rowing

55434895-1791-4D88-B782-0225DE3613C1

Dec 19 2017

Swim and Hour of Power

Monday

My last day at work. I have a couple of vacation days to take up, so I can enjoy being free from now to the end of the year. Well, there are a couple of work related things that I’d rather finish before January, but I can do them from home, and I can enjoy prioritizing slightly differently.

I am doing a couple of a holiday challenges. The first holiday challenge is the classic Concept2 Holiday Challenge ($0.02 per kilometer rowed and logged on the Concept2 logbook goes to a charity).

The second Holiday challenge is to get the Christmas presents without visiting a mall. More about that later.

The third holiday challenge is to row a ranking distance every third day, starting with the Half Marathon and working my way systematically to the shorter distances. I did the HM on Saturday.

So Monday was still a day for a recovery training, and I decided to do no rowing. I opted for swimming, a sport that I rarely practice, mainly because I am a super slow swimmer.

So after work I headed to the municipal swimming stadium Za Lužánkami, built in the communist early 1980s.

swimming pool

When I first visited this pool 10 years ago it was in very bad need of maintenance. Now, the pool has been renovated and it is a basic 50m pool, mainly used by people who want to train.

I go swimming rarely, and hadn’t been in this pool for 10 years, so everything was new to me. I figured out that some lanes were reserved for swimming clubs. Then there were a few lanes for the general public, some of which had a minimum swimming speed of 2 minutes per 100m.

The problem was that I was slightly slow for the 2 min/100m lanes and slightly fast for the slower lanes. Anyway, I quickly figured out that 20 pools was achievable in under an hour, so I had my target. I swam 2km, and evening I fell asleep early.

Recovery training.

Tuesday

First full vacation day. In the morning, I worked a bit on a top secret rowing data project. That was fun.

Then I did some groceries. I figured that 9:30 was an ideal time for doing them. Hopefully, the wave of shoppers who wait in front of the store to open at 8am would already have left, and the pre lunch wave would arrive later. Turned out to be a good bet. I managed to get all the stuff I need for ur Christmas dinners, and only fresh stuff is left for later. Oh, and for the wines I intend to visit a local vineyard. No supermarket wine. I note that I visited a supermarket, not a mall. No anonymous place that looks the same all over the country.

Then it was time to head to the center of Brno to buy some Christmas presents, combined with a lunch, and a coffee in my favorite book store. Brno is a smaller version of Vienna, so imagine lots of Christmas markets, a really nice atmosphere. There is also an abundance of coffee houses with good Italian espresso, so everything was good.

Then it was time to row. The Hour of Power, today. After Saturday’s debacle, I made a point of not looking up my Personal Best and row at a conservative pace. Rowsandall.com suggested a range between 207 and 223W, with the higher number being the best I could achieve. As the calculation is based on very few rows, I ignored the upper limit and decided to start off at 207W, which was not by coincidence the average power of Saturday’s half marathon row. I was pretty skeptical I would be able to put in a good effort. I was still pretty sore from the swimming.

All went very well. I was able to gradually increase the pace. Work per Stroke was nice and constant. I think the images and the summary speak for themselves:

Workout Summary - media/20171219-1631110o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15366|60:00.0|01:57.1|218.8|24.8|165.3|180.0|10.3
W-|15366|60:00.0|01:57.1|218.8|24.8|165.3|180.0|10.3
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|01519|06:00.0|01:58.5|208.6|23.3|144.7|156.0|10.9
01|01521|06:00.0|01:58.3|211.5|23.7|158.6|163.0|10.7
02|01515|06:00.0|01:58.8|208.6|23.5|160.3|165.0|10.7
03|01515|06:00.0|01:58.8|208.6|23.6|165.1|168.0|10.7
04|01525|06:00.0|01:58.0|213.0|24.1|166.3|170.0|10.5
05|01527|06:00.0|01:57.9|213.6|24.5|167.0|171.0|10.4
06|01530|06:00.0|01:57.6|214.9|24.7|167.9|171.0|10.3
07|01542|06:00.0|01:56.8|220.0|25.3|170.2|172.0|10.1
08|01561|06:00.0|01:55.3|228.3|26.0|172.9|174.0|10.0
09|01614|06:00.0|01:51.6|253.2|28.4|176.8|180.0|09.5

workout chart

workout work per Stroke chart

The irony is that after the row, I found out I was just 14 meters short of a PB. Just one Watt more and I would have equaled my PB. As a rower at my club used to say, I missed a PB by a “pičí chlup”. Do not google this, just believe me it is a very small margin.

