Sunday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ rest (dynamic)

February 12, 2017February 12, 20172 Comments

Friday: Arrived home off the red eye at around 7:30am. Straight into conference calls. I had a 30 minute window so I decided to try out my new dynamic rowing machine.

I struggled a bit with getting everything set up. My main problem was that the PM5 was trying to connect to a hr monitor that I was not wearing instead of the one that I was. That took some time to get fixed.

I did a 5 minute row, then a 3 minute row, and then I got stuff set for a final 12 minute row. I did the first 9 minutes at 175W, and then the last 3 at 225W.

Saturday: No training. Doing errands and chores all day. No time.

Sunday: Just an easy session to get used to the new machine.

3 x 20′ / 1′ rest
175 W
No rate restriction
HR cap at 155

It was hard work. The break through that I made before I went on the road for a week seems to have disappeared. I’m back to where I was a couple of weeks ago.

I wanted to get an idea of how this compared to rowing on the model D, so I matched it up with one of the 2×30′ sessions that I did a couple of weekends ago on the cape. I was similarly fatigued and jetlagged then.

Here is all the parameters compared on a time scale.

Slightly higher power today.
About 1 spm higher rate is where I settled today. I think 1 to 2 spm higher on the dynamic is probably about right.
HR response nearly identical
Peak and average force about the same, but the force ratio is lower on the dynamic (less efficient?)
Drive length. Started shorter on dynamic, but eventually came close. I was surprised about this, I expected it to be consistently shorter without my bodies momentum carrying me into the catch.
Work per stroke decreasing through the row.
Drive speed, a much more noticeable difference. Significantly higher on the dynamic.

I might do a second session this evening, maybe a first cut at the CTC.

Trapped in San Diego – 60 minutes in the Fitness Center

February 9, 20171 Comment

So, my flight to Boston last night was cancelled because of winter storm “Niko”. A huge Nor’easter that is pummeling the northeastern United States.

(side note: One of the main online weather services in the US, weather.com has taken to naming major storms, not just hurricanes. I like it. It solves a referencing problem and it’s fun to talk about storms by name…back to the narrative)

So, I am stuck in San Diego until my rescheduled depart, tonight around 9pm. I had a conference call at 6am, so I was unable to go to Crossfit Del Mar today. I was relegated to using the hotel fitness center.

I decided to just do 60 minutes of aerobic maintenance.

30 minutes treadmill (15% grade, 3.1mph…slowed to 3.0 at about 20′, and then 2.9 at 26′ to keep HR below 145)
30 minutes on the elliptical (rolling hills, level 14 of 25), HR cap < 155.

The treadmill felt like hard work, the elliptical felt easier, but my HR was a bit higher.

Tomorrow: I arrive (hopefully) around 8 am. I plan to work from home and get in a marathon plan workout.

4 x 15′ / 4′

6′ @ 5KP, 9′ @ MP

92.5%

(172)

2 x 30′ / 2′ rest at Crossfit Del Mar

February 8, 20172 Comments

I’m in San Diego. I went over to Crossfit Del Mar, paid my drop in fee and grabbed an erg.

Plan: 2 x 30′ @ MP HR cap at 155

I ended up busting the cap in the last third of the 2nd piece.

I’m on the red eye tonight back to Boston. Hopefully, I will get in. There is snow in the forecast. Lot’s of snow.

Tuesday: 3 x 20′ / 2′ rest (MP,10KP,HMP)

February 7, 20172 Comments

Still in Korea. I’m writing this in the KAL Lounge prior to my flight to Tokyo, and then on to LA.

I had a conference call at 2am local time this morning, I slept from 10pm to about 1:45, so almost 4 hours (plus almost 30 minutes in the car on the way home from the restaurant). After the call, I did some email and called some other folks to get some work going while I am on my flights. I wrapped this stuff up around 5:00 or so, and decided to head down to the gym.

The objective today was to do another marathon training session, this one is 3 – 20 minute intervals at different intensities. I decided to do them on the elliptical to avoid too much stress on my knees. I also didn’t really feel like doing this session on the bike.

Since the power ranges on the erg are not applicable, I did this session to heart rate. The HR cap is 167, so I wanted to stay under 150 for the MP piece, get my HR up in the mid 160s for the 10KP piece, and then choose a level between those two for the HMP.

