training

fartlek1

Oct 17 2015

Saturday: Fartlek in the single

The training plan said “Intensive Steady State”. The original plan was that I would row in the quad with Romana’s girls crew, but in the end there were enough girls. So I took the single.

I rowed next to the girls quad for most of the session, and decided to do a Fartleg at 22spm and higher.

fartlek2 fartlek1

The water was nice. Some chop but today I liked it. There was enough chop to make it a challenge but it was manageable with good technique.

We all went for lunch to a pizzeria close to the lake. Took some pictures on the dam when we returned to the club. The first picture shows the lake (and there is a sailing race going on), the second picture shows the river as it continues after the dam. The concrete construction on the left is a 1940s bridge pillar for a highway the Germans wanted to build across occupied Czechoslovakia:

Lake
Lake
zaba 006
River

After that we had the traditional season closing with the club. We determined coxed four crews by a draw and raced against each other. Then we had a few beers and discussed the state of rowing in our town, in the world, and the world in general.

By • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

3x20min

Oct 16 2015

Friday: 3×20 min

Woke up too late to do a session in the hotel. Flight from Brussels to Vienna was delayed by 20 minutes, so I missed the RailJet direct train. Arrived home around 4:30pm.

Dialed up a 3×20 minutes (with 2 minute active breaks) and decided to try out the Greg protocol, i.e. start slowly, then accelerate. To break the boredom, I varied stroke rates between 18, 19 and 20spm and power between 160, 170 and 180W. Looking at the HR plot, I might go a little faster on these sessions.

3x20min
Listened to a local radio station during the row. They announced that the police has removed another corpse from our lake today. They found the body of a dead man near Rokle, with a sports bag filled with stones tied to his body. The police announced that they think the man died at the end of September.

Tomorrow:
If the weather is good, a “intensive steady state” row OTW. If the weather doesn’t allow OTW rowing, it will be my debut as running trainer for our club’s girls group. Still have to think about a nice running session. I don’t usually run from the rowing club.

By • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: , , ,

LC6000-6-Stack-Multi-Station_M

Oct 15 2015

Hotel Fitness workout

Wednesday

Worked from home in the morning, then took the train to Vienna. First time I saw the real refugees/migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, and other places. About a hundred of them in the Vienna Hauptbahnhof hall. Young families with small children (babies to 6 year olds), and groups of young men (in their twenties). They looked tired. They probably still believed what the smugglers have told them. Didn’t know what to think about it. In the media these people are either described as bloodthirsty jihadist, or, on the other end of the spectrum, as piece loving engineers and scientists. I was glad I saw the real people and not just the media image.

Then on to the airport and a plane to Brussels. No exercise.

Thursday

Woke up quite well rested and headed for the hotel gym. The meetings don’t start until 10:30 so I had some time. I am 75% through reading the book that Boris recommended, “Muskelrevolution” by Marco Toigo. Apart from learning very interesting things about how the little muscle engines work, here are a few things I grasped (hopefully correctly) so far:

  1. Don’t fuss about sets vs repeats
  2. Determine your 1 repeat maximum, then work at 50%-60% of it
  3. Work slowly

So after about 30 minutes of threadmill, cycle and elliptical (10 minutes each) I headed for this monster:

Actually, I quickly returned to my hotel room to get a pen and my notebook, and determined as well as I could my max for bench press, leg extension, leg curl, lat pulldown, biceps curl, bench pull and shoulder press. Then did a little circuit where I worked at 60% of the max, and just did as many repeats as I could until failure (or until 20 repeats, whichever came first). I also added situps, pushups, back and squat with weights into the mix. Actually, I added the squat later, when I started to realize that I was mostly working my upper body … I guess that is what fitness rats like to work…

I did the circuit 2 times. One hour and fifteen minutes including the 30 minutes extensive steady state and the quick determination of 1RM maxima.

Looking forward to how my body will feel tomorrow.

By • Uncategorized • 14 • Tags: , ,

L4 Prehrada 10-12-2015, Heart rate

Oct 12 2015

Monday: Rowing a quad with the girls

Romana had to be in Pardubice for work. Usually she has her appointments in the morning and is back in time to coach her girls, but today I volunteered to look after them.

They had scheduled 1500m intervals (3 of them) on the erg, which was sensible given the predictions of freezing temperatures and a 4 Beaufort wind, which can throw nasty chop on our lake. However, when we arrived at the rowing club, it was sunny and the wind direction was such that there was a lot of rowable water. Three girls: Lenka, 15, and an experienced rower. Iva, 14, who has rowed in the girls 13/14 category, and Klara, 17, who is just learning to row. I decided to take them in the quad and do technique/extensive Steady State. I promised them I will explain to Romana. I also promised they will not escape from the OTE intervals.

I put the “girls double” on 3 and 4, Klara on 2 and I rowed bow position to take care of the course and to keep an eye on Klara as the least experienced. But she picked up quite well. We did rowing by pairs on the first 1km. Then we used the second warming up km to work our way to a full stroke, starting with hands only, etc. After 3km we were rowing steady enough that we could add some pressure. So the training ended up to be low stroke rate (17-18spm) with high pressure and a sloooow recovery to feel the boat run (and give Klara some time to sequence everything right).

Worked out pretty well and it was fun to do. Turns out, I thought I was doing nothing myself, but when I did some stretching this evening I found out that I had taxed my muscles a bit. So far, so good.

L4 Prehrada 10-12-2015 L4 Prehrada 10-12-2015, Heart rate

By • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: , , , , ,

Babice 001

Oct 9 2015

Hradiště test drive

The club needed my small trailer for tomorrow’s head race, to shuttle singles that are used by more people from the finish to the start. My trailer has the nice property that you can load it with a few singles without removing the wings/riggers.

