May 19 2016
Good sprintervals in the eight, and a few words about coxing
We had a very good outing in the eight. The head coach accompanied us during the training and made us do a 4km long warming up, including technical drills. This really made the boat come together. After that it was time for the 15 stroke on / 10 stroke off training (2x3km).
Timing is everything. When we had the timing right, there were hints of boat speed. 🙂
The first 30 minutes were warming up. I had the feeling we were doing higher rates than the 32spm that the plot shows. Still, I felt surprisingly comfortable on stroke side (not my preferred side), and the coach’s instructions were good and helpful. The rowing stroke is subtly different than the sculling stroke. Actually, for a sculler it feels as much less subtle but I guess there are different subtleties. One of the things I need to pay attention to (even more than in sculling) is to first push on the legs and then use the back swing to help the arms. Otherwise, the blades pop out of the water, the boat stops accelerating, and suddenly everything become much more difficult.
We had a new cox, the son of one of the rowers. I think he will be good at it, but of course today he made the classical beginner’s mistakes. Too much steering (oversteering) and not enough talking. Can’t blame him. It must be scary for a 16 year old to be suddenly in charge of 8 old men. Here’s the result:
If you think that’s not so bad, compare it with my trajectory in the single:
As said, he will eventually learn it. 🙂
Tomorrow a long racing weekend will start. First, on Friday, there is the CEFTA, or the “Rowing Regatta of the Olympic Hopes” as it is called with a beautiful English name. This regatta is for 15 and 16 year olds, from former Communist Eastern European countries only. The regatta used to be organized under communism, and after the fall of the iron curtain it just continued under a different name. The location is different every year, but this year it will be in Brno.
Then on Saturday and Sunday there is the Brno International Youth Regatta, an annual event on our lake for rowers in the 15/16 and 17/18 year old categories. My daughter Lenka will row in a quad.
So while we were out on the water about three trailers, two clubs from Prague and a trailer from Poland (I believe) arrived and the club was busy with youth. Also the lake was full of young rowing teams. Nice atmosphere.
In other news, I received an email from David at Concept2. He will check what I am sending to the Concept2 Development logbook server and when he finds it ok, we will migrate rowsandall.com to the real thing! Exciting!
He also lifted the data limitation on the Concept2 logbook server, so we can now upload each and every stroke, up to 9 hours of rowing. Exciting. It will be a challenge to do a row which exceeds the Concept2 data limit!
Jun 17 2016
Travel = Bad Training
Wednesday, Thursday
I wanted to go running but I didn’t manage to. On Wednesday I woke up with a headache and feeling an upcoming cold, as well as tired from the long day at the conference the day before, which ended with a welcome cocktail. I remained in bed long enough to pass the last moment to get up and get a decent training in before having to go to the venue.
Same thing on Thursday. Then it was even harder, because this was the morning after the VIP dinner. I left very early (some were still sending pictures to social media at 4am … not really pictures you want to spread by the way, but who am I to comment), but still reached bed way after midnight.
A conference is hard work. There were fun parts too:
Being back in Amsterdam was fun as well. Even though I didn’t have time to visit my family, being back in the place where I was born and spent a large part of my adolescent years was fun. Nostalgic fun.
So a lot of eating and drinking, socializing, talking, explaining, listening, etc. The good thing was that the temperatures in the auditorium were so high that my suit doubled as a wearable sauna and I actually lost weight during these few days. :-/
Friday
So today I was going to do my fun OTW training, 16×45″/60″R at 1000m race pace.
It wasn’t to be. The wind was so strong I didn’t even have to drive to the lake. No way I would be able to row a decent workout on the water.
So back to the erg.
Not fun. I did a 2k warming up, then dialed up a 45″/60″ rest workout and started doing it. I do these workouts at 1k pace, which means just under 1:40/500m. Every fourth interval I go full out to prove that the 1k pace is slower than max. Slow down if the “full out” interval turns out not to be faster than the last few intervals. I guess my explanation is confusing … please comment if you don’t get it but are interested to know.
After 8 intervals I comforted myself with the thought of being half way.
Then in the 9th interval I handed down. Just like that.
My “inner coach” (see this comment) talked to me during the rest period but couldn’t convince me to get rowing and finish the workout.
So I dialed up a 4k and rowed that one out, starting at 2:00 pace and slowly slowing down:
Tomorrow: 4x1k on the water and I should really video it.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, sprintervals, training