concept2

Jan 25 2016

5k PB without reserve gas tank

The 5k isn’t a distance I row frequently. I live in a country where all the endurance tests are a 6k. There is always more reason to do a 6k, and the 5k seems too close to do a separate attempt. One could then also do a 7k or a 4k or a 3245m row and keep records of personal best times.

But the 5k is on the list of nonathlon events, so once a winter I row it. And because it is this month’s Cross Team Challenge, I had to do it in January. And because I will be out of town for business for the rest of the week, I had to do it today.

I wasn’t sure about the strategy. My PB was 18:26 and I feel I can go faster. On the other hand, I spent a lot of time snow shoveling and speed skating over the weekend, so I guess my reserves are quite depleted. I decided to aim for a PB anyway, and the plan was to negative split to something between 18:16 and 18:26.

I set up pace boats at 1:50 pace (18:20), 1:51 (18:30) and a final, slow one at 1:52 pace (18:40) to have something to keep behind me in case I would go bust. That’s how certain I was.

Ended up rowing a length behind the fast pace boat, a length ahead of the second one. Tried to create light between me and the 1:51 boat and not lose too much on the 1:50 one. The plan was to then push on the gas in the last 1500m and get the average down to close to 1:50, row right through and finish a bow ball in front of him.

Reality was different. With 1500m to go I started to push, then with 1000m to go I couldn’t hold 1:49 and started to see the occasional 1:52. I decided to back down a bit and just stay ahead of the 1:51 pace boat. With 500m to go the predicted end time was oscillating between 18:25 and 18:26. That gave me enough energy to push at least a bit and get 18:24 on the predicted end time.
Workout Summary - Jan 26, 2016 --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|05000|18:24.9|01:50.5|259.5|27.0|175.7|183.0|10.1 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|Comments 01|00500|01:50.7|01:50.7|257.9|26.6|151.7|169.0|10.2| 02|00500|01:51.0|01:51.0|256.1|26.0|170.1|172.0|10.4| 03|00500|01:50.6|01:50.6|258.9|26.6|174.2|176.0|10.2| 04|00500|01:50.6|01:50.6|258.5|26.6|176.3|178.0|10.2| 05|00500|01:50.0|01:50.0|262.6|26.7|178.5|181.0|10.2| 06|00500|01:50.4|01:50.4|259.9|26.6|179.8|181.0|10.2| 07|00500|01:50.3|01:50.3|261.1|27.2|180.5|181.0|10.0| 08|00500|01:49.7|01:49.7|265.3|27.4|181.2|182.0|10.0| 09|00500|01:51.0|01:51.0|256.2|27.6|181.8|183.0|09.8| 10|00500|01:50.6|01:50.6|258.7|28.8|181.6|183.0|09.4|

In the first graph you can see very well the short pace dips around 11 and 13 minutes. That is a sign of trouble.

Happy with the result. Still believe I can go faster when well rested, but I will leave it at this attempt.

Romana registered me for a 2k erg race coming Saturday. I will be up against our club’s fastest Masters rower. He rowed a 6:20.5 2k in December and wants to repeat it now that he is 50, to set a new Czech record for the 50-59 category. I will be flying home on Friday after a week in Brussels, so we’ll see what the 2k brings me.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 9 • Tags: 5k, concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, training

Jan 22 2016

Plan, Periodise, Train, Adjust and Win Part II

On December 18th, 5 weeks ago, I did the two speed lactate test. Read my blog of 18 December about it.

Today, I planned to repeat it. I tried to copy the protocol as much as possible. So first a Fletcher warming up:

Higher heart rates than 5 weeks ago.

Then the main event, two 1k tests spaced 15 minutes apart. The first one at head race pace. Second one at 2k pace or faster (full out allowed). I looked up my stroke rate of 5 weeks ago. They were 27 spm for the first one and 31 spm for the second one.

Again, a higher heart rate in the second 1k.

Workout Summary - Jan 22, 2016 --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|02000|06:58.5|01:44.6|305.6|29.5|173.9|185.0|09.7 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|Comments 01|01000|03:36.5|01:48.3|275.8|27.4|168.7|180.0|10.1| 2.6 mmol/L (1.9) 02|01000|03:22.0|01:41.0|339.9|31.8|178.8|185.0|09.3| 4.1 mmol/L (3.2)

So, compared to 5 weeks ago, there are the following differences:

2 seconds faster split on the first 1k (stroke rate 0.4 spm up)
HR 10 bpm higher on the first 1k
Lactate 0.4 mmol/L lower after the first 1k
2.3 seconds faster split on the second 1k (stroke rate 1 spm up)
HR 7 bpm higher on the 2nd 1k
Lactate 0.4 mmol/L lower

So I am faster at lower lactate but higher heart rate. This sounds plausible. For the aerobic energy path way, the heart rate has to go up when delivering higher power.

