So, I actually pushed another 3 watts beyond the targets. I sure paid for it though.
It was good to dig the deep hole and keep plugging. Whenever I race, I worry about blowing up and embarrassing myself. These sessions where you slow down, but don’t give up are a pretty good way to show some grit for that kind of situation.
I will probably do a 20 minute warmup only a little later today.
Race plan for Saturday. The race is 2 laps of a 4km closed course.
Aim at a rate of about 22-24 depending on wind and wave conditions
Focus on steering and rowing clean
Try to keep HR below 170 in the first lap. That’ll be an early sign that I’m pushing too hard.
I have very little idea what kind of pace I can sustain. Probably about a 2:30 pace, but that’s a total guess.
Monday night: Flew out to San Jose. Arrived around 11. Asleep around 1am
Tuesday: Rest Day. Meetings all day. Caught the red eye home from San Jose.
Wednesday: Arrived at the airport around 5:15am. My original plan was to stop in Newton, do a session on the water, and then continue on to work. But, I felt pretty beat up from the flight and I decided to go home and get some sleep instead. I was in bed by 6:30 and I slept until 10. I had breakfast, did some email, and decided I had time for a quick erg session.
I have a race this Saturday. It’s open water, and 8K long. I’m just getting used to the Aero, and I’m not sure what kind of pace I can hold over 8km. Two weeks ago, in my first row, my “tide adjusted” pace was around 2:55/500. That was basically at a marathon pace, so I think 2:45 might work. 8km at 2:45 would take 44 minutes. So, basically, it’s not that different than a hard 10K on the erg.
So, I haven’t really done any hard distance work, so it seemed like a good idea to do a “dry run” to remind myself that its possible to row above 165bpm for a long time, even though it isn’t very pleasant.
I was at home, and I was using the dynamic. So I had no idea what pace would work. I decided to be conservative and take off at a 2:00 pace, and then speed up once I got calibrated. Based on the 4×15 type sessions I’m doing I figure I am good for 1:55 pace over 10K on a static erg right now.
But on the dynamic, it was impossible for me to hold a 2:00 pace beyond 5km. By that point, my HR was already up around 175 (93% HRR) and I was really struggling. I upped the rate and eased the pace to try to get back in firmer control of the row, just the way i would if I went out too fast in a race. I really didn’t want to give myself permission to give up. That is not the way to prep for a race.
So, I struggled my way through the back half of the session and managed the tiniest of sprints at the very end. I spent 6 minutes above my anaerobic threshold. It hurt. It hurt more that I was only rowing at a 2:00 pace.
So, I am trying to figure out just how much harder it is for me to row the dynamic. On clue could come from the session that I did on Monday. That was a 4×15′ where the first 6′ was at 250W (roughly a 1:50 pace). I compared my HR response over the first 6 minutes of that row and the first 6 minutes of this row.
They are very close to superimposed. So, my guess is that I am 40W “better” on the static than the dynamic, that’s 23% different. For comparison, between the static erg and my fluid, the difference is closer to 11%.
So, I still hate that devil machine. (El Dy-ablo)
Tomorrow:
M2
3 x 20′ / 2′
MP, 10KP, HMP
90.0%
(167)
On the water. I’ll do each interval to the proper distance and do quick turns when required.
I decided that it would be best to do my session inside, so I drove to work and headed to the fitness center.
Plan:
4×15′ / 4′ rest
6′ at 5kp, 9′ at mp
5kp target: 250W
mp target: 203W
I was very happy with how this workout went when I did it last weekend, and I was a little worried that it was a fluke. Today would test the theory by trying to hold the same power.
To make a long story short. It was fine. Roughly the same HR response, Basically the same RPE. I ran out of time after the last 6 minute segment, so I dug deep and pushed hard through the end of that segment. I paddled for a couple minutes into the last interval to cool down.
I have to say that I like being able to stop a workout without finishing it. In the rowpro days, I would have lost all my precious data if I had done that.
One other side note. I have done about 5 or 6 sessions with the polar H7 and the PM5 on 3 different ergs and I haven’t had any issues with hangups or crashes. I might give painsled another try with the H7. I think my problems were related to the Tickr.
Otherwise, not much to report.
Here is the workout compared to the one two weekends ago.
I’m heading to the airport in the afternoon for a quick trip to San Jose. I will be coming back on the Tuesday night red eye.
I hate the dynamic erg. I never have a good workout on it. It is unpleasant to row and very noisy. I think it’s time to sell it and buy a model D.
