OTW

myimage11.png

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.

myimage (11)

 

 

By • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: , , , , ,

myimage6.png

Apr 17 2017

Monday: A nice row in the double

It was a holiday today.

After lunch, we convinced ourselves that despite the nasty weather (rainshowers, temperature 6 degrees) we should go to the rowing club and check out the lake. In the worst case, Romana and I could do a joint row on connected ergs on sliders.

It turned out that the water was too flat to resist. And when we arrived at the lake, just after 3pm, it was not raining. Romana and I went out on the double and it was great. Great beyond what data can capture. We rowed steady state and technique exercises, and we were really focused on bringing the 2x together.

In the end it resulted in what I think was pretty good boat speed.

myimage (6)

 

myimage (7)

By • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: , , ,

myimage3-1.png

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:

  1. 500m at 28spm, 500m at 30spm
  2. 30spm
  3. 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 đŸ˜€
  • 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.

myimage (3)

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.

bokeh plot (3)

 

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.

bokeh plot (4)

 

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.

bokeh plot (5)

 

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.

bokeh plot (6)

 

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

bokeh plot (7)

 

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.

bokeh plot (8)

 

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

bokeh plot (9)

 

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

bokeh plot (10)

 

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 • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: , , , , ,

IMG_2157

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
Part 2 – after the wave

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 • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: , , , , , ,

myimage-1.png

Apr 12 2017

First row in the quad

Today we started to train for our annual race in the eight.

We did it by rowing a quad and a coxless four. We all arrived, the entire team, eight Masters men, at 6pm. It was a miracle. Nobody was late. Nobody canceled last minute. It was a miracle, except for the fact that everybody, except our captain, expected that the captain would organize a coxswain.

So at least we rigged the eight and checked that everything was good for a row.

Then we took a quad and a four. I stroked the quad. We did an 8km technical row on mirror flat water. Lots of arms only, arms and back, half stroke, 3/4 stroke, and lots of rowing at 16spm. The SpeedCoach was dutifully recording it all, as was the Garmin Forerunner. At least I thought so.

Coming home after the row, I realized that I could use the NK smartphone app. This app syncs with the SpeedCoach, but I don’t use it because it doesn’t sync the Empower Oarlock data. No Oarlock data in today’s row, so I went ahead and started the app, which prompted me with a question if I wanted to upgrade the SpeedCoach’s firmware. I clicked OK before I could realize that that might erase all data.

It erased all data.

Luckily, there was still the Garmin watch. But unfortunately, I had forgotten to switch that to the Tickr X heart rate belt.

myimage

 

I synced the Garmin watch to Garmin connect, which syncs automatically to Strava, and from there I imported the row to rowsandall.com.

What, power data? Yes. Stravistix thought this was a run and did a power estimate. Cool.

What was also cool was that this was a very nice technique row. We worked really well together, today, and when that happens, you can row a quad almost effortlessly.

[amazon_link asins=’B00O5Y4FXA’ template=’ProductAd’ store=’rowingdata-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’31231b96-1fb7-11e7-aa76-978d7abe41f9′]

By • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

img_1426.jpg

Apr 10 2017

Monday – Steady State with Focus

IMG 1426

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.

myimage (22)

 

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.

bokeh plot (47)

 

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 • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: , , , , ,

dsc_1095

Apr 9 2017

Czech Rowing Long Distance Championships – Race report

Woke up at 7, well rested. First trip to the bathroom, then to the scale.

71.8kg

Why am I rowing this race when I have to row in the Men’s (age unrestricted) lightweight category? I have no chance of winning this event. But I guess it is because I enjoy head racing. I think the 6k is one of the most difficult distances. There is a lot of room for errors like going out too fast. There is a technique aspect, and I guess I am closer to the elite on longer distances than on the 2k.

Above all I love doing it. Almost 25 minutes of high quality race rowing. Where can you get that?

Yes, on a canal near a muddy field north of Prague. Among others.

So breakfast was limited to coffee and one bun with jam.

And the amount of water I could drink was capped to 500 ml until the weigh-in. Not fun.

The weather was slightly better than on Friday. It was dry, and there was even some sun now and then. Here is a picture I took of the preparation area. The muddy field with all the boats is to the left. The start is 2km away from this place.

IMG 2143

I arrived at this place at 9:30, with the club’s minivan. My starting time was at 2:18pm.

At twelve o’clock I went to the weigh-in area to join a small crowd of lightweights. The young guys seem to have accepted my place in this crowd, after 3 years of participating, and a few of them started chatting with me, the crazy Masters rower who rows this race for fun, and not to achieve a qualifying time to be considered for the national team.

I weighed in at 71.8kg, exactly 2 hours before the race start time. So now I had a small window to get some food in (a bun, a banana, and some energy bars and nuts) and drink some water.

Romana was busy with Iva, who had to place 18th to be invited to the “control” races in a couple of weeks. She came in 21st, 7 seconds behind 18th place. In a head wind, she would have made the limit easily. Iva told me afterwards that she had stopped at one point, because a girl flipped. She stopped rowing to ask the girl if she was all right and instruct her dad (who was cycling on the bank) to help the girl. I didn’t know what to say when she told me that. I guess she is right and “qualification” is not so important as making sure that nobody gets hurt.

Then it was time for me to launch. In contrast to Iva, I was looking forward to rowing in a tail wind. Of course, now it was my race time, the wind had stopped. Oh well.

