rowing

Nov 25 2017

Friday – Steady State in the single

On Friday, I left home early for an exciting row.

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I was going to try out my new OH1 optical heart rate arm band on the water. Plus, I was going to test the updated RowP app with the Quiske Sensor. More about the latter on a separate blog post on analytics.rowsandall.com.

Despite leaving early, I lost some precious time. When I arrived at the club, I realized I didn’t have the keys to the boat house, so I had to drive home to fetch them. That cost me more than 30 minutes, and with the early darkness that was a problem.

The row was great but I had to return early to avoid darkness.

Oh, and regarding the OH1 arm band? I like it. I was completely unaware that I was wearing it. I am looking forward to never having to adjust a chest strap on the water again! I have rowed many kilometers with a chest strap on my hips.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: OTW, river, rowing, single, steady state, training

Nov 20 2017

Mixed Bag Training

Today I followed the training prescribed for our club’s Masters group:

Warming up 2500 meter
4×10 minutes, 4 minutes rest. Rowed as 4/3/2/1 minutes at 20/22/24/26 minutes
Cooling down for a total of 16km

Sounded good. A bit more intensive than plain steady state but nothing I couldn’t handle in my jet lagged state.

After a 2500 warming up I programmed the PM to 10 min intervals with 4 min rest and set off to do the first interval. The phone rang in the middle of that. It was the KLM guy announcing that he would deliver my bag in five minutes. Good timing. Right in the rest period. I continued rowing and the rest I went in front of the house, right as the guy turned into our street. I got the bag, thanked him, signed a piece of paper, and got back to my erg cave. There was still 2 minutes rest to go, but the PM5 had lost the connection with my heart rate monitor, so I had to reset the monitor and start again.

  Workout Summary - media/20171120-2001110o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|02462|14:00.0|02:50.6|201.6|22.2|135.2|170.0|07.9
W-|02319|10:00.0|02:09.3|203.5|21.9|139.9|170.0|10.6
R-|00146|04:00.0|13:42.6|118.0|23.1|015.5|170.0|01.6
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00962|04:00.0|02:04.7|177.7|20.2|129.7|142.0|11.9
01|00563|03:00.0|02:39.9|200.8|21.6|132.7|145.0|08.7
02|00524|02:00.0|01:54.6|232.0|24.0|157.2|166.0|10.9
03|00271|01:00.0|01:50.6|257.4|26.0|167.7|170.0|10.4

Here are the three other intervals:

    Workout Summary - media/20171120-2000500o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|08890|42:00.0|02:21.7|181.9|22.0|150.5|173.0|09.6
W-|07422|30:00.0|02:01.3|197.4|22.2|152.8|173.0|11.2
R-|01474|12:00.0|04:04.3|144.2|22.8|147.9|173.0|00.3
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00959|04:00.0|02:05.1|176.0|20.3|134.2|148.0|11.8
01|00757|03:00.0|01:58.9|208.6|22.9|156.0|159.0|11.0
02|00526|02:00.0|01:54.0|236.5|24.7|164.6|169.0|10.7
03|00242|01:00.0|02:03.8|187.9|21.1|169.6|171.0|11.5
04|00949|04:00.0|02:06.4|173.2|20.5|141.5|152.0|11.6
05|00737|03:00.0|02:02.1|192.3|22.1|155.1|160.0|11.1
06|00512|02:00.0|01:57.1|217.7|24.2|162.1|166.0|10.6
07|00267|01:00.0|01:52.4|245.7|26.1|169.0|173.0|10.2
08|00947|04:00.0|02:06.8|175.2|20.5|144.9|153.0|11.5
09|00746|03:00.0|02:00.6|199.3|22.3|159.4|163.0|11.2
10|00512|02:00.0|01:57.1|217.8|24.1|164.9|168.0|10.6
11|00267|01:00.0|01:52.4|245.2|26.0|169.0|173.0|10.3

On SoundCloud, I chose a “running” workout music playlist and it worked out really well. Minimalistic music with a strong beat. Gets you into a light trance and makes the time go by fast. Here is the link.

By sanderroosendaal • rowing • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Nov 11 2017

Lactate Step Test

Today was Lactate Day at our rowing club. The kids who are in a performance program get this paid by the federation, and for us Masters and other less promising rowers there is the opportunity to pay and participate. I happily did that, because it is much more convenient than doing it myself.

The tests were done by two ladies from the university. We had 6 ergs lined up and the testing protocol was 5 intervals of 5 minutes, with 2 minutes rest. The second erg started 1:10 minutes after the first, and so forth, so the ladies had 1:10 to collect the data after each interval and they were continuously occupied.

You finish an interval, the two ladies come to you. One writes down your heart rate, and the other takes some blood from your ear lobe. The only thing I had to focus on was rowing at the prescribed Power values.