This turned out to be level 17 (of 25) for the MP section, level 21 for the 10KP and level 19 for the HMP. The 10KP felt very heavy, like I was working in molasses, but it sure was hard work. My HR ended up a little below target, but not too far off.

The last 20 minutes felt like forever. I guess that’s the whole point.

I will now fly east, so I’m going to land at LAX about the same local time that I’m leaving behind in Seoul. I will probably hit the hotel fitness center Wednesday morning, but I might get ambitious and drop in at a local crossfit to use an erg for a 2×30′ MP session.

Monday: 4 x 15′ / 4′ (6’/9′ step down) on Treadmill

February 6, 2017Leave a comment

Well, that was a very difficult workout.

I wanted to mimic the intensity of this workout, but I didn’t have an erg at my disposal, so I decided to do it on the treadmill at max incline. I really want to avoid “real” running for now because I don’t want to cause inflammation in my newly repaired knee.

But even a slow jog at 15% grade is enough to really be really taxing. The question was how much was enough.

I decided that I would work from HR. I wanted the 6′ sections to bring me up into the range of 165-172 bpm, and the 9′ sections to bring me back down into the 150-160 range. I used the first interval to experiment. In the first 6′ interval, I started at 4.5 mph and within a minute, I knew that was way to aggressive. I backed off to 4mph and even that was a genuine struggle. My HR monitor picked the wrong day to act up. You can see in the plots that there were dropouts and lags. It might be time for a new battery. The 9′ sections were fine at about 3.1 mph

By the last interval, I was really tired. I slowed down to about 3.8 on the fast bit and ended up dropping the 9′ pace to around 2.8mph. Pitifully slow, but effective.

I think that was pretty effective. Sure was less fun on a treadmill than on the erg though. I’m rower not a runner, that’s for sure.

Tuesday: I’ll hit the gym to do my regularly scheduled workout. I’ll do it by HR on the elliptical. For MP, I will aim at having my HR around 150 by the end of 20′, for the 10KP, I will aim at 167 by the end, and for the HMP, I will split the difference.

3 x 20′ / 2′

MP, 10KP, HMP

90.0%

(167)

Friday: 10K @ MP

February 3, 2017Leave a comment

I didn’t have much time this morning, so I did what I could.

Plan called for 2 x 45′ at marathon pace. I only had about 40 minutes because I had an early meeting I needed to get to, so I subbed in a 10k at the same pace.

These workouts are supposed to be done with a HR cap, and today was no exception. I decided to row against a cap of 150 (80% of HR max). Since I’ve had such great sessions the past couple of days, I decided to start off at 185W and see how long I could hold it before I needed to back off to stay under the cap. Turns out I made it the whole way. It was another good workout. If I was doing another 45 minutes, I would have had to back off, but still. It was better than the HR response I was seeing at 170W just a week ago.

A few stroke metrics, just for fun.

Pretty consistent.

I’m posting this from the BA lounge at Logan airport. I board for Narita, connecting to Korea in about 45 minutes.

Maybe the Sheraton in Seoul has an erg. (But I doubt it).

Thursday: 3 x 25′ / 3′ rest (8′ @ 5kp, 17′ @ mp) – Breakthrough workout

February 2, 20172 Comments

I was a bit intimidated by this workout. It wasn’t that I thought I would fail, I was pretty certain that I would complete it successfully. Rather, I was dreading the 17 minutes at marathon pace. In previous attempts at these step down workouts, I dug so deep in the 5kp section that the marathon pace sections were very taxing. My HR stayed high and it was miserably hard work.

I was surprised and delighted today. This workout didn’t feel easy, but I felt really good throughout. My HR was way lower than any workout like this that I’ve done over the past few weeks. I felt so good that I did the last 5 minutes at half marathon pace.

Workout Summary - media/20170202-1405210o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|21146|90:00.0|02:07.7|193.5|22.7|151.1|166.0|10.4
W-|19796|79:00.0|01:59.7|204.8|22.6|152.8|166.0|11.1
R-|01354|11:00.0|04:03.6|069.6|22.7|135.5|166.0|02.9
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01011|04:00.0|01:58.7|210.9|21.8|129.7|147.0|11.6
01|02096|08:00.0|01:54.5|233.0|24.3|151.1|158.0|10.8 -target 225-240
02|04137|17:00.0|02:03.3|186.9|21.0|147.3|156.0|11.6 -target 180-195
03|02096|08:00.0|01:54.5|233.4|24.4|155.5|164.0|10.7 -target 225-240
04|04135|17:00.0|02:03.3|186.6|21.4|153.1|163.0|11.4 -target 180-195
05|02099|08:00.0|01:54.3|234.6|24.7|156.7|166.0|10.6 -target 225-240
06|04222|17:00.0|02:00.8|198.8|23.0|161.0|166.0|10.8 -target 180-195

I looked through the metrics.

