training

May 18 2017

An exercise in fading

Wednesday

I did a short outing in the double with a new rower. I heard about this new colleague who had been an excellent rower in the past. Talked to him and got him enthusiastic to try rowing again.

The caveat. He had a severe motorbike accident 8 years ago, has an arm and shoulder full of titanium, and has spent 100% of his energy on working since then. This was his first row since the accident.

It was a fun experience. The guy clearly knew what he was doing, but he will need a few rows to get back his former level of technique. Also, he was quite exhausted after just the warming up. I guess that calibrates my level of fitness. It’s a good reminder. Sometimes I think my fitness is dropping, but I guess I am always far from the absolute minimum.

By the way, it is my experience that base fitness comes back very quickly with bodies that have been exposed to intensive training when they were young. If you have such a body (which I do), congratulations!

Thursday

A morning row. I was supposed to take the bag with boat and scull covers to the club, because Romana wants to ride her bike this afternoon, and she would prepare the boats for transport to Hodonin, where we will be racing, coming weekend.

At 6am I am capable of getting up, getting my rowing bag and my work stuff, get a rudimentary breakfast in my stomach, and drive to the rowing club. At the last traffic light before the club, I realized I had forgotten the bag with boat covers. Oh well. Romana will just remove the riggers this afternoon, and I will have to come earlier to put the shells in the covers and load them on the trailer.

I forgot to read my training plan, so I headed over to the announcement board to read the Juniors/U23 training.

My training plan called for 6x250m/2′-3′ pause. The U23 training plan called for 4x start plus 15 strokes, plus 2x500m/500m, with the first 500m at 30spm, and the second one at 35spm.

I liked that. So, I did it.

The warming up plus a 2k with 4 practice starts followed by 15 strokes:

The end of the practice starts brought me to the finish line of the 2k course. I rowed back to the start, focusing on technique. So that brought me to 5k of distance covered.

Now it was time for the 500s. Here is the result:

The first 500m was performed well. The second one, I don’t know. I probably hit too high power values for this one, and I faded dramatically. Looking at the metrics charts below, I am not pleased with how the effective length drops in the second half of the second interval. It was really a dramatic exercise in fading.

Workout Summary - media/20170518-0735410o.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|01500|06:28.0|02:09.5|245.8|27.1|165.0|186.0|08.6 W-|01000|03:46.0|01:53.5|328.3|31.9|177.4|186.0|08.3 R-|01000|05:06.0|02:33.4|150.3|21.4|150.7|186.0|00.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|00500|01:55.8|01:55.8|312.2|29.9|175.5|182.0|08.7 02|00500|01:51.2|01:51.2|345.2|34.0|179.3|186.0|07.9

And a few charts with comments:

I also had fun looking at the lack of improvement in my metrics over the past weeks. No conclusions yet, except that it was fun to do it and I am glad rowsandall.com gives the opportunity to use this type of charts to monitor your athlete’s (lack of) progress. I filter away all strokes marked as “rest” and I also took the liberty to remove all strokes below 450 Joule per stroke, as they are either (unmarked) rest paddle, technique work, or short stroke exercises.

Tomorrow: Boat trailer loading. Boat trailer drive to Hodonin, then a mixed double row with Romana.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: ANC, ANC training, OTW, race prep, rowing, training

May 11 2017

Thursday – Steady State

Every day is different this week. Today it was a nice 21 degrees and sunny. Krocan and I went out in singles and we did a long steady state row. It was choppy when we started and flat when we finished. In the chop, I rowed away from Krocan easily. On flat water, the difference was smaller. I worked on sending the boat at the finish, tapping down clean and keeping the wash metric low.

You can see how the total drive length has a much smaller spread than the effective length.

On rowsandall.com, the wash numbers always look a bit worse than what I expect from the numbers I see in the boat.

All this focus on “wash”. Does it really pay off? I decided to filter my rowsandall.com OTW rows on “Steady State” and look at the median value of Wash and its standard deviation. The result is sobering:

I added the average wind strength as reported by the Dark Sky network to the plot. It seems the wind (and probably chop) is the biggest factor influencing the Wash value and its spread.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 3 • Tags: OTW, rowing, single, steady state, training

May 1 2017

Monday: More race pace training

It’s a Labor Day in Europe and in this part that is a bank holiday.

The training plan that the coach sent didn’t take into account the fact that I am racing in 5 days, so I had to improvise a bit. But Thursday’s workout looked interesting.

