OTE

lactate1

Aug 31 2016

Tuesday – Bike & Lactate step test

Morning

Commute to work on the bicycle.

https://www.strava.com/activities/693940250/analysis

Average heart rate 132 bpm so definitely a regeneration workout. Although, at one point, at the beginning of what Strava calls the “Olomoucká I” segment, a 500m long climb of 27 meters elevation difference (5% average grade, 10% max grade), another cyclist was just behind me, and I had to push a bit harder to avoid him taking over. That pushed my heart rate up to 176 bpm.

Evening

The post summer vacation / pre winter season lactate step test on the Concept2 erg. I did 6 intervals of 10 minutes at increasing power, taking a finger prick lactate measure after every step.


Workout Summary - media/20160830-194351-sled_2016-08-30T20-14-40ZGMT+2.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14906|70:04.0|02:21.0|21.6|153.4|176.0|09.9

Workout Details
#-|SDist|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|Lactate|Power
00|02494|21.1|138.0|153.0|09.9| 1.7 | 170
01|02540|21.4|148.9|162.0|09.9| 1.6 | 180
02|02520|21.6|156.5|165.0|09.7| 1.7 | 190
03|02552|21.9|160.9|172.0|09.7| 2.0 | 200
04|02554|22.5|166.7|176.0|11.2| 4.6 | 210
05|02246|21.0|149.1|159.0|08.9| 3.1 | 160

I started at 170 W and increased with 10W after each interval. After reaching 4.6 mmol/L at 210W and feeling like you feel at 4.6 mmol/L, I didn’t continue to 220W but took the last interval as a cooling down.

The goal is to determine the threshold, under which lactate is flat. For me, this seems to be just under 200W, but I will confirm this next week by rowing 6x10min at a constant power of 195W, taking a lactate measurement every 10 minutes.

Here is the graph:

lactate1

The “Model” line is a line that I “fitted” through last year’s data. For comparison, here is the graph that I compiled in November 2015.

Lactate measurements November 2015
Lactate measurements November 2015.

So in comparison with November 2015, my steady state lactate level is higher, the step is more pronounced and seems to be shifted to the left. I guess that corresponds to being in a worse shape, fitness wise. Vacation effect, I think.

We’ll see if this is confirmed next week, but it looks like my steady state should not go above 195W.

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20160824-192305-sled_2016-08-24T20-48-53ZGMT+2.strokes20160824-193915

Aug 24 2016

Dusting off the erg – CTC

The plan for today was to do a 6×10 minute steady state step test at 170/180/190/200/210/220W and measure lactate after every 10 minutes. I am eager to pick up lactate testing and erging again after a long summer with zero erg time.

Got my lactate measuring device ready and some test strips. Note to self:

  1. Order new strips.

The current ones are nearing their expiry date. Set erg monitor to 10 min  / 1 min rest and took off at 170W.

Wipe. Wash. Wipe. Prick. Ouch. Wipe. Prepare strip. Drop.

Low battery. Ouch.

Note to self:

  1. Order lactate test strips
  2. Buy a new battery for the lactate meter

Well – it didn’t make sense to continue, and I changed to plan B. Do the CTC of this month. I had to skip the July because the 3x2813m session didn’t fit into my plan and I wanted to maximize boat time, so I was keen on getting a score in for this month’s CTC, which is a funny one:

Row four sprints during August.
(They don’t need to be done on the same day.)
One 400m, one 300m, one 200m, and one 100m.
If you row more than one of the pieces as intervals each must be from a standing start.

Find the pace (time for 500m) for each of the four rows from your performance monitor.
Simply add the four paces together to give you an entry for this CTC.

I rowed them in the following order: 400m, 200m, 100m, 300m, with roughly five minutes of active rest in between and of course from a standing start.

During the active rest after the 400m, I noticed that my Garmin Ant heart rate strap behaved funny. It seemed stuck to a value of 130bpm, while I was gasping for air and my heart rate was definitely still higher than that value after an exhausting 400m row.

So I sprinted to my OTW sports bag and grabbed the Tickr heart rate belt.

