May 3 2015
Data annoyances and wellness
Just checking if this cool video works. Looking forward to following this guy:
Saturday
Went out in the single for a steady state workout. Everything seemed to work against me. I had terribly tired legs after Friday’s workouts. There was a nasty chop. Did I mention I was tired? My back hurt. I didn’t seem to be able to find my light and fast stroke. CrewNerd issues. First, the XGPS160 stopped after 4km, which I discovered just after the turn and I didn’t want to interrupt my rowing, so I rowed 4km without tracking. Then I switched the XGPS back on, closed CrewNerd, restarted it, but CrewNerd didn’t seem to take the high update rate of the XGPS. I can see that on the screen. When it works, the distance rowed is increasing in 1 meter intervals and I can see the pace change during the stroke. When it doesn’t work, the distance rowed is increasing in steps of 2 or 3 meters, and the pace displayed changes every other stroke.
I have the new version of CrewNerd and I am duly sending bug reports to the author of the software, who is very active and responsive, so I am expecting this is a bug that will be solved in the next couple of weeks.
However, on a day when everything seems to cost extra energy, I find this annoying. 4km of rowing missing in my data. Data in two separate files. Not good for this data and automation junkie.
Need to start using the Garmin forerunner again as a backup scenario. It has never failed me and seems to have more accurate position data than the iphone without the XGPS160.
I made a salad with green asparagus and lamb steaks from the charcoal grill for dinner. Picture will follow once Lenka sends it to me.
Sunday
Went out in a double with Romana in considerable chop. The plan was to do 4x6min but it turned out there were sailing races. We couldn’t go on the river because it is officially forbidden to go there so you have to do that only on times when the ferries aren’t out. On the lake, we had only 500m of the 2k to our disposal because of the sailing races.
My father called me in the middle of the row and I had to take it. My first phone call from the middle of the lake.
Funnily, this was one of the rare outings where Romana actually did enjoy rowing in rough conditions. So we did do a race start and a few fast strokes, then binned the session, promising ourselves that we would finish it in the erg room.
We didn’t do that. We went to the wellness in hotel Maximus instead:
It’s a really great wellness, with lots of nice saunas around a little lake with ice cold water to swim in after the sauna. The sauna complex is 500m from the rowing club. So I took an unexpected rest and recovery day. I really enjoyed the sauna. Feel very refreshed now.
The data annoyances continue. I am actually surprised at how low my HR was during the 5km row in the double, but looking at the values and steps in the HR, I am really suspecting something is not right.
May 4 2015
Low visibility and race pace training
The week started quite interestingly. At least it made me produce some nice paces in today’s workout:
But back to the story. On Sunday evening, after we had finished watching a film on DVD, I made the mistake to check my email. I shouldn’t have done that. Why do I make the same mistake over and over?
There was an email about next week, telling me the club had signed me up for
– Masters Single
– Open category quad
– Open category eight
Damn! Looking at the program the open quad is less than 2 hours before my single race. I cannot do a full out 2k, then a full out 1k in the single a few hours later. Also, my idea of the weekend was to enjoy watching the races. Do the masters quad on Saturday, the master single on Sunday, but mainly watch my children race. Now I would be zipping up and down the race course trying to be in time for the start and I would miss all the youth action.
I did send out a few quite bitchy emails.
Things got worse.
I am usually a bit grumpy getting up at 5:30 to row at 6, but this time I was really in a foul mood. Seeing the mist on the lake didn’t really help, but at least the water would be perfectly flat.
It was even to be worse.
Arriving at the rowing club, I noticed a text message from my double partner that he was sick. The message was sent at 5:30, but my phone is on night mode so I didn’t register the message.
With my single already prepared for transport (because I will be out on business travel for the rest of the week), I had nothing to row on and would be stuck to the erg.
Eda arrived and I started discussing how he could have put me in a Men’s quad and eight without even consulting me.
Turns out it was supposed to be a Masters quad and a Masters eight, both rowed on Saturday, while my single race is on Sunday. Today they will correct the registration.
He also allowed me to row in his single Liduška, so all was good. This single is built for 95kg, so a little big, but with the flat water it wouldn’t be too much of a problem.
It was really low visibility today. Rowing on the Albano, I could see 5 buoys behind me, so that is 50m, not more. In the middle of the lake I couldn’t see any of the banks. Just rowing in white milk. There was no other traffic on the lake at this early hour, and the double and I decided to row the same workout next to each other to avoid any collisions.
The workout was 20 strokes “on”, 20 strokes “off”.
In the first half, from Rokle to Sirka, I kept the stroke rate “low” (30-31spm) and tried to work on sending the boat. I think that worked out pretty well. The double was slightly faster than I but in the 20 strokes they never gained more than 1 boat length. I used the 20 stroke breaks to get back next to them.
Turning, and some rest. Now, I thought, they will let the dogs out.
And they did. But I had positioned myself half a boat length ahead of them and was able to counter their 36-37spm bursts, first doing my own 34spm, but as the end of the workout was nearing I had to go up.
I did see 40spm on CrewNerd. And I did see a consistent 10 stroke interval of 1:44s. Happy with that. I think I had to work harder than the double but I was able to match their speed. A good training to rate up.
No detailed statistics today. We were rowing this on stroke count rather than on time and I don’t know how to get that from CrewNerd.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: lake, mist, OTW, rowing, single