erg

soukalova

Dec 6 2015

Another steady state at lactate – and biathlon

Another endurance building session (hopefully). I decided to stick to the 200W level.

I expected this to be a hard session. After yesterday’s running I feel delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) and didn’t expect my energy stores to be fully replenished. Funny enough, during the session I sensed that I was OK and kept the 200W level, apart from a slightly slower first interval. Heart rate stayed nice and low (higher than I used to row my steady state intervals but at least it didn’t creep towards 165).

Workout Summary - Dec 06, 2015
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|20432|86:00.0|02:06.3|173.8|21.6|149.9|160.0|11.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|Comments
01|04872|20:00.0|02:03.2|187.4|21.1|143.6|154.0|11.6|#1
03|04972|20:00.0|02:00.7|199.1|22.4|152.5|159.0|11.1|#2
05|04969|20:00.0|02:00.8|198.8|22.9|153.9|160.0|10.8|1.2 mmol/L
07|04975|20:00.0|02:00.6|199.5|23.4|152.8|158.0|10.7|1.4 mmol/L

4x20.jpg

All good. A very successful finger stab at 60 minutes. Blood kept flowing out of my finger for another 5 minutes during the row. I am starting to be less nervous about this.

Listened to the radio during the row. Pop songs alternated with sport reporting. Biathlon is on. I love doing cross country skiing, but for watching (and listening) biathlon is much more interesting.

The leader of the World Cup is a Czech lady named Gabriela Soukalová:

soukalova

Biathlon athletes must have fantastic aerobic endurance. What makes it interesting to watch is the shooting.

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3x20min

Dec 4 2015

Friday:Travel & 3×20 minutes

Woke up at 4:15 to take the taxi to the airport, through a rainy Brussels. Took the 6:25 AM flight to Munich, where I had a breakfast, had my shoes shined, and sat down at the gate for my connection with lots of German newspapers. It’s nice to read foreign papers. You get a different perspective on things.

The flight to Brno was empty. Really empty. Besides me, there was one other passenger. I chatted a bit with the flight attendant. It’s a new route and it hasn’t been advertised much, but I also think that the departure times around noon are not very well chosen. If I want to fly from Brno to have meetings somewhere (other than Munich), I need an extra hotel night, and I end up with a lot of unused time.

Well, it was pleasant for me and a relaxed flight for the attendant, but I doubt BMI regional makes money on this.

Had lunch with Romana in a good Italian restaurant in town, then drove home. Worked a bit, then a 3×20 min session.

3x20min.jpg


Workout Summary - Dec 04, 2015
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-DPS
--|15365|64:00.0|02:05.0|179.4|21.4|155.4|11.2
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|DPS-|Comments
01|04907|20:00.0|02:02.3|191.4|21.4|146.7|11.5|
03|04964|20:00.0|02:00.9|198.2|22.0|159.5|11.3|
05|04947|20:00.0|02:01.3|196.1|22.3|162.9|11.1|

The summary pace is including the 2 minutes of rest between the intervals.

I didn’t really force myself to hold 200W, but rather rowed on feel. Ended up rowing very close to Tuesday’s result but it felt a whole lot easier.

Heart rate was just 2 beats lower. Heart rate drift was the same.

Lactate was at 1.5 mmol/L though, compared to Tuesday’s 2.5 mmol/L.

Tomorrow,  Romana’s girls and I will do another running event under the “cross-training is fun” banner.

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Dec 1 2015

Another Steady State Data Point

Today I ignored lesson 1 for steady state sessions. If it is supposed to be a UT2 or UT1 session, it is not supposed to feel like hard work. If it does, you should back down, reduce the intensity, or even just stop and take a rest day.

For science (or rather for my curiosity as my method lacks scientific rigor), I pushed on.

A lot of things were different today, compared to the steady state sessions that I measured lactate on so far:

  1. I didn’t sleep well. I woke up from a dream which I could remember quite vividly, which doesn’t happen very often. It was 3AM. Between 3AM and 6AM I was turning in bed, not sleeping well.
  2. I cycled to work. Made a point of cycling very lightly, “to get yesterday’s heavy session out of my system”.
  3. I had a big cold salad for lunch, then nothing for the entire afternoon, and for dinner I decided to add an omelet to my usual light dinner.
  4. The weather has changed from nice, cold and dry to 10 degrees C, rainy and humid.
  5. It is not November any more.

