head race

Apr 10 2016

Friday: Race Day minus One

Packed race gear including all the energy bars and other placebos to make me row faster.

Drove to rowing club. Loaded single on my small trailer. All the other boats are on the big trailer, but we need the small trailer for shuttling boats from the finish back to the start. Some boats are used by multiple crews, you see.

Drove to Hořín, dropping our sons at my mother-in-law on the way (and having a good lunch at her place). Arrived at the launching site after 3pm. Prepared single. Went for a short row.

Horin 001.JPG — The canal in Vraňany, near the launching site. The race start is 2km in the direction of the picture

There is a big gap in the data. I tried to use CrewNerd’s “Courses” function to check where I put the start line on the Hořín course. You basically set it to a course that you have prepared using Google Earth. Then the clock starts ticking when you cross the virtual starting line, and stops when you cross the finish line. The app doesn’t take data before the starting line.

It was around the last big bush before the railway bridge, which was earlier than the official start line. That means that I put it wrong and would not be able to use this function during the race. I remember I did last year, and was looking at the wrong average split during the entire race. Average split for me is an important motivator. I set something during the first 2k and then I am fighting to not let it drop.

As you can see from the plots, the race was just a short one (35min) with a few bursts at race pace.

A light head wind. Not nice. I prefer tailwind.

After my row, Lenka and Iva went out for their short row and I took a few pictures:

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Then we drove the trailer to the finish area.

In the evening I was a solid 1kg under weight, which allowed me to have a normal dinner. Went to bed early.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: head race, rowing, single, taper, training

Apr 7 2016

Taper Race Day minus Two

The workout

My plan for today was to do a 50 minute row, and have one “lake” of 30 sec / 60 sec rest at race pace.

Arrived at the club. Had a nice chat with the head coach. He saw the Holland Acht (Dutch 8+) training in Gavirate, and expects them to be very good at the Olympics. Nice. I casually asked him what his guys were doing today. “One lake at 22spm, then one lake 30″/60″ rest”, he answered.

Typical.

So it must be a good training to do two days before the race.

Workout Summary - C:Downloads2016-04-07-1545.CSV --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|04020|18:08.0|02:13.9|28.7|162.9|173.4|09.2 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|03008| 13:38 |02:16.1|22.5|160.0|171.0|09.8 | 3km 02|00124| 00:30 |02:00.7|28.0|150.0|165.0|08.9 03|00000| 00:30 |0000:00|30.0|165.0|173.0|00.0 | GPS failure 04|00125| 00:30 |02:00.1|30.0|156.0|171.0|08.3 05|00124| 00:30 |02:01.3|28.0|163.0|174.0|08.9 06|00125| 00:30 |02:00.2|28.0|166.0|175.0|08.9 07|00127| 00:30 |01:58.3|28.1|166.0|174.0|09.1 08|00128| 00:30 |01:57.5|30.0|166.0|175.0|08.5 09|00128| 00:30 |01:57.3|30.0|165.0|176.0|08.5 10|00131| 00:30 |01:54.9|32.0|172.0|180.0|08.2

The lake was super flat. One would think there was no wind. I thought so. I thought so during the warming up, and during the first 3km stretch at 22spm. I was really excited to see my average split drop below 2:20 for that part. (By the way, I rowed this as a CrewNerd set course, with start and finish lines that you can define in Google Earth and then upload to CrewNerd. Nice feature.)

But when I turned, I quickly realized that there had been a very light breeze pushing me.

On to the 30 second intervals. My GPS device stopped during the second interval and I had to reset it. That causes the peaks in the graph and the absence of data in interval #3.

Otherwise, it was nice. I know what to focus on to row my best head race stroke, so I tried to focus on that, and I think it works. Keywords: Length. Reach. The Distance-per-Stroke (DPS) parameter is what I monitor.

Programming fun

Just for fun, I wrote to Concept2 for the API to the Concept2 logbook. I got an answer today with a link to a description and a form to fill out and get an API key. So, in principle it is possible to change my Python code so it uploads much more row data to the Concept2 logbook, including splits, so the logbook can create the nice graphs that you get with ErgData.

I am very unexperienced with HTTPS requests (in any programming language), so I am probably not going to do this.

What it tells me is that C2 logbook integration is doable. Painsled, CrewNerd, NK, others: You can do it! I would love to see this integration, as well as direct upload to Garmin, Strava, SportTracks, and of course CSV and TCX downloads. That would be very cool.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: head race, lake, OTW, rowing, single, taper, training

Apr 7 2016

Race Day Logistics for a LW Masters rower

I will race in 2 days. In the elite Light Weight category. Just because there is no Masters category on this race.

