race prep

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Jan 30 2016

Race prep different

Morning: meetings in Brussels and a late, quick lunch (Japanese ramen). Then to the airport and fly to Prague. Train to Pardubice. Dinner in train (Hungarian goulash soup with dark bread, it turned out to be a soup day). 

Picked up at the station by Romana and immediately taken to race venue to build it up. My brother in law is the organizer. I was still in work clothes (suit and tie) but started to haul chairs immediately. I left the unloading of the truck with concept 2 ergo meters to the others. 

Laid cables. Replaced batteries. Left at this stage:

  
The IT folks were still getting the race software to run at that moment. I think they were there until midnight. 

Racing on Saturday afternoon. 

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Babice 001

Oct 9 2015

Hradiště test drive

The club needed my small trailer for tomorrow’s head race, to shuttle singles that are used by more people from the finish to the start. My trailer has the nice property that you can load it with a few singles without removing the wings/riggers.

So I took the opportunity to load my own single on my trailer and go for a morning reconnaissance row in Hradiště. I also had the opportunity to combine it with a work-related visit to the local aircraft manufacturers Evektor and Aircraft Industries.

My timing notes for today were:

  • 5:30 depart from home
  • 5:45 arrive at rowing club; pick up trailer
  • 6:00 depart from rowing club; drive 110km to Babice
  • 7:30 arrive in Babice
  • 8:00 launch and row
  • 9:30 backfrom training
  • 9:45 drive to finish area; park trailer
  • 10:15 drive to Aircraft Industries
  • 10:30 arrive at Aircraft Industries
  • 11:00 meetings
  • 13:30 depart from Aircraft Industries; drive 70km to Brno
  • 15:00 arrive at work; interview candidate

Woke up with the common cold at 5:20. Worked off the program. Arrived at Aircraft Industries at 10:37. I arrived at work 14:55 to interview the candidate. I was never more than 15 minute from the plan.

Here is how I arrived at Babice, in the rain, in the middle of nowhere:

Babice 001

I rowed the 14km from the launch point to the finish and back. I had programmed the race as a “course” in CrewNerd and I test drove this. It was good that I did that. I had placed the start 100m before the real start. Corrected that now, but I discovered that the upgrade of SportTracks seems to have lost my most used plugin: Google Earth Visualisation by Dobrou Extensions. 🙁

The row itself was nice. The mirror works perfectly for steering and I tried to row the ideal course. You can check here:

https://www.strava.com/activities/409295053

On our own river, I had difficulties distinguishing between the two banks in the evening light, but on the Morava river with its green, grassy banks I had no trouble. The ideal course is, according to my estimate, the shortest course that never brings you closer than 2 meters to the bank. Closer than 2 meters, and the river is too shallow and you don’t benefit from the stream.

Rowing on the perfectly flat water and checking my mirror, I really got into the mood for tomorrow’s race. Not good that I am a little sniffly, but I decided to just ignore that.

hradiste

The meetings were fine. Both companies make interesting aircraft. Here is a promo video about the L410 landing in Nepal. Quite nice, even though the engines are from the competitor:

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2014

Oct 8 2015

The Draw

Wednesday

Cycled to work.

Cycled home.

The usual course. In the morning, I left home 20 minutes later than normal and I discovered that this is a mistake. In Židenice, the part of Brno that I ride through, are a lot of small courtyards, and on these courtyards, there are small enterprises. Handymen, builders, carpenters, etc. They start at 7AM with their preparations for the day, and around 8AM they all leave their courtyards with their little vans and trailers. What I perceived as a quiet neighborhood was suddenly buzzing with activity.

Thursday

The original plan was to use a gap around lunch time to row and prepare the boat for transport for Friday’s reconnaissance row and Saturday’s race.

The gap disappeared in a sea of work.

Then the idea was to leave around 4:30, row and prepare the boat for transport. I had one call to make with a guy in Phoenix He let me know he had a conflict and needed to postpone. So I arrived at the club around 6 and the only thing I could do was admire the mirror flat water, not row, and prepare the boat for transport.

I am OK with it. I will not sit on the erg but take a rest day instead. Today it was important to get all the work out of the way, because tomorrow I want to have time for my reconnaissance row.

The Draw

Around lunch time they published the draw. First let me show you last year’s result in my field:

2014

I won, and Mr Machacek from Blesk, the president of the Czech Rowing Association, came 9 seconds behind me. Close, but i was faster.

Here is this year’s draw:

2015

So Dusan Machacek starting one minute before me … so he can watch me. Interesting coincidence. Cernak, who didn’t race a year ago, is also pretty fast. So this will be interesting. At least i have all my opponents around me.

