lake

Apr 27 2017

Wednesday – a row in the coxless four

Wednesday is our Masters evening. Of course the Masters rowers of our rowing club do more trainings, but on Wednesday at 6pm we gather and row in the eight.

On this particular rainy and cold Wednesday evening, the turn-up was 5 rowers, and a sixth one called us at exactly 6pm, saying that he was “just now” leaving office. That office being just 45 minutes away in the peak hour traffic. 🙁

To at least do something that resembles rowing in an eight, we decided to pick a coxless four. The fifth guy decided to stay on the erg and wait for the sixth guy.

I rowed in bow seat, and the rest of the crew consisted of Martin “Krocan” (=Turkey), Petr “Bulda” (=Bulldog) and Michal “Míša” (=Bear). So we had a rich representation of the animal kingdom.

The boat was an old Empacher 4-, and we lost 15 minutes because we had to replace the shoes so that Bulda would fit into the boat.

I didn’t really fancy rowing on the bow seat, but I guess being the lightest of this crew (with 75kg, compared to Bulda’s 113kg), it had to be me. I like practicing my sweep rowing, but it takes more of my mental effort to do it well, compared to sculling. You can imagine that I did not have the need to also turn around every few strokes and scan the lake for upcoming traffic. Well, so be it.

All our boats are foot steered from the stroke position, so at least I didn’t have to do the steering. And Míša is one of our rowers who can steer our lake with a blindfold, so the course was always right and I just had to watch out for the traffic.

This was a technical training, so we did a lot of drills.

Some of the drills involved rowing with stops at various places. You can see that the SpeedCoach didn’t really understand that.

It was cold and rainy, but we did make a lot of progress during this short outing. It was fun to row something else than a single, and it had been a long time since I last rowed a coxless four.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: 4-, coxless four, lake, OTW, rowing, training

Apr 25 2017

Masters: Pacing a 1000m single scull row with a power meter

So according to Rowperfect, I am “on a mission to find the optimal pace when doing head races”. I liked that. I like being on a mission.

I am already on the next mission. The 1k sprint season is starting. Since the head racing, I have lost some fitness, mainly due to me not putting in the required training volume. Work. Other stuff.

So, I don’t know exactly where I am, fitness wise. A week and a half from now I will row my first Masters 1k race in the single. It would be good to have a few tries in before that. And now that I have a power meter, I can use it to help me pace the race.

Here is my line of thought:

Start with the erg power value as a guideline. I estimate my current erg power for a 1000m (around 3:20 time) to be between 325W and 350W. On the water, everything is slower, so the race duration is longer, so I expect to end up a little lower. However, it is not given that the Empower Oarlock power values correspond exactly to the erg power. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.
If I go out too fast, I will finish slow. If I go out too slow, I should sprint to the line to get the power average as high as possible.
Make use of all of rowsandall.com’s data analysis power to find out as much as possible about how I did that initial 1k.
Next time, row at the average power I achieved and use the lessons obtained in 3 (hopefully).

I made use of a gap in my schedule, after lunch and before the evening conference calls. It was a warm afternoon, a slight drizzle, 15 degrees, and flat water. Only a light wind, which turned out to be a headwind for my 1k.

I did a 3km warming up including two practice starts and a few 10 stroke bursts:

At that point I was in the buoyed 2km track, about 800m from the finish line. I mentally prepared myself for “a lot of red” (referring to the power and heart rate plots), dialed up a 1k on the SpeedCoach and got into starting position.

Workout Summary - media/20170425-150809-Sanders SpeedCoach 20170425 0311pmo.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|01000|04:00.0|02:00.2|319.3|30.2|175.4|184.0|08.3 W-|01000|04:00.0|02:00.4|318.5|30.1|176.1|184.0|08.3 R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|184.0|00.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|00100|00:22.9|01:54.6|365.1|33.0|140.6|167.0|07.9 01|00100|00:23.9|01:59.5|339.1|30.0|170.6|172.0|08.4 02|00100|00:23.5|01:57.4|341.9|29.9|175.0|178.0|08.5 03|00100|00:24.0|02:00.1|328.9|30.0|179.9|181.0|08.3 04|00100|00:23.9|01:59.3|326.2|30.0|181.8|183.0|08.4 05|00100|00:24.0|01:59.9|321.1|30.2|182.8|184.0|08.3 06|00100|00:24.1|02:00.3|311.2|30.0|183.1|184.0|08.3 07|00100|00:24.5|02:02.5|294.0|29.8|182.4|183.0|08.2 08|00100|00:24.9|02:04.7|287.6|29.5|181.8|183.0|08.2 09|00100|00:25.2|02:06.1|276.6|29.1|181.0|182.0|08.2

So yes, I went out too fast. But I did obtain an average power value, and it’s 320W. As usual in a 1k row, around the 500m mark things started to fall apart. I really had trouble keeping the stroke rate at least above 30spm (where I should be at 32spm in a couple of weeks), and in the slight headwind everything just became very sluggish. I was happy though that the total time was not too far from 4 minutes. Usually, in April, my 1k OTW time is around this, and today it was into a headwind.

