steady state

Nov 10 2017

Back in the single & an unexpected visit

Thursday

Another hour of steady state on the erg. I made it a little more interesting by varying the stroke rate every minute in intervals 1and 2, then reverting to a more traditional rate ladder in the last 20minute interval.

Yep’ in the last interval I did a cooling down at the end. I had some fun looking at stroke data on Rowsandall.com:

Pretty consistent drive length there.

Friday

I will be in the USA for 6 days next week, tomorrow I will do an erg lactate test, and on Sunday I will probably go running. So today was the day to get in some steady state, not too hard, in the single.

It is funny. I know Work per Stroke goes down at the end of the workout, but I seem incapable of preventing this to happen.

It was a great workout. The water was not flat but still very rowable, I was the only single out except for s lightweight guy from the other club, accompanied by his coach in a launch. At one point I needed to speed up a bit to stay ahead of his wake. The young LW guy is a bit faster than I but he was doing some intervals and by working a bit harder during his rest and staying focused on technique I stayed ahead of his coach’s wake.

When I was cleaning my boat after the row, Ondřej Synek walked on to our club. It was great to chat with him. He is in town for the Sport Life trade fair, promoting Concept2 ergometers, and decided to pay us a surprise visit. We showed him our boats and he talked about racing in Brno as a junior. Then he walked into the erg training of our Juniors. They almost fell off their ergs.

In the car driving home I heard this song. I liked.

By sanderroosendaal • rowing • 0 • Tags: concept2, OTE, OTW, rowing, single, steady state

Nov 8 2017

Prague Skyline

I’ll start with the highlight of this post. Some great photos of the Head of Prague race. Somewhere among these boats is us:

And here we are rowing towards the turning point. Notice the Prague castle and cathedral in the background:

Yesterday, I got my annual influenza vaccination with the recommendation to avoid exercise for two days, so I skipped training. Today, I did the 2×20 minutes of steady state prescribed by our club Masters training plan. It doesn’t sound like a lot of volume, but we do very long warming up and cooling downs so all in all it was 15km of erging.

Here are both 20 minute pieces compared.

The orange line with lower power and higher heart rate is the second interval.

By sanderroosendaal • rowing • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Nov 6 2017

Friday to Monday

Friday

It was a hard day at work and I was looking forward to rowing OTW. Unfortunately, I also had some shopping to do and I got stuck in a traffic jam, spending 30 minutes trying to leave the mall parking garage. So instead of driving to the club, I headed home.

Sat on the erg, booted up the new Beta of Painsled, and tried to connect it to Zwift. I didn’t manage to get that going because I was short of one Bluetooth device. If I understand it well, the phone with Painsled running serves power data. You then need another device with a Zwift Mobile app which collects the data and relays it to the Zwift app running on the iPad. I may try it again, but I am waiting for the next beta of Painsled. You will understand why in a minute.

I put on the latest BRowShow Podcast about recovery and got going.

A nice first 30 minutes in which I pushed the average power to 185 Watts without seeing any alarming things happening, heart rate wise.

The second 30 minutes proceeded in a similar way. No issue at all. Average power 183W. Heart rate where I like it.

At the end of the session I did a lactate test. Recorded 2.1 mmol/L. A few minutes later, I did the test again, now measuring 1.9 mmol/L. I believe this indicates that I have been working in the desired training zone.

I didn’t get to row on the water, but at least I had a decent erg session in. I was looking forward to see the data. So I started export the workouts from Painsled to rowsandall.com, which is normally a simple email export from the app to workouts@rowsandall.com. This threw an error. I tried various settings, and 30 minutes later I still had no luck.

Later that evening, I downgraded to the normal version of Painsled, losing all data in the app in the process. So, no data for this workout.

So, let me recap.

A difficult day in the office
No OTW row because of traffic
A good OTE workout but no data to prove it
Oh, and a couple of bug reports on rowsandall.com.

