Sunday: 15km in Wellfleet

July 9, 2017July 9, 2017Leave a comment

Weather: nearly perfect. Temp in the low 70s, sparkling sunshine, wind from the NW at about 5-10mph with gusts to 15. This made the water lumpy, especially on the eastern side of the bay.

I launched from the northeast beach, my plan was another UT2/UT1 outing, about 90 minutes or so.

I headed up to Wellfleet inner harbor figuring that I would have less chop to contend with if I was closer to the north. As it turned out, the wind swung a bit to the west so I don’t think it helped all that much.

The row north was not that pleasant. I was bashing into the waves and not making very rapid progress. I was glad when I finally passed the breakwater and turned east. I was glad until 3 big cabin cruisers passed me at close range and high speed, stopping me dead in my tracks. After that, it was a smooth coast into the harbor, past the commercial dock and along the town jetty. I turned around the end and behind my boat, I saw a curious seal pop up his head to see what the hell I was doing.

I turned around behind the jetty and had a quick drink of water. A fishing boat pulled out ahead of me as I started to go back the way I came, and because of the “no wake” 5 mph speed limit in the inner harbor, I passed him. Later, as e passed the buoy marking the end of the speed limit, he returned the favor, complete with a monumental wake.

The row out of the harbor over to the great spit was another slog. I was going into to teeth of the wind but the waves were considerably smaller. I took on a lot less water and made good progress. I reached the shallows by the spit at around 8000m and turned SW to row in the lee of the spit. This bit was good fun. Flat water, wind on my starboard beam. I counted out strokes until I hit 11000m. In my fluid, on flat water, I do about 10m/stroke steady state. In the Aero, which is shorter and slower, and with a slightly higher stroke rate, I do between 7-8m/stroke. So it takes 120 to 130 strokes to cover a kilometer.

When I hit 11km on the speedcoach, I had a quick drink, and turned for home. This was bouncy fun. I was going nearly dead down wind and the waves built as I went across to the east side of the bay. It wasn’t particularly fast, but it was a blast.

As I passed the northwest point of the island I started a slow turn back to the beach, finishing just past the 15km point.

After I got my boat loaded, I went for a quick and refreshing swim.

Workout Summary - media/20170709-163411-Greg Smith 20170709 0901amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15095|95:39.0|03:10.1|000.0|21.5|139.7|155.0|07.4
W-|14814|92:33.0|03:07.4|000.0|21.5|139.9|155.0|07.5
R-|00284|03:06.0|05:27.8|000.0|20.4|124.0|155.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|05172|34:18.0|03:19.0|000.0|21.8|139.0|155.0|06.9
01|05702|35:36.0|03:07.3|000.0|21.5|141.5|149.0|07.5
02|03940|22:39.1|02:52.5|000.0|21.0|138.7|147.0|08.3

Tomorrow: I catch a 8am flight to San Francisco. I’ll be out there for a few days, returning on the Wednesday red eye.

Saturday: Choppy 10k in Wellfleet

July 8, 20172 Comments

Weather: Sparkling sunshine. mid 70s. Breezy, about 10-15mph with gusts to 20mph from the SSW.

I launched at about 1:45pm, from the Northeast beach. I wanted to go for about an hour. Since the wind was from the SW, I decided to go south for a change so that I would finish by coming downwind. I also have not explored that side of the island at all.

I hugged the shoreline of Lieutenant Island as it wraps around to the south, then south east, and I skirted along the edge of the salt marsh. The initial part to the south was quite choppy and I managed to fill the foot well a few times. I am having trouble with the self bailer. It does not want to stay deployed. I think there is a spring that is supposed to hold it in position, but it is not working. So, ultimately, I gave up and just rowed with the foot well full of water. On the plus side, it’s a small foot well.

Once I turned the southern corner of the island and headed along the salt marsh, I was headed more across the wind and it took some work to get used to the waves on my beam. I didn’t realize how much the wind had built up until I turned around to head west. The wind was whistling past my ears and I was pounding into the waves. But the water was warm and the sun was out and I felt pretty confident in my boat. I just tried to keep track of my heart rate and basically ignore the pace. I kept track of the distance and I decided that I could turn north after I hit 6000m.

After I turned north, I got a better appreciation of how big the waves were since they were coming at me from the stern. Since my vantage point is so low, the waves looked huge, but I bet they were not much bigger than a foot. But at times, my bow would be completely buried. Other times, the stern would be buried for two or three feet, and most impressively, there were some waves that submerged the shafts of my oars while I was recovering. That was new experience for me.