A little bit of drive length variation in the last interval
peak force varying with power
you can see the same thing in the work per stroke. I was effectively underrating the fast stuff and over rating the slow stuff
I see more variation in rhythm today. Not sure why

Comparison to the 4 x 15′ (9′ @5kp, 6′ @ mp) workout form earlier this week.

Same powers, just different durations so it gets a bit confusing after the first rep.
Nearly identical stroke rates for the faster bits. A bit lower for the slow today (because I felt fantastic)
The difference in HR is astounding. My HR didn’t go nearly as high in the 5kp sections, and it recovered better in the mp sections.

So, why was it better?

time of day: nope…same for both
nutrition state: nope…fasted for both
amount of sleep: nope…~6.5 hours before both
temp/humity: nope…same for both
accumulated fatigue: If anything I should have been worse today. This is the 7th day in a row that I have rowed. This session and the prior one were rowed the day after a low intensity 60 minute endurance session.

So, I am left with random variation and improved fitness. I think there is lot of the former, and a little of the latter.

Tomorrow: Probably nothing. I have an early meeting, and then I head off to the airport for a trip to Korea. I’ll be off the erg for a week. I’m pretty bummed about that, I was just starting to see progress.

Wednesday: 2 x 30′ / 2′ HR cap at 145

February 1, 2017Leave a comment

Wow! Very low HR and RPE.

Quick Comparison to this same workout on Saturday. Time of day was similar, nutrition state was similar (fasted), I got better sleep on Friday night, and the room was colder on Saturday. Despite two factors leaning in favor of lower HRs for the Saturday session, it was nearly 10 points different at the end. (Today’s session is in blue)

Tomorrow: A session straight from the mouth of hell.

3 x 25′ / 5′

8′ @ 5KP, 17′ @ MP

92.5%

(172)

Tuesday: 3 x 30′ / 3′ rest (mp, 10kp, mp)

January 31, 2017January 31, 2017Leave a comment

When you write it in shorthand, it doesn’t look that bad, but it is a whole lot of rowing. 90 minutes of rowing, 60 minutes of it at a little bit above my endurance pace, and 30 minutes of it a lot faster than my endurance pace.

This was a monster of a workout. The EF marathon plan does not feature the acute pain of the Pete Plan, but it is designed to put you into chronic oxygen debt and elevated lactate levels for VERY LONG PERIODS OF TIME.

The way I was thinking about this workout is this:

The first 30 minutes at MP is basically like doing the first 30 minutes of a marathon
The second 30 minutes at 10KP is faster than marathon pace to build up a really good oxygen debt and lactate load, that gets delivered to the last 30 minutes
The last 30 minutes at MP is like the last 30 minutes of a marathon. You are rowing at a comfortable pace, but you have a big debt that you can’t pay off. (That’s as fun as it sounds)

I did the 20 minute flavor of this workout before, and the extra 10 minutes at 10KP is brutal!

I had a hangup with the PM5 and Painsled. I think it was related to using ANT+ for HR data. It froze up on me about 8 minutes into the first mp interval, so I stopped at 10 minutes, reset the PM, and programmed a 20’/30’/30′ variable interval session. There wasn’t much to look at for the first 10 minutes anyway. I aimed at 185W, I did 187W.

Here is the rest of the session from painsled.

I was never seriously considering quitting, but boy that middle 30 minutes lasted forever.I decided to ignore the HR cap, basically because I’m a prideful idiot.

I looked a bunch of metrics. Some of them are interesting (at least to me).

Drive length is consistent across time and stroke rates
peak force declined between the first 30 minutes and the last 30 minutes as I rated up to try to deal with the fatigue
Drive energy is basically work per stroke (of SPI). This shows how I was a shadow of my former self in the last 30 minutes.
I thought the stroke rhythm was interesting. My drive to recovery ratio was smaller in the first 30 minutes and consistent between the 10KP and final MP segments. Another indication of how my rowing changes when I am really tired.
Then a few plots versus stroke rate. I find it interesting how different the first mp section is from the last mp section in these.

