Well, more like 13K of technique and 2K of slogging through nasty chop.

Weather:  Weird.  It started out just fine.  Little or no wind.  Overcast.  About 70F and more humid than yesterday, about 80% RH.  We launched at about 6:45 and the weather stayed that way until about 8am.  Just when we had hit the south end of the lake. We turned around and all of the sudden there was a pretty considerable headwind from the North.  It was a slog up to the narrows, and it got worse from there.  The chop on the north side of the narrows was awful, and it made me feel like all the good drill work that I had been doing had gone to waste.

Don’t take my word for it.  Take a look at the plot from Weather Underground.

Anyway, back to the rowing.

Today’s Plan:

• 2K of rowing with a bungee.  Trying to work on relaxing my arms and shoulders through the drive and getting my arms out straight.  Work on sequencing the drive better and holding a forward position through the leg drive.
• (500m of SBR, 500m of alternating SBR and feathered, 500m of feathered) repeated over and over again.  Working on trying to maintain the same back position at the finish when feathered of square.  Try to correct my habit of laying back too much.  Also try to get way out at the catch and challenge my balance at the catch.

We launched and headed north.  I had a bungee around the boat about where the footplate was.  I was working on getting my arms straight and my shoulders relaxed.  At first, I was really hammering the catch and opening up my back too early.  I was also rowing at a very low rate.  As I continued up lake, I was doing better getting to full compression, easing into the drive, and holding my body forward longer.  This was a much smoother stroke and my speed and rate both picked up.  Very satisfying at the end seeing the water flying everywhere off of the bungee.

At the north end of the lake, I had a quick drink and took off the bungee.  Then I started my 500s with my blades square.  My balance was pretty good and I was able to get out to full compression reasonably well.  I was having some trouble keeping my finishes clean.  On about 1/3 of the strokes, I could feel myself getting hung up as I extracted the oars.  My best strokes, the finish was much smoother, essentially maintaining the pace of the stroke at the finish and just lifting the blades clear of the water.  On the bad strokes, I would reach the end of the stroke with the blades still buried and I could feel the pressure on  the blades from the boat velocity.  It got a bit better as I continued to work on it.

The alternating SBR and feathered is a great drill (in my opinion anyway).  I have noticed that I tend to layback too much, especially as I get tired and leave the oars in the water too long.  Then I feather and extract the oars in one movement.  By doing alternating strokes, I can try to match the exact body position at the finish for both SBR and feathered.  An early finish on SBR leads to a smooth extraction, going late leads to a hang up.  The feeling is much more pronounced than when rowing feathered and the turn of the oar handle avoids the hangup.  The alternating strokes reinforces the right moment in the drive to push the handles down.

It’s always a relief to do the 500m of feathered rowing, but also a chance to really try to reinforce the body position that I was holding at the finish.  I caught myself with too much layback a bunch of times, but the good thing was that I really noticed it and corrected it.

The 500m chunks are a good length because it’s enough time to really work on stuff, but not so long that you lose concentration.

I did about 11K of this drill, so maybe 7 complete sets or so.  the last couple sets were into the newly developed head wind.  I could really feel it pushing back on square blades.  I bailed out on the drill at the narrows because the water was too nasty to row n the square productively.  I slogged along until I was nearly at the bridge and then pumped up the rate a couple notches and tried to finish with a bit more effort.

Workout Summary - media/20160717-165231-2016-07-17-0647o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15370|86:10.0|02:48.2|17.8|146.0|169.0|10.0

Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|15370|86:09.0|02:48.2|17.8|146.0|169.0|10.0

Tomorrow:  Probably a rest day.  I am picking my wife up at the airport at 11:30pm.  I doubt I’ll want to get up at 5am after going to bed around 1am.

Week #1: Plan vs Actual

Happy enough with that.  Priority is on lots of SS minutes now.