I did a 3×20 min tonight with a lactate measurement after the last 20 minute interval.

I warmed up for 5 minutes.

First interval didn’t feel too bad. I slowly ramped up the power for the first 10 minutes and ended up doing a 190W on average.

I rowed the second interval with an eye on the clock. It seemed endless. I knew I was working harder than I want to work in steady state sessions, but after 10 minutes funnily the pace started to drift to 210W and I had to consciously keep it down. Still, my breathing and the feeling in my legs told me I was working too hard.

The third interval was hard. The kind of annoying steady state “hard”. It just took too much mental effort to hold the pace. I did some stroke rate changes in the first 10 minutes just to keep the focus. Took a lactate measurement immediately after the interval:

laktaat 001.JPG

Feeling confirmed. I was actually very happy about this result. It gives me more confidence in lactate measurement as a method to confirm what the perceived rate of effort tells me. And thus it also gives me confidence to continue doing what I have done so far: If it feels too hard, back down.

I’ll start keeping my lactate readings, together with notes on heart rate, perceived level of effort and some other parameters in a spreadsheet.

Here’s the HR plot of the session:

3x20min.jpg


Workout Summary - Dec 01, 2015
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-DPS
--|15428|64:00.0|02:04.5|181.6|22.2|156.9|10.9
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|DPS-|Comments
01|04902|20:00.0|02:02.4|190.9|21.1|147.2|11.6|1st 20 min
02|00345|02:00.0|02:53.7|066.8|17.5|124.5|09.9|rest
03|04990|20:00.0|02:00.2|201.3|23.3|161.2|10.7|2nd 20 min
04|00220|02:00.0|04:33.0|017.2|13.0|127.9|08.5|rest
05|04971|20:00.0|02:00.7|199.0|23.5|165.4|10.6|3rd 20 min: 2.5 mmol/L

HR drift was 7%.

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4x2km2

Nov 30 2015

Torture Variations

It’s one thing that we regularly torture our bodies to misery. Let that pass. But torturing it always in exactly the same way, that goes too far.

So even though I keep coming back to the interval sessions from the Wolverine Plan (and the Pete Plan), this year I make an effort to vary how I row them. Today I tried red-lining (or perhaps purple-lining, looking at my heart rate). Next time it may be positive splitting. Or do a full out 2k in the first interval, then try to minimize the damage in the following ones. The method behind the madness is to avoid staleness, and there are even training theories based on physiology that support this. Surprise your metabolic systems …

The target was 1:52.9 which didn’t seem too hard, but I have come to respect these 4x2km sessions. You cross the line and suddenly you are at risk of not finishing the session.

4x2km24x2km1

The pictures tell the full story better than the summary table. Basically I went into each 2km with 10 hard strokes at 1:40 pace, then slowed down. From the second interval onward this left me gasping for air with about 1890 meters to go. Then I would try to recover. At the half way point I did 10 hard strokes (1:47 pace), and with 500m to go I would do 50 hard strokes (1:48-1:50 pace). The final interval was of course a special one, with everything one or two seconds of split faster and a crazy acceleration in the final 500m, to squeeze out everything.

Workout Summary - Nov 30, 2015
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-DPS
--|08000|29:40.3|01:51.3|254.1|27.6|167.6|09.8
Workout Details
#-|EDist|-Etime-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|DPS-|Comments
01|02000|07:29.9|01:52.5|246.0|26.3|158.0|10.2|
02|04000|14:56.0|01:51.5|252.3|27.3|167.2|09.9|
03|06000|22:20.7|01:51.2|254.6|27.9|170.0|09.7|
04|08000|29:40.3|01:49.9|263.8|29.1|174.6|09.4|

Average pace: 1:51.3. Nice. Haven’t done this session this fast before. In the 2014/15 winter, I managed 1:51.6.

That brings me to my final thought of the day, on steady state intensity again. Since I started measuring lactate I have started to think I can increase their intensity to 200W. One thing is to stay below 2.0 mmol/L in these sessions, but another requirement will be that the steady state intensity is low enough that I can be sharp for the harder sessions.

