erg

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Jan 25 2017

Taper for no race

I am following the official training plan of the Masters group of our club now. It’s a watered down version of what the Juniors are doing. We’re tapering for an erg regatta coming Saturday.

Unfortunately, I probably won’t be able to travel to Pardubice. We have a couple of sick kids in the family. Gotta stay at home and do the 2k on my own rower. Oh well.

Today was 2k warming up, followed by 2×15 minutes at 19 and 21spm. A luxurious 4 minutes of rest.


Workout Summary - media/20170125-1943230o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|08056|38:00.0|02:21.5|184.2|20.3|151.8|168.0|10.4
W-|07373|30:00.0|02:02.1|191.1|20.4|154.1|168.0|12.1
R-|00685|08:00.0|05:50.2|138.8|20.2|144.8|168.0|00.2
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|03639|15:00.0|02:03.6|182.2|19.4|147.7|157.0|12.5
01|03733|15:00.0|02:00.5|199.9|21.4|160.5|168.0|11.7

Something cool about the Power Pie Chart (at least in my opinion). On Rowsandall.com, I have made the Power Zones more flexible. You can now name them as you want and change the zone boundaries to your liking. So I named the lowest zone “Rest”.

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myimage (13)

Jan 12 2017

Steady State

Just 14km of steady state. And working on technique. By the end of the workout, I was shortening my stroke a bit, trying something I discussed with Jeroen, the guy behind Row Analysis.


Workout Summary - media/20170112-202757-sled_2017-01-12T19-55-38ZGMT+1.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14000|57:31.0|02:03.3|192.4|21.2|160.8|174.0|11.5
W-|13500|54:40.0|02:01.5|195.5|21.3|161.2|174.0|11.6
R-|00500|02:51.0|02:51.2|116.8|19.3|150.5|174.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|02500|10:03.6|02:00.7|198.0|21.1|146.6|164.0|11.8
01|02250|09:01.2|02:00.3|201.6|21.2|162.6|170.0|11.8
02|02500|10:09.1|02:01.8|194.1|21.6|162.1|172.0|11.4
03|02250|09:05.9|02:01.3|196.5|21.3|167.5|172.0|11.6
04|02000|08:05.3|02:01.3|196.1|21.6|163.6|171.0|11.5
05|02000|08:15.4|02:03.9|185.8|21.3|166.9|174.0|11.4

Temperatures are up to +1C. A heatwave of sorts.

It had snowed the whole night, so in the morning I had to clear away a lot of snow. After that it was quite fun to drive to work through the snow, 50km/h on the highway. Czech drivers are pretty used to this weather though. In the Netherlands, everything would have come to a standstill. In the afternoon, the temperatures got above the freezing point and everything started to melt.

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bokeh_plot (21)

Jan 10 2017

January CTC: 4x4min/4min rest

I have taken it easy last week, even though it was supposed to be a hard week. Too much sniffing and sneezing going on to do any hard workouts.

So, today was the first real hard workout in ages. I chose to do the CTC. It is somewhere in between the shorter stuff I have been doing before Christmas and the “long intervals” that I am supposed to do in this mesocycle of my training plan.

Row 4 times 4 minutes with 4 minutes rest between reps

Use the same damper setting for all reps.

Record your distance for the sixteen minutes of rowing.
Don’t include any resting metres.

The first 4 minutes must be a standing start. All others can be standing or rolling starts.

In the 2k warming up I did a few 10 stroke sprints at slightly faster paces than I normally do them. Then I set up the 4x4min.

I was warned that it would be a tough workout, so I set myself a target to row 28spm and higher, a “light” stroke and watch stroke length and technique.

Every interval was the almost same, except that they got slightly harder each time. The first minute flew by and I would have thoughts of doing a fast interval at 1:46. The second minute was slightly harder. The third minute was endless and I was struggling to keep 1:48. The light at the end of the tunnel got me through the fourth minute.