Below, I will add some detailed discussion of the various other metrics.

I paddled the 350m to the finish line of the 2k course, turned the boat, and continued in a light “steady state” row. During that steady state row, I did two 250m pieces, just for the fun of it, to test how 320W of power would feel at 32spm. I did one piece in tailwind where I saw 1:55-1:56 pace, and one in headwind where the pace was around 2:00.

Detailed analysis

Catch angle seems high. When I first started rowing with the Empower Oarlock, I was worried about the short catch angle. Perhaps I have no the opposite problem? It seems to be an artifact of the sprint pace. The average over the entire outing is 66 degrees catch, 41 degrees finish. What you can also see is that as I got tired in the second half of the test, I shortened up on the finish. Here’s the “stroke profile” plot:

I did not watch “Wash” numbers, and not having rowed a lot in the single lately, I am a little behind on my “mission” to improve my “wash” numbers. I think I could do better on this value. Here is the story of “wash”:

Yep, it became a sad story after 700m.

Work per stroke varied quite a lot during the row. The mean value was 648J (which is high), while the 25% and 75% boundary was at 593J and 678J respectively. So that means that more than 25% of the strokes (about 30 strokes) were at more than 678J, and about 25% of the strokes were below 593J.

For head racing, I wanted to be around 550W, and I think that is even a good value for sprint racing. At least, that’s my hypothesis, still to be confirmed. For now, I note that I should rate up and lighten up.

This graph (above) of power and average drive force vs time is the embarrassing one. Of course the start strokes were strong, but then I brought it down to what I thought was a good value of just under 350W, but in the headwind, after 500m, you can see exactly where the wheels came off and I reduced the average drive force, shortened up at the finish, and brought the entire power down. At this point in the race, I was looking at my power values and I didn’t know what to do. (Unfortunately, I had no additional metrics to see. Being “smart”, I had set one of the bottom screens to distance, not realizing the SpeedCoach defaults the other bottom screen to distance as well when doing pre-programmed pieces. I wish there was more control of that. I would like to set it exactly as I want it, not as NK thinks I want it.)

Oh well, I also dropped the rate in the final 200m. Booh, Sander!

Here are the two “250m” pieces that I did afterwards.

Of course these were shorter pieces, but they did feel better. I think I have a plan for my upcoming 1k race.

Also, I am still impressed by how incredibly useful these metrics are in analysing what happened, and how, if you put in a little thinking, they guide you to what is hopefully a better plan to attack the next 1k piece.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: 1000m, 1k, lake, masters, OTW, rowing, single, sprint, training

Apr 22 2017

Rowing a (coastal) Lite Boat! Fun? You bet.

The races had been cancelled, but I drove to the rowing club anyway, hoping that the wind would not be strong enough to prevent me from crossing the lake and then row in the canyon. The canyon can be windy as well, but the waves never reach oceanic sizes.

Here is the lake when I arrived at the club. I thought it would be just rowable.

When I got out of the dressing room, the wind strength had increased and the waves were much higher. I had an idea. Why not take out our new “Golem”?

This is the Golem:

“The most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late 16th century rabbi of Prague, also known as the Maharal, who reportedly created a golem to defend the Prague ghetto from antisemitic attacks and pogroms. Depending on the version of the legend, the Jews in Prague were to be either expelled or killed under the rule of Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. To protect the Jewish community, the rabbi constructed the Golem out of clay from the banks of the Vltava river, and brought it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations. The Golem was called Josef and was known as Yossele. It was said that he could make himself invisible and summon spirits from the dead. The only care required of the Golem was that he couldn’t be active on the day of Sabbath (Saturday). Rabbi Loew deactivated the Golem on Friday evenings by removing the shem before the Sabbath began, so as to let it rest on Sabbath. One Friday evening Rabbi Loew forgot to remove the shem, and feared that the Golem would desecrate the Sabbath. A different story tells of a golem that fell in love, and when rejected, became the violent monster seen in most accounts. Some versions have the golem eventually going on a murderous rampage.”

I didn’t go on a murderous rampage. At our club, “Golem” is the name of our new LiteBoat. It was thus named because of the sturdy design of the boat, compared to our racing singles.

