steady state

ST2

Aug 25 2016

OTW session reduced to 30 minutes and some more Power Based Training considerations

I couldn’t row in the morning, and I couldn’t leave work early.

So I arrived at the rowing club around 5:30pm. It was a very hot day and the lake looked gorgeous. Colorful sails from a sailing race that was ongoing, and many many paddle boards and pedal boats and swimmers and … The paddle boarders are multiplying rapidly. I admit that I quite appreciate seeing paddleboardettes in bikinis. It is a nice sight, and I am always friendly to them.

I was also friendly to the woman who swam in front of my single when I turned, and didn’t move. She was doing a back stroke but just didn’t move anywhere. To be honest, she looked like she had smoked something, or perhaps took her medicine at the wrong time or in the wrong dose. Completely off the world. Smiling to herself, and when I asked her if she was intending to go or not, she giggled, answered:

“My psychiater has a wet rucksack!” Then she burst out in laughter and almost disappeared under the water surface.

I looked at the paddleboardettes and made the cuckoo sign. They smiled.

But why only a thirty minute row? One reason is that the lake was full with boats and I couldn’t do a decent workout. The other reason was that I had lost precious time because

  1. The wrong boats were loaded on my trailer so I had to move one single to the big trailer to make room for my single.
  2. The lock of hanger nr 4 (“IIII”) was stuck, so I had to go to the back of the hangar through some bushes, crawl through a slightly open window, avoid falling on the scull rack and then open the hangar from inside. I put some vaseline on the lock, which hopefully helps.
  3. Daughter Lenka had used the single earlier that day and forgotten to move the footboard back. As the bottom nut is not a wing nut but a normal one, I had to go to my car to get the tool to move the footstretcher
  4. I needed some time after the session to load my single on the trailer

Well, it’s freewheeling week anyway, so I just did a 6km row.

Earlier today I fixed the “2:11 pace” bug on rowsandall.com. Using the Rowing Physics module on rowsandall.com, it’s premium users can calculate equivalent erg pace from the workout data. This worked fine for faster pieces, but all the slower segments seemed to get stuck to a 2:11 equivalent erg pace. I was looking for errors in the Rowing Physics module but couldn’t find any. At the end of the day, it turned out to be an embarrassing mistake in the Rowing Data module, which called the Rowing Physics module with a stroke rate of 30spm, instead of changing that to the real stroke rate.

I fixed the bug and now I can make a power estimate of my row on rowsandall.com before I export it to Strava or SportTracks.mobi. Here is the row:

20160825-184038-Sanders SpeedCoach 20160825 0621pm

Here is the power plot:

download (22)

The corrected pace is the pace in absence of wind. There was a slight east wind today that was slowing me down for most of the row.

download (23)

Here is the row on Strava, exported after doing the Power magic on rowsandall.com:

https://www.strava.com/activities/688834586/analysis

And here is one of the plots on SportTracks.mobi:

ST1

ST2
I don’t think this plot is exactly right but I need to dig deeper into Power Based Training to understand what the insight is from this plot

Oh, and in the Desktop version of SportTracks, I could do this plot.

Power Distribution. Not sure about the insight
Power Distribution. Not sure about the insight

I personally think it is a pretty cool thing to have Power estimates from OTW data. I will try to do some further descriptions of what I am doing and what rowsandall.com can do in subsequent posts.

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download (16)

Jul 23 2016

Munich & Steady State in mixed double

I woke up early and spent some time going through the news on my phone. Of course I found out about the shooting in Munich.

Munich. On Thursday we will go to Munich for the Euromasters 2016.

Munich. A beloved city. Fantastic museums. A very nice old town. Great airport. Nice regattas.

After breakfast, Romana and I drove to the rowing club for a short outing in the double. Steady state and a few practice starts.

At 9:30 it was already warm (around 27 degrees C). The water was perfect. Flat, as if the lake was filled with oil instead of water.