Generally, I was able to handle the waves well, but a couple of times, I was pushed broadside to the waves and pushed around. But the boat has a ton of natural stability and I never felt like I was going to go over.

I turned the corner at the northwestern tip of the island and headed over to indian head. The waves were smaller and more regular here and much easier to judge. Finally I turned for home, heading back into the waves one last time.

I tried to draw the wind and tidal flows on the chart. The key thing was the tide was against the wind, which I think help pile up the water a bit more.

Screen Shot 2017-07-08 at 5.14.42 PM

You can see the effect of wind and tide on the summary chart.

to 800m: flat water in the lee of the island
800m to 3500m: rowing south along the shore with the wind and waves abeam, slowly turning to the east following the shore.
3500m to 4400m: rowing south east across the waves
4400m to 6000m: bashing my way to the west basically right into the wind and waves. The transients to very slow pace are essentially when a big enough wave totally stopped my and filled to footwell.
6000m to 8100m: Wind and waves on my port stern. This was the wildest bit. Again the slow downs were swampings.
8100m to 8900m: easy and fun surfing dead down wind.
8900m to 9500m: back into the wind for the last bit back to the beach.

You can see how rowing downwind in this amount of chop is more technical than aerobic. My HR was much lower.

myimage (84)

It turned out to be a pretty close to perfect 60 minute aerobic session (and a hell of a lot of fun)

myimage (85)

Its hard to describe rowing in waves. The gopro point of view doesn’t seem to show what it’s like. Here’s a picture of the waves after I got back to the house, from about 40 feet above the water.

2017-07-08 15.34.52

When I was out, there were more white caps and the waves were a bit bigger. They certainly seemed a lot more confused than they look from here.

This has nothing to do with rowing, but last Sunday, I went for a walk as the tide was falling. I skirted the edge of a salt marsh and I ran into what looked like the kingdom of the hermit crabs.

Tomorrow is the last day of my vacation. I’m flying out to California on Monday morning for a conference. I hope to wake up reasonably early and get my last row in.

Vacation continues

July 7, 20172 Comments

Monday, July 3: We delivered my sister in law and her two sons to the ferry in the morning and spent the day doing laundry, cleaning and hanging out. It was great to have company, but it was also nice to have the house to ourselves again. Around 3:30 in the afternoon, I decided that the wind had died down enough for a row. So, I packed up my boat and headed off to the northeast beach. The wind was blowing about 10mph from the WNW, and there was a ton of chop from the wind and whole lot of motor boats.

I launched from the northeast beach of the island and headed up to wellfleet harbor. The tide was coming in, so I was going with the current up along the shore of indian neck. I went into the harbor and did a broad turn up toward “The Cove”. As I came back toward the channel, there was a sailboat coming out of from behind the jetty. It’s pretty shallow where I was, and I suspected it was even shallower where they were. Sure enough, I soon heard a grinding noise and they came to a stop, aground on a sand bar. As I rowed out of the harbor, I saw them back the sails and maneuver off the bar.

I then headed west along mayo beach. At certain points, it go pretty shallow. I could see the bottom and a couple of times one of my oars touched bottom, but it was OK. Then I took a broad turn toward the south and circled around the point of great island.

The row from there to my turning point was bouncy and somewhat unpleasant. The waves were very confused with all the motor boat traffic, and the various shallow spots. Eventually, I noticed the time and turned for home.

I had intended to row due east straight past the red buoy #10, but the waves wanted me to take a bit of a more northeasterly course. I swung around in a big arc and headed for the beach when I passed the northwest tip of the island.

Workout Summary - media/20170704-015955-Greg Smith 20170703 0352pmo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15925|98:02.0|03:04.7|000.0|21.1|154.1|163.0|07.7
W-|15470|93:50.0|03:02.0|000.0|20.9|154.6|162.0|07.9
R-|00458|04:00.0|04:22.2|000.0|25.0|142.9|162.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|04982|29:30.0|02:57.7|000.0|20.0|154.8|162.0|08.4 - to harbor
01|06740|42:47.2|03:10.5|000.0|21.0|155.6|160.0|07.5 - across and down
02|03749|21:33.0|02:52.4|000.0|21.7|152.3|162.0|08.0 - back to beach

I was working hard through the whole row, and the HR shows it. I have to avoid doing that in long races or I will burn out for sure.

Tuesday, July 4: We packed up ourselves and headed back to Hopkinton. The traffic on the day after July 4th can be murderous on the cape, and we wanted to avoid it is possible. We got home in the late afternoon, and eventually, I settled down for what I hoped would be a quick and easy 40 minute session. Of course this was on the cursed, awful dynamic erg at home, so it didn’t turn out that way.

