Apr 22 2018
Saturday – Spring Races
Absolutely crazy weather. Approaching 30 degrees C. The Brno Dam was packed with people.
In 2017, this race was canceled because of hard wind. This year, the only trick that our lake did was to swap wind direction specially for Saturday. The entire week had been a nice tailwind from Start to Finish. Now it was a headwind. Otherwise the water was fine.
I had to be there because of the eights races. I didn’t race any small boats. But lots of family members were racing. Here’s a picture I took when I walked to a nearby restaurant to have a quick lunch.
I spent most of the day relaxing on the grass. I made a mistake not going for a quick training row in the single, but there was so much to see.
These races are organized by Lodni Sporty, the rowing club on the other side of the lake. From our club’s perspective, it’s a strange event. You don’t really see the buzz of racing, the commentator’s voice, the out-of-town clubs arriving with their trailers. It’s just a busy, sunny day at the rowing club. But then you take your boat out of the boathouse on to the water, you do a warming up, and there you are in the middle of a regatta.
First, my sons rowed their races, watched by their trainers:
Dominik was second in the 4x+ over 1000m. In fact, their cox had a confusing moment and they rowed about 1100m, leaving the race course and then returning to it.
Robin and Vasek won the 500m in the double:
Romana and Veronika won the Women’s double (for their only opponent not being at the start in time, because of double boat use).
Then some more lazy race watching:
We need binoculars to see most of the racing.
By then, it was time for some eights racing. A certain Masters group had registered for the Open 8+, and a mix of Juniors and Men from our club had taken up the challenge.
(Of course, this is not the CVK Brno Masters 8+, because we are not training at all.)
So a little after 5pm, after the Women’s 8+ race, two crews hopped in the boats and rowed to the start, which is just one kilometer from our club. This Masters 8+ group needed that entire 1k to go from arms only to full stroke, and that was all the warming up they got, because the referees were eager to get this final event of the regatta started off.
Two eights at the start. A Masters group, and a mix of Juniors and young Men. A Wintech boat (the Masters) against an Empacher (the men/juniors).
Ready … go.
No practice starts done at all, and still this was a great start. The Masters were half a length ahead of the juniors/men and in the first 200m they built that to a boat length advantage, going strong at 35spm.
One of the Masters rowers, a guy sitting in 2 seat, was rowing well and enjoying a bit of racing, but also struggling with his too loose hat blowing off his head in the headwind. The hat blew into his lap and he was afraid of getting it between the rolling seat. Luckily, after a few strokes, the hat fell into the cockpit behind the footstretcher.
Thirty four strokes a minute, 500m into the race, the Masters were still leading, and just silently enjoying the view of the Juniors/Men, a length behind them. That other boat was not silent. One after the other, those guys were shouting calls. They were clearly surprised at not leading.
After about 1000m, the Masters eight passed the CVK Brno club house, in front of assembled wives and partners. Good to hear the cheers.
A few strokes later, there was a huge wake coming from the left. From the Water Rescue Squad, who were being playful with their launch.
The Masters got the full wake but kept rowing, but the Juniors were doing one more of their power tens while they didn’t have the wake, and rowed straight through the Masters.
From that moment on, the Masters were trailing half a length, then a length. There was some good cheering at Kozi Horka (Little Goat Mountain) and the club house of Lodni Sporty Brno, and then it was counting strokes until the finish line.
As expected, the men won, but the Masters won the 1k, and isn’t that the Masters’ distance?
Well, look at the stroke rate. No wonder they faded at 1k.
How-To
This row was recorded on a NK SpeedCoach GPS 2 coupled to a Polar OH1 optical heart rate meter, worn on two seat Masters rower’s upper left arm. This doesn’t limit the rowing at all.
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There were a lot of people wearing heart rate belts, and perhaps this confused the SpeedCoach, or there was something else wrong with the heart rate, because this Masters rower went well above 170bpm. He knows how he felt during the race, and it certainly wasn’t 140 bpm.
The row was recorded as a “Just Row”, because on Regattas, you don’t want to fiddle with the SpeedCoach right before the race start.
After the race, the SpeedCoach was paired with an iPhone and the row was downloaded using NK LiNK for iOS. From the app, you can select the workout and send it as a CSV to workouts@rowsandall.com, which is exactly what happened just before the post-race shower.
