Month: April 2018

Better than nothing. A run and a walk

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Wednesday:  I headed into the office at 7am so I could learn my part in the Shinto ritual to dedicate our new building.  It wasn’t that tough to learn.  I needed to take a bamboo branch from the priest and place it on the altar.  But it had to be done “just so”, with the right numbers of and right kind of bowing.  Frankly, I was pretty nervous about messing up.  Were taking this blessing stuff seriously.  Our last building was destroyed by an earthequake, we want to cover all of our bases.

The blessing was at 10, then a lunch reception for the architects and construction company along with the local government officials.  In the afternoon a few internal meetings.

We headed back to the hotel where our big party was to be that evening around 3:30pm, and got there at 4:45.  I didn’t have to be at the reception until 6.  I put on my running shoes and went for a run.

The hotel is located in Kumamoto, right along a river with paths along the banks, so I just started running along the near side of the river.  I crossed to the other side when the path on my side was blocked by construction, then I kept going until I ran out of path.  Then I turned around and headed back.

As always, I intended it to be a gentle jog.  As always, I push the pace too much and my HR gets high, but since I only had about 40 minutes, that was OK.  The Strava data is missing the first 3 minutes because I set up the run wrong and wasting tracking gps, it took me a bit of time to notice it.

Screen Shot 2018-04-06 at 2.37.15 AM

It was humid and I was very sweaty when I finished.  In fact I was still sweating at 6:00 when I showed up at the dinner in my suit and tie.  The dinner was a blast.  The was another first for me, another ceremony for good luck.  This one involves Saki barrels.  The top lid of saki barrel is obviously a circle, a shape that has good positive vibes about it.  So, the ceremony is for a group of people to gather around a Saki barrel and bash in the lid with wooden mallets, then a toast is drunk out of nifty little wooden saki boxes.  To make things more civilized, this is done symbolically.  The saki barrel has just a trace of saki at the bottom, and the lid is conveniently pre-broken.  So the celebrants just need to tap the top and it all crashes in.  There were speeches and dance troupes and plaques and many toasts.  A very nice evening.

Thursday:  Up early for a 7am breakfast meeting with a customer.  After that, a trip into to the office.  A meeting with the full team at 10:30, and then off to the airport at 11:30.  The flight from Kumamoto to Haneda was uneventful, as was the cab ride from Haneda to Narita.  I ended up with about 2 and a half hour wait in Narita.  I headed to the lounge and ate a belated lunch.  I still had a lot of time to kill, so I put my stuff in a locker and went to walk the terminal.

If you haven’t been to Narita, it’s a great airport.  Terminal 2 is huge and it’s good for walking.  I used the gmaps pedometer to measure how far I went…nearly 4 km.  It took me about 45 minutes.  I was a bit sweaty when I finished, but it was time to gather my stuff and head to the gate.  I boarded just a couple minutes later.

I started feeling pretty sleepy as we climbed out, so as soon as the seatbelt light went out, I went to washroom, changed into my pajamas (oh yeah, I brought pajamas!) went back to my seat, and conked out for 7 hours of surprisingly good sleep.

That brings us to the present.  So, I happy.  I thought I would get no exercise at all, but I managed to get a little something done.

Tomorrow:  OTW, 1x, I think I will do a Cat VI endurance session.  Hopefully 80 minutes or so.

 

Off to Japan

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Friday night, my wife and I decided on the spur of the moment to see if we could organize Easter on the Cape.  We called our sons, who live in Cambridge to find out if they we up for an adventure and they were!  So, my wife and I headed down to the Cape on Friday night.  We arrived pretty late, around 10pm.

Saturday morning, I headed out early (ish) and went to the French Bakery.  I bought all sorts of good stuff for later and headed back to the house.

A bit later, I needed to head out to go pick up my boys.  They were taking the commuter rail about halfway to the house, but I still had about an hour of driving each way to get them.

I also had to contend with the tides.  I left quite a bit early so I didn’t get trapped.  That gave me time to stop at the fish market and supermarket for the rest of our feast.

I was back at the house by around 2pm and we hung out for a while.  Around 5 I decided to go do my scheduled erg session.

The plan was:

  • 3 x 15′ rate ladders / 4′ rest
    • 5′ at r20 (2:04)
    • 4′ at r22 (1:58 to 2:00)
    • 3′ at r24 (1:52 to 1:54)
    • 2′ at r26 (1:48)
    • 1′ at r28 (1:45)

This was done on slides.  I was a bit dubious because this was my 8 straight day working out, but it turned out to be a good session.

         Workout Summary - media/20180331-2220260o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|12940|57:00.0|02:12.1|183.7|21.7|146.1|177.0|10.5
W-|11614|45:00.0|01:56.2|224.6|22.6|149.3|177.0|11.5
R-|01334|12:00.0|04:29.8|030.3|18.4|133.8|177.0|05.7
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01223|05:00.0|02:02.6|187.3|20.2|125.1|136.0|12.1
01|01003|04:00.0|01:59.6|204.4|21.8|141.3|145.0|11.5
02|00796|03:00.0|01:53.0|241.9|24.0|150.6|155.0|11.1
03|00555|02:00.0|01:48.1|275.9|26.1|160.0|162.0|10.6
04|00287|01:00.0|01:44.4|308.3|28.1|163.7|165.0|10.2
05|01215|05:00.0|02:03.4|186.6|19.3|133.9|144.0|12.6
06|01011|04:00.0|01:58.6|209.1|21.8|149.0|155.0|11.6
07|00801|03:00.0|01:52.4|245.9|24.0|159.1|164.0|11.1
08|00556|02:00.0|01:47.9|278.3|25.8|168.1|171.0|10.8
09|00288|01:00.0|01:44.3|307.8|28.0|172.7|174.0|10.3
10|01217|05:00.0|02:03.2|188.8|19.7|140.8|151.0|12.4
11|01017|04:00.0|01:58.0|213.1|22.0|157.3|161.0|11.6
12|00796|03:00.0|01:53.1|241.5|24.0|163.8|169.0|11.1
13|00556|02:00.0|01:47.9|277.6|26.4|170.7|174.0|10.5
14|00291|01:00.0|01:43.0|318.9|30.5|175.9|177.0|09.6

Turned out better than prior attempts.