Here is my Critical Power Chart after the row and the updated predictions:

CP chart

rowing predictions

Two easy days, then a 10k.

By • rowing • 0 • Tags: , , , , , ,

Dec 17 2017

Running / Low Batteries

A busy day! First relaxing after breakfast, then a run. Followed by sauna and rowing club social event.

Romana and I went to the sauna today. I ran to it. About 11 km through interesting terrain. Two big hills. The temperature was slightly above zero.

When I had to set off, there was a light panic.

The Garmin Forerunner was completely discharged.

My iPhone was at 20% battery. I had forgotten to put it in the charger on Saturday evening.

The Samsung phone was fully charged but I had not paired it with any of my HR measuring devices.

The Polar arm belt was low battery. I had put it in the charger on Saturday, but the funky charger thing can also go into a USB socket the wrong way. So no charging.

In the end I managed to remember my password for Polar Flow, and the Samsung seemed to pair with the Polar OH1, so I opted for that combination. Turns out the heart rate was never recorded.

I ran to Maximus Resort, close to the rowing club. Romana arrived by car, with dry clothes. We enjoyed 2 hours of sauna and relax. Then we went to the rowing club for a Christmas get together.

The ice on the lake seems to be disappearing, but still about 70% of the lake is covered, and the pieces of ice are being blown around by the wind.

Tomorrow: Last working day of the year and a light training.

It started snowing.

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holiday-chall-2017-web

Dec 17 2017

Half Marathon – Holiday Challenge – My own site is smarter than I

So the holiday season is nearing and I decided to restore an old tradition: To row all ranking distances during the holiday break, starting at the longest one, and use the results to get an idea of my current shape.

It is also a good way to get some kilometers in the bank (and raise some money for the Concept2 Holiday Challenge).

I do skip the Full Marathon. My behind would hurt too much. I probably would have to skip trainings after it, and I would have to build an entire day around making time for it.

The morning was a bit busy. I had to go to buy a Christmas tree, then carry it home over 1.5km. I could of course have mounted the roof rack on the car and spared myself the walk, but I don’t like to mount the roof rack, and I don’t mind a little walk.

I paid almost 900 Kc (roughly $45) for the tree, which is ridiculously expensive given that the forests around Brno are full of perfectly fine Christmas trees. Some people solve it like that, they go to the forest to illegally get a tree. Not for me. Growing a Christmas tree of the size I bought takes about 5 years, so imagine how the forest would look if we all took our trees there. Coming to think of it, that price was pretty reasonable.

Then another chore. Got rid of the old water closet, which again I did walking, this time with the wheelbarrow. It’s just a few hundred meters, and this time I wanted to avoid any liquids dripping into my car from the old water closet.

Then it was lunch time, and after lunch I finally sat down to sort out the target pace for my Half Marathon. Here’s what Rowsandall.com said, using the Pro Users OTE Erg CP chart:

Well, that was clearly not useful. I haven’t done any longer hard rows recently, so the extrapolation to 21km is far too optimistic.

So this time I used the CP chart on the free version of Rowsandall.com. The difference with the Pro version is that it only uses the official Concept2 ranking pieces that it finds in your workout history. But this time, that was an advantage, because it finds them automatically, and I could set it to look back a little further:

All right, 1:58.1 based on some pretty old rows. My PB pace is 1:57.5, which I also noted down on the piece of paper that I took with me to the erg basement.

