Saturday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ r L4

June 26, 20163 Comments

Stayed up too late, and decided to sleep instead of heading to the lake. I’ll row tomorrow instead. Got up around 9:30 and hopped on the erg.

After yesterday’s very long row, I decided to only do 60 minutes today. I also decided to stick with a stroke sequence and let my HR do what ever it wanted to do.

I did the following sequence: 2′ @ 16, 2′ @ 17, 2′ @ 18, 2′ @ 19, 2′ @ 20

Power was 10W * stroke rate (so 16spm = 160W)

One interesting thing in the charts is the drive length. As usual, you can see my drive length increasing over the first 10 minutes. I think it is cool how it becomes more erratic as I get tired. I like all the data that you can get out of painsled.

Started off feeling great. But I kind of hit the wall in the last 20 minutes. HR was a lot higher. I’ve decided to try to do my LIT endurance workouts in a fasted state. I think the research is pretty clear that it helps keep you metabolizing fats to a higher intensity than if you have eaten recently. The thing that I am trying to work out now is intensity.

I have the feeling that if I had limited to high end of this workout to 190W, I probably would have maintained a lower heart rate. It might be better to go back to a constant power level for these workouts. My suspicion is that there is a fair amount of hysteresis in the crossover between fat and CHO metabolism. Once you flip the switch to start burning glycogen, that you have to go way down in intensity to flip the switch back to fat. I think that where I am now, that going above 180W I am flipping the switch.

For now, if I have to do any steady state on the erg, I think I will start doing lactate testing again, and stick to constant power. Pity. It is very boring. But I want to get some unequivocal data on where my base fitness is right now.

Friday: 20K Steady State / Technique

June 25, 20162 Comments

I got home around 11pm and got to bed around 1AM. There was no way that I was getting up at 5:15 to go rowing. I did pack my rowing stuff in case I was able to sneak out and go for a row in the afternoon. It turns that I did.

I was not in the mood for the planned 6 x 750. I still felt pretty worn down from all the plane flights and jet lag. Also, I had not been in a boat since the previous Sunday. Even that didn’t entirely count since it was my chubby boat. So, I thought it would be a good idea to work on technique. I went to my go session for working on balance and technique

2′ square blade rowing
2′ alternating square and normal
2′ normal
Rate target: 18 to 20
Pace target: none
HR cap: < 150 (hopefully a lot under 150 for most of it)

It was beautiful out today. Around 80F, but with a nice breeze from the ENE around 5mph, with gusts higher.

It was a really nice outing. Nice and easy. It’s hard to concentrate for that long, but I had stretches where I felt like my rowing was fluid and natural. I also had periods where it was just wobbly and awful.

The XGPS160 was acting up badly today. It froze and I cycled power four times. Each time, the symptoms were identical. The pace and distance would stop updating. I would power it off, power it back on, it would start talking to the iphone again and everything worked fine.

It was also navigating horribly. Here’s the map of the whole outing.

Some of the lines look a little jagged. When you zoom in it gets much more apparent that the position it is reporting has a lot of uncertainty to it.

The first map is the leftmost third. The jaggy line is the beginning of the row. Look at the sudden jumps in the position. Further over, notice that the position is just wrong. It has me rowing through the penisula.

The second picture also has navigation errors showing me rowing into the north bank of the river coming out of the s-turn. I assure you, I did not.

The third picture is the Moody street basin and you can see the weird results by the bridge. Also, the lines down the canal are wrong. The good water is very narrow and I tend to follow it quite consistently, the lines are all over the place.

At this point, I think I am going to be leaving the XGPS160 in my kit bag until I hear something back from the vendor. With this much error in the position and the impact it has on the instantaneous pace display, which is jumping all over the place, it’s worse than the much slower updates of the internal GPS of the iphone.

Tomorrow: The promised 6×750.

