intervals

Romana went out in the double with her partner Veronika and I took the single. I was looking forward to this workout, and a little worried about the prescribed stroke rates:

3x(3x2min/2min)/6min, two minutes are 1 minute at 28spm, 1 minute at 30spm

The coach always writes stroke rates for bigger boats, so for a single we are supposed to subtract 2. Still, I haven’t spent much time at stroke rates above 25spm this year, and the water was a little rough.

It was, actually, ideal weather for the youth sailing regatta happening on the south end of the lake, confining us rowers to its northern half:

A bit of a zig zag course. I warmed up to Rokle (top left on the map) and then on to the start of the 2k course (top middle, close to “Osada”). I did two of the three intervals in headwind (south direction), followed by a turn, and then one interval in tailwind, followed by a paddle back to the start of the 2k. In the last series, I had to change course quite abruptly at the beginning of the second 2 minute interval, to avoid a crash course with some sailing boats, so I rowed the last interval in front of the rowing club, and the cooling down was quite short.

I am pretty happy with the stroke rates I managed, especially given that the charts below seem to suggest I was holding up technique pretty well at the higher rates, despite the choppy water. This is in line with what I felt during the row.

Sunday

No training. Too jetlagged and also having a cold. We did make a nice excursion to a nearby Chateau.

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Monday

Too strong wind for rowing. I did a one hour swim in the indoor 50m pool.

Tuesday

I created my new training plan for the coming period today, and I was able to weave in quite a lot of the sessions suggested by our club’s head coach. This is not always the case, but this time it worked out.

We’re going out in the eight tomorrow, and I am going to strongly suggest that that will be a steady state session. Some in this Masters rowers group have a tendency to want to do speed work on every outing, but I think that a nice technique row is more appropriate for our first row of the season. That was the reason for me to do the 4x5min/4min at 28/30spm today, so I could claim having it already done, and needing a steady state session.

The training was “4x5min/4min with 5min as 3min @ 28spm, 2min @ 30spm”. I decided to reduce the recommended stroke rates by 2, as I was rowing in a single (and because I haven’t rated up yet this year).

It was pretty windy and choppy when I launched, so I sought shelter in the gorge. There is a stretch that is a little longer than 1km and pretty straight, so there is where I would be doing my 5 minute intervals.

I still haven’t found my OTW rowing routine. Today, I forgot to pack the heart rate belt.


Workout Summary - media/20180403-1715420o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07503|39:59.0|02:39.9|181.0|22.9|0.0|000.0|08.2
W-|04527|19:52.0|02:11.8|256.0|26.6|000.0|000.0|08.6
R-|02979|20:00.0|03:21.4|106.9|19.2|000.0|000.0|07.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01186|05:00.0|02:06.5|272.5|26.2|000.0|0.0|09.1
01|01106|05:00.0|02:15.6|251.5|26.8|000.0|0.0|08.3
02|01146|04:52.8|02:07.8|267.0|26.9|000.0|0.0|08.7
03|01089|05:00.0|02:17.7|233.1|26.5|000.0|0.0|08.2


I am pretty happy with the achieved boat speed. There was a big difference between tail wind (first and third intervals) and head wind (second and fourth intervals) and in the fourth interval I was both tired and steering, as I ended up doing the 28spm bit in the first part of the windy stretch.

In the Flex charts, you can see how I got tired, and especially the Wash number deterioriated (or was it the steering).

I also had a problem with the Empower Oarlock disconnecting and reconnecting several times during the row.I just upgraded the firmware  Perhaps it will help.

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Today was also the first row with the Quiske pod. I used the sensor pod under the seat. I was curious to see if there would be any differences between the head wind and tail wind intervals and between the first ones when I was fresh and the last ones. Let’s first look at boat acceleration for the 26spm and 28spm bits.

That looks pretty consistent. No big differences between the intervals. A bit more spread in the data in the recovery part of the 28spm acceleration curves, compared to 26spm. These bits, two minutes which I counted as 8×7 strokes to survive them, were pretty hard. I conclude that I was able to row 26spm consistently, but have to work on the recovery at higher stroke rates. The acceleration from the minimum speed (left part of the chart) looks OK to me, but I am curious to see what the Quiske crew thinks of it. In 26spm, you see a slight acceleration (or reduced deceleration) in the very final part of the recovery. I was paying attention to accelerating slightly up the slide in that final part, and taking light catches.

Now, let’s look at the Seat Speed:

Funny, I can not see that acceleration on the recovery which I could very distinctly feel as a slight leg pull. I guess one would have to compare with a baseline of people who don’t do this.

Another fun thing is that the Quiske file can be exported to a CSV which is compatible with Rowsandall.com. I imported that file and was able to do a couple of nice charts.

I am expecting that seat speed is more or less linear in boat speed and that the seat recovery speed is more independent. This chart is seat speed (drive & recovery) vs boat speed. Here, I am really just exploring the data, to see if I can make sense of it and possibly derive a useful technique metric.

It is difficult to make sense of these charts now, but perhaps after a couple of rows I will start to understand.

I have also created a data set with all the data from the two rows. If I find time tomorrow, I will do some correlation analysis. Big fun!