OTE

Mar 13 2016

3×20 minutes

Instead of running, I went on a strawl with my wife Romana and my son Robin. We took the bus to Ořešín and hiked back. It was a very nice walk, through the village of Jehnice, then through the forest and along a few ponds back to our house.

So, enough outdoors and nature to be able to tolerate the 3×20 minutes on the erg, which by this time in the preparation phase are really becoming boring.

Nothing special to report about this session. Sat down. Rowed 3×20 minutes and listened to a course. Stroke histogram and heart rate plot are below. After the third interval, I measured lactate: 1.4 mmol/L. It felt “medium”. I wouldn’t call this a “Watts came easy” session and I had to play a few mind games to negotiate with myself and keep the 200W, but it wasn’t too hard.

This was the last session of a high volume week. The target was missed by a whopping two hours because of the travel and the show. Still, I am looking forward to a lighter week. I am planning it now. Need to take note of the wind forecast too, so I can plan my OTW sessions on the low wind days.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Mar 11 2016

Concept2 Cross Team Challenge @ 2k pace

Working from home today, but don’t think I am lazy.

Still tired from all this, but I have to complete the final reviews of 11 project proposals:

CdHW2LbUMAQouVY — Picture from Honeywell Aero Twitter (https://twitter.com/Honeywell_Aero)

CdBGcc1VIAAsAYA — Picture from Honeywell Aero Twitter (https://twitter.com/Honeywell_Aero)

CdH9zmmWAAMUUZ6 — Picture from Honeywell Aero Twitter (https://twitter.com/Honeywell_Aero)

So sitting behind my desk, reading and commenting.

Tiring work. I was done around 3:30PM and decided to read a bit in a book I bought at the Vienna train station. It’s about the Habsburg family, and very interesting. A family that left an influence in Spain, the Netherlands and central Europe. I just wanted to read for 30 minutes and do my workout.

An hour and a half later I woke up, book on my chest.

So I quickly changed clothes, did a 2k warming up and then straight into this month’s Cross Team Challenge:

Row nine reps of 300m
with just 30 seconds rest between each rep
The first rep from a standing start the others can be rolling starts.
Record the time taken for the 9 reps (2700m total).

I decided to go off at 2k pace (1:44). This way it would be nice intermezzo between two threshold pace workouts, and allow me to train my stroke at 30spm, the intended stroke rate at the Czech long distance championship (April 8th).

It’s an interesting workout. The breaks are extremely short. Somehow it reminded me of an old recipe to improve your 2k pace, which goes like this: Dial up a 2k on the Concept2 rower. Row your new 2k pace (3 seconds per 500m below your PB pace). Stop when you hit three subsequent strokes that are slower than the target pace. Get up, stretch your legs, sit down on the erg and continue at the target pace. Repeat until you’ve completed the 2k. Repeat session until you complete the 2k in one go at the new target pace. (Yes, that sounds like 20th century training philosophy.)

So here’s the result:

Workout Summary - Mar 11, 2016 --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|02700|09:15.1|01:42.8|322.2|30.8|168.9|184.0|09.5 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|Comments 01|00300|01:02.6|01:44.3|308.8|29.7|142.6|163.0|09.7| 02|00300|01:01.9|01:43.2|318.5|30.0|165.2|170.0|09.7| 03|00300|01:02.1|01:43.5|315.7|30.0|167.4|172.0|09.7| 04|00300|01:02.1|01:43.6|315.0|30.9|168.3|173.0|09.4| 05|00300|01:02.1|01:43.6|315.1|29.9|171.1|176.0|09.7| 06|00300|01:01.8|01:43.0|320.1|31.1|172.8|178.0|09.4| 07|00300|01:01.5|01:42.6|324.2|30.2|174.4|179.0|09.7| 08|00300|01:01.4|01:42.4|326.1|31.3|176.7|181.0|09.4| 09|00300|00:59.5|01:39.1|359.7|34.3|180.3|184.0|08.8|

Quite hard work, but in the end I managed 2k pace minus 1 second.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: concept2, ctc, erg, OTE, rowing, training

Mar 10 2016

Flywheel spinning again

A hard week

Training plan said it was a high volume week. At the same time, I was going to spend Monday to Thursday in Madrid, Spain, to represent my employer at a big industry trade show.

