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Aug 1 2019

The EURow Regatta in Linz, Austria

Friday

On Friday, July 26, we drove our trailer to Ottensheim near Linz. That’s a very easy 3.5 to 4 hour drive, down to Vienna and then basically following the Danube upstream, passing beautiful Melk and other nice places.

Romana and I parked the trailer on the race venue, claimed rack space by putting our boats on it, and then drove back to Linz to find our accomodation.

The regatta course in Ottensheim – photo by Natascha Kral

We had a small 1 room apartment about 2km east of the center of the town. It was past 7pm when we wanted to get something to eat, so I pulled out my phone and looked for the nearest place on Foursquare. This turned out to be some place with good reviews, about 700m of walking in the southeast direction.

That turned out to be walking 1500m, because of some construction sites blocking the shortest route. And when we arrived there, in the middle of an industrial area, the place was closed for the summer.

So I thought we should take a taxi to the city center and eat there. Well, there’s no Uber in Linz, and before I had figured out the phone numbers of a classical taxi service, we had a better idea. There was a big hotel close to our apartment, on the bank of the Danube. Why not have a dinner in the hotel restaurant? That worked out, but we ate later than planned, and we got a 3km hike as our exercise of the day.

Later, we found a piece of paper in our apartment, listing places to eat including opening times.

Saturday

Romana dropped me off at the regatta course in the morning, and then drove to lake Lipno on the Czech side of the border to pick up our son Robin, who had spent a week at a sailing summer camp.

I took care of my single. Then I had a coffee with Dave and Daniela who represent Wintech, Concept2 and Nielsen-Kellerman in the Czech Republic, to tie out some details about the September camp.

Then it was time to get ready to race.

The EURow regatta (I don’t like the name, by the way) is a revamped Austrian Masters Nationals. It’s open for crews from other nations, and they are marketing it as a EU wide regatta, sort of like Euromasters in Munich. As it is a new or re-branded event, and it is held on the same course as the World Rowing Masters Regatta (WRMR) in 2020, Romana and I (and a few other Czech Masters) thought it was a good idea to check out this regatta. My other motivation was that I have done very little racing in the single, in this season, and I know I need some race experience as a preparation for this year’s WRMR. The good masters rowers in Austria are fast enough to be a good trial. One always performs differently in racing conditions than in a training.

The format of the regatta was heats on Saturday (but the heat winner did get a medal) and finals on Sunday (with medals for the first three). As the Masters C 1x had only 6 participants, Saturday was a race for which lane you race in on Sunday.

So how did the race go? It was ideal weather, almost no wind, flat water, fixed start pontoons and I didn’t know 4 of my 5 opponents. So it was an ideal practice race. The only opponent I knew was Mr Helbig. Mr and Mrs Helbig are usually a few seconds faster than Romana and I in the mixed 2x, but I never raced him directly in the single. Also, I didn’t check his online results, but somehow was expecting him to be roughly as fast as I.

I had a great start. Some people were ahead of me and some were behind, including Mr Helbig. Based on my Critical Power curve of last season and recent trainings, I was aiming for around 315 to 325 Watts. When I took a first glance at the SpeedCoach, about 200m into the race, I was going at 350W. I decided to let that gradually drift down while keeping the stroke rate at 32, then wind up in the second half.

I succeeded beyond my expectations. I was able to hold the power around the 340W range.

Nobody passed me and I didn’t pass anyone else, although I tried hard to catch up with the guy rowing ahead of me. I finished third. As you can see from the picture, I was happy with the result.

Look, I had the most consistent splits from the first to second 500m of all competitors!

The picture also gives a really good impression of the nice flat water. According to the official results I finished third (no surprise) in a time of 3:48.

With that race a success, we spent the afternoon exploring the old town of Linz.

In the evening, I uploaded the race’s data to the rowsandall.com site. As expected, this did shift my Critical Power curve by about 25W around the four minute benchmark. Yay! I guess I have to move my target for the upcoming regattas.

We had dinner in the hotel restaurant again. This time, we walked straight to it, instead of doing a 3km hike.

Sunday

So Sunday would be a repetition of Saturday’s program, but two hours earlier (and divided in “big” and “small” finals for those disciplines that had more than 7 competitors). And then, at the end of the afternoon, there would be mixed racing. Exciting!