On that last one, I had spent quite a lot of time doing some user interface upgrades on rowsandall.com, and on Friday I wanted to have all that finished and working. Instead, I was looking at some weird bugs, and there was no way I could understand what was going on. Sometimes, the site seems like a lot of hard work without some real benefits.

I wasn’t in the best mood.

Saturday

Got up early but not early enough. We all went to the rowing club with the idea to start a session at 9AM, and finish it in time for a club activity starting at 10.

I set up the erg on sliders and got going warming up. I was waiting for Romana’s girls to join, and wanted to join in their 6x1km/5min workout (at 6k pace, 28-30spm on sliders).

After a 2.5km warming up the girls disappeared for stretching. That turned into stretching and chatting and I did another 5k at steady state pace in the mean time.

By the time the girls came back to start the 6x1k, there was very little time left. I wasn’t in the best mood (again), because I knew I would have to stop at 10AM and wouldn’t be able to finish the workout.

Also, I had terrible issues with the sliders. I kept bumping against the ends of them. I don’t know if I set them up wrongly or if my technique was so terrible, but it just wasn’t working. I basically became so annoyed that I stopped and walked away from the erg in the third 1k.

Notice the erratic second 1k interval. I really was a jerk on Saturday.

The activity starting at 10AM was mowing the banks of the lake, an activity that we as rowing club members have to do, and I didn’t want to let the others down. So I spent three hours mowing and clearing one part of the lake’s bank. It was a good way to channel some bad energy. Felt a lot better afterwards.

Sunday

The only thing I did was a short run with my daughter.

Oh, and a lot of moving in our house. The boys move to the big room in the attic. Romana’s study goes to the smaller room in the attic, and Lenka goes from the smaller room in the attic to the former boys’ room.

In the evening I found some time to finalize those rowsandall.com user interface improvements. These are a couple of tweaks that don’t change the functionality but make the loading of slower parts of the site much more attractive to the user.

Monday

So no risks today. A stable version of Painsled. Some nice music on, and a session from our club’s official training plan for Masters. I make my own plan, but I try to pick as many sessions from the official plan as possible. It makes it easier to socialize with the other Masters, and even do the odd training together in the club erg room. Today it was

3x15min/4min with 15 min as 3x4min @ 20spm, 1min @24spm

Here’s the result. It wasn’t too hard to do. I am not sure about the physiological training effect of the 24spm speed bumps, but it broke down the 15 minutes in a nice way.

With a 2.5km warming up, that is 16k for the session.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, ergometer, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Nov 1 2017

Race Photos and more Training Data

Race Photos

Some great pictures have surfaced from our race. No trace of the drone video, yet.

Monday – Steady State

This is the period of the year when base building is the only focus. So on Monday I dutifully rowed my two times 30 minutes, erring on the lower power side. I will do a lactate step test on November 11 and after that, I plan to use lactate as a guidance. For now, I go with Perceived Rate of Exertion and Heart Rate.

Tuesday – the same but on the rowing club

More base building on the erg. This time I rowed it in the rowing club erg room. I expected a few more of our Masters rowers, as Tuesday evening is our assigned erg room evening for this winter season, but in the end I was the only one. The head coach and a bunch of Men and Juniors were in the adjacent weights room, so there was enough company, and people passing and looking at my PM.

I rowed three sets of 5km, with Tamed Wolverine Plan rate ladders. Tamed, because I did 1spm steps instead of 2spm steps. Here are the first two intervals:

For the final 5k interval, I decided to start a bit higher and work down back to 18spm.

One interesting fact about the charts of Tuesday are that the heart rate date were not recorded by the PM. I recorded it separately on the Garmin Forerunner. On rowsandall.com it is easy to combine data from different sources into one workout.

Finally, a comparison of steady state workouts using the Box Chart:

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Oct 27 2017

A lot going on actually

#Wednesday

Body weight exercises. Several iterations of the Wahoo Tickr 7 minute set. I am going to do these ones more often. A short session but still feeling DOMS on Friday.