Sunday

Traveled to Prague by train, then flew to Madrid. In bed at 1:30 AM. No exercise.

Monday

Not a show day, but I had to review a large number of documents. Slept in a bit, then started working in my hotel room.

In the afternoon I went to the hotel gym (3×4 meters with a few dumbbells, a threadmill and a cycling machine. I did 10 minutes running on the threadmill, 10 minutes of pedaling, then 10 minutes of running. An interesting observation. In the first 10 minutes, my average heart rate was around 140 bpm. In the final 10 minutes, with the same threadmill slope and speed, my heart rate was around 120 bpm. Quite a significant difference.

After that I did 45 minutes of strength training in the hotel room, using body weight and elastic bands. All in all a pretty good session.

I also planned out the exercise for the rest of the week so I would achieve the prescribed volume and type of training.

Late business dinner.

Tuesday

Alarm clock at 5:45 to go running in the park. Woke up and discovered that it is still dark in Madrid at that hour. I hesitated for about 20 minutes, then went for a short run, not in the park but through the city center. The Madrilenos were getting into taxis or staggering home on foot. There were a few other runners. Did just 40 minutes instead of the planned 60 minutes recovery run.

A full day at the show, standing around, having meetings. Quite tiring and some adrenaline involved as well.

Late business dinner.

Wednesday

I had meetings planned from the opening of the show to the closing time, and then a dinner. This was the second blow to my plans. There was simply no time to exercise.

During the day the starting time of the dinner was moved to the right, and I was able to start my final meeting early, so that created a 40 minute slot for running. Took to the park and did two quick rounds. Quite far from the planned 12 km.

Red: Tuesday morning. Blue: Wednesday evening (two rounds)

We had a very nice dinner at La Cocina de Maria Luisa. An excellent restaurant with a very nice atmosphere, delicious food and excellent wines. In bed around midnight.

Thursday

Alarm clock at 4am to catch the plane. Ouch. This was hard, especially after the late dinner and the excellent wine.

On top of that, Madrid Barajas Terminal 2 is an “old” and inefficient terminal, and this Thursday there were large groups of weekend travelers, people who are not used to the airport security drill. You can’t blame them, but that in combination with super strict checks and very unfriendly and slow personnel, on top of my lack of sleep, made it a not nice experience.

Slept in the plane. Woke up to admire the Mont Blanc Massif, then fell asleep again. Sprinted through Frankfurt to catch the connection to Vienna. Train home. Arrived at three in the afternoon.

At four I sat down to do the planned 5x1500m/R5 workout. First time on the erg in almost 2 weeks.

I knew this was going to be hard. I have done this workout at a pace faster than 1:50/500m, but today I gave myself a soft target of 1:51.5 (i.e. a little slower than 6k PB pace). I managed:

1:50.7 – pretty ok – 0.8 seconds (per 500m) in the bank

1:50.8 – started to be hard – 1.5 seconds (per 500m) in the bank

1:51.5 – 1.6 seconds in the bank

1:52.7 – lost a bit.

The “seconds in the bank” is my number mind game. I basically count how many cumulative seconds (per 500m) I am under the average, so I know how much I can afford to slow down and still make the target pace. After just 4 hours of sleep, I just didn’t have the mental energy to do anything faster than the target pace that I agreed with myself. In the end the average pace for the session was 1:51.3.

I did it. That’s all I can say. Tired now.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: 5x1500m, concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, running, training

Feb 26 2016

Two speed lactate test

Workouts this week

Monday: Waterfall 3k/2.5k/2k

Tuesday: 60 minutes of steady state

Wednesday: Nothing. Worked from 7am to 11pm.

Thursday: Strength training (45 minutes of “elasto” and body weight exercises)

Two speed test

After 4 weeks, I did the 4 speed test again. Same day of the week. Same time of the day.