So I took the opportunity to load my own single on my trailer and go for a morning reconnaissance row in Hradiště. I also had the opportunity to combine it with a work-related visit to the local aircraft manufacturers Evektor and Aircraft Industries.

My timing notes for today were:

  • 5:30 depart from home
  • 5:45 arrive at rowing club; pick up trailer
  • 6:00 depart from rowing club; drive 110km to Babice
  • 7:30 arrive in Babice
  • 8:00 launch and row
  • 9:30 backfrom training
  • 9:45 drive to finish area; park trailer
  • 10:15 drive to Aircraft Industries
  • 10:30 arrive at Aircraft Industries
  • 11:00 meetings
  • 13:30 depart from Aircraft Industries; drive 70km to Brno
  • 15:00 arrive at work; interview candidate

Woke up with the common cold at 5:20. Worked off the program. Arrived at Aircraft Industries at 10:37. I arrived at work 14:55 to interview the candidate. I was never more than 15 minute from the plan.

Here is how I arrived at Babice, in the rain, in the middle of nowhere:

Babice 001

I rowed the 14km from the launch point to the finish and back. I had programmed the race as a “course” in CrewNerd and I test drove this. It was good that I did that. I had placed the start 100m before the real start. Corrected that now, but I discovered that the upgrade of SportTracks seems to have lost my most used plugin: Google Earth Visualisation by Dobrou Extensions. 🙁

The row itself was nice. The mirror works perfectly for steering and I tried to row the ideal course. You can check here:

https://www.strava.com/activities/409295053

On our own river, I had difficulties distinguishing between the two banks in the evening light, but on the Morava river with its green, grassy banks I had no trouble. The ideal course is, according to my estimate, the shortest course that never brings you closer than 2 meters to the bank. Closer than 2 meters, and the river is too shallow and you don’t benefit from the stream.

Rowing on the perfectly flat water and checking my mirror, I really got into the mood for tomorrow’s race. Not good that I am a little sniffly, but I decided to just ignore that.

hradiste

The meetings were fine. Both companies make interesting aircraft. Here is a promo video about the L410 landing in Nepal. Quite nice, even though the engines are from the competitor:

By • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: , , , , ,

6km

Oct 4 2015

Sunday: Head Race Simulation

We slept in and had an extensive breakfast. Scrambled eggs, bacon, freshly pressed juice and all.

After coffee, Romana and I headed to the lake. We cleared the boats off our little trailer, rigged the single, and parked the trailer. Then Romana went to the erg room to do a steady state 3x15min erg, and I headed to the lake to do my weekly 6km hard distance.

Only a little of wind, and no chop. Ideal conditions. My usual 6km course with a turn would feature head wind in the first half, and tailwind in the second. A nice variation.

Unfortunately, a sailing race was planned for today. This is the sense of humor of the Brno Dam. When there are rowing races, there is strong wind, high waves and generally unrowable conditions. When there are sailing races, there is no wind, and the contestants just float around on a flat lake, legs up, doing nothing.

The sailing race course was laid out in such a way that I couldn’t do my usual 6km course on the lake. It would bring my straight through the field and along the boat with the referees. I wasn’t curious to hear their reprimands. Hugging the shore wouldn’t help either.

So I decided to go on the canyon. With a couple of sharp turns at the entry to the canyon, this would be a good mirror steering exercise. Here is a map showing how twisty this part of the river is:

twisty

I overtook a tourist ferry about 500m before the turn. On the way back, in the headwind, there was a motor boat in front of me. When I approached to about 50m of them, they suddenly opened the gas and sped away from me, leaving me in their wake. With rocky and steep banks on both side, especially in the twisty bit, this created a lot of heaving waves which slowed me down.

A good head race simulation anyway.

6kmspm 6km
|Dist_|Time_|Pace__|_SPM__|avg HR|max HR|DPS|Remarks
|01803|10:25|02:53.4| 19.2 | 128 | 139 |09.0|warming up
|00999|04:11|02:05.6| 25.9 | 158 | 169 |09.2|km 1
|01001|04:13|02:06.4| 25.3 | 170 | 172 |09.4|km 2
|00999|04:12|02:06.2| 25.6 | 175 | 177 |09.3|km 3
|01001|04:46|02:22.8| 25.0 | 171 | 176 |08.4|turn & km 4
|00997|04:38|02:19.4| 25.7 | 173 | 175 |08.4|km 5
|00985|04:35|02:19.6| 25.9 | 172 | 175 |08.3|km 6
|01888|11:30|03:02.7| 17.7 | 134 | 175 |09.3|cooling down


dist_____|time_____|_pace___|_HR__|_SPM__|_DPS|comment
1803_____|_10:25____|_2:53.4|128|19.2|9.0|warmup
5982_____|_26:35____|_2:13.3|170|25.6|8.8|Main set
1888_____|_11:30____|_3:02.7|134|17.7|9.3|Cool down
9673____|_48:30____|_2:30.4|153|22.3|8.9|_Total

By • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: , , , ,

Oct 2 2015

Carry-on luggage running shoes

Had a business lunch close to a mall today so I checked the sports store. With lots of business travel between now and Christmas, I am on the lookout for lightweight exercise gear. 

Bought Adidas minimalistic running shoes. They fold flat in th carry-on luggage, are lightweight and full running shoes. 

On the training front I did a steady state row with some speed bursts, then prepared double and single for transport. 

Departing 6;45 tomorrow morning. Sprint races. I will row Masters 1x and mix all ages 2x with my daughter Lenka. We are 29 years on average so Masters A. 

Fun races. 

By • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: , , ,

«< 63 64 65 66 67 >»