concept2

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Sep 14 2016

Monday – Wednesday: business trip

Monday

Traveled to Brussels through Munich. Then dinner in the hotel with colleagues. No training.

Tuesday

Hotel fitness at 10am. I am not in my usual hotel. In the Hilton Brussels City, where I had to stay to be with the colleagues from the US, you pay more for a smaller room, and the hotel is further away from normal streets and restaurants. But the gym has an indoor rower. A model C with a PM2 monitor. Just like I had in the old days. I rowed a 2k warming up, then 10 minutes of spinning and then I did 3×15 push-ups, sit-ups, bench pulls, pistol squats and that was it. 45 minutes of exercise before a long day of meetings followed by a 3 hour business dinner.

Wednesday

3×20 min of steady state with 1 minute of rest. A quite sweaty affair in the very hot fitness center. In the first interval I just rowed for 10 minutes, then did a Wolverine L4 4/3/2/1 sequence at 20/21/22/23 spm to break the bore. In the second interval I did 4/4/4/4/4min at 170/180/190/180/170 W. The most successful boredom reduction strategy was the last interval. I started at 190.5 W for one minute and then let the average drop by 0.5 W per minute, which means you row at 170W in the final minute and end up with an average of 180.0W.

image image image

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Sep 8 2016

Thursday – 3x20min Steady State

Again compromising with my training week because of the workshops. Also, I found out yesterday that my own single doesn’t fit on the big trailer to Brandys. As I don’t want to drive my own trailer, I will have to race in a club boat coming weekend. So I will do my Friday’s workout on Friday morning, in my own single, and it will be the 2x3km that I had planned for Saturday.

I will take a day off on Saturday, visiting Prague with my son. Then race on Sunday.

Today was simple. 3x20min on the erg (no time to go to the rowing club) and I let the power vary a bit – but tried to stay around 180W.

Lactate was 1.9 mmol/L after 40 minutes and 1.5 mmol/L (!) after 60.20160908-191755-sled_2016-09-08t19-51-30zgmt2-strokes20160908-191828

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lactate3

Sep 6 2016

Synek’s race & Lactate riddles

Synek’s race

On Sunday I proceeded to make my plan for this week. As usual.

The only thing is that I forgot that my kids will be racing in Brandys nad Labem, a regatta organized by the Brandys rowing club (president Ondrej Synek), and it doesn’t make sense to be the only family member remaining in Brno, let alone that my single would travel to the race venue anyway because Lenka will be racing it.

So my plan to do a 2x3km row on Saturday and a recovery run on Sunday would be difficult to execute.

To make things worse, I am in a full week of a training program. At our local site, luckily, but it means that I am doing the training from 8am to 5pm and have to do my day to day job before 8am and after 5pm, which leaves little time for training.

Plan goes to the dustbin. I signed up for the Masters 1x race on Sunday, and designed an alternative plan.

Sunday

On Sunday I did a recovery bike ride with the family. Nothing straining. Just a nice ride. Didn’t bother to wear a heart rate belt.

Monday

The plan (and the revised plan) called for sprintervals, but there was too much wind to go OTW. Also, I had a bad night of sleep from Sunday to Monday, so I decided for an additional rest day.

Tuesday

Today’s workout was 6x10min at 190W, with lactate measurements after each 10 minutes. After last week’s step test, this would confirm that my lactate level at 190W would stay steady and below 2.0 mmol/L.

The reality was different.

Here is the table with the record:

time Power Lactate HR Max
10 193 2.3 160
20 194 1.9 162
30 194 1.8 168
40 195 3.7? 173
50 190 2.7 171
60 191 2.8 174

The first measurement was a bit high, but I concluded that could be a “start” effect, and as soon as lactate “burning” would set in, my lactate level would stabilize. I seem to remember something to that effect described in the Olbrecht book.

The measurements at 20 and 30 minutes seemed to confirm the theory, so the 3.7 mmol/L after 40 minutes was a shock. Perhaps a failed measurement? I didn’t have time to redo the measurement because I had to go do another 10 minute interval.

After 50 and 60 minutes I measured clearly above 2.0 and my perceived exertion was in line with that. I seem to be able to detect increasing lactate quite well. It suddenly seems harder to hold the required power. Until 40 minutes, I had to force myself to go below 200W and I ended up rowing a few watts above the required 190W and things felt easy. Also, it was easy to reproduce stroke after stroke very similar Watt numbers. When I get tired, there are more power oscillations, and I feel it.