Thursday: 4 x 20′ / 1′ L4

June 23, 20163 Comments

Tuesday: Arrived in Munich at 10AM. Showered, connected by plane to Stuttgart. Meetings with customer in the afternoon, back to the airport, flew to Paris, connected to Marseille. Got to my hotel at midnight. No Training

Wednesday: Decided to sleep in, instead of trying to workout. Prep sessions all morning, customer meeting in the afternoon, then back to the airport to fly back to Munich. Arrived at the airport around 8:30PM, took the s-bahn to my hotel. Met with a couple of colleagues at the hotel. Got to bed around 1AM. No Training

Thursday: Up at 7:30AM for a breakfast meeting with a customer. That finished around 10AM. My flight leaves around 4:10PM, so finally, I had a window to go to the gym. I went to the hotel fitness center and saw a meticulously clean Concept2 Model E with a PM4. Yesss!!!

Plan:

4 x 20′ / 1′ rest
L4 format. Power target –> 10W x stroke rate (16spm = 160W, etc)
HR Cap: 156

I figured with all the flying around, irregular meals and reasonable consumption of beer, that this would be a difficult session. I was right.

I started slow and within 10 minutes I knew that I would struggle. Here’s the stroke sequences I did.

16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20
16 / 17 / 18 / 19/ 20
3′ @ 16 / 3′ @ 17 / 3′ @ 18 / 1′ @ 19
3′ @ 16 / 3′ @ 17 / 3′ @ 18 / 1′ @ 19
4′ @ 16 / 3′ @ 17 / 2′ @ 18 / 1′ @ 19 (dropped off the target power in this one)
4′ @ 16 / 3′ @ 17 / 2′ @ 18 / 1′ @ 19
10′ @ 16
9′ @ 16 / 1′ @ 20

Very disappointed with what has happened to my aerobic fitness. But pleased with the gigantic puddles under the erg.

Tomorrow: Sprint session in the boat. 6 x 750 / 5′ rest.

Monday: 3 x (6 x 1′ / 1’r) / 5’r

June 21, 20161 Comment

Inside, on the erg. I originally planned to do it on slides, but I couldn’t get them set up so they were sliding freely. They kept binding so that I would end up banging against the end while I was warming up, so I took the erg off of them for the rest of the workout.

The plan was

4 x ( 6 x 1′ / 1′ rest ) / 5′ rest
Rate target: 30
Pace target: 1:40

While I did the workout, I had enough time to think through the plan. That would be 24 minutes at faster than 2K pace. Even with the generous rests, that seemed a bit excessive. Compared to other sprint workouts like a 4 x 1k or 8 x 500, they have about 14 minutes of work. Anyway, during the first 5 minute rest I decided to stop after 3 sets. It certainly felt like enough.

I wasn’t all that sure about pace, since I haven’t been doing many sprint sessions on the erg lately, but 1:40 turned out to be a good pick. I was able to beat it by a bit, but the last set really stung.

I am very happy with that.

Now I am over Germany, about to descend into Munich. I’ll be connecting over to Stuttgart, and then going straight into meetings all day. So no training for Tuesday. Hopefully, I will be able get a workout in tomorrow morning.

Sunday: 70 minutes steady state in the Alden

June 20, 2016June 20, 20162 Comments

Sunny, 70s, windy. Wind SW 5mph with gusts to 15. Sun sparking on the water. Really beautiful.

Today the plan was a low intensity steady state session. I decided to take my Alden out for a spin to get used to rowing it and to figure out what kind of paces are reasonable in a shorter and wider boat. I went to Lake Whitehall, which is about 5 minutes from my house and is a popular kayaking, fishing, and canoeing spot. No rowing though. It works OK, but the longest straight is about 2K and that requires some fancy steering through a couple of narrow spots. As I found today, it also builds some chop. It was not an issue in an open water boat, the power boat wakes weren’t either. They were kind of fun to row over.

The Dual XGPS160 acted up again today. For the first 15 minutes of the row, the pace was just bouncing all over the place. Getting stuck for a few seconds, then dropping down to 0:02/500, then returning to normal. Looking at the view on the map, there were a bunch of zigs and zags as the GPS position got messed up and then locked in again. For some reason, it started working after about 15 minutes.

The first half of the row was quite enjoyable. Since the boat turns on a dime, I tried to hug the shoreline more closely than I normally would. After that, the heaviness of the boat started to get to me. I learned that the analogy that Concept2 uses to describe drag factor is spot on. The heaviness on the drive and the faster deceleration were exactly the same. The only difference is that you don’t have the magical PM making the splits faster for that extra effort. You just go a bit slower. My best guess is about 0:20/500 slower. So, the same effort that produces a 2:30 pace in my fluid, produces a 2:50/500 pace in the Alden.