Note to self:

  1. Order new lactate strips
  2. Buy battery for lactate meter
  3. Buy battery for Garmin HR belt

Here are the plots for the CTC pieces:

20160824-192436-sled_2016-08-24T20-24-25ZGMT+2.strokes20160824-193940
400m – HR belt misbehaving
20160824-192606-sled_2016-08-24T20-35-14ZGMT+2.strokes20160824-193934
200m
20160824-192736-sled_2016-08-24T20-42-09ZGMT+2.strokes20160824-193926
100m
20160824-192305-sled_2016-08-24T20-48-53ZGMT+2.strokes20160824-193915
300m

Tomorrow: Steady State. Probably OTW followed by trailer loading.

Note to self:

  • Don’t forget to put the Tickr HR belt back in the rowing bag!!

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MixC2x

Aug 3 2016

Giving it a rest

In yesterday’s blog I forgot to show the results. Lost with 0.26 second margin. Look at how close the three boats were. A great race, actually.

MixC2x

I haven’t rowed since Sunday. I am giving myself a rest of at least 3 weeks before I start training seriously again. Of course I will go jogging a bit, and there will be hiking, and swimming in the sea, biking along the coast of Istria (Croatia) and in South Bohemia.

I will also give the blogging a rest. Back in a few weeks.

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Bily Potok 003

Jul 9 2016

Wednesday – Saturday

Wednesday

Too windy to row, so 45 minutes on the erg. Steady State.

Thursday 

Rest day.

Friday

Had to row in the afternoon, because I didn’t have the car in the morning. It was a warm day, and a Friday afternoon, and it is school vacation, so the lake had turned into a giant swimming pool again. I did steady state in the single, with start practices. I set CrewNerd to 250m with 2:30 rest, and started each 250m with a start plus a few strokes, then paddled.

I caught a crab in one of the starts, right in front of a little beach with a few young ladies in bikinis watching me.

Saturday

No rowing. Romana and I took the train from Brno to Vlkov, a small village about 30km into the highlands. From there it is a very pleasant ride on mountain bikes, along a small stream called Bílý Potok. What makes it special is the abundance of old watermills, that are now turned into weekend residences, most of them in a very tasteful way. Another fun aspect of this ride is that there are no less than 16 places where you have to ride through the stream with your bike.

Bily Potok 002

Bily Potok 003

Lunch
Lunch
Bily Potok 004
We rode through most of them, but we waded through this one

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nemo-from-the-sky

Jun 17 2016

Travel = Bad Training

Wednesday, Thursday

I wanted to go running but I didn’t manage to. On Wednesday I woke up with a headache and feeling an upcoming cold, as well as tired from the long day at the conference the day before, which ended with a welcome cocktail. I remained in bed long enough to pass the last moment to get up and get a decent training in before having to go to the venue.

Same thing on Thursday. Then it was even harder, because this was the morning after the VIP dinner. I left very early (some were still sending pictures to social media at 4am … not really pictures you want to spread by the way, but who am I to comment), but still reached bed way after midnight.

A conference is hard work. There were fun parts too:

Fun part 1: Overflying the conference venue during one of our test/demo flights
Fun part 1: Overflying the conference venue during one of our test/demo flights. Conference venue = the green building.
Fun part 2: Me explaining something important to a government official
Fun part 2: Me explaining something important to a government VIP

Being back in Amsterdam was fun as well. Even though I didn’t have time to visit my family, being back in the place where I was born and spent a large part of my adolescent years was fun. Nostalgic fun.

So a lot of eating and drinking, socializing, talking, explaining, listening, etc. The good thing was that the temperatures in the auditorium were so high that my suit doubled as a wearable sauna and I actually lost weight during these few days. :-/

Friday

So today I was going to do my fun OTW training, 16×45″/60″R at 1000m race pace.

It wasn’t to be. The wind was so strong I didn’t even have to drive to the lake. No way I would be able to row a decent workout on the water.

So back to the erg.