The 3km between 2000m and 5000m on the graph above was like a dream. Every stroke was perfect. Perfect sync. Nice 18spm. Effortless rowing.

download (16)

Average power is a bit lower than what I perceived. Of course, in the mixed double, power is an average for the entire crew. Also, I calculate power from OTW pace, so any technique deficiencies will reduce the power.

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Capture

Jul 19 2016

Race recovery for Masters Rowers?

So I took a rest day on Monday, just as I was used to from my pre-Masters rowing career. Just went to the rowing club to unload the trailer, get all the boats ready for rowing and chat about the races.

For this Tuesday morning, my training plan prescribed 30″ on / 30″ off speed work. To paraphrase Amy Winehouse:

“They wanted to make me do speed work. Body said no, no, no.”

I knew it when I was driving to the club, I knew it when I carried the boat to the water, and I knew it for 100% when I did the warming up.

So I decided to do technique work in steady state fashion. One stroke at a time. Perfect stroke. Next perfect stroke. Not so perfect stroke. Try to row next stroke perfect. Repeat.

Recovery from a heavy racing weekend takes time. And a sound training plan should take into account the different recovery times needed for different types of exercises. Sprinty speedy stuff needs more time to recover from.

And Masters rowers need longer recovery than Elite rowers, I guess.


Workout Summary - media/20160719-205521-2016-07-19-0709.CSV
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|09953|51:29.0|02:35.3|17.8|151.0|171.0|10.9
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|09953| 51:29 |02:35.2|17.8|151.0|171.0|10.9

I ended up pushing the heart rate really high, because apparently today “rowing perfect strokes” resulted in rowing high pressure, low stroke rate. I am not saying this is ideal, but that is how it went.

I will have to reshuffle a few trainings in my plan for this week. So tomorrow will be the 30″ on / 30″ off, Thursday a recovery row, Friday 40″ on / 40″ off, Saturday recovery row and Sunday Speedy Fartlek. Hopefully, Friday in the double with Romana.

Rowsandall.com

With the OTW Physics calculations done, I thought I would let rowsandall.com stable for a month or so. However, the need to process my own data of last weekend’s races forced me to add a new feature. An interactive plot where you can pick your own y axis parameters. So you can plot both HR and SPM against time or distance, or Pace and SPM, Pace and HR, etc.

And, finally, I stumbled upon forecast.io which featured a free API for historical weather data and aggregates data from many sources, among other Dark Sky’s “hyperlocal forecasts”, data from The USA NOAA’s NEXRAD system (USA) and the UK Met Office (UK),  the Norwegian Metereological Institute (which has actually very good data across Europe), as well as METAR data. Forecast.io has a very easy API so it was literally one boring meeting to implement a functionality that looked up the wind speed and bearing at the time and location of the row.

METAR data are taken at 10 m above ground. I was thinking if I need to apply a Hellman coefficient to get to the wind at 1m above ground, and what Hellman coefficient to take. For today’s row, forecast.io wind data (using METAR from LKTB, the local airport), was definitely higher than the very light breeze I had. I measured my wind to be 0.7 m/s. The forecast.io data said 1.7 m/s.  Same difference when looking at the data for last weekend. That looks like a Hellman coefficient for neutral air above human-inhabitated areas is a good approximation. It’s just a tool to get some initial data. Better of course to measure wind speed directly.

Screenshot from the site
Screenshot from the site

Finally, a video that talks about using big data in rowing:

And finally, I have ordered my SpeedCoach GPS 2 with Data Pack. I am getting it in a week and a half, at the Munich Euromasters regatta.

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Bily Potok 003

Jul 9 2016

Wednesday – Saturday

Wednesday

Too windy to row, so 45 minutes on the erg. Steady State.

Thursday 

Rest day.

Friday

Had to row in the afternoon, because I didn’t have the car in the morning. It was a warm day, and a Friday afternoon, and it is school vacation, so the lake had turned into a giant swimming pool again. I did steady state in the single, with start practices. I set CrewNerd to 250m with 2:30 rest, and started each 250m with a start plus a few strokes, then paddled.

