The temperatures have increased to above 30 degrees C, but luckily we were rowing in the evening.
It had been s hectic day. After a four hour drive back from Racice, we found our poor cat in distress. It had injured its tail and during the twelve hours it had spent alone, it had sprayed blood all over the house. So instead of relaxing in our garden we took care of the wound (which was not easy, as is evident from the claw marks on my arms) with help of a rowing friend who lives nearby and is a vet. On Monday we visited him in his office for a check, some injections and antibiotics, as well as a cap to prevent the poor animal from biting its painful tail again.
So when I arrived at the rowing club, my rowing friends were still discussing the European Championships, but I had already moved on to another world.
Anyway, we are racing the eight coming weekend so it is time to get to business. The training plan prescribed 1500m pieces at 26spm but the crew wanted to add a race pace piece. The compromise was one 1500m and one 750m.
I gave the SpeedCoach to the cox because his CoxBox Mini doesn’t show stroke rate. I told him to not touch any buttons on the SpeedCoach and started its recording when we still had the boat in slings. Unfortunately I forgot to switch the screen to distance, so the cox had only elapsed time and stroke rate. He managed well and just did the pieces by estimated distance from landmarks. For the 1500 that was easy: from the 2k start to the Lodni Sporty club house. For the 750 it was a bit more difficult.
But rowsandall.com can deal with that. Sitting on 2 seat the SpeedCoach didn’t record my heart rate. However, I was using the Garmin watch to capture that. After the row, I imported the Garmin data through Strava to rowsandall.com, uploaded the SpeedCoach data and did a data fusion merging the NK pace, SPM, and distance data into the Garmin workout.
Then, I used the Interval Editor and the interactive plot to determine the start and end times of the pieces and here is the result:
Ignore the power data. It’s a conversion from pace using the equation for the Concept2 erg and when you’re in the eight it overestimates the power. I will update the site to do a better power estimate for OTW rows.
As Greg correctly pointed out, combining big boat rowing with a job is harder than combining it with a single. Today was no exception.
My boss was out of town, so I had to moderate a 5pm to 6pm conference call with our headquarters in Phoenix. I also had a training in the eight from 6:30. So I would either have to tell the crew that I come late or find another way. Left the office at 4pm. Made it throught the traffc with just 10 minutes to spare and set myself up in one of the bedrooms at the rowing club.
All good, except that the juniors switched on the music in the gym just below this room. And to make matters worse, two rowers started a loud discussion right in front of the window. At least the US colleagues took it with humor and content-wise the review was fine.
There was a lot of wind on the lake and especially in the first 30 minutes of the outing we were in big waves. There is just 45 minutes of rowing recorded, but we spent another 20 minutes of “discussion time”. We basically rowed up and down the quietest part of the lake doing 25 stroke and 50 stroke “race pace” pieces and practicing starts. It was better than I expected and there was real progress during this hour.
The Saturday evening party was great. We chatted with everybody, especially the Cernak couple, who had high hopes to win the mixed double against us, after their excellent results in New Zealand. Most of the people at the party had seen the Masters 1x race, and most frequent comments were that I was rowing technically cleaner, longer strokes, but Cernak was doing 36spm short sliding and manoeuvring his single in front of mine so I had no chance to pass. That’s nice to hear, but I would probably have done the latter as well if I were in the leading position. These small regattas are highly unregular, and everybody explores the boundary between what the referees allow and where they start issuing warnings.
Another day of arriving early on the regatta venue, because Romana’s girls would have early races in the doubles.
My most important race was at 13:05, the Masters Mix 2x. But before that, I was racing the Men’s (open) double at 11AM, together with Antonin, a Masters rower from Breclav. This regatta had no Masters 2x on the program, so we inserted ourselves into the open race, racing against people half our age (and half our rowing experience, of course).
Men’s Double
Around 10am, Tonda and I started our warming up. We passed the Ostrava trailer and chatted a bit with Mr Cernak and the other Masters rowers from that club. They all were going to watch our doubles race, they said. I joked that Tonda had received secret instructions to wear me out in that race, so I wouldn’t be able to peak at the mixed double. Looking at the reaction, I might have hit the mark there. I continued to joke that I was merely going to warm up the engines.
On the 4 lane course, our 2x race was a three boat race. Again, we were in lane 1, with a stacked start because of the turn, so we were behind the other two boats. The referee launch arrived just before the race time, so after we started we rowed through its wake.