So I took the LiteBoat. I needed help to prevent it from being thrown on the dock by the waves, but when I finally launched, it was big fun.

I did a quick circle in one of the choppiest part of the lake to check that everything was OK and then I took off for a longer row. Rowing this boat is hard work and you go slow, but still it resembles rowing quite well. It is like rowing in a single with a strap around the boat, or sitting on an erg with a very high drag factor.

Well, the erg comparison is actually quite off. Being outside on the waves, with the wind blowing through my hair, and the boat sometimes rising during a stroke and then falling on the water with a stomping sound was quite exciting and definitely a three dimensional affair, compared with the one-dimensional erg.

Here is how slow I went:

It seems the SpeedCoach didn’t always pick up the stroke rate correctly in the wavy environment.

First, I rowed in the headwind to the north end of the lake. Then I turned around. Turning around is a very funny experience in this boat, if you are used to turning a single or a quad. The first time I did it, I nearly spun two rotations. Because the boat is so short, there is very little resistance to turning, so when you are pulling as hard as I do when you turn a single, you get yourself into a spin.

This turning behaviour was also funny when you end up on the top of the wave. Sometimes the boat and me would glide off a different side of the wave than I expected, turning the boat at the same time.

Well, after I turned (and did another turn at my maximum boat turning speed, just for fun, with some anglers watching me in bewilderment), I rowed to the south end of the lake, where the waves where the highest. In the tailwind I managed a “fast” pace of 2:50 per 500m. I did some tests at 27 spm (which was about the fastest I could row this boat) to see where that would bring me.

The final stretch from the south end of the lake, back to the rowing club, was great. In a full headwind and with big waves, it was fun to try to anticipate how the boat would pitch, roll and yaw. I got really wet but it didn’t matter. I was extremely happy.

After 50 minutes I returned to the club. I did a short erg cooling down and that was that. This is big fun. I think I would really enjoy real coastal rowing. The waves on the sea must be even higher.

Here is a short video from the LiteBoat manufacturer that shows how it can be rowed on the Sea by beginners:

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 6 • Tags: lake, liteboat, OTW, rowing, wind

Apr 22 2017

Friday: Mixed Quad

Wednesday

No training. I flew to Amsterdam. KLM had two surprises to me. The first one was a one hour delay.

The second surprise, a nice one, was that they offered me a glass of champagne to celebrate my birthday. It was interesting, to sit in Economy class and being the only one drinking champagne from a real glass (as opposed to a plastic cup).

Thursday

Hotel room workout. Then a full day of conference, ending at Airport Valkenburg with a drone demonstration.

During the day I received a call from one of our coaches. The spring races in Brno had been cancelled, because of a weather forecast promising lots of wind and wind gusts over the weekend.

KLM had another nice surprise for me. A one hour delay, which is not cool when that means you arrive at 23:30 in Vienna, from where it is a 2 hour drive home.

In bed at 1:50am.

Friday

Up after just a few hours of sleep. I was wondering if I should do a workout at all. Left home for work an hour later than normally, and in the last minute I threw my rowing clothes in the trunk. Not good. The drive to work took 45 minutes instead of the usual 15 minutes.

It was a long day. Our monthly operations review, which is a four hour marathon session, and this time it was planned right over lunch. The pizzas arrived when it was my turn to present my Department’s results. So, 45 minutes later, I ate cold pizza.

Around 3pm I was really tired. I drove to the rowing club. I didn’t really fancy a workout, but I had to drive there anyway because Romana is in Racice with Iva to row the trials, and I had to pick up my boys from their rowing training.

Arriving at the club, there were two of our older Masters ladies, and Martin, and they were looking for a fourth person so they could row a quad. I offered help. We rowed up to the castle because there was a lot of chop. When we returned to the lake, there was slightly less wind, so we did a few hundred meters more on the lake.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: lake, OTW, quad, river, rowing, training

Apr 15 2017

Saturday: 3x1000m/1000m – the rich experience of rowing with data

Today’s session was a 3x1000m/1000m, with the 1000m rowed as follows:

500m at 28spm, 500m at 30spm
30spm
500m at 30spm, 500m at 32spm

Rowing in the single, and this being the first interval workout on the water of this season, I decided to reduce the prescribed stroke rates by two.

My gear for this row:

NK Empower Oarlock
NK SpeedCoach
Tickr X heart rate belt
Garmin Forerunner 220 (for data redundancy, as well as to see the distance indicator)
A new water bottle 😀
And of course my single “Dolfijn” with Concept2 Low-i sculls

I did a 3.5km warming up with a few 10 stroke segments at higher stroke rate. Between 3km and 3.5km, I rowed a circle, to create some more distance between a group of single scullers with a coach in a launch and myself.