In essence, I will be doing a fair amount of bungee rowing. This has good and bad aspects to it. The good is that it slows everything down on the drive so it is easy to focus on blades depth and not missing water at the catch. The bad is that the load is heavy and I will need to adapt to two very different boat feels. One thing is clear though. It is much better than erging, both in terms of the stroke mechanics and also just getting outside and having some great scenery.

By rowing for over an hour, I found two additional issues with the boat. The first is the seat. I must have a different butt geometry than what the seat was designed for. I started noticing some pain at my right sitz bone about halfway through the row and it kept getting worse and worse. By the time I finished, I could barely support my weight on my right leg, and I was concerned that I might not be able to carry my boat out of the water. After about 5 minutes, the pain subsided a bit and I could function, but it’s still quite sore today. I’m going to try to get the exact same seat as what I have in my fluid. I can sit on that for hours without pain.

The second issue was much more serious, and far more abrupt. As I was rowing back from the south end of the lake to the launch ramp, about halfway, all of the sudden I heard a big bang off to starboard in the middle of my drive. I was sure that something had broken, but I wasn’t sure what. I looked at the rigger and I couldn’t see any damage immediately, so I took a couple of gentle paddle strokes while watching the starboard rigger. Ah ha! I saw that the starboard backstay on the rigger had parted right at the oarlock pin. Every stroke, the rigger was flexing toward the bow. This picture shows where the backstay broke.

So, now I will try to get some new backstays and get it all fixed up.

Start_|_Dist_|__Time_|_Split Pace_|_Strokes_|_SPM__|_DPS__|_Remarks
00010_|_4190_|_14:23_|_1:43.0_____|_276_____|_19.2_|_15.2_|_corrupted data
04200_|_1872_|_11:29_|_3:04.1_____|_224_____|_19.5_|_08.4_|_headwind
06072_|_3000_|_16:33_|_2:45.5_____|_327_____|_19.8_|_09.2_|_tail wind
09072_|_0078_|_01:13_|_7:51.1_____|_013_____|_10.6_|_06.0_|_rest
09150_|_2800_|_16:25_|_2:55.8_____|_337_____|_20.5_|_08.3_|_headwind
11950_|_0150_|_01:18_|_4:21.6_____|_019_____|_14.5_|_07.9_|_rest
12100_|_1800_|_10:06_|_2:48.3_____|_195_____|_19.3_|_09.2_|_tailwind
13900_|_1303_|_10:06_|_3:52.7_____|_177_____|_17.5_|_07.4_|_broken rigger

Distance_|_Time__|_Pace___|_Strokes_|_SPM__|_DPS__|_Remarks
4190_____|_14:23_|_1:43.0_|_276_____|_19.2_|_15.2_|_warmup
9472_____|_54:32_|_2:52.7_|_1083_____|_19.9_|_08.7_|_Main set
1531_____|_12:38_|_4:07.6_|_209_____|_16.5_|_07.3_|_rest meters
15193_____|_21:34_|_2:41.0_|_1568_____|_19.2_|_09.7_|_Total

Today: I skipped rowing this morning because I didn’t get to bed until after 1AM last night. I’m hoping to get a sprint session in on the erg before I fly to Germany tonight on the red eye. The plan is 4 x (6 x 1′ on / 1′ off) 5′ rest.

Saturday: June CTC – 30R24

June 18, 20164 Comments

Friday: “Rest Day”. Flew to San Diego in the morning, and back on the red eye. I arrived at 7:00AM. Drove home and slept until around 10:30.

A little after 2, after doing some domestic chores, I found time for an erg session. The month is passing and I hadn’t made an attempt at the Cross Team Challenge.

I started with a 2K warmup, with 3 bursts of 20 strokes each near my target pace and rate.

Then it was onto the main event. I felt like an 8K target was about right. Maybe a bit aggressive since I haven’t been doing much erging and very hard distance work, but I would have felt bad doing less.

I turned out to be doable. I was a bit fast through the first half, and I needed to bleed off a bit of pace to keep from blowing up in the second. It was very close to a maximal effort.

