OTE

Erg 002

Oct 27 2015

Tuesday: 4x2km in Blagnac

Monday

Flying to Toulouse, this time through Zurich. A grandiose view on the Alps during the Fokker 100 flight from Zurich to Toulouse. Never boring.

In meetings all afternoon and evening. No training.

Tuesday

Up early after a night in a too warm hotel room. Couldn’t get the climate control to start cooling. Couldn’t open the window. I chose this hotel only because of the gym and C2 erg. Not sure if I will stay with this.

It was very warm in the gym as well but I wanted to finish a 4x2km session this time. This meant that, after a 2km warming up, I started conservatively, at 1:55 pace, with a 1:55 pace boat. I rowed the first 2km flat, with a few fast pace intervals when there was someone passing. The second to fourth row I changed strategy. I started with 10 strong strokes, then flat at 1:55, then a ten strokes push at the 1km mark, and rowing the final 500m a bit faster. In the last interval I wanted to be under 7:30, and succeeded.

I made a nice puddle under the erg.

Erg 002

I managed a nice 2km cooling down.

Erg 003

https://www.strava.com/activities/421107956

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Brno 009

Oct 25 2015

Saturday Run & Sunday Erg

Saturday

Two options for the training. If the weather would allow, an extensive steady state row. If there would be wind or chop or otherwise unfavorable conditions: a run.

We left home at 9:30 am in sunny but cold weather. However, the river valley and the lake were cloudy.

We arrived at the lake and the air temperature was +2 degrees C. Interestingly, there was no wind, but still chop and fog at the same time. Our lake has strange ways … Anyway, visibility was low, and on top of that, one of Romana’s girls had to be home early. We decided for the run. My debut as a running trainer.

The girls want to participate in a 5k run in two weeks, so a running training wouldn’t be a bad thing.

We did a 10 minute warming up, then a good stretching session. Then we ran 2.5km steady state towards the castle. After 2.5 km we stopped, walked for a few minutes, then got ready for the 2.5 km return run. I told the girls to do “Steigerung”, i.e. a push run. I would wait for them at every 500m mark (measured using my Garmin watch) and tell them to increase the pace. Both Iva and Lenka did this perfectly and they both managed to arrive at the 5k mark doing a good pace. I told them this is the way to negative split a 5k.

We ran the 2km back to the club, then did a good stretching session in the weights room.

https://www.strava.com/activities/419071513

Sunday

Having moved the running, planned for Sunday, to Saturday, today was a Rowing Day. However, Romana and I wanted to do something with the kids, so we would lack the time to drive to the lake, row, and drive back. So it had to be an erg session.

In the morning, we took the train to the Central Station, walked up to the Spilberk Castle to have a coffee there. This Spilberk castle was the heaviest prison in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We passed a monument for Italian freedom fighters imprisoned here, around the time Italy united:

Morti per la redenzione d’Italia nelle carceri dello Spielberg fvrono qvi sepolti Oroboni Fortvnato Villa Antonio Moretti Silvio Vincenti Giovanni … figli d’Italia terra da commissioni di stato segrete fvor di legge Austriache in svolo Italiano condannati a morte come carbonari

After the coffee at the castle we descended back to the city to be witnesses of the building of the new statue for Jost of Moravia, a controversial medieval ruler of Moravia:

Brno 012

Brno 001 Brno 003 Brno 007 Brno 009

On the erg, I did a 3×20 minute row. Have to find some better audio books to listen to during these boring rows. I did a play with stroke rates to break the boredom:

3x20b 3x20min

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Vienna 001

Oct 22 2015

Cycle, Row, Travel

Good morning. Six AM and I am at Vienna Airport again. This week’s business trip will be

Thursday: Amsterdam
Friday: Brussels
Weekend: Home
Monday: Toulouse
Tuesday: Toulouse

Great!