The only difference being that we are in the “short final” of a very big pursuit. There was a problem with one of the partners, and I was expecting a phone call, roughly at the same time as the test. I sent my partner a message that I might be “driving” and unable to take his call, but would call back immediately.

First, a Fletcher warming up:

Then it was time for the main event, two 1ks with 15 minutes of paddling between. The first one at “6k pace” and the second one “2k pace or faster, preferrably max out”.

Workout Summary - Feb 26, 2016 --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|02000|06:57.7|01:44.4|307.4|29.6|169.9|181.0|09.7 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|Comments 01|01000|03:35.6|01:47.8|279.5|27.3|165.1|178.0|10.2|6.9? mmol/L (3.3) 02|01000|03:22.1|01:41.1|339.2|32.1|174.4|181.0|09.3|6.1 mmol/L (6.1)

I made a serious mistake after the first interval. My lactate taking routine is the following:

Handle down
Wipe hand with paper cloth
Wipe hand with wet washcloth
Wipe hand dry with paper cloth
Prick finger
Wipe away first drop with paper cloth
Prepare lactate meter
Measure using the second drop

After the first 1k, I forgot steps 3 and 4. I measured 6.9 mmol/L lactate. I presume my blood drop was contaminated with sweat.

I did the measurement 3 minutes into the break and measured 3.3 mmol/L, so I guess my real lactate was somewhere around that value, or perhaps slightly higher. Lactate values above the threshold are not supposed to drop immediately after stopping the exercise, as the blood takes up the lactate from the muscles.

After the second 1k I did follow the correct protocol and measured 6.1 mmol/L. After 3 minutes (light paddle), I measured again. Again, 6.1 mmol/L. During the cooling down, I used the two spare strips to take some more measurements. Here is the entire series:

1 min: 6.1 mmol/L

3 min: 6.1 mmol/L

7 min: 4.5 mmol/L

10 min: 3.3 mmol/L

Intriguing results. Compared to a month ago, I observe

High lactates (6.1 vs 4.1 after the second 1k, both at 340 W)
Lower average heart rates (165/174 bpm today vs 169/179 bpm a month ago)

Here is the graph:

Not sure what to think of it. It’s really a pity I missed the first measurement. In the graph, I put the 3.3 measured after 3 minutes. I think it is quite close to the truth.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 11 • Tags: concept2, erg, lactate, OTE, rowing, test, testing

Feb 22 2016

A hard day / waterfall

The day started in an interesting way. I woke up at three, and couldn’t fall asleep again. Some work related issues, and such.

Drove to work early. Control light on dashboard alerted me that my headlight needed replacement.

Fine. I wanted to test that new Volvo shop in town anyway. This would be a nice simple thing, to check them out, and casually get a quote on some bigger repairs that I need to do.

I was welcomed by a “easy on the eye” blonde young lady. Offered coffee and some Swedish pastry. Got to admire a beautiful white Volvo 1800S in the showroom:

The friendly head mechanic took my car keys and promised to change the bulb in 10 minutes.

I waited 30 minutes. He came back to apologize. The light wouldn’t work. They were checking the cabling. Had already tried exchanging the left and right bulbs and other parts.

I agreed to leave the car there and they gave me a lift to work. Again, I casually mentioned the planned repairs and that I was interested in a quote.

A busy day at work. Lots of meetings. I didn’t drink enough water and too much coffee.

End of the day I called the shop. They apologized lengthily, saying that it was a mystery. The mechanic had spent the entire day trying to figure out what was wrong, but couldn’t find the culprit.

I need the car repaired soon. Should I pick it up and drive to the competition? Decided to give them one more day. See how they cope. I hope my car is not a training project for an unexperienced mechanic.

The session was the dreaded 3km/2.5km/2km waterfall. I have mixed results on this one. The door in my erg room has a record of a 1:51.0 average on slides (and on the rowing club, with people walking around behind my erg). The last session (this fall) was a 1:52.9 average. Decided to go for improving that. An “uninspired, grumpy Monday” approach to the session.