Here is a picture I took after my row, of the last group. Notice that we had participation from the other club in town, who do these tests on sliders. We row on static ergs.

For me, the levels were 160, 190, 220, 250, and >280 Watt.

  Workout Summary - media/df_20171111-100732.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07846|41:12.0|02:37.5|223.7|22.7|154.4|184.0|08.4
W-|06419|25:00.0|01:56.8|223.6|24.1|160.8|184.0|10.7
R-|01433|16:12.0|05:39.2|210.2|16.1|131.6|184.0|02.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01156|05:00.0|02:09.7|162.1|21.0|139.5|151.0|11.0
02|01222|05:00.0|02:02.8|189.8|21.9|154.1|160.0|11.2
03|01287|05:00.0|01:56.6|221.2|23.5|163.5|170.0|11.0
04|01346|05:00.0|01:51.4|251.2|25.7|170.4|177.0|10.5
05|01408|05:00.0|01:46.6|293.7|28.2|176.3|184.0|10.0

I had to do some data fusion to merge the heart rate data measured with the Garmin and the other parameters measured with PainSled, connected through USB cable to the PM3.

I am pretty happy with the power achieved in the final interval.

The power pie chart is a beauty. I have to share it:

Not sure what to think of the following chart:

I was quite constant in stroke length, so I obviously varied the force from interval to interval. I am wondering if the Lactate values would be different with constant drive force, varying the stroke rate more.

Anyway, the blood samples are now traveling to the lab, and I will know the results on Tuesday. That is the only advantage of doing Lactate tests yourself: you can play with the data immediately.

By sanderroosendaal • rowing • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, lactate test, rowing

Nov 10 2017

Back in the single & an unexpected visit

Thursday

Another hour of steady state on the erg. I made it a little more interesting by varying the stroke rate every minute in intervals 1and 2, then reverting to a more traditional rate ladder in the last 20minute interval.

Yep’ in the last interval I did a cooling down at the end. I had some fun looking at stroke data on Rowsandall.com:

Pretty consistent drive length there.

Friday

I will be in the USA for 6 days next week, tomorrow I will do an erg lactate test, and on Sunday I will probably go running. So today was the day to get in some steady state, not too hard, in the single.

It is funny. I know Work per Stroke goes down at the end of the workout, but I seem incapable of preventing this to happen.

It was a great workout. The water was not flat but still very rowable, I was the only single out except for s lightweight guy from the other club, accompanied by his coach in a launch. At one point I needed to speed up a bit to stay ahead of his wake. The young LW guy is a bit faster than I but he was doing some intervals and by working a bit harder during his rest and staying focused on technique I stayed ahead of his coach’s wake.

When I was cleaning my boat after the row, Ondřej Synek walked on to our club. It was great to chat with him. He is in town for the Sport Life trade fair, promoting Concept2 ergometers, and decided to pay us a surprise visit. We showed him our boats and he talked about racing in Brno as a junior. Then he walked into the erg training of our Juniors. They almost fell off their ergs.

In the car driving home I heard this song. I liked.

By sanderroosendaal • rowing • 0 • Tags: concept2, OTE, OTW, rowing, single, steady state

Nov 8 2017

Prague Skyline

I’ll start with the highlight of this post. Some great photos of the Head of Prague race. Somewhere among these boats is us:

And here we are rowing towards the turning point. Notice the Prague castle and cathedral in the background:

Yesterday, I got my annual influenza vaccination with the recommendation to avoid exercise for two days, so I skipped training. Today, I did the 2×20 minutes of steady state prescribed by our club Masters training plan. It doesn’t sound like a lot of volume, but we do very long warming up and cooling downs so all in all it was 15km of erging.

Here are both 20 minute pieces compared.

The orange line with lower power and higher heart rate is the second interval.

By sanderroosendaal • rowing • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Nov 6 2017

Friday to Monday

Friday

It was a hard day at work and I was looking forward to rowing OTW. Unfortunately, I also had some shopping to do and I got stuck in a traffic jam, spending 30 minutes trying to leave the mall parking garage. So instead of driving to the club, I headed home.

Sat on the erg, booted up the new Beta of Painsled, and tried to connect it to Zwift. I didn’t manage to get that going because I was short of one Bluetooth device. If I understand it well, the phone with Painsled running serves power data. You then need another device with a Zwift Mobile app which collects the data and relays it to the Zwift app running on the iPad. I may try it again, but I am waiting for the next beta of Painsled. You will understand why in a minute.

I put on the latest BRowShow Podcast about recovery and got going.

A nice first 30 minutes in which I pushed the average power to 185 Watts without seeing any alarming things happening, heart rate wise.

The second 30 minutes proceeded in a similar way. No issue at all. Average power 183W. Heart rate where I like it.