The 40 minute measurement is probably a faulty one. I didn’t feel tired yet.

My theory is that I was too close to the threshold. My hypothesis is that my reduced fitness has shifted my threshold to the left and also makes me produce much more lactate when above the threshold. So I was rowing on the edge and moved over it after 40 minutes. As soon as I moved over the edge, lactate shot up.

lactate3

As a scientist, I would feel uncomfortable with this level of speculation and hypothesis, but I accept that Lactate measuring, as everything in sports science, is as much an art form as a science. If you have to do a full battery of tests and measurements before you make a decision, you lose too much valuable training time.

I am retreating to 180W for my steady state rows and will measure lactate after 60 minutes.

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erg 004

Aug 31 2016

4x2km with difficulty

I am in the first week of a 6 week block with a focus on “Aerobic Power” (or AT/VO2 training zone). Today the AEP training was the good old Pete Plan 4x2km, at 5 minutes rest. Here are the training zones I am referring to:

Definition of Training Zones
Definition of Training Zones

The Pete Plan way of doing this is to take a target power (or pace) and try to hold it, then go all out in the final interval. The session average is the new target pace.

A year ago I read books on rowing training (for Masters rowers) and a book on swimming training (Olbrecht). This year I am reading “Watt-Messung im Radsport und Triathlon” (English original “Training and Racing with a Power Meter”) by Allen and Coggan, the guys behind TrainingPeaks.com. The book is focusing on cycling training. They have a different philosophy on intervals and recommend to continue doing the intervals until you are not able to do it at a minimum percentage (of Power) of the third interval. Yes, the third interval. Not the first or the second, but the third. The idea is that in the first two intervals you are searching for the “right” power and in the third one you have found it. Then you continue until you cannot hold

  • 95%-97% of that power for 20 minute intervals
  • 94%-96% for 10 minute intervals
  • 93%-95% for 5 minute intervals
  • 91%-92% for 3 minute intervals
  • 88%-90% for 1 and 2 minute intervals
  • 85%-88% for 30 second intervals

For rowing on the Concept2 erg, where you can keep your Watts in a very narrow band from stroke to stroke, it is easier to find the “right” power already in the first interval, but I decided to stick to the book’s “third interval” rule. In cycling, the power meter swings much more than in OTE rowing, so I guessed that I needed to row with less constant feedback. To simulate that I covered part of the PM5 so I would only see heart rate and meters left,  then checking the average power during the break.

So a 5% drop signals the last interval. When executing the workout I didn’t reread the relevant section of the book and I wrongly remembered a 10% drop. Here is the result:

erg 004

So in Watts, this is

  1. 244W – 104%
  2. 242W – 103%
  3. 234W – 100%
  4. 219W – 93%

It was a very hard workout. I wanted to stop after 2 intervals.

A few pictures have emerged from last weekend’s regatta:

My opponent (the guy I had to catch up with) in the mM 1x race
My opponent (the guy I had to catch up with) in the mM 1x race
Me on 2 seat in the losing eight
Me on 2 seat in the losing eight

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lactate1

Aug 31 2016

Tuesday – Bike & Lactate step test

Morning

Commute to work on the bicycle.

https://www.strava.com/activities/693940250/analysis

Average heart rate 132 bpm so definitely a regeneration workout. Although, at one point, at the beginning of what Strava calls the “Olomoucká I” segment, a 500m long climb of 27 meters elevation difference (5% average grade, 10% max grade), another cyclist was just behind me, and I had to push a bit harder to avoid him taking over. That pushed my heart rate up to 176 bpm.

Evening

The post summer vacation / pre winter season lactate step test on the Concept2 erg. I did 6 intervals of 10 minutes at increasing power, taking a finger prick lactate measure after every step.


Workout Summary - media/20160830-194351-sled_2016-08-30T20-14-40ZGMT+2.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14906|70:04.0|02:21.0|21.6|153.4|176.0|09.9

Workout Details
#-|SDist|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|Lactate|Power
00|02494|21.1|138.0|153.0|09.9| 1.7 | 170
01|02540|21.4|148.9|162.0|09.9| 1.6 | 180
02|02520|21.6|156.5|165.0|09.7| 1.7 | 190
03|02552|21.9|160.9|172.0|09.7| 2.0 | 200
04|02554|22.5|166.7|176.0|11.2| 4.6 | 210
05|02246|21.0|149.1|159.0|08.9| 3.1 | 160

I started at 170 W and increased with 10W after each interval. After reaching 4.6 mmol/L at 210W and feeling like you feel at 4.6 mmol/L, I didn’t continue to 220W but took the last interval as a cooling down.

