rowing

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Sep 11 2018

Steady State & Another Hard Distance Row – Fail

Monday

A nice steady state row in the single. I am still having a head cold, but this was a nice sustainable effort. Pulled a bit harder in the second half of the workout as I was passing two guys from the Lodni Sporty rowing club in a double, then was not too much slower than our Men’s pair, and finally passing a Lodni Sporty guy in a single. I felt fast.

I also had to be at home on time to join my evening conference calls. 
Tuesday

While Monday’s training was in the evening, Tuesday’s had to be first thing in the morning, because of travel. Not ideal when you are scheduled for a hard 7k.

I skipped the hard 8k, so I thought it would be a good compromise to row this one as a hard 7500m. Target power 211W.

In contrast with Monday’s row, this time I remembered to take the Quiske oar pod, but I forgot to put on the heart rate belt. Too much gear!

The first part of the 7.5k went pretty well although it surprised me that I had to work hard to get the stroke power above 211W. Normally, the power comes almost for free in the first half of the hard distances and I am focusing on not going off too hard. This time I had to watch and make sure I was at the target power. Perhaps because the target power was 10W higher? Or perhaps because I was still fighting a head cold?

The first turn was after about 3km. I set off fiercely, happy that I had bitten the first part off of this long hard row. Now I was rowing into a head wind and after about 1.5km I just stopped. I had been watching the total stroke angle on the RowP screen and saw my stroke shortening, which usually leads to shortening. I worked pretty hard to bring the number up again but the long strokes also seemed to sap the energy out of me pretty fast.

Demotivated by the large number of meters left. Unhappy because not being able to keep the stroke angle up? I don’t know. I paddled for the rest of the stretch, during which I formulated the plan to “save” this workout. I would row the final 2km at the original power, and argued to myself that it would still count as a decent threshold workout. At least RowP told me that my stroke was pretty consistent:

The three lines are the average over the entire session, a short number of strokes at the beginning (light tailwind) and a short number of strokes at the end (light headwind), just before handing down.

During the recovery you can see a little acceleration bump which is typical for stroke rates 25spm and higher. Basically, the boat is floating the fastest during the middle part of the recovery. Here’s a comparison (of whole session averages) between head race pace and Monday’s steady state:

The x axis is a bit deceiving as it is a percentage of the stroke duration. A 25spm stroke is of course shorter in duration than a 20spm stroke. What I can see during the row is that on “good” strokes the deceleration troughs on both ends of the chart are relatively short in duration, while on “bad” strokes they are wide. Those are pretty good clues to watch technique during a row.

Here’s a comparison of my head race pieces so far:

The averages are calculated over the “on” strokes only (discarding the middle 1.5km of today’s fail). So I am slightly longer, faster and slightly higher power. At least that’s comforting. Not happy about today’s handing down, but I have another opportunity coming Sunday, when I will row a 6k, which is my race distance.

Now I am heading to the airport and will spend the rest of the week in Sofia, Bulgaria, without an opportunity to go to Plovdiv to watch the worlds, unfortunately. My training plan has anticipated this trip, so I have running and weights scheduled.

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acceleration2

Sep 10 2018

Last Week – Amber and Red

So the week started well with a hard 9k in the single. Still got an “amber” score on my training plan because it was harder than anticipated:

On Tuesday, I did a weights session. The first weights session after vacation, and as expected it created shoulder and breast muscle soreness for two days.

On Wednesday, we had the inaugural training for “Head of Prague”, in the mixed 8+. This one was easier and shorter than planned, although I suspect that I pushed the power a bit harder than what rowsandall.com estimates based on boat speed and stroke rate. We had some replacement rowers which definitely didn’t pull as hard as Martin and I in the “engine room”.Thursday’s steady state in the single was a very nice one. I had chartered Martin to be my sparring partner and we were about the same speed.

The last full lake stretch was interesting. I was experimenting with “waiting” a bit longer around the finish. Here is a plot of distance per stroke when I was doing my normal stroke:

Now the same thing with the much hyped “wait” around the finish:

I did take care to select the same stretch of lake. It looks like I gained 3 centimeters per stroke at very comparable stroke rates, but I was also adding a bit more Work per Stroke. Looking at OTW Efficiency, which is a measure of the power/velocity efficiency, there was a slight increase from 60.5% to 61.5% when I was adding a slight pause at the finish.