My first race was at noon, so in the morning we took care of the double, had a coffee, watched some races, talked to friends. Had a really good time.

Then it was time to prepare for my race in the single. The weather was virtually the same as on Saturday, and I was up against the same opponents. However, I considered Saturday’s race a close result (except for the winner, perhaps), so everything was open again.

This time I was racing in lane 2. The first 200m seemed to be a repetition of Saturday (more about that later), with Mr Humbek leading, followed by Mr Hettler, and me rowing in third place. The difference was that my new target was 350W. When we were approaching the 500m mark, I thought I should try and pass Mr Hettler. I tried for 10 strokes, but was unable to get the power up, and I didn’t really close the gap.

As a consequence, I entered the third 250m interval with everything falling apart at the same time. The lactate burn peaked. The guy rowing behind me charged and was threatening to row through me. It was all very unpleasant, and all I could think of was somehow make it to the 750m without losing the bronze medal position. I did succeed in that, and then it was just a question of counting strokes until the finish line. Almost the same result as Saturday:

Here are the charts:

The orange is Saturday’s race. Green is Sunday. You can see that I pushed harder in the first 250m, but I paid for that in the third 250m. The average power was 5W higher on Sunday (+1%) but the time was 2 seconds slower (-1%). I thought the weather was identical, but seeing that everybody got a bit slower on Sunday, there may have been more of a headwind then.

Here’s pace. See the dramatic slowdown in the third 250m:

And here’s stroke rate:

I also studied the other metrics (stroke length, slip, wash, work per stroke) but they were nearly identical between Saturday and Sunday. Well, in WpS you can see the dip as well:

Here is me rowing (in the final 50m):

And here is the victory ceremony:

And a picture of Romana and me between my 1x race and our mix 2x race, watching other races:

And now it was time to prepare for the mixed double. Always a huge event. Romana and I hadn’t raced since Euromasters in July 2018. We also knew that Ostrava was keen on beating us, and we know that the Helbig family has historically rowed 2 to 5 seconds faster than we. We didn’t know any of the other crews.

We had a good start and by 500m we were in second position, but not by much. The Helbigs and Ostrava were a second behind us.

We kept pulling strong and we were rowing really well. Passing the 500m mark, I was expecting the other crews to fall behind, but that didn’t happen. It was one of those mixed double finals again. With 250m to go I upped the stroke rate to 38 (and higher), but Michael Helbig started his engine and the Helbigs pushed for an amazing sprint. In the heat of the race, we were also passed by Ostrava. Fourth place.

I guess we were a bit disappointed. However, we really had no idea whether we would be a fast or a slow crew, and looking at the times, and how close we were to the Helbigs, you can say that we are as strong as in 2017 and 2018. Now let’s work hard to gain a few seconds before the WRMR.

Then it was time to make a group photo with all the Czech participants:

We loaded the trailer and drove home. The last 50km was driving through a very heavy thunderstorm (at an average speed of 60 km per hour) and we were home by 10pm.

Oh, and just for fun, a map of my 1x race from rowsandall.com. It’s fun to add the water navigation overlay when we were so close to a big river.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: 1x, 2x, mix, OTW, race, racing, rowing, sprint

Jul 13 2019

Back on the sliding seat again

On Sunday, June 30th, Kazi and I rowed a fun fartlek style workout in the double.

Then, on Monday, we drove off to Romana’s family cottage in the Giant Mountains, Czech Republic, where we were joined by my sister, her two sons, and a close friend.

And that was the start of a near two week intermezzo of unstructured cross training, which consisted mainly of hiking, but also involved sawing, hauling logs, building camp fires, and other pleasant mountain activities.

We did a five day trek through the mountains, doing an average of 6 hours of hiking a day.

Some nice mountain huts. Some unexpected encounters:

And of course we had to cherry-pick:

Thursday was travel day and on Friday, I had my first outing in the single after this good break.

The weather was funny. It was clouded and there were intense rain showers, which lasted about 10 to 20 seconds. I got totally wet, but it wasn’t unpleasant, because the air temperature was still around 22 degrees.

The workout was just paddling and a few pieces to establish a baseline, going into the last 8 weeks of preparing for the World Rowing Masters Regatta. After a few warming up sequences and practice starts, I did the following pieces:

Trying to hold 330W for as long as possible. I basically broke down at the first bite of lactate pain.
A four minute piece, evenly paced, maximum Watts
A full out one minute piece

The first piece is slightly above what I think I can hold for a 1k race.

