In Singapore at The Regent Hotel. A reasonably equipped fitness center, but no rowing machines. 30 minutes on the treadmill, then 30 minutes on the stationary bike, then 30 minutes on the elliptical. A long session, a bit of intesty in the first 30 minutes and then backed off and tried to keep things aerobic the rest of the session.
Remarkably dull and tremendously sweaty. The highlight was the ice cold water flavored with fresh lemon slices. A nice touch.
Felt good this morning. Higher stroke counts and lower HR.
More fun with Pain Sled. Consistent drive times across stroke rates. Consistent average force across rates (and peak force too) across rates, but it drops slightly over the hour, and my drive length increases. I have no idea if this a good or a bad thing.
I felt better today in the warmup and in the main set. I set a target of 1:42 and I was able to beat it on each interval. Mainly I focused on trying to keep my stroke rate pegged at 30 and my strokes long and smooth.
Very happy with this workout.
I also used Painsled, which worked perfectly. I’ll do a separate post reviewing it, but here are the plots from the workout.
The warmup:
The main set:
The cool down
Tomorrow: 3 x 20′ / 1′ L4
Decided to stick with an easier stroke sequence today, but I still ended up working a bit too hard (judging by HR and RPE).
Today I did 6 repeats of 2′ @ 18, 2′ @ 19, 2′ @ 20, 2′ @ 19, 2′ @ 18. At 10W per stroke, this should yield about a 188W (2:03.0 pace). As I usually do, I ended up about 4W above that.
Tomorrow: Another go at the CTC, target pace 1:41.
Felt tired today. Scaled back stroke counts in the last 40 minutes, but HR was still high. I guess I dug pretty deep yesterday or I’m accumulating some fatigue.
Ergdata worked perfectly again!
Tomorrow: Same as today.
I received an updated painsled beta today and tried it for a quick 100m test piece. The fatal error has been fixed and two critical features for me have been added (csv format stroke file, and seamless dropbox export). If folks are looking for a PM5 to TCX solution, I think it’s worth a try. I’ll give a proper tryout and write something up after this week is over.
I haven’t done a speed session since my aborted 2K time trial 9 days ago. Since then I have missed a bunch of days training due to illness and travel. And even before that, my training was pretty disrupted for the two prior weeks. Basically, I blew my chance to peak.
That brings us to today. I did nice steady state sessions Saturday and Sunday, and today, it was back to my normal schedule. Up at 5:15AM, and working out in the gym first thing.
With too little sleep and a short turn around time after my session yesterday afternoon, there were a couple more excuse codes that I can draw on for today’s session.
Looking at some of the early CTC results, it looked like folks could do it at 2K pace or maybe 2K – 2. So, I was hoping that I could hold a 1:40 pace.
So, how did that work out for you Mr. Smith? Not well….Not well at all. But we’ll get there in time.
I started with a fletcher warmup, which showed alarmingly high heart rates
Then in to the main event. I went out trying to hold 1:40 in the first rep and it hurt. A lot. I was barely recovered by the start of the second rep, and blew up half way through. I reset to a target of 1:43, just to get a score into the CTC. The rest was uneventful, but quote taxing.
I was pretty well shattered after that. I did a 2K cool down and staggered to the locker room.
I think I will give this one another try later this week, maybe on Thursday. I think I can probably pull off a 1:41 or so given the right attitude.
Tomorrow: 3 x 20′ L4
I thought about doing 80 minutes, but decided to stop after 60. It was a lovely workout. Today, I did 3 – 20 minute segments. Each segment was
This seems a bit harder than other arrangements of the same stroke rates because you have 8′ at 200W or above in the middle of each section. Makes the time go by a bit faster too.
I used ergdata today with the PM5.
Tomorrow: I might give the CTC a try 9 x 300 / 30″ rest. I’ll start at a 1:40 and see where that takes me.
Saturday 2/27: After I managed to really blow up big time in my 2k attempts, I went downhill fast. Stomach cramps set in by around 6pm, and by 8 I was in bed shivering and strangely enough struggling with nasty leg and foot cramps. I was up and down all night
Sunday 2/28: pretty darn ill. Basically slept the entire day. Ate nothing. Manage to drink about one glass of water. This was worrying because I had a business trip coming on Monday.
Monday 2/29: dragged myself to the airport, and got through my meetings in Chicago, but was still feeling under the weather.
Tuesday 3/1: I had time to trading before my 9am flight to Minnesota, but decided sleep and recovery was the better choice. Another day of meetings large and small in our design center up there.
