sprintervals

Dec 8 2017

Job’s tidings

Tough day at work. Some bad news that sucked the last bit of energy out of me. I had a two hour gap between lunch and a call with a colleague in Washington, so I drove home through the rain and sat on the erg.

I had optimistically planned a sprinterval workout and decided to do it. There was definitely a HD risk, but I feared that swapping this one for a steady state session would be a recipe for boredom, frustration, which also would lead to the undesired HD.

So I decided to do a 3km warming up and then the workout, doing at least 15 intervals but aiming for 20. I dialed up the following sufficiently dark and monotonous sound track on SoundCloud. Dark and monotonous but I like to row to it:

I decided to row the intervals at 2k PB speed and focus on technique. That turned out to be a good choice. I was focusing on pulling a relaxed, gentle stroke at 29 SPM, sitting in a strong position from half way the recovery, then just sliding towards the catch, and hang on the handle during the first half of the leg drive. When I do this correctly, it feels like I get 2 splits for free. (Which reminds me of Ranger, the infamous erg blogger back in the days of Concept2.co.uk.)

Every fifth interval is supposed to be a max out, just to make sure that I was doing the others in a controlled way.

First fifteen intervals went by without any incidents, and then it was just a question of hanging on, and emptying the tank in interval #20. Followed by a 2km cooling down.

A quick shower and on to my calls. An unexpectedly good training. Made my day.

By sanderroosendaal • rowing • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, rowing, sprintervals, training

Aug 28 2017

Monday – Speed work in the double

A short training in the evening. When I made it to the rowing club after work, Romana had already rigged the boat and cleaned it after transport.

Going into the taper for Bled, I wanted this one to be an intensive but short training. I chose my beloved 45″/R75″ format. I personally think our boat moving skills are good, but Romana is unsure about some of the technique changes I have made. Due to rowing with the power meter and analyzing the metrics that the Oarlock has revealed, I have been making gradual changes in my technique, and the issue is that Romana hasn’t changed with them, as she was not rowing for a few weeks in June/July due to back issues.

After a 2k warming up with some 10 stroke bursts, we did 6 intervals. After the fourth one we had to do a quick turn because there was too much traffic ahead. Paddle boards, wind surfing, sail boats, and a pair from the other rowing club, who are also preparing for Bled. Actually, that ladies’ pair was rowing in the wrong direction, against the traffic pattern. I did point that out to them after we had completed our intervals. Told them a crash would have damaged two boats and ruined our plans for the World Masters Regatta.

Here is the summary:
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|-Pwr-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00200| 00:45 |01:52.5| 33.3| 000 | 140 | 166 | 8.0 02|00209| 00:45 |01:47.6| 33.3| 000 | 164 | 175 | 8.4 03|00206| 00:45 |01:49.2| 34.7| 000 | 162 | 173 | 7.9 04|00211| 00:45 |01:46.6| 33.3| 000 | 165 | 174 | 8.4 05|00189| 00:45 |01:59.0| 32.0| 000 | 168 | 176 | 7.9 06|00195| 00:45 |01:55.3| 33.3| 000 | 165 | 176 | 7.8 Workout Summary --|01210| 04:30 | 1:51.5| 33.3| 000 | 161 | 176 | 8.1

After my “friendly” chat about the traffic pattern, we turned around and rowed a “500m” against the pair. Actually, we were leading by several boat lengths after about 400m when Romana had enough of constantly turning around to check the position of paddle boarders, pedalos, sailing boats, and wind surfers, and we continued to row slowly.

I had put the Quiske sensor on Romana’s scull. So here are some charts, from all the 45″ intervals as well as the 500m.

When I put the sensor on the scull, Romana joked that she hoped that I wouldn’t remove her from the selection based on her rowing data. Of course, I praised her great rowing style. (And I don’t think there is anything wrong with these curves.)

What is interesting is to compare the scull horizontal/vertical angles of a stroke between the single and the mixed double. I don’t realize it any more, but we do row a shorter stroke, as Romana is a bit shorter than I am. And here are the data:

The outlier curve is me in the single.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: ANC, double, lake, OTW, rowing, sprintervals, training

Aug 6 2017

Saturday: Sprintervals in the double – minus one GoPro camera

Friday

Another heat wave day. I decided to cross train, cycle to work (15km) and, after only half a day of work, cycle home (15km), which was a good endurance workout in the heat. I took the afternoon off and did some work around the house, helped by my son Dominik.

I didn’t know the route through the city center is shorter:

Saturday

We drove to Pardubice, where we celebrated my youngest son’s eleventh birthday at my mother-in-law’s place. Big lunch. Then coffee with birthday cake. Then unwrapping of gifts, followed by a refreshing hour of splashing in the pool.

