rowing

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Nov 10 2018

Snow Shoeing and other alternative trainings

I spent Monday thru Thursday of this week in France. Monday and Tuesday were a short vacation with my old boss and our old team. The boss is going to retire, and we spent two days around his log cabin in the Pyrenees.

So my exercise on Monday was three hours of hiking with snow shoes, which is great fun by the way.

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After that, we enjoyed some hot springs in another part of the valley and we finished the day with an excellent dinner in a nice small restaurant in the Spanish town of Llivia (a Spanish exclave surrounded by France).

On Tuesday morning we woke up in a mixture of drizzle and snow, so we decided to move to the Mediterranean close to Perpignan for another hike.

At the end of the day we returned to Toulouse, where I checked in to my hotel and joined a business dinner with our Navigation group.

On Wednesday, I worked out in the hotel gym. There was a funny rower, a “Matrix”:

I did my warming up on it and it wasn’t as bad as I expected. It works with a metal flywheel with magnetic resistance. What impressed me was that the simple display displayed watts and pace that were quite comparable to the Concept2 erg. Of course I was working on feel, but pulling 2:09 at 160W and 2:00 at 203W felt like it should feel.

After the warming up I did my strength training. I am now doing 4×30 repeats. I improvised a bit based on the limited equipment I had but it was a good one hour workout.

On Thursday I flew home and didn’t exercise. On Friday, I spent an hour in the Brno Luzanky (Olympic size) pool.

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Nov 8 2018

Novembervieren Race – battling on old battle grounds

Our CVK Brno/Naarden coxed quad was racing in block 3, so there was time enough in the morning. We arrived in Amsterdam around lunch time.

The water was nice and flat. I watched the races of Block 2 from the banks at the Omval, close to rowing club RIC.

The weather was nice, although humid and cold, but it wasn’t raining and there was a light tail wind.

Finally, it was time to launch. As we were the last boat in our division, we also launched last, so we received some comments from the umpires to not lose contact with the other boats steaming up to the start and receive an official warning.

As we were a relatively fast boat, there was no problem whatsoever. We steamed up to the start line in our usual 24 spm, about 10 minutes before the start of the first boat in Block 3. We quickly found our position among the large crowd of fours and quads, and waited.

The sun getting lower, and we ended up having to wait in the shadow. That made it a little colder, especially when we removed our turtle shells and prepared to race.

The chart shows only the race part, plus perhaps 100m of getting up to speed. As you can see we settled into 31-32spm and never lost that. The heart rate values are not correct for the first part of the race. I was fiddling with the Polar OH1 before the start, and I think it didn’t make good contact, until it snapped into place in the second kilometer.

It was hard work but at the same time I really enjoyed racing on my old battle ground. I was curious to see if I would still know every turn and every bridge, and I wasn’t disappointed. With every stroke, I knew exactly where I was and where the cox would turn the boat to. We had a great cox, by the way. Look at the line he took:

You can’t really steer this course any sharper. Here is us heading down the course:

I am not sure at which point this picture was taken. I guess from one of the bridges. The water was a bit rougher than I had expected. I think this had a lot to do with rowing as the last boat in our division, with 80 or more boats ahead of us.

Immediately from the start, our coxswain started encouraging us, letting us know that we were making ground on the crews ahead of us. Eventually it took until the Omval (1.5k to go) when we started to pass crews, but now we were passing them fast. We gained contact, quickly rowed through a crew, and sprinted to the next one. About 200m before the Berlage bridge I told Dennis that we could rate up a bit, which he did. I just wanted to let him know that I was ready to start emptying the tank. Now we had 800m to go. Rating up brought some unrest in the crew, so we stuck at 32/33spm. It was a long stretch rowing from the Berlage bridge to the finish at De Hoop rowing club.

Immediately after crossing the finish, our coxswain got his phone out of his pocket and announced that we were in the first 20.

In our division, we were 19th out of 63 boats. Not bad. Funny that we finished on a shared 19th position. The first 6 boats of our division were all rowing with formed elite rowers (mostly Olympians).

Happy faces after the race. In the background the Berlage bridge and the high rise office buildings at the Omval

We spent an hour preparing the boats for transport, and then it was time to get warm by taking a shower. I had some time for a quick coffee before I was headed to the airport. Took a flight to Munich, where I arrived at 1am, slept for a few hours and then continued with the 6am flight to Toulouse.

What a great race day!

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kaart

Nov 4 2018

Coxed Quad Training – Race Prep

That was an intensive experience.