#Thursday

Erg session. 2 kilometers warming up. Then a 10k row. I tried to hold 180W and stay below 165bpm heart rate at the same time. Ended up at 178 Watts. Towards the end I ignored the heart rate cap and tried to get back to 180W average power.

I tried a 2x1min intensive bit before the cooling down.

#Friday

A busy day. In the afternoon, my sons visited me at work. We had organized a little event for kids where they could fly our airplane and helicopter simulators.

Then we headed to the rowing club. Dominik did an erg session and a circuit training. I went out in the single despite severe conditions on the lake. There was a lot of chop but when I reached the gorge it was just windy. It wasn’t sunny, unfortunately, it even rained a bit. Still, I took some pictures of Veveri Castle and the woods around it.

The row was a light steady state session. Not too hard because of tomorrow’s race. Unfortunately, I forgot the heart rate belt at home, so no heart rate values. The headwind section:

The tailwind section:

I was running a Beta version of BoatCoach in parallel with the SpeedCoach. Dan Eiref of BoatCoach prepared a beta based on some tests I did for him. I am happy to report that Stroke Rate and Pace are now very close to the values of the SpeedCoach.

The comparisons were done on rowsandall.com.

On top of that I did a few good changes to the Critical Power parts of the rowsandall.com site. More about that another time.

By sanderroosendaal • rowing • 0 • Tags: Comcept2, erg, OTE, OTW, rowing, steady state, training

Oct 24 2017

The Power of Habit

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Now, at the start of the winter off season, the most important thing is to keep working out regularly, keep sticking to the plan and building the habit. Coming back from illness, this is hard. On Monday, I actually decided to take a rest day to finish some fine tuning of a new feature on rowsandall.com. My plan allows for this sort of flexibility. I simply took the rest day on Monday instead of Wednesday.

Today, I listened to this Rowperfect rowing chat with Charlie Simpson and Jim Flood who have published a new book on rowing coaching. At the end of the podcast, they come to talk about Rowing Data. What they said made a lot of sense and I am excited to see that rowing data starts to be discussed more and more frequently.

The session was the usual 2 stretches of 30 minutes. In the first set, I rowed Wolverine plan rate ladders. I started doing the same in the second set, but noticed my heart rate rising to above 170 bests per minute, so I took down the power to stay under 165 beats per minute.

First 30 minutes:

Workout Summary - media/20171024-1835500o.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|07232|30:04.0|02:04.7|180.6|19.9|157.7|172.0|12.1 W-|07233|30:04.0|02:04.7|180.6|19.9|157.5|172.0|12.1 R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|172.0|00.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|02399|10:00.0|02:05.0|177.4|19.3|144.8|161.0|12.4 01|02421|10:00.0|02:03.9|182.4|19.8|160.3|167.0|12.2 02|02413|10:04.2|02:05.2|181.9|20.6|167.2|172.0|11.7

Second 30 minutes:

Workout Summary - media/20171024-1835500o.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|07224|30:04.0|02:04.9|180.6|19.9|157.7|172.0|12.1 W-|07226|30:04.0|02:04.8|180.6|19.9|157.5|172.0|12.1 R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|172.0|00.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|02395|10:00.0|02:05.2|177.4|19.3|144.8|161.0|12.4 01|02413|10:00.0|02:04.3|182.4|19.8|160.3|167.0|12.2 02|02417|10:04.2|02:05.0|181.9|20.6|167.2|172.0|11.7

Heart rate drift was 8% in the first interval (warming up effect) and 2% in the second one. I am not 100% sure how relevant this metric is, but rowsandall.com reports it, as it was requested by a user, so I take note of the values.

Before the session, I visited an exhibition of art work made by my daughter and her classmates.

By sanderroosendaal • rowing • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

Sep 24 2017

On being a prick (a steady one)

Sorry for the title. Couldn’t resist.