I took 721 strokes exactly, according to the painsled file.

Then a 2K cool down

Mission accomplished.

Tomorrow: Steady State OTW

Crushed by the lactate wave. 750m intervals

June 16, 2016June 16, 2016Leave a comment

Weather: sunny, warm mid-70s, basically no wind. A great day for rowing.

Pity it was such a shitty workout.

Plan:

8×750 / 4′ rest
Rate: 28-32
Pace: 2:00
Standing starts
Paddle in the rests

I am feeling the effects of a big increase in Volume. I got my boat back last week and I’ve rowed everyday since last Friday. I’ve also done longer sessions this week. Last night, I got enough sleep, but I woke up feeling very sore and lethargic. I also had stomach issues which forced me stop for an unscheduled pit stop on my way to the boathouse.

By the time I got on the water, it was nearly 7am, and I had less than an hour for the workout. I did a quick warmup and then attempted to start the first interval. I got 5 strokes in and noticed that I hadn’t pushed start on CrewNerd. The second attempt at the start actually worked and off I went. I took a little too long to settle down to a realistic pace, and I felt the familiar “Lactate Wave”. Nausea, feeling like I’m drowning. This is a feeling I hate, but I need to get used to in order to well in sprint races. It’s kind of the whole point of this workout.

The problem is that I was not mentally prepared for what this workout demanded. I made it through the wave in the first interval by slowing down. The second interval, I powered through it and was happy that I hit the target pace, even while steering to the bridge. This one really hurt after I finished. I nearly puked, but by the end of the rest I thought I was better.

Twenty strokes into the next interval, I discovered that I wasn’t. I bailed out the interval approaching the bridge, and then slowly picked back up to a reasonable pace for about the last 400m. I was pretty annoyed with myself.

I paddled through the s-curve during the rest and decided to hold the rate a bit lower during the next interval. The result was a slower split and a more manageable wave.

I quit on the next interval and frankly, I’m not even sure why. It was after about 20 strokes, and this time I picked back up pretty quickly and pushed through the rest of the piece. This was not going well.

I was running out of time and so I decided to make the next one my last. No quitting allowed on this one. I managed the wave and finished reasonably well.

I rowed feet out back to the dock. I have to come back and do this workout again soon.

Workout Summary – media/20160616-173853-2016-06-16-0646.CSV–|Total|-Total-|–Avg–|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg

–|Dist-|-Time–|-Pace–|SPM-|-HR–|-HR–|-DPS

–|07319|36:50.0|02:37.1|22.6|134.1|145.2|08.5

Workout Details

01|01240| 07:56 |03:11.9|16.4|117.0|132.0|09.5

02|00000| 00:10 |0000:00|00.0|0.0|0.0|0nan

03|00750| 03:07 |02:05.1|28.1|154.0|165.0|08.5

04|00750| 03:00 |02:00.6|30.2|164.0|174.0|08.2

05|00750| 03:41 |02:27.7|23.8|146.0|161.0|08.5

06|00750| 03:09 |02:06.2|28.8|165.0|176.0|08.2

07|00750| 03:15 |02:10.4|27.0|158.0|174.0|08.5

08|00750| 03:11 |02:07.7|29.1|165.0|178.0|08.1

09|01579| 09:21 |02:57.7|20.1|138.0|147.0|08.4

Tomorrow: “rest day”. I’m flying to sandiego in the morning and back on the redeye. Some rest day.

Wednesday: Steady State Rate Ladders

June 15, 20162 Comments

Weather: Sunny, 70F, light shifty wind from the WNW about 2-4 mph. Wind was not really a factor, but slowed me down at times.

Plan:

6′ Rate Ladders
3′ @ 17 / 2′ @ 19 / 1′ @ 21
1′ rests when I turned at the ends of the river.
Technique Notes: Keep the drive smooth. Get the blades off the water.

Notice the purple box? If you look over to the right hand side at the speed scale, it indicates that I was going 4600 km/h. Pretty nice acceleration, eh?

What actually happened was the Dual XGPS160 unit and it took me a little while to notice. The interesting thing is that the pace and distance seemed to update for a while after the point where the straight line started. I thought it was only about 30 seconds or so where I saw the pace and distance frozen before I stopped and cycled power on the unit, but the data is missing for nearly 9 minutes. Some weird s**t going on here.

