strength

bokeh_plot (15)

Feb 23 2017

Power at 17spm

Today’s workout was another interesting one:

5x(6x15strokes on / 10 strokes off)/5 minutes rest. Drag 145. Stroke rate 17spm

My Masters team mates warned that this is a “very heavy” workout. So after another long day at work, I went down to my erg cave. Tired, but curious.

I did a 1500m light warming up without any fast strokes. Then set the drag to 145 and started a “Just Row”.

After the first interval I took a piece of paper and wrote down a row of numbers 1 to 5 and another row of numbers 1 to 6. Then I took two coins and placed one on the 1 in the top row and the other one next to the 1 on the bottom row.

After each 15 strokes “on”, I moved the bottom coin to the next number.

The only way for me to count the number of intervals and sets. Counting to 15 and 10 was hard enough.

Here are some stroke stats:

Pace-wise, I paddled the 10 strokes at a very light pace, and the “on” strokes got down to 1:54, but usually were between 1:56 and 1:58. It took about 10 strokes in each set to get below 2:00 pace.

It wasn’t very hard, and I was surprised how fast the first 10km passed. Perhaps I was doing something wrong? Perhaps I should pull harder?

Doing the flex charts I made an interesting discovery. The average/peak force was unusually high for me. Normally it is around 0.56 or 0.57. Today it was significantly higher at 0.62. Most of the following plots are made on rowsandall.com by selecting only the strokes below 18spm:

Not sure about this workout. Let’s see. Either I did it wrong, or I wake up tomorrow with a 10% increase in leg strength.

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ride

Nov 10 2016

Snow!

First snow of this winter. Just a little and all dry and powdery. Nothing big.

Two sessions today. The first one was a gentle 15km bike ride from work to home, which was after the snow had turned into rain, and also after the rain had stopped.

https://www.strava.com/activities/771683402

The second session was a strength training. Also 45 minutes. Just to get into it again. I mainly focused on the upper body.

To add some illustrations, a few random pictures from my local friends on Strava. Everybody seemed to be excited about the snow and eager to go out and do some sports.

w35ete8mhdejc5scf_vmb1q4kozs1g7ycnfllnmfnum-2048x1152

k1f5kdo9ckfdqhmc-u53lqoid8co6acsfevphvfkycw-1536x2048

ride
It’s a pity Google Earth doesn’t come in winter colors

For fun, I overlaid parts of my ride over 19th century maps that are available on-line. It is interesting how many of today’s roads are exactly where the roads used to be 150 years ago. I wonder how my bike ride would have looked, cycling through the 19th century.

capt3

capt2

capt1

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Belgie 002

Apr 28 2016

Hotel Fitness #BrusselsTribute

Arrived to Brussels on Wednesday afternoon. First time I go through the airport after the attacks. The main staircase connecting the different levels is still as on March 22, so to reach the train station I had to go through the car park, down a level, walk through the bus station and take a rear entrance to the trains. Later, I heard trains are only running since Monday. On the way, I passed a couple of these banners:Belgie 002

This morning I took the metro to the meeting, passing through the Maalbeek station. Everything is back to semi-normal, but one thinks about the events. Soldiers everywhere make you aware that things are not normal. I wish things get back to normal one day.

Before that, I did 30 minutes of extensive endurance using the “Random”, “Hills” and “Hills” programs of a treadmill, elliptical, and bike in the hotel fitness, respectively. That was followed by 3 rounds of an improvised strength circuit. Total time 60 minutes.

Today’s meeting was an Administrative Board Meeting, but I am not allowed to share the details with you. They are utterly boring, anyway.

I was advised to go to the airport early, because it can take up to four hours to get to your gate. I took the train again, then followed the signs to the temporary checkin area. In tents. Had to queue outside in hail before I got into the tent for the first security check. Then to another tent where I could just walk past the long queues to check luggage. Through staircase that is normally just open for personnel, and on to the main security check. Took me an hour from train station to the airport lounge, so it wasn’t so bad.

Today’s training wasn’t much but tomorrow it will be interesting. The good old 4x2km … on water.