This was rowed into a slight head / cross wind.

Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|00588|02:16.2|01:55.7|335.7|31.7|000.0|0.0|08.2

I originally wanted to continue pushing until the average power (on the NK SpeedCoach) showed 5W below the target, but somehow, after the vacation, I wasn’t prepared for the lactate rush and I just stopped rowing. Well, 588 meters. It’s a baseline, and I think pushing this out to something closer to 1000 meters is realistic.

I did a 3000 meter paddle to recover, then started a 4 minute piece. The goal of this one was to row it flat pace (power) but max out over four minutes. I was careful this time and chose 300W as the target.

Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00981|03:50.6|01:57.6|298.9|29.5|000.0|0.0|08.6

Again, this was done from a race start.

I was surprised by how low I could rate but decided not to bother about stroke rate. It turns out I was at 600 J Work per Stroke, which is above what I am aiming for. Need to work on lightening up.

The third piece was a full out minute, from a standing start, which I did after a 2.5k paddle.

Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|00254|00:57.0|01:52.4|395.7|35.7|000.0|0.0|07.5

I have no heart rate data, because I forgot to pack my heart rate band. So why am I doing all this? Because, using the Critical Power plot functionality of rowsandall.com, I can use those three pieces to get a feeling for where I stand in terms of 1k fitness:

The chart takes data from yesterday’s pieces, plus a few longer pieces that I did in the fall and this spring. It doesn’t contain sprint data from the 2018 season.

Here’s a close-up:

This section of the CP curve starts at one minute and ends at five minutes. I expect the sprint races to take between 3:40 minutes and 4 minutes, depending on the weather conditions. The green curve is a conservative estimate and gives guidance for training pieces, while the red curve indicates where I should be for a regatta .

So the goal for the coming 8 weeks is clear.

Shift the red curve to the right and up.

The beauty of using the CP chart is that you can use different pieces, and you’re independent of the wind strength. I could do a full out 1k test, or I could repeat the pieces I did yesterday (what I intend to do) or I could use data from interval sessions.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: CP chart, critical power, OTW, rowing, single, sprint, training, vacation

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Jul 19 2018

More Close Finishing – Trebon Czech Masters Regatta Day 2

There are a few people missing on this photo, taken on our Friday evening get together in Trebon, but this group of members of CVK Brno, plus a few “affiliates” who have a license to row with us, form the core of the group that was responsible for the largest number of starts on this big regatta.

One of the many Mix 8+ races being started (photo Natascha Kral)

Is it a big regatta? Yes. We are not aware of it any more, but our friends from Ruderverein Donaubund (Vienna) do admiringly remark on their blog that this is one of the few regattas in the world where it is taken for normal that there are 17 entries in the Mixed 8+ category. Similarly, in the Men’s Single category, there were 53 entries. Mixed 2x had 39 entries. And the Men’s 2x had 32 entries, which brings us to my first race on Sunday.

A few hours before the race, I was sitting in the Ostrava rowing club tent with a few friends and reading them the lineup for my race. Lane 1: Kazimir & Mitas (nr 1 and 2 in my 1x race respectively). Lane 2: Novotny and Franz from Brandys. Lane 3: Prihoda and Urban from Pardubice. Lane 4: Schreiner & Helbig from Vienna/Graz. Lane 5: Kral & Milodanovic (fastest time in the single with 3:30) from Vienna. Lane 6: Cernak and Roosendaal from Ostrava/Brno. When I finished reading, it was silent for a few moments.

With an average age of 49.5 years, we were the oldest of the field. Medal candidates were in lanes 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Of all the doubles races, this seemed to be the heat with the most closely matched boats.

Because we hadn’t rowed much together this year, except for a less than ideal race at the Vienna International Regatta, Vojtech and I had done a 30 minute training with a few practice pieces in the morning. All was well.

There are never enough practice starts, so just before the race, we rowed up to the 2k start line, turned the boat and did a practice start. It turned out to be one of the top 3 starts I had ever done in a double. It was so sharp, well timed and fast that there was no chance we would produce a better start at the race, even though the Trebon lake was as flat as a mirror on this hot Sunday morning.

Turned out the race start was good. Very good. But of course not as good as that practice start.