I had set up the SpeedCoach display to show stroke rate, power, ‘Wash’ (my technique attention point) and effective stroke length.

So here I was rowing with live feedback on

distance covered (meh, always a disappointing number when you check mid interval, hoping you are nearly finished),
stroke rate (a rowing essential, and a prescribed number for the intervals
power – I estimate my 2k power to be somewhere above 280 and below 300W
effective length – I want to keep this above 90 degrees
Wash – just to check now and then and remind myself to sit up straight and not row with sloppy technique

At the same time I was gathering enough data to spend a nice 30 minutes after the row and look at them on rowsandall.com. Here is the overview graph.

In the first and third interval I was rowing into a very light headwind. In the second interval I was rowing with a light tailwind. Here is the summary:

Workout Summary - media/20170415-104816-Sanders SpeedCoach 20170415 0938amo.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|06995|37:29.0|02:40.8|168.7|22.3|145.0|181.0|08.4 W-|03000|12:30.0|02:05.0|271.9|28.3|172.2|181.0|08.5 R-|07416|44:20.0|02:59.4|124.4|19.8|133.4|181.0|08.3 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|01000|04:13.7|02:06.8|275.3|27.4|169.3|177.0|08.6 02|01000|04:02.3|02:01.1|271.1|28.3|173.3|179.0|08.8 03|01000|04:14.3|02:07.1|269.2|29.1|174.2|181.0|08.1

So already now I have a lot more information than if I would just row without any electronics, or if I would row with just pace. Even though I rated up to 30spm in the third interval, the average power was virtually the same (even 5W lower) than in the first interval. The pace was very similar, but without power numbers, we would have to estimate that the wind speed didn’t increase or decrease.

I also know what caused the lower power because I was very conscious of it. During the third interval, around the middle of it, I rowed through an area with wake from a launch. There was wake coming both from the left and the right. It wasn’t the direct wake from a launch, but the waves that had reflected off the bank and were now traveling back to cross the lake a second time. The result is a weird effect where the single goes through some “S” alignment and balance is slightly off. Even though I was trying to work as hard (and it definitely felt hard), the power numbers dropped. Below, I will check some other metrics to see if the wave effect is visible there as well. Being slightly off balance and putting the blades into wavy water apparently causes the power to be lower. It also had an definite effect on my pace.

The other thing that I have to watch out for is to not use overly powerful strokes in the first interval. On fresh legs, I seem to push a bit harder than I should. This is hard to control, because it just doesn’t feel so hard on those fresh legs, and also because the power values jump around a bit more than on the erg, so it is hard to regulate.

Now looking at catch and finish angle (picture above). Ah, I was cheating a bit in the third interval! Rating up to 30, but doing that on a shorter stroke.

This scatter graph (above) is again power and average drive force. You can see the dip in the third interval, where I was rowing through the wake.

I was fairly good in holding the prescribed stroke rates. Except in the first interval, which I started off with an enthusiastic 28spm and had difficulty to bring down to 26spm. We have also seen above that the 30spm in the final interval was achieved by shortening up on the stroke length.

This next picture is just a distribution of work per stroke, power and stroke length.

With the “flex plot” on rowsandall.com, you can plot any metric against any other metric. Here you can see that the catch and finish angles seem to get smaller (shorter) at the higher stroke rates.

Slip seems to be under control, and also the distribution of catch angles is pretty consistent.

The distribution of “wash” angles is a bit larger, indicating a less consistent finish.

Effective drive length is the length of the drive minus slip and wash. YOu can see that this is fairly consistent for the first two intervals, and worse for the second. It also shows that during the rowing in the wake, in the middle of the third interval, when I was having balance issues, it was the “effective drive length” that suffered most.

I am really excited about looking at my data like this. I guess if I were my coach, I would have a conversation with myself about that last interval. Well, I guess I am my coach!

[amazon_link asins=’B00O5Y4FXA,B00NH9WEUA,B00NH9WEXM,B016PAPI3W,B00JQF6H8Y,B016PAPI1Y’ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’rowingdata-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’9373ee55-21f2-11e7-a7ec-f19c72788ed2′]

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: intervals, lake, OTW, rowing, single, training

Apr 14 2017

Friday: Doing the washing

Thursday

Too windy to row OTW. The training plan had a strength circuit, so I did the Tickr X 7 minute workout three times. That was enough. Some of the exercises do wear me out. The original plan was to do five of them, but I was grilled after three.