Cycling the power made everything happy again.

Today was a day of mishaps. On my last trip down the river, Was trying to squeeze in the end of a ladder and I pushed it too far. There is a cable across the river with big orange floats (about 18″ in diameter) strung on it. I put on the brakes, and tried to turn, but managed to get my bow and starboard oar blade under the cable between two floats, and my boat basically parallel to the float line. What ensued was an ungainly display of backing and forthing and turning and wobbling as I tried to get my bow extracted, my boat turned around and get myself clear. It was an ugly demonstration of what not to do in a boat.

After that, I finished the journey up river and was approaching the dock. There are a few challenges to deal with. First, there was a bit of cross wind. No big deal. Second, there is an underwater propeller under one side of the dock that is artificially creating a current to try to keep area by the dock clear of weeds. Also no big deal if you approach the other side of the dock. Third, is the weeds themselves. They are floating in great clumps right now. This was the cause of my downfall today. I was aiming to put my bow about a foot away from the side of the dock, so I would come in on the port side of the boat. But when I was about 6 feet from the dock, my port oar caught a great hunk of weed, and turned my bow to the port side.

With a small bump, I hit the end of the dock. No big deal, right. The bow ball is there, right? Well, on this specific dock, there is a 4″ wide gap between the board along the side of the dock and the one on the end of the dock, and my bow hit that gap with extraordinary precision, and the bow became wedged between the two bits of wood. I had to back the boat with a fair amount of pressure to get it free, and it took a couple of strokes to do it.

Between those strokes, I was processing what the hell I would do if I couldn’t get it free. I guess, jump out and swim. That would have been pretty damn humiliating! I’m glad it didn’t come to that. There was no damage to the boat. In the future, I will approach the dock with less speed and more paranoia.

Tomorrow: 8 x 750 / 4′ rest.

Tuesday: Starting to work on Starts

June 14, 2016June 14, 2016Leave a comment

Weather: Basically like yesterday. Sunny, cool and blustery. Generally WNW, 5 mph with gusts to 15 mph.

Plan:

Rojabo style warmup to the moody street dam
Do as many starts as I can stand
15 strokes each start, 10 stroke paddle, then stop the boat, reset and do it again
In each start work on:
- Get set comfortably at the catch.
- Do NOT go to full compression, stop when it feels like my heels are beginning to lift. The key is to be rock solid at the start of the first stroke.
- First stroke: Smooth, powerful acceleration, very early finish, get the blades way off the water, barely feather.
- Second Stroke: get back to 1/2 slide fast! get the blades in, keep it smooth, finish early, get the blades clear
- Third through fifth: keep taking short strokes and focus on balance and finishes
- fifth through tenth: extend out to full slide. Keep stroke rate up above 38, but keep recovery smooth.
- 10 to 15: full pressure, good strokes
Long cool down focusing on technique

Here is the whole session in google earth. I paddled to the lap02 flag, then did the Rojabo warmup. That took me to the end of the basin in Waltham. Then I turned and did 14 starts going up river and generally with a cross/tail wind. That took me back to the beginning, I had a drink, turned again, and did another 14 starts going back down river, now with a bit of a head wind. A few of them, especially #’s 22 to 25 were definitely impacted by a reasonable strong headwind at the time.

Here’s the whole session as interpreted by Rowsandall

This is time based, so it gives you a better picture of the gap between intervals. There is something fishy about the pace display. The graph from google earth is in km/h. Here is a closer view of the speed.

The top speed is 18.7 km/h. This is a foreign unit to me, so here’s the translation

15 km/h = 2:00.0/500
17 km/h = 1:45.9/500
19 km/h = 1:34.7/500

This intrigued me enough that I exported the CSV file from crewnerd and plotted it in Excel.

That matches Google earth.

Next time, I will set it up as a predefined workout in Crewnerd. 15 strokes on and about 1:30 rest would be about the same thing. I’ll have to pause it sometimes to get to a fortuitous starting point, but it should workout OK.

Other than the interesting pace discrepancies, it was a useful and interesting workout. The key really is the first stroke. Being a little conservative and finishing clean is the biggest thing. Once the boat starts to build a little momentum, it gets easier.

