday, and I decided to do the Steady State workout on my erg in my basement, and move the 6k to Sunday, when a small group of our Masters rowers meet at the rowing club and erg together.

I put the erg on slides, to get a bit closer to the OTW feeling, and, admittedly, also because erging a 6k is so much easier on slides. Did I mention that I am considering buying slides for use at home? I found a local guy who can make them really cost effective.

So here is the entire workout

I did a nice long warming up with some speed bumps. It’s easier to rate up on slides, so I found myself doing 40spm for a few strokes. Then, while the rest of the Masters started their 4x8min/2min workout (at 22/24/26/22spm), I started my 6k. The plan was to stick to 1:54 pace for the first 2400m and be careful, but I did see a lot of 1:52 pace, and when I got enthusiastic, even some 1:52 and 1:51.

With the other rowers next to me, I didn’t have difficult rating up in the second half of the row. It’s amazing how much peer pressure helps, although I also think that for a lightweight as me, rowing on slides is a definite advantage.


Workout Summary - media/20180318-1530530o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06000|22:16.0|01:51.4|253.1|28.7|0.0|000.0|09.4
W-|06000|22:17.0|01:51.5|253.1|28.7|000.0|000.0|09.4
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|000.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00500|01:53.1|01:53.1|237.5|27.1|000.0|0.0|09.8
01|00500|01:53.6|01:53.6|239.5|26.6|000.0|0.0|09.9
02|00500|01:52.9|01:52.9|241.7|27.3|000.0|0.0|09.7
03|00500|01:53.5|01:53.5|240.9|27.0|000.0|0.0|09.8
04|00500|01:52.7|01:52.7|243.0|27.4|000.0|0.0|09.7
05|00500|01:52.2|01:52.2|247.1|27.9|000.0|0.0|09.6
06|00500|01:52.5|01:52.5|245.5|27.7|000.0|0.0|09.6
07|00500|01:52.5|01:52.5|247.4|28.3|000.0|0.0|09.4
08|00500|01:51.4|01:51.4|252.6|29.0|000.0|0.0|09.3
09|00500|01:49.5|01:49.5|265.1|29.8|000.0|0.0|09.2
10|00500|01:48.4|01:48.4|274.2|31.1|000.0|0.0|08.9
11|00500|01:45.5|01:45.5|307.8|35.2|000.0|0.0|08.1

Not a bad workout. Actually a Season’s Best, and pretty close to my PB (of 2 years ago) of 22:13.1.

Here are a few of the flex charts that I found interesting:

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How-To

Rowing in our rowing club’s erg room is always a challenge, data wise. The ergs have PM3 monitors, and no heart rate adapter. To get Painsled to register anything, I need to use the iPhone connection kit plus a lightning to 30 pin adapter to get my iPhone to work with the monitor.

[amazon_link asins=’B074KG6G5Q’ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’rowingdata-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’77f1393f-2ad8-11e8-814d-abd3cf302b13′]

I do record heart rate separately, using the Polar OH1 optical heart rate belt worn on my upper arm. This heart rate band has a standalong mode, which syncs to Polar Flow, and then to Strava. Then, I can import the heart rate data using the Strava connection to rowsandall.com.

Before I merge the heart rate data with the rowing data, I first glue warming up, 6k and cooling down together on rowsandall.com, as described here.

Then, I go to the Advanced Edit page for the workout and select “Sensor Fusion”:Clicking the highlighted link brings me to a page where I select the heart rate data imported from Strava, and then I get to this page:

I select heart rate, and as I started the heart rate band at the same time as I started rowing, I don’t need to edit the time offset.

If I wanted, I could now split the resulting workout again to get a nice record for my 6k with heart rate, but I didn’t have a need for that.

The sensor fusion, joining and splitting are experimental functions on rowsandall.com, and you have to try which approach gives you the best result. I find that when the workout durations are very different, like today where the OH1 recorded one hour long record, but the painsled workouts where divided in three parts, it is more efficient to first glue together the rows, and do the data fusion with workouts of approximately the same length. That creates a nice workout record for the entire session, which can then be split up again if you want.

