Day: February 26, 2015

3×20’/2′ rests with lactate

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I was experimenting with a change in my posture.  Trying to sit up straighter and hinge at my hips.  This made things a bit tougher, since it was like walking with a stone my shoe.

I did the first 20′ at 183W like a good boy, and did my lactate test. I figured it would be high since I felt pretty tired and sweaty.  It was…2.4mmol/l.  too high.  Definitely need to retreat back to 180.

So, I did that for the second 20′ piece.  For some reason, probably because I was concentrating pretty hard to maintain my posture, I was really tired at the end of it.

I had a false start on piece #3.  I briefly thought about just quitting, but that seemed like a wimpy thing to do.  So I decided to do change it up a little bit.  I bumped up the stroke rate to 22.  If I was trying to maintain constant SPI, I would have been aiming for 200W, I instead aimed for about a 190, so it was a lighter stroke.  It was easier to maintain better posture at this slightly higher rate, and even though my HR was higher, it felt more comfortable.  The HR plateaued in the mid-150s in the last few minutes of the the piece. 2015-02-26_9-13-17

2015-02-26_9-21-33

Sit up straight! Suck in your gut!

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I was obsessing about how bad my rowing looked in the videos that I posted and I was really puzzled by why I could see no real lean forward even though it felt like I was doing it while I was rowing. Then it stuck me. I’m actually not as fat as I look in the video! 😀 It’s really that my posture sucks! I am really slumped over and my back is very curved at the catch. It also explained my hand position. My hands weren’t too high, my chest was too low!

The reason I don’t see layback or lean forward is that the bottom of my back (and my hips) are a not moving. All the movement is coming in the middle of my spine. With that in mind, I decided that the best coaching advice for me would be remember what I always heard in junior high.

“Sit up Straight!”
“Stop Slouching”
“Suck in your gut”

Did I mention that it was not a very nurturing environment?

So, I tried to keep that in mind today and, woo boy, was it hard. It was like writing with my left hand or trying breath on the wrong side when swimming the crawl. Entirely unnatural. But effective. I could sequence the recovery better. It was more taxing from a CV perspective since I wasn’t used to it, but I think it’s the right adjustment.

What do you think?