Not fun. I did a 2k warming up, then dialed up a 45″/60″ rest workout and started doing it. I do these workouts at 1k pace, which means just under 1:40/500m. Every fourth interval I go full out to prove that the 1k pace is slower than max. Slow down if the “full out” interval turns out not to be faster than the last few intervals. I guess my explanation is confusing … please comment if you don’t get it but are interested to know.

After 8 intervals I comforted  myself with the thought of being half way.

Then in the 9th interval I handed down. Just like that.

My “inner coach” (see this comment) talked to me during the rest period but couldn’t convince me to get rowing and finish the workout.

So I dialed up a 4k and rowed that one out, starting at 2:00 pace and slowly slowing down:

Tomorrow: 4x1k on the water and I should really video it.

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figure_1-16

Jun 9 2016

Hill / Random / Heart Rate / Manual

Wednesday – traveled to Brussels.

Going through the Vienna train station I noticed there was a wifi network called “refugees”. It’s easy to be cynical about it. But it shows how important access to information is nowadays, for everybody.

At Vienna airport I saw a Boeing 787 Dreamliner from Ethiopian Airlines. It was a nice sight between all the Austrian Airbuses and Fokkers.

This morning, I found my regular hotel’s fitness room completely revamped. Wow!

  1. The cycling machines were now wall-facing. Apparently pedalists were staring too much at the other users of the fitness room. 🙁
  2. The water fountain had been moved by 1.5 meters to the left and around the corner.

The LifeFitness equipment still offered the usual menu:

  1. Hill
  2. Random
  3. Heart Rate
  4. Manual

I usually choose Random but today I felt adventurous, so I did treadmill on Hill, elliptical on Manual / Intervals and the cycling on Manual / Watts. It was a completely new experience! Still the same old track/hill/map/bar chart choice though:

Ergometer Physics

On the train and during the flight, I have been playing a bit with my physics of rowing toybox. I never really looked at the erg model, so when a discussion was stimulated recently on rec.sport.rowing about the part of the power that is not captured by the PM, I started improving my erg model.

As a result, I have two erg models now. Both have their weaknesses, but they seem to agree on the important bit.

figure_1-16 figure_1-18

I apologize for the color inconsistency between the two graphs (this was done on an airplane!) and clearly there is a lot to improve, but here are the topics of discussion.

  • During the drive (first 0.8 seconds of this graph), leg power is used to accelerate the rower’s body and to accelerate the flywheel. The acceleration of the flywheel is done by the force on the handle. That is the red curve in both graphs.
  • Half way during the drive, the rower’s body starts to slow down. There has to be a negative force on the rower’s body. There are two sources of this, one is the handle force and the other is the leg force. By pushing less hard on the legs and starting to swing the back, the rower slows down. In the top graph, you can see “leg power” go negative. This is where the rower is actually hanging/pulling in the footstretcher in order to stop. If he had rown strapless, he would shoot off the slide.
  • During the recovery, the rower has to accelerate, then break. One is a positive power (force and velocity have the same direction), the other negative.

The discussion is about how to count these negative lobes. Clearly, they are not measured on the PM. The human leg is not a spring, so you cannot store energy for reuse during the drive, so this negative power has to be accounted somehow. In my model, I just take the absolute value of this power and add it to the total power balance.

It is also clear that the bulk of this extra power is generated during the recovery. During the drive phase, a large part of the kinetic energy in the rower’s body can be transferred to the handle effectively.

Don’t catch me on the numbers and exact shapes of the graphs. It was really toying around trying to explain the principles.

 

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20160606-204144-sled_2016-06-06T19-23-15ZGMT+2.strokes

Jun 7 2016

Monday – steady state

There is a lot going on at work so I couldn’t leave early and row on the lake. Couldn’t row in the morning and arrive late either. So in the evening I just sat down for an uninspired steady state row on the erg.

To force myself to row at least for an hour, I dialed up a 14k. On the erg, I have a strong preference for distance based rows.

To make it more interesting, I did a 10 stroke push every 1000m, at varying stroke rates. That generated this beautiful plot:

Average pace was very slow. Over 2:08, including the “warming up” and “cooling down” 2k on the beginning and end of the row. Total time was 60:00.3. Damn. I rowed 0.3 seconds more than I wanted!

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