Friday

A bank holiday in the Czech Republic. We headed to the lake for our row at 9:30. This was an exciting day for our junior girls. Last weekend’s race, the 6km in Horin, is quite decisive. It determines who gets to go to the trials (next weekend in Prague) and who doesn’t. Those who don’t get to the trials start to combine and form double and quads. Those who get to the trials are preparing for it.

Our daughter Lenka didn’t row in Horin because of illness, so she had invited a girl from Hodonin to come and try forming a double. Romana’s fastest girl, Iva, did make it to the trials, but we only found out two days ago. She didn’t make it according to her ranking in the girls 15/16 field, missing it by 7 seconds. However, based on her erg scores, and the fact that she actually stopped for a stroke to ask a capsized girl if she was ok, she got a wild card. In the mean time, however, she had invited a girl from Ostrava to come and train the double.

This gave us a bit of a dilemma this morning, because the girls wanted to go out in doubles, but Iva should also prepare rowing in the single, for next week’s trials.

In the end the lake decided. The wind became stronger and waves started to form. The girls went out in doubles.

I took my single and started my warming up. This was going to be another technique row focussing on Wash.

Arriving at Rokle and turning a bit later than the doubles, I was behind Romana in her launch. However, they did some technique drills and were slower. So I took a slightly different course and expected to pass them. What happened next was unexpected. The doubles somehow accelerated and changed course, and suddenly they were in front of me. Romana had forgotten all about me, concentrated as she was on her coaching, and pulled her launch between me and the doubles, and then increased the throttle. The result was that her wake, amplified by the already quite high waves, completely drowned me.

Within 2 seconds, my entire single was full of water.

My socks were wet. My water bottle washed out of the boat. The only thing I could do was row back to the dock, empty the cockpit, and resume my row.

The Empower Oarlock stopped in the mean time. I restarted it when I resumed.

The only thing I cared about today was a low “wash” number, because I see how it is correlated with good posture at the catch and a good, boat moving back swing. The numbers are a bit skewed because the south end of the lake wasn’t very rowable because of the waves, but I spent a lot of time at Wash numbers below 12 degrees.

Part 1 – before getting waked by my own wife

Here are a few metrics charts from the second part:

After the row, we went on a cat mission. Our kids have persuaded us to have a cat. I personally don’t have a problem with having a cat at home, but Romana, grown up on the country side, wasn’t used to having an indoors cat. In Czech villages, cats are outdoors creatures, and having a domestic cat is a new concept. However, the kids have used all their persuasive power, and since this afternoon we have a new family member. His name is Emil. He is a boy and is 1.5 years old and was castrated a few months ago when he came to the animals shelter, after spending some time trying to survive on a parking lot.

Given his background and the fact the we, “some people”, came, fetched him and put him in a new environment, he is extremely at ease.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: lake, OTW, rowing, single, steady state, technique, waves

Apr 10 2017

Monday – Steady State with Focus

Today, I quickly packed my rowing bag before going to work. Actually, it was more throwing out than packing in. I admit that I didn’t touch my sports bag on Sunday and enjoyed a nice day off. I got messages from the lake about the perfect flat water, but I successfully ignored them. I had some work around the house, some groceries, some blog writing, and some other work to do.

But today I would get the boat from the trailer and take it for a steady state row. So that is why I packed that bag.

At the rowing club, I discovered I had forgotten to pack my Tickr X heart rate belt. This belt usually stays in the red rowing bag, except when I travel for work or, as last weekend, I travel with two bags. I picked my “broken” Tickr to use it with the Garmin watch (over ANT+) and then do data fusion later. However, it turns out the heart rate data were so erratic that I decided not to use them.

During the row, I focused on minimizing “Wash”. For this metric, lower is better, because it is essential the length of the final part of the drive where the force falls below 100N. For me, this has a lot to do with sitting in a strong, straight position at the catch. When I get that right, I have a powerful stroke which goes all the way to the finish. When I have a more bent back, a “C”, it is more difficult to hold the force/power and thus my “wash” value increases.

The graph shows the values over the entire duration of the row. It is quite erratic, but on the SpeedCoach direct feedback, I could concentrate and get numbers below 14 degrees, and when I didn’t focus, the number went up to above 14 degrees. I really like how you can use the technique metrics to add focus to your workout.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: lake, OTW, rowing, single, steady state, training

«< 6 7 8 9 10 >»

lake

Wednesday – a row in the coxless four

Masters: Pacing a 1000m single scull row with a power meter

Rowing a (coastal) Lite Boat! Fun? You bet.

Friday: Mixed Quad

Saturday: 3x1000m/1000m – the rich experience of rowing with data

Friday: Doing the washing

Monday – Steady State with Focus

Calendar

Tags