The one and only training of the Masters C 4x+ Naarden/Brno combination, Richard, Jos, Sander and Dennis. I was on 3 seat following the stroke Dennis.

It was a glorious but cold November morning. In the warming up we started at 24spm straight away, zipping around the Fortress of Naarden. This was tough for me on three, as my main job was to copy and reinforce the stroke rhythm of the Dennis, but I was a tad slower on the tap down. These guys row an aggressive tap down!

After about a kilometer, we arrived at the beginning of the Muidertrekvaart and that’s where we used the 4km to do various drills. Fixed seat, quarter slide, full slide at various pressures and stroke rates. It was fun.

Passing under the Hakkelaarsbrug we started the final stretch of the “there” part of the row, starting gently but then pushing up the stroke rate to finish at 30spm after two kilometers. I was working hard, and you can see it from my heart rate response.

On the “back home” part we started with a drill again, alternating full length strokes with quarter sliding. At the Hakkelaar it was announced that we would do the next 4km in steady state, 28 spm. Okay!

Here’s a video taken at the end of the 4k and during the warm down:

The facts in graphical form:

That was the race prep! On Sunday (this afternoon) we’re racing in Amsterdam.

On Saturday afternoon, I gave a rowing data clinic. I will post about it later on the Analytics Blog. After the training I went for a walk through the fortress. I grew up here and learned to row at this club:

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head1

Oct 15 2018

From One Extreme To The Other

Title will become clear later. But first, race pictures:

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Sunday – Quad Heaven

Half of our Head of Prague eight decided to go out as a mixed quad on Sunday afternoon. I sat on three seat instead of my usual stroke position and I loved it. Because of the heavy wind, we chose to go into the gorge and enjoy the autumn colors and the castle. It was absolutely gorgeous. As it was the day after the race, it wasn’t a very taxing row.

Recorded with the Garmin because I left my SpeedCoach as well as my phone at home. So no stroke rate data.

 

Monday – Erg Hell

This week is supposed to be a volume week, but I have to represent my boss at a meeting in Brussels, which cuts out almost 48 hours. Not knowing exactly how the rest of the week will unfold training and energy wise, I decided to take the heavy session today, even though I had raced just two days ago. I thought I could consider Sunday’s row as a recovery row.

Not.

I thought 240W would be a good target power for this 4x2km/5min row.

Not.

After one interval, I was convinced I was doing fine.

After the second interval, I knew the third one was going to be hard.

After the third interval, I negotiated a lower power for the fourth one with myself.

After 100m in the fourth interval, I broke down completely and just rowed a 2k cooling down.


Workout Summary - media/20181015-1845320o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|16262|51:38.0|01:35.3|150.0|20.5|149.4|179.0|15.4
W-|07975|31:36.0|01:58.9|214.0|24.2|159.4|179.0|10.4
R-|08291|20:01.0|01:12.5|049.1|14.5|133.6|179.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01975|07:22.4|01:52.0|240.8|25.6|159.8|175.0|10.5
01|02000|07:37.3|01:54.3|240.1|25.5|167.7|179.0|10.3
02|02000|07:34.9|01:53.7|240.5|26.0|170.6|179.0|10.1
03|02000|09:02.1|02:15.5|147.9|20.5|142.8|149.0|10.8

I forgot to pull a stroke in the fourth rest interval, which messed up the stats a bit. The total distance was a lot less than 16km.

Oh, I rowed with the Quiske pod and RowP app  during the warming up.

I may have inserted the pod the wrong way under the slide, because I got 0 score for “Seat Stopped” and “Leg Speed”. Will try next time. I like how the app gives feedback during the row.

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Capture

Oct 14 2018

Saturday Race Day: Head of Prague

We arrived in Prague at 8am. Actually, we were the first to order coffee at the bar of the Prague rowing club Blesk (“Lightning”). Coffee and cake, and then getting our boat ready for the race.

Again, we were competing in the Mix 8+ category. No age restrictions, so we were up against combined Juniors crews as well as other Masters crews. For us, the Head of Prague is more a nice autumn experience than a “must win” race.

We had great fun rowing up to the start and enjoying the fine, sunny autumn weather along with 50 other eights waiting for the first boat to start.

We had some difficulty in the middle part of the race. Some tourists on a motor boat were going on in the middle of the river, at about the same speed as us, and for about 1500m we were surfing on their wake. I think we took about 100 Liters of water in that stretch. Sitting on 6 seat, both my oarlock and the stroke’s were under water a couple of times and we got a good share of cold water.

Then, “The Turn”. Our club president cheering on the bridge gaves us a 6 out of 10, with most other crews being slower but some remarkably faster.

