concept2

bokeh_plot-18

Nov 22 2016

Tuesday – Steady State

This is going to be a hard week to row according to my training plan. Both my boss and my former boss are in town. Yesterday, a full day with my boss and his team, followed by a dinner.

Today was a normal day. But tomorrow, I will have dinner with my former boss and his wife, and a few other colleagues, to celebrate is retirement. And on Thursday I will go to a concert.

As usual after a later dinner, I didn’t sleep well. So when it was time to do my steady state workout this evening, I was tired and not motivated. Still managed to row 12.5km.

myimage-7

bokeh_plot-19

I have also worked a bit on the performance of the rowsandall.com site. I can now make a plot of all my strokes over the past year, without crashing the site:

bokeh_plot-18

Yes, that’s all strokes rowed on the erg in the past 365 days.

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myimage-3

Nov 20 2016

More Steady State & Bad Technique

Just a 15km Steady State row, partitioned as 6x2500m, with the first 3 intervals rowed as 1000/750/500/250, and the final three intervals as 250/500/750/1000. In the first interval, I rowed at 18/19/20/21spm, in the second one 19/20/21/22spm, and in the third one 20/21/22/23spm. In the second half of the row I climbed down those same ladders in reverse order.

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Bad Technique

On Friday, I introduced a new parameter, the ratio of the average and peak drive force, and I found a study by Kleshnev that links this parameter to rowing style. Going one step further, I wanted to know if the value could be used to fingerprint bad technique. I set up a 250m intervals with 20 seconds rest and rowed. In the first and final intervals, I rowed my “normal” stroke, which I believe is decent, technique-wise.

In the other intervals I rowed exaggerated versions of common examples of bad technique. Here is the resulting table. I don’t see a correlation.

Fratio Ldrive
Good 0.58 1.40
Bad 1 0.56 1.38
Bad 2 0.59 1.38
Bad 3 0.57 1.45
Bad 4 0.59 1.41
Good 0.56 1.38

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bokeh_plot-11

Nov 19 2016

Saturday – more Steady State

It was rainy and dull, so no good weather to go out running. Today, I programmed 20k in the PM5 and rowed it down to zero. A few sessions ago I came up with a 750m/500m/250m sequence and Greg Smith, the quantified rower perfected that to 1000m/750m/500m/250m which gives you a nice 2500m interval. The fun part is to try and row each part of the 2500m at a prescribed stroke rate and work on consistency. It really makes long workouts fly by.

I also had a little fun with the interval editor on rowsandall.com and created these monster stats:

