Month: July 2016

Tuesday: 3 x 20′ / 1’30” rest (w/lactate)

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I had a blast in Provincetown on the 4th.  I went for a walk in the morning to go collect some breakfast.  Then we lazed around the rest of the morning.  Around noontime, we wander over to a boat rental place and rented a 2 person kayak.  We spent an hour paddling around the harbor, checking out the yachts and enjoying the sunny day.  Then the walk back to the hotel, picking up some sandwiches on the way for lunch.  Later in the afternoon, we headed out again and walked all the way across town to a favorite shop of ours.  On the way back, we picked up some wine, cheese and crackers to enjoy during the fireworks.  We settled in on the deck of the hotel, and watched the fireworks over the harbor.  All together, it was over 7 miles of walking and a brilliant day.

The drive home was unpleasant.  We set out for home around 11am on Tuesday morning.  Apparently, so did everyone else on Cape Cod.  We fought through 4 hours of traffic to get off the cape, and even then, the traffic pretty heavy  the rest of the way.  We didn’t get home until well after 5pm.  I had a snack, and drink, and then went off to do a light 60 minute session.

Plan:

  • 3 x 20′
  • 1:30 rest (to allow time for lactate tests)
  • target power: 185W
  • rate: 19-20

It was hot and humid.  After I finished, the temperature was 80F, and the humidity was 80%.  It was a very sweaty, and hot enough that it compromised the power I could hold with reasonable lactate levels.

The first 20 minutes was fine.  Lactate at the end was 1.9mmol/l.   I missed the start for the second interval because I was running to get a water bottle.  So, I was chasing the target power a bit.  The power for the full interval read 182W, but I missed about 15 seconds of rowing at the beginning, so I was rowing >185W for the whole interval. I also was starting to sweat up a storm and feeling a bit overheated.  At the end of the second interval, I read 3.2mmol/l.  I suspect it might have been a bad reading, but I decided to back off the power to 180W for the last 20 minutes, and push the stroke rate up to 20 to keep things under control.  It did the trick.  My HR stabilized and my lactate level dropped back to 2.2mmol/l. by the end of 60 minutes.

myimage (35)

2016-07-05 18.56.47

 

Sunday: 2 x 1K on Quinsig

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Weather:  Sunny, cool (60f), a bit of wind from the West, about 5-10mph.  This was a mostly cross wind, but a little bit to the bow when rowing north, at least I’d like to think so.

Plan:

  • Warmup
  • Practice Starts
  • 1000m Race Simulation
  • recovery
  • 1000m Hard Interval
  • Cool down

Screen Shot 2016-07-03 at 10.07.21 AM

2x1k

summary

I guess I’m OK with how things went.  I was hoping for faster times, but with the cross wind and chop, I was having some trouble rowing long.  It was a bit tippy at the catch.  The pace variations were mostly caused by gusts.  Especially the big drop off about 3/4 of the way in to the second 1000m.  In terms of effort, the first one was all out.  The second one, I started out a a bit lower stroke rate, and when things seemed to be going OK, I started pushing harder.

But the main point of today was to dig deep, experience the pain, and carry on.  From that perspective, this was a very good session.  It hurt like hell, but I eased up just a little and carried on.  I have a good idea of what I can do in the race.  target pace is right around 2:00 for the first 500m, and then go for broke in the second half.

While I was doing the 1ks, I noticed that the speedcoach was reading a bit faster than Crewnerd.  I had not recalibrated after reattaching the impeller, and I think it was giving me a couple of seconds on the pace that I was not earning.  So, after I got to top of the lake, I did one final 1K, this time trying to keep the rate around a 26 to do a speedcoach calibration.  To do this, I set up a 1000m piece on Crewnerd, and put the Speedcoach in to calibration mode.  You start them both up, and then you push stop on the speedcoach right when Crewnerd hits zero.  The cal factor ended up being 0.971.  My old cal factor was 0.983.  The change takes away about 1.5 seconds of pace.  Whew.  I feared it was more.

This afternoon, my wife and I are heading off to Cape Cod to celebrate July 4th out in Provincetown.  Tomorrow will be a rest day.  Tuesday, I will do an easy erg session in the afternoon.