After 5 minutes of warming up, I set off. I wanted to row at 1:58-1:59, but the faster pace came easily, and I soon found myself looking at a 1:22:38 estimate at completion, which is my PB. So I decided to hold 1:57.5 exactly …

I shouldn’t have done that, of course. I had to gradually increase the stroke rate from 24spm to 25spm and eventually to 26spm to hold that pace. With 12km to go I was still optimistic, and I started to play number games. As I passed the 12km to go mark at a time that looked like xx:38, i.e. 38 seconds after the minute, I was going to change that time by 5 seconds every kilometer, to finish exactly at 1:22:38. The idea was to get slightly ahead of that schedule and then push.

With 9km to go the pacing got wobbly, and suddenly I started seeing 2:00, and 2:01.

Time to reconsider.

I would have hated to hand down after rowing for so long, so I decided to back off a bit and aim for 1:58.5 average pace.

I backed off too much, and 1:58.5 average pace came with more than 5km to go. I didn’t have the energy to get back to pulling 1:59.

Only on the final kilometer I started to get back to 1:57, then 1:55 to get the final time under 1:24:00.

Workout Summary - media/20171216-1610470o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|21097|83:57.0|01:59.4|205.9|25.1|172.1|180.0|10.0
W-|21097|83:58.0|01:59.4|205.8|25.1|172.0|180.0|10.0
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|00097|00:22.0|01:53.4|206.2|22.9|099.7|107.0|11.6
01|01000|03:55.8|01:57.9|213.5|23.9|152.7|162.0|10.7
02|01000|03:54.9|01:57.4|216.0|24.2|164.2|166.0|10.6
03|01000|03:54.7|01:57.3|216.7|24.1|169.5|172.0|10.6
04|01000|03:54.6|01:57.3|216.7|24.5|171.4|174.0|10.4
05|01000|03:54.9|01:57.4|216.1|24.8|172.9|174.0|10.3
06|01000|03:54.7|01:57.3|216.7|25.2|172.5|175.0|10.2
07|01000|03:55.3|01:57.7|214.8|25.1|173.7|176.0|10.1
08|01000|03:55.3|01:57.7|214.9|25.3|175.7|178.0|10.1
09|01000|03:55.0|01:57.5|215.9|25.6|176.6|179.0|10.0
10|01000|03:54.9|01:57.4|215.9|25.9|176.7|179.0|09.9
11|01000|03:55.5|01:57.8|214.3|25.8|176.5|178.0|09.9
12|01000|03:55.5|01:57.7|214.4|26.0|177.3|179.0|09.8
13|01000|03:56.8|01:58.4|211.0|26.2|177.2|178.0|09.7
14|01000|04:00.6|02:00.3|201.4|25.7|175.5|177.0|09.7
15|01000|04:05.4|02:02.7|189.5|24.9|173.8|175.0|09.8
16|01000|04:04.5|02:02.3|191.5|24.9|174.0|176.0|09.8
17|01000|04:07.3|02:03.6|185.5|24.5|171.8|174.0|09.9
18|01000|04:05.0|02:02.5|190.2|24.8|172.7|175.0|09.9
19|01000|04:08.6|02:04.3|182.9|24.9|171.9|174.0|09.7
20|01000|04:11.7|02:05.8|175.6|23.9|168.6|170.0|10.0
21|01000|03:56.1|01:58.0|214.2|26.9|174.5|180.0|09.5

Here is an interesting chart of Work per Stroke for the row:

Here are some stats from rowsandall.com:

rPower 207.4W
HR drift 10.66%
rScore 117
TRIMP 244

The rPower value basically tells me that I could have held 207W (as opposed to 206W) by rowing flat, instead of holding 215W and then crashing to 190W. This sounds correct to me.

Here is the updated CP chart after including the HM:

And the updated predictions:

That looks more realistic. I think I am able to hold 211W for the Half Marathon, on a good day. The predicted 10k target is faster than my PB. I think I am going to approach this very conservatively, around 90-95% of the predicted 247W, then see how much I have left in the tank with 2km to go. One has to take into account that the predictions are for a full out effort from a fully rested state.