I’ve registered for the Cromwell Cup. This is a 1km sprint race on July 10th. So, that should provide some motivation to do some more start practices.

I also had a useful live demonstration of the value of magik oarlocks. Right now, one of the tension bands, the one on my port oarlock, is busted. So that oarlock acts just like a normal C2 oarlock. The tension band on the starboard oarlock is intact, so the little lever applies pressure to the stern side of the oar.

In normal rowing, I can detected no difference between port and starboard, but sitting at the catch with blades buried, I sure could. With the wind today, there was a bit of chop, and I could feel my port oar rattling around at the catch, my starboard oar was just solid. No movement at all. I don’t know if it was coincidence, or self fulfilling prophesy, but most of the problems that I had with imperfect first strokes were on the port side.

I enjoyed the cool down. I did two repetitions of 500m SBR, 500m of alternating SBR and normal, and 500m of slow roll ups. That took me back to the cut. From there it was just a paddle back to the dock.

Tomorrow: Another session of easy rate ladders. HR cap at 155.

Monday: Easy Rate Ladders

June 13, 20164 Comments

Weather: Sunny, upper 50s, Windy! Sustained winds around 10mph, with gusts to 20. Shifting around between the west and the north.

Rowing on the upper charles from newton down to Waltham. In my wonderful Fluid.

Plan:

Rate Ladders (3’/2’/1′)
Rate: 17 / 19 / 21
Pace: Completely useless with the shifty wind
Technique: Work on getting way out at the catch and slowly squaring the oars at the catch.

I used Crewnerd with the Dual Skypro XGPS160

This unit provides a 10Hz update rate for GPS information to the iPhone over bluetooth. This is 10x faster than the internal GPS of the iPhone. This is a good thing because pace changes should be reflected more quickly and accurately in CrewNerd. If you are getting updates that quickly, you can turn down the smoothing from ~100m to ~20m and the annoying lag is a lot better and with the fast update rate, the pace does not hunt around. When it works it works great, unfortunately I have never been able to complete an entire workout without the unit hanging up. When that happens, the pace and distance on Crewnerd stop updating. It happened to me today. You can see it in the map below where the course goes from yellow to red.

The updates actually stopped about 1km before that, at the little blue flag. Here’s a zoom in.

The updates stopped coming out of the s-curve. It seemed like the display was live for at least another 2 minutes, and then froze, about 100m before the “lap001” flag.

I experimented to try to figure out what was going on. I quit crewnerd and restarted it. It was still not updating pace and distance. I started up the XGPS utility app. It took a while to open, and then finally failed, and crashed. Next, I cycled power on the XGPS unit, and that seemed to do the trick. But I am not sure that the iphone was actually using the XGPS anymore because the pace was madly misbehaving. It was misbehaving just like it does when you don’t use enough smoothing and the internal GPS.

Anyway, I am not sure if it is the worth the hassle to use the XGPS. I like the crisper pace display, but it really pisses me off when technology does not work reliably. I’ll be glad when I get my impeller back.

So, back to the workout. My pace was terrible and all over the place because of the wind. I focused on trying to hit my rates and keep my HR below 155. I also focused on the technique notes. Even though it was windy, I really enjoyed the session.

The first plots are for the bulk of the session, up to the hang. The second is for the last 2 minutes of the last ladder and the paddle back to the dock. Looks like I did 12 complete 6′ ladders.

Tomorrow: Time to start working on starts! The plan will be to do a long warmup (Rojabo style) to the Moody Street dam, and then do starts, lots of them. Basically 20 strokes from a standing start, paddle 20 strokes, stop the boat, repeat. Focus is on cleanly building speed and hitting stroke rates in the mid 30s during the second 10 strokes.

Quantified Rowing

Measure – Adjust – Improve

Category: Training Journal

Saturday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ r L4

Friday: 20K Steady State / Technique

Thursday: 4 x 20′ / 1′ L4

Monday: 3 x (6 x 1′ / 1’r) / 5’r

Sunday: 70 minutes steady state in the Alden

Saturday: June CTC – 30R24

Crushed by the lactate wave. 750m intervals

Wednesday: Steady State Rate Ladders

Tuesday: Starting to work on Starts

Monday: Easy Rate Ladders