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Maybe it does. But not the ophthalmologist.

I had noticed that I had difficulties reading the small print, especially after a long day and in bad light, so I visited her a week ago, literally for the first time in my life. She measured my eyes and confirmed my suspicion. +0.75 on both eyes.

Today I got a message from the optician that I could pick up my reading glasses. I guess I may finally start to look intelligent. Perhaps I should a picture of myself on my rowing data site and change the slogan to “Recommended by the leading rowing data miners”. :-/

Anyway, because I had to go to town to pick up my glasses and run some other errands, I came home early, and managed to squeeze in a 2x30min Steady State session before dinner.

A bit lower on power than yesterday, but about the same on the Borg scale of perceived exertion. Probably the result of going a bit harder yesterday. It’s a fine balance with these steady state rows.

A year ago I churned out 3x20min and 4x2omin without problems. This year I find I have to “Just Row” or alternate the formats in order to keep it interesting. Actually, a “just row” seems to suit me best recently. The 3x20min just feels to much like 3x”the rest of my life”.

Today it was 2x6km with 2 minutes rest. Added a warming up and a cooling down to bring the total to 14km and the total time to about an hour. Turns out the 6km worked wonders to my motivation. I chopped off the distance in 600m intervals and just kept going.

Here’s the summary:


Workout Summary - media/20161024-185508o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|12325|52:44.0|02:08.4|22.8|158.1|172.0|10.2
W-|12000|48:44.0|02:01.8|22.9|158.9|172.0|10.8
R-|00326|04:00.0|06:08.5|20.1|164.8|172.0|01.1
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|06000|24:25.1|02:02.1|22.7|153.6|166.0|10.8
02|06000|24:19.2|02:01.6|23.1|164.3|172.0|10.7


The original plan was a row in the double with Romana, and then on to the sauna.

But the rowing club had rented out the premises again to a birthday party. It’s good income for the club, but you never know what you find when you are the first to go rowing the next morning.

So the double part was replaced by indoor rowing. It’s a pity, because we haven’t rowed the double for a long time and it’s really a great discipline.

During the erg workout I listened to the Rowing Chat by Rowperfect, which was an excellent way to kill the time. Listening to the talk about sculling really made me realize how much I love the sport. It has everything. You need to be physically fit, there is a big technique element, and it comes the simplicity of getting from A to B in the fastest possible way with team spirit and with the elements.

I listened to a discussion with a coach from Craftbury Sculling Center, and I listened to the first 10 minutes of a chat with Kim Brennan. Both were very interesting to listen to. I liked how Kim described what she observes when rowing the single. Sitting on an erg and listening to someone talk about listening to the sound of the bubbles under the boat or looking at the shape of the stern wake really made the erg time fly by and I even had the feeling it will help my OTW rowing. There was also a lot of discussion about drills, which was good to listen to.

Here’s the row:

The training plan talked about “4x20min”, but instead of that I just sat down in “Just Row” mode and started pulling 6 minute “Wolverine Plan” intervals at 170-190W. After exactly 60 minutes I stopped to take a lactate measurement: 1.2 mmol/L. And after that I continued rowing until I hit 18km.

Workout Summary - media/20161023-093732o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|18000|77:40.0|02:09.5|20.6|157.4|171.0|11.2
W-|18007|77:41.0|02:09.4|20.7|157.4|171.0|11.3
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|00.0|000.0|171.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01162|04:57.2|02:07.8|19.9|132.4|145.0|11.8
02|01178|04:56.6|02:05.9|19.8|148.9|153.0|12.0
03|01205|05:00.7|02:04.7|20.6|153.8|158.0|11.7
04|01199|04:58.8|02:04.6|20.3|156.6|159.0|11.8
05|01207|05:01.7|02:04.9|20.0|159.1|163.0|12.0
06|01205|05:02.3|02:05.4|20.0|159.6|163.0|12.0
07|01197|05:00.1|02:05.4|20.2|160.6|163.0|11.8
08|01186|04:56.4|02:05.0|19.7|162.1|165.0|12.2
09|01222|04:59.5|02:02.6|21.1|167.2|171.0|11.6
10|01204|05:04.4|02:06.5|20.1|162.7|166.0|11.8
11|01186|04:56.5|02:05.0|20.6|164.1|166.0|11.7
12|01195|04:59.1|02:05.1|20.7|163.9|167.0|11.6
13|01228|07:14.6|02:56.9|22.3|157.1|167.0|07.6
14|01179|04:53.2|02:04.4|22.5|161.6|164.0|10.7
15|01144|05:08.9|02:15.0|21.3|152.3|162.0|10.4
16|00109|00:31.2|02:22.9|21.1|147.6|149.0|09.9


I also made a few “stroke cloud” plots.

So 180W average at 21spm median stroke rate. The two red blobs are “18spm” and “20spm”. There is also two minutes worth of “22spm”. I always row a bit higher stroke rate than I intend to.

Today the schedule asked for 60 minutes of steady state and I decided to do it as a just row with no breaks, and do Wolverine Plan L4 style rate changes to kill the time.

I was also listening to Glitch, a Dutch language podcast:

Gitch is an unpredictable podcast on conceived matters. With hands-on guests from the world of design, media and technology. We discuss the magic of making: fundamental doubts and straightforward convictions. Always at the sharp interface of man and machine.

Glitch: smart insights from real people. 100% cheese-talking-marketers free.

I found out that during Steady State it helps if the podcast is in my native language. It takes just slightly less effort to row and focus on the stroke rate and Watts, and listen at the same time.

Time went by surprisingly quickly.

I took it slightly easier than yesterday, especially in the beginning:


Workout Summary - media/20161018-192655-sled_2016-10-18T19-45-37ZGMT+2.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14342|60:05.0|02:05.7|20.7|145.1|166.0|11.5
W-|14346|60:05.0|02:05.7|20.7|144.8|166.0|11.5
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|00.0|000.0|166.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|02358|10:00.0|02:07.2|19.8|128.0|140.0|11.9
02|02361|10:00.0|02:07.1|19.8|138.0|145.0|11.9
03|02383|10:00.0|02:05.9|20.6|142.5|160.0|11.6
04|02404|10:00.0|02:04.8|21.4|152.3|159.0|11.2
05|02399|10:00.0|02:05.1|20.9|151.2|166.0|11.5
06|02441|10:05.9|02:04.1|21.7|156.7|166.0|11.2


I have been fiddling with the interval statistics on rowsandall.com. The intervals are better now, but the Pie chart has the wrong numbers. The percentages are right, though. Will look at the pie chart tomorrow.

Lactate measurement after 60 minutes of easy L4: 1.1 mmol/L.

This plit shows the Work per Stroke for the entire session, as a function of stroke rate. You can see three groups of data points (each point is one stroke). The 24spm efforts are a fourth, smaller group. So for 18spm (more like 19) 20spm (more like 20.5spm) and 22spm, Work per Stroke is roughly constant between 550 and 600 J. For the 24spm, it is higher, clearly above 600J. I didn’t feel the 1 minute intervals at 24spm as particularly heavy, but I guess I was subconsciously comparing them to the harder strokes at the lower rates, i.e. the top parts of the stroke blobs on the chart.

Here is the power histogram for the row.

I have been taking more erg strokes in the past 2 weeks, so I start to have a good data set. Here is the stroke blob for the past month:

Tomorrow: The October CTC, a hard 10k row.