The fact that I had the hangup gave me an interesting opportunity to compare this workout to the 3 x 20′ version that I did 2 weeks ago.

Remember the first 10 minutes of today’s workout is missing.

The power was identical in the first and second intervals. In the third interval of the prior workout, I felt so fresh, I upped the power. Stroke rate was higher today, and I was trying to do that. HR is interesting. The first interval shows that my HR after 10 minutes today was much lower than 10 minutes into the first piece last time, but by the end of that piece it was a bit higher. You can see the effect of that extra effort in the second interval. My HR bumped up faster, and kept climbing. Last week, it plateaued around 165 or so, today, it just kept on going.

Tomorrow: 2 x 30′ sub-MP, HR limit at 150

Monday: 4×15′ / 4′ rest (9′ @ 5KP, 6′ @ MP)

January 30, 2017February 1, 20173 Comments

This one pushed me to my limit. Two weeks ago, I did the version of this where I did 6′ at 5KP and 9′ at MP, and it was a pretty easy ride. Swapping those two was brutal.

It’s a bit of a bummer, because I have rowed longer than this at a much faster pace then the 5KP, but it is what it is, and I can work with it.

The first rep was pretty manageable, but I definitely felt like I was working hard. This step down format is a pretty fiendish way to do an interval. I was struggling to get to the end of the 9 minute block, and my central governor really wanted me to stop at that point. Instead, you slow down. But you don’t slow down enough to feel much better. My heart rate slowly drifted down and my RPE was amazingly high for a 2:03 pace.

I reprogrammed my power zones in rowsandall to reflect my marathon target paces.

So for this workout, the goal was 36 minutes at 5KP and 24 minutes at MP. The power pie chart shows exactly that break down. So it will be a useful way to track this type of workout on the erg, and even when I am on the water.

Pics of the PM. I set it up as a variable interval session so I could grab the warmup along with the main set in one set of data.

Workout Summary - media/20170130-1315200o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|19032|82:01.0|02:09.3|187.5|23.0|159.5|179.0|10.1
W-|16257|64:00.0|01:58.1|213.6|23.3|165.0|179.0|11.0
R-|02782|18:01.0|03:14.4|064.8|21.5|134.5|179.0|08.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01018|04:00.0|01:57.9|212.8|22.2|132.4|148.0|11.4
01|02351|09:00.0|01:54.8|231.5|24.1|157.9|166.0|10.8
02|01464|06:00.0|02:02.9|188.7|20.8|160.5|166.0|11.7
03|02355|09:00.0|01:54.6|232.9|24.6|164.7|175.0|10.6
04|01464|06:00.0|02:03.0|188.3|21.1|170.2|175.0|11.6
05|02347|09:00.0|01:55.0|230.0|24.7|169.0|177.0|10.6
06|01462|06:00.0|02:03.1|187.7|21.9|173.7|178.0|11.1
07|02335|09:00.0|01:55.6|228.5|24.9|170.1|179.0|10.4
08|01460|06:00.0|02:03.3|187.1|22.0|174.5|179.0|11.1

I did a bunch of flex plots. Drive length is good and consistent across rates and as I geot more tired. It’s cool to see the effect of fatigue on stroke rhythm. You can see my trading off higher rate to try to hold on to the power and the force I could generate declined. The work per stroke versus stroke rate shows an increase with stroke rate. I think that is mainly because the lower power stuff was tacked onto the end of the higher power stuff, so I was really spent and barely hanging on during those sections. I usually see a flatter work per stroke than that.

Last week I did a version of this workout but with 6′ at 5KP and 9′ at MP. I was interested to compare them. The first plot is power and you can see that I was hitting the same target. You can see that I was rating a touch higher, and I think that’s a good thing. Finally in the HR comparison, you can see that I was struggling more with this workout more than the other one. My HR was higher at 6′ in interval #1 today than it was last time. I think accumulated fatigue and time of day are the main factors there.

Tomorrow:

3 x 30′ / 3′

Pace: MP, 10KP, MP

HR cap: 90.0% (167)

Quantified Rowing

Measure – Adjust – Improve

Category: Training Journal