It also turned out that all 6 boats had a pretty good start. First 200 meters and nobody was moving, except Mitas & Nedoba who were slightly in front. Then Pardubice started to lag behind a bit. With 500m to go Mitas & Nedoba were leading slightly and there were three boats chasing them, including ourselves. So we all started accelerating.

Well, all except the unfortunate Viennese double Kral & Milodanovic. It turned out Mr Kral had not completely tightened his wing rigger and it was starting to come lose, so they were limiting the power and stroke rate.

The pictures show Petr and Kazimir leading, with us behind them in lane 6. I don’t know where we were relative to to Schreiner & Helbig on lane 4. I didn’t want to look. I just kept increasing the rate, just as I had done in two races on Saturday.

We ended up rowing the entire final 150m at 40spm, trying to close the gap with Mitas & Nedoba and hopefully also pushing our bow in front of Schreiner & Helbig.

The speaker announced a win for Mitas & Nedoba, a second place for us and a third for the Vienna/Graz double. So we cheered for the winners, waited until they received their gold medals, and then landed on the medal pontoon to receive the silver medals.

Waiting for verdict (photo Natascha Kral)

At that point, the ceremony was interrupted by the jury announcing that they were studying the finish video.

A few minutes later, there was still no verdict, but they did invite the Austrian double to land on the medal pontoon as well. I wasn’t sure if that was a bad sign for us, but somehow I was expecting my luck to be balanced, so after the 0.09 sec lead in the 4x on Saturday and our 0.5 second win in the mixed double, would this be our turn to be 0.1 second behind them?

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Turns out that it was a dead heat.

The official results show it clearly. Both boats were exactly 2.79 seconds behind the winners, and both boats would receive the silver medal. According to the regatta speaker, we were the first to achieve this since 1966. I bet the video system wasn’t as advanced back in 1966.

What a race! We had good fun with the Austrian crew receiving our medals. And then we had to row back to the club fast, because Vojtech was also rowing a double with a 82 year old local guy, the oldest participant to the regatta. It was probably a great cooling down for him.

After that it was busy time for me. I hopped on the bike and rode back to our hotel, where I picked up the car to park it closer to the venue. Then I prepared the single for transport. All in very hot temperatures. Then, finally, it was time to watch the MW 4x- with Romana take a bronze medal:

My final race of the day was in the eight. There were 7 eights in the C category, so we were divided over two heats, with two B boats added to ours. In principle, we could ignore the B boats in lanes 1 and 2, and focus on beating the other C crews, but our goal was of course to pass the finish line first in this last event.

Because of back injuries and vacations, our Brno eight was rowing with four substitutes from rowing club Hodonin. We had Jan Brazda, Milan Viktora, and Kazimir Nedoba, as well as Renata Nedobova, Kazi’s wife and Milan’s daughter, coxing. She was a great coxswain by the way. With a lovely and clear voice she announced dreadful things like “power tens”, but she also gave us info on the relative position of our competitors, on top of calling the catch and finish for timing during the entire race.

We were great out of the start but one of the young B boats decided to take the lead. In the final 500m, we did catch up with them but it was not enough. We tried a final desperate scramble for the finish line, but that destroyed our rhythm entirely and probably slowed us down. Still, a gold medal for winning the C race.

It was a great weekend. Here’s the score:

Three times gold, one bronze and one silver. Not bad. And here are a few random pictures from Saturday that emerged on Facebook today, all by Natascha Kral:

Green/Yellow De Laak blades: Petr Mitas. White boat: Kazimir Nedoba. Blue blades: Me

By sanderroosendaal • 1000m, 1k, OTW, pictures, race • 0 • Tags: 1k, double, eight, masters, OTW, race, rowing, sprint

Aug 22 2017

Sunday – more racing

The weather had changed from calm to windy. A nasty crosswind.

My first race was the Masters mix 2x with Romana. We weren’t sure what to expect, but we agreed that we would row it as a test race to Bled. Row our own race.

We launched early to get a few practice starts in and to get used to the chop and the crosswind. Then it was time for our start. The locals from Trebon to our right side looked dangerous, and we were also nervous for the trainer from Lodni Sporty, the other club in Brno, who rowed with her son who was over on vacation from Norway. He looks big. Also, I am convinced that the fastest mix Masters combinations are young guys with a “average age compensating” lady. That was it. Just three boats in the C category.

