Dec 22 2017
Another Ranking Distance
The title of this post doesn’t imply that they are becoming routine. But using the CP chart reduces the risk of blowing up. Still, the stars have to be aligned to achieve a really good result.
Today, it was the 10000m row, also known as the 10k. According to the CP chart, I should aim at a power between 220 and 235 Watts. I have already learned that the higher end of this range is to be done with a real taper and in a really well prepared manner. It requires a super focused effort. The lower end of this range is something that I have probably done recently, probably as part of a longer piece. That made sense this time, because 219W is one Watt above my Full Hour effort of three days ago.
I have also learned that starting off at the lower limit, then increasing the pace according to how I feel, is the best recipe to get a good score and minimize the risk of blowing up during the row. Today, I did just that.
I religiously held 220W in the first 4 km. Then I allowed myself to go higher, taking the planned step increases as a fall back scenario. It was nice to see the average power value gradually increase. (Yes, I have the PM now permanently showing Watts. I am less interested in pace.) At every point in the row, I knew I could finish the row at the average Watts shown on the monitor, so rowing at higher power seemed a risk worth taking, especially past the 5km point.
I did go a little too high, though, because around 235W I found that I couldn’t really increase much. I tried with 750m to go, counting strokes, but as you can see from the graph, I was strangely attracted to a 235W value.
Workout Summary - media/20171222-1556170o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10000|38:24.4|01:55.1|229.1|25.9|169.9|180.0|10.1
W-|10000|38:24.4|01:55.1|229.1|25.9|169.9|180.0|10.1
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|180.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00500|01:55.9|01:55.9|218.8|25.3|121.9|155.0|10.2
01|00500|01:56.6|01:56.6|220.6|25.0|158.1|162.0|10.3
02|00500|01:56.8|01:56.8|220.7|25.1|163.5|166.0|10.2
03|00500|01:56.3|01:56.3|221.2|25.0|165.0|166.0|10.3
04|00500|01:56.7|01:56.7|220.3|25.1|166.9|169.0|10.3
05|00500|01:56.3|01:56.3|222.5|25.4|167.0|169.0|10.2
06|00500|01:56.2|01:56.2|223.2|25.2|169.3|171.0|10.3
07|00500|01:56.2|01:56.2|223.5|25.3|170.7|172.0|10.2
08|00500|01:55.5|01:55.5|226.7|25.6|172.4|173.0|10.2
09|00500|01:55.4|01:55.4|227.6|25.2|172.7|174.0|10.3
10|00500|01:55.2|01:55.2|228.9|25.5|173.1|174.0|10.2
11|00500|01:55.4|01:55.4|227.8|25.6|173.9|175.0|10.1
12|00500|01:54.6|01:54.6|232.3|26.0|175.9|176.0|10.1
13|00500|01:54.6|01:54.6|232.5|26.1|176.4|177.0|10.0
14|00500|01:54.3|01:54.3|234.4|26.1|176.4|177.0|10.1
15|00500|01:54.1|01:54.1|235.9|26.4|177.5|178.0|10.0
16|00500|01:53.9|01:53.9|236.5|26.6|178.2|179.0|09.9
17|00500|01:54.5|01:54.5|233.3|26.5|178.4|179.0|09.9
18|00500|01:52.6|01:52.6|245.1|27.4|178.5|180.0|09.7
19|00500|01:52.6|01:52.6|246.8|28.6|180.0|180.0|09.3
I ended up doing the piece at 95% of my PB power, but I do think that my 37:45 PB is one of the strongest rows I have done after the year 2010.
I was pretty happy that I managed to move the average power from 228W to 229W in the final 100m. Here is the updated CP chart, and a close-up in the region around 10k.
In the close-up, the two red points on the right are from my Half Marathon. Moving to the left, the next two points are from my 60 minute row, and the rest is from today’s 10k.
Dec 29 2017
Train rides, reading and a 6k
Tuesday – Steady State
We met at the rowing club. By the time everybody was ready for the 3x15min steady state workout, I had already done a 3km warming up.
Here is the entire workout in one chart combining warming up, main intervals and cooling down.
Heart rate data are slightly offset, because I recorded them separately and didn’t bother to adjust the time offset on the rowsandall.com site.
Wednesday – no training
In the morning, there were some chores around the house. Then we took the train to Pardubice to visit Romana’s mother. The entire trip takes two hours by car, and three hours by train and bus, but in this time of the year I prefer that. I spent most of the time reading. Before Christmas, I plundered the Math/Phys section of the Academia bookstore in Brno. In fact, I bought so many books that the one purchase earned me a lifetime 20% discount card.
The selection is not as great as Amazon.com, but their in-store coffee house has great espresso, and their Physics and Math section is serious, so there you go.
(A note to my American readers, who may be imagining something like the Barnes & Nobles coffee corner when I mention espresso in a bookstore: We are not too far from Italy, and all countries of the former Austro-Hungarian empire have a great coffee house tradition. We are in a different league here. Come over and try yourself.)
Thursday – 6k
Spent the morning at my mother in law, including lunch, and then a bus/train ride home. Again, lots of time for pleasant reading. The car alternative would have involved driving on wet snow and freezing rain. Arrived home around 4pm, so no excuse to skip the next Ranking Distance: 6k.
First, a nice long warming up. For the shorter ranking distances, a good warming up is important, and I have learned that it doesn’t hurt to do 20 minutes including some pretty tough intervals.
Then the main piece. The CP chart gave me the bounds. I was supposed to go faster than 230W (of course, because I had held 230W for 30 minutes just three days earlier) and the stretch target was 245W.
I decided to start at 230W, then accelerate at 3600m to go. I set the PM to record 400m intervals. From 3600m to go down to 1800m, the goal was 235W but I did go slightly higher.
As you can see from the summary, things continued favorably and I managed to finish in 292W, raising the average power to 244W and a total time of 22:32.4. (Somehow, the total time in the summary misses 2.4 seconds, probably because I skipped the final pull.)
So that was a good one, at 96% of my PB power. Looking forward to the 5k on Sunday, actually.
Friday
I did a recovery training in the pool. I swam 2km in about 50 minutes. This time it was slightly challenging, because the pool entrance was free today.
It was nice to see kids from poor families enjoying the water, but it also required a bit of flexibility from the endurance swimmers.
I almost felt like a seasoned swimmer, in this chaos. That was partly because I was swimming with swimming goggles.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: 6000m, 6k, concept2, erg, OTE, ranking piece, rowing, training