In theory, 3cm per stroke would mean 6.6m over a typical 2000m race, but the problem is that I expect the difference to become smaller as stroke rate increases to above 30spm. I think it is good to measure these things and to try and quantify them. Of course, it’s also possible that I was already rowing pretty well (?) or I was not executing the “improved” stroke well enough. Also a third explanation comes to mind. Perhaps this hyped slowness at the start of the recovery works better in crew boats, and perhaps the mechanism isn’t about boat acceleration but more about being in sync. A fourth explanation is that the wind slightly changed. Definitely, wind has a big effect on these metrics. It was only a mild wind on Thursday, but I had to discard the middle stretch of this workout as it was rowed with a very light tail wind, improving the distance per stroke and OTW efficiency numbers.

More to follow. I am really interested in improving my efficiency on the recovery.

I had a morning swim planned as Friday’s recovery cross training, but they are still reconstructing the 50m indoor pool and the outdoor pools have already restricted opening times (because the school vacations have ended). I also had some late conference calls (until 9pm on Friday evening) so there was no time for a light evening workout.

Also, I had started to develop a head cold. This changed my plans for the weekend. The original plan was to do a hard 8km in the single and then either a cross training or a row in the double on Sunday. I decided to go for a run on Saturday (causing muscle soreness because of not having done a running session in a long time) and go out in the double with Romana on Sunday.

Sunday’s row was a great one. In the first part of the workout we focused on our synchronization around the tap down (again using the pauses that I discussed above). In the final part of the row, we added a slight acceleration in seat recovery speed just before the catch. We didn’t do quite enough strokes with this feature to really nail it, and the negative consequence was that we lost a bit of our lightness on the catch, but there were a few interesting strokes. I recorded everything with the Quiske pod and RowP app and here are the charts:

The green line represents the stretch were we focused on our catches. We were slower than when we weren’t! However, I have to point out that even though most of the workout was with mirror flat water, the wind increased strength during the workout, and this final stretch was rowed in head wind conditions.

You can see a very slight delay of the boat deceleration just before the catch when we were focusing on the catches (green line), but the effect is blurred because we were rowing in the double and there were many strokes where the timing wasn’t 100%. In the next chart, I try to pick out one stroke where I think we nailed it:

The blue line is the one with the delayed deceleration before the catch, which is the right most part of the chart. The green line is a similar stroke (at same stroke rate and on the same stretch of the lake) when we weren’t working on the catches. The wiggles at the end of the pull are not good. You typically see them when the synchronization of the tap down and hands away between bow and stroke is not good.

In that sense, the double is a great boat to do these measurements. In bigger boats, one guy being out of sync doesn’t do much to the boat acceleration or deceleration, and in a single you cannot be out of sync and you’re only looking at your individual strokes.

Thinking about boat acceleration charts, another thing should be noted. When rowing at a steady average boat speed, the area of the positive (acceleration) part and the area of the negative (deceleration) part should always be equal. So, if I change something that makes me row more efficient, the boat should speed up a bit. Because at higher boat speeds, drag increases, thus increasing the deceleration. What I am trying to point out is that looking at boat acceleration charts one has to be very careful about comparing two curves if they are taken at slightly different boat speeds. In this case, you can see that although we are managing to delay the big deceleration (checking) of the boat just before the catch, we are paying for that by slightly higher deceleration during the first part of the recovery.

And again, we’re trying to look at very subtle things here, where we always have to bear in mind that the effect of wind or stream may completely overwhelm any slight speed benefits.

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Sep 3 2018

Riding the bus in a rowing uni and flip flops

You will have to read until the bottom of this post to understand the weird title.

It’s been a while since my last blog post. In the beginning of August, we went on a vacation to Italy and had a great time. I purposely did not do any planned exercise, but there was plenty of (sea) swimming, hiking, and bike riding. Nothing very intensive.

After my vacation I was back in the office for four long days. I did manage to get two rows in, one in the single and one in the double with Romana.

Then, I hopped on a plane to India and spent a week in Bangalore. Working days were long and I prioritized socializing with my Indian colleagues over any structured working out. It’s the off season.

Now I am back and it’s time to prepare for the head race season. I am looking forward to it. This year, I am doing three races over three weekends. I start early October with a 6k head race in the single, then, two weeks later, the Prague Head (mixed 8+), and finally the Novembervieren in Amsterdam, rowing a 4x with my old rowing mate and two other guys.