Yesterday I cycled home from work. I want to do cycle legs per week, but with the business trips it is difficult. My bicycle actually spent an entire week at work. When I rode it home, it was raining a little but the temperature was OK. I didn’t need gloves.

https://www.strava.com/activities/417479989

After that, I did an extensive steady state erg session. Warming up. Thirty minutes on Rowpro with 2 other chaps (got disconnected about 20 minutes in), then a cooling down. I had ambitions for a 2×30 minute but got bored.

30min

By the way, I wonder who approved the architecture of Vienna Airport terminal 3. Here’s what I don’t like about it:

  1. Not enough walking conveyor belts. I just got a gate change from F01 to F36. About 10 minutes of walking in my pace, but that could amount to about 20 for an old lady
  2. Toilets. You have to go down one level for the toilets. How convenient is that for disabled people?
  3. The colors. Everything is white, gray or black. You can see every scratch, every stain, and it makes a very dreary impression
  4. Endless distances. I walk pretty fast, but some people must spend a full hour between the arrival gate and the parking garage …
  5. Stupid architecture. I believe the architects gave this job to an intern. There are crazy “unsolved” places everywhere. Take for example this spot:

Vienna 001

This picture was taken from the F01 waiting area looking into the main space. The glass bit on the right are escalators  for passengers who arrive, get dropped one level below the departure gates, have to get up the escalator 2 levels to one level above the departure gate, then walk the entire length of the terminal, and finally go down 3 levels to the luggage belts. On the left is a black place that I suspect contains another set of stairs or escalators. The architects created a nice crawl-through corridor. I guess in the early days some passengers bumped their heads here, so they had to put warning tape on it and restrict the access to the useless area under the stairs.

A user experience that is way below average.

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30min

Oct 20 2015

Monday-Tuesday: Steady State and CTC

Monday

Wanted to row OTW but I had to finish something at work. It was raining hard when I had to drive to the club, and I was late already, would have to shorten the row because of the early darkness … so I did an OTE session.

Warming up, then a 30 minute rowpro session, then a cooling down. A bit under an hour in total. Time pressed.

30min


Workout Summary - Oct 20, 2015
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS|-SPI
--|07255|30:00.0|02:04.0|183.4|22.1|156.4|167.0|11.0|08.3
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|-SPI|Comments
01|01205|05:00.0|02:04.5|181.6|21.6|136.1|147.0|11.2|08.4|
02|01226|05:00.0|02:02.3|191.2|22.4|156.0|161.0|10.9|08.5|
03|01216|05:00.0|02:03.4|186.4|22.0|160.0|164.0|11.1|08.5|
04|01207|05:00.0|02:04.3|182.2|22.2|160.1|164.0|10.9|08.2|
05|01206|05:00.0|02:04.4|182.0|22.0|163.6|166.0|11.0|08.3|
06|01195|05:00.0|02:05.5|177.1|22.2|162.2|167.0|10.8|08.0|

I did the 30 minutes at slightly higher power than the Friday session.

Tuesday – CTC

Again working late. I started this session close to 9pm. 15×1 minute on 1 minute rest, and actually quite enjoyed it. Targeted 1:45 which is around my 2k pace. It was nice to do some sprinty stuff after many steady state and distance sessions. Counted to 30 strokes. A sip of water after every 3 sets. Final three sets with closed eyes and imagining rowing the final 300m of a sprint race.

I did wear the heart rate belt but forgot to clip on the heart rate unit. 🙁

ctc

Tomorrow: Cycling and steady state.
Thursday: Fly to Brussels/Amsterdam
Friday: Short hotel fitness triathlon + weights

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3x20min

Oct 16 2015

Friday: 3×20 min

Woke up too late to do a session in the hotel. Flight from Brussels to Vienna was delayed by 20 minutes, so I missed the RailJet direct train. Arrived home around 4:30pm.

Dialed up a 3×20 minutes (with 2 minute active breaks) and decided to try out the Greg protocol, i.e. start slowly, then accelerate. To break the boredom, I varied stroke rates between 18, 19 and 20spm and power between 160, 170 and 180W. Looking at the HR plot, I might go a little faster on these sessions.