Tonda and I had agreed to row technically sound, and to my surprise that brought us in 2nd position at the 500m point. Unfortunately, the third crew managed to accelerate strongly in the final 500m, and they steamed past us in the final straight stretch, beating us by a length. In the other heat, we would have ended 3rd out of four boats. Not bad. Here’s a picture of us after the race (I am the skinny guy on the right).
Mixed Double Race
I used the two hours after the Men’s double to eat and drink a bit, and I did a long cooling down run. At this regatta, you have to turn the boat immediately after the finish, so there is zero cooling down, so going for a 30 minute run seemed a sensible thing to do.
After that, Romana and I launched from the one and only launching dock (which effectively means there is 1 minute and 15 seconds per crew to put the boat in the water, put the sculls in the oarlocks, remove shoes, and push off) and we were on the water in time to do a few 10 stroke sequences and practice starts.
Romana and I were super nervous for this race, but by the looks of it the Cernak couple was in the same state. We all arrived at the start line on time, but had to wait for the launch to arrive. When we were aligned and the starter was raising the flag (with us in lane 1, stacked behind all the other boats), Romana commented that we were in the launch wake. Indeed, only our double was bobbing around in the wake reflected of the bank. I had a split second to decide whether I would raise my hand and postpone the start or not, and I decided to take the risk and not do it. Because of that, our start was slightly worse than our practice starts (but then, those had been excellent).
The rest of our race opening was executed flawlessly. Coming out of the start at 45spm, I continued to push through the 15 hard strokes we had agreed, gradually lowering the stroke rate to 35.
I don’t have other data than stroke rate and GPS pace, but I think the graph above tells the story of the race clear enough. We settled for a stroke rate of 34.5 – 35 for the middle part of the race. The first 200m had brought us in front of the Cernak’s in lane 2 (who had started in front of us), and I am convinced that this “shock and awe” opening did its job perfectly. I focused on rowing a nice rhythm, and Romana on bow took care of the steering (although I did anticipate, rowing this course on memory). Romana steered a very sharp course. To our left was lane 0 with traffic coming in the opposite direction of kids’ double rowing to the start, sometimes passing each other and thus entering lane 1. Pushing steadily, we passed Burda/Masatova with 600m to go and got into the lead of the race. The referee was calling steering instructions to “Brno”, leaving it to the two Brno crews to guess which of them was the target. At one point it was clear though: “Brno turn – there are doubles in lane 0”. We corrected slightly and I was thinking if I wanted to win so badly that I would risk a collision. The answer was a clear no.
Luckily, our steering corrections helped avoid collisions. It did slow us down a bit though and Burda+Masatova were catching up again. I upped the stroke rate.
At that point we were making the final turn and all the kids from CVK Brno were cheering for us. You can see how that helped from the big jump in pace between “800” and “1000” in the graph above. Still, Mr Burda and Mrs Masatova were not too far behind us, and they were still dangerous in theory. They started a final, desperate push, and I responded by a final stroke rate increase, to 36spm.
The finish line and the bell. We were first. I told Romana that we had rowed an average of 35spm (the graph says 36) and she was surprised. It was true that we had found this magical rhythm which allows you to row calm and take rest on the recovery even when you’re doing 35spm. Sometimes things work out.
I was definitely very exhausted after this race. I rowed it without a power meter, but I am sure I managed more than the 321 W of Saturday.
After this race, I got kisses from Mrs Cernakova and Mr Cernak didn’t speak to me for 30 minutes. Both events were sweet. 🙂
Mix Masters 8+
In the final event of the day, I raced in an ad hoc mixed Masters eight against the local rowing club. We were given their older, heavier boat, and we had a cox who coxed for the first time. Here is the youtube video of us losing (I row in the 6 seat, counting from bow):
Other events
Two guys from our club raced at Junior European Championships in Krefeld, Germany. Here are pictures.
Ondrej, in the single, rowed to a great 10th place, wearing our club shirt under his Czech national uni. He was joined to the team as a reserve rower, so this was a great result. Vasek, in the eight, didn’t make it to the finals and they ended in 7th place. The Czech Junior girls 8+ won a Silver medal behind Romania. Congratulations!
The Czech town of Brno has two universities, the Technical University and the Masaryk University. In 1937, the two universities raced each other in eights for the first time.
World War II came in between.
The race was held again in 1946 and in 1947.
The communist took over power. Rowing was an “elite” sport and the universities race did not happen any more.
Last year, in 2015, our club ÄŒVK Brno, organized the “zeroth” edition of the renewed university eights, which was won by the Technical University.