I caught a crab in one of the starts, right in front of a little beach with a few young ladies in bikinis watching me.

Saturday

No rowing. Romana and I took the train from Brno to Vlkov, a small village about 30km into the highlands. From there it is a very pleasant ride on mountain bikes, along a small stream called Bílý Potok. What makes it special is the abundance of old watermills, that are now turned into weekend residences, most of them in a very tasteful way. Another fun aspect of this ride is that there are no less than 16 places where you have to ride through the stream with your bike.

Bily Potok 002

Bily Potok 003

Lunch
Lunch
Bily Potok 004
We rode through most of them, but we waded through this one

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DSC_0088

Jun 24 2016

First outing in the quad and steady state

Thursday evening

Out in the quad. Lots of technique drills to work on catch and recovery timing.

CrewNerd obviously cannot cope with the stroke rate when we do technique drills.

Friday

More technique drills, but now in the single. Went out at 7:30 am but it was already close to 30 degrees. Tired from the two Thursday sessions so I did a very calm row with technique drills.

Took the single to the castle this time. Mirror flat water, and two white swans in the water close to the castle.

After the row I had a quick coffee in the club house. Romana arrived and we prepared the morning event. Dominik’s school class was coming to pay us a visit. We showed them the boat house, then we put them on ergs to teach them a basic rowing stroke. Then we did a race over 200m, which was won by the girls. Times were between 0:54 and 1:20 for the 200m.

After a short break and handing out prizes (club badges, some sweets) and giving all the children some info leaflets about rowing at our club, we proceeded to the water. Dominik and his classmate Vít who are already proficient rowers, did a show on singles. Then we had the kids try out rowing themselves in a wider boat.

As the weather was so hot and the water so attractive, our attempts to keep the kids out of the water were futile. Originally the teacher didn’t want to allow them in the water, but it was unstoppable. And all kids had a very good time and were nicely refreshed.

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Steady State - 1x 6-22-2016

Jun 23 2016

Wednesday – Steady State

A long steady state session after work. It was quite warm, around 26 degrees C, and there were many swimmers and recreation boats on the lake. I alternated 18spm and 20spm and tried to focus on a long reach and acceleration through the stroke.

In the first part after the warming up I was excited to see 2:05 – 2:10 as average pace on some pieces. Wow, I thought. I have found the wonder stroke. Funny that it differs so little from my regular stroke.

At the beginning of the second leg I had the idea to reset the XGPS160 and that immediately brought me back to ground (well, to the water, actually). The slightly more noisy first 30 minutes of the row resulted in CrewNerd calculating a slightly longer distance, which resulted in a slightly larger pace.

Here is a zoom in of a part of the lake where I rowed a few times. From right to left, they are:

  1. Warming up (noisy)
  2. Second or third Rokle-Sirka segment (not noisy)
  3. Second or third Rokle-Sirka segment (not noisy)
  4. First Rokle-Sirka segment (noisy)
  5. Two Sirka-Rokle segments
    Steady State - 1x 6-22-2016

It is clear how the noisy segments appear to be slightly longer if you measure from waypoint to waypoint.

Still, I think I did good work on my stroke. Total workout distance a little over 13km.

 

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20160606-204144-sled_2016-06-06T19-23-15ZGMT+2.strokes

Jun 7 2016

Monday – steady state

There is a lot going on at work so I couldn’t leave early and row on the lake. Couldn’t row in the morning and arrive late either. So in the evening I just sat down for an uninspired steady state row on the erg.

To force myself to row at least for an hour, I dialed up a 14k. On the erg, I have a strong preference for distance based rows.

To make it more interesting, I did a 10 stroke push every 1000m, at varying stroke rates. That generated this beautiful plot:

Average pace was very slow. Over 2:08, including the “warming up” and “cooling down” 2k on the beginning and end of the row. Total time was 60:00.3. Damn. I rowed 0.3 seconds more than I wanted!

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