At 5pm, my brother-in-law Tomas and I, as well as my daughter Lenka and her boyfriend took off to the University rowing center in Pardubice (where Tomas is coaching). Tomas and I took a double, and Lenka and Vasek would row a quad with two Pardubice student girls.

I fitted the double out with my GoPro camera, because I wanted to film this workout.

Then we were busy getting the girls (+ one boy) out on the water, and in the hassle I forgot to put on my heart rate belt. I only noticed that after the row.

I also forgot to record the cooling down on the SpeedCoach (because I was pretty exhausted by the time we started the cooling down). So for the entire row, I only have the Garmin Forerunner recording:

The workout was great. The only minus was that we got terribly waked three times by a waterskier. Normally water skiing happens on a lake not far from Pardubice, but this guy decided it was a good idea to do water skiing.

I also noted that Stand-Up Paddle boarding has reached Pardubice. There was a SUP rental station 500m upstream from the rowing club, so there we would row through about 15 paddle boarding beginners. Exciting!

One of the wakes must have washed my GoPro off our front deck. We ended the row without camera. It’s a pity I don’t have the footage, because it was a good workout and we wanted to look at some technical flaws. I am not too depressed about losing the camera. I was a very early adopter of the GoPro, so I am due for an upgrade! 😉

The workout was 2x(8×45″/1:15″)/5min. The 8 intervals were chosen to fit nicely into the 4km stretch of river that we rowed on. It was an interesting experience. There were intervals where Tomas was perfectly in sync with my rhythm, and there we hit 35spm easily with good pace. But about half of the intervals were “miss”. We were slightly out of sync, which means that the boat suddenly feels heavy, you have difficulty getting the stroke rate up, and about 20 seconds into the interval you feel the lactate rush to your legs.

Work Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|-Pwr-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00206| 00:45 |01:49.2| 32.0| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.6 02|00222| 00:45 |01:41.3| 33.3| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.9 03|00217| 00:45 |01:43.6| 33.3| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.7 04|00226| 00:45 |01:39.5| 36.0| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.4 05|00210| 00:45 |01:47.1| 33.3| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.4 06|00218| 00:45 |01:43.2| 33.3| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.7 07|00215| 00:45 |01:44.6| 33.3| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.6 08|00219| 00:45 |01:42.7| 34.7| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.4 09|00205| 00:45 |01:49.7| 32.0| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.5 10|00198| 00:45 |01:53.6| 32.0| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.2 11|00204| 00:45 |01:50.2| 33.3| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.2 12|00201| 00:45 |01:51.9| 34.7| 000 | 000 | 000 | 7.7 13|00183| 00:45 |02:2.9| 30.7| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.0 14|00189| 00:45 |01:59.0| 32.0| 000 | 000 | 000 | 7.9 15|00220| 00:45 |01:42.2| 36.0| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.1 16|00227| 00:45 |01:39.1| 36.0| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.4 Workout Summary --|03360| 12:00 | 1:47.1| 33.5| 000 | 000 | 000 | 8.4

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 4 • Tags: ANC, ANC training, double, river, rowing, sprintervals, training

Jun 24 2017

Saturday: Sprintervals

This was supposed to be a heavy week, but I have the feeling that the weeks of business travel and some stressful work issues are taking their toll. I did no exercise on Friday. Partly because I was moderating a full day workshop on strategy, and partly because I needed some rest. Well, if you can’t do volume, you have to make sure there is some intensity. And that was the plan for today.

Meanwhile in Prague, my son Dominik rowed a 1k race in 4:25, coming last in his heat. In two of the four heats, he would have been third and qualified for the semifinals of his National Championships (for 12 year olds).

This morning, we decided to row at 8am. A bit earlier than usually on Saturday, but necessary with this hot weather. The water was great. Mirror flat. A good day to work on race pace and above by doing sprintervals.

I decided for 45 sec sprints, long enough to get into a rhythm and feel how the boat moves, long enough to correct some errors, but short enough to be manageable. I also decided on 1:15min rest, long enough to make sure I would do each interval with maximum focus. A five minute break at the turning points, and you have a 3x(6×45″/1:15)/5′ workout. I also decided to row this at 30/32/34/36/34/32 spm, to make it more interesting.