This year, we have enhanced the program. On Friday, the two local universities race each other. Tomorrow, on Saturday, we have three more eights. There will be 1:1 heats, repechages, semifinal and final.
The race is rowed on the river Svratka. Narrow, and twisty. The entire event is pretty small. Here is a video impression.
Sunday breakfast in the beautiful garden of our friends’ house in BÅ™eclav. Their garden is really a miracle. I am afraid we will never even approach this level of perfection. I am too sloppy and not really interested in gardening, and Romana doesn’t have enough time. Still, my doubles partner Radek, who is a garden architect, has redesigned our garden and we will implement the new design. But having breakfast looking at this garden in BÅ™eclav, with nice people, was a treat.
My first race was in the afternoon, and I decided to do a light steady state session in the morning. There is a canal branching off the river, so I figured I could do the training there without hindering the ongoing races.
Of course I managed to mess up this plan a bit. Instead of doing a steady state as a “just row”, I decided to try out the 4x(4/3/2/1m)/3m rest that I had programmed into the SpeedCoach. That was OK but on the first interval I found out that the canal is a dead end, shorter than 10 minutes. So I had a turn in the first interval, and the second interval brought me back on the river for three minutes.
Luckily they were doing 500m races at that point in time, so I had the river for myself.
The third and fourth interval were on a quite narrow and windy part of the river, and paces were all over the place, mainly because I had to steer a lot. Also, wind and current varied a lot. I tried to do some estimates of the current on rowsandall.com, but I am not sure if I got it right. Still I can say that I rowed between 150W and 220W, and that is also how it felt, 3 on a 10 point Borg scale of Rate of Perceived Exertion. Or is it Perceived Rate of Exertion? Or Perceived Exertion?
The “Training with a power meter” book says that you should use the Borg scale at the beginning of the earlier intervals, so I guess that means that you have to estimate how hard it feels, not how tired you are.
I managed to sneak back to the rowing club just before the 1500m races would start. Got a friendly reprimand from one of the umpires for rowing on a course that was closed for training. He was right of course, but I just wanted to do some steady state.
Work Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00817| 04:00 | 2:26.8| 18.5| 140 | 150 | 11.0
02|00649| 03:00 | 2:18.6| 20.7| 153 | 159 | 10.5
03|00368| 02:00 | 2:43.0| 20.5| 153 | 161 | 9.0
04|00231| 01:00 | 2:9.8| 23.0| 160 | 165 | 10.0
05|00828| 04:00 | 2:24.9| 18.8| 144 | 152 | 11.0
06|00646| 03:00 | 2:19.3| 20.7| 158 | 162 | 10.4
07|00423| 02:00 | 2:21.8| 22.0| 162 | 165 | 9.6
08|00218| 01:00 | 2:17.6| 23.0| 166 | 168 | 9.5
09|00779| 04:00 | 2:34.0| 19.0| 145 | 153 | 10.2
10|00596| 03:00 | 2:31.0| 20.7| 153 | 157 | 9.6
11|00400| 02:00 | 2:30.0| 22.5| 159 | 162 | 8.9
12|00206| 01:00 | 2:25.6| 23.0| 162 | 165 | 9.0
13|00815| 04:00 | 2:27.2| 19.0| 139 | 148 | 10.7
14|00635| 03:00 | 2:21.7| 20.0| 152 | 156 | 10.6
15|00421| 02:00 | 2:22.5| 22.0| 157 | 161 | 9.6
16|00222| 01:00 | 2:15.1| 23.0| 164 | 168 | 9.7
Workout Summary
--|08254| 40:00 | 2:25.3| 20.3| 151 | 168 | 10.2
In the afternoon I rowed two races in the eight. I rowed the mixed Masters eight, where we had the pleasure of rowing in BÅ™eclav’s new Empacher and won. At the end of the afternoon I was drafted for a 300m sprint in a Men’s eight. We were up against the locals (with seats 7 and 8 taken by the Czech Pair who came 7th in Rio) in their new boat, and our boat was a mix of Juniors and Masters from various clubs, in the heavy 1987 Hudecek. Of course we came second (they beat us by a length over 300m), but we got a few nice bottles of wine for giving the BÅ™eclav men competition.
In other races, daughter Lenka rowed two finals. They came third in the girls quad Final in a race that was re-started when they were leading after 500m and the two other boats clashed (umpire being the trainer of one of the quads in the clash). They also came third in the doubles Final.
