Sep 15 2016
September CTC
Around 2pm in the afternoon, my employer sent out a message to all people on the site that the tap water was not drinkable. Due to hot weather, the entire town’s tap water is above the norm for bacteria. The water company’s site is down, so I don’t know by how much we are over the norm and if there is a huge risk. Driving home after work, I stopped at a supermarket to buy bottled water, only to find it was sold out. Luckily, Romana had managed to get hold of 20 liters of bottled water. Well, I guess you can always boil the tap water and then drink it. It’s a pity I didn’t have our own water well tested. We use it only to flush the toilet and water the garden.
Or, I may have to revert to drinking wine and beer. 🙂
Today’s session was planned as a 5x10min/R3, with the first and last 10min intervals as a warming up, respectively cooling down. I would do the second (hard) 10 minute interval from a standing start, so I could claim it as this month’s CTC.
First, I messed up with the PM. Instead of selecting a time based interval session, I dialed up a single 10 min row.
No problem, that was only the warming up. Dialed up the 10min interval session and set off.
The CTC (Cross Team Challenge) is a fun team challenge. You register for a team (I row for the “Free Spirits”) and each month there is a different rowing challenge. You row the challenge and submit your result to the site. You end up in a “boat” consisting of one lightweight rower, one female rower, and 3 “open” seats, i.e. there will be heavies or fast lightweights or female rowers. The competition is between the teams. The more people participate, the more boats are “floating”. The better your boat scores, the higher you end up in the ranking. I really like this challenge and try to row it every month, to the best score that fits into my training plan. This month’s challenge was “row 10 minutes straight, from a standing start, and record the distance”, so my first 10 minute interval would qualify.
Workout Summary - media/20160915-195537-sled_2016-09-15T20-04-20ZGMT+2.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|08325|36:01.0|02:09.8|25.2|165.9|185.0|09.2
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|02727|10:00.0|01:49.9|27.3|170.8|185.0|10.0
01|02609|10:00.0|01:54.8|26.7|174.5|184.0|09.8
02|02283|10:00.0|02:11.2|22.7|157.4|167.0|10.1
I spent some time thinking about my target pace for a 3x10min. My 30 minutes Season’s Best is 1:52.4 pace. According to the fit to Concept2 ranking distances on my own site rowsandall.com, I would be able to do a 30 minute effort (without rests) in 1:52.0 and a full out 10 minutes in 1:46.7 pace. I didn’t think it would be wise to aim for that 1:46.7 pace in the first interval, but I wanted to row 1:52.0 average pace.
My goal was to row faster than the current lightweight in Free Spirits boat #2:Â David Plump (also known as Plummy), who had set an average pace of 1:52.9. I knew I wouldn’t be able to beat John Steventon’s (of Free Spirits boat #1) pace of 1:42.9, so I set off at 1:52, held that for 4 minutes, then 3 minutes at 1:51, 2 minutes at 1:50 and final minute free rate and pace.
I managed to  2727 meters in that first interval which is 1:50.0 pace. This resulted in a few lightweights jumping ship. I managed to enter Free Spirits II (same boat as Greg) and move it from 20th place to 17th place. Plummy moved to Free Spirits III still on 27th place but with a better score, and RGelissen moved to Free Spirits IV, bringing that boat up from 39th place to 18th place. Free Spirits V and VI are still in the boathouse.
Having rowed 1:50.0 in the first interval, I took back the power a bit in the second interval, with the idea to row 1:55 average, and then manage 1:52.5 in the final interval. I managed to execute that second interval according to plan, but I didn’t like my heart rate at all. It went substantially above 180bpm, just as in the first interval. Also, I felt tired and not motivated. So I just paddled the final 10 minute interval and called it a cooling down.
My mental strength always returns late from business trips.
Anyway, the CTC challenge does make indoor rowing more fun.
Sep 17 2016
Saturday: 2x3km
Friday
No training on Friday. I am in recovery week. Also, somehow the business trip and Thursday’s 10 minute intervals made me very tired.
Saturday
Romana is racing in Bratislava, Slovakia, today. A race in eights from Devin to Bratislava, 11 km on the Morava river with the current.
I got a text message that her eight has won and she is bringing a cup home. Great!
Because Romana was racing in Slovakia, I got to manage the girls 15/16 training today. My daughter Lenka is not fit to row, so she got to do stretching and some light spinning in the gym. With the two other girls, I set out to do a 2x3km in singles, to prepare for the 6km race in 3 weeks.
The weather: 18 degrees C and drizzle. Quite a change after a week of 30-35 degrees and sunshine.
Two girls, a 15 year old and a 16 year old. I let them start side by side, because they tend to be competitive and race like that. On this headwind 3km, I started myself three minutes after the girls.
I took over Tereza (15) with 500m to go. Iva (16) was already waiting at the 3km mark “Sirka”. I asked her how long she had been waiting. Two minutes, was the answer.
Three minutes after I finished (and about 2:15 after Tereza finished) we all started together for the second 3km interval.
A tailwind row. I quickly took the lead and rowed away from Iva, but somehow the mojo wasn’t there. The stroke rate was at the prescribed 25/26 spm but I didn’t pull too hard. Even had two “handle down” moments, and certainly didn’t have energy to finish strong.
After completing my second 3km interval, I waited for the girls to arrive and had them count heart beats with their fingers on their neck. Iva (16) counted without hesitation, 24 beats in 10 seconds, so a 144 pulse.
With Tereza, it was a bit more difficult. She had gone much deeper during the row, and she is younger and not yet used to structured trainings. I had to explain to her how to measure heart beats with your fingers on your neck. In the end she got it, and counted 26 beats in 10 seconds. So, how much is 26 times 6, I asked her. You should have seen the look on her face. Counting on her fingers, she got to the correct answer eventually.
After the training, during the stretching, I explained a bit about training programs, that every week there are one or two hard sessions, where the coach expects them to go really deep. Iva told me that Romana had set a stroke rate cap of 24 and I had told her to take a light stroke. Yes, she has to work on technique and take light strokes, but endurance wise she is ready to do this at 28spm. For the younger girl, Tereza, all this was a new world and she did go deep (having difficulty to hold 24 spm). Anyway, it was fun to work with the girls and (hopefully) help them be better rowers. A very welcome change to my normal solo (narcissistic?) sessions.
Here’s the session in images and statistics:
Work Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|03000| 13:54 |02:19.0| 25.0| 174 | 183 | 8.6
02|03000| 12:54 |02:09.0| 25.0| 173 | 178 | 9.3
Workout Summary
--|06000| 26:48 | 2:14.0| 25.0| 174 | 183 | 9.0
I measured wind speed on the dock after the session. An average over a 2 minute measurement was 2.9 m/s, with a peak of 4.0 m/s. I used these values to calculate power. There may have been a slightly lighter wind during the session, but I still think the power plot is an accurate representation of what I did.
The second 3km got recorded on Strava as a valid time for the “Sirka-Rokle” segment that I defined, and I am leading the leaderboard with it. I don’t think this is fair. I was helped by the 3m/s tailwind and I think this is one of my worst efforts on this segment. It shows that Strava and rowing is difficult. Wind is a big factor. The first interval didn’t get recorded for the segment “Rokle-Sirka”, probably because I was too far off the course. Rowing Strava intervals on a lake is not straightforward.
After the training, my son Robin and I went to Kunstat, a small town in the highlands, about 30 minutes from Brno, to visit a pottery fair. Unfortunately, we didn’t find what we wanted, but we had a great time.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 4 • Tags: 2x3km, lake, OTW, rowing, single, training