Today, the graphs from Rowsandall.com are very interesting. First, the summary plot:

and the summary:


Workout Summary - media/20170110-195135-sled_2017-01-10T19-42-09ZGMT+1.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06613|32:00.0|02:25.2|212.1|25.3|158.0|177.0|08.2
W-|04466|16:00.0|01:47.5|281.5|27.8|167.5|177.0|10.1
R-|02149|16:00.0|03:43.4|074.1|20.7|144.9|177.0|01.3
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01114|04:00.0|01:47.7|279.0|27.1|162.9|173.0|10.3
01|01120|04:00.0|01:47.1|284.4|27.9|169.5|177.0|10.0
02|01117|04:00.0|01:47.4|282.3|28.0|169.1|177.0|10.0
03|01115|04:00.0|01:47.6|280.4|28.1|168.5|177.0|09.9

And here are the interesting plots:

There is a lot of things going on here (at least in my perception).

  1. I am clearly trading stroke length for stroke rate. I should focus on staying long when I get tired.
  2. In the beginning of the row, I was focusing on technique, especially on a couple of the weak points that I discovered in the video analysis. This leads to a slightly higher Average to Peak force ratio. In the second half of each 4 minute interval, and more so in the 3rd and fourth intervals, I just focus on surviving and my technique flaws come back. The ratio drops.

I was wondering if this is due to the peak force or the average force. Guess what? There is a chart for that:

After a few months of spending some of my free time on rowsandall.com, I have something that is really useful, at least for myself. I use painsled to record the data. I get them onto rowsandall.com. I have set of “favorite” charts defined that I browse through. Rest paddling is automatically filtered out, and the result is a set of data that give me a quick overview of what I did, and some observations that are hard to get without a coach sitting next to and observing you.

The temperature in my rowing basement was +1.5C. Outside temperature -8C.

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schaatsen

Jan 7 2017

The showdown that didn’t happen

Friday

With the new users flocking to rowsandall.com in droves, I get a lot of reports about issues. The new users use the site in different ways than the crew of beta testers, and so new bugs are being discovered. One of the bugs seems to have a root cause in the data we receive from the Concept2 logbook for interval workouts. So I did Thursday’s workout with ErgData instead of my favorite Painsled for iOS.

On Friday, I wanted to test the new version 5 of RowPro. I have been an avid user of RowPro, but that ended in March 2016, when I started experimenting with Painsled, and after that the OTW season took off and I didn’t spend much time on the erg. On the Analytics Blog, I wrote a post about applications to capture erg data, so I wanted to test the new RowPro myself.

The idea was to row for an hour, have RowPro and Painsled open at the same time (RowPro through USB, Painsled through bluetooth link), and then compare what Rowsandall.com can do with the data from both apps.

It wasn’t to be.

Not having rowed with RowPro for months, I forgot a few peculiarities of the program. I sat down on the erg, connected everything, programmed a 1 hour workout, and set off.

After six minutes I realized I had forgot to “connect” the Heart Rate belt to the PM5. I had no HR data. So the only thing I could do was stop the row.

In RowPro that means you have no data. When you abandon a row early, it is like if you didn’t row it, even if you stop a 60 minutes row after 55 minutes. It’s tough.

Luckily, Painsled was happily recording data on the side. There is much to be said for data redundancy.

I quickly changed the plan, connected my HR belt to the PM monitor, set up a 10k and set off:


Workout Summary - media/20170106-1710100o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10000|40:30.0|02:01.5|195.3|21.4|164.8|178.0|11.5
W-|10000|40:31.0|02:01.6|194.7|21.3|164.5|178.0|11.6
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|178.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01000|04:04.4|02:02.2|188.8|20.0|145.4|158.0|12.3
01|00750|03:01.3|02:00.9|198.0|21.0|158.8|162.0|11.8
02|00500|01:58.8|01:58.8|208.2|22.0|164.3|168.0|11.5
03|00250|00:58.3|01:56.6|221.0|22.9|168.2|170.0|11.3
04|00250|00:58.3|01:56.6|220.8|23.1|170.5|172.0|11.1
05|00500|02:00.8|02:00.8|198.9|22.0|169.0|171.0|11.3
06|00750|03:04.0|02:02.6|190.2|21.0|165.4|169.0|11.7
07|01000|04:09.7|02:04.8|180.0|20.0|162.4|165.0|12.0
08|01000|04:05.1|02:02.6|190.2|21.1|164.7|167.0|11.6
09|00750|03:00.4|02:00.2|201.0|22.1|168.3|171.0|11.3
10|00500|01:56.2|01:56.2|222.7|22.9|172.7|176.0|11.3
11|00250|00:57.0|01:54.1|235.4|24.4|177.0|178.0|10.8
12|00250|00:59.7|01:59.5|206.0|22.5|176.0|178.0|11.2
13|00500|02:02.7|02:02.7|189.9|22.3|171.1|175.0|11.0
14|00750|03:06.1|02:04.0|183.4|21.4|167.2|171.0|11.3
15|01000|04:09.1|02:04.5|181.2|20.6|166.8|171.0|11.7

And in pictures:

I was quite intrigued by the “work per stroke” plot as a function of distance. An interesting case of slacking off on the final rate ladder down to lower rates.