3x20min
Listened to a local radio station during the row. They announced that the police has removed another corpse from our lake today. They found the body of a dead man near Rokle, with a sports bag filled with stones tied to his body. The police announced that they think the man died at the end of September.

Tomorrow:
If the weather is good, a “intensive steady state” row OTW. If the weather doesn’t allow OTW rowing, it will be my debut as running trainer for our club’s girls group. Still have to think about a nice running session. I don’t usually run from the rowing club.

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Ochtendrit 10-13-2015, Elevation

Oct 13 2015

Tuesday: 4x2km HD

How much force of will does one have on an average day?

Here’s a sample of the stuff I did today:

  1. Cycled to work in -1 degree C and enjoyed it
  2. Completed a difficult performance review
  3. Discussed salary expectations with a direct report – having to hold a line which I think is a fair one
  4. Listened in to a project review, discovering 55 minutes into the discussion, that the guys who are claiming to be in a verification/validation phase are actually still in a debugging phase, a few weeks from a presentation to a launch customer. Followed a long interrogation on where they think they ought to be vs where they really are, ending with a project leader who felt offended. Followed an hour long discussion with the guy’s manager on how to recover the project …
  5. Helping the boys with their homework … later than expected

Anyway, I still thought I could do a full erg workout, did a warming up and dialed up the 4x2km. I did have a modest target pace, 1:53. First 2km in 1:52.7 in 25spm. Still OK although a little high on the heart rate.

Five hundred meter into interval #2 I stopped. I was doing solid 1:52 pace at the time but I just didn’t feel like completing the workout. Actually, it felt like I was looking at the entire amount of workout work I have to/want to do in the coming winter.

Somehow I have a feeling that a person can be limited in the amount of force of will he can use on a day, and perhaps this is something that needs to be trained as well. Researching this a bit, I actually found an article about it. Key sentence from the abstract: “mentally fatigued subjects reached their maximal level of perceived exertion and disengaged from the physical task earlier than in the control condition. In conclusion, our study provides experimental evidence that mental fatigue limits exercise tolerance in humans through higher perception of effort rather than cardiorespiratory and musculoenergetic mechanisms.”

Will do some easy stretching this evening and that’s it.  Tomorrow’s another day. A travel day, actually.

My morning ride:
Ochtendrit 10-13-2015, Elevation

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30min

Oct 6 2015

Tuesday: 30 minute erg + circuit training

Working from home today because in the afternoon I had to give a lecture at the technical university, which is close to my home.

So just before lunch I took an hour to do my workout for the day. I am mixing strength workouts into the mix, and the current recipe is 30 min erg (or running) followed by either weights or body weight circuit.

I am still not settled on the exact format of my strength training, so today I was going to go with what I could do from home, with the limited equipment I had.

First, 30 minutes of light erging (after a warming up of course):

30min

Perhaps I should try Greg’s method of starting slower, then increasing. And I guess that without lactate testing this a bit a shot in the dark. Had I not worn my HR belt, I would probably have gone a little faster …

Then, the circuit. Here’s my draft circuit:

  1. Triceps dips using a chair 20 reps
  2. Dorsal Raise 30 reps
  3. Press Up 20 reps – leg assisted when form started to break down
  4. Sit up 30 reps
  5. Pull ups – as many as possible with good form (not many, too embarrassed to tell the number)
  6. Burpee – 20

I did three rounds which took me about 20 minutes. I will probably expand this to 30 minutes but I don’t think it is wise to ignore that I am in a lousy shape, strength exercise wise, so I will try to do the number of reps that I can do with good form.

The good thing about this circuit is that there is nothing that cannot be done in a hotel room.

I am also reading up on strength exercise, so maybe with increased wisdom absorption I may change the routine.

Actually, I hope to change the routine, unless the literature tells me that I have to absolutely do the exact same routine every time. I am hoping for variation, though.

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