Apr 27 2015
Finding Length in a Black Hole
This morning’s workout was scheduled for 6:15 AM (defined as time we push off the dock). Lately it is no problem for me to get up this early. I find that after about 7 hours of sleep I wake up with upper back pain. I have no problems whatsoever during the day or during workouts. Only in bed. Perhaps time to buy new mattresses.
This morning had a 20x1min/R1min on the menu. Last week, Boris suggested a 30″/30″ which I mistakenly remembered as “30 strokes on / 30 strokes off”, which is awfully close to 20x1min/1min which is a popular workout at my rowing club.
Tried to talk the Masters double into doing it with me but they had 4x5min or something like that.
The warming up was a bit shorter than normal because I didn’t want to row into a field of debris that was floating around the nude beach area.
I was a bit scared by this workout, and was afraid I would bail out early. Didn’t happen, actually.
It was 6 intervals from the nude beach to Sirka. Then 6 intervals headwind back to the nude beach. After these 12 intervals I was determined to finish the set. Six more intervals with tailwind, then two times one minute into headwind and I would be ready for the day. Somehow I got motivated by trying to better the number of meters for each interval.
It took me 16 intervals to figure out that I could lengthen the stroke a bit at the catch, row 29.5spm instead of 30spm and find quite a lot of boat speed in this way. Of course you have to have the fitness to sustain these long strokes. It doesn’t really show from the numbers but interval 17 was going to the wrong side of 2:00 pace until I slightly lengthened the stroke, which in 3 strokes brought the pace to 1:56. It may of course have been the GPS inaccuracy fooling me.
The weather was OK but the lake was again playing tricks, adding some breeze that created some waves when we started our workout. When we finished, the lake went to calm and flat again.
Here’s the “rollercoaster” picture (HR, speed and position in one Google Maps):
I had to change my spreadsheet to allow for so many intervals. Numbers 7, 13 and 19 were problematic because there I had literally one minute to drink a bit, turn the boat and row out of (or into) the 2k course:
| Dist_ | Time_ | _Pace__ | _SPM___ | avg HR | max HR | DPS | Remarks
| 01934 | 11:44 | 03:02.0 | 18.6 | 123 | 150 | 08.9 | warming up
| 00250 | 00:59 | 01:57.9 | 29.2 | 140 | 155 | 08.7 | #1 tailwind
| 00256 | 01:00 | 01:57.3 | 30.1 | 148 | 151 | 08.5 | #2
| 00264 | 01:01 | 01:55.6 | 29.3 | 150 | 153 | 08.8 | #3
| 00256 | 01:00 | 01:57.0 | 29.0 | 150 | 163 | 08.8 | #4
| 00249 | 00:59 | 01:58.7 | 30.1 | 153 | 154 | 08.4 | #5
| 00247 | 01:00 | 02:01.6 | 28.3 | 156 | 164 | 08.7 | #6
| 00241 | 01:01 | 02:06.4 | 29.2 | 152 | 164 | 08.1 | #7 headwind
| 00241 | 01:00 | 02:04.7 | 29.2 | 158 | 168 | 08.2 | #8
| 00234 | 00:59 | 02:05.9 | 28.7 | 160 | 168 | 08.3 | #9
| 00238 | 01:00 | 02:05.9 | 28.7 | 163 | 171 | 08.3 | #10
| 00238 | 01:01 | 02:08.4 | 28.9 | 161 | 169 | 08.1 | #11
| 00234 | 01:01 | 02:10.4 | 27.7 | 160 | 167 | 08.3 | #12
| 00249 | 00:59 | 01:58.4 | 29.2 | 157 | 166 | 08.7 | #13 tailwind
| 00250 | 01:00 | 01:59.8 | 29.1 | 160 | 168 | 08.6 | #14
| 00255 | 01:00 | 01:57.6 | 29.2 | 163 | 171 | 08.7 | #15
| 00260 | 01:01 | 01:57.5 | 29.3 | 158 | 169 | 08.7 | #16
| 00251 | 00:59 | 01:57.6 | 28.9 | 162 | 171 | 08.8 | #17 found stroke length
| 00255 | 01:00 | 01:57.6 | 29.4 | 163 | 173 | 08.7 | #18
| 00232 | 01:00 | 02:09.1 | 28.5 | 159 | 167 | 08.2 | #19 headwind & turn
| 00250 | 01:01 | 02:02.2 | 30.7 | 168 | 176 | 08.0 | #20
| 02143 | 12:35 | 02:56.2 | 18.8 | 142 | 176 | 09.1 | cooldown
Short summary:
dist_____|time_____|_pace___|_HR__|_SPM__|_DPS|comment
1934_____|_11:44____|_3:02.0|123|18.6|8.9|warmup
4950_____|_20:01____|_2:01.3|157|29.1|8.5|Main set
2143_____|_12:35____|_2:56.2|142|18.8|9.1|Cool down
3046_____|_18:59____|_3:07.0|159|19.1|8.4|rest meters
12073____|_03:19____|_2:37.3|149|21.1|9.0|_Total
According to Greg’s equation this is a Black Hole workout. I disagree. My legs strongly disagree, and my stroke length is very happy I did this workout.