Still not entirely happy with the predictions. I wondered where rowsandall.com takes the data for rowing at 260W for 15 minutes from? It turns out it found those records in the ANP test, but because of a Painsled bug (in Painsled Beta), it didn’t record the power during the 2 minute rest intervals but kept logging the last power value of the work intervals, so that is an overly optimistic number. When I removed that workout from the Ranking Workouts, I got this:

And the following predictions, which I will use for my Holiday Challenge rows:

It is interesting how big a difference there is between my steady state pace of 2:01-2:02 and this HM pace of 1:59!

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myimage (15)

Dec 17 2017

Friday: Steady State and some stats

I succeeded in getting home from work early enough to get in a workout before dinner. Dialed up a standard 20 minute interval at one minute rest. I was afraid that doing this as a “Just Row” would tempt me to stop somewhere between 40 and 50 minutes in. With the intervals, I always feel obliged to finish the interval, so that would guarantee that I would row at least 60 minutes.

I did finish all the intervals, and I did it at a better power than I had expected. I concluded that I am back at the level of 2 seasons ago, where I did all my steady state between 195 and 200W.

Workout Summary - media/20171215-1615300o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15155|63:00.0|02:04.7|193.6|22.6|159.8|171.0|10.7
W-|14846|60:00.0|02:01.2|196.5|22.7|159.9|171.0|10.9
R-|00312|03:00.0|04:48.4|084.7|20.6|155.9|171.0|00.5
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|04983|20:00.0|02:00.4|199.9|22.4|151.0|164.0|11.1
01|04971|20:00.0|02:00.7|199.0|22.7|163.9|169.0|10.9
02|04892|20:00.0|02:02.6|190.5|22.8|164.9|171.0|10.7

The statistics on rowsandall.com:

rPower 196.1W
HR drift 9.8%
rScore 77
TRIMP 140

rPower is the normalized power, which is an interesting metric. It basically says that the 3 minutes of rest, which brought down the overall average power to 193W, can be ignored, and the workout is virtually equivalent of rowing 63 minutes without breaks at 196W.

Heart Rate drift slightly higher than normal. Normally, I am in the 5-7% range. It may have been just an artefact of me slacking down on power in the final three minutes.

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bokeh_plot (28)

Dec 14 2017

Good Days and Bad Days – a comparison of two steady state sessions

I have been wondering about good and bad days.

On Monday, I did a session that was prescribed by our coach:

2.5 km warming up, 15min/2min, 20min/3min, 15min, 5 min cooling down

All was to be rowed at 20/21 spm. The circumstances:

  • Rowed the day after a pretty good 4x2km
  • Overall feeling “above average”, HRV 7.2, morning pulse 55, fatigue low
  • Music was pretty monotonous techno rock for workouts

This was the executed Monday session:

Stats from rowsandall.com:

  • rPower = 197W
  • Heart Rate Drive = 5%
  • rScore 79
  • TRIMP 129

Note that I did row at lower stroke rates than prescribed. To break the boredom, I did rate ladders, starting at 18, up to 22spm, than oscillating between 21spm and 20spm, and finally down again.

Tuesday

The plan was another steady state session, but there was a guy doing a quick repair on one of our Water Closets. Long story short: The quick repair turned out to be a total replacement of the WC, which I needed to assist with, including driving to the hardware store to buy the thing.

Perhaps carrying old WC down the stairs and new WC up the stairs can count as strength training?

Wednesday

  • Rowed after an unplanned rest day
  • Overall feeling “above average”, HRV 7.7, morning pulse 46, fatique low
  • I listened to the latest Rowperfect.co.uk podcast (“Small Puddles”)

The HRV value is higher (worse) but overall I am on a decreasing HRV trend since I came back from travels. Here is the executed Wednesday session:

Stats from rowsandall.com:

  • rPower = 186W
  • Heart Rate Drive = 6%
  • rScore 81
  • TRIMP 119

On Wednesday, I was free rating but I intended to hold 195W and higher (blue in the chart). I pretty much succeeded and the workout felt very easy.