Workout Summary - media/20161119-1200070o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|20000|86:14.0|02:09.4|174.5|19.5|153.7|166.0|11.9
W-|20000|86:16.0|02:09.4|172.9|19.4|153.0|166.0|11.9
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|166.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01000|04:23.7|02:11.9|163.1|18.0|130.3|140.0|12.6
02|00750|03:08.6|02:05.7|176.2|19.1|142.9|149.0|12.5
03|00500|02:02.9|02:02.9|188.3|20.2|151.5|154.0|12.1
04|00250|01:00.7|02:01.5|195.4|21.4|154.3|156.0|11.6
05|01000|04:12.8|02:06.4|173.4|18.7|149.4|155.0|12.7
06|00750|03:08.9|02:05.9|175.4|19.3|148.0|151.0|12.4
07|00500|02:02.7|02:02.7|189.4|20.1|154.2|157.0|12.2
08|00250|01:00.7|02:01.4|196.5|20.9|158.9|161.0|11.8
09|01000|04:11.8|02:05.9|175.5|18.7|155.1|158.0|12.8
10|00750|03:06.9|02:04.6|180.8|19.3|156.3|158.0|12.5
11|00500|02:03.2|02:03.2|187.1|20.3|160.0|162.0|12.0
12|00250|00:58.1|01:56.2|192.4|21.1|161.7|163.0|12.3
13|01000|04:15.0|02:07.5|175.1|19.4|157.7|163.0|12.1
14|00750|03:05.4|02:03.6|185.5|20.3|160.6|163.0|11.9
15|00500|02:01.6|02:01.6|195.1|21.3|163.9|166.0|11.6
16|00250|02:43.4|05:26.7|111.2|18.0|129.3|165.0|05.1 - drink + 1.6mmol/L
17|01000|04:46.8|02:23.4|166.4|18.6|148.2|159.0|11.2 - playlist issue
18|00750|03:11.2|02:07.4|168.7|19.4|153.4|159.0|12.2
19|00500|02:04.8|02:04.8|180.2|20.4|157.2|159.0|11.8
20|00250|00:59.7|01:59.5|186.9|21.3|158.2|159.0|11.8
21|01000|04:16.7|02:08.4|169.3|18.6|156.3|160.0|12.5
22|00750|03:10.7|02:07.1|170.5|19.3|157.8|159.0|12.3
23|00500|02:05.3|02:05.3|178.1|20.5|158.5|160.0|11.7
24|00250|01:00.6|02:01.2|192.1|21.4|161.0|164.0|11.6
25|01000|04:18.0|02:09.0|163.8|18.4|157.3|163.0|12.6
26|00750|03:12.6|02:08.4|165.4|19.5|154.9|158.0|12.0
27|00500|02:05.8|02:05.8|175.5|20.2|156.3|158.0|11.8
28|00250|01:01.3|02:02.7|185.2|21.3|158.9|161.0|11.5
29|01000|04:20.8|02:10.4|159.0|18.8|154.2|160.0|12.2
30|00750|03:10.9|02:07.3|169.6|19.6|156.1|160.0|12.0
31|00500|02:04.5|02:04.5|181.5|20.7|160.3|162.0|11.7
32|00250|01:00.1|02:00.1|182.8|21.5|160.5|162.0|11.6 - 1.0 mmol/L

I paddled the final 250m of the fourth interval and stopped to take a lactate measurement: 1.6 mmol/L.

Then in the first 1000m of the second 10k, my playlist stopped, so I had to get off the erg and restart it.

At the end of the row, I measured lactate again. By now, that was very tricky because sweat was dripping from all my body parts. I was wearing a moisture wicking long-sleeved shirt. The moisture wicking combined with the high humidity in my rowing cave resulted in me being covered in “dew”, which steadily dripped off the sleeve ends. Hard to not contaminate the lactate strip. Anyway, I measured a low value of 1.0 mmol/L. I think it is time to man up and go 10W higher.

bokeh_plot-7

bokeh_plot-8

Stroke power distribution
Stroke power distribution

For the period between September 1 and today, my Power histogram on the erg looks like this:

bokeh_plot-11

So 80% of my strokes below 200W (which is steady state). The peak is around 185W, and 50% of the strokes are at a lower power.

Also this interesting plot is available for everybody who uses rowsandall.com.

 

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capture

Nov 19 2016

Friday – 12.5km Steady State / force curve

Friday was a bridge day between a Bank Holiday and a weekend. I decided to take a holiday and catch up with some maintenance on the site, as well as preparation for a workshop on Monday. I ended up taking more time on the website, and will have to prepare the Monday workshop today.

At the end of the afternoon, I descended to my rowing cave. First I played a bit with the official Concept2 smartphone app “ErgData”, and then I reverted to my beloved Painsled app to crank out a 12.5km steady state. I wanted to do more, but I ran out of time.

Here are a few new plots. I am still looking for the “signature” set of plots for a workout.

bokeh_plot-9

I have added a new metric to Rowsandall.com. It is the ratio of the average drive force vs the peak drive force, and it tells you something about the force curve. For a perfectly “flat” stroke profile, this ratio would be 1.0. For any sort of triangular profile, the ratio would be 0.5. The higher the value, the longer the force plateau during your drive. It seems from the plot above that I am pretty constant throughout the 19 to 22spm stroke rates I rowed in this session.

