Weather: Overcast, cool, humid. Light wind, headwind going upstream.
Felt very low energy in the morning. Got up anyway.
Plan:
| M2 | 3 x 20′ / 2′ | MP, 10KP, HMP | 90.0% | (167) |
Power targets:
- MP: 158-171
- HMP: 171-184
- 10KP: 184-197
So, I had two different thoughts in my head. One was the memory of the awesome workout I did on Saturday where I pegged the watts above the top end of the band. The other was the empty legs feeling from the aborted workout Monday night.
For the first interval, aggressive Greg was dominant. I rowed it at an average power of 176W (including the s-turn, but not the spin). Or 6 watts above the top end of the power band.
Same thing in the second interval. I rowed the first five and a half minutes at 196W watts avg, spun the boat, rowed another 3 minutes at about the same power, hit the HR cap, tried to slow down, and then bailed on the interval. I rowed the rest of it out at sub marathon power.
Chastened, I rowed the final interval smack in the middle of the power band, but it was massively hard to do.
I annotated the summary plot with the turns, rests and failures.
The pie charts show elevated HR, and overly ambitious power.
There should be no 2kp and very little 5kp, basically just from starboard turning strokes. There should be around 20 minutes of 10kp, 20 minutes of hmp, and 20 minutes of MP. And then the balance sub-MP, about 15 minutes. Lousy pace discipline.
I’m finding it hard to row to a target power. It seems to bounce around a lot from stroke to stroke. Perhaps that is an indication that my rowing is inconsistent. Perhaps, it is a characteristic of the measurement method. I wonder if there is a way to have the speed coach show a running avg of the power over a few strokes?
Alternatively, I could try to row to a specific work per stroke and stroke rate. That seems to be a bit let noisy on the display.
Workout Summary - media/20170530-172024-Greg Smith 20170530 0643amo.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|13813|74:21.0|02:41.5|163.9|21.4|152.8|172.0|08.7 W-|11824|57:49.0|02:26.7|175.8|21.6|155.9|171.0|09.5 R-|01997|16:31.0|04:08.4|104.8|19.4|135.3|171.0|04.4 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|02771|13:13.8|02:23.2|179.0|20.5|149.4|156.0|10.2 -1st mp 02|01431|07:04.8|02:28.4|172.5|20.3|155.2|159.0|10.0 -1st mp 03|01162|05:31.8|02:22.8|194.5|23.6|160.2|168.0|08.9 -2nd 10kp 04|00607|02:52.2|02:21.9|192.2|24.3|161.6|167.0|08.7 -2nd 10kp 05|00262|01:15.0|02:23.1|174.3|23.3|154.5|157.0|09.0 -2nd ease up 06|01664|08:13.2|02:28.2|154.9|19.2|147.5|160.0|10.6 -2nd post bail 07|03927|19:39.0|02:30.1|176.1|22.8|162.0|171.0|08.8 -3rd
I was wondering what the heck was wrong. Why was I so tired. I decided to do an experiment. My HR monitor didn’t work on my long row on Sunday. But, my guess was that I averaged about 150 for the 2 active hours of the row. I manually doctors the CSV file for the row to insert 150 for the active part of the row and reimported it to Stravistix. Turns out that a 2 hour workout at 150bpm is a TRIMP of 256. It pushed me into overload.
Then my aborted session and the Tuesday session kept me right on that line. I’m not sure that this is exactly right, but I do think that rest will do me more good than working out right now, so I decided to sleep instead of rowing on Wednesday morning.
In the Eddie Fletcher Marathon Plan, he says that you may need extra rest days and you should not hesitate to take them. Despite the fact that it I still have trouble believing that I can make more progress by doing nothing than by doing something, I should let the evidence and data guide my actions. The important thing to me right now is to be able to do quality sessions, and especially to be ready and eager for the open water long rows that I do about once a week. Those are the pinnacle sessions.
Wednesday: Rest Day
Thursday:
On the water
| M1 | 4 x 15′ / 4′ | 6′ @ 5KP, 9′ @ MP | 92.5% | (172) |
Power Targets:
- 5KP: 184-197
- MP: 158-171
Quantified Rowing 
I should really add a stroke to stroke power consistency metric so we can compare. Your plots are more colorful but I think your bands are closer together then how I have defined them.
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Yes, the bands for the marathon training plan are very narrow, 5% of 2K watts defines each band. It’s OK on the erg but hard to do on the water. I’ve been focused on trying to:
1. hit specific stroke rates
2. maintain effective length >80 degrees
3. power in the right range.
On the longer straight sections, I can settle down into a groove and get everything lined up, but as soon as I need to row through curves, under bridges, or around traffic, it’s an information overload.
I bet it would be a bit better on Lake Quinsigamond where it’s a straight 6K from bottom to top.
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Having done the Marathon Plan 3 times (I think) on the erg and once in the single, I can attest to how difficult the translation from one to the other is. The erg is a power measuring machine and does it better than anything else. In the single, there are just too many other outside influences and variables to make a direct comparison of power work. On some days you’ll feel like you’re flying and others like you’re rowing in mud.
The one thing that I was sure of during the plan was that I needed more rest than I took. Doing the plan 4, 5 or even 6 days a week on the erg is OK. In the boat, no more than 3 days otherwise you’ll burn out. There is no doubt that it works though as my Marathon row in Grand Rapids (upstream HM in 1:46:00 after an 18:00 4k downstream) will attest. I am so far from that right now its not funny.
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Thanks for the comment, Dave. I’m liking the challenge of the plan, but it’s a challenge.
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