Work Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00191| 00:45 |01:57.8| 29.3| 152 | 168 | 8.7 02|00193| 00:45 |01:56.5| 32.0| 168 | 176 | 8.0 03|00199| 00:45 |01:53.0| 33.3| 171 | 180 | 8.0 04|00202| 00:45 |01:51.3| 34.7| 173 | 182 | 7.8 05|00199| 00:45 |01:53.0| 32.0| 173 | 181 | 8.3 06|00195| 00:45 |01:55.3| 32.0| 166 | 177 | 8.1 07|00189| 00:45 |01:59.0| 30.7| 159 | 170 | 8.2 - wake 08|00196| 00:45 |01:54.7| 33.3| 170 | 178 | 7.8 09|00202| 00:45 |01:51.3| 34.7| 172 | 179 | 7.8 10|00207| 00:45 |01:48.6| 36.0| 173 | 181 | 7.7 11|00196| 00:45 |01:54.7| 33.3| 175 | 181 | 7.8 12|00187| 00:45 |02:00.3| 32.0| 173 | 177 | 7.8 13|00190| 00:45 |01:58.4| 30.7| 157 | 168 | 8.3 14|00193| 00:45 |01:56.5| 32.0| 169 | 177 | 8.0 15|00196| 00:45 |01:54.7| 33.3| 171 | 178 | 7.8 16|00200| 00:45 |01:52.5| 36.0| 176 | 182 | 7.4 17|00202| 00:45 |01:51.3| 34.7| 172 | 182 | 7.8 18|00196| 00:45 |01:54.7| 32.0| 171 | 179 | 8.2 Workout Summary --|03533| 13:30 | 1:54.6| 32.9| 169 | 182 | 8.0

In the first series of 6, I rowed a bit too much on power. I corrected that in the second series. I got waked in the first sprint of the second series, but for the rest it was great. Tapping down was good today and reaching high stroke rates was thus very easy.

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

May 25 2017

A bunch of hard 250m intervals

The wind was strong and the water was very choppy, but I didn’t want to shy away from rowing high stroke rates in the chop. You never know what the conditions will be on race day.

The official training plan (from our club’s head coach) asked for 2x(4x250m/250m)/5min. I decided that I would do three sets of four. The prescribed stroke rate was “Race SPM+2”, and I decided that that would be 34spm. I wanted to row each 250m as the respective 250m segment in a 1000m race, so the first one from a standing start and the final one with a desparate push to the finish line. Race simulation on a chilly and rainy Thursday morning. I had the entire choppy surface of the lake for myself.

Pushed off the dock and rowed to the end of “Rokle”, where the water was a bit flatter. After the row, I discovered that I had not switched on the SpeedCoach for this 2.5 km of warming up. This always upsets me a bit. 2500m of unrecorded rowing!

On the SpeedCoach, I programmed the workout as 8x250m with no rest. When I got ready to start, I noticed that I had already moved 3 meters and the clock was ticking. Must have been the wind. So I set off and rowed. The final 100m of the first 250m is in a slight turn to starboard, so I was recording lower power on my (starboard) Empower oarlock.

This first set was done with tailwind. I forgot to focus on anything, except the final sprint in the fourth interval.

Workout Summary - media/20170525-081041-Sanders SpeedCoach 20170525 0734amo.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|02015|09:13.0|02:17.3|243.0|27.5|166.5|182.0|07.9 W-|01007|03:47.0|01:52.8|325.3|32.8|169.6|182.0|08.1 R-|01009|05:26.0|02:41.9|149.0|21.5|163.3|182.0|09.2 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|00257|01:03.5|02:03.4|331.8|32.4|153.9|176.0|07.5 01|00250|00:54.6|01:49.2|324.7|32.2|173.6|179.0|08.5 02|00250|00:55.1|01:50.2|322.9|33.3|175.3|179.0|08.2 03|00250|00:54.1|01:48.2|320.7|33.3|178.0|182.0|08.3

The second set of intervals was in headwind. After the first set, I noticed a ship steaming towards Rokle, so I decided to do the first two intervals in front of our rowing club. Worse chop and stronger wind, but no need to be on the alert for potential collisions. One of my club mates made a very wise remark yesterday: “The more tired you get, the more important it is to keep the technique perfect.” It is true, when the drive force starts to diminish, you get tired, your posture gets a little less strong, and the decline in boat speed keeps increasing.

Workout Summary - media/20170525-081203-Sanders SpeedCoach 20170525 0747amo.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|02000|10:42.0|02:40.7|226.6|26.7|168.3|183.0|07.0 W-|01000|04:09.0|02:04.6|317.0|32.8|171.4|183.0|07.3 R-|01000|06:34.0|03:17.0|129.2|20.2|164.9|183.0|08.5 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|00250|01:05.3|02:10.6|332.1|32.7|158.3|178.0|07.0 01|00250|01:01.9|02:03.8|320.2|32.2|175.1|181.0|07.5 02|00250|01:00.7|02:01.4|315.0|32.8|176.9|183.0|07.5 03|00250|01:01.4|02:02.8|299.9|33.5|176.0|182.0|07.3

The final set of intervals was in tailwind. I started them at the same point as the first interval. After the second set of intervals I was of course tired, but I judged that I should be able to finish another set.

