After my adventure on Sunday, I rushed back to my hotel, took a quick shower, packed up my stuff and headed to the train station.  We took a train from Shanghai to the city of Hefei, about two and a half hours away by high speed rail.

Once we arrive, we had a nice dinner with some of the team leaders there, and I called it a night.

Monday, June 24 – Treadmill

There was a well equipped fitness center in the hotel in Hefei, but alas no rowing machines.  I grabbed a treadmill and started to hike.  Going gradually to see how well I could coax my smo2% up in a warmup.  I definitely didn’t give it enough time and it peaked out much lower than other sessions.

Basically what I did was start walking slow and level.  Then I increased the pace to about 3 mph.  Then I increased the incline every minute to get me to 15%.  Around the 5 minute mark, I did a 1 minute run on the incline, that’s the dip.  Then I slowed it way back down, and had a drink.  In retrospect, I should have done that a couple more times to open things up.

Then I just hiked up the 15% incline at about 3 mph.  I saw orange, so I back off to 2.8 soon after starting.  That worked fine until about 20 minutes in, where I needed to drop the pace a bit more.  The last minute or two was in the orange, but my HR was still quite low.

When I got back to my room, it was sunny, clear and beautiful outside.  My room had a great view.

 

 

I had a busy day at our design center in Hefei.  I great group of engineers.  In the afternoon, we headed to the train station and headed back in the direction of Shanghai, stopping in the city of Wuxi.  I was schedule to have a business dinner with a customer.  We went to a really good Japanese restaurant and had lots of beer and Sushi.

Tuesday, June 25 – Stationary Bike intervals with Humon

The fitness center was hot, and I was feeling pretty tired, and just a little hungover.  I hopped on a stationary bike, and started pedaling.  I did about 20 minutes of warmup, including a couple of sprinty bits.  This warmup increased my smo2 from 63% to 70.9%.

Then I programmed in one of the preset “interval sessions”.   I set it for a 40 minute session.  This turned out to be another 10 minutes of warming up and then a one minute on / one minute off routine with 4 levels of intensity for a total of 14 reps.

As it turned out, I had not set the intensity high enough for this session, as you can see I was not getting into the red in most of the sprints.

But, it was interesting following my progress on the app.  I met my colleague in the lobby and we grabbed a “didi” (basically the same as an Uber) to drive us to Shanghai, which was about a 90 minute ride.

When we got to Shanghai, I went straight to a lunch time meeting with one of our teams there, then headed over to another office and had another set of meetings.  In the evening, I had a business dinner with a customer at an extremely good, very small Chinese restaurant.  Then it was back to the Kerry hotel.

Wednesday, June 26 – 3 x 20′ Endurance Session on the erg

I grabbed the good erg, and set myself up to do a nice gentle warmup.  I started with a pick drill, and then just gentle rowing.  I was alarmed by the early appearance of some orange.  I decided to experiment with a set of moderate power bursts.  I did 10, 20, 30, and 40 strokes The 40 strokes I did a noticeably lower power.  You can see the corresponding dips and recoveries in the SMO2%.  I finished very close to where I started, 72% vs 69%.  I’d have to say that this was not an entirely successful warmup.  I suspect that it would have recovered to a much higher umber, but not in the 2 minute rest that I had programmed.

The rest of the session was pretty much terrible.  I had a lot of trouble staying in the green and ended up just alternating r18 and r20 at 160W and 180W.  Even with that light load, my SMO2% was low, and my HR was a bit high.  I was a bit grumpy so I sprinted out the last 2 minutes, taking my SMO2% way down to a 61%.

It’s interesting that the Humon color algorithm is a much more sensitive indicator than HR.  If my theory that I am not making good progress because I had been overcooking my steady state stuff, this will certainly put that theory to the test.

I went straight from my workout into some work calls, took a quick shower, and headed into the office for a couple of last meetings.

After lunch, I headed to the airport to fly to Taiwan, the last stop on my, way too long trip.  I arrived at my Hotel, the Sheraton in Hsinchu around 8, had some dinner, and then I was on the phone in conferences until about 11pm.

Thursday, June 27 – Inclined walk

I was up at 5:30 and in the fitness center before 6.  I headed to the treadmills and settled in for another boring slog.

The plan was the same as the last one, but I was going to try to take the warmup more slowly.  Again, I got up to a healthy walking speed and then boosted the inline, but only a degree or two every minute.  It was good to see my SMO2 climbing as I went.  After twenty minutes I was at the right incline and then stopped to grab a drink and towel off.  It was remarkably hot and humid.  My SMO2 climbed really well in that rest period.  From 63% at the start to over 72% after recovery.

In the session itself, I found that I was pretty tired and the  time was going very slowly.  Kept popping over into orange, and I would slow down a tenth or drop the incline by a degree each time.  But you can see how many times that happened.  It was not my best work.

After my workout, I started my business day.  A couple of quick calls in my room.  It was a misty morning, and the mountains near Hsinchu looked like classic asian landscape art to me.

To our office for prep meetings, then to a customer reception at lunch, then to another customer meeting, then back for another internal meeting, and finally a dinner meeting with a few of the managers.  Around 8 I headed to airport and got on a work teleconference.  This lasted my whole trip to the airport.  I checked in, got settled in the China Airlines lounge and got on another work call.  This lasted until it was almost time to board my 11:35 flight.  This flight took me from Taipei to San Francisco.  I arrived at 8pm, shuffled off to the Delta terminal and caught the 10:42pm red eye to Boston.  I am currently over Nebraska with another 2:37 to go.

Once I get to Logan Airport, I am going to drive straight to the Cape.  Hopefully arriving before 11 on Friday.

It’s been quite a trip.  I had a rowing experience I will never forget.  Visited places I have never been, and worked out every day that I was on the ground.  I’m pretty happy with that.