  • lower HR
  • higher power
  • good drive length on slides

Then it was time for the “Parade of Deliciousness”, all accompanied by prosecco

  • Appetizer: bruscetta with Mac’s Seafood boursin
  • First course: Sauted Maine shrimp and Cape Cod sea scallops with roasted aspargus.
  • Second Course: roast ham with baked sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes
  • Green Salad
  • Assorted desserts

After that I was paralyzed.

Sunday:  We got a reasonably early start for us, we were out of the house by 11:00AM.  We needed to beat the tide, and get my sons to the train before 12:30.  That got us home by about 1:30pm.  The workout for Sunday was 2 hours of yardwork clearing the trees and branches that had come down in the string of 3 Nor-easters that we had in March.  It was reasonably hard work and I didn’t have time for an erg session.

Monday:  9am flight to Chicago, then the long flight to Narita, then a 80 minuute car ride from Narita to Haneda, then a 2 hour flight to Kumamoto, then a 40 minute cab ride to the hotel.  I arrived at the hotel at 9:30pm, Tuesday night (having lost a day to travel) about 26 hours after leaving my house in Hopkinton.  I felt like I had been beaten up by thugs..  So, no training on Monday or Tuesday.

Wednesday:  Up at 5AM, and right into emails.  Off to the office at 7am.  Today, I am helping to dedicate our new building in Kumamoto.  Our old building was destroyed by the earthquakes there in April of 2016.  I just finished participating in the Shinto dedication ceremony.  A remarkable experience that involved a whole lot of bowing.  Now we have a luncheon to thank the architects and construction company, later on we have a big dinner for our local team and a customers.  It’s a pretty big deal for us.   SO no training again.

Thursday:  I have a breakfast meeting with a customer at 7am, then a “coffee meeting” with our local team, and then I’m off to the airport to catch a flight around noon.  The return path is a one stop better…

Hotel  –> Kumamoto –> Haneda –> Narita –> Boston –> Home.

So, no training again.  That’s four days without training.  Arghh.  Just when I was getting in the groove.

Hopefully, I can get a good session in on Friday.

 

 

 

Friday: Horror Films. Video Feedback

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One of the primary reasons that I wanted to get expert coaching was to make improvements in my rowing technique.  I figure that there are three elements to achieving good boat speed.

  1. Lose weight.  (5 kg is worth a second of pace at least just in reduced displaement)
  2. Improve fitness
  3. Improve technique

I know how to do number 1 and 2.  Those items are determined by the amount of time I have to train, work commitments, willpower and desire.

Technique is tougher.  I know good rowing when I see it, and I can see that there are things wrong with my rowing, but I want some expert guidance to figure out what needs to be fixed first and by what means.

Since I am using a remote coaching arrangement with Marlene Royle, that means that I have to record video and share it.  I did this over the winter and I think I made some good progress on improvement the mechanics of my stroke, especially the recovery.

Now I am back on the water, and before I get too set in my ways, I wanted to take some video in the boat and start fixing stuff.

I have seen all kinds of arrangements to take video.  If you are lucky enough to have a live, local coach, it’s very simple.  They film you from the launch.  Without a coach, you have to figure a way to mount a GoPro or some other camera on the boat.  The easiest is to mount it on the stern deck, but then you don’t get to see a lot of the body work in the stroke.  To get that you need a side view.

To get a side view, I picked up a trick from Larry Tait.  He figured out how to mount an old rigger backstay to the end of his rigger, and then put his gopro on the end of the backstay.  This gets the camera about 6 feet out  to side, and with the wide field of view, that’s more than enough to see the whole stroke.

I described it a bit more detail and included pictures of the setup here.

So, I set myself up and went out for a row.  I had about an hour, so I decided to do a bit of a free form session.  I would do 6 minute easy rate ladders consisting of 3′ @ r18, 2′ @ r20 and 1′ @ r22.  To spice it up a bit, I decided to throw in a few practice starts, just  to see if I remembered how to do them and to see how good my balance was at the catch.

Here’s the whole session

Screen Shot 2018-04-03 at 5.28.47 PM

And here’s the video….

The first video is the first rate ladder.  During the 2′ at r20 I was making my way through the s-turn.

After the first 2 ladders, I reached the dam in Waltham.  I did a set of four starts after I turned around.  A couple of them were OK.

After a couple more ladders, and a few more starts, I did one last short ladder, just 10 strokes at each rate from r18 up to r28.

Looking at the video, I see a whole bunch of issues.

  • Sad to say, I’m heavier and balder than I was the last time I did side video in the boat. :-(.
  • I am not sitting erect enough in the boat, my hips are rocked too far back throughout the stroke.
  • I am not completing my rock over on recovery before I start to slide.
  • Blade depth looks OK to me, although it looks like my hands are arcing up right after the catch and then leveling out.  The last ladder looks worse in terms of “rowing over the barrel”.
  • As you can see, I struggle a bit with balance.  I lightly skim my blades on recovery.
  • Some strokes have a pretty pronounced pause at the finish.

And here, or pure entertainment value is my worst start of the day.  I caught a crab and nearly flipped

The look on my face as it happened was priceless.

Screen Shot 2018-04-03 at 5.47.27 PM.png

The great thing about rowing is that it keeps you humble!