Aligning boats in a strong crosswind is not an easy task. We moved all the way to the stroke side buoys, hoping that the aligning would be fast enough to prevent us from moving over to the other side of the lane and having to row the first race strokes in the buoys. We managed that, but the last boat to be aligned was ours, so Romana was busy paddling, and the boat was not set, when the starter called “GO”.

We were second out of the start. Trebon was in front by a meter. Lodni Sporty were falling behind fast. Bye bye guy from Norway.

But with a 500m race, not leading out of the start, you’ve got a problem.

Tried to solve the problem by just keeping the stroke rate high. No settle, just furious 37/38spm strokes in the chop. “Row our own race” plan went out of the window.

I think we narrowed the gap to 30 cm, but we couldn’t quite close it. Then the gap opened again, as my legs started to hurt. I was definitely not rested after Saturday’s four races. So we were second. And we were disappointed. During the paddle home I had to explain why I needed to do four races on Saturday. The “Row our own race to prepare for Bled” argument was not deemed valid any more.

We all have our ways to deal with disappointment. It was OK.

I spent an hour in our team van to write up the blog post about Saturday’s races, and then I moved over to where my brother in law Tomas had his boat trailer. I explained to him that we would probably finish last in the Men’s Open 2x race, because I was really tired. We agreed to still row the race “to prepare for Bled” and do it in a leisurely 30spm.

So around 2pm we warmed up and rowed to the start.

Six boats. All young guys … and us in lane 3. The wind was very strong in the first 500m of the race course, because at this point the lake is not shielded by the spa park trees any more. The plan was to just row and survive the first 500, then find good rhythm and row the entire 2k at 30spm.

Attention – GO. Off we went. I did the full power start and first 15 strokes thing, but the five other boats were gone by the time we were finished with that. Ok, too bad, but we wanted to row our own race anyway.

The first 500m were a struggle, but not as bad as I expected, and we managed to find a good rhythm sooner than the 500m mark.

Somewhere around the 500m mark the boat on lane 1 was reappearing in my peripheral vision. I just kept going in 30/31 spm and at this slow stroke rates I felt pretty good.

We passed that boat, and to my surprise we were now in closing distance to the boat in lane 6. “Wow, all these guys go out like crazy and then settle to a really slow middle 1k,” I thought.

We passed the double in lane 6, and to let Tomas know that I was fine, I called “catch the next one”.

By now we had 1k to go. The regular Masters distance, and we were going gently enough to not be scared by that at all. And the first three boats were not so far ahead of us.

Unfortunately, these three boats started to row away from us. We just kept going. Lane 6 was passed by lane 1 as well, and started to fall behind.

Crossing the 500m line, the lane 1 boat did a visible shift in stroke rate. In fact, in that final 500m they managed to get back a lot of the distance Tomas and I had put between them and us. In the end it boiled down to a final sprint towards the finish line. I was really tired by then, but we managed and we finished just ahead of them.

Nice!

What a great race. It’s a pity that the 2k is not the Masters distance.

About 10 seconds after that, I became extremely disappointed, seeing the dreaded word “STOP” in the middle bar of my SpeedCoach. Oh no!

I had reset the SpeedCoach at the end of our warming up row, planning to switch it to “READY” by the time we would start aligning at the start. But of course, with the cross wind and all, I forgot. This was the second time that happened this weekend.

There was a glimpse of hope when I noticed that Tomas had switched on his SpeedCoach GPS. So after the race I took it to the computer and tried to download the data. This is when I found out that Tomas doesn’t have DataPack installed. So then I wanted to use the Recall function and take photos of the screen, but the memory was full with older data. Why can’t the bloody thing just remember the most recent 100 splits, instead of filling up the memory and then just not recording any more!

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: 2k, double, OTW, race, racing, rowing, sprint

Aug 20 2017

Saturday – A storm and a storm of races

On Friday evening, we had a nice dinner at the Regent Beer Brewery, then went to our hotel to get a good night’s rest before the races.

It wasn’t to be like that. Two hours later I woke up because of the storm. It sounded like a hurricane was going over Brno, and I started to get very worried about our boats. We had them outside on the Trebon rowing club grounds. On the one hand, our boats were in a relatively shielded area, under some trees. On the other hand, our boats were under some trees!

