Nov 16 2016
New Painsled beta, steady state erg and mind games; and playing with data
Painsled iOS published a new beta version of their Concept2 data capture app. It’s really a very promising application and it has now gotten even better. Of all the ways to capture erg data, Painsled is the most complete. Now they have added stroke force profile feedback to their app, so besides safely capturing all your strokes for post workout analysis, there is also a useful screen to see how consistent you are from stroke to stroke, while you are doing the workout.
This being a beta, it comes with very little explanation, but the graph looks like a standard stroke force profile, but it is overlaid on the past few strokes. Also, during the recovery, there is a bar which moves across the screen to a second bar. I think that when you take the catch exactly when the two white bars match, you are exactly copying your previous stroke (or perhaps the average over the past few strokes). I need to ask the developer what it does exactly, but I think it is very powerful, especially for steady state, where working on technique and stroke consistency is a big sub-goal of each workout.
Having data captured in painsled, I send them by email to workouts @ rowsandall.com, where they automatically end up in my account. Here are the stats of the workout as they arrived.
Workout Summary - media/mailbox_attachments/2016/11/16/aa5e11a267c142448e0aaedb6cd95eea.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14999|63:31.0|02:07.0|176.6|20.2|158.9|174.0|11.7
W-|15005|63:31.0|02:07.0|176.4|20.2|158.9|174.0|11.7
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|174.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01179|04:57.9|02:06.4|170.4|20.1|130.1|150.0|11.8
02|01196|05:00.4|02:05.6|176.8|19.5|149.4|154.0|12.3
03|01204|04:54.7|02:02.4|191.6|20.4|158.1|165.0|12.0
04|01212|05:01.8|02:04.5|182.0|19.9|160.8|163.0|12.1
05|01196|05:00.6|02:05.6|177.9|20.0|160.4|167.0|11.9
06|01214|05:02.4|02:04.6|182.3|20.5|164.2|168.0|11.8
07|01124|05:09.0|02:17.4|160.1|19.8|155.4|168.0|11.0
08|01216|04:59.8|02:03.3|188.0|20.8|165.4|170.0|11.7
09|01192|04:59.1|02:05.5|177.6|20.0|166.6|170.0|12.0
10|01202|05:01.0|02:05.2|180.1|20.3|167.5|171.0|11.8
11|01203|05:00.2|02:04.8|182.3|20.5|169.3|174.0|11.7
12|01139|05:10.6|02:16.4|167.3|20.5|164.1|174.0|10.7
13|00726|03:13.9|02:13.5|147.3|19.9|152.0|159.0|11.3
That’s basically an hour of “Just Row” at steady state. But wait, to break the boredom I had some structure in the workout. After the business travel and another long day at work (and a “Monthly Operations Review”, a 4 hour marathon meeting) I arrived home empty, tired, and not motivated to work out. I had dragged myself to the erg and after 2k of warming up I came up with a mind game that might motivate me to row a full hour.
I decided to row 8x1500m, with each 1500m divided as 750m at 18spm, 500m at 20spm, and 250m at 22spm. Somehow, distance based rowing always makes the time go by faster to me, compared to time based intervals.
I paddled the final 250m of the fourth interval and drank some water. Finally I completed the workout without problems. On rowsandall.com, I can add this interval information after the fact. The workout summary then becomes:
Workout Summary - media/20161116-20100719o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15004|63:30.0|02:07.0|176.6|20.2|158.9|174.0|11.7
W-|14755|61:59.0|02:06.1|177.9|20.2|159.2|174.0|11.8
R-|00250|01:31.0|03:03.3|094.0|18.8|142.7|174.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|02000|08:23.5|02:05.9|173.6|20.0|137.6|151.0|11.9 - Warming up
02|01500|06:09.9|02:03.3|187.5|20.0|156.0|165.0|12.2
03|01500|06:11.0|02:03.7|185.9|20.2|161.6|167.0|12.0
04|01500|06:15.1|02:05.0|180.3|20.4|161.0|168.0|11.8
05|01250|05:13.0|02:05.2|179.3|20.1|164.3|168.0|11.9
06|01500|06:12.0|02:04.0|184.5|20.4|162.4|170.0|11.8
07|01500|06:12.8|02:04.3|183.6|20.5|167.4|171.0|11.8
08|01500|06:13.9|02:04.6|182.7|20.5|168.1|173.0|11.7
09|01500|06:15.3|02:05.1|180.2|20.5|168.2|174.0|11.7
10|01005|04:53.6|02:26.1|134.1|19.3|152.2|172.0|10.7 - Cooling Down
And here are the plots:
The Work per stroke for all strokes (except the 250m of paddling in the middle):
Same plot, but only for the 8x1500m (excluding the 250m of paddling):
Ah, so the “structured mind game” helped to make the strokes more consistent! Just for fun, peak and average force for the same stroke selection:
Jan 7 2017
The showdown that didn’t happen
Friday
With the new users flocking to rowsandall.com in droves, I get a lot of reports about issues. The new users use the site in different ways than the crew of beta testers, and so new bugs are being discovered. One of the bugs seems to have a root cause in the data we receive from the Concept2 logbook for interval workouts. So I did Thursday’s workout with ErgData instead of my favorite Painsled for iOS.