3x(7x40sec/20sec)/5min at race pace

I woke up into a nice sunny day, but the trees were moving and the wind forecast wasn’t great, predicting 7 to 8 m/s, which on our lake means it may be a bit rough. The forecast was confirmed when I arrived at the club. So I decided to just cross the lake to Rokle and then take the river to Veveri Castle and beyond.

I got a little bit of water in the boat while crossing the lake. I am afraid it didn’t really look like rowing in this part, but the goal was just to cross. It was a little choppy, really:

On the river, I did the workout. I had to improvise a bit. Some of the turns are a bit sharp, so I took the rest instructions as “inspiration” and adjusted the rest and work intervals to suit the turns.

This is a great training. Perhaps I should have increased the stroke rate a little, because it wasn’t as hard as I expected, but this was difficult on the river, with the turns, the wind, and the other traffic.

The need to watch the traffic and steer made it a bit hard to watch “Wash”, but I think there were a few intervals where I had the right emphasis.

The average “wash” value at 28spm and higher is 13.6 degrees, but if you look at the dots (each one being a stroke), you can see that this is skewed a lot by steering strokes and I would argue that I am closer to 12 degrees.

Here are “wash” and “effective length” vs stroke rate. I don’t think it makes sense to look at the averages. Crossing the lake twice, I had to revert to short strokes. There was no way I could do something that looked like rowing in those conditions. Also, after I finished the third interval, I paddled quite lightly, just enjoying the scenery.

And here is the video. I took the FIT file from the SpeedCoach and just did a quick DashWare overlay using the power, cadence and pace values. The averaging causes the metrics to change very quickly at times. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to overlay Empower Oarlock metrics like slip, wash, catch and finish angle over the video? I guess you would have to do a slightly better job at synchronizing than I did, though:

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: chop, intervals, OTW, river, rowing, single, training

May 1 2017

Friday – Sculling with the breaks on

Friday

The training plan asked for 6km with a break (a band around the single to slow down the boat), followed by 5km without.

Rowing with a band is fun. It slows down the boat just enough to make it easy to concentrate on the stroke sequence. It was a chilly 4 degrees C, and a bit windy, but not much chop, so it was actually a quite nice day to row.

Interesting to see how the power measured varies much more in the first part (with the break on).

After removing the break, I kept the stroke rate low and tried to focus on technique. Still, Wash values were all over the place.

Saturday + Sunday

No training. We had to drive 2 hours to Ceske Petrovice. Romana’s aunt was celebrating her 80th birthday, so it was a big family event in a cottage in the Orlicke Hory (“Eagle Mountains”). Quite remote place.

What was rain in Brno, had been snowing in the mountains, so when we arrived it was interesting to see the remains of the snow.

We spent the evening talking (and drinking) in the cottage, so we also needed Sunday morning to rest. By the time we got back to Brno, I didn’t really fancy getting in a workout. Let’s say that it was a hard weekend, anyway.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: band, break, lake, OTW, rowing, sculling, single, steady state, training

Apr 27 2017

Thursday morning – 36 intervals in the single

From a rowing technology blogger’s standpoint this was really a session I was looking forward to.

It wasn’t to be. Sometimes the NK SpeedCoach’s user interface drives me crazy. I am 100% sure that I have recorded the row, but somehow I have managed to delete it on the device, perhaps when I switched it off. Anyway, when it was time for me to sync the unit with the PC, I was surprised to see no new session.

It’s really a pity, because this morning’s session was:

6x(6×15 strokes “on”/10 strokes “off”)/5min, with the 15 “on” strokes at 26, 28, 30, 32, 34 and 36spm.

The idea was really to learn (again) to row at high stroke rates and to transfer boat feel and stroke efficiency from the 26spm all the way up to 36spm.

I set the SpeedCoach to show power, stroke rate, effective length and wash during the row and all the time I was looking forward to doing the data analysis. I wanted to see how wash and effective length, as well as work per stroke, would hold up at the higher rates, and uncover other hidden information from the data.

So if I want to row a 1k race at 320W and 32spm, probably all my strokes should be around 10W/spm, i.e. I should row the 26spm bit at 260W, the 28spm bit at 280W, etc. This is what I tried during the row.

It was a cold and rainy morning. Four degrees C, and something between snow and rain when I drove to the rowing club. When I launched, the rain had stopped, and it turned out to be a gray and cold but fantastic morning.