As the SpeedCoach didn’t record power data, the rower had to use one of the little tricks on rowsandall.com to get a power estimate.
On the Advanced Workout page, there is a link to “Geeky Stuff”. Clicking on that brings you to a page where you can Edit wind and stream data and start the OTW power calculations.
First, we need to add the wind, because the wind direction has a large influence on the power needed to achieve a certain boat speed.
The easiest way to get wind data is to click on either “Airport Data” or “Dark Sky Data”. The wind is downloaded from these databases (either for the nearest airport or for the row’s coordinates from the Dark Sky database) and from the wind bearing and speed, a headwind/tailwind is estimated. After that is set, you can launch the OTW Power calculations.
It is important to check the boat type and average crew weight, otherwise you get nonsense results. The Quick Calculation is a slightly faster calculation cutting a few corners. The site will launch a background process to estimate the power for each stroke, and it will send you an email when it is done. Then, you have power estimated values in your workout data.
It is important to note that the estimate is the average power per rower for the eight. You may have pulled harder or less hard than the average. However, the power estimate is a good way to get at least some power value for rowers without power, and it is a way to see if rowing with power is something for you, before you spend the money to buy a power meter.
Finally, I had set up today’s workout as a row over a course. On rowsandall.com, you can upload courses to row. Here is a link to the Brno 2k. You need to be logged in to see it. When you set up your session as a row over this course, and you link it to your workout data, the site checks whether your row went through the polygons marked on the course map and calculates your net time from start to finish:
When this is done by an entire training group, the rowsandall.com page gives you a ranking per time.
Jul 30 2018
The Euromasters Regatta 2018
Thursday, July 26th, the first day of the Euromasters Regatta 2018 at the 1972 Olympic rowing course in Munich. We’re here. This is it. The end of a long season of training and racing. The final regatta before the vacation break.
I had to be realistic. A busy (and deciding) year at work and time invested in the rowsandall.com site has cost me quite some training hours. Stravistix tells me I am 25% behind in training hours since January 1, compared to 2016 and 2017.
The regatta itself seemed 25% bigger than the previous edition. More boats. More people. More food stalls. More merchandise. An extra race day. Higher temperatures (highs well above 30C, not a lot of cooling off in the night).
I had been realistic and not signed up for too many disciplines. Here’s the back of my accreditation card with my schedule for the four days:
Day 1
At 14:21 in the afternoon, Kazi and I lined up in lane 1. I was nervous. If there was a race with the biggest chance of finishing first or second, this was it. It was a strong field, but Kazi and I row a nice double, and Kazi’s season is strong. We were lined up against Exeter on lane 2 (this year’s Henley Masters winners in the C category, as I was told on Twitter), our friends from Bohemians Praha, Germany, Austria and Spain.
Out of the start we were slow, but we quickly recovered and after 250m we were in second position, half a length behind Exeter.
At the 500m mark the field broke apart in two halfs, with Exeter and us in front, then water, and then the rest. This happened just after I started our attack on Exeter with about 600m to go. The attack brought us almost level, but we went past them only after the 500m.
They tried to come back but must have been slowing down more than we did. We defended our position. Their attack lasted for about ten strokes, and we could row the final 150m being certain of our win. True, Exeter was just half a length behind us but we had some reserves still, as the stroke rate chart confirms. Yes, I had to rate up to hold our position, but with Kazi behind me I could have gone up to 40 spm without the boat falling apart.
So the first race was a win! The time was not great, but we were rowing into a headwind, and times in Munich are in general not very fast. It’s a slow course.
Here’s the video of our row (forward to 1:28:00 where our race starts).
On Thursday evening, Romana and I did a quick 4km row to reset ourselves after the choppy adventure of Monday.
Day 2
The draw had been pretty strange for all races. On Thursday’s M 2x C race, we were up against Bohemians Prague, a double that I have raced already twice this year. On Friday’s M 1x C races, it was even worse. In one final, the two Bohemians guys were racing each other, and in the other final Kazi and I were.
Our fan clubs had given us orders to occupy the first and second position. Kazi had beaten me in Trebon at the Czech Masters. I knew he was a hard nut to crack, and I was sure there were some other fast scullers in the race.
There was only one option, perhaps. And that was to go out fast and be ahead of Kazi after 500m. He has given up in such positions in the past.