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4x20a

Nov 29 2015

Steady State – further lactate figures

Saturday

Weather not good for rowing. Some ice along the banks. Cold water. Also, I promised Romana (who is struggling with a cold) that I would take her training today. So it was a very slow run from the rowing club with the girls. I tried to improve their running technique. A couple of breaks for stretching.

https://www.strava.com/activities/440656322

prehradarun.JPG

Sunday

A week ago, I did the first serious lactate testing. Today I played with the thought of repeating it at slightly higher power settings, to get some more info about my lactate curve. In the end I decided to not do 8x10min but 4x20min, to save strips and reduce the rest. I have the feeling that my lactate level goes down quite quickly and 2 minutes rest on 10 minutes exercise seems quite luxurious.

2k of slow warming up (2:15 pace) and then into the main event:

4x20b.jpg

First 20 min at 180W to get into the groove and get a data point around the power where I had minimum lactate last Sunday. I measured 0.8 mmol/L.

Then up to 200W. Today it felt like a very easy intensity, but I guess doing this after 20 minutes at 180W my aerobic engine was running at full speed and not yet tired. The result: 1.4 mmol/L. Nice.

Up to 210W and a few minutes into that row I knew I should expect a higher lactate level. The breathing got heavier, but more importantly my splits began to swing more, between 195W and 220W, instead of staying within a few Watts of the target. I had to focus more. The result: 1.9 mmol/L.

The original plan was to do the final 20 minutes at 220W, but I didn’t feel like it. Instead, I decided that holding 210W and looking at the lactate and HR levels would also be an interesting result. The row didn’t feel harder than the third interval, but still I got a very interesting (and comforting) result: 2.2 mmol/L.

Here is the graph. I plotted the additional data points over the 8x10min step test of last week.

4x20a.jpg

Even though I changed from a 10 minute based step to a 20 minute based step, I think the results are very consistent. It also looks like 200 W is really the level that I should do my steady state, if I follow the paradigm that one should do steady state below 2.0 mmol/L.

So all  in all I start to have more faith in my lactate results and will do 200W steady state for the coming week or two. I am really happy to have established that my lactate level can go above 2.0 on 210W steady state. I also liked how the level kept increasing in the second interval at 210W. Kind of suggests that 210 is above lactate steady state.

So 200W it is. Probably 3x20min during weekdays and 4x20min in the weekend, measuring lactate at the end.

 

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lactate 001

Nov 26 2015

Bike, Steady State & Experimenting

Wednesday

No training. Took the 7:40 train to Prague. Worked at our Prague office. Then had a nice dinner down town with my old rowing friend. Walked through Prague Old Town after dinner, talking about the old times.

Took the 8pm fast bus back to Brno, arriving at the bus station at 22:15, at home and in bed by 23:00. I read an interesting article on elite athletes in the bus. Will talk about it later.

Thursday

A long day at work. Then I cycled home:

Namiddagrit 11-26-2015, Heart rate.png

About an hour after a light dinner, I headed down to the erg room. I prepared two lactate strips in the cold (5-8 degrees C), next to the erg, and left two lactate strips in their container in the kitchen (21 degrees C).

Did a 2km warming up. I didn’t feel top form, despite the resting day. I even suspect a light head cold may be coming up.

The original plan was to do a 60 minutes, but I convinced myself that my experiment would work at any lactate reading, so a 40 minute exercise would be OK.

I rowed for 40 minutes. It was not nice. My heart rate was higher than usual. It felt hard. I had to stop after 17 minutes to get my audio going again (a 30 second stop only, just switched from “lecture” to “radio”).

40min.jpg

Average pace 2:03.7, 185W.

The plan was to do a lactate reading immediately after the row.

Unfortunately, when I stopped rowing, I got unbearable cramp in my right calf, so I spent the first minute in pain before I could start preparing for a lactate reading.

lactate 001.JPG
20:22 After exercise. Cold strip. Cold meter.

I did an easy 1km in 2:19 pace and took another measurement.

lactate 002.JPG
20:29 After cooling down. Cold strip. Cold meter.

Then I went upstairs to the kitchen and did a measurement immediately with one of the strips that had waited in the kitchen.

lactate 003.JPG
20:30. Warm Strip. Cold Meter.

Then I washed my hands with warm water and did another measurement.

lactate 004.JPG
20:32 Warm hands. Warm meter. Warm strip.