For the stroke metrics plots, I used the original Painsled 6k workout, without heart rate data, and just browsed through my defined set of favorite flex charts, zooming in on stroke length and work per stroke using the flex tools. Pretty happy with what I saw.

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myimage (17)

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.

Workout Summary - media/20171228-1636020o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06000|22:30.0|01:52.6|245.6|26.6|168.7|180.0|10.0
W-|06000|22:31.0|01:52.6|244.7|26.5|168.4|180.0|10.0
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|180.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00400|01:30.7|01:53.4|231.7|25.9|127.7|156.0|10.2
01|00400|01:32.0|01:55.0|230.9|25.5|161.1|164.0|10.2
02|00400|01:31.6|01:54.4|232.6|25.6|164.3|166.0|10.3
03|00400|01:31.7|01:54.7|232.4|25.4|167.1|168.0|10.3
04|00400|01:31.5|01:54.4|233.6|25.8|167.8|169.0|10.2
05|00400|01:31.2|01:54.0|236.2|25.8|170.4|171.0|10.2
06|00400|01:31.0|01:53.7|237.9|25.9|171.0|171.0|10.2
07|00400|01:30.9|01:53.6|238.0|25.9|171.2|172.0|10.2
08|00400|01:30.8|01:53.5|239.5|26.1|172.2|173.0|10.1
09|00400|01:30.5|01:53.1|241.7|26.4|172.2|174.0|10.0
10|00400|01:30.3|01:52.9|243.7|26.5|173.5|174.0|10.0
11|00400|01:29.2|01:51.5|252.7|27.0|174.8|176.0|10.0
12|00400|01:28.3|01:50.4|260.5|27.6|176.9|178.0|09.8
13|00400|01:26.9|01:48.6|272.2|28.7|178.6|179.0|09.6
14|00400|01:25.0|01:46.2|292.2|30.4|179.5|180.0|09.3

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.

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myimage2.png

Mar 24 2017

The Proof of the Pudding – a 6k head race test with power meter

So yesterday I had some theories about how you can use the metrics of a power measuring oarlock (the NK Empower Oarlock in this case) to find an optimum race strategy and keep an eye on technique during the race.

This morning I tested some aspects of this theory. This is part of the philosophy I have for the rowsandall.com rowing data analytics site. I will try to test as much as I can so that you, the users, can be sure that what we recommend has been tried and tested. We (that is I and our alpha and beta testers) use all the apps that the site is compatible with and we make quick adjustments when something doesn’t work.

Back to the 6k test now. First, I did a 2k warming up:

myimage (1)

After that is was time for the proof. I set the SpeedCoach display as follows:

  1. Top Left: Stroke Rate
  2. Top Right: Instantaneous Power (Watts)
  3. Bottom Left: Effective Stroke Rate (degrees)
  4. Bottom Right: Work per Stroke

For (4), you could argue that I should have chosen maximum or average force, but the problem was that I didn’t have a feel for the data. This is partly my own fault. On the site, I am using pounds, a horrible American unit, while the SpeedCoach uses the perfectly sound Newton. I need to convert the site to Newtons. I don’t think anyone will object. For now I use work per stroke, though, because I feel I shouldn’t go above 550 J or below 500 J.

The effective stroke length is the stroke length minus slip and wash, so it is the arc through which you are effectively pulling. Stroke rate was there to check that when the other metrics tell me to lighten up and rate up, I am actually achieving that goal.

So, no pace information? No distance? Correct. As I was rowing on a 2k FISA compliant race course, I had enough visual clues about my position, with a sign every 250m, and a sequence of buildings as you approach the finish line. And pace? I decided that pace was irrelevant. (I did cheat a little, because my Garmin watch on the scull provided pace in time per km, so a division by 2 would give me the infamous pace per 500m.

There was a light wind, which would be a headwind in the first and last 2k sections. After each 2k section, I would have to quickly turn. I contemplated setting the row up as a 3x2km workout with 1 minute rest, but decided I wouldn’t do that. I rowed it as a Just Row.

