head race

Apr 2 2015

Crazy day and race prep

A crazy day in all aspects.

It was snowing when I drove to work. Then I had one of those crazy mornings where you do something else every ten minutes just trying to help your direct reports and move everything forward a bit.

Then an off-site lunch with a colleague and friend, discussing some work/life related stuff that is not relevant for this blog. I also realized I had forgotten the bag with my boat and scull covers at home, so I raced home to get it, then back to work.

Spent the afternoon onboarding a new direct report. The plan was to disappear at 4:30, drive to rowing club, a quick row with 2 intervals at race pace, then prepare boat for transport. The reality was that I left at 6, arrived at the club at 6:20. There were huge waves on the lake, so I prepared the boat for transport and then went for an erg training.

2.5km warming up

1km target 1:49 @ 29spm, reality 1:47 pace @ 28spm

2km rest

1km target 1:49 @ 29spm, reality 1:47 pace @ 28spm

2.5km cooling down

Yesterday was the day that my new toys arrived from Amazon. Unfortunately I had not time to test CrewNerd+XGPS160+Wahoo bluetooth HR belt. I did test the Wahoo belt with the iphone to record the erg training though. Worked fine of course.

Well, I will need to try the other toy on tomorrow’s reconnaissance row at the race venue.

The draw is out:

horin

The Vetesnik guys are Olympians. Ondrej Vetesnik has a 6:08 erg score. They start way ahead of me anyway, so nothing to worry about.

What is more interesting is that the guy with bow nr #352, Mr Barton, was 20 seconds faster than I a year ago. So I guess my goal is to fend him off … 🙂

Tomorrow: Packing for the race, drive to race venue, quick training, then go to hotel. I will leave the laptop at home but may try to do some blogging using the iphone WordPress app.

My race is on Saturday 14:21 Central European Time. Live results will appear here: http://www.sportis.cz/index.php?category=zavody

Weight is a good 70.5kg. 2kg of reserve, that should be enough.

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chart (2)

Mar 31 2015

RIM analysis of head race pace

An interesting day, the last day of March.

We had snow in the morning. Then rain, and wind. Then a lot of sunshine, and Romana called that the lake was OK to row on. An hour later she called that there were heavy waves. Sun and rain were doing 30 minute intervals.

I decided to go to the rowing club anyway. It’s a few days before the race and I wanted to do some analysis.

When I was on the water, there was a strong wind and waves, but no rain. I managed to find a few relatively quiet spots to do my testing.

First, the numbers by Garmin. No HR data today, because my HR belt had disappeared in the dirty laundry pile (found it after the training).

|Tstart_|Tstop__|Dist_|Time_|_Pace__|Remarks
|00:00.0|15:51.0|02531|15:51|03:07.9|Warming up
|15:51.0|17:27.0|00412|01:36|01:56.5|standing start, tailwind
|17:27.0|24:50.0|01516|07:23|02:26.1|rest
|25:00.0|25:54.0|00232|00:54|01:56.4|tailwind
|25:54.0|33:51.0|01355|07:57|02:56.0|rest
|33:51.0|35:30.0|00394|01:39|02:05.6|headwind
|35:30.0|50:36.0|02441|15:06|03:05.6|cooling down

chart (2)

analysis2

The strokes with “headwind” and “tailwind” comment are from today. The two other strokes are from November. In my feeling the top one, marked “headwind”, was the best stroke. Here I concentrated on not making a too deep catch, and I was able to find that good groove stroke.

So let’s say what the analysis says. So from November to March, my stroke efficiency has decreased from >1.5 to around 1. Apparently a bad thing …

Check factor has changed from around 2 to around 1.5, which would indicate a smoother movement of the boat, which is better.

Catch efficiency is roughly the same, higher in headwind (and when I felt I was rowing better) and lower in tailwind, compared to the November data. Catch duration is roughly the same.

I must say the stroke efficiency data are the ones that are thoroughly confusing me …

(For those who have access, here is my blog about the November analysis on Indoor Sport Services: http://indoorsportservices.co.uk/forum/blog.php?u=11066&b=117050 )

snelheid

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Mar 30 2015

Tapering, weight control and wind

This is a tricky week. In the last week before an important head race, I want to taper. However, I will be competing in the Open LW category, so I need to maintain weight. My current weight is oscillating between 71kg and 72kg and I need to make sure I weigh in at 72.5 in rowing clothes on Saturday around lunch time.

My Sunday evening weight is usually a bit higher than my Friday evening weight. It tells something about the quality of the canteen food at work compared to what my wife or I prepare at home. Anyway, I need to maintain a level of easy, steady state kilometers per day or be very disciplined in my eating. I try the middle road. Be slightly disciplined, and row.

A difficult moment today around 3pm when I was reviewing and approving project proposals before they are submitted. I ate a twix bar.

I felt that chocolate bar in my stomach for hours.

The original plan was to row OTW and do 10 to 12 km of technique, with a few bursts at race pace. I wanted to use the RIM app and use the stroke analysis. Unfortunately, we had thunderstorms and heavy wind and the lake was unrowable.

I was uninspired and tired in the evening but I dragged myself down to my basement and started RowPro. RowPro prepared me with a nice surprise, a welcome screen and a first-user tutorial. All my data had disappeared. I was able to load a January backup of my logbook (there was a today’s version but that was corrupted) but at least I hadn’t lost my collection of custom rows.

pyramidde

To overcome my tiredness and uninspiredness,  and because I wanted to do “a few bursts at race pace”, I decided to do a nice sequence of 10 stroke bursts followed by light rowing, shortening the distance between bursts by 200m after each burst, until I would have two bursts after each other, then starting to lengthen again. I miss 100m somewhere. Also, I am now going to play with some math equations to see how I can make this entirely symmetric.

The 10km passed very fast in this way.

Looking forward to Saturday’s race. For those who are registered on Indoor Sport Services, here’s last year’s blog: http://indoorsportservices.co.uk/forum/blog.php?u=11066&b=114285

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