Mar 9 2018
A light week?
Monday
In the evening, I sat down determined to do at least an hour of steady state on the erg.
As you can see from the chart, I lasted for only 30 minutes. It was weird. Even though I was working at normal steady state effort levels, my heart rate stayed really low, and at the same time it felt really hard. After about 30 minutes, I decided that it was enough. I just stopped.
Tuesday
I decided that I would take a rest day instead of working out. I also had a pretty long working day.
Wednesday
An hour of swimming. Pretty light, but it felt good. This was also the day that I did a 14 hour work day.
Thursday
A 4x2km with 5 minutes rest. Classical Pete/Wolverine plan workout. It didn’t go well. At all.
I thought 1:52 pace would be sustainable so I set off with that plan.
As you can see from the chart, I stopped half way the second interval and paddled it out. I was almost ready to give up on the entire workout, but then I decided to just complete the other two intervals at a slower pace. Here is a comparison with the same session from February:
Heart rate sky high, compared to the well executed session of February.
There are a lot of bugs going around at the office. Colleagues are either at home sick, or at home with sick children, or walking around like walking dead, sniffing, visibly uncomfortable, but being there to get the stuff done that needs to be done. I guess that being in relatively good physical shape helps me ward off those bugs, but perhaps the fighting off of bugs has an impact on my capability to do serious workouts.
I can also see that from my HRV values taken each morning using the HRV4TRAINING app.
Well, this was supposed to be a light, recovery oriented microcycle anyway.
So, instead of the steady state on the plan, I am going to take a rest day today, and tomorrow, I will be busy clearing out the rowing club house. We are preparing it for a major renovation of electric circuits.
Mobility
In other news, on Monday I went to the Honda dealer to pick up this guy:
The main reason for getting this is economy and speed. Brno traffic is sometimes extremely slow, and this will allow me to move faster. In terms of economy, this little thing goes 100km on 1.8 liters, which is significantly cheaper than driving a car, especially on my usual OTW training days, when I drive around 45km between rowing club, home, and work.
Because of winter weather, I couldn’t take it out until Thursday afternoon, when I just rode it to the gas station to fill it up. A full tank for 123 Czech crowns (6 USD), giving me a range of 300km. Yay!
In other mobility related news, I received a letter:
You can see the GPS coordinates and the mention of 63 km/h.
Yes, it was a speeding ticket. Ouch. The interesting thing was that it was from 7 October, when I was driving to Uherske Hradiste to take part in the 6km head race (and won the Masters category). This was on the main road, where you drive down a hill and the town limit of Slavkov (“Austerlitz” as it is known historically) starts at the bottom of the hill. I did find the speed camera on Google Street View:
You can see the speed camera in the top right of the second photo.
May 29 2018
Monday – Another recovery row & Tuesday – Strength
Monday
A hot day, but it was a holiday in the US so I could go to the rowing club early (because no calls with our US colleagues) so I had no excuse to put in another recovery row.
Before the row, I discussed my training plan for this week with our head coach. He confirmed, that after an absence of almost 2 weeks and illness, it is wise to stay at Steady State for a week. He said I even had permission to do “improper” (his words) steady state. He means: Err on the light side.
Just to see where I stand, I used rowsandall.com to compare Heart Rate response and Average Power for three “Steady State” sessions of approximately the same duration:
The May 5 workout is my “healthy” baseline. Sunday saw a drop from 160W (median Power) to 136W and heart rate up from 145bpm to 157bpm. On Monday, I was at 138W and 146bpm.
I used the Quiske sensor again, but on the other side. I wanted to look at the stroke curve. Unfortunately, I must have slightly misaligned the sensor compared to Sunday, and I didn’t get data I could compare.
I am able to look at total stroke angle though. Here’s a comparison, taking care to compare the same intervals:
It was slightly more choppy on 5/27 than on 5/28. Still, I was a bit longer according to both the Empower and the Quiske sensor. The Empower records a length differnce of 1.5-2 degrees from Sunday to Monday. Quiske, on the other hand, shows a shortening of 3.4 degrees going from the left hand to the right hand. So yes, I take that as a pretty strong indication of asymmetric rowing. I’ll look into this more and see if the picture remains like that.
Here are the charts (blue = Monday, green = Sunday):
Just as a check, I added a piece that I recorded on Monday, but in contrast to the two recordings I compare above, it was rowed in tailwind conditions (cross tailwind).
So according to Quiske my right hand gets a little longer in tailwind. Looking at Empower data for the same part of the row, my length doesn’t change compared to the headwind conditions. So does that suggest that I am more assymetric in headwind conditions?
Tuesday
Today, I decided to try out a new, small fitness center that opened a stone’s throw away from my office. It’s literally a 5 minute walk from the moment I drop my pencil to the moment I walk into the changing room. I can say I should really make use of this facility. It has 2 Model E ergs with PM 4 monitor. Here are a few pics of the possibilities for a strength workout:
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
And the best thing is, to use this facility costs only CZK 80 (about 4 USD) per workout.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: OTW, recovery, rowing, single, steady state, stroke length, training