Here is a study by Kleshnev on the force curve in rowing.  Here is a key plot from the study. “Classical style” would give you a force ratio close to 0.5. “Simultaneous style” is significantly higher (looks like 0.7 by eye). Kleshnev is not making conclusions on what is better. It is interesting that the tables in the study show force ratios between 0.4 and 0.6, but not much higher, for the rowers that he has in his database.

capture
Copied from Kleshnev

bokeh_plot-10

This plot shows work per stroke and power output. The average power was 174W (yes I have added annotations to the plots), and the work per stroke was 600 J. However, the plot clearly shows that it is dropping slowly but steadily during the workout.

Stats:


Workout Summary - media/20161118-1610052o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|12508|52:38.0|02:06.3|174.0|19.7|151.3|163.0|12.0
W-|12508|52:38.0|02:06.3|174.0|19.7|151.3|163.0|12.0
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|163.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|02500|10:23.6|02:04.7|178.3|19.3|141.9|153.0|12.4
02|02500|10:24.5|02:04.9|180.0|20.2|150.5|159.0|11.9
03|02500|10:37.6|02:07.5|169.1|19.3|150.2|159.0|12.2
04|02500|10:29.1|02:05.8|176.2|20.3|156.0|163.0|11.8
05|02508|10:43.9|02:08.3|166.5|19.5|157.6|162.0|12.0

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myimage-2

Nov 16 2016

New Painsled beta, steady state erg and mind games; and playing with data

Painsled iOS published a new beta version of their Concept2 data capture app. It’s really a very promising application and it has now gotten even better. Of all the ways to capture erg data, Painsled is the most complete. Now they have added stroke force profile feedback to their app, so besides safely capturing all your strokes for post workout analysis, there is also a useful screen to see how consistent you are from stroke to stroke, while you are doing the workout.

This being a beta, it comes with very little explanation, but the graph looks like a standard stroke force profile, but it is overlaid on the past few strokes. Also, during the recovery, there is a bar which moves across the screen to a second bar. I think that when you take the catch exactly when the two white bars match, you are exactly copying your previous stroke (or perhaps the average over the past few strokes). I need to ask the developer what it does exactly, but I think it is very powerful, especially for steady state, where working on technique and stroke consistency is a big sub-goal of each workout.

Having data captured in painsled, I send them by email to workouts @ rowsandall.com, where they automatically end up in my account.  Here are the stats of the workout as they arrived.


Workout Summary - media/mailbox_attachments/2016/11/16/aa5e11a267c142448e0aaedb6cd95eea.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14999|63:31.0|02:07.0|176.6|20.2|158.9|174.0|11.7
W-|15005|63:31.0|02:07.0|176.4|20.2|158.9|174.0|11.7
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|174.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01179|04:57.9|02:06.4|170.4|20.1|130.1|150.0|11.8
02|01196|05:00.4|02:05.6|176.8|19.5|149.4|154.0|12.3
03|01204|04:54.7|02:02.4|191.6|20.4|158.1|165.0|12.0
04|01212|05:01.8|02:04.5|182.0|19.9|160.8|163.0|12.1
05|01196|05:00.6|02:05.6|177.9|20.0|160.4|167.0|11.9
06|01214|05:02.4|02:04.6|182.3|20.5|164.2|168.0|11.8
07|01124|05:09.0|02:17.4|160.1|19.8|155.4|168.0|11.0
08|01216|04:59.8|02:03.3|188.0|20.8|165.4|170.0|11.7
09|01192|04:59.1|02:05.5|177.6|20.0|166.6|170.0|12.0
10|01202|05:01.0|02:05.2|180.1|20.3|167.5|171.0|11.8
11|01203|05:00.2|02:04.8|182.3|20.5|169.3|174.0|11.7
12|01139|05:10.6|02:16.4|167.3|20.5|164.1|174.0|10.7
13|00726|03:13.9|02:13.5|147.3|19.9|152.0|159.0|11.3

That’s basically an hour of “Just Row” at steady state. But wait, to break the boredom I had some structure in the workout. After the business travel and another long day at work (and a “Monthly Operations Review”, a 4 hour marathon meeting) I arrived home empty, tired, and not motivated to work out. I had dragged myself to the erg and after 2k of warming up I came up with a mind game that might motivate me to row a full hour.