I had my “digital rowing” plan thought out quite well. No heart rate strap (to avoid the risk of the dreaded SpeedCoach hangup), new battery in the Empower Oarlock, the Garmin watch to monitor my start time, and a second stroke meter to monitor the distance, because I had set the SpeedCoach to show SPM, Power, Work per Stroke and Effective Length. However, one of our elite rowers was short of a stroke meter, so I gave him that device for his race. No problem, I could manage. I do want to see the elapsed distance, because even though there are markers on the bank for every 1k and I sort of know the course, it is easy to miss the marker and it is even easier to get confused when heavily fatigued.

So, one minute before my start, I switched the Garmin from showing time to recording and showing distance, and set the SpeedCoach to “ready”.

There were 24 lightweight men competing, and I started as the 23rd of them, with only Mr Hrstka from Brno behind me. Jan Hrstka is a sympathetic young guy who rows at Lodni Sporty, the club on the other side of my “home” lake, and we see each other regularly when training. Before the start I chatted a bit with him, commenting that we had traveled 250km to look at each other again.

Last sip of water to empty the bottle. Set SpeedCoach to record. Switch Garmin Forerunner to show elapsed distance, watch the two other scullers before me get started, paddle to the starting position.

5-4-3-2-1-GO

I was off. A race start and ten hard strokes and then try to settle for the 240W that I thought was a good power target for this race. This is very hard. On fresh legs, settling for a certain power value is much harder on the water than on the erg. The numbers I saw were above 300W, and I had to consciously lighten up and reduce the stroke rate to get to the 250-270W range.

Exactly 30 seconds after me, Jan Hrstka started. I looked at him. I was doing 28spm and it looked like he was doing 35spm. He quickly closed in on me.

After about 1km, he was just a few lengths behind me.

I stuck to my script and rowed at 230-250W, 500-600J per stroke, and keeping the effective stroke length above 90 degrees. I was curious to see what would happen.

It turns out we continued to row like this for most of the race.

At the half-way point, he had closed in to one length behind, but it had taken him 2km to do that. At that point, Romana and Adam, our head coach, were cheering. I put on a little more pressure.

At 2km to go, Mr Hrstka seemed to make a move. We were closing in on a bridge where the canal is a bit narrower, so I shouted at him that he should finally pass me, which he finally did. When he passed me, I noticed he looked quite worn out.

These 4th and 5th km were quite hard. I saw the power drop, occasionally to 210W, and had difficulty keeping the effective length high. Also, now I had to row in Mr Hrstka’s puddles. I was wondering if I should have tried to increase the power and stay ahead of him.

The last bridge, 1.5km before the finish, and the start of a long and slow turn in the canal.

When I saw 5km on the Garmin, I started counting strokes. With 500m to go I tried to squeeze out everything and empty the tank, which I think I succeeded in doing.

In the end result, I came in 19th place out of 24 rowers, in a time of 24:48.8 minutes, beating 5 guys (among them 3 U23 rowers). If I had started with the heavies, I also would have beaten quite a few rowers. Jan Hrstka came in 13th place. Our club’s second best lightweight (the best guy had a race in Italy) beat me by a minute. Complete results here.

So, I am pretty happy with that result. A minute faster than a year ago, but then it was in headwind, while today there was a very very light tailwind (when I rowed). A year ago I came 15th out of 16 (and Jan Hrstka was 90 seconds faster than I). In 2015, I was 14th out of 17 in a time of 25:05. My gap with the winner is constant around 2 minutes and 40 seconds. Quite a gap!


Workout Summary - media/20170409-073849-Sanders SpeedCoach 20170408 0217pmo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|05918|25:09.0|02:07.6|243.6|27.8|0.0|000.0|08.4
W-|05918|25:10.0|02:07.6|243.6|27.8|000.0|000.0|08.5
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|000.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00150|00:51.8|02:52.7|237.9|27.6|000.0|0.0|06.3
01|00500|02:05.9|02:05.9|266.1|27.8|000.0|0.0|08.6
02|00500|02:04.4|02:04.4|251.3|27.1|000.0|0.0|08.9
03|00500|02:06.1|02:06.1|249.9|27.4|000.0|0.0|08.7
04|00500|02:08.0|02:08.0|242.6|27.6|000.0|0.0|08.5
05|00500|02:05.9|02:05.9|249.5|27.7|000.0|0.0|08.6
06|00500|02:05.5|02:05.5|250.2|28.3|000.0|0.0|08.5
07|00500|02:04.8|02:04.8|238.8|28.1|000.0|0.0|08.6
08|00500|02:06.9|02:06.9|232.9|27.6|000.0|0.0|08.6
09|00500|02:08.2|02:08.2|229.4|27.2|000.0|0.0|08.6
10|00500|02:07.3|02:07.3|232.1|27.7|000.0|0.0|08.5
11|00500|02:08.2|02:08.2|246.5|28.4|000.0|0.0|08.3
12|00268|01:07.8|02:06.3|230.5|30.0|000.0|0.0|07.9

myimage (20)

 

After the finish, there was only a few minutes on the water to relax. After that there was a lot of work to do. Carrying the boat to the trailer (which is extremely hard after such a 6k race). Preparing the boat for transport. Walking to the car to get dry clothes.

Here are a few pictures from the official race photographer.

Then it was time to drive home. I didn’t have to travel with the trailer, because Romana had arrived with our car. We caught up with the trailer at one gas station, so I took a quick picture.

IMG 1425

 

Race Data Analytics

Here are the detailed graphs of my race, for the data junkies (including myself)

And here is the key graph from the entire row.

Both slip and wash became gradually worse as I got fatigued, and especially seemed to suffer from rowing in the puddles of Jan Hrstka.

By • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: , , , ,

«< 23 24 25 26 27 >»