On Friday, I wanted to test the new version 5 of RowPro. I have been an avid user of RowPro, but that ended in March 2016, when I started experimenting with Painsled, and after that the OTW season took off and I didn’t spend much time on the erg. On the Analytics Blog, I wrote a post about applications to capture erg data, so I wanted to test the new RowPro myself.
The idea was to row for an hour, have RowPro and Painsled open at the same time (RowPro through USB, Painsled through bluetooth link), and then compare what Rowsandall.com can do with the data from both apps.
It wasn’t to be.
Not having rowed with RowPro for months, I forgot a few peculiarities of the program. I sat down on the erg, connected everything, programmed a 1 hour workout, and set off.
After six minutes I realized I had forgot to “connect” the Heart Rate belt to the PM5. I had no HR data. So the only thing I could do was stop the row.
In RowPro that means you have no data. When you abandon a row early, it is like if you didn’t row it, even if you stop a 60 minutes row after 55 minutes. It’s tough.
Luckily, Painsled was happily recording data on the side. There is much to be said for data redundancy.
I quickly changed the plan, connected my HR belt to the PM monitor, set up a 10k and set off:
Workout Summary - media/20170106-1710100o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10000|40:30.0|02:01.5|195.3|21.4|164.8|178.0|11.5
W-|10000|40:31.0|02:01.6|194.7|21.3|164.5|178.0|11.6
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|178.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01000|04:04.4|02:02.2|188.8|20.0|145.4|158.0|12.3
01|00750|03:01.3|02:00.9|198.0|21.0|158.8|162.0|11.8
02|00500|01:58.8|01:58.8|208.2|22.0|164.3|168.0|11.5
03|00250|00:58.3|01:56.6|221.0|22.9|168.2|170.0|11.3
04|00250|00:58.3|01:56.6|220.8|23.1|170.5|172.0|11.1
05|00500|02:00.8|02:00.8|198.9|22.0|169.0|171.0|11.3
06|00750|03:04.0|02:02.6|190.2|21.0|165.4|169.0|11.7
07|01000|04:09.7|02:04.8|180.0|20.0|162.4|165.0|12.0
08|01000|04:05.1|02:02.6|190.2|21.1|164.7|167.0|11.6
09|00750|03:00.4|02:00.2|201.0|22.1|168.3|171.0|11.3
10|00500|01:56.2|01:56.2|222.7|22.9|172.7|176.0|11.3
11|00250|00:57.0|01:54.1|235.4|24.4|177.0|178.0|10.8
12|00250|00:59.7|01:59.5|206.0|22.5|176.0|178.0|11.2
13|00500|02:02.7|02:02.7|189.9|22.3|171.1|175.0|11.0
14|00750|03:06.1|02:04.0|183.4|21.4|167.2|171.0|11.3
15|01000|04:09.1|02:04.5|181.2|20.6|166.8|171.0|11.7
And in pictures:
I was quite intrigued by the “work per stroke” plot as a function of distance. An interesting case of slacking off on the final rate ladder down to lower rates.
I also did a 2k cooling down row.
Saturday
Normally, Saturday is our regular “club run” day, but today was special. For more than a week now, the ice on our rowing lake is thick enough for skating. Until Monday, there was a perfect black layer of smooth ice, without snow.
On Monday I was still not well, and I did the erg row with video.
For the rest of the week, I was too busy, and still not well.
From Tuesday to Friday, there were frequent snow showers. Luckily, there was a stiff north wind as well, so there was just a thin layer of powder snow on the ice.
I spent 45 minutes wiping a 400m oval. Then I started skating, taking breaks to improve my “Olympic Oval” gradually.
The boys played ice hockey. Some people went on the lake on X country skis. I am going to do that tomorrow.
Here is the Strava summary: https://www.strava.com/activities/823892699/overview
And here is the SportTracks.mobi summary:
You can see from the HR plot that the snow wiping was quite hard work as well. After 90 minutes on the ice I was quite tired. It was also quite cold. When we started, it was -15 degrees C. When we finished, it was “only” 12 degrees below zero.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, crosstraining, erg, ice skating, OTE, painsled, rowing, rowpro, skating, steady state