I wrote some stuff about my Dad, but moved it over to a different post.  I decided it doesn’t have much to do with training.

 

I had a tough day at work on Friday.  There are multiple projects going on and one of them in particular is in that critical stage, that it seems all projects go through, where it looks like the world is ending.  I was supposed to review progress at 3, but they waved me off because they were in the middle of a test run, so I had a hole in my schedule.

I thought a quick workout would help me keep my head clear and thinking straight, so I headed to the gym.  I decided to do a 10K L4.  Since I am training so little right now, overtraining is NOT going to be a factor, so I dialed up the intensity.  Instead of trying to keep my HR below a cap, I just rowed to power, and I included a fair amount of work at 22spm and 24 spm.

Of course, since I was on a tight schedule, today had to be the day that Painsled decided to not work.  I am not sure whether it was because of changes in PainSled, or because my phone was in a funny state, but it would not stay linked to the PM.  It would get the first HR and then not update after that.  I tried a couple of things and couldn’t get it working, so I bailed on painsled and went to ergdata.  Say what you want about ergdata, it seems very reliable.  It always links, the syncing to the logbook is fast and easy.  The support in the logbook is getting better all the time.

Heres what the workout detail page looks like now, if you row with ergdata.

Pretty good huh?  It has all the basics including heart rate.  If it recorded the stroke metric esoteric that painsled does, I’d be really happy.

Of course you can’t do the stuff you can do on rowsandall.  Let’s use this workout for a quick comparison.

Workout summary:

• rowsandall provides the ability to do summaries using distance or time.  concept2 is time only.
• rowsandall provides a plot of power in addition to pace.  Since I row to power, that’s handy.
• Splits:  concept2 provides the same splits that were defined in the PM.  rowsandall does the same as default, but provides a way to redefine splits, which I used to look at each segment.
• Drag Factor:  concept2 has this on the summary page, for rowsandall, it is on the summary plot.
• Accuracy:  Because rowsandall is reconstructing the row from stroke data, there is some error in the distances recorded, generally much less than the distance in a stroke.  This can cause significant changes in avg pace for very short intervals.
• Concept2 log integration:  ergdata to concept2 log is incredibly easy.  so is export from rowsandall to concept2.  However, watch out for rankable pieces.  Because of the interpolation on rowsandall, if you export a HM you might end up with a 21094m which you can’t rank.  In general, for ranking pieces, I log them manually to make sure they match the PM exactly.  On ergdata/concept2 syncing, they seem to match exactly every time.  (I wonder if they are using features that they are not publishing in the API?)

Of course there is stuff that you can’t do on the concept2 log page.  Here are a few examples:

Time in Zone HR chart and Time in Zone Power chart

And of course flex charts:  Here is pace versus SPM.  Which I’ve defined as one of my favorites in the tool.

You can also easily generate a power histogram for the workout.

Or generate it for a range of dates, so you can see how well you are managing intensity for a polarized workout plan.  Here are all the erg strokes I’ve taken since November 8th.

You can see that I am in a low intensity, endurance maintenance mode right now, with very little work being done above 200W.

With regard to the workout, it was a useful diversion.  I enjoyed it so much that in the last 2500m, I decided to push it harder.  I did 500m each at 18/20/22/24 and 26.  I was rowing strapless so the 24 and 26 was a bit of a challenge.  I was in a much better place when I finished than when I started.

Here’s the summary

Workout Summary - media/20161217-143940-concept2-result-28153486o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10000|39:31.0|01:58.6|210.8|20.7|147.7|169.0|12.2
W-|10000|39:32.0|01:58.6|208.3|20.4|147.0|169.0|12.5
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|169.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01000|04:07.0|02:03.5|182.3|17.7|121.8|133.0|13.7
02|00750|02:58.6|01:59.1|204.0|20.2|138.1|143.0|12.5
03|00500|01:55.6|01:55.6|223.8|22.0|146.4|149.0|11.8
04|00250|00:55.7|01:51.3|250.5|24.0|150.0|152.0|11.3
05|00500|02:03.0|02:03.0|188.7|18.3|148.2|153.0|13.3
06|00500|02:04.3|02:04.3|180.0|18.0|138.2|142.0|13.4
07|00500|01:58.8|01:58.8|205.8|20.1|143.2|147.0|12.6
08|00500|01:57.4|01:57.4|214.1|21.0|147.3|151.0|12.2
09|00500|01:53.8|01:53.8|234.2|22.8|152.0|155.0|11.6
10|01000|04:07.5|02:03.7|184.5|18.2|147.4|156.0|13.3
11|00750|02:58.9|01:59.2|203.9|20.1|148.7|152.0|12.5
12|00500|01:55.7|01:55.7|222.2|21.9|154.6|156.0|11.8
13|00250|00:56.2|01:52.3|244.9|23.9|158.2|160.0|11.2
14|00500|02:03.4|02:03.4|188.3|18.4|156.0|160.0|13.2
15|00500|01:59.3|01:59.3|203.5|20.2|152.5|154.0|12.4
16|00500|01:56.1|01:56.1|220.7|22.0|156.4|159.0|11.7
17|00500|01:52.6|01:52.6|241.1|23.9|160.7|163.0|11.1
18|00500|01:48.7|01:48.7|268.8|25.4|166.4|169.0|10.9

Not sure if I will row today.  It might be a good idea to keep myself busy until the snow clears.