The plan for was an L4 style workout. I really enjoyed the last 20 minutes of the session I did on Saturday, so I decided to do basically the same thing. But I found doing it on the dynamic to be a whole different experience. It was massively difficult. I have never worked so hard to go so slow!

One mitigating factor was the heat and humidity. It was 70% humidity and 80F in the room when I finished. It took two towels to mop up the floor.

Wednesday, July 5th: I guess I must have been tired, because I slept until 10:30. The rest of the day was a blur of shopping and yard work. We aren’t around the house much and the outside was looking a bit shabby. All day long I was dreading the idea of doing another session on the horrible dynamic in the sweatbox.

The plan was to stick to strict HR cap at 155, no matter how slow I had to go. That turned out to be very slow, and continually slower to stay under the cap.

So, how much worse is the dynamic. I used the comparison charts to look at this workout, and the 3×20’/2′ workout that I did on the prior Saturday on a static erg.

Both sessions were endurance sessions, with a HR cap at 155. Here’s the HR compared.

The orange trace is the dynamic. The green is static. Now here’s power.

In the middle of the last interval, when the HR’s were about the same, I was pulling 50w lower on the dynamic!

Here’s a scatter plot of the HR vs power. You can on the static (green points), the expected relationship of higher powers and higher heart rates holds. The dynamic (orange points) shows a backwards relationship. It seemed as if no matter how much I backed off the pace, my HR was pegged in the 150s. This is consistent with my thought that there is something wrong with the machine which is increasing the friction on the drive.

One confounding factor is temperature. The static session was in a cool (but humid) basement. The dynamic session was in 80F/70% humidity. That could explain a bit of the difference.

Thursday, July 6th: My father passed away last December. He took up sailing in the 1970s and it became more and more important to him over the next four decades. For the last thirty years, he has been a member of the Boston Yacht Club and over that time has been the chairman of the race committee and a principle organizer of a big ocean race that the club runs every other year between marblehead and Halifax Nova Scotia.

We decided that a fitting send off for my Dad would be to scatter his ashes at sea off of marblehead. We planned it for this Thursday because the start of this race is coming on Saturday and many of the folks that he knew from Nova Scotia would be around for the race.

A friend of his has a very serious vessel, the Elizabeth M. It’s a 40′ trawler. Here’s a video of it out for a cruise on another day…

We had aabout 25 people on board, took a slow cruise around the harbor, and then, once we were off marble head light, we scattered my Dad’s ashes and left some white flowers.

It was a really nice send off for him. He had a great group of friends and he has left a legacy at the club behind him.

Then we headed home, packed up and headed back to the cape.

Friday, July 7: Rain was in the forecast starting in the late morning, so I got up early (ish), and headed out for a row around 7:30. I launched from the NE beach. It was overcast with very little wind. The wind picked up a bit about half way through the row, but only to about 8mph, from the SSE.

The plan was for an easy row. Try to get the feeling of rowing at a stroke rate of 20 SPM and stay in the UT2 HR zone. For a 3 to 4 hour race, I want to be doing a pace I can hold all day long!

I decided to explore wellfleet inner harbor a bit today. I rowed out to Buoy #10, then turned north. The trip up to the harbor was fast and smooth. There was little wind and I was rowing with the tidal current. I rowed to the breakwater that marks the entrance to the inner harbor and rowed along the town jetty, and around behind to the boat slips. The speedcoach showed that I had done 7500m.

I stopped for a drink of water, and then retraced my steps. The row back from the breakwater to buoy #10 was a lot slower. The wind had picked up a little bit and I was rowing against the current. The plots show a good 30 seconds difference in pace.

I turned around Buoy #10 and headed due east to get back to the beach. When I reached the place where I launched, I was about 500m short of 15km, so I continued on a bit, turned around and beached the boat right when the speedcoach passed 15000m.

It was a very happy row.

Workout Summary - media/20170707-170512-Greg Smith 20170707 0739amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15049|87:41.0|02:54.8|000.0|20.5|139.6|157.0|08.4
W-|14836|85:11.0|02:52.3|000.0|20.6|139.7|157.0|08.5
R-|00216|02:30.0|05:47.9|000.0|18.0|119.6|157.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|02397|15:00.0|03:07.7|000.0|20.8|133.1|146.0|07.7 - to buoy #10
01|02947|15:00.0|02:32.7|000.0|20.4|141.4|146.0|09.6 - to bkwtr
02|01704|09:00.0|02:38.4|000.0|20.6|139.5|142.0|09.2 - to turn
03|01163|07:00.0|03:00.5|000.0|20.0|130.1|136.0|08.3 - back out of hbr
04|04753|29:00.0|03:03.1|000.0|20.5|141.7|147.0|08.0 - back to buoy #10
05|01872|10:11.7|02:43.4|000.0|20.9|148.4|157.0|08.8 - back to beach

Now it is raining like crazy.