I tried to make an hour of steady state on the erg a bit more interesting. On Friday, I had tried to use Kinomap and wasted 10 minutes of precious exercise time trying to revive my Kinomap account. Didn’t work. I think I am going to uninstall Kinomap from my devices. It is never straightforward, and it is always taking more time than I want.

So I dusted off my lactate meter and decided to take measurements every ten minutes. I did a baseline measurement before the row, which gave me a nice 1.2 mmol/L value. That was slightly higher than expected, but OK.

Down to the erg room. Dialed up a 10 minute and rowed. I decided to aim for a 200W average, which is probably higher than I should row my steady state, but I wanted the lactate readings to tell me that. You basically want to see that the blood lactate concentration keeps rising steadily during the entire hour.

The dip after a few minutes is when I decided to stop erging and increase the volume on my radio. I was listening (again) to the BroShow podcast on training planning and the volume was too low to hear anything.

Measured lactate after 10 minutes and got an “Er1” value. Hm. Probably due to me learning to do lactate measurements again after almost a year. I tried with a new strip, and got the same problem.

So I did another 10 minutes.

I did hold 203W exactly. Somehow, 203W is a more attractive value than 200W, because it means that in 10 minutes you cover exactly 2500m (and row at 2:00 pace).

Did a lactate measurement (so this is now 20 minutes into the hour): 1.7 mmol/L. Phew.

So I had the feeling I was going to run out of Lactate strips before the end of the hour, so I dialed up 20 minutes and rowed for 20 minutes, average power 203W:

Heart rate is behaving nicely. Everything was fine. And steady. Fourty minutes done in total. So I perforated my finger another time and took a measurement: 5.6 mmol/L. WHAT?

Well, no time to think. Dialed up another 10 minutes and rowed.

This time the Lactate measurement gave 1.9 mmol/L, which seems more in line. So I had good hopes for the final 10 minutes.

And the lactate meters said … 3.9 mmol/L. Damn! I had one strip left of the set I took down to the erg room. I wanted to use that to measure after a five minute cooling down paddle, but now I used that one immidiately. The result: “Er1” error. Not good.

Well, I guess it was a good steady state session. Probably at a slightly too high power value. From past seasons using the lactate meter, I know that my steady state, stable lactate level is lower than the 2.0 mmol/L that people use. I also know that my feeling of how hard the row was correlated quite well with the lactate readings. So, I tend to conclude that the high values are due to incompetent measuring from my part, and the 1.7 and 1.9 values are correct.

I am wondering, however, if I should order a new set of lactate strips, and row with lactate this winter, or not. The only reliable use I got out of the device was checking my steady state. The other tests gave results that were hard to interpret. Just doing steady state to confirm my subjective feeling of hardness doesn’t seem to give a lot of added value. Lactate is always a measurement after the row, so you cannot use it to adjust the intensity during the row. Especially for steady state, I think it is important to adjust the intensity when you are feeling it is too hard.

Over lunch I watched the Poznan and Lucerne World Cup singles races on YouTube. I am really impressed by Manson’s boat skills at 38spm. He is my favorite for winning the world title in Sarasota, even though I live in the land of Synek. I am also going to cheer for Annika van der Meer (in the Mix 2x Para event) and Marieke Keyser (LW 1x), both from the Netherlands. For the eights, I am neutral. I think the Dutch eight is not good enough (yet) for a big win. But there are a lot of very good heavyweight sweep rowing men in NL. Hoping they can prepare something spectacular for Tokyo.

Oh, and I will cheer for the Czech Women’s 2x, and hoping the Dutch will take silver.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: concept2, erg, lactate testing, OTE, rowing, steady state

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steady state

Back in the single & an unexpected visit

Thursday

Friday

Prague Skyline

Friday to Monday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

Race Photos and more Training Data

Race Photos

Monday – Steady State

Tuesday – the same but on the rowing club

A lot going on actually

The Power of Habit

On being a prick (a steady one)

Calendar

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