So this will be one of the few rowing races this year (perhaps the only one) where I will have to make weight. My natural weight oscillates around 72kg, so it should not be a big problem. The challenge is always that I am a few kilograms more on January 1. Well. who isn’t? Here is how my weight has been going in the past few months:

The blue symbols are measurements. Always measured first thing in the morning, after a visit to the bathroom. The fat orange line is the line I need to be under on Saturday. The blue line is a linear fit to the trend in the data, and the thin orange line is the moving average with a window size of 5 measurement points.

A few things. You can see that the day to day oscillations are big. Almost 2kg sometimes. I strongly suspect that that is mostly water. I was happy I knew this and didn’t worry about those oscillations too much between January and now. The consequence, of course, is that I want to be well under the limit approaching race day, or otherwise I will have to dehydrate myself.

By the way, I didn’t do anything special to lose the weight. Regular exercise, of course. And no fizzy soft drinks. Beer and wine limited to the weekends, with the exception of business dinners.

On race day, I need to make weight between one and two hours before the race start time. After that, there is time for a quick snack and some drinking. I need to buy some bars and sports drinks for that time window. Also, there are no shops in the starting or finish area. In the starting area, there is nothing. In the finish area you can buy softdrinks and grilled sausages. :-/ So, I need to plan carefully and take all my food and drinks with me.

So that was the easy logistics challenge.

This year, my daughter is racing as well in the Girls 15/16 category, and that will make it really interesting. Almost as if I am doing two races. Why?

Here’s is the starting list and time order:

http://www.veslo.cz/17-mistrovstvi-cr-na-dlouhe-draze-s-mezinarodni-ucasti/25043315/startovni_listina_horin_2016.pdf

Lenka’s start is at 13:08. My start is at 14:33, and that is the time when the officials start my race clock, even when I actually pass the starting line later. There is 85 minutes between that. Let’s say Lenka’s race takes 30 minutes. That leaves 55 minutes to

Take the single out of the water and load it on the trailer. This will involve carrying it through the finish area crowds, because I doubt we will be able to get the trailer any closer than 500m to the finish line. This will take at least 15 minutes.
Drive 10km to the starting area. This will take 15 minutes.
Change footstretcher setting. Launch. This will take 10-15 minutes.
Row to the start line. This will take 5-10 minutes.

There is very little slack in this schedule. 🙁

Luckily I can put the single on the top level of the trailer without actually removing the wing rigger.

Here’s a map of the race. The green polygon is the approximate position of the start line. The red one is the finish. The yellow ones are boat/trailer areas. The race is 6 km long.

Oh boy. I will have to have a very relaxed attitude to all this, and take it with some lightness. If I miss the start time, I will miss it. Will measure my real time on CrewNerd and then check where I would have been in the results if …

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: head race, OTW, race prep, rowing, single

Oct 11 2015

Saturday: Hradiště 6km head race

Before My Race

We drove to Babice early in the morning, because our first task was to be at the start at 10am to collect shoes and bags of the kids who started at 10:30. Here are 2 pictures of the start area. It was dry but there was a cold north (tail) wind and it was just a few degrees above zero:

We briefly talked to our head coach, who just came out of the meeting. My biggest opponent, Mr Machacek, had canceled his participation because of illness. I was a bit disappointed, because I would have liked to race him, but illness is illness.

We collected shoes and bags, then drove the 10km (by car) to the finish area. There Romana and I hopped on our bikes and rode along the river to the 3km point, where we picked up some of the Juniors. We basically assisted the head coach shouting steering instructions and general remarks of encouragement to the kids.

There was a gap of about an hour, so Romana and I had time to go into the Moravia rowing club club house and had a warm lunch and hot tea. Great to be able to warm up a bit. In the mean time, it started to rain.

Around 2pm, the last junior had arrived. We loaded three singles on my trailer and drove them back to the start area.

Then I just sat in our club’s minivan and waited for my start time.

My Race

Being the 340th boat in this race, my start was scheduled at 4:45pm, only to be followed by the Women’s Masters. At 4pm, the last girls went on the water and the minivan drove off to the finish area, basically leaving me in the ice cold drizzle in my rowing clothes. I ran a few rounds to get warm, then I started to get the boat ready for an early launch and a few warming up rounds on the river.

We chatted a bit with the other Masters. Our main conclusion was that we were all crazy to do this. Pesat and Cernak teased me by saying they had hoped that I would be ill, because now I would be the certain winner. There was a new guy as well, a Mr Polasek. Apparently a former rower who had just returned to Masters rowing. Here is is World Rowing Bio:

http://www.worldrowing.com/athletes/athlete/8721/polasek-martin

There was also a rather old participant from Ukraine. I had already met him on my Friday training. He started a few minutes before me and I knew he was very slow.