The Roosendaal’s were well represented in our crew, named “Zrejme Dobrej Oddil” (= “Apparently a good club”). Romana rowed in 4, Sander on 6, and Dominik (13) was our coxswain. I think the following 10 minute video captures the race atmosphere well:

The video was my first experiment with a GoPro chest strap. I think that a head mount will be better next time. The main protagonists of the video are coxswain Dominik and our stroke man and walking encyclopedia of Czech Rowing Martin “The Turkey” Krocil.

My heart rate monitor had some issues in the first part of the race. Otherwise the stroke rate and pace is accurate.

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Oct 7 2018

Head Race Video with Rowing Data

Here’s a (shortened) video of my head race in Hradiste. It’s cool to have the Empower oarlock data integrated in the video.

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Oct 7 2018

Hradiště 6km head race – race report

Saturday, October 6, 2018

Head Race Day! I was up early, far too early. The town of Uherske Hradiště is an hour drive east of Brno and our race wouldn’t start until 2pm. We left Brno at 9:30 after picking up my club mate (and competitor) Eduard. The early departure time was to allow Romana to coach one of her Junior girls.

Arriving in Babice, at the place of the start of this 6km race, we found sunny weather, fair temperatures and a nasty head wind. The race is down stream on the river Morava, but the river was low because of the draught and there was very little flow. Actually, it would be wiser to stick to the middle of the river to avoid rowing into shallow parts. Still, a head wind blowing against the stream could potentially lead to some chop.

I contemplated setting the sculls a bit lighter, but then thought through the consequences and decided to not do it.

The race went pretty well. I started off and settled on my target 230W, not worrying about the stroke rate too much. I knew the stroke rate would be a bit lower in the head wind, and focused on hitting the power and work per stroke target. I also counted series of 30 strokes, 10 strokes focus on sitting straight at the catch, 10 strokes on legs, 10 strokes on back swing.

The course has a few turns and it was always a surprise what the wind would do after the next turn. At one point, about 1600m into the race, the wind really kicked up some waves. I hit a wave with the bottom of my right blade and nearly capsized. It stopped me for one stroke, then I continued to struggle into the head wind. I had no pace information on my SpeedCoach, and kept trying to hit my power targets, but in the middle 2km, the roughest bit, this was pretty hard.

I was rowing away from the guy behind me (David Ulc) and catching up on someone in front of me, but I wasn’t sure if that was Tomas Zeman or Andrej Hudec. Only at the finish line I found out that Tomas had taken over Andrej very early in the race.

I was worried most about Tomas Zeman and my double buddy Kazimir Nedoba. In the sprint season, Kazi had been faster, but he is fast mostly in direct confrontations and has difficulty rowing in the loneliness of a head race with 1 minute start intervals. Tomas, I had beaten him numerous times in a direct 1k confrontation, but he’s a big guy, a fire fighter, and the “indestructible man” body type. I feared that he could be fast into the head wind.

The first 4km went by pretty fast. The only annoying thing was that my left oarlock started squeaking quite a lot. The fifth 1000m interval started to hurt and the final 1000m hurt a lot.

I had missed all the kilometer markers, but I didn’t really had to look for them, having reset the SpeedCoach just before the start and showing distance rowed in the bottom left bit of the screen. I also saw the first houses of Hradiste, the water got calmer, and I knew it was time to rate up.

The final 500m were really painful but I wouldn’t let myself rate down. I knew it could be a close finish between me and the other contestants, so I wanted to get out as much speed as possible.

I collapsed at the finish line, chatted with Andrej a bit, then did a 2km cooling down row.

Meeting the other Masters rowers in the boat area, we all decided to go for a quick beer before loading our boats on the trailers. On the way to the club house we stopped to look at the results:

Second place for me, “only” ten seconds behind Tomas. Looking at the 2k and 4k times, it is also clear that I lost most in the middle 2k and made up for that in the final 2k.

We had our beer and then we received our prizes in a mini ceremony. I got a nice medal, a T-shirt, and some sweets. Tomas got a cup and a bottle of home made Slivovice. Oh, and we all got kisses from Mrs Tomastikova, the charming club president of Moravia Rowing club.

The winner’s ceremony with the charming club president of Moravia Rowing Club

Here are the race charts. The overview chart and a few comparisons with a year ago. To do justice to the comparison, you have to know that a year ago the river was high and flowing fast. This year, I spent 4 minutes longer on the course.

I have a race video which is uploading to YouTube right now. I will post a separate blog post with the video.

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