I also did a 2k cooling down row.

Saturday

Normally, Saturday is our regular “club run” day, but today was special. For more than a week now, the ice on our rowing lake is thick enough for skating. Until Monday, there was a perfect black layer of smooth ice, without snow.

On Monday I was still not well, and I did the erg row with video.

For the rest of the week, I was too busy, and still not well.

From Tuesday to Friday, there were frequent snow showers. Luckily, there was a stiff north wind as well, so there was just a thin layer of powder snow on the ice.

I spent 45 minutes wiping a 400m oval. Then I started skating, taking breaks to improve my “Olympic Oval” gradually.

The boys played ice hockey. Some people went on the lake on X country skis. I am going to do that tomorrow.

Here is the Strava summary: https://www.strava.com/activities/823892699/overview

And here is the SportTracks.mobi summary:

You can see from the HR plot that the snow wiping was quite hard work as well. After 90 minutes on the ice I was quite tired. It was also quite cold. When we started, it was -15 degrees C. When we finished, it was “only” 12 degrees below zero.

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myimage (4)

Jan 5 2017

Maintenance

Skipped yesterday’s strength workout because of a long working day and because of the flu.

Today. Limited to 30 minutes, or rather 3x2500m with 1 minute rest, just to not get out of the habit of working out.

I captured the interval workout with ErgData, in order to simulate the workflow of the majority of the rowsandall.com users. From ErgData to the Concept2 Logbook. Then importing into rowsandall.com, and from there exporting to Strava and SportTracks.

I caught a few bugs in the process. I am curious to see if there are any further reports of failing synchronization to Strava.

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myimage (3)

Jan 3 2017

Abandoned session because of exploding head

I have the flu. Nothing very serious so far, and I did yesterday’s steady state session without problems.

Today, however, I didn’t feel fully recovered from the intervals. Which is weird.

The training plan asked for a 4x2km session. Haven’t done this one in a while. I went to the erg room with a plan. Take it easy. Just row 26spm and take whatever pace you get. It is more important to complete the session than to row it at PB pace.

That was the theory. I set off at 26spm and used the free speed I got from my erg video analysis advice report. Which got me through the first interval at 1:52 average pace, and half way through the third one. That was the point where my head exploded. Not literally, of course, but this was how it felt.

So let’s see how I feel tomorrow.

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IMG_1255

Jan 2 2017

Happy New Year! – Ergometrics

First, I would like to wish all my readers a happy, healthy, and successful new year, without injuries, and full of quality training and successful racing.

I have spent the past few days in Berlin with the Roosendaal clan (my parents, my two sisters, the children and significant others). Of course this was more about sightseeing, visiting museums and attractions, and eating than about training. Still, one of the best ways of sightseeing in a busy city is an early morning run (Strava link).

Here are a few pictures:

Today, it was back to work. I spent the morning shaking hands and wishing my colleagues a happy new year. I kicked off a few things and around lunch time I took a break to go to the lake.

There is a thick layer of what looks like good quality ice there, and many people were ice skating. I have a slight cold, though, so instead of going on the ice I headed to the erg room of our rowing club.

Before doing a nice hour of steady state on sliders, I took a few minutes to video myself erging. For Christmas, Greg gave me a video analysis from Row Analysis, so today I happily taped markers on various places on the erg and on myself, and then made a ten stroke video. The raw result is here:

I hope the video is high quality enough for the analysis. I have uploaded it to the Row Analysis site and am now waiting for the results. Will keep you posted.

The hour of steady state was very nice. It is so comfortable to do this on an erg on sliders. It is easier on the back, and the stroke is longer (because you pick up the acceleration of the flywheel earlier in the stroke) and for me it is easier to hold a pace than on the static erg. If the row club had PM5 monitors for their ergs, I would work out there more often, even though the time lost driving there and back is not insignificant.

Edit

Adding a few video snapshots.

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