We got ready to start. In the moment of concentration, I forgot to start the Garmin Forerunner, but I didn’t forget CrewNerd. Also, I had the good idea to remove the remove the “glass” from my glasses. It would have been hard to use the mirror through damp glasses full of raindrops.

Pesat started two minutes before me. There was a two minute gap between him and me, because Machacek cancelled. Cernak was one minute behind me, followed by Polasek another minute later.

Task was clear. Row away from Cernak and Polasek, close the gap with Pesat.

Go. I did a start sequence to get up to speed, then slowed down to 28/29spm and tried to keep that. I had a few moments when I dropped to 27spm but I decided to not force it back up to 29spm. I had the feeling I was rowing well, and forcing it in the beginning would have been a mistake.

Here is the summary from CrewNerd. I had defined a “course” in CrewNerd. I made it slightly shorter than the real course to avoid starting the timer while waiting for the start signal. I am surprised by the reported stroke rates. I had the feeling I was doing 27/28 most of the course, not 26spm. Also, I have only data for the 95% of the race part, not for the warming up or the cooling down.

|Dist_|Time_|Pace__|_SPM__|avg HR|max HR|DPS|Remarks |00499|01:53|01:53.2| 27.5 | 170 | 178 |09.7|km 1 |00500|01:57|01:57.1| 26.7 | 175 | 176 |09.6| |00500|02:04|02:03.9| 26.7 | 176 | 177 |09.1|km 2 |00498|01:59|01:59.4| 26.5 | 178 | 179 |09.5| |00499|02:00|02:00.3| 26.6 | 179 | 180 |09.4|km 3 |00502|02:02|02:01.5| 26.5 | 179 | 180 |09.3| |00501|02:03|02:02.8| 26.6 | 180 | 181 |09.2|km 4 |00498|02:01|02:01.4| 26.9 | 181 | 182 |09.2| |00502|02:02|02:01.4| 27.0 | 181 | 182 |09.1|km 5 |00496|02:00|02:01.0| 27.0 | 182 | 183 |09.2| |00498|02:03|02:03.4| 27.5 | 182 | 183 |08.9|km 6 |00264|01:03|01:59.1| 28.5 | 183 | 184 |08.8|

After 1.5km I passed the Ukranian guy. After 3km I noticed that Polasek had passed Cernak. Hm. I had the feeling Cernak was slower than I, but now I had to judge if this Mr Polasek was two minutes behind me or less. Staring at them I made the “beer brewery” turn a bit too wide. After that, I decided to ignore the guys behind me and just focus on my own rowing. There were too many turns to check, anyway. I could only see him on the straight bits.

I noticed I had forgotten to remove the head scarf worn as a shawl during the cold wait. I didn’t mind. I wasn’t cold any more, but it was still chilly.

Now I hoped Romana would have found time to drive to the 3km point and cheer me, but that didn’t happen, unfortunately. She had to spend time with her pupil, who I later heard had rowed well, but missed her start slot by 1:20 minutes.

Tailwind was nice and I was doing well until the end. I cranked up the stroke rate to 30 in the last 500m. I heard the bell when Pesat finished, and that was certainly less than 2 minutes before my finish time, because I was well past the 500m mark.

In my last 20 strokes I heard the commentator telling the public that Mr Roosendaal, “who was last year’s winner, had won the sprint races last week, and now he is back to head racing.” Great.

I finished. Put on warm clothes. Forgot to check the watch to check if there were more or less than two minutes between me and Mr Polasek. From the rowing club house balcony, Radek shouted at me that I had “probably” won. I decided to wait.

The information came when I was already on the dock. The speaker announced that the winner was … Mr Polasek. Roosendaal in second place, 6 seconds behind the winner.

I admit I was disappointed.

Afterwards, I think I should be happy with the result. The guy beat me by 6 seconds but he is two years younger than I and looks a lot stronger. That means I have kept up with him by rowing technique and good steering. I beat Cernak and Pesat by large margins. In the Open Men’s LightWeight 1x, I would have been 14th out of 20. In the heavyweights, 13th out of 19. The fastest woman was 15 seconds slower than I.

My time was 30 seconds slower than a year ago, but the river was much lower. I think the difference is due to less strong current.

Lessons for next year’s edition:

Minibus parks in finish area, so rowers can enjoy the warm club lounge and its offering of tea, warm food etc before and after the race. Use small cars to shuttle batches of rowers to the start.
Divide tasks between trainers: Cyclists whose only task is to cycle up and down the course and encourage crew, finish area guys who help rowers with boats and loading the trailers
Have someone responsible for food

Anyway, season over. Let the winter preparation begin!