Tomorrow, the plan is to get up at 5:30, get the trailer, leave Brno around 6, arrive at the race start at 7:30, go for a 12km reconnaissance row, park the trailer on the trailer parking, and head for my 11AM meeting, about 10km from the race venue.

Here is the reconnaissance video I made a year ago:

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Aug 28 2015

Looking forward to fun races

Coming weekend I am competing in a fun race in Breclav, an hour drive from Brno. The picture above is the event poster. The text is fun:

“BE THERE! The SLovacko rowing club organizes traditional rowing races:

Slovacko regatta 2015
29 and 30 August 2015 * BRECLAV *
Area above the weir

The best rowers from Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia
* Dramatic races for traditional prizes
* Saturday heats starting 11:00, Sunday finals starting 9:00″

The entire happening is also a fundraising event for a few good causes.

Here are some pictures from last year:

The race is held on a river. The 2km course is more like 1700m long and is a big S curve. The 1km course is also a bit shorter than 1km and is one big curve. With the drought, there will be low water levels and not much current. Still, lane 2, the middle one of the three lanes is the fastest, especially when they forget to cut the branches of the trees on the bank (lane 3). Sometimes they put four boats on the three lanes, and usually the “random” draw puts the local crews in lane 2. It’s just a fun race, where everything works in a very friendly atmosphere and nobody makes a big problem out of these small irregularities.

On Saturday, I am competing (in order of start time):

  1. 1x men Masters
  2. 2x men Masters. I bet they will put us in lane 3 with the tree branches. We have already beaten the local Masters 2x twice this year.
  3. 8+ men Masters. The locals put us on the starting list without us knowing about it, so we will try to collect eight Masters rowers during the day, meet near the boat they will assign to us and row.

Also I intend to sign up for the “single open” which is an interesting format. The race is over 300m and it’s a knock-out format, one single against one single. In previous years, if you won your heat, you would immediately row back to the start for the next round. This year they seem to have planned heats on Sunday morning and semifinals and finals on Sunday afternoon. To enter you pay a whopping 100 Kc (5 USD) and the winner gets 10,000 Kc (500 USD) prize money. I have never rowed for prize money, so this is pretty exciting. Not that I stand a chance to win, but I would at least like to advance by one or two rounds.

Also on Sunday is the mix 8+ where our club has an entry (again, put there by the organizing club without informing us), so I will probably spend a big part of the weekend addressing random women at the race venue and try to convince them to join a mix 8+. 🙂

Above, I wrote that we beat the Breclav Masters 2x twice, but this is not entirely true. I did beat them twice, but this weekend I am not racing with Radek, my regular 2x partner. He has to be in Prague for a (personal development) training, so I row with Martin, one of the guys from our masters quad.

Yesterday we took the double out for a quick training. I put him on stroke seat. I always row stroke, so I really wanted to row bow for this occasion. Also, I think I have a little more ability to adjust to Martin’s stroke than the other way round (even though I stroke the quad). He’s a converted sweep rower. In the first part of the outing, the double was bouncing around quite a lot when we tried some race pace stuff, but we managed to adjust quite a bit and I am looking forward to a fun race on Saturday. Tree branches, here we come!

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zaterdag 006

Jul 11 2015

Saturday: a bit of sprinting in the double

Our boys go on a summer camp. Not sure if they knew what that means. Anyway, they will live in tents in the mountains for 2 weeks in very basic conditions. They will have a lot of fun I am sure, but it may also be difficult now and then:
zaterdag 003

zaterdag 004

Lenka started to row with Iva, a girl who will move into her age category in September. It’s vacation time, so a good occasion to let them discover something new. They were out in a pair for the second time. This is when we pushed them off the dock.
zaterdag 005

zaterdag 006

We put them on the other side than they had rowed 2 days ago, so Lenka changed from stroke to bow and Iva from bow to stroke. Not good.

We pushed them off:

“IIIIIIII – AAAAAH – THIS IS SO WEIRD! – THIS IS VERY WEIRD – THIS IS SCAAARY – AAAAA – IIII”

They had difficulty coming back to the dock at all. Then Lenka went back to stroke seat and Iva to bow, we pushed them off and they silently rowed away, in good balance. Very funny to this sculler who can row sweep both sides (slightly preferring bow).