Averages were 248W/249W/250W for the 3000/2500/2000m respectively. That boils down to a 1:52.0 average (according to the PM) and a 1:51.9 average according to my spreadsheet.

It was hard work, but it wasn’t impossible. I think about this session as a “longish 6k with breaks” so I kept telling myself that pulling 1:52 was slower than my recent 6k. That helped me through the hard parts.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 3 • Tags: concept2, erg, intervals, L2, OTE, rowing, training

Feb 21 2016

Sunday: 3x20min

Saturday

The plan was to do some running training. This was a work day at the club. At 9, a few members would take our new dock out of storage. Then there would be a window of two hours during which there would be some preparation work for only a few people, and then we would be building our dock.

It turned out differently. The turn-up was so high, that it actually made sense to do some garden work in the “forest” behind our club house. So we cleaned up plastic bottles, cigarette packs, and other junk that people throw over our fence, then collected dead wood and leaves. That turned out to be a two hour quite physically heavy exercise. Sort of a very long circuit training. Raking the leaves on piles. Putting the leaves in big bags. Hauling the bags around the club house, empty the big bag on a big pile. Start again.

The two hours training window was filled with this exercise. At least we got our job done.

Then we concrete arrived and we could start building the pontoons. Unfortunately, everybody was busy and nobody was taking pictures. We bought very nice Easyfloat pontoons from Belrive, three two by six meter pontoons, each weighing 243kg and with a buoyancy of more than 2000kg (150 kilo per square meter). Here’s a picture from the easyfloat website, to give you an idea:

The work proceeded amazingly quick. Last week, we have built two concrete “cubes” for the ramps. As we approach our water from a very steep hill, we had to build ramps leading to the dock. Because we are on reservoir with varying water levels (winter level being 6 to 10 meters lower than summer levels, and plus or minus one meter easily during the rowing season), the entire design had to allow for the different water levels. The way this was designed left very tolerance for misplacement of the ramps. Luckily, everything turned out to fit with millimeter precision.

Now we only have to wait for the water level to rise. From Friday to Saturday, we measured a 40cm rise. We have another 3m to go. That meant we could build the dock with dry feet, but we have to wait one or two weeks to start using it. I guess we wish for rainy weather. The dock is now resting on pillars which we built from old car tyres.

I am so much looking forward to rowing from a normal, low dock. Our old one was a horrible steel and barrels construction that scratched boats, and was way too high for launching a single.

Sunday

A 3x20min on the erg. I had planned for a 4x20min session, but I measured 1.9 mmol/L after 3x20min at 195W, so I called it a day. It’s supposed to be a light week.

Funnily, until the start of the third interval, I had the feeling I was OK and would do 4 intervals. Then, in the beginning of the third interval, I had difficulty holding 195-200W without going to too high perceived effort. That improved during the interval, but resulted in the mentioned relatively high lactate level (my target is to be between 1.2 and 1.5 for these sessions).

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Feb 19 2016

Testing continued: end of winter 6k

Here’s my training plan. At the top you can see the dates. Then a the macro and meso cycle (numbered in roman numbers), then a crude bar chart indicating training volume in hours per week. The area with the different numbers refers to the number of sessions of different training types. Finally there is a row with races, and at the bottom the tests and PB attempts.

Training plan detail. From top to bottom date, meso cycle, training volume, training type, tests.

Early November, I did some testing:

1 minute
6k
2k

Then, early December I did the 2 speed Lactate test. This week I am repeating the 6k and 1 minute test. Next week, the 2k and the 2 speed test. This 6k test is an indicator of how I come out of winter training, endurance wise. Also, the next to mesocycles will aim at improving my 6k, culminating in the Hořín head race over 6k on April 9.

Originally I wanted to do this 6k on Thursday. However, a full out 6k is a difficult test. In my opinion, there is a huge mental component to it. The 2k starts to hurt and then you have to survice a few minutes of pain. The 6k wears you out. In the beginning you don’t notice it. Then you slowly start to lose form and posture. And suddenly you find yourself thinking: “This is going to be impossible.” You check the monitor and you see:

9 minutes gone (so roughly 13 minutes to go still)
2400 m rowed (not even half way!)