I decided to row 8x1500m, with each 1500m divided as 750m at 18spm, 500m at 20spm, and 250m at 22spm. Somehow, distance based rowing always makes the time go by faster to me, compared to time based intervals.

I paddled the final 250m of the fourth interval and drank some water. Finally I completed the workout without problems. On rowsandall.com, I can add this interval information after the fact. The workout summary then becomes:


Workout Summary - media/20161116-20100719o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15004|63:30.0|02:07.0|176.6|20.2|158.9|174.0|11.7
W-|14755|61:59.0|02:06.1|177.9|20.2|159.2|174.0|11.8
R-|00250|01:31.0|03:03.3|094.0|18.8|142.7|174.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|02000|08:23.5|02:05.9|173.6|20.0|137.6|151.0|11.9 - Warming up
02|01500|06:09.9|02:03.3|187.5|20.0|156.0|165.0|12.2
03|01500|06:11.0|02:03.7|185.9|20.2|161.6|167.0|12.0
04|01500|06:15.1|02:05.0|180.3|20.4|161.0|168.0|11.8
05|01250|05:13.0|02:05.2|179.3|20.1|164.3|168.0|11.9
06|01500|06:12.0|02:04.0|184.5|20.4|162.4|170.0|11.8
07|01500|06:12.8|02:04.3|183.6|20.5|167.4|171.0|11.8
08|01500|06:13.9|02:04.6|182.7|20.5|168.1|173.0|11.7
09|01500|06:15.3|02:05.1|180.2|20.5|168.2|174.0|11.7
10|01005|04:53.6|02:26.1|134.1|19.3|152.2|172.0|10.7 - Cooling Down

myimage
Pie Chart

And here are the plots:

myimage-1
Power Pie Chart

myimage-2

The Work per stroke for all strokes (except the 250m of paddling in the middle):

bokeh_plot

Same plot, but only for the 8x1500m (excluding the 250m of paddling):

bokeh_plot-1

Ah, so the “structured mind game” helped to make the strokes more consistent! Just for fun, peak and average force for the same stroke selection:

bokeh_plot-2

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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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map

Nov 9 2016

Steady State row and bike ride

Monday

Working from the Prague office. Train ride to Prague. Then full day of work, finished by a dinner with my sister who happened to in Prague for business. Then a bus ride home. Got up at 5:20am. In bed at 00:45, technically Tuesday morning.

Tuesday

Notebook switch at work, which meant I was 4 hours without computer, and after that spending a big proportion of my time setting up my environment to my needs. I arrived at home tired and frustrated. Still managed to get down to the basement to do an erg row, but stopped after 10km to continue watching TV (US elections).

The rowsandall.com site now gives two kinds of Pie chart. One is based on heart rate zones and the other is based on Power zones.

myimage myimage-2

The left plot is the power based Pie chart. The right plot is the heart rate based one. I think there is merit in using the power based one. I pushed on the gas from the first minute, and I think the left graph reflects that, with most of the row in UT1 zone and about a quarter of the row in the AT zone.

I contemplated staying up and watching the US elections, but in the end I decided to go to bed.

Wednesday

Well, this is certainly not going to be business as usual!

One of the first things I did this morning was checking the results of the US presidential elections. I can’t say I am surprised, having been in the US often enough, but definitely this will shake things up, and I am not sure whether for the good or the bad. Let’s say it is certainly an impulse for Europe to get its act together.

I cycled to work. It was cold, this morning, -2C according to the weather report, and it felt like that. A cold, sunny winter morning.

https://www.strava.com/activities/770315065/overview

map

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