In a graph, it looks like this:

To be honest, I had hoped for a right shifted first point and a steeper curve. You can’t say I didn’t try. The second 1k is a Season’s Best.

I did another lactate test after a 2k cooling down. 2.3 mmol/L

So I guess my aerobic fitness has increased. Next test in 5 weeks.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 9 • Tags: concept2, erg, lactate, OTE, rowing, test, testing

Jan 20 2016

Concessions

Monday

Plan: Free form steady state

Execution: Did a 4x2000m “biathlon game” Concept2 with 250m penalty rounds each interval for

Exceeding 190 strokes – penalty round 250m for every 10 strokes)
A 250m round for each second above 2:00 average pace for the interval (2:00.9 – zero penalty; 2:01.0 – 2:01.9 – one penalty; and so on)
A 250m round for each part of the interval where HR was 161 or higher.

I ended up doing a few penalty rounds as you can imagine. It made the time pass quick.

Tuesday

Plan: No training, rest day

Execution:

Alarm clock at 2:30 am to catch taxi to airport, then flight to Brussels
10 am to 5pm – meetings in Brussels
7pm to 11:30pm – travel home by flight to Vienna, then taxi home

What a rest day!

Wednesday

Plan: 3×20 minute steady state erg @ 200 W

Difficulty to wake up. Decided to work from home and do the workout before work. Would give me time in the evening to spend with my family.

Execution:

Wrote important email briefing on Tuesday’s meeting to my boss and other stakeholders. I bring home a few facts that may change a few important decisions. Then quickly sat down on erg. Between this and my first meeting of the day, there was only just enough time to do the workout and a quick shower
A 1km warming up, followed by the 3x20min
Power seemed to come easy. HR was high but the perceived rate of exertion (PRE) was OK and I didn’t have difficulty holding the 200W average.
Started second interval. RPE was a bit higher now. Still holding 200W.
A few minutes into the second interval, my audio stopped (I was playing some course material) and I noticed an incoming call from my boss. Stopped to answer the call and talked to him for the rest of the interval and the beginning of the third interval.
Finished 3rd interval and measured lactate: 1.7 mmol/L

I am not sure about the significance of the Lactate reading as I had an interrupted row.

I had 10 minutes left between end of shower and first meeting. Made a coffee and went to work.

Did some of the urgent “emergency” tasks, multitasking during the meeting and am now caught up enough to take 10 minutes to write this blog.

I had to make a few concessions but this week there are a more than a few crucial work topics to finalize and decisions to make. Also, I preferred a compromised row in the morning over spending the evening in the erg room without seeing the kids.

It’s a low volume week anyway, and the recovery is the most important part of the training. So, in that light, the decision to sleep in that caused the compromised row was a great one.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Jan 16 2016

Saturday: Two Flavors of Steady State

At the rowing club. Romana’s girls had a 30 minute run and then a 30 minute erg. I was elected as their “running coach” so I went with them.

Passing the fire station, a fire truck honked at our little group. I guess it wasn’t my attractive sportsman body that they were admiring. :-/

I taught the girls a few basics about the 30 minute run from our rowing club.

Run slowly, conversation tempo
Run to the other rowing club
At the other rowing club, touch the gate
If you’re feeling naughty you can ring the other club’s doorbell
Turn around, run back slowly

We got to Lodni Sporty when one of their Masters rowers was just done with training. With a smile, he invited me for coffee. I declined the offer, saying I still had to do my training.

https://www.strava.com/activities/471342951

141 bpm average heart rate. 5km. 30 minutes.

Then it was time to erg.

The girls spent ages in the changing room. Romana told me that they were completely exhausted after their run with me.

I did an hour on the erg, as various just rows because I had to interrupt the rowing to fiddle with the radio.

The rowing club erg room with the view on the (frozen) lake:

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 3 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, running, steady state, training

Jan 12 2016

2.6! What?

Morning ride to work: https://www.strava.com/activities/468553389

Average heart rate 134 bpm.

Overheard a conversation at work. Two ladies at the coffee machine commenting starting again with exercise after the Christmas break. “It’s incredibly hard,” she said. “My heart rate was over 145 bpm for the entire hour! I was naggered at the end of it.”