 

Saturday: 3 x 20′ / 1’30” rest (with lactate)

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My wife and I went to see Weezer outdoors at the Xfinity Center last night.  Aside from a terrible warmup band, and a massive thunderstorm that pushed through right before they went on stage, it was a very fun night.  We didn’t get home until nearly midnight, so I opted for sleep instead of rowing this morning.

I slept like a log and woke up around 9:30.  After various chores and errands, I decided to keep things ticking over with another easy erg session.  I’ll hit the time trial hard tomorrow on Quinsig.

Today, I wanted to turn down the power a bit to see if I could hit the endurance sweet spot.  Very little HR drift, end HR below 155, and a lactate below 2.0mmol/l.  I set up my meter, wet and dry towels and test strips.  As Eminem would say…”It’s back to the lab again”.

Plan:

  • 3 x 20′
  • 1:30 rests to accommodate lactate testing with minimal panic
  • target power: 185W
  • target rate: 19spm
  • HR limit: 155
  • Lactate tests after each 20′ piece.

Lactate test results were:

  • 20′: 1.8 mmol/l
  • 40′: 2.1 mmol/l
  • 60′: 1.9 mmol/l

So that is the difference that 6 watts makes.

Tomorrow:  1k TT, plus starts, plus some other sprint pieces.

3 x 20′ / 1′ rest @ 192W

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I decided to just do an erg session today.  A nice easy erg session.  I’ll do my race prep tomorrow.

Plan:

  • 3 x 20′
  • 1′ rests
  • Power target: 190W
  • Rate target: 19-20spm
  • HR Cap: 155

Today, my HR started low, but just kept going up.  I think that means that I was just the slightest bit faster than my ideal training power.  I really should have setup to do some lactate testing, but I forgot until I had gotten going.  But in the past, when my HR keeps drifting up, my lactates generally came in high.  When I plateaued and the drift decreased over the session, then they were generally in range.

Next session, I’ll go for 185W.

Tomorrow:  1K hard.  Additional sprints as I see fit.

New Backstays on the Alden

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I’m procrastinating.  I slept in this morning and didn’t feel like doing the time trial.  I am also feeling a bit worn out.  Over the last 7 days I’ve totalled 9:30 of time rowing, and 99,828m.  That’s a huge increase compared to how the rest of this season has gone so far.  My weekly averages are 54,000m and 4:45.  They have been great sessions and I’m glad I’ve been home to be able to do them, but I am sore all over and feel very low energy.

But truth be told, part of it is being scared of the time trial.  I’ll either go over later today or do it tomorrow morning.

But in the mean time, I finished the project to put new backstays on the Alden.  I broke a backstay a couple weeks ago, as I described here, during my first real outing in the Alden Star.  After that, I tried to find a replacement backstay.  I attempted to contact the folks who sold me the boat (no reply), I attempted to contact Alden (no reply).  I called the folks at Adirondack Rowing.  They were great.  They told me that they did not have the part, and that they were having a lot of trouble getting any merchandise from Alden.  They pointed me to another guy who might have the part.  He did not, but told me that it would be a lot easier to just make them instead of trying to buy them.

I asked him if there was anything special about the material.  He said that most of them were standard aluminum tube.  So, I google my way over to onlinemetals.com, navigated my way to the aluminum tube products and bought:

  • Aluminum 6061-T6 Bare
  •   Drawn Tube
  •   0.5″ x 0.049″ x 0.402″

They had anodized, but not in the dimensions I wanted.  I might eventually paint them, or I might not.

Then, I paid a visit to my Dad, who has an impressive workshop.  He was so excited by the project that he went out and bought himself a new, bigger, better, vise to form the ends.  Using the one backstay that I had as a template, I cut the tubes to length, then flattened the last inch in the vise.  Matched the hole sizes from the previous backstay to a drill and drilled the holes for the ends.  A little work with a file to remove all the burrs and we were done.

Here’s the result.

The only thing that I am not completely happy with is the original was formed on the ends so that the bottom side of the stern end and the top side of the rigger end were flush.  You can see in the picture above, that with available technology (a bench vise), that the flattening is centered on the tube, so there is a slight interference between the round tube and the stern deck.  The problem is entirely cosmetic though.

Well, that’s done now.  On to the next project.  And hopefully, I’ll get myself pumped up enough to go rowing.