Workout Summary - media/20170525-081256-Sanders SpeedCoach 20170525 0801amo.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|02000|09:31.0|02:22.9|219.0|27.6|167.3|180.0|07.6 W-|01000|03:44.0|01:52.1|307.5|33.8|169.8|180.0|07.9 R-|01001|05:47.0|02:53.7|120.6|20.8|165.0|180.0|08.8 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|00250|00:56.5|01:53.0|320.9|34.7|156.7|174.0|07.6 01|00250|00:56.1|01:52.2|310.6|33.0|174.8|179.0|08.1 02|00250|00:56.1|01:52.2|295.6|33.8|173.0|177.0|07.9 03|00250|00:55.5|01:51.0|302.9|33.5|174.8|180.0|08.1

I finished the workout with a 2 km paddle in the most choppy part of the lake.

All in all it was a good workout. I was happy that I managed to get the stroke rate up (at the cost of a slight reduction in finish angle, I am afraid). It was hard work to stay technically together in the windy and choppy conditions, and it was also hard work get the power output in the desired range.

I am trying to get in another workout at the end of the day. I will spend the coming weekend in Racice (where I did the training camp in the spring) to attend (not compete, of course) the European Rowing Championships, so I need to get my training load in before Saturday.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: chop, lake, OTW, rowing, single, sprintervals, training

Mar 21 2017

Račice day 2 – Sprintervals

Alarm clock at 5:30, pushing off the dock at 6:00. With the jet lag and everything I had expected this to be very hard, but I hopped out of bed with no problem. Then I had the canal for myself and mirror flat water. Heaven!

The session was Nx30″/60″ with N being the number of intervals that fit into three straight 2k segments. In the end N turned out to be 21, if I count correctly.

On purpose, the breaks were long enough to allow me to focus on form, rather than going into workout survival mode. I think that paid off. As the intervals progressed, I got back that boat feeling (that one so successfully destroys when stuck to the static erg) and was able to see some nice pace numbers (1:48 was the lowest split I saw).

A slight adjustment in the foot stretcher. I think I am where I want to be now.

Here are the pie charts:

I was curious to see the technique metrics (slip, wash, effective length vs total length, etc) for this first time in the season I have consistently worked above 30spm on the water.

I think the slip and wash numbers look pretty good. I am wondering whether the numbers given by NK in their guidance are for race pace, because I get higher numbers for the paddling and steady state. Paddling between the intervals, both stroke length and effective stroke lengths are shorter, but this was just me paddling really easy. In most of the graphs above, I have selected only the “work” strokes. Here is the drive length graph for all strokes:

After the workout, I drove to the P+R just north of Prague and took the metro to our office on the other side of the city. It took me more than 90 minutes door to door, but the 45 minutes on the metro were usable for reading and working, so not much time lost.

Tomorrow: Steady state, again in the early hours. It will be just me, mirror flat water, and birds singing in the forests around the canal.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: OTW, rowing, single, sprintervals, training

Mar 11 2017

Friday – 18x45sec – and fusion work

In the morning I hit the road early and drove to Prague. On the D1 route through the Czech-Moravian highlands I was surprised by two pretty heavy snowstorms, but I arrived (unexpectedly) on time, because there were hardly any traffic jams into the city.

Had a few meetings in our Prague office, then drove to Andel for a lunch with a few rowers interested in rowsandall.com. It was a very positive meeting, and perhaps some nice side projects result from it. It’s encouraging to see that people see the value of the little toolset I have built in the past year.

This was the blog post on the day I started to look at some Python code in an email from Greg. On March 17th, he had written. “Hey, check this out. I made a python post processor for Painsled stroke files. Still working on the time formats. Thought you’d be interested.”

Well, yes I was interested.

Currently I am working on Data Fusion. I need this because on my rows at the rowing club, I am working with Concept2 ergs with the older PM3 monitor. I have no heart rate dongle for that, so the idea is to capture the PM data with one app and record heart rate with another app. Then fuse the data, which means that I add the heart rate data to the PM data into a new workout. It sounds very simple, but there is some time alignment and interpolation involved. Fortunately, it is easy to get Python and its Pandas package to do this to your data.

Here is one successfully fused steady state workout (3×20 minutes):

Pretty cool stuff.

I did a sprinterval workout yesterday, after an uneventful drive back to Brno. I went to the rowing club and dialed up 45 seconds “on” vs 1:15 “off”. Unfortunately, Painsled didn’t do a very good job at recording the workout. It didn’t record the real power and pace in the “off” sections. Also, I need to replace the battery in my Wahoo heart rate belt. It is showing some weird value swings. Hope it is just the battery.

Here is the resulting plot (after data fusion):

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 3 • Tags: erg, OTE, rowing, sprintervals, training

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