The swallows were heaving breakfast, and it was a joy to see them. At these temperatures, they fly just above the waves, about the same height as a rower’s blade between strokes, and they are such fantastic flyers. I really enjoyed how efficiently they glide through the air, only occasionally reverting to high wing frequency flying, when hovering to catch insects or gaining speed in headwind conditions. I made a mental link to my rowing, doing the 26spm as the swallow glides and the 36spm as it hovers.

As said, I failed to save the session on the SpeedCoach, so you will have to do with the pictures from the Garmin watch, imported through Strava. Strava magically added some power values through a biking/running plugin, so you shouldn’t take those too seriously (although the values are pretty good). The SPM values were all over the place but that is because the Garmin tried to measure running cadence.

Sets 1, 3 and 5 were rowed in tailwind. Sets 2, 4 and 6 were rowed in headwind. As the sets progressed, I became better and better at hitting the right Power values and I think I learned a lot from this session, even though it almost feels like I didn’t do it, not having any data.

With the swallows and all, definitely a session I enjoyed a lot. It was hard, it wasn’t short, but it was 100% worth it.

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

Apr 27 2017

Wednesday – a row in the coxless four

Wednesday is our Masters evening. Of course the Masters rowers of our rowing club do more trainings, but on Wednesday at 6pm we gather and row in the eight.

On this particular rainy and cold Wednesday evening, the turn-up was 5 rowers, and a sixth one called us at exactly 6pm, saying that he was “just now” leaving office. That office being just 45 minutes away in the peak hour traffic. 🙁

To at least do something that resembles rowing in an eight, we decided to pick a coxless four. The fifth guy decided to stay on the erg and wait for the sixth guy.

I rowed in bow seat, and the rest of the crew consisted of Martin “Krocan” (=Turkey), Petr “Bulda” (=Bulldog) and Michal “Míša” (=Bear). So we had a rich representation of the animal kingdom.

The boat was an old Empacher 4-, and we lost 15 minutes because we had to replace the shoes so that Bulda would fit into the boat.

I didn’t really fancy rowing on the bow seat, but I guess being the lightest of this crew (with 75kg, compared to Bulda’s 113kg), it had to be me. I like practicing my sweep rowing, but it takes more of my mental effort to do it well, compared to sculling. You can imagine that I did not have the need to also turn around every few strokes and scan the lake for upcoming traffic. Well, so be it.

All our boats are foot steered from the stroke position, so at least I didn’t have to do the steering. And Míša is one of our rowers who can steer our lake with a blindfold, so the course was always right and I just had to watch out for the traffic.

This was a technical training, so we did a lot of drills.

Some of the drills involved rowing with stops at various places. You can see that the SpeedCoach didn’t really understand that.

It was cold and rainy, but we did make a lot of progress during this short outing. It was fun to row something else than a single, and it had been a long time since I last rowed a coxless four.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: 4-, coxless four, lake, OTW, rowing, training

Apr 25 2017

Masters: Pacing a 1000m single scull row with a power meter

So according to Rowperfect, I am “on a mission to find the optimal pace when doing head races”. I liked that. I like being on a mission.

I am already on the next mission. The 1k sprint season is starting. Since the head racing, I have lost some fitness, mainly due to me not putting in the required training volume. Work. Other stuff.

So, I don’t know exactly where I am, fitness wise. A week and a half from now I will row my first Masters 1k race in the single. It would be good to have a few tries in before that. And now that I have a power meter, I can use it to help me pace the race.

Here is my line of thought:

Start with the erg power value as a guideline. I estimate my current erg power for a 1000m (around 3:20 time) to be between 325W and 350W. On the water, everything is slower, so the race duration is longer, so I expect to end up a little lower. However, it is not given that the Empower Oarlock power values correspond exactly to the erg power. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.
If I go out too fast, I will finish slow. If I go out too slow, I should sprint to the line to get the power average as high as possible.
Make use of all of rowsandall.com’s data analysis power to find out as much as possible about how I did that initial 1k.
Next time, row at the average power I achieved and use the lessons obtained in 3 (hopefully).

I made use of a gap in my schedule, after lunch and before the evening conference calls. It was a warm afternoon, a slight drizzle, 15 degrees, and flat water. Only a light wind, which turned out to be a headwind for my 1k.

I did a 3km warming up including two practice starts and a few 10 stroke bursts:

At that point I was in the buoyed 2km track, about 800m from the finish line. I mentally prepared myself for “a lot of red” (referring to the power and heart rate plots), dialed up a 1k on the SpeedCoach and got into starting position.

