Apr 19 2015
A relaxed row in the double – XGPS160 troubles
After yesterday’s racing with crazy wind conditions the weather turned for the good. Today the leaves barely moved. I am just exaggerating slightly. The lake wasn’t a mirror, but the water was flat and very easy to row.
Well, spring races wouldn’t be spring races without wind and crazy waves. See my blogs from other years on Indoor Sport Services:
http://indoorsportservices.co.uk/forum/blog.php?u=11066&b=114495
http://indoorsportservices.co.uk/forum/blog.php?u=11066&b=114495
Always waves and wind at our spring races.
The sailing clubs have races a week after the rowers. Every year they end up sitting on the shore waiting for wind …
Anyway, today we were looking forward to a calm row in the double. We settled for 2×12 minutes in Wolverine plan “L4 style”, i.e.
2 min 18spm
2 min 20 spm
2 min 22 spm
3 min 18spm
2 min 20 spm
1 min 22 spm
1 minute rest to turn the boat
Repeat.
On the second 2 minute interval of the second 12 minute set CrewNerd stopped counting meters and the pace remained stuck at the last value. Luckily, we were in a time based training, so we could finish the set.
Apparently the XGPS160 and the iphone were not communicating well.
So I switched it off and on, and checked the XGPS in its own iphone app. All working well, 65% battery remaining.
I started a “just row”. Romana and I did a practice race start. Nothing. No pace. No meters. I pressed “reset” on the CrewNerd just row and now the meters were clocked.
We rowed another 1500m, and when I started the second 20 stroke at race pace segment, the meters stopped again.
Quite annoying. I don’t know what’s going on. I had the XGPS160 on during the drive home, without problems. It was communicating with the phone all the time.
However, when Romana was washing the boat and I was bringing the sculls to the rack, I noticed that the XGPS160 pretended it was on, was showing a “connected” status in the app but the data transmission was 0 Hz!
I will do 8x500m tomorrow, so I guess I will take the Garmin Forerunner as a backup system.
Here is my HR vs pace for the first part of the row, stopping at the point where the GPS stopped.
As you can see a real easy row to flush the muscles.
Here is the second part of what CrewNerd recorded, including a 20 stroke sequence that brought us up to 1:50 pace, and the onset of the second 20 stroke sequence when the GPS dropped out again:
Apr 20 2015
First OTW 8×500 – Are my hard days too easy?
Time for the first 8x500m training of this season. I spent some time on Sunday to prepare the training plan between now and the next race, which will be a 1000m sprint on May 30. Time to get accustomed to the high stroke rates. My training being based on the Pete Plan, from now on I will push for short intervals rather than long intervals. I want to replace the “hard distance” with 1km or 2km efforts with long warming up and cooling down steady state.
I did the last OTW 8x500m a year ago, on 18 April 2014, achieving roughly 2:00 pace on average, roughly 28spm, in light wind (0.8m/s average). The temperature was 16 degrees C.
In June 2014, I did a 10x500m/500m rest which looked roughly like this:
That really looks painful1.
Today’s session had to be early in the morning, because there is stronger wind predicted for the afternoon. So I pushed off at 6:18 which is early for me.
The weather was slightly different than a year ago. Average temperature during the session 3 degrees C, and a wind speed of 1.1 m/s. So colder and slightly stronger wind. My year old report doesn’t say anything about waves. Today there were some, and there was some varying wind. Rowing from Rokle (northwest corner of lake) to Sirka (south) I had both tailwind and headwind conditions.
Here are the data:
|Dist_|Time_|Pace__|_SPM__|avg HR|max HR|DPS|Remarks
|02059|12:37|03:03.8| 19.0 | 132 | 145 |08.6|Warming up
|00499|01:58|01:58.3| 28.3 | 159 | 168 |09.0|#1; tailwind
|00500|02:00|01:59.9| 28.6 | 163 | 172 |08.8|#2; tailwind
|00498|02:06|02:06.5| 29.5 | 165 | 174 |08.0|#3; varying wind
|00501|02:03|02:02.8| 28.9 | 166 | 175 |08.5|#4; varying wind
|00500|02:16|02:15.9| 26.9 | 165 | 174 |08.2|#5; headwind
|00501|02:10|02:09.8| 28.2 | 171 | 176 |08.2|#6; headwind
|00500|01:57|01:57.0| 31.0 | 171 | 179 |08.3|#7; tailwind
|00499|01:59|01:59.2| 30.8 | 171 | 178 |08.2|#8; tailwind
|01006|06:52|03:24.8| 18.3 | 139 | 178 |08.0|cooling down
And the overall summary:
dist_____|time_____|_pace___|_HR__|_SPM__|_DPS|comment
2059_____|_12:37____|_3:03.8|132|19.0|8.6|warmup
3998_____|_16:29____|_2:03.7|166|29.0|8.4|Main set
1006_____|_06:52____|_3:24.8|139|18.3|8.0|Cool down
3532_____|_20:58____|_2:58.1|149|19.0|8.9|rest meters
10595____|_56:56____|_2:41.2|149|21.1|8.8|_Total
Hm, so I am a bit slower at a bit higher pace, but at lower HR. Should I be worried that my hard days are too easy? Whatever the answer to that question is, this a good marker for the season, although I am wondering if I should keep the 8x500m / 3:00 rest format or switch to the 10x500m/500m format. I want to see the red next time1.
I can also happily report that I made some additional changes to my CrewNerd TCX spreadsheet and above summaries are now almost produced automatically. XGPS160 and CrewNerd were well behaved today. I did “swipe up” to completely switch off CrewNerd before the row, as Greg suggested.
Footnotes
1Yes, I am aware that my TR/AN boundary was set 5 beats lower in April 2014. Still, I want to see more red. Red is good for me!
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: 8x500, crewnerd, lake, OTW, pete plan, rowing, rowing data, single, training, wind