I did my planning for the 2018/19 season and the main events in the run-up to the first head race are long, hard distance pieces in the single. Using the power values given by the Empower Oarlock, these pieces give me good info on where I stand, helping me to select a sustainable power for the 6k head race. I started last Thursday with a 10k piece. I targeted 200W.

It was pretty winy and choppy, and it was hard. I had to row this in the gorge, but because the lake water level is low because of the the draught, we cannot row all the way up to Bityska, have to turn at the castle and thus I had to start and finish on a very choppy lake. You can see the power and pace starting to drop aroun 7500m when I returned to the lake. With 1000m to go, I decided to turn again and stay on the north end of the lake to avoid the worst chop (white caps).

I was slightly disappointed by the power levels, but I did hold a 198W average power, and that is including two 180 degree turns and rowing in the chop.

I spent the weekend cycling through the South Moravian vineyards with Romana (and getting very wet on Saturday, when we were riding in heavy rain).

Today, I arrived at the club around 6pm, and got ready for another hard distance piece. First I had to chat with our medal winners from the U23 European Championships (silver in the LW 4x-). There was a frenzy of activity on the club. The kids had raced in Litomerice and there was a trailer to unload and boats to wash.

I told everybody I was going to go out on the single and set off for the workout.

Pretty calm weather today. Just a slightly nasty crosswind making the 1k part on the south end of the lake a little slower. You can see that in the chart between 0 and 1000m and between 6200m and 7800m. The heart rate sensor had some difficulties in the first 1000m.

The average power was 211W (224W rPower, higher because the turns are lowering the average) and I liked how I rowed, especially the part between 4000m and 6000m where I think I hit a pretty efficient stroke, not too hard on the catch and with a clean tap down. The final 2000m were a struggle, and especially the final 500m required a bit of toughness to keep going.

That was a good 41 minutes of rowing.

I did a very slow cooling down. And that was the moment where I will explain the title of this blog post.

I arrived at an abandoned rowing club. The boat house was closed and locked. The club house closed and locked. The problem was that I had been so lazy as to leave the club house keys in my pocket, relying on the usual Monday evening rowers. Apparently the last one to leave hadn’t checked the dock or the rowing log book to see if there were any boats out there.

They did forget to clean up two pairs of slings, so at least I could get my boat out on dry land. Then I had to think. My car was on the parking, locked. All my other stuff was in the dressing room and I literally had what I was wearing, plus a seat pad, a half empty bottle of water and a NK SpeedCoach. Plus an empty battery that I had replaced in the Empower oarlock.

There was only one option. I climbed over the rowing club fence, hiked 15 minutes to the nearest tram stop, took tram 1 for a few stops, changed to trolley bus 30, then took bus 70 to the bus stop nearest to my house. I was wearing my sweaty rowing uni and flip flops. I didn’t have my bus card with me, nor did I have any ID. If I had been checked by a ticket control, I would have to explain and if they wouldn’t believe me they would probably take me to a police station. Luckily that didn’t happen. It was a bit unpleasant how people were looking at me, but I could deal with that. At home, I rang the door bell, and then explained the situation to my beloved wife. We got in her car and she dropped me off at the rowing club. Using her keys, I was able to get in, get a shower, clean up the boat, get into my car and drive home.

I guess I have learned a lesson and will not rely on ‘the usual training times’ any more, and take the keys with me in the boat as I do on my morning outings.

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Adding Empower Oarlock metrics for later analysis. I have lost an hour riding the bus in a rowing uni, so I have no time to do a deeper analysis. I think the values are reasonable.

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boatspeed

Aug 18 2018

Saturday – technique row in the double

Last chance to row the double before leaving to India on a business trip. Romana and I did just 10k with lots of technique exercises. Watching the video from the Munich (winning) race had made her think about a few technique flaws, her being shorter and taking the catch slightly early.

I think the early catches were a specific of that race in Munich. We led the field so early and we were increasing our lead so fast that Romana was in unknown race tactics domain and mistook my shouts for calming down for power tens. Racing in CZ, it is almost always trying to come back from behind.

We had Martin Krocil with us in the launch and he confirmed, Romana’s timing was perfect. She was just a bit shorter.

We did some technique exercises to determine the exact catch length and then our focus shifted to the tap down and hands away. I had RowP (https://www.rowingperformance.com/) running in the mode that shows the boat acceleration.