After that I took a hot shower. I mean hot. Really hot. I usually end showering by gradually lowering the water temperature until I shower off cold, to stop sweating. This time I didn’t. After the shower I took a final measurement, from my second container. My 26th Lactate strip this week.

lactate 005.JPG
20:48 Hot hands. Warm meter. Warm strip

In conclusion, I don’t think it is detrimental to keep the strips at 5 degrees. I have to believe that my 26 lactate measurements of this week were real, at least to withing 0.5 mmol/L. I think the increase from 0.6 to 1.1 while I was standing in my kitchen can be explained by the muscle lactate being cleared, temporarily increasing blood lactate.

Still leaves unanswered the question what my good steady state intensity is. I am afraid 200W is too much, but let’s see how I think about it a week from now.

 

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randstad1993-1

Nov 24 2015

5x1500m

Ben Redman posted a link to an interesting series of articles on endurance training in his latest blog post. Great reading to stimulate thoughts on rowing training for time pressed people.

My ride to work this morning was a bit slower than usual, because it was mighty cold and the mist was freezing to some sections of the road. I didn’t fancy a fall so I drove carefully.

Riding my bike I got cold hands, which made me think about my super-low lactate readings of the past two days. I guess my difficulty to get good blood flowing is to do with the low temperature in my rowing basement. The thermometer on the wall indicates something between 8 and 12 degrees C.

I also expressed fear that the low temperature might cause the readings to be lower than normal.

I posted these thoughts on the Lactate training thread on the Free Spirits rowing forum. By the end of the day Boris (“dr3do”) had responded that indeed according to him lower temperatures give lower readings and I should do my measurements at normal room temperature.

Then I made the mistake of posting a response before thinking, and as any new convert going through excitement, expectation, disappointment and frustration, I overreacted. On a public Forum. After 20 years of being on the internet I should know better.

Anyway, I apologized and I hope everything will calm down and be back to normal.

This low temperature thing is a bummer. I love to train in my chilly basement. To get the facts, I moved the thermometer to the basement floor where I prepare my lactate strips:

lactate 001
Temperature near the ground

Indeed, lower than the 8 degrees measured on the wall.

On Thursday I will do an experiment to confirm (or, hopefully, falsify) my fear. I will take two strips to the basement and leave one prepared in a heated room. I will do a 60 minutes steady state, and take a lactate measurement immediately after. Then I will do a 1km very light cooling down and take another measurement. Finally, I will walk up the stairs and take a measurement with a  warm strip. The two last measurements should be close. If the “warm” measurement gives a higher reading than the second “cold” measurement, I am in trouble.

Today’s training was a good old 5x1500m. Target pace was 1:50.7 which I was not looking forward to. At least I was able to channel my forum faux-pas frustration and focus on the splits.

5x1500.jpg


Workout Summary - Nov 24, 2015
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-DPS
--|07500|27:31.4|01:50.1|262.3|27.8|165.9|09.8
Workout Details
#-|EDist|-Etime-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|DPS-|Comments
01|01500|05:30.2|01:50.1|262.5|27.1|158.2|10.1|
02|03000|11:01.7|01:50.5|259.4|27.5|165.0|09.9|
03|04500|16:33.3|01:50.5|259.2|27.3|167.9|09.9|
04|06000|22:04.8|01:50.5|259.3|27.9|167.8|09.7|
05|07500|27:31.4|01:48.9|271.2|29.2|170.3|09.4|

Here’s a picture of my erg room wall with the scores on the doors:

lactate 004.JPG

The scribbled equations were written during the breaks of the 5x1500m. I was thinking about enzymes and the temperature dependence of their activity. Being a physicist I couldn’t come up with anything better than something looking like an Arrhenius equation. That doesn’t bring me any further because I don’t have a clue what typical activation energies would be for enzymes, let alone if they follow Arrhenius equation type behaviour. Also I would have to guess about the temperature in the strip. The plastic housing looks quite a good heath insulator. Then you pour warm blood into something that is probably around 5 degrees C. We are looking at a temperature difference that is probably a bit smaller than 294K – 278K. Basically if the reaction rate would half between these two temperatures, then the activation energy would be 31 kJ/mol. However I am afraid that with enzymes as a catalyst, things are probably not so simple.

May look into it but I fear the experiment is a more useful way to determine the effect.

Tomorrow is a resting day. An old rowing friend has a business trip to Prague, so I will join him for a beer and a dinner. Here is the two of us rowing the double in Amsterdam in 1993. I am the stroke rower and Ele Jan is the bow.

randstad1993-1.jpg

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