Day: October 20, 2018

Tuesday: Steady State r20

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This week is a bit weird.  No more races for the season, but the weather is still good for rowing, so what should I be doing?  I decided that just enjoying the last few days on the water and doing some steady state training would be the best way to go.

So, the goal today was to row at r20 and stay under my HR cap. The exciting thing was that I was rowing with the impeller!  It was slightly disappointing that there was a head wind so I could not see perfectly identical splits going upstream and down, but it was still a lot closer than what I was seeing before.

Also, over the past couple of days, and with a lot of help from the fine folks at NK, I finally figured out why my power numbers were so pitifully low.  This is a little complicated, so bear with me.

Back earlier this year, NK discovered that their power algorithm was yielding power numbers that were a bit too high, and they pushed a correction in a firmware update.  At the same time, the web site that I use to log my training (rowandall.com), did an update so that it would look at the rev of firmware in uploaded speedcoach files, and if it was the old FW, it would apply the same correction, so that power would be consistent for all logged workouts.  That’s all great, stuff, but there was a bug in the iOS application that NK provides to transfer workouts.  This LINK app apparently was reporting the old FW rev in exported files, even if the speedcoach had been updated.  Rowsandall was seeing the old rev and deducting a percentage of my power, but the speedcoach was reporting the corrected power already, so my power readings ended up being about 10% low.

The solution was to delete and reinstall the LINK app on my phone, and viola, my power readings popped back to something that made a lot more sense.

          Workout Summary - media/20181016-1205320o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|13751|74:24.0|02:42.3|132.3|19.9|142.4|164.0|09.3
W-|11512|57:07.0|02:28.9|149.5|20.3|147.4|164.0|09.9
R-|02246|17:17.0|03:51.0|075.5|18.6|125.8|164.0|13.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00205|00:57.6|02:20.2|147.1|18.7|124.4|132.0|11.4
02|00877|04:14.5|02:25.1|141.2|19.1|131.8|142.0|10.8
03|01868|08:48.7|02:21.5|152.4|19.4|142.4|149.0|10.9
04|02606|13:32.1|02:35.8|149.7|20.2|152.9|158.0|09.5
05|01993|09:26.4|02:22.1|145.7|20.5|146.3|154.0|10.3
06|00629|02:56.1|02:19.9|154.3|20.1|147.2|153.0|10.7
07|02647|13:56.0|02:37.9|145.1|20.4|152.3|157.0|09.3
08|00257|01:13.5|02:23.2|194.2|24.5|141.3|157.0|08.6
09|00429|02:02.8|02:23.0|167.3|25.4|150.7|164.0|08.3

 

 

Monday: Impeller Cal

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I really enjoyed Sunday.  I spent a couple of hours just messing around with my boat.  I recalibrated my empower oarlock.  I tried setting up the new Quiske Pod and it’s iOS application.  And I reinstalled the impeller on the bottom of my boat.

On Monday morning, my training goal was to do some steady state, but the other task was to calibrate the impeller.  All season long, I have been unable to do much with the pace reading on the speedcoach because the river current has been higher than normal.  I finally decided that remounting the impeller would be better.

But the impeller is a finicky little gizmo.  If you don’t have it well aligned with the sensor, you get intermittent readings, if you don’t have it well calibrated, you get wrong readings and if you row in a place with a lot of weeds, it gets fouled.  But at least you get rid of current as an error in your data!

So the first thing to do was calibrate.  I rowed out to the straight 1000m section, and set up to do a 500m cal.  The way the speedcoach does this is it uses the GPS to measure you going 500 and sees how far the impeller has measured.  Then you do the same thing in the other direction, over the same exact section of river.  The theory is that this will cancel out the effect of the current.  Anyway, I did it and it seemed to yield sensible results afterward.

Of course, after I calibrated, I forgot to push “start” on the the speedcoach, so I didn’t log any of the rest of the workout.  Have no fear!  I had a backup.  I was running RIM on my phone.

          Workout Summary - media/20181015-164518-115122o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11390|66:03.0|02:54.0|000.0|19.8|0.0|000.0|08.7
W-|11391|66:03.0|02:54.0|000.0|19.8|000.0|000.0|08.7
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|000.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|11391|66:03.0|02:54.0|000.0|19.8|000.0|0.0|08.7

Sunday: 3 x 20′ dynamic

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Nothing to special.  Just trying to keep things going along.  Rowed with a HR cap of 155.

          Workout Summary - media/20181014-2235320o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14375|63:00.0|02:11.5|159.7|20.1|142.8|155.0|11.4
W-|14034|60:00.0|02:08.3|165.9|20.0|142.8|155.0|11.7
R-|00343|03:00.0|04:22.0|036.4|20.9|142.3|155.0|07.9
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|04705|20:00.0|02:07.5|168.4|20.1|131.5|145.0|11.7
01|04666|20:00.0|02:08.6|164.5|20.0|146.1|151.0|11.7
02|04663|20:00.0|02:08.7|164.6|20.0|151.0|155.0|11.6