Jan 6 2018
Four Minutes is not that long
Thursday
I didn’t do any workout, because I felt tired after the hard 2k and my morning pulse was getting higher.
Friday
A 2km swim in th morning. I like the swimming because it is a new element in my training. I have no expectations on how hard or fast I “should” be. It is a great workout, covers the shoulders which I will need when I get back to OTW rowing, it is easy on my back and it involves breathing and water resistance.
I have noticed that I have to pay attention to how I breathe, which enables me to concentrate. I have also noted the similarity with OTW rowing, in the sense that rhythm is quite important and with good timing you can increase the distance you cover per stroke.
This being the first two weeks of a new year, the pool was crowded, and every lane that was reserved for endurance swimming had its slow swimmers. I just coped with it, knowing that I am not a particularly fast swimmer, and three weeks ago I was probably just as slow as this week’s beginners.
The only thing that bothers me is not having any heart rate data. I may try out the Tickr X next time. It has internal memory, so it can record a workout without needing a watch. The problem is that I don’t see anyone wearing any wearables in the pool.
In the evening, Romana and I went to a theater performance in the center of Brno. I took a few pictures on the way between the tram stop and the theater.
The performance was great, and afterwards we tried out a new “hipster” pub. The owner is very brave, selling Canadian and US craft beers (and no local beers) in the center of Brno. But I had a nice darker ale, and we had a great time.
The pub is on the first floor of the “modern but doing on the left of the photo above this blog post.
Saturday
Today was a “third” day, so time for the next ranking piece: the four minute effort.
First, a long and thorough warming up:
Then, on to the main event:
Workout Summary - media/20180106-1510540o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|01172|04:00.0|01:42.4|323.1|31.2|166.1|183.0|09.4
W-|01176|04:00.0|01:42.0|323.0|31.2|166.4|183.0|09.4
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|00149|00:30.0|01:40.4|285.0|29.5|110.6|126.0|10.1
01|00144|00:30.0|01:44.2|313.4|30.3|149.1|165.0|09.5
02|00145|00:30.0|01:43.2|316.0|30.5|170.1|174.0|09.5
03|00146|00:30.0|01:42.5|325.2|31.1|176.9|179.0|09.4
04|00145|00:30.0|01:43.2|320.6|30.4|179.0|179.0|09.6
05|00147|00:30.0|01:42.0|328.0|31.1|180.8|181.0|09.5
06|00149|00:30.0|01:40.9|339.6|32.1|182.0|182.0|09.3
07|00150|00:30.0|01:40.1|356.2|34.4|182.9|183.0|08.7
Based on my Critical Power Chart, I decided to start at 310W, then increase to 320W with 2:30 minutes to go, to 330W with 1:20 to go and go all out with 40 seconds to go. Again, a conservative approach, but one where the first 2 minutes are a good taste of how my 2k race of next week will go.
The summary on Rowsandall.com didn’t capture the first 30 seconds correctly. I had set the PM to 30 second splits and monitored the split averages during the row. I was never below 310W.
That was a pretty exhausting row, but I managed a good update to my Critical Power values. Here is before:
And after:
Now I need to remove the low values in the “dip” between 1and 4 minutes. In three days, I will do a 1k, and then in the few days before the race, the remaining short ranking pieces (500m, 1 minute, and 100m).
After a few moments of breathing hard and being content with the result, I started the cooling down. However, during the first 1000m I discussed with myself that this wasn’t a real training. How about adding three 1k efforts to make this something similar to a 4x1000m/5min workout?
I decided to add three 1k segments at any power that I could hold, at 1000m of paddling in between.
In the first interval, I “felt” I could hold 300W, but was brutally corrected by reality, about 500m into the row. In the second interval, I decided to hold 280W and succeeded, and in the final interval I started at 270W but then gradually increased the pace, emptying the tank in the final 150m.
I followed up with a 2k cooling down. Now this feels like a complete workout, and my muscles are sore.
Jan 14 2018
Friday – remaining ranking distances
In the morning, during short breaks from finalizing this year’s performance assessments for my group, I worked down a long checklist to release and publish about the latest and greatest on rowsandall.com.
After that, I took the train home. Before going to the erg basement, I visited the Honda dealer close to my home. We’ve been contemplating getting rid of one of the cars (Romana’s Skoda Fabia), keeping only one as a “family car”. The idea would be to get a scooter for those rides around our town that cannot be done on the bike.
A typical round that I do in the OTW season is
A scooter would save fuel and usually be faster through the traffic. I still have to get used to the idea though. The issue for us Masters rowers is that we still believe we look like this:
Anyway …
The workout for the day wasn’t really a workout. After Thursday’s rest day, Friday was meant to be both a confidence booster (for Saturday’s 2k erg race) and a way to get two of the remaining ranking distances out of the way. So I did:
I managed the 500 in 1:33.4, which is a nice score. As you can see from the chart, power was oscillating between 440 and 460W, and it started to drop when the wheels came off in the final 150m.
Then I did a 2km paddle followed by a 100m at a slightly higher drag factor, which I managed around 600W. This resulted in the following series of ranking pieces rowed this season:
The other interesting thing is that the 500m piece looks like the best of the series. The 100m piece average is below 600W because it takes too many strokes to get up to 600.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: 100m, 500m, concept2, ergometer, ranking, rowing, training