That’s when you need to be on top of your game mentally. You have to continue pulling the paces you were supposed to pull, until you can start sprinting. That’s when the hard part is over.

The problem was, I wasn’t sure I was up to it mentally. On Thursday evening I wasn’t. The row was too close to dinner. I was tired after a long working day. It was too close to the end of a business trip, and I had DOMS from Tuesday’s strength training. So I just rowed through the 6k at slow pace, with a few bursts at PB pace here and there. Session total: 10k

Today, it had to be different. Unfortunately, I had a difficult night. Went to bed at 11pm. Something woke me up at midnight. Then something woke me up at 3am. I don’t know about other people in my age, but to me waking up at 3am is the worst scenario. I have real difficulty falling asleep again, usually falling asleep at 5am. Then, the alarm clock at 6 is very cruel, leaving you feeling lousy for the rest of the day.

On top of that it’s the period of the year when we have to do performance discussions. Luckily, I have been able to build a well performing team, so for me this shouldn’t be so stressful this year. Still, it is draining.

Luckily, I was able to stop early and row this row at 3:30pm, an ideal time between meals. Did a 2k with speed bursts. Started my favourite rowing SoundCloud playlist, and set up a few pace boats in RowPro. My row from November, a 2014 row which was a PB back then, and a 1:51.2 quick pace boat, which turned out to be quite prophetic.

Here’s the colorful graph:

And here are the raw data:
Workout Summary - Feb 19, 2016 --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|06000|22:13.1|01:51.1|255.3|27.1|175.1|184.0|10.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|Comments 01|00500|01:51.4|01:51.4|253.0|26.4|148.8|164.0|10.2| 02|00500|01:52.1|01:52.1|248.5|26.2|167.3|169.0|10.2| 03|00500|01:51.8|01:51.8|250.3|26.3|170.7|173.0|10.2| 04|00500|01:51.9|01:51.9|249.9|26.3|173.4|174.0|10.2| 05|00500|01:51.4|01:51.4|252.8|26.4|175.8|177.0|10.2| 06|00500|01:51.2|01:51.2|254.9|26.5|177.2|179.0|10.2| 07|00500|01:51.1|01:51.1|255.0|26.5|179.1|180.0|10.2| 08|00500|01:50.7|01:50.7|258.0|27.1|180.1|181.0|10.0| 09|00500|01:50.3|01:50.3|260.6|27.2|181.0|182.0|10.0| 10|00500|01:50.3|01:50.3|260.6|28.3|182.0|183.0|09.6| 11|00500|01:50.5|01:50.5|259.1|28.2|182.5|184.0|09.6| 12|00500|01:50.2|01:50.2|261.3|29.4|182.1|184.0|09.3|

In November, I rowed a 22:28.3, and my heart rate was in the red from 10 minutes into the row (average 177 bpm). Today, I rowed a (personal best) 22:13, and my average heart rate was 2 beats lower.

Here’s the comparison in power vs time:

The fall row was also after a long working day, so I am not sure if the graphs show an improvement in endurance or an improvement in mental fitness. I tend to believe it’s the former.

My PB calculator tells me I should be able to row around (or slightly under) 22:10. I believe that. In the coming 6 weeks I shall improve my 6k performance, OTW and OTE. I may sneek in a 6k hard distance training session just to see if I can do it.

Tomorrow will be a work day at the rowing club. We need all our “strong men”, and then a few weak lightweights like myself to build our new dock. Very exciting. That doesn’t mean I will go OTW from tomorrow on. There will still be some work to do on the dock after tomorrow.

For now, I will celebrate a PB improvement from 22:19.4 to 22:13.1. More than 6 seconds!

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: 6k, 6km, concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, testing

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OTE

3×20 minutes

Concept2 Cross Team Challenge @ 2k pace

Flywheel spinning again

Two speed lactate test

A hard day / waterfall

Sunday: 3x20min

Testing continued: end of winter 6k

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