There we were, lining up at the stake boats, Kazi in lane 2 and I was next to him in lane 3.
Attention – Go! We were both very well out of the start and after 200m, it was Kazi slightly in front and me rowing in second position.
I tried very hard to stay close to him, but unfortunately he had a really strong day and just steamed away, creating a boat length of light between us with 500m to go. I was also busy defending my second position against a Sankt Petersburg from Russia.
My third 250m was really bad. I saw power values going to 280-290W and I just didn’t find a way out of that. Some steering issues as well. The Russian guy passed me. With 250m to go I refound myself and I passed the Russian again. Romana told me later that Kazi in front was now really struggling with the consequences of going out fast as well. Apparently, we were catching up fast.
Unfortunately for me, the Russian guy caught up and beat me on the finish line:
A great race, except for a badly executed third 250m. Perhaps the penalty for going out too fast? The times were slow because of head wind.
The charts are quite clear.
Earlier that day, Romana came fifth in the double. Here’s a picture of Romana and Veronika going to the start:
When my racing was done, Romana and I went swimming in a nearby lake. That was really nice. Clean, cool water. After that, Romana still had a quad to race:
The girls were second after a strong Austrian crew.
Day 3
At 8:12, Romana and Veronika rowed a great race in the double. They were third, but against some really strong crews, and their technique and race strategy were exemplary.
On Friday evening, Kazi had been teasing me with his medal from the single. Well, on Saturday I had another chance to row the single. This time I was up against people I didn’t know, although I had heard that Carsten Brzeski from Wiking Berlin was pretty good (had won the C 1x a day before, one heat before us).
This time I decided to adhere to my prescribed power levels and ignore the other rowers. With 750m to go I was last. Between 750m and 500m I passed two boats and rowed in third position. Brzeski was out quite far, but Halle was a bit closer. I sprinted the entire final 300m at 36spm and almost caught up. Still a third place:
Average power was still only 300W. I had hoped it to be 20 Watt higher. Need to train more consistently.
This 1x race was also the one with the funniest comment shouted at me from the shore. Radek, one of my 4x crew cycled alongside me, together with Romana. With me rowing in third position and the winner far in front, he shouted: “Save some energy!” right at the moment when I rated up to 36spm. Romana commented that I apparently didn’t listen to Radek.
That 4x- race was almost immediately after the single. The start times were just 65 minutes apart. I quickly changed dress to Hodonin colors (this regatta requires uniform dressing), drank some water and had some sugar.
In the quad, I rowed on bow seat, replacing one of the Hodonin crew that had come third (after us) at the Czech Masters. I really enjoyed this race. We were in front at the start and then rowed away from the Germans. The Italians were a bit too far in front for us to catch, especially as Radek is a less experienced rower, so we couldn’t go all crazy with stroke rate in the final stages of this race. Second place at this regatta is not bad for this crew.
Day 4
As we were scheduled to race at 15:46, we had a long day of waiting in the heat. We spent the time watching other races from the grand stand.
Fabrizio Tucci, one of the winning crew of our quad race, was lined up against Romana and me in the C category Mix 2x. They really looked confident at the start, and so did the Leicester/Nautilus Anglo-Dutch combination.
Our start sequence wasn’t executed perfectly but we were still the first boat after 10 strokes, so I kept the stroke rate high for another ten, which gave us a lead of one length.
In the next 250m, we built out the lead by another length. Our rowing was not the best. Romana was catching slightly early, which I tried to anticipate, but that resulted in us going in a pretty high stroke rate. I shouted “Calm down” but Romana understood “Go!”. So she started to push even more.
We were leading by two lengths and, this being the fourth day of racing, I was really getting tired. We got awfully close to the lane buoys but we managed to steer back again.
You can see all that on the video (fast forward to 2:39:00 for our race). Still we won by a large margin and were really happy.
The stroke rate chart tells the story. No power tens. No sprinting. Just keep going at 35/36 spm.
After loading the double on the trailer, we went for a swim, and by 5pm we were on the road driving back to Brno, where we arrived at 11pm. And that, dear readers, is the end of the sprint season. Time for vacation. I am looking forward to taking a two to three week break from rowing and structured training plans.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: 1000m, 1k, euromasters, OTW, race, regatta, rowing