You might guess that todays workout was not so good. You’d be right.
The plan was
2 x 30′ at mp or slower
2 minutes rest
HR cap at 150
Just and easy session. On a static erg, I would probably crank the first interval out at 180W and the second at 175W and it would be nice and easy. On the dynamic, it was awful. It felt like I was rowing through weeds the whole time. I cranked the drag down to 1 (DF = 82 for the purists) and it still felt heavy. I’m done with it.
Today I registered for my first coastal race. The Provincetown Regatta, next Saturday. It’s a little race. 8k long, two laps of an M shaped 4k long course.
I am training through this race. I am doing it mainly to get an event under my belt before the Blackburn and to meet some Cape Cod based rowers.
One must be adaptable. My original plan was to do a long open water row this morning, but we decided to stay home instead of going to the cape this weekend. So, I texted Joe and asked him if he wanted to do a long row in the double this morning at 6.
He was willing, so that was the plan. The weather this morning was beautiful. A bit chilly, in the upper 40s. There was no wind when we arrived, but a light breeze picked up by the time we launched. It was shifty, coming sometimes from the NE, sometimes from the SE, and sometimes it was non-existent. This was mostly a cross wind. It was sunny and clear and the water was nice and flat.
We took out the Wintech double that we bought from Saugatuck. I really like the boat. It’s easy to set and much lighter than the old Vespoli we had been rowing last year.
I didn’t have much of a plan, beyond 90 minutes of UT1. We rowed to the south end of the lake. That was mostly just us getting in sync and watching the scenery. I stepped up the stroke rate over the last 1500m or so to spice things up.
Once we spun the boat, I asked if Joe was up for some easy rate ladders. He was, and off we went. The plan was 6 minute ladders. 3 minutes at r20, 2 minutes at r22, and 1 minute at r24. Repeat until you run out of lake.
It took us 4 and half ladders to get to the north end of the lake. I checked if we had the time and energy to go all the way back to the south end of the lake. We did 🙂
Going back south, it took almost 5 complete ladders. We got waked right at the end, which was a bummer. By then we were getting short on time so we spun the boat and headed back north to the boat house. We did two more ladders, which brought us to about 1k south of the bridge. Joe said we should row past the docks since there was a crowd gathering for learn to row day. The plan would be to row at r20 until we got to the bridge, and then I would bring the rate up to 28 or so and we would demonstrate the beauty and grace of our rowing to assembled throng.
That was the plan. I’m not sure how beautiful or graceful it was, but there was a lot of water in the footwell and Joe looked very wet by the time we finished. :-O I guess I really need work on my catches to reduce my backsplash!
After that we helped out with our humble part of National Learn To Row Day. We had a couple dozen folks show up. So we taught the basics of the stroke on a dozen ergs, got the to sign away all their rights, and then took them out in a couple of eights for a quick row.
There were 5 other singles out while I was rowing. I think that’s the highest number I’ve ever seen. It was nice to have company.
The plan:
The training plan called for 2×30′ mp with a HR cap below 70%HRR. I’ve never been able to respect a 70% HR cap, ever. So I decided 150 was OK (75%)
30 minute intervals are a pain on my stubby little river, so I did 20’/15’/15’/20′
The challenge for me today was to figure out how to row with marathon power at r20 and good length. Why is this a challenge? Well, because that combination requires me to row with a lighter stroke than I am used to. I tend to naturally row at a higher than mp power at r20, and that makes my HR shoot up too high. When I try to lighten up, instead I tend to shorten up, which, in theory, reduces how efficient I am.
I pronounce the session today to be useful and productive, even though it was a pretty constant struggle. It was an exercise in “mindful training” I was consciously thinking about every stroke, and the speedcoach was basically grading me on every stroke. I would finish and glance down during recovery and see stroke rate, effective length and stroke power. And then I would adjust for the next stroke. One of the things that I really noticed is that if I concentrated on trying to get a little more layback than I am used to doing, and kept my elbows nice and wide at the finish, I was getting about 5 extra degrees of effective length, and my finishes were cleaner.
The result of the struggle was that I ended up pushing up against the HR cap, and I was getting pretty tired. Bearing in mind that I have a long row planned for tomorrow, I decided to focus on technique for the last 20 minutes of the row by alternating 2 minutes of r20 and 2 minutes of SBR. This allowed me to focus on practicing strokes with more layback and getting the blades out of the water as cleanly as possible.
Weather: Beautiful. We had a line of thunderstorms blow through last night and this morning was cool and dry. There was a little bit of a breeze, which was generally a headwind heading up stream.