At the end of the session I did a lactate test. Recorded 2.1 mmol/L. A few minutes later, I did the test again, now measuring 1.9 mmol/L. I believe this indicates that I have been working in the desired training zone.

I didn’t get to row on the water, but at least I had a decent erg session in. I was looking forward to see the data. So I started export the workouts from Painsled to rowsandall.com, which is normally a simple email export from the app to workouts@rowsandall.com. This threw an error. I tried various settings, and 30 minutes later I still had no luck.

Later that evening, I downgraded to the normal version of Painsled, losing all data in the app in the process. So, no data for this workout.

So, let me recap.

A difficult day in the office
No OTW row because of traffic
A good OTE workout but no data to prove it
Oh, and a couple of bug reports on rowsandall.com.

On that last one, I had spent quite a lot of time doing some user interface upgrades on rowsandall.com, and on Friday I wanted to have all that finished and working. Instead, I was looking at some weird bugs, and there was no way I could understand what was going on. Sometimes, the site seems like a lot of hard work without some real benefits.

I wasn’t in the best mood.

Saturday

Got up early but not early enough. We all went to the rowing club with the idea to start a session at 9AM, and finish it in time for a club activity starting at 10.

I set up the erg on sliders and got going warming up. I was waiting for Romana’s girls to join, and wanted to join in their 6x1km/5min workout (at 6k pace, 28-30spm on sliders).

After a 2.5km warming up the girls disappeared for stretching. That turned into stretching and chatting and I did another 5k at steady state pace in the mean time.

By the time the girls came back to start the 6x1k, there was very little time left. I wasn’t in the best mood (again), because I knew I would have to stop at 10AM and wouldn’t be able to finish the workout.

Also, I had terrible issues with the sliders. I kept bumping against the ends of them. I don’t know if I set them up wrongly or if my technique was so terrible, but it just wasn’t working. I basically became so annoyed that I stopped and walked away from the erg in the third 1k.

Notice the erratic second 1k interval. I really was a jerk on Saturday.

The activity starting at 10AM was mowing the banks of the lake, an activity that we as rowing club members have to do, and I didn’t want to let the others down. So I spent three hours mowing and clearing one part of the lake’s bank. It was a good way to channel some bad energy. Felt a lot better afterwards.

Sunday

The only thing I did was a short run with my daughter.

Oh, and a lot of moving in our house. The boys move to the big room in the attic. Romana’s study goes to the smaller room in the attic, and Lenka goes from the smaller room in the attic to the former boys’ room.

In the evening I found some time to finalize those rowsandall.com user interface improvements. These are a couple of tweaks that don’t change the functionality but make the loading of slower parts of the site much more attractive to the user.

Monday

So no risks today. A stable version of Painsled. Some nice music on, and a session from our club’s official training plan for Masters. I make my own plan, but I try to pick as many sessions from the official plan as possible. It makes it easier to socialize with the other Masters, and even do the odd training together in the club erg room. Today it was

3x15min/4min with 15 min as 3x4min @ 20spm, 1min @24spm

Here’s the result. It wasn’t too hard to do. I am not sure about the physiological training effect of the 24spm speed bumps, but it broke down the 15 minutes in a nice way.

With a 2.5km warming up, that is 16k for the session.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, ergometer, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Nov 1 2017

Race Photos and more Training Data

Race Photos

Some great pictures have surfaced from our race. No trace of the drone video, yet.

Monday – Steady State

This is the period of the year when base building is the only focus. So on Monday I dutifully rowed my two times 30 minutes, erring on the lower power side. I will do a lactate step test on November 11 and after that, I plan to use lactate as a guidance. For now, I go with Perceived Rate of Exertion and Heart Rate.

Tuesday – the same but on the rowing club

More base building on the erg. This time I rowed it in the rowing club erg room. I expected a few more of our Masters rowers, as Tuesday evening is our assigned erg room evening for this winter season, but in the end I was the only one. The head coach and a bunch of Men and Juniors were in the adjacent weights room, so there was enough company, and people passing and looking at my PM.

I rowed three sets of 5km, with Tamed Wolverine Plan rate ladders. Tamed, because I did 1spm steps instead of 2spm steps. Here are the first two intervals:

For the final 5k interval, I decided to start a bit higher and work down back to 18spm.

One interesting fact about the charts of Tuesday are that the heart rate date were not recorded by the PM. I recorded it separately on the Garmin Forerunner. On rowsandall.com it is easy to combine data from different sources into one workout.

Finally, a comparison of steady state workouts using the Box Chart:

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

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rowing

Friday – Steady State in the single

Mixed Bag Training

Lactate Step Test

Back in the single & an unexpected visit

Thursday

Friday

Prague Skyline

Friday to Monday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

Race Photos and more Training Data

Race Photos

Monday – Steady State

Tuesday – the same but on the rowing club

Calendar

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