Took a train home, quick dinner and then on the erg.

I am starting to hate RowPro. You set up 4x20min and then you do 4x20min. However, this time I really wanted to stop after 3x20min. My heart rate was high. It felt hard. It wasn’t right. My lactate was too high.

And here’s the lactate reading after 60 minutes:

2.6.

Two. Point. Six.

Another proof that perceived exertion is a reliable measure.

Workout Summary - Jan 12, 2016 --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|19027|80:00.0|02:06.1|174.4|20.9|155.7|173.0|11.4 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|Comments 01|04956|20:00.0|02:01.1|197.3|21.4|150.7|169.0|11.6| 02|04870|20:00.0|02:03.2|187.2|20.7|162.2|173.0|11.8| 03|04875|20:00.0|02:03.1|187.7|22.0|165.7|173.0|11.1| 2.6 mmol/L 04|04326|20:00.0|02:18.7|131.2|19.6|143.1|173.0|11.1| paddling

So after that high reading I just paddled for 20 minutes to complete the fourth interval. Junk meters? Perhaps.

Rest day tomorrow.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Jan 11 2016

200m sprints with long rest

Day 1 of week 3 of a 5 week meso cycle involving “anaerobic capacity” trainings. These are the most unknown to me. I know how a threshold workout looks like. I know how Pete Plan intervals look like. But these ones are supposed to be short intervals with long rests. Difficult to get the work/rest ratio and the volume right. One guideline is that the workout should easily fit into one hour. Also, the interval shouldn’t be a full out sprint.

I contemplated doing this one for a few moments:

Looks like a bit too long for a true sprint and also takes more than 90 minutes to execute. Another time.

This week is going to be a high volume week but today I longed for a short workout. DOMS from yesterday’s run, and overall tired after a quite intensive weekend. So I dialed up 200m intervals at 2 minute rest. That’s a very luxuriously long rest.

Well, at least I did something and I will be rested for a day of long steady state tomorrow.

Again I rowed this on the PM3 using painsled to capture. This time it was a variable intervals workout with distance intervals. Apart from the graph (and a few other graphs), my spreadsheet generated this overview table:

Looks like I miss the last stroke on most of the intervals.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: anaerobic, concept2, erg, intervals, OTE, rowing, sprint, training

Jan 10 2016

Neratovice Erg Race: PB and third place

Traveling the 250km from Brno to Neratovice was slightly adventurous for me, the driver. We picked up Albert & Iva at 6AM. The back of the car fell asleep or were listening to their iphones and didn’t notice that it was either raining, or thick fog, and the outside temperature was -2 in Brno and -6 in the highlands.

Not good. So safety first and I reduced the speed to 80-90km/h for the first 100km. Then the sun came up and it got dryer, so we could drive a little faster.

We arrived at the venue just one hour before the start of the girls race.

Neratovice 001.JPG — Happy to have arrived

So no time lost. Starting fee paid and preparing for the race.

As Romana had two girls in one race, I took care of our daughter Lenka. Here she is warming up, already on the race erg.

I took my place on the coach chair behind Lenka and we got ready for the race.

Neratovice 009.JPG — 10AM. Lenka a minute before the start.

Lenka’s personal best is a 2:08 pace, so the plan was to row 2:07. She set off at a blistering 1:51 pace, and I spent the first full minute trying to slow her down. I think she rowed at least 45 seconds at a pace below 2:00. Finally, after about 200m, I got her at 2:06 rating 27. Then we focused on the rate. Incidentally the rate would drop to 26 and the pace to 2:08-2:11. I focused on getting her at 27spm and higher.

Of course she wasn’t leading but there were enough girls rowing around her pace so make it an interesting race. She finished in a PB of 8:30.0 and we were all very happy. She improved her PB by 5 seconds and finished 29th out of 37, with a lot of girls around 8:30. On erg #4, Iva PB’ed by 2 seconds in 8:10.2 and was 22nd. She was disappointed because she wants to be faster than 8:00. Next time.

The race was won by a 14 year old who rowed a very impressive 7:14.1 which was 15 seconds faster than the number 2. About 15 girls rowed under 8 minutes.

So that was the morning session. My race was the very last race of the day, at 4pm, so I had time enough to cheer for my club mates.

Our Albert was the favorite to win the 17/18 year olds. Here he is preparing for his race:

Erg #14 was just next to the jury, who started off the race and then opened their pizza boxes to have lunch. Good for the jury but very bad for ergs #13 and #14 because of the pizza smell. Still, Albert delivered. Here’s the score board about half way (notice the pizza):

He won in 6:17.2 which is just 0.2 seconds above his PB.