This chart is showing averages over a few strokes recorded between 15 and 30 minutes into the workout. When running in real time you can see the boat acceleration of the last stroke. The interesting feature I should the little acceleration bump around 30% in the chart above. When our timing was good and synchronous, that bump was short and sharp. When the timing of the hands away was off, the bump broke down in two or three smaller bumps.

We also measured oar angular velocity and oar trajectory (on my right scull) but I didn’t look at it during the race. The only parameter I looked at now and then was the total angle reported by the RowP app, because without an Empower Oarlock on the double this is a good alternative way to look at stroke length consistency.

Here are the charts anyway.

It was a light training but that was good. Temperatures were already very high, even though it was only 10am.

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Aug 17 2018

Back OTW – short and intensive

After two weeks of vacation, spent doing nothing apart from walking around in nice Italian cities, and swimming, I was back on the water this morning.

I had told myself that actually swimming in the Mediterranean had kept my fitness sort of OK, but when I paddled away from the dock in my single, I had to check if I hadn’t caught some weeds around the fin. It felt … hard.

Apart from that everything was fine. I was geared up fully. My usual basic electronics set was expanded by a Scosche Rhythm 24 on my right upper arm (with the Polar OH1 on my left arm). The Scosche was connected to my iPhone in a waterproof bag and logging HRV. I am doing a little mini project trying to figure out the good, bad and ugly of HRV measurements for myself, so I needed to log the basic HRV measurements. More about this project later.

This would also be one of my few opportunities to do a full, semi-hard 2k on the Brno 2k course, for a virtual regatta that we have set up. So the outing was simple. A 3k warming up. A 2k “full out”. And then a 3k cooling down. Full out, after the vacation, meant stroking around head race pace to get to a semi decent time. There was no way I was going to be able to hold my usual numbers right now.

It got quite hard in the second 1000m of the 2k, when my heart rate entered the red zone and the lake became a little choppier. Here are the stats for the interesting bits of this workout.


Workout Summary - media/20180817-0630250o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|08309|45:11.0|02:43.1|138.7|21.3|145.1|182.0|08.6
W-|02404|10:10.0|02:06.9|224.9|26.7|165.8|182.0|08.8
R-|05912|35:01.0|02:57.7|113.7|19.8|139.1|182.0|09.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00110|00:31.0|02:21.3|205.3|23.2|114.5|118.0|09.1
02|00096|00:25.0|02:10.1|257.5|27.9|118.2|124.0|08.3
03|00111|00:28.6|02:09.1|249.1|27.4|147.0|164.0|08.5
04|00108|00:27.2|02:05.3|219.7|24.5|141.0|148.0|09.8
05|01979|08:18.6|02:06.0|223.4|27.0|173.8|182.0|08.8

The empower metrics were in the usual ranges, so that may mean that I haven’t unlearned rowing entirely.

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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.

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Jul 30 2018

Final week before EuroMasters

This was a 10 day interval between the Czech Open Masters and the Euromasters Regatta in Munich.

On Monday, July 16th, we washed boats, rigged them and put them in the racks. No training.

On Tuesday, I did a 50 minute weights session.

On Wednesday morning, I went out to the castle on a Steady State row with Eduard.

Nice rowing.

On Friday, July 20, Romana and I did a 2x(6×45″/45″)/5min row in the double.

If I remember well, this was a nice row. I failed to make any notes for this workout.

On Saturday, we rowed “mini sprints” alongside another Masters Mix 2x. These were 7-10 strokes full pressure and high rate, alternated with two minutes rest. High rate is coming together really well now.

On Monday, July 23, we did another session in the double. We should not have done it. It was windy and there was a nasty chop. We just did a few practice starts and short race pace intervals, but the boat was “dead”.

After that, we loaded the small trailer which would go to Hodonin on Tuesday, where our boats were put on the big trailer together with the boats of Hodonin and Uherske Hradiste. It’s more economical to tow one big trailer with boats for three clubs than to arrive in Munich with three half empty trailers.

On Wednesday, we drove to Munich in five and a half hours, checked in to the hotel, and waited for the Hodonin trailer to arrive. It came at 4:15pm, and by then the boat area was already chock full of boats. We found a quiet place in the shade behind the accreditation building:

On Thursday morning, Kazi and I did a quick row in the double, to make sure all was set for our first race on the regatta, the Masters Men 2x in the C category.

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