Well, vacation is over.  This morning at 5:15, my alarm went off.  The alarm was loud enough to wake up my wife, but not me, so she nudged me awake.  I was so tired that I felt nauseous, so I just shut it off and rolled over to go back to sleep.

But my brain had other ideas.  There were so many different voices in my head.  “Get up, do the session”  “You need more sleep” “When’s my first meeting”  “Do I have any free time blocks to go catch a quick workout on the erg?”  “Should I even be rowing with my sore back?”  After 9 minutes of this jabbering, I gave up, got up, and stumbled through my morning routine.  The bathroom phase of the routine took a bit longer than normal.  There is nothing worse than trying to row when you need to poop (sorry, but it’s true)

By the time I got on the road, I knew that my workout would be time limited.  Luckily, traffic wasn’t too bad and i was on the water by 7:03am.  I knew I needed to be on the road by 8:15 to my 9:00am meeting on time (allowing a generous 12 minutes to shower and change).  So, that provided a window exactly one hour long for my row.

The plan:

• 60 minute recovery / endurance session
• stroke rate target: 18 spm
• target effective length: 80deg
• target WPS: >450
• HR limit: 150

My plan was to row until the elapsed time was 29:30, then turn around and retrace my path.  This ended up being about 1/3 of the way back to the start from the dam in Waltham, right before the s-turn.

My heart rate was stubbornly low today.  I’m coming to think that this is related to very hard efforts the day before.  After about 15 minutes, I got up into the UT2 range, and I was able to hold my heart rate right at the top of the ut2 range with very small changes in stroke pressure.  It was only in the last quarter when I felt a bit of time pressure did I push hard enough to get into the meat of the ut1 range.

Of course, I wish the splits were faster, but this was a good workout.  It was nice to be on glassy flat water, and I felt like I could take long, smooth strokes.  I am not enjoying the back issues though.  Most strokes felt fine, but some strokes, especially when I was  turning, or not well balanced at the catch provided not very subtle form feedback through my frayed nerve endings.  I’m worried that this could get worse before it gets better.

        Workout Summary - media/20170821-193402-Greg Smith 20170821 0703amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11157|59:12.0|02:39.2|142.1|17.8|139.0|152.0|10.6
W-|10839|56:02.0|02:35.1|145.8|17.7|138.8|152.0|10.9
R-|00322|03:10.0|04:55.8|080.6|20.9|137.3|152.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01095|06:00.0|02:44.3|128.9|16.9|112.7|124.0|10.8 - slow turny bit
01|02932|14:47.2|02:31.3|149.7|17.7|136.1|144.0|11.2 - down to dam
02|01393|07:12.0|02:35.0|151.1|17.7|141.8|146.0|10.9 - back to 29:30
03|01395|06:52.8|02:28.0|157.6|17.5|141.2|146.0|11.6 - back to dam
04|03078|16:04.8|02:36.7|146.6|17.8|145.4|151.0|10.7 - back to start
05|00946|05:05.5|02:41.5|128.5|18.6|149.0|152.0|10.0 - slow turny bit

So, how much difference does nice flat water make?  Here is a comparison of the stroke profile for work strokes yesterday and today.

So, with slick flat water I get higher peak and average force, an extra degree on the catch, a degree on slip, 3 degrees on the finish.  Together it ends up increasing my effective length by about 7 or 8 degrees.  That’s about 10% more length!  The peak force angle also moved about 4 degrees to the bow.  I guess more work in choppy water would be a good idea!

Here are some more stroke metrics.  Nothing really weird in the data.  The averages here do not exactly match the stroke profile because I pruned all strokes with WPS below 350J to get the turning strokes out.

Tomorrow:  The plan calls for an L1 session.  The Pyramid!  OTW in my fluid.  Stroke rate target is 30 SPM.