The mental trick I played was dividing each 20 minute interval into five 4 minute intervals and focus on some aspect of my rowing for four minutes.

So in Summary:

  • Monday – lower average power, workout felt hard
  • Wednesday – higher average power, workout felt easy

Here are the comparison details:

Orange is Wednesday. Higher power.

Interestingly, despite feeling easier, my heart rate was significantly higher on Wednesday.

The chart above clearly shows the different approach to rating.

In terms of Average/Peak force ratio, the workouts are nearly identical.

However, on Monday the average and peak drive force was higher. Also, the drive length was a few centimeters longer:

All this resulted in a significantly higher Work per Stroke value for the Monday workout:

I find this highly interesting. It shows how small things can have a big impact. To summarize:

  • I was on an improving trend in terms of being rested (HRV, resting heart rate)
  • On Monday I was sore from a hard workout on Sunday. Wednesday was done after a rest day
  • I eased up, shortened up slightly, and adapted the rating to get the desired power output

Three things that are small, but the synergetic effect is huge.

Also shows how unreliable Heart Rate is as a measure of fitness. I wish I had done Lactate measurements for these two workouts …

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8119FF43-F126-4378-BCFF-DFC8378A074E

Dec 10 2017

Marker Workout (OK)

This morning, we had a late breakfast, and instead of working out, I had a lazy morning. We had lunch in town with some old friends. Then there was a small thing to fix around the house, so it was after 4pm when I changed to rowing gear and went to my erg basement.

The workout of the day was a 4x2km, but I didn’t look up any recent results for this workout. I did a 2km warming up and decided to row this workout as if I was rowing 2km segments of a hard 10km:

  • Focus on rhythm and technique
  • Don’t go too low with Stroke Rate – keep the stroke light
  • Work from a base pace of 1:53 per 500m, go faster only when doing it respecting the previous two bullet points
  • in the first three intervals, a set of 10 hard strokes at the half way point
  • Accelerate and empty the tank in the final interval

After the workout, I scrolled through the PM history to find the last 4x2km. This was the result:
Concept2 PM

Today’s workout was executed exactly according to the plan. No drama, except that the final 300m were really hard.

PM Concept2

And here is how that looks in a chart:

rowing chart

I also looked at a few charts to check if I really was a consistent in rhythm and technique as it felt during the row. I had most difficulty to get into the rhythm at the start of each interval, where pace was oscillating between 1:54 and 1:52. The other hard part was around 1100m to go. Here are the charts:

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42EC4A56-3692-477B-A544-EE80B368ABFC

Dec 8 2017

Job’s tidings

workout chart

Tough day at work. Some bad news that sucked the last bit of energy out of me. I had a two hour gap between lunch and a call with a colleague in Washington, so I drove home through the rain and sat on the erg.

I had optimistically planned a sprinterval workout and decided to do it. There was definitely a HD risk, but I feared that swapping this one for a steady state session would be a recipe for boredom, frustration, which also would lead to the undesired HD.

So I decided to do a 3km warming up and then the workout, doing at least 15 intervals but aiming for 20. I dialed up the following sufficiently dark and monotonous sound track on SoundCloud. Dark and monotonous but I like to row to it:

I decided to row the intervals at 2k PB speed and focus on technique. That turned out to be a good choice. I was focusing on pulling a relaxed, gentle stroke at 29 SPM, sitting in a strong position from half way the recovery, then just sliding towards the catch, and hang on the handle during the first half of the leg drive. When I do this correctly, it feels like I get 2 splits for free. (Which reminds me of Ranger, the infamous erg blogger back in the days of Concept2.co.uk.)

Every fifth interval is supposed to be a max out, just to make sure that I was doing the others in a controlled way.

Flex chart Rowsandall

First fifteen intervals went by without any incidents, and then it was just a question of hanging on, and emptying the tank in interval #20. Followed by a 2km cooling down.

A quick shower and on to my calls. An unexpectedly good training. Made my day.

By • rowing • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

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