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ples-v-opere-brno-mahenovo-divadlo-43_denik-600

Jan 22 2016

Thursday: Two short trainings

The first training was Bow Tie training. I haven’t worn a bow tie since my Ph.D. thesis defence, and I didn’t even own one until this week.

A Dutch Ph.D. thesis, by the way, to steal the words of this blogger, “The ceremony is incredibly formal, fairly succinct and the party that follows approaches the level of a wedding reception. The scale and grandeur of the event is a fitting marker of the accomplishment of completing a doctoral degree.” At that event, my “paranimfen” and I were wearing a full tuxedo, as is required at such an event. Formally, my “paranimfen” (usually good friends or a colleague) are the only persons who are allowed to wear a sabre during the examination, so they could defend me in case the commission attacked me. We refrained from that right, however.

So that was my last bow tie wearing of 16 years ago, in this room to be precise:

academy-hall

But on Saturday I have to go to a ball with Romana, who got herself a beautiful dress for the occasion. I could of course wear a suit and tie but I would feel as if I was going to work. I craved for something that was acceptable to the occasion but also has a fun and party air to it. So the bow tie.

The training took 30 minutes and I went from zero skills to being able to tie an acceptable tie.

The second training was 40 minutes of strength training. Nothing special. Just my weekly routine. This time without a light steady state to precede it, because it is low volume week.

So on Saturday I will be dancing at the Ball of the Olympians. Something like this, but with Olympic medal winners (and us).

ples-v-opere-brno-mahenovo-divadlo-43_denik-600

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fiets

Jan 16 2016

Thursday: Bike & Strength

I am a little behind writing this blog.

My boss is in town.

My teams have a deadline on January 28th.

It is the time of the year when we are preparing and doing the annual reviews with our reports. With more than 50 people to take care of that is quite a task if you want to do it consistently and fairly.

Training didn’t suffer. Well, on Wednesday I went to a Cuban restaurant with my boss and a few colleagues. Good food and a few beers. No training.

On Thursday, it was a beautiful, sunny day and I didn’t get my work done at work. I rode home in the sun, on the bike, arrived at home with a clear head, made sure I didn’t connect to email and chatter and did my work.

https://www.strava.com/activities/470172351

fiets.JPG

The ride was 2km longer but my phone battery died after 12km. I wanted to do a slow ride but I couldn’t help and sprint up the Husovice hill. That’s the high HR bit around km 8.I don’t understand Strava’s power estimate but I think they come pretty close. This is a very non-taxing ride.

In the evening I did an hour of strength training. Quite intensive. Low number of repeats.

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painsled1

Jan 5 2016

Testing Painsled

Today I did an easy row and some weights.

For the easy row I used the Chrome app function of Painsled. Although I don’t like its name, it’s an interesting app (in beta). I stumbled upon it on the Concept2 forum because the developer advertised a mobile version. What it does? It connects to the PM monitor and then logs data (stroke data). There is an iOS app that works with the wireless enabled PM5. For my PM3 I have to use the USB connection and use the Chrome App version. Here’s a screenshot:

painsled1.jpg

It works pretty nicely. You basically have it running on your computer and don’t care about it. You use the PM to set up workouts and row them. The app just follows what you are doing on the erg and logs each stroke. It shows the data on the screen, so you basically have an extra erg monitor with some data (stroke power curve, watts, 500m pace all in one screen). The logs correspond to the Just Rows or Workouts that you did on the erg. I guess when the PM saves to the log card, a new log is started in PainSled.

After rowing, you can export the data to a CSV file. I did that and then played a bit with Dan Burpee’s spreadsheet so I could manually copy data from the CSV to the spreadsheet and create pretty graphs:

painsleda.jpg
Warming up – a 2k row
painsledb.jpg
A 3x1500m / 30 second rest – pace and heart rate
painsledc.jpg
3x1500m / 30 sec rest – stroke rate and heart rate

I like the philosphy of the app. Just a data logger. There is a TCX export plugin available which I couldn’t get to work. Also, I noted that the cumulative meters in the CSV file stopped after the second 1500m interval. Probably a bug in the software, but the stroke specific data were there so I could easily correct it.