Romana and I took the double ORCA out and did some sprinting. 10 strokes on, 10 strokes off in increasing pace during the warming up. The “Small Pyramid” with a test start, then a start+1 minute, some light paddling, then another practice start, and finally a cooling down.


| Start | Stop_ | Dist_ | Time_ | Pace__ | _SPM | avg HR | max HR | DPS | Remarks
| 00000 | 02914 | 02914 | 16:59 | 02:54.9 | 22.0 | 134 | 173 | 07.8 | WU
| 02914 | 03003 | 00090 | 00:19 | 01:46.0 | 37.1 | 132 | 155 | 07.6 | 20" @ 38spm
| 03003 | 03074 | 00070 | 00:20 | 02:22.0 | 23.6 | 163 | 166 | 09.0 | rest
| 03074 | 03253 | 00180 | 00:39 | 01:48.6 | 35.1 | 170 | 179 | 07.9 | 40" @ 36spm
| 03253 | 03382 | 00129 | 00:41 | 02:39.4 | 22.3 | 172 | 179 | 08.4 | rest
| 03382 | 03657 | 00275 | 01:01 | 01:51.0 | 33.4 | 176 | 181 | 08.1 | 60" @ 34spm
| 03657 | 03821 | 00165 | 00:58 | 02:56.0 | 20.5 | 170 | 181 | 08.3 | rest
| 03821 | 04004 | 00182 | 00:41 | 01:52.4 | 34.3 | 171 | 179 | 07.8 | 40" @ 36spm
| 04004 | 04119 | 00115 | 00:41 | 02:58.4 | 21.4 | 174 | 179 | 07.9 | rest
| 04119 | 04210 | 00091 | 00:20 | 01:49.6 | 36.2 | 172 | 177 | 07.6 | 20" @38spm
| 04210 | 05035 | 00825 | 07:24 | 04:29.1 | 20.7 | 135 | 178 | 05.4 | rest
| 05035 | 05303 | 00269 | 00:59 | 01:49.8 | 33.1 | 158 | 174 | 08.3 | start+1 minute race pace
| 05303 | 07965 | 02662 | 17:18 | 03:15.0 | 19.9 | 137 | 174 | 07.7 | CD

Conditions were interesting. Mirror flat when we launched, then ripples, then some light chop. All within 30 minutes. Wind turning. You would row 20 strokes in quite fierce headwind, then suddenly you would row in tailwind.

malapyramida

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Jun 13 2015

How to prepare for Masters 1km sprints – some ideas

Here are a few sessions that I have used in the past to prepare for sprint racing. The dreaded Masters 1000m is really an exercise in lactate suffering and one has to get used to it.

One part of it is to do standalone 1km trials on the water on a regular basis. Feel the bite at 500m.

But for those who like a bit more sophistication, here are some more ideas. They are not my own. I have inherited them from my coaches and keep returning to these in the building up towards the Masters Nationals and Masters Worlds. I am putting them here because I am tired of searching them in old emails. Enjoy!

Session 1: Lactate is the killer

Adding a new layer of misery on top of the 1km.

Warming up

250m racing start,
stop immediately, check your boat hard.
Line up immediately, 250m race start, stop immediately.
As soon as you have stopped start the stop watch for 2:30mins as that is when you start your 1000m.
You will feel the burn and the mental focus must kick in or you will fall apart.
Cooling down

Session 2: To build up lactate levels early, then work through the set pieces.

Needed: A 2km race course with 500m marks

My Tech Notes:
1. As rating rises, keep ‘long’ & time on the recovery. To put it another way, when rating increases, increase through the water, not by rushing the slide.
2. Keep head very still, do not lift chin at catch, sit tall at finish. Use abdominal strength.
3. Handle path; Keep flat on drive and recovery. As to your comments, only bury the blade under the water, not shaft.
Start:
a) 2km: Standard warm up
b) 2km: Perfect technical rowing 200m off @17?spm, 300m on @21spm,200m off, 300m on,200m off, 300m on,200m off, 300m on.
c) 2km: Running piece 500m off @17?spm, 1000m on @23spm, 500m off @17?spm
d) 2km: Running piece 500m off @17?spm, 1000m on @27spm, 500m off @17?spm
Assess: What was good? What was bad? Refine for next 2km
e) 2km: Running pieces 500m off @17?spm, 500m on @29spm, 500m off @17?spm, 500m on @29spm.
Assess: What was good? What was bad? Refine for next 2km
f) 2km: Warm down, Perfect technical rowing 1000m on @21spm, 1000m off @17?spm.
Ends = 12km for session
The session is specifically designed to assess what ratings you are comfortable at.

Session 3: Small pyramid (for beginning of taper week)

Warming up

All intervals with rolling start.

20´´/20´´ @ 38spm

40´´/40´´ @ 36spm

60´´/60´´ @ 34spm

40´´/40´´ @ 36spm

20´´ @ 38spm

Cooling Down

Note: This session is very nice in a double and adding 2 strokes to the prescribed stroke rates. Needed: Two scullers who row very well together. The idea is that you become comfortable rating up.

Session 4: Race prep (end of taper week)

Warming up

250m at race pace

500m rest

250m at race pace

500m rest

250m at race pace

Cooling down

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