I just listened to the sound and worried and wondered if I should go out, drive through the storm, and check the boats. But then, imagining myself under those trees, in the hurricane, … hmm. Luckily, the storm was short and the wind calmed down.

In the morning, I received a picture from my brother in law, who was sleeping in a cabin on a camping about 20 km away.

Not good. Tomas was sleeping in the cabin opposite, but there were people inside when the tree fell. Luckily, nobody got hurt, but it is a small miracle.

On to the races. Luckily, we found all our boats in good order. The first race was for my son Robin, competing in the 500m single scull in the Boys 11 category. He raced to a great second place. Unfortunately, I didn’t see his race, because my single was planned for 10 minutes later.

My first race was the Masters 1x. A full field of C rowers. On lane 1, Radek Skodik from Hodonin, a merry chap who combines horse racing with race rowing. He learned to scull a year ago, and this year he is confident enough to race the single. Me, on lane 2. On lane 3, a Mr Lacko from Roudnice. Lane 4, Tomas Zeman from Smichov Prague, bronze medal at the Masters Nationals. Lane 5, a Mr Gerhat from Prerov. On lane 6, Jan Dekanovsky from Tabor, fourth place at the Masters Nationals.

My race plan was well prepared. I consider this a training race, so the plan was to go out hard and fast, then settle to 325W exactly, and hold that to the finish line.

“Lane 2 a little forward. Lane 1 a little forward. Lane 4 back. Attention. GO!”

Well, that caught me a bit by surprise, and my first start stroke was not as planned. Luckily, I managed to correct immediately in the second stroke, and as the adrenalin was kicking in, I hammered 5 hard strokes after the start which brought me to the lead, and then another 2 sets of five hard stroke which gave me a length of lead on the field. Yep, my starts can be fast.

Shift down to target power. This is always very difficult. The risk is dropping the stroke rate too much, and actually that is exactly what happened.

I was approaching the second 250m in 30spm. I noticed, and corrected. The field crawled back a bit. I just continued to hold 325W, slightly raising stroke rate with each 100m gone. With 200m to go I didn’t like that Mr Dekanovsky was moving ahead of the field and starting to close in on me, so I pushed a bit more. I crossed the line in 3:48, three seconds before Jan Dekanovsky. Nice.

What is also nice is that this workout is moving my power-duration curve (also known as CP chart). Here are the before and after pictures. First, before:

Then, after. Check the values on the y axis.

My Silver race at the Czech Masters was 347W over 3:56 minutes. This race was 358W over 3:48 minutes. I guess the 15 hard strokes after the start made the big difference, but I tend to think these are not the ones that punish you in the second 500m.

This win was the start of a series of races. I did four races in total within a two hour time frame.

The first one was the Masters/Child combination with my son Dominik. We battled ourselves to a nice second place on the 500m, in a time of 1:52. I think it is a nice result and a great time, especially given that most of the other Masters took a 14 year old, where I was rowing with a 12 year old. It is fun to scull with Macon blades. You really have to row technical and make sure you get the blade placement right. As a result, I didn’t row this race full out.

Shortly after that, I swapped my son for a fresh family member. My brother-in-law Tomas took his place and we rowed the Masters 2x over 1000m. That was a great race, racing wise. Immediately out of the start, I am told that we were leading. I do not know, because I was busy stroking the double and looking straight back to avoid bringing the boat out of balance. Then, Zeman+Ulc from Smichov took over the lead, with Dekanovsky and his partner, who had a slower start, starting to catch up with us. At the 500m point I started to increase the pressure and we passed Zeman+Ulc. Unfortunately, so did Dekanovsky and co, and in the process they also passed us. With 250m to go I rated up and we started to catch up with Dekanovsky, but they did a great final sprint to secure their win. We were second in a time of 3:33. I consider that not bad for the neutral wind conditions. It will not be a winning time in Bled, but we should be able to beat a few crews.

The closing event of my marathon racing afternoon was a 500m double scull. Again with Tomas, but this time in the Open Men category. Because there weren’t enough boats registered to row heats, the race organizers had replaced the heats with a 500m sprint on Saturday. I was tired already and we didn’t race well. Our first 250m was great, and we were hanging off the end of the field but I even had hope that we would be able to pass the fifth placed boat. Unfortunately, we got thrown out of rhythm by a few waves and never were able to get back into it. It shows that we have not enough meters rowed together.