Tomorrow, hopefully another row just like this one!

Back from Korea – some training (and some eating)

July 2, 2017Leave a comment

Thursday, June 29: I posted about my workout in the morning. I had the morning in the office, and then headed to the airport at 2pm Korea time. I took off at 5:30pm, arrived in Dallas, around 4:30pm. Connected to Boston, taking off at 6:25pm and arrived in Boston around 11pm. I got my car and pulled around to a different terminal to meet my daughter who was flying in from St. Louis.

She took over driving duties and we headed off to Cape Cod, arriving at 1:30AM. My total travel time 24 hours and 30 minutes. I was surprised to see my sons when I got to the house. I guess they keep late hours.

Friday, June 30: Honestly, I don’t remember much about Friday. I was tired. It was very windy. The highlight of the day was my quest to make great lobster rolls. First stop, great bread from this amazing french bakery near us (PB Boulangerie in Wellfleet). The traditional lobster roll is on a buttered split top hot dog bun. I prefer a fresh Croissant. Still buttery, but also flakey and light. Next stop, Mac’s fish market on the pier to buy some cooked lobster. Finally, the Wellfleet market for celery, since lobster salad needs a little crunch.

Lobster Salad (serves 2) (I quadrupled the recipe)

Two big flakey, fresh croissants
1/2 pound cooked lobster, cut into biggish chunks
1 stalk celery, diced
Hellman’s Mayonaisse to taste
dash of salt
dash of ground black pepper
dash of italian seasoning
1/4 lemon squeezed

Warm up the croissants in the oven while you make the salad. mix the lobster, celery, salt, pepper and italian seasoning in a bowl. Add a tbsp of mayo and mix, and then add a tsp at a time until the salad just barely clings together. Squeeze a bit of lemon juice over the top

Slice the croissants, add the lobster salad and enjoy.

Ummmm. No training

Saturday, July 1: More hanging around. More wind. It was above 40mph sustained winds for a while. I did an erg session.

3 x 20′ / 2′

I just wanted to keep it easy so I set off at 2:08 pace and held it for the first 2 pieces. I got bored so I did the last 20 minutes L4 style

Workout Summary - media/20170701-2315210o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14515|65:12.0|02:14.8|162.9|18.9|138.5|154.0|11.8
W-|13640|58:00.0|02:07.6|168.7|18.9|138.6|154.0|12.5
R-|00880|07:12.0|04:05.7|082.0|19.0|129.7|154.0|10.9
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|04697|20:00.0|02:07.8|167.4|18.7|129.0|138.0|12.5
01|04696|20:00.0|02:07.8|168.4|18.9|140.3|146.0|12.4
02|00925|04:00.0|02:09.7|160.1|17.8|136.4|145.0|13.0
03|00707|03:00.0|02:07.4|169.3|19.0|147.2|148.0|12.4
04|00478|02:00.0|02:05.5|176.6|19.9|150.4|152.0|12.0
05|00486|02:00.0|02:03.3|186.5|20.6|153.2|154.0|11.8
06|00714|03:00.0|02:06.0|175.3|19.7|152.5|153.0|12.1
07|00937|04:00.0|02:08.0|166.8|18.6|150.3|152.0|12.6

Later in the day, I went and gathered some oysters from the sand bars in front of the house. Then it was my first attempt at solo shucking. I got a quick lesson last summer, and I managed to shuck a dozen or so oysters without impaling myself.

Sunday, July 2nd: Too much stuff going on all day. We dropped our daughter off at the ferry in Provincetown, and I went for a nice walk around the island, but no training.

There was a very nice sunset on Sunday though.

And later that night the next town had their fireworks. They were pretty far off in the distance, but it was fun to be able to see them from our porch. They were down in Rock Harbor, which is 10.7km SSE from where we are. The fireworks plainly visible, but not very impressive from that distance.

Quantified Rowing

Measure – Adjust – Improve

Month: July 2017

Sunday: 15km in Wellfleet

Saturday: Choppy 10k in Wellfleet

Vacation continues

Back from Korea – some training (and some eating)