The CSV file is very complete. Here are the data that I found in it:

  1. Start time of stroke (time stamp)
  2. Interval distance at start of stroke
  3. Workout (cumulative) distance at start of stroke
  4. Stroke Number (easy if you want to count strokes)
  5. Stroke type (1 for waiting, 0 for work)
  6. Interval number – I miss this one in RowPro
  7. Workout State (“waiting to row” / “work distance interval” / “interval rest”, etc
  8. Stroke drive duration in ms
  9. Stroke drive meters
  10. Stroke recovery duration in ms
  11. Stroke recovery meters
  12. Stroke duration
  13. Stroke meters
  14. Stroke pace (seconds per km)
  15. Stroke rate (strokes per minute)
  16. Stroke Watts
  17. Stroke Heart Rate
  18. Stroke Drag Factor
  19. Elapsed time
  20. Stroke Calorie Counter
  21. Workout start time stamp
  22. Workout end time stamp
  23. Total workout meters
  24. Total workout stroke count
  25. Workout type (e.g. “distance interval” or “just row”)
  26. Workout Interval Count
  27. Workout rest time
  28. Workout Erg model
  29. Workout Erg Serial number
  30. Workout Erg Odometer
  31. Stroke force map

And if you can write plugins, you could probably make a function to upload the row to Concept2 and other nifty things. A semi automatic excel to extract data from the CSV file is easy and very interesting.

Unfortunately I don’t have a PM5 (nor will I see many PM5 monitors on the hotel gym or crossfit box ergs that I frequent), so the mobile app is useless for me at the moment. In that respect, ErgStick seems promising.

So definitely something to watch.

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Remi 003

Dec 16 2015

Running & Strength in Brussels

Sunday

Packing and spending time with family. I also was still quite tired from the Half Marathon failed row, so there was no time, and no energy to do any sports.

Departed to airport after lunch, arriving to Brussels in the evening.

Some thoughts about this week. I will spend Monday-Friday in Brussels, in a hotel with a decent gym. So I took running and gym gear and decided that this microcycle (“week”) would be a light one, but with extra strength work. From next week on until the end of the year, I will want to start doing some Season’s Best (or PB attempts), starting with the Half Marathon, then the hour, the 10k, and the 30 minutes. This light week as a preparation doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

Let’s say I am on a training stage in Brussels. Some people go to high altitude. I go to Brussels. 🙂

Monday

I woke up slightly too late, so all I managed before I had to go to my meeting was a 3x10min hotel gym very light exercise (cycle, threadmill, elliptical) and 30 minutes of strength.

This was followed by an epic negotiation session about which I shall not tell you anything more. Just that an agreement was reached after we took many hurdles in a multilateral negotiating environment. Arrived at hotel late and too tired to even celebrate.

Tuesday

Woke up too late to do a morning session, but my meetings ended at 2pm (with a Champagne lunch), so I was able to do some running.

I decided to explore an unknown part of Brussels by running towards the Koekelberg hill. The Basiliek van Koekelberg is one of the 10 biggest catholic churches worldwide, and the biggest art deco building in the world.

09

Here is my run. It was an extensive affair, frequently stopped by traffic lights. About 45 minutes of running with a heart rate of 140 bpm on average.

koekel.jpg

Somehow the first 1 km of the run wasn’t captured by the Garmin. I started and finished at the same place: Botanique.

koekel2.JPG

Wednesday

Today is a bridging day. I am spending it working from my hotel room. Decided to work from early morning, then do a workout just before lunch. Again, I did 3x10min (cycling, running, elliptical) hotel gym triathlon, followed by an hour of weights. My intention was to increase the weights until the point where I wouldn’t be able to do more than 10 reps, but somehow I mostly ended up around 10-15 reps until failure. I did 12 different exercises, each 3 series of 10-15 reps. Legs, shoulders, core, arms, divided evenly as much as possible.

After such a session one has to have a balanced sports meal. Luckily I am in a Brussels neighborhood with a large offering of sports nutrition places. Today I took a take-away Turkish kebab sports nutritionist’s advice. Look how balanced it is:

Remi 003.jpg

The proteins were hidden under the carbs, so I had to take a second picture:

Remi 004.jpg

It was delicious!

On my little stroll through the neighborhood I saw many other interesting sports nutritionists that I will have to “ask for advice” soon.

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