My son Dominik enlarged his medal collection by steering a winning boys quad and winning a boys double final.
That was the end of a nice small regatta. While I was out sprinting in the eight, the kids had loaded the trailer, and apart from a small Sunday afternoon traffic jam into Brno the trip home was uneventful.
Dinner on our terrace, still 30 degrees at 7pm.
BÅ™eclav rowing club. Finish “tower” and final straight part of the course
So I ended the Saturday blog by saying that Kazi and I took the double for a quick row and we were flying. Rowing Nirvana. The right stroke. The right rhythm. Microsecond timing precision.
It was noticed. And we were proclaimed the favourites for this Masters C 2x race, by all our friends. Talk about putting on the pressure.
I wasn’t so sure. We were up against an unknown Polish boat. I saw them row the mixed quad on Saturday and was impressed. They rowed effortlessly, and won by a very big margin. One of the guys was just a second slower than me in the single. Also, I had very strong suspicions that this is the Polish mixed quad that beat us in Hazewinkel. Checking this now and confirmed. It’s the same guys. See here. So the men from that mixed quad would be rowing against us.
The only problem was that they didn’t show up at the start. The umpires called them. We waited 5 minutes for them. Then the umpires decided that it was too late and we were started off, only three boats.
Our rowing was far from the Nirvana experience of the previous evening. We were in front, of course, but struggling to keep Olomouc (Polasek/Brazda) behind us. They kept doing pushes to come next to us. In vain. Â A 10 stroke push at the 500m got some light between the boats and we rowed the final 500m in relative comfort.
Won. A gold medal! And looking at the results, our time was not half bad. Wait, what are those Polish guys Szczepaniak and Bednarek doing among the B rowers (race 1403)? We asked them after the race. The explanation was simple. They hadn’t attended the representatives meeting and were unaware that our race was moved to an hour earlier. They found out 10 minutes before the scheduled start and came late. They went to the race organization to ask and were allowed to row in the B race. They won with a big margin in a time that is comparable to ours.
Mix DoubleÂ
Talking about pressure, the pressure on us for the double was nothing compared with the pressure we felt for the Mix 2x. Romana and I were the defending champions. Most of the doubles competing in this race are couples, which means that this is a race that is discussed long after the event.
Although we were the defending champions, we were not the favorites. Petr Mitas with his doubles partner Jitka Masatova were. He’s the muscular guy who beat me by 9 seconds in the single. She is a fitness trainer from Prague. Other strong participants were the Cernak’s from Ostrava (husband and wife) and Pardubice/Olomouc (which will soon be Olomouc proper, because Karel will move and he will live together with his beloved Vendula in Olomouc). Romana’s double partner Slavka with her younger doubles partner (but only that, not a couple) were strong outsiders, and on a good day even Neratovice could go fast (not sure about any relationship between Mr Tockstein and Mrs Chovanakova).
We were quick out of the start and executed our race strategy of a very strong opening 15 strokes.That brought us in second position. The good news was that we were not far behind Mitas/Masatova. The bad news was that Karel and Vendula were on our heels.
Still  we rated down a bit and tried to save some energy for what we expected would be a very tough second half of the race. With 500m to go I didn’t like how close Karel and Vendula came so I called for a 15 stroke push. This push had an interesting result. Not only did we row away from Karel/Vendula as if they were standing still (and we probably broke them at that point), also did this push bring us in the leading position, a few cm in front of Mitas/Masatova. We didn’t know that at that time, but spectators told us.
Mitas and Masatova stepped on the gas and soon they were in front of us. I didn’t dare to look too often. We were rowing in lane 2, with Mitas and Masatova over in lane 6. Passing the club house I took up the stroke rate a little bit and with 200m to go I really started to push. Unfortunately, also exhaustion started to play a role …
We finished second. A bit more than a boat length behind the winners. But Petr told me later that we scared the hell out of them and he had rowed the second 500m full out to stay ahead of us.
No heart rate data
This graph shows nicely our big push that helped us row away from Karel and Vendula. Same push brought us back close to the winners
I am also happy that we had a faster time than any of the rowers in the second C race, with all the international participants.
Masters B eight
After the mixed 2x, I spent about 30 minutes lying in our event shelter tent, and then it was time to launch the eight. You can imagine I was pretty tired by now, but this was our revenge race against Blesk of Prague. See this blog post.
In Radek, my “other double partner”, we had a newbie cox. We told him to just keep talking to us. Count. Give information about the other crews. We had a detailed race plan which involved a push around the “water slide” (before the 500m mark) and a “strong last minute”.