Here are the results:


Workout Summary - media/20170324-083240-SpdCoach 2136923 20170324 0726amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06117|27:20.0|02:14.1|225.9|26.3|173.9|185.0|08.5
W-|05908|25:36.0|02:10.0|232.8|26.4|174.0|185.0|08.7
R-|00211|01:44.0|04:06.0|099.1|24.0|171.9|185.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01968|08:33.0|02:10.3|234.7|26.4|167.0|177.0|08.7
01|01976|08:34.0|02:10.0|231.0|26.1|175.4|181.0|08.8
02|01963|08:29.2|02:09.7|232.7|26.8|179.6|185.0|08.6

In graphs:

myimage (2)

 

myimage (4)

 

myimage (3)

 

I wasn’t entirely sure about the ideal Power value, but I guessed that 250W would be too much, and I took Monday’s 4x2km at 211W as the lower boundary. In the end that worked out to 233W average. During the row I saw it vary between 210W and 250W. Some of that was due to course corrections (the wind was a headwind but also a slight crosswind). I was worried about the low stroke rate, but I also know it takes a few of these trials to get the stroke rate higher. I decided to stop worrying about it and focus on length, power, and work per stroke.

The effective length was a bit lower than I had hoped, and I consciously worked to get the values above 90 degrees. But then, I didn’t want to look at the SpeedCoach for each and every stroke, so the values slipped a bit as I got tired. I think you can also see that my effort was quite constant in the end.

The question is always if I could have gone faster. In a 6k race, on race day with the adrenalin, and without the turns, I think I could. But still it will be a smart strategy to stick to these values for the first 4.5km, and only go faster in the final stretch.

bokeh plot (12)

Drive length oscillating around 89 degrees (would have liked to see a bit more there).

 

bokeh plot (11)

Catch and finish angles in a pretty narrow range.

 

bokeh plot (10)

It looks like work per stroke and power are mainly determined by the drive length.

 

bokeh plot (9)

 

bokeh plot (8)

Pretty constant in the average drive force. This tells me that most of the Work per Stroke variations are from the effective drive length.

 

bokeh plot (7)

Not sure what the big differences in catch angle mean.

 

bokeh plot (6)

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img_1129

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.

myimage-4
Power Pie Chart
myimage-3
Heart Rate Pie Chart

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:

bokeh_plot-1
Peak and Average stroke power
bokeh_plot
Work per Stroke vs stroke rate.

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:

bokeh_plot-2
0-3000m
bokeh_plot-3
3000-6000m

And here is that dramatic last 1000m:

bokeh_plot-4

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.

img_1129

img_1130

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download-17

Sep 28 2016

A warned man counts for two?

Today is a bank holiday and a good day to do the 6km. The only problem is that I couldn’t row the 6km in one go from the castle to Sirka, because the tourists boats depart earlier on bank holidays, and we’re not supposed to be on the river when they operate.

So I had to do my usual 6km with a turn somewhere between 3000 and 3500m (depending on where I put the exact start). I started the session with a 2km warming up.

The plan was simple. Warned by my struggle with 1500m to go, a week ago, I decided to start slowly on purpose. If pace was faster than 2:11, I would lighten up the stroke. The idea was to row this in an even split and not slower than 2:13 average (including the turn).

I wouldn’t say that the plan went out of the window as soon as I started the 6k, but in the first 500m I just rowed what felt like a fine pace. After 500m I finally started to adhere to the plan and slowed down, but it was hard to slow down slower than 2:09 without letting the stroke rate drop below 25spm.

After 2km I passed in front of our rowing club, and noticed the head coach going out with the launch, following three singles.

The final 1000m before the turn were a bit more difficult. The lake was wobbly. Some weird standing wave. So here I finally had my 2:11 pace.

I turned around and started rowing. That’s where I noticed that what I thought was windstill weather was an ever so slight breeze, now a headwind. In the beginning nothing was wrong, but then I started to have to rate up to 26spm to hold 2:12. Then I started to drop to 2:15.

With 1500m to go I rowed in the remains of the wake of the coach launch. It wasn’t really a wake, but today the weather, wind direction, and temperature all collaborated to make the lake very bouncy and wobbly. I cannot explain it, but under certain conditions, standing waves seem to not be dampened at all. I started to get really tired, and also angry, for still rowing too hard in the beginning of the row.