Plan:
M1
4 x 15′ / 4′
6′ @ 5KP, 9′ @ MP
92.5%
(172)
Power Targets:
5kp: 197 – 210
mp: 158 – 171
This session needed to be modified slightly. From end to end, the river takes 13 to 14 minutes to row. I had two alternatives. One was to turn and finish. The other was to cut the mp section short when I ran out of river. I decided to just cut them short.
Workout Summary - media/20170601-134451-Greg Smith 20170601 0644amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14243|82:31.0|02:53.8|161.4|22.2|148.5|175.0|07.8
W-|11306|54:07.0|02:23.6|191.4|22.1|162.2|175.0|09.6
R-|02945|28:24.0|04:49.4|068.0|20.3|118.2|175.0|07.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01407|06:00.0|02:07.9|239.5|26.8|160.4|168.0|08.7 - w/ curr & wind
02|01386|06:43.2|02:25.4|171.9|18.6|153.9|168.0|11.1 - w/ curr & wind
03|01317|06:00.0|02:16.7|223.5|25.8|166.7|173.0|08.5 - against
04|01509|07:52.8|02:36.7|160.8|19.0|159.6|172.0|10.1 - against
05|01345|06:00.0|02:13.8|226.9|25.7|166.7|172.0|08.7 - with
06|01467|07:13.2|02:27.7|154.6|18.9|159.9|172.0|10.7 - with
07|01277|06:00.0|02:21.0|211.8|25.7|167.2|175.0|08.3 - against
08|01598|08:18.0|02:35.8|169.7|19.5|164.3|175.0|09.9 - against
So, the average power for the 5kp sections was 225W vs the 197-210 range, so a bit on the high side. And the mp sections average was 164.25W vs the 158 to 171W, right in the band. You can see at the end of the last interval where I started trying to chase the split going into the head wind and the narrowest part of the river with the most current.
Ideally, the power pie would be 24 minutes in 5kp, 36 minutes in mp. You can see that basically all the 5kp target was rowed in a higher band. The mp rowing was all over the map.
The stroke metrics were somewhat illuminating (to me).
Tomorrow: steady state, technique focused, HR cap at 150.
Felt very low energy in the morning. Got up anyway.
Plan:
M2
3 x 20′ / 2′
MP, 10KP, HMP
90.0%
(167)
Power targets:
MP: 158-171
HMP: 171-184
10KP: 184-197
So, I had two different thoughts in my head. One was the memory of the awesome workout I did on Saturday where I pegged the watts above the top end of the band. The other was the empty legs feeling from the aborted workout Monday night.
For the first interval, aggressive Greg was dominant. I rowed it at an average power of 176W (including the s-turn, but not the spin). Or 6 watts above the top end of the power band.
Same thing in the second interval. I rowed the first five and a half minutes at 196W watts avg, spun the boat, rowed another 3 minutes at about the same power, hit the HR cap, tried to slow down, and then bailed on the interval. I rowed the rest of it out at sub marathon power.
Chastened, I rowed the final interval smack in the middle of the power band, but it was massively hard to do.
I annotated the summary plot with the turns, rests and failures.
The pie charts show elevated HR, and overly ambitious power.
There should be no 2kp and very little 5kp, basically just from starboard turning strokes. There should be around 20 minutes of 10kp, 20 minutes of hmp, and 20 minutes of MP. And then the balance sub-MP, about 15 minutes. Lousy pace discipline.
I’m finding it hard to row to a target power. It seems to bounce around a lot from stroke to stroke. Perhaps that is an indication that my rowing is inconsistent. Perhaps, it is a characteristic of the measurement method. I wonder if there is a way to have the speed coach show a running avg of the power over a few strokes?
Alternatively, I could try to row to a specific work per stroke and stroke rate. That seems to be a bit let noisy on the display.
I was wondering what the heck was wrong. Why was I so tired. I decided to do an experiment. My HR monitor didn’t work on my long row on Sunday. But, my guess was that I averaged about 150 for the 2 active hours of the row. I manually doctors the CSV file for the row to insert 150 for the active part of the row and reimported it to Stravistix. Turns out that a 2 hour workout at 150bpm is a TRIMP of 256. It pushed me into overload.
Then my aborted session and the Tuesday session kept me right on that line. I’m not sure that this is exactly right, but I do think that rest will do me more good than working out right now, so I decided to sleep instead of rowing on Wednesday morning.