We also had the determination to not let Blesk pass us.
Eight races are very emotional events. Fourty eight people lined up at the start. Lots of adrenaline. Big boats that take a while to get up to speed, so the start seems to happen in slow motion. High stroke rates. And, with masters rowing, lots of water splashing about.
Hysterical coxes.
Side wind.
Anyway, we were out of the start well and the first part of our plan worked. At 700m to go, we were half a length in front of Blesk. The bad news was that there was another boat in front of us. And more bad news. The half length lead was shrinking.
We did our push which we executed very well.
I had no tired feeling. All of us were just rowing in a trance.
We managed to increase the lead slightly.
Then it was just a struggle to stay ahead of them. We managed and I got another silver medal.
Overall, this was a super weekend. Four silver medals and one gold, out of five races.
Heats day of the Morava races, which are regional races. These races are quite important as they are qualifying races for the National Championships for the 11 to 18 year olds. The races are being held on our lake, so no transport needed this time.
We headed for the lake in the morning. As we were going to sleep at the club and stay for the whole weekend, it took some time to get everything in and on the car, including two bicycles and  a lot of food.
I spent the morning preparing my blades for a paint job. There is the new pair of sculls which must be in club colors before the Masters Nationals. Also, one of my old pairs were painted in a rush. By yours truly, I have to confess. I didn’t sand and clean them throroughly before painting, with the result that that paint gradually begins to peel off. This time I was prepared to do the job thoroughly. So I spent more than an hour getting the old paint off those blades, then sanding and cleaning them. Then I discovered that the club was out of the blue paint so I had to hop on the bike to get some new paint. I am happy to report that at the end of the afternoon I had two pairs of nicely painted blades. The only thing is that the paint slightly darkens when it ages, so my third pair is a slightly darker tint. It is either the darkening effect, or the fact that our club is not entirely sure about the right shade of blue that is our club colors.
We do have it specified, mind you, but in a pre-WWII paint numbering standard which is not used any more, and nobody is able to convert it for us. So RAL 5015 it shall be for me.
By then it was time to fire on the barbecue. The girls were out in a quad and I wanted to go for a short row in the single, but my blades were drying and I was responsible for providing dinner.
After dinner, we made a camp fire and had a good time sitting around the fire and chatting. I had no heats, but the kids had done well. My son Dominik had managed to get into the A final on the single (which meant he was qualified for the Nationals) and daughter Lenka and her double partner Iva had done the same in the double.
At 10:30pm it was time for the fireworks.
There is this fireworks contest in Brno. It’s held every year in June and the fireworks are done from a big pontoon in the middle of the lake. From the dock of our rowing club you have the best view of the show.
So we tuned the radio to the station that broadcasted the music to the fireworks show and watched. This year it was really great.
Sunday
Woke up to the sound of birds singing. Breakfast at the rowing club. In the morning I spent some time doing work, but then it was time to get ready for action.
My first race would be at 15:18, so around 1pm I hopped on the bike and cycled around the lake to the Lodni Sporty rowing club for the weigh in. I made 72.2kg with shoes on so no problem there.
The problem was that there were only four LW 1x rowers in that final. Three of them aged 18 to 25 and fast scullers. And me. From our club there was Lubos, who I have occasionally been a sparring partner to, who is trying to get to the U23 Worlds in Rotterdam in the LW2x. Then two guys from Breclav, a Mr Susky who has aspirations as well, and a Mr Rampula, who is unpredictable but can be fast.
Trying to relax before the race, I decided to take it as a time trial and just row a good time. During the day, the light tailwind had turned into a light headwind, so I wasn’t sure what to aim for. Kleshnev predicts a 7:40 2k in neutral weather based on my erg results, but I take that as the ultimate achievable, not as the mean for 7:40 scullers. Based on recent trainings, I thought that under 8 minutes would be a good target. Actually, I have never rowed under 8 minutes on this lake.
In hindsight, I think that the most important decision was to take it as a time trial and ignore the other rowers.
Arrived at the start. Light headwind, still. Set CrewNerd to 2000m and Auto-Start and prepared.
I started off well, but of course started to fall behind the young guys already in the first 500m. But I kept going at 30spm, trying to focus on technique, and getting over the waves as well as possible. When I say waves, I am not talking about chop. I am talking about long standing waves caused by the boat traffic on the lake. These waves really have the ability to throw your balance off, so it is important to stay relaxed and react to the movements of the boat.