Wednesday 3/2: again, I had the time to get in a workout, but still didn’t feel up to it. Flew from Minnesota to Portland, Oregon. Another design center and another set of meetings. Started to feel ‘normal’ in the afternoon, and by dinner I noticed my appetite was starting to return with a vengeance.
Thursday 3/3 (today): today, I managed to get down to the fitness center for a very easy 30 minute session, 10 minutes on a cross trainer that seemed incapable of providing resistance, and then 20 minutes walking up an incline. (15 % grade, around 5 mph). This was good, heart rate right around 70% HRR. It felt good to work up a little sweat. Today, I’ll be in our second biggest design center in Los Angeles, for another day of meetings. Then I’ll grab the red eye back to Boston.
Tomorrow, I will plan on an easy erg session, maybe a 3×20 L4. I expect that the illness and training layoff has probably set me back a month in terms of fitness. It’s time to lay out objectives for the summer and map out a training plan.
This kind of stuff is frustrating, I need to work on making the overall training program challenging AND enjoyable on its own. I’m trying to find the balance. On one hand, setting goals to achieve certain levels of performance in competition is very motivating and enables me to really push harder workouts and not blow off training. On the other hand, I have higher priorities than competition, especially since my competition is against my own prior performance. I’m never going to set records or win big events. That doesn’t change the feeling of satisfaction that comes as you reel in and pass someone in a head race, right at the edge of your capabilities.
Enough philosophy. Time to go talk to some engineers!
Yesterday was a blur. I got off the red eye at 6AM and I was bleary eyed and strung out. I went home and tumbled in bed and slept until nearly noon.
After that, it was a bunch of work phone calls, mainly trying to figure out a bunch of travel coming up in the next few weeks. There just wasn’t enough time to workout before my wife and I needed to pack up and head in to the city to celebrate my twin sons birthday (#23!). A very frustrating day and a workout would have definitely helped my mental outlook.
Today, nothing would stop me, and I had new toys to try out. I’ll put up a separate post, but today, I compares ergdata, ergstick, and painsled today, along with giving my new PM5 a maiden voyage. I was in data heaven. But we’ll get to that. First the workout.
Plan:
First 20 minutes, I used painsled. No luck. This was all I got from painsled.
I’ve emailed back and forth with the developer and apparently, this is not an error that any other users are seeing. Oh well.
Here’s the results using the old fashioned method. The stroke sequence was
Nice low HR.
Then over to ergstick for another 2×10′. This time, I did 2 of the 1×21, 3×20, 3×19, 3×18 sequences.
Ergstick provides a CSV output that I quickly adapted my ergdata worksheet to use. Here’s the result of that.
So, pretty easy stuff.
Finally, over to ergdata. And a carbon copy of the prior 20 minutes
And of course with ergdata, you can seamlessly sync to the logbook, so boom, here’s the summary.
What an enjoyable workout. Just about the perfect intensity.
Tomorrow: 4 x20′ – All on erg data.
One of the more pleasant ways to disrupt a training plan! My wife and I have been fleeing to Aruba over the February school vacation week. We first came down, nearly 20 years ago to celebrate our 10th anniversary, we returned 10 years later with out kids to celebrate our 20th, then about 5 years ago, it became an annual respite from Boston in February.
This year, we tried a different hotel, a place called Bacuti and Tara. It’s a lovely place. Very different from the crowded bustle of the high rise hotels. It came equipped with a very nice and airy fitness center, and about 4km of soft sand beach.
Sunday 2/14: travel day, no training
Monday 2/15: Run on the beach. 6km, no HR data. Hot! Threshold intensity.
Tuesday 2/16: used the horrifyingly bad knock off version of a water rower that they had in the fitness center. I lasted twenty minutes on it and then I retreated to a cross trainer for another 40 minutes. Whole workout was <150 HR.
Wednesday 2/17: short, hot, hard run on the beach. Around 4km, about 26 minutes.
Thursday 2/18: 60 minutes in the fitness center, this time 40 minutes on the awful rower, and 20 minutes on a stationary bike. All <150bpm.
Friday: 7km run on the beach, 44 minutes. Started easy-ish, BRuth then Higher intensity. Threshold intensity, 7 minutes above 170bpm.
Saturday 2/20: 60 minutes in the fitness center. Light and easy.
Sunday 2/21: flew home. No training.
The objective was to try to avoid losing too much fitness and enjoy myself. It felt like a good balance. It would have been much better if the rowing machine was a proper concept2, but all in all, that’s a pretty minor quibble.
Quantified Rowing 