Workout Summary - media/20170425-150809-Sanders SpeedCoach 20170425 0311pmo.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|01000|04:00.0|02:00.2|319.3|30.2|175.4|184.0|08.3 W-|01000|04:00.0|02:00.4|318.5|30.1|176.1|184.0|08.3 R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|184.0|00.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|00100|00:22.9|01:54.6|365.1|33.0|140.6|167.0|07.9 01|00100|00:23.9|01:59.5|339.1|30.0|170.6|172.0|08.4 02|00100|00:23.5|01:57.4|341.9|29.9|175.0|178.0|08.5 03|00100|00:24.0|02:00.1|328.9|30.0|179.9|181.0|08.3 04|00100|00:23.9|01:59.3|326.2|30.0|181.8|183.0|08.4 05|00100|00:24.0|01:59.9|321.1|30.2|182.8|184.0|08.3 06|00100|00:24.1|02:00.3|311.2|30.0|183.1|184.0|08.3 07|00100|00:24.5|02:02.5|294.0|29.8|182.4|183.0|08.2 08|00100|00:24.9|02:04.7|287.6|29.5|181.8|183.0|08.2 09|00100|00:25.2|02:06.1|276.6|29.1|181.0|182.0|08.2

So yes, I went out too fast. But I did obtain an average power value, and it’s 320W. As usual in a 1k row, around the 500m mark things started to fall apart. I really had trouble keeping the stroke rate at least above 30spm (where I should be at 32spm in a couple of weeks), and in the slight headwind everything just became very sluggish. I was happy though that the total time was not too far from 4 minutes. Usually, in April, my 1k OTW time is around this, and today it was into a headwind.

Below, I will add some detailed discussion of the various other metrics.

I paddled the 350m to the finish line of the 2k course, turned the boat, and continued in a light “steady state” row. During that steady state row, I did two 250m pieces, just for the fun of it, to test how 320W of power would feel at 32spm. I did one piece in tailwind where I saw 1:55-1:56 pace, and one in headwind where the pace was around 2:00.

Detailed analysis

Catch angle seems high. When I first started rowing with the Empower Oarlock, I was worried about the short catch angle. Perhaps I have no the opposite problem? It seems to be an artifact of the sprint pace. The average over the entire outing is 66 degrees catch, 41 degrees finish. What you can also see is that as I got tired in the second half of the test, I shortened up on the finish. Here’s the “stroke profile” plot:

I did not watch “Wash” numbers, and not having rowed a lot in the single lately, I am a little behind on my “mission” to improve my “wash” numbers. I think I could do better on this value. Here is the story of “wash”:

Yep, it became a sad story after 700m.

Work per stroke varied quite a lot during the row. The mean value was 648J (which is high), while the 25% and 75% boundary was at 593J and 678J respectively. So that means that more than 25% of the strokes (about 30 strokes) were at more than 678J, and about 25% of the strokes were below 593J.

For head racing, I wanted to be around 550W, and I think that is even a good value for sprint racing. At least, that’s my hypothesis, still to be confirmed. For now, I note that I should rate up and lighten up.

This graph (above) of power and average drive force vs time is the embarrassing one. Of course the start strokes were strong, but then I brought it down to what I thought was a good value of just under 350W, but in the headwind, after 500m, you can see exactly where the wheels came off and I reduced the average drive force, shortened up at the finish, and brought the entire power down. At this point in the race, I was looking at my power values and I didn’t know what to do. (Unfortunately, I had no additional metrics to see. Being “smart”, I had set one of the bottom screens to distance, not realizing the SpeedCoach defaults the other bottom screen to distance as well when doing pre-programmed pieces. I wish there was more control of that. I would like to set it exactly as I want it, not as NK thinks I want it.)

Oh well, I also dropped the rate in the final 200m. Booh, Sander!

Here are the two “250m” pieces that I did afterwards.

Of course these were shorter pieces, but they did feel better. I think I have a plan for my upcoming 1k race.

Also, I am still impressed by how incredibly useful these metrics are in analysing what happened, and how, if you put in a little thinking, they guide you to what is hopefully a better plan to attack the next 1k piece.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: 1000m, 1k, lake, masters, OTW, rowing, single, sprint, training

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training

An exercise in fading

Thursday – Steady State

Monday: More race pace training

Friday – Sculling with the breaks on

Thursday morning – 36 intervals in the single

Wednesday – a row in the coxless four

Masters: Pacing a 1000m single scull row with a power meter

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