PS Here’s the main Czech TV report about the new tradition of Academic rowing races in Brno: http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/10103510226-sport-v-regionech/315297370030049-univerzitni-souboj-osmiveslic/

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 4 • Tags: 6km, head race, OTW, race, rowing, single

Oct 9 2015

Hradiště test drive

The club needed my small trailer for tomorrow’s head race, to shuttle singles that are used by more people from the finish to the start. My trailer has the nice property that you can load it with a few singles without removing the wings/riggers.

So I took the opportunity to load my own single on my trailer and go for a morning reconnaissance row in Hradiště. I also had the opportunity to combine it with a work-related visit to the local aircraft manufacturers Evektor and Aircraft Industries.

My timing notes for today were:

5:30 depart from home
5:45 arrive at rowing club; pick up trailer
6:00 depart from rowing club; drive 110km to Babice
7:30 arrive in Babice
8:00 launch and row
9:30 backfrom training
9:45 drive to finish area; park trailer
10:15 drive to Aircraft Industries
10:30 arrive at Aircraft Industries
11:00 meetings
13:30 depart from Aircraft Industries; drive 70km to Brno
15:00 arrive at work; interview candidate

Woke up with the common cold at 5:20. Worked off the program. Arrived at Aircraft Industries at 10:37. I arrived at work 14:55 to interview the candidate. I was never more than 15 minute from the plan.

Here is how I arrived at Babice, in the rain, in the middle of nowhere:

I rowed the 14km from the launch point to the finish and back. I had programmed the race as a “course” in CrewNerd and I test drove this. It was good that I did that. I had placed the start 100m before the real start. Corrected that now, but I discovered that the upgrade of SportTracks seems to have lost my most used plugin: Google Earth Visualisation by Dobrou Extensions. 🙁

The row itself was nice. The mirror works perfectly for steering and I tried to row the ideal course. You can check here:

https://www.strava.com/activities/409295053

On our own river, I had difficulties distinguishing between the two banks in the evening light, but on the Morava river with its green, grassy banks I had no trouble. The ideal course is, according to my estimate, the shortest course that never brings you closer than 2 meters to the bank. Closer than 2 meters, and the river is too shallow and you don’t benefit from the stream.

Rowing on the perfectly flat water and checking my mirror, I really got into the mood for tomorrow’s race. Not good that I am a little sniffly, but I decided to just ignore that.

The meetings were fine. Both companies make interesting aircraft. Here is a promo video about the L410 landing in Nepal. Quite nice, even though the engines are from the competitor:

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: head race, OTW, race prep, rowing, single, training

Apr 5 2015

More Puddles (Race Report)

Race

Where did I leave you, dear reader?

Ah, I remember.

I, bow nr 351, had just overtaken a second single sculler, I was making progress on taking over bow nr 352, and I had bow nr 350 on my heels. I was doing 29spm into the headwind, and I was starting to get tired.

I started noticing the occasional 28spm. Remembering how I slowed down in the middle 2km of last year’s edition, I tried to keep the rate up and tried to keep #352 behind me as long as possible.

But he was gaining on me. I wasn’t wearing my HR belt, because in races I don’t want to wear anything that restricts my breathing, but I was clearly in the red.

I knew our head coach would be waiting at the half way point and I had told him to tell me to not dip the blades too deep and keep sending the boat. That forced me to focus on technique, even though the head coach never appeared at the 3km point.

So I passed the 3km, 3 more to go. Nr 352 was rowing in my puddles, and I was rowing in nr 350’s puddles.

Not much changed between 3km and 3.5km, except that I crept a little closer to #350, and #352 kept a little closer to me.

The situation now started to be precarious, because the last 1000m is a slow turn, so in my mind I had to chose between letting him pass and be able to row the shortest course in the turn, or risk being passed in the turn and having to row the wider curve.

To make matters worse, #350 was right in front of me on the right-hand side of the canal. This canal is too narrow for three singles, and both #352 and I were gaining on #350.

What to do?

The mind does strange things when you’re at 29spm and your heart is beating at 185bpm, and you still have more than 2km to row.

I saw three options:

Go to other side of canal, right in front of my pursuer, losing distance on him, and risk being disqualified for hindering an opponent, in order to pass #350.
Keep rowing straight into #350 and force him to the other side, thus forcing him to hinder #352 and risk being disqualified. Or, he would keep rowing in front of me so I would be in his puddles, be forced to slow down, and then pass him on the other side.
Slow down ever so slightly, let #352 pass, then sneak up behind #352 and pass #350.