I have no digital record of this sprint, because I forgot to switch the SpeedCoach to recording.

So we were last, and on Sunday’s 2km I expect to finish last as well, but it will be a good training/race. We need to make meters together.

My son Dominik came third in his Boys 12 race (a 1k event) and my daughter Lenka survived the heats and qualified for the A final in the combined Juniors/Women 2x (over 2k). So Sunday will be an interesting race day.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: 1k, 500m, double, OTW, race, rowing, single, sprint

Jul 16 2017

Czech Open Masters Race Report- Saturday

Friday

We left Brno around 11am and arrived at 2pm, including a one hour lunch in the nice village of Horni Cerekev. I decided to relax and not row. Romana and I just claimed a few bost stands for our club boats, I prepared my single, and then we went for a short bike tour.

Saturday

I launched at 8am for a quick row. I had left the SpeedCoach holder at the hotel so I rowed ‘unplugged’. I rowed to the 2k start, then did 2x 30 strokes at race pace, with a 500m paddle between. Then, at the 500m line, I did a 35 stroke interval consisting of 25 race pace strokes and 10 harder ones. The theory behind this is that doing this a few hours before e race will make the transition to lactate burning easier during the race. Usually, the first race of the day hurts a lot agout 300m in, and because I had only two races on Saturday, I thought it would be good to do this. And I think it didn’t hurt.

My first race was a tough one. The Masters C single. I was up against Petr Mitas, a guy who always beats me, and a few other guys who shouldn’t be underestimated. Kazi Nedoba from Hodonin, Tomas Zeman from Prague. Six boats in total. I was super concentrated for this race. My plan was to be in front out of the start, then settle for a race pace around 325W, and start attacking whoever would be in front front of me with 500m to go.

I think I was second out of the start, but I am not sure. I try not to look. There also was a strong cross/head wind which required a lot of attention in the beginning of the race.

By the time I settled down to 34spm, I was in second position, a one third boat length ahead of the ‘pack’ and one boat length behind Petr. Petr battled on at high rate, so I rated back to 35.5 spm. That took me out of the pack but Petr had about 2 lengths on me.

With 600m to go the pack was three lengths behind me and Petr was two oengths ahead of me. When I passed the 500m mark I launched my desperate attack. Stroke rate went up to 36spm and I managed to reduce the gap with Petr to a length and a half. At this point in the race I passed to members of my club who were rowing a cooling down from their Masters A 1x. It was great to have them their cheering for me.

Unfortunately, my engine stopped producing Watts with about 250m to go. In the cross/head wind I had difficulty keeping the rate and power up. All my muscles were burning and screaming. I tried to hold the power, even ousted two or three screams. But to be honest I basically collapsed. I finished in second place, 8 seconds behind Petr and 9 seconds before the rest of the pack, where a dramatic fight for third place ended unfavorably for my friend Kazi, who came in fourth.

3:56 in head wind. Not bad. It took me along time to start breathing normally, then turn the boat. I collected my silver medal in the medal ceremony under the finish tower and started a long cooling down.

Mission failed but I guess it was mission impossible and miracles don’t exist.

4x-

In the afternoon it was time for the quad. We hadn’t rowed the quad since July 2016, at the same race exactly a year ago. This was a full field, six boats of Masters B quads. We knew Neratovice are good. They beat us two times in a row, and they have raced quad smaller races in Bohemia, winning everything.

We didn’t know the other boats.

The weather, which had been quite diverse, changing every ten minutes throughout the entire day, showed an ugly face. During the warming up we got a really strong tailwind, throwing big waves. Our practice start was a disaster.

The real start was even worse. The strong cross tailwind blew us into the next lane, the starter wouldn’t let us correct that so the only thing we could do was turn the boat at an angle that would bring us back into our lane. Sitting in stroke seat, I had to foot steer strongly to get us straight into our lane.

By the time we were done steering and ready for a tactical move, we found ourselves rowing in second position, a lengh behind. The favorites and a little over a length ahead of the rest of the field.

We didn’t really try to catch up with Neratovice. Instead, we tried to tap down clean in the very heavy chop and row long strokes. I reduced the stroke rate to a safe 33/34 spm, and we just monitored the remaining four boats behind us. My friend Kazi stroked the Hodonin quad. They managed to manoeuver themselves in third place and subsequently caught a crab with 100m to go, and they ended in fifth place. We were second in 3:17. Not a fast time but with the cross wind and the chop there wasn’t much we could do to go faster.