Our LightWeight guy who went out slightly too fast and was struggling with 1000m to go.

My Race

My last erg race must have been in the winter of 1990. After that I have just used the erg as a training tool and never participated in the races. So I was glad I had the entire day to watch the racing and understand what I needed to do in terms of race prep.

While the men’s open were rowing I disappeared to change to racing gear and went to the warming up area. I did a 5k Fletcher style warming up on an old Model C with PM2 screen.

During the warming up I saw the men’s open fastest heat on the screen. The 6 fastest men were below 6min. Our club’s fastest guy was 11th in a PB of 6:08.5.

I stopped the warming up when the first heat of Masters (the older guys) were at the 1000m mark, walked over to the race area and cheered for my friends, and especially for Jaroslav Kadlec (1930) who rowed a 9:28.4.

Then it was time for me to get to my erg #5. Lenka and Albert took the “coach” seat behind me. It was fun to have them there.

I didn’t forget to adjust the foot stretcher height and check the drag factor.

5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 – toot off we went

Ten strong strokes. By the tenth stroke I was pulling 1:40 and the average pace was just below 1:43. One loses quite a bit with these race starts, it seems. I pulled a few 1:43s and then settled for 1:44 – 1:45, about 29spm.

All this is from memory, as we weren’t allowed to put in log cards.

I cruised through the 1500m mark with an average pace of 1:43.8 and was doing fine.

At the 1200m to go mark I was thinking about negative splitting. My original plan was classical: 500m at target -1, 2x500m at target + 1, 500m at target – 1. For a few strokes I considered dropping to 1:44, then dropping more at 600 to go, 300 to go, etc. I was rowing 4 meter behind Milan Viktora and could pull myself towards him. In the end I decided to stick with the original plan.

The guy on the erg to my right was pulling 1:37 pace. A quick glance on the computer monitor told me I was somewhere in the middle of the pack.

My coaches were silent. Their first words of encouragement came when I passed the 1000m mark. I did ten strokes at 1:43 pace there, then settled back to 1:45. I saw the occasional 1:46 and compensated with the occasional 1:45.

The difficult third 500m. I really didn’t want to speed up here. 600m to go. It crossed my mind that it was now just above 2 minutes to the finish line and I took up the pace a little. Average pace was around 1:44.3 now.

With 500m to go the noise level in the hall increased noticeably. Now Albert and Lenka were cheering me on every stroke and also the fans in front of the ergs were cheering.

This was good. It really enabled me to hold on to 1:43s and with 250m to go I tried to speed up even more. The legs didn’t really cooperate so I don’t think I pulled much faster, but at least I didn’t let the pace slip away.

I saw the average pace dropping to 1:44.2.

I saw it drop to 1:44.1 and in the last few strokes it even dropped to 1:44.0

I didn’t realize what that meant until I looked at the computer monitor and saw my end time of 6:56.1. I made a victorious fist pump and then continued to slide back and forth idle, gasping for breath.

I managed to do a quick average pace check on the PM after the organization switched off the race software:

1:43.8

1:44.5

1:43.3

Then I was summoned to the ceremony as I had a third place (out of 5) in my age category. I received a bronze medal and a flower:

After that, I wanted to row a cooling down, but the warming up ergs had been removed during my row, and the organization was now starting to move the race ergs. Also, Albert was a bit in a hurry because of a party in Brno that he wanted to attend.

So we hit the road richer in 3 PBs, one bronze and one gold medal. We only stopped at a gas station to buy some water and a bottle of cooled Bohemia Sekt (bubble wine). The last 30km were again in thick mist but the temperatures were just above the freezing point and the road was fine.

After the “champagne” I fell asleep in front of the TV.

Very happy with the PB of course! I have been rowing around 6:58 for the past 5 years. I have improved over all the larger distances, but I didn’t get the 2k below 6:58. I believe the race environment helped me over this bump.

Oh, and I got chicked. A junior girl (1998/1999) rowed a 6:52.1. I saw her row it. It was very impressive.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 6 • Tags: 2000m, 2km, concept2, erg, OTE, PB, race, rowing

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concept2

5k PB without reserve gas tank

Plan, Periodise, Train, Adjust and Win Part II

Concessions

Saturday: Two Flavors of Steady State

2.6! What?

200m sprints with long rest

Neratovice Erg Race: PB and third place

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