In the Eddie Fletcher Marathon Plan, he says that you may need extra rest days and you should not hesitate to take them. Despite the fact that it I still have trouble believing that I can make more progress by doing nothing than by doing something, I should let the evidence and data guide my actions. The important thing to me right now is to be able to do quality sessions, and especially to be ready and eager for the open water long rows that I do about once a week. Those are the pinnacle sessions.
I was wiped out all day after my 20k adventure. (Maybe I pushed a bit harder than I thought). Monday was a holiday, but the weather was terrible, so my wife and I decided to head back a bit early. Apparently everyone on Cape Cod decided to do the same thing because we were in a massive traffic jam and it took us over 4 hours to get hour (vs the normal 2 hours).
Once we were home, I decided to do the next M2 session.
M2
3 x 20′ / 2′
MP, 10KP, HMP
90.0%
(167)
I was doing this on the dynamic (and I am beginning to really dislike the machine). I felt awful. Just rowing the first 30 minutes at marathon pace was torture. My HR didn’t climb that much but my RPE was through the roof. I decided to bail after the first 20 minutes.
Part of the problem was that I didn’t respect the fact that I get more watts on the static than I do on the dynamic, but really, the big issue was that I was just spent.
Weather: I launched right around 8am. There was a little wind that was dying down.
The more salient bit of data was the tides. We are in a period of time called the King Tides. These occur a few times a year when the moon is at perigee and also aligned with the sun (new moon of full moon). If they happen around January 2nd, they are even bigger because the earth is at perihelion. These tides were pretty damn big.
Here’s a view of the Lieutenant Island Tide calendar.
The squiggle is the tide height. The numbers above each peak is the time and height of the high tide. The highest tide of the month was very early Saturday morning (12:46AM May 27th) and was a 13.0 tide.
Aside: The faint line near the high tide points is the tide height where the water comes over the road to the island. When these tides are very high, you are cut off for about 4 hours around high tide.
The low tides are correspondingly low. I launch from a beach that has the best low tide access, but this particular low tide ended up causing me a comic 30 minutes of trying to find deep enough water to row in.
Here it is speeded up buy a factor of 30 to reduce the boredom factor.
Certainly an inauspicious was to start.
Once I got through that, I was able to really try out the new boat. Here’s my course.
This chart was made with some a navigation. A program called GPSNavX which supports plotting course directly on navigation charts. The GPS coordinates come from the speedcoach, exported to CSV using NK Link, then uploaded to rowsandall, then exported as TCX, then convert to GPX by TCXConverter, then loaded into GPSNavX. Simple 😉
This part was “on foot”
The row up to Wellfleet was good fun. There was some light wind was from the SSW, so the chop could build up more as I got further north. The boat handles quartering waves very well and surfing directly downwind is rock solid and good fun.
I noticed that there were patches of floating reeds all over the place. These float out of the salt marshes during very high tides. They had the effect of turning this outing into something like a random bungee row. I would be rowing along, pass through an area with some reeds and eventually notice that it was harder to keep the pace. Then, I would stop, back the boat down, wiggle it a bit from side to side and see a big clump of reeds float up from the fin.
I turned and headed out to sea. The wind basically stopped and there was very little chop. I just tried to set a nice rhythm and take long easy strokes. My HR monitor decided early in the row that it didn’t want to cooperate, so I didn’t have that feedback. My guess is that most of the row was low UT1.
I passed over Smalley Bar, and I noticed the water got appreciably lighter as it got shallower. At the shallowest, I could see the features on the bottom, but at least I didn’t need to get out and walk.
After that I noticed that my pace was getting mighty slow. It eventually dawned on me that the tide had turned and was now coming in. On the chart, you can see that I was in the deepest part of the channel for a while.
I got to Red Nun “6”, and decided to do another 2K to the south. That would put me at about 20km for the whole outing. The row to Green Can “5” was very slow because of the tide and I could see it flowing past.
Rowing into the tide, I was doing around a 3:30 pace. After I turned, with the same effort, I was doing around 2:20. I calculated out the current.
Here’s the pace and rate for the outing. The first 1000m were paddling, dragging and walking the boat.
Here’s a quick video showing a bit of the downwind with the waves, then me trying to row past the green buoy against the tide, and finally showing the process of getting the reeds off the fin.
Despite the initial challenges, I declare the voyage a success. The boat is amazing. It’s noticeably lighter to carry and much stiffer to row. I can’t say much about how it does in bigger waves, but I suspect it will do better than the Alden.
Quantified Rowing 