The goal is to determine the threshold, under which lactate is flat. For me, this seems to be just under 200W, but I will confirm this next week by rowing 6x10min at a constant power of 195W, taking a lactate measurement every 10 minutes.

Here is the graph:

lactate1

The “Model” line is a line that I “fitted” through last year’s data. For comparison, here is the graph that I compiled in November 2015.

Lactate measurements November 2015
Lactate measurements November 2015.

So in comparison with November 2015, my steady state lactate level is higher, the step is more pronounced and seems to be shifted to the left. I guess that corresponds to being in a worse shape, fitness wise. Vacation effect, I think.

We’ll see if this is confirmed next week, but it looks like my steady state should not go above 195W.

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20160824-192305-sled_2016-08-24T20-48-53ZGMT+2.strokes20160824-193915

Aug 24 2016

Dusting off the erg – CTC

The plan for today was to do a 6×10 minute steady state step test at 170/180/190/200/210/220W and measure lactate after every 10 minutes. I am eager to pick up lactate testing and erging again after a long summer with zero erg time.

Got my lactate measuring device ready and some test strips. Note to self:

  1. Order new strips.

The current ones are nearing their expiry date. Set erg monitor to 10 min  / 1 min rest and took off at 170W.

Wipe. Wash. Wipe. Prick. Ouch. Wipe. Prepare strip. Drop.

Low battery. Ouch.

Note to self:

  1. Order lactate test strips
  2. Buy a new battery for the lactate meter

Well – it didn’t make sense to continue, and I changed to plan B. Do the CTC of this month. I had to skip the July because the 3x2813m session didn’t fit into my plan and I wanted to maximize boat time, so I was keen on getting a score in for this month’s CTC, which is a funny one:

Row four sprints during August.
(They don’t need to be done on the same day.)
One 400m, one 300m, one 200m, and one 100m.
If you row more than one of the pieces as intervals each must be from a standing start.

Find the pace (time for 500m) for each of the four rows from your performance monitor.
Simply add the four paces together to give you an entry for this CTC.

I rowed them in the following order: 400m, 200m, 100m, 300m, with roughly five minutes of active rest in between and of course from a standing start.

During the active rest after the 400m, I noticed that my Garmin Ant heart rate strap behaved funny. It seemed stuck to a value of 130bpm, while I was gasping for air and my heart rate was definitely still higher than that value after an exhausting 400m row.

So I sprinted to my OTW sports bag and grabbed the Tickr heart rate belt.

Note to self:

  1. Order new lactate strips
  2. Buy battery for lactate meter
  3. Buy battery for Garmin HR belt

Here are the plots for the CTC pieces:

20160824-192436-sled_2016-08-24T20-24-25ZGMT+2.strokes20160824-193940
400m – HR belt misbehaving
20160824-192606-sled_2016-08-24T20-35-14ZGMT+2.strokes20160824-193934
200m
20160824-192736-sled_2016-08-24T20-42-09ZGMT+2.strokes20160824-193926
100m
20160824-192305-sled_2016-08-24T20-48-53ZGMT+2.strokes20160824-193915
300m

Tomorrow: Steady State. Probably OTW followed by trailer loading.

Note to self:

  • Don’t forget to put the Tickr HR belt back in the rowing bag!!

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Bily Potok 003

Jul 9 2016

Wednesday – Saturday

Wednesday

Too windy to row, so 45 minutes on the erg. Steady State.

Thursday 

Rest day.

Friday

Had to row in the afternoon, because I didn’t have the car in the morning. It was a warm day, and a Friday afternoon, and it is school vacation, so the lake had turned into a giant swimming pool again. I did steady state in the single, with start practices. I set CrewNerd to 250m with 2:30 rest, and started each 250m with a start plus a few strokes, then paddled.

I caught a crab in one of the starts, right in front of a little beach with a few young ladies in bikinis watching me.

Saturday

No rowing. Romana and I took the train from Brno to Vlkov, a small village about 30km into the highlands. From there it is a very pleasant ride on mountain bikes, along a small stream called Bílý Potok. What makes it special is the abundance of old watermills, that are now turned into weekend residences, most of them in a very tasteful way. Another fun aspect of this ride is that there are no less than 16 places where you have to ride through the stream with your bike.

Bily Potok 002

Bily Potok 003

Lunch
Lunch
Bily Potok 004
We rode through most of them, but we waded through this one

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