Pretty graphs:
May 4 2015
Low visibility and race pace training
The week started quite interestingly. At least it made me produce some nice paces in today’s workout:
But back to the story. On Sunday evening, after we had finished watching a film on DVD, I made the mistake to check my email. I shouldn’t have done that. Why do I make the same mistake over and over?
There was an email about next week, telling me the club had signed me up for
– Masters Single
– Open category quad
– Open category eight
Damn! Looking at the program the open quad is less than 2 hours before my single race. I cannot do a full out 2k, then a full out 1k in the single a few hours later. Also, my idea of the weekend was to enjoy watching the races. Do the masters quad on Saturday, the master single on Sunday, but mainly watch my children race. Now I would be zipping up and down the race course trying to be in time for the start and I would miss all the youth action.
I did send out a few quite bitchy emails.
Things got worse.
I am usually a bit grumpy getting up at 5:30 to row at 6, but this time I was really in a foul mood. Seeing the mist on the lake didn’t really help, but at least the water would be perfectly flat.
It was even to be worse.
Arriving at the rowing club, I noticed a text message from my double partner that he was sick. The message was sent at 5:30, but my phone is on night mode so I didn’t register the message.
With my single already prepared for transport (because I will be out on business travel for the rest of the week), I had nothing to row on and would be stuck to the erg.
Eda arrived and I started discussing how he could have put me in a Men’s quad and eight without even consulting me.
Turns out it was supposed to be a Masters quad and a Masters eight, both rowed on Saturday, while my single race is on Sunday. Today they will correct the registration.
He also allowed me to row in his single Liduška, so all was good. This single is built for 95kg, so a little big, but with the flat water it wouldn’t be too much of a problem.
It was really low visibility today. Rowing on the Albano, I could see 5 buoys behind me, so that is 50m, not more. In the middle of the lake I couldn’t see any of the banks. Just rowing in white milk. There was no other traffic on the lake at this early hour, and the double and I decided to row the same workout next to each other to avoid any collisions.
The workout was 20 strokes “on”, 20 strokes “off”.
In the first half, from Rokle to Sirka, I kept the stroke rate “low” (30-31spm) and tried to work on sending the boat. I think that worked out pretty well. The double was slightly faster than I but in the 20 strokes they never gained more than 1 boat length. I used the 20 stroke breaks to get back next to them.
Turning, and some rest. Now, I thought, they will let the dogs out.
And they did. But I had positioned myself half a boat length ahead of them and was able to counter their 36-37spm bursts, first doing my own 34spm, but as the end of the workout was nearing I had to go up.
I did see 40spm on CrewNerd. And I did see a consistent 10 stroke interval of 1:44s. Happy with that. I think I had to work harder than the double but I was able to match their speed. A good training to rate up.
No detailed statistics today. We were rowing this on stroke count rather than on time and I don’t know how to get that from CrewNerd.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: lake, mist, OTW, rowing, single