Work Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|06000| 26:37 |02:13.0| 25.5| 179 | 185 | 8.8
Workout Summary
--|06000| 26:37 | 2:13.0| 25.5| 179 | 185 | 8.8

The following image is from rowsandall.com. I used 0.7 m/s as wind speed (as indicated by nearby weather stations). It shows that even though the pace dropped, I was probably rowing at a constant power anyway. The distinct power (and pace) drop in the last 1000m was me counting strokes and being quite desperate. Only with 300m to go I was able to get my act together and start pulling a bit harder again. Well, average under 2:13.0 so mission accomplished.capture

The following illustrates one of the new plots I have enabled on rowsandall.com. It’s basically an interactive plot where you can choose your axes. You can clearly see two groups of blue points. When I look at the time into the row, I started on the right hand side of the top group of blue dots, i.e. at high drive energy and power. Then I worked my way to the left, i.e. as the first 3km went by, my drive energy (leg force times drive length) decreased. The headwind part is the bottom group of blue dots. Again, I started on the right, and worked my way to the left, staying in that bottom group.

download-17

A list of my 6k times

Today – 26:37 (2:13.0) – with turn

21 Sep 2016 – 26:11 (2:10.9) – no turn

2 Apr 2016 – 27:22 (2:16.8) – with turn / wind / chop

26 Sep 2015 – 28:09 (2:20.9) – with turn / slow / sloppy / choppy

19 Sep 2015 – 26:15 (2:11.2) – with turn / wind

A little over a week to race time. Must. Get. Act. Together.

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curves

Sep 21 2016

Wednesday: 6k Test On The Water

So for today the plan said “Row 2x3k full out, short break just to turn”. After yesterday’s nice trip to the castle, I thought why not make it a full 6k, starting at the castle? On Greg’s blog post of yesterday, there was a discussion on training full pressure turns, and I think it makes sense to train with the mirror as well. This trajectory:

6k

So I set out to do a long (5.2km) warming up to get to the start line at the Veveří castle.

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Then I set off for my 6k. The plan was to row at 25-26 spm for the first 2k, then 26spm for 2k, and finally increase to 28-29spm. In the spring, I did some theoretical mechanical rowing efficiency simulations for head race pace, and it seemed that 27-29spm is the ideal stroke rate for a single. I really have to work on rating up but staying light, from the beginning of the row. I think it also helps with the pacing. When I start at 25spm, pushing with long strong leg pushes, after 15 minutes my legs start to be “empty”. This is actually exactly what happened today.

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The average drive force is an estimate (assuming a constant stroke length). I think I was pushing too hard in the first five minutes, then lacking strength in the final 10 minutes.

Did I do the turns well? I have indicated where they are in the second plot. Here is a zoom in to the “serpentines”:

curves

I think that went pretty well. I slowed down only a little. With these turns, the idea is always to connect the turning points with straight lines. You have to look in the tiny rear view mirror and row towards the turning point, which is a few meters off the bank on the inside of the turn. Then you pass the turning point and head straight to the next one. It was hard, though, to find the turning points in the mirror. The bank is grey rock and green trees on a background of grey and green, and even the reflection of the forest in the water makes it green. Well, I managed, but I had to turn my head a few times to check. I would hate to run into the bank.

The other point I indicated in the graph is “wake”. At “Rokle”, I met a pair and two singles. Then, a few minutes later, with about 1500m to go, the coach’s launch passed me, going in the opposite direction. It wasn’t going fast and it didn’t throw a big wake, but because it was going at an angle to my trajectory, I ended up rowing in a small wake for a few hundred meters. At a point where I was really tired. The result was that I didn’t keep my technique up, started to row sloppy, and I slowed down a lot.

This broke me. I had been rowing with the aim to get the average pace under 2:10. The speedcoach had started counting a few seconds before I really started rowing at the start line, so I started at an average pace of 8:00, and gradually worked to bring that down. I was at 2:11.2 average pace when I entered the wake area, and 2:11.4 when I left it.

I finished in 26:11.0 minutes and an average pace of 2:10.9. Average stroke rate 26.3. Average heart rate 177 bpm. Pretty much a maximum effort but not well paced at all. I need to rate higher but row lighter in the beginning of the 6k.

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