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By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: OTW, quad, race, race report, rowing, single, sprint

Jul 7 2017

Thursday – Sprint Sprint Sprint Sprint Sprint

Wednesday

A traditional “rest” travel day, which means sitting in a suit and a tie in a hot meeting room for eight hours, then doing the airport steeplechase (I had fast lane access today, hurray!), flying for 90 minutes, and a 2 hour drive, arriving close to midnight.

Thursday

It’s a holiday in the Czech Republic, and I slept in long, then had a long slow morning which ended around 2pm. I hacked together a prototype of a new chart, which I will explain soon, over on the analytics blog.

Around 2pm, I headed to the lake for a row. Getting to the rowing club was a challenge on this hot, sunny holiday. The road to the club is quite narrow, and when two cars meet, one of them has to stop at the nearest place that is slightly wider so the two cars can pass each other. Normally, this works pretty smooth, but this time the road was populated by people who don’t usually drive here. I am going to stereotype a bit, so apologies in advance, but I felt I was only meeting people in oversized SUVs who don’t really know how big their car really is. They were driving more than a meter from the guard rail, eyes big as tennis balls, scared to scratch their car. That made it slightly challenging to pass each other.

Anyway.

The lake was full of small boats, of course. I think the water is now actually a mix of suncream and water. Wondering if that makes the boat go faster or slower.

The session was 3x(5×30″/variable)/6min. So three sets of 5 30 second intervals, where the 30 second intervals were at 36, 38, 40, 38, and 36spm, and the rest is 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 1 minutes, 45 seconds.

With all the recreational boats, swimmers, etc, I had to chose the bearing in the direction of the least number of boats. That involved quick 180 degree turns and other course changes depending on the traffic situation.

I am happy to report that despite these challenges I was able to hit the prescribed stroke rates. This workout is not easy. You basically go at faster than 1k race pace for 30 seconds, then you have just enough rest to paddle 5 strokes, and then you go at an even faster pace. The rest after the 40spm is a bit longer, but you really need that rest. It does make you comfortable rating up when in pain.

All metrics were nicely in the usual range, so I won’t bore you with more graphs. But I will include a sneak preview of the new chart:

Work Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|-Pwr-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00141| 00:30 |01:46.3| 36.0| 402 | 158 | 173 | 7.8 - tailwind 02|00142| 00:30 |01:45.6| 38.0| 409 | 175 | 182 | 7.5 03|00148| 00:30 |01:41.3| 38.0| 325 | 175 | 182 | 7.8 04|00143| 00:30 |01:44.8| 36.0| 323 | 171 | 181 | 7.9 05|00139| 00:30 |01:47.9| 36.0| 376 | 172 | 179 | 7.7 06|00133| 00:30 |01:52.7| 34.0| 395 | 160 | 173 | 7.8 - headwind 07|00133| 00:30 |01:52.7| 36.0| 403 | 175 | 180 | 7.4 08|00140| 00:30 |01:47.1| 40.0| 430 | 176 | 183 | 7.0 09|00139| 00:30 |01:47.9| 36.0| 397 | 174 | 180 | 7.7 10|00135| 00:30 |01:51.1| 36.0| 367 | 174 | 180 | 7.5 - tailwind 11|00139| 00:30 |01:47.9| 36.0| 378 | 160 | 172 | 7.7 12|00142| 00:30 |01:45.6| 38.0| 381 | 176 | 181 | 7.5 13|00135| 00:30 |01:51.1| 40.0| 420 | 179 | 185 | 6.8 - headwind 14|00136| 00:30 |01:50.2| 38.0| 393 | 176 | 182 | 7.2 15|00127| 00:30 |01:58.1| 36.0| 344 | 176 | 180 | 7.1 Workout Summary --|02072| 07:30 | 1:48.5| 36.9| 383 | 172 | 185 | 7.5

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: OTW, rowing, single, sprint, sprint training, training

1 2 3

sprint

The EURow Regatta in Linz, Austria

Back on the sliding seat again

More Close Finishing – Trebon Czech Masters Regatta Day 2

Sunday – more racing

Saturday – A storm and a storm of races

Czech Open Masters Race Report- Saturday

Thursday – Sprint Sprint Sprint Sprint Sprint

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