Option 3 seemed the smartest at the moment. Also, my head liked the idea of slowing a little and then going full speed ahead.

Option 3 it would be. What I didn’t realize is that my option 3 had a hidden assumption, that is that when you pass someone, you pass him fast and make sure you gain on him even after you passed him.

I slowed down a little, which Crewnerd immediately noticed. I started seeing the 2:10s on the pace window.

What the heck? Nothing happened. Our relative positions remained the same. I didn’t want to slow down more …

It took about 500m for #352 to come beside me and he kept rowing there.

“GO!” I shouted to him.

“I am trying,” he replied.

What to do now that my perfect plan was showing some imperfections? I could still see #350 right in front of me in my mirror, and I could feel his puddles.

“GO!” I shouted. I wished I had the breath to add some explicit language. I didn’t.

He finally passed me just before the bridge marking the start of that final turn.

The worst place to be for me, because now I was in double puddles under a bridge. So while I was trying to get back my speed I had to row in puddles and wake reflected by the concrete bank in the bridge. I could really feel my single going up and down and left and right. Still, I managed to increase the rate. It helped that at this point Romana shouted at me.

What did she shout?

“Come on, you can take over both of them!”

Good motivation.

I also noticed daughter Lenka on the bank. She didn’t shout anything, too embarrassed to be caught cheering for her father. I didn’t mind. I was going to rate up anyhow.

Mister 350 took the inner side of the turn as well, so it took Mister 352 a lot of time before he could pass Mister 350. All the time I was rowing in both gentlemen’s puddles. On the last straight 300m to the finish, Mr 352 managed to pass Mr 350, with me on his tails and pushing.

Now we were rowing in front of the public.

No light between 352 and myself. My bow ball must have been right next to his stern. I started to pass 350.

Beep. Beep Beep.

Something in me wished there was another 1000m to race.

I paddled a few strokes. There isn’t much to paddle there, because the lock is only 100m after the finish line. Here’s my post finish dialogue with #352, the guy who took more than 1000m to pass me.

Man, you should have passed me quicker.
I know but I had a crisis. The finish was still so far.

I managed to sneak in front of 350 on the little dock space available and I took endless time to take out my sculls, put on a warm layer of clothing, remove the GPS and iphone, and then lift the boat out of the water.

Post Race

There you are, carrying a single but not knowing where your club’s trailer is. With very very very tired legs. In a very busy finish area. Everybody is rushing somewhere. Nobody to help.

I managed to drag myself 100m further and find our trailer without dropping my single. I had to ask someone to put up some slings for me to put my single in. I am afraid I was a little grumpy by then.

When I finally could put down my boat and start to prepare it for transport, I could get a little rest.

When all was ready, I went to buy myself a nice grilled sausage and some warm tea, which at that moment seemed the ideal combination to me. Hot grilled sausage with mustard. Hot tea. Heaven.

Here’s my final ranking. Looking at the scores, I must have passed another boat, the #344 who DNF.

So I came 14th of 20, not bad for a 42 year old in a field where the second oldest is 12 years younger. I am not worried about being 3 minutes behind Olympians. I am quite happy to have finished in front 2 rowers of LSBR, Lodni Sporty Brno, the rowing club on the other side of the lake. 🙂

If I had finished 15 seconds earlier, I would have been on a 12th place which earns points for our club. A year ago I finished 12th but 12th out of 15.

I did the course in 20 seconds slower than a year ago. But a year ago, there was no wind and they were feeding the canal with river water, causing a slight flow. So I consider this year a stronger effort.

Some pictures taken after the finish. I love this 19th century lock and the view on the town of Melnik:

What followed?

An hour and a half of driving to Pardubice. A stop at a gas station where I saw my reflection in the window, a very tired man in sweaty rowing clothes. A tired but happy man. I paid for the gas and added two bottles of Pilsner Urquell and a bottle of wine.

In Pardubice, at my mother-in-law’s place, I quickly wrote up the first part of this blog and then spent the evening talking rowing with Romana and my brother-in-law.

In the end I think the drama of #350, 351 and 352 gave me enough adrenalin to compensate for the time lost in the slowing down to let 352 pass maneuvers.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: head race, OTW, single

Apr 3 2015

Packing for the race

New team clothing.

Also trying out WordPress mobile.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: head race, taper, weight control

1 2 3

head race

Friday: Race Day minus One

Taper Race Day minus Two

Race Day Logistics for a LW Masters rower

Saturday: Hradiště 6km head race

Hradiště test drive

More Puddles (Race Report)

Packing for the race

Calendar

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