By the 1k mark I was rowing about 3 lengths behind the number three, Mr Rampula. I was hoping that Lubos was taking over the lead from Mr Susky by then but I didn’t know. Three singles lengths behind. That didn’t really bothered me, because I noticed on CrewNerd that I was rowing under a 2:00 pace per 500m and I knew the first 500m had been really fast.
The third 500m wasn’t the best. I saw a couple of strokes at a 2:06 pace, but I managed to get back to 2:02 and lower. Then, with 600m to go, I noticed that I was closer to Mr Rampula than I thought. I rated up slightly and started to chase him.
Probably Rampula had gone out too fast, wanting to play with the big boys, and was now paying for it. Anyway, I gradually managed to close the gap and with 250m to go I was half a length behind him.
By now I was really in problems. I was breathing very heavily. Counting strokes. But the fact that I was on Rampula’s tail kept me going.
He managed to stay in front of me. I passed the finish and collapsed, just barely noticing that CrewNerd was still counting down and only stopped 20 m after the real finish line. I guess that’s the problem with GPS measured distances.
CrewNerd stopped counting at 8:06 but I hung around in the finish area and listened to the announced official times. I had managed 7:59.06 and I was very happy with that. Actually made a proud fist punch gesture to celebrate. That must have seemed strange from the grandstands. Comes in last. Is happy. 🙂
And here is how I suffered to achieve this. I am not 100% sure about the immedate jump to “red” heart rate values after the start. The data seem to have a strange plateau there. Need to look into that. Otherwise, though, the picture is true.
After that, I had about 2 hours to recover and get ready for the eight. Of course that wasn’t to be. And worse, there were more rowers in our Masters eight who had done one or two races before that day, so we ended up in third place, beaten by our Elite crew and by a mix of Juniors/Masters/Elite from Lodni Sporty. We managed to leave our club’s historical eight behind us. 🙂
And here are the pictures …
Lenka and Iva in the doubleBoys fourThe Boys trainers on a launchBoys doubleTailwind changed into headwind. Some of us changed gearNumber one!Our head coach sending a pair to the startThe Author going to the startThe Author almost ready to row to the startThe Author’s son rowing to his startThe Author’s son rowing to his startThe Author on #2 seatAn artistic picture of our eightAfter the raceGroup picture of the three eights of our club
Lenka and Dominik did well in their respective races. Lenka was third in the double and Dominik came in fifth in the single. Both in the A final.
The races ended, it was time to enjoy our club house’s brand new beer tap:
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May 30 2017
Two pieces for a Masters Eight
The temperatures have increased to above 30 degrees C, but luckily we were rowing in the evening.
It had been s hectic day. After a four hour drive back from Racice, we found our poor cat in distress. It had injured its tail and during the twelve hours it had spent alone, it had sprayed blood all over the house. So instead of relaxing in our garden we took care of the wound (which was not easy, as is evident from the claw marks on my arms) with help of a rowing friend who lives nearby and is a vet. On Monday we visited him in his office for a check, some injections and antibiotics, as well as a cap to prevent the poor animal from biting its painful tail again.
So when I arrived at the rowing club, my rowing friends were still discussing the European Championships, but I had already moved on to another world.
Anyway, we are racing the eight coming weekend so it is time to get to business. The training plan prescribed 1500m pieces at 26spm but the crew wanted to add a race pace piece. The compromise was one 1500m and one 750m.
I gave the SpeedCoach to the cox because his CoxBox Mini doesn’t show stroke rate. I told him to not touch any buttons on the SpeedCoach and started its recording when we still had the boat in slings. Unfortunately I forgot to switch the screen to distance, so the cox had only elapsed time and stroke rate. He managed well and just did the pieces by estimated distance from landmarks. For the 1500 that was easy: from the 2k start to the Lodni Sporty club house. For the 750 it was a bit more difficult.
But rowsandall.com can deal with that. Sitting on 2 seat the SpeedCoach didn’t record my heart rate. However, I was using the Garmin watch to capture that. After the row, I imported the Garmin data through Strava to rowsandall.com, uploaded the SpeedCoach data and did a data fusion merging the NK pace, SPM, and distance data into the Garmin workout.
Then, I used the Interval Editor and the interactive plot to determine the start and end times of the pieces and here is the result:
Ignore the power data. It’s a conversion from pace using the equation for the Concept2 erg and when you’re in the eight it overestimates the power. I will update the site to do a better power estimate for OTW rows.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: eight, lake, OTW, training