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Hooray, the hotel has an erg!

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Monday, July 24 and Tuesday, July 25:  (No Training)

I woke up at the ungodly hour of 4:30am to get to the airportfor my 7am flight.  I was flying to Shanghai via Chicago, total flight time 17 and a half hours.  Total travel time 22 and a half hours.  With the time zone changes, I got into my hotel room at 3:00pm Tuesday afternoon.  I took a shower and went to work, then a customer dinner.

I was back in my hotel room by 9:00pm and asleep at 9:01pm (approximately)

I guess you’d call that 2 rest days, but it didn’t feel very restful.

Wednesday, July 26:

I slept pretty well considering the jet lag.  I woke up around midnight, but got right back to sleep.  I woke up at 3:00am and slept fitfully until 5am.  I was in the gym by about 5:30am and what a gym it was.

IMG_2330

I’m staying in the Kerry Hotel in Pudong and the fitness center is incredible.  The main gym has ceilings two stories high, there is a spinning room and a group room off to the side.  They have lots of treadmills, ellipticals, bikes, weight machines, TRX, free weights, kettle bells, all in brand new condition.  And they had 2 perfectly maintained concept2 Model D rowing machines with PM4s.  I couldn’t believe my good fortune.

When I arrived there was someone using one of the rowers, and so I settled into the second one.

Plan:

  • 80′ L4
  • 4×20’/1′ rest
  • rate/power
    • 16 – 150W
    • 18 – 170W
    • 20 – 190W
    • 22 – 210W
  • stroke sequence:  I decided to go for my all time favorite classic L4 sequence.  In shorthand it’s a 2x(168/172/176/180).  That means 168 strokes in the first 10 minutes, then 172, then 176, then 180.  So, here’s how that looks.

7-25c

I had a blast!  The intensity was just about perfect.  The fastest bits pushed me above the top of my UT1 zone, but my HR dropped back in the slower pieces.

I really should get a USB cable so I can use ergdata with the PM3 and PM4, but for now all I get is HR data.

7-25a

Tomorrow:  I think I’ll stick with the Wolverine theme and do this month’s CTC.  It will be slow, but I’d like to put a score on the board.

 

 

Planning an adventure

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As I have been struggling with motivation and balancing work, travel, life and training, there has been one consistent bright spot for me.  The thought of doing the Blackburn challenge.  I have been having a blast rowing open water, I like the adventure of it and the newness of it.

So, we are heading back to the cape this weekend, and the weather looks favorable to do a long row.  The forecast for Saturday morning is for partly sunny, around 50F, and light wind from the east.  That is my new favorite wind direction because it is an offshore wind and that keeps the waves under control.

The tide will be low, so I want to stick to deeper water,  That gives me an opportunity to work on rowing to a compass heading and following a planned course.

I laid out a course that is just about 23km (12.5nm).  This is a bit over half the length of the Blackburn Challenge (22nm) , but a good long row.  It should take me just over 2 hours, depending on the sea state.

Here’s the course plan.

Screen Shot 2017-05-10 at 9.27.40 PM.png

For a fun comparison, here’s the annotated course map for the Blackburn.

 

Learning about myself

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Tuesday:  I planned to get up at 5:15AM to go rowing.  I did get up at 5:15.  Went to the bathroom and felt so awful that I went back to bed.  I didn’t feel really sick, just a bit shakey and very, very tired.  I slept until about 7, and then showered and went to work.  No training.

Wednesday:  I put out all my rowing clothes and I went to bed at a reasonable hour, but when the alarm went off at 5:15, I just turned it off, rolled over and slept until 8AM.  I drove to work and since I didn’t have anything on my schedule until 11, I went to the gym and did an easy 10K.  Mostly as a diagnostic test to see if I was really “off”.  My typical endurance training power is around 180W (2:05 pace) these days, so I just set out to flat pace the 10K and watch what my HR did.  If I was coming down with something, I figured that my HR would rise abnormally fast.  If not, that I just dug myself into a deep hole with my festival of mulching on Saturday that I had to recover from.

The verdict is inadequate recovery.

5-10a

The heart rate was a little high, but not unusually so.  I would have had to slow down if I was continuing for another 40 minutes.

So, what does it all mean?  I’ve never had good instincts for listening to my body.  And by most metrics, my training load is very light.  I’m doing way fewer meters than I did a couple of years ago.  But, there are two things that are different.  First, I am traveling a lot more and I think that the travel is causing a serious chronic level of fatigue.  The other is (I hate to even write it down because it feels like a cop out) that I am getting older.  I’m 54 now, and I don’t feel like I am recovering as quickly as I did a couple of years ago.

This brings up all kinds of complicated thoughts.  Will I ever see another sub-6:40 2K?  Will I ever do better than middle of the pack at HOCR?  Does that stuff matter?

I think it’s time to dust off my Principles and see if they still fit.

As I write this, I am, once again, flying to California.  I will spend Thursday in San Diego and take the red eye home.  Ah, the injustice of needing to make a living.

Tomorrow morning I am planning to bop over the Del Mar Crossfit and do the OTW session I was supposed to do today on the erg.

Edit:  I did a bit of research on my travel.  We are in the 18th week of 2017.  Over that period, I have been traveling in 12 of those weeks.  I have made 3 trips to asia, and 6 other trips.  Almost all of them included at least one overnight flight.  This has made me feel a bit better about the fatigue I’m feeling.  I think I’ve earned it.

 

Sunday: 2 x 45′ / 4′ rest (HR cap at 155)

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The plan called for:

5-Mar W8-D M3 2 x 30′ / 3′ MP or slower 80.0% (149)

But I have been missing endurance sessions and cheating down the durations, so I decided to go long.

5-Mar W8-D M3 2 x 45′ / 4′ MP or slower 80.0% (149)

I did this session at home on the dynamic.  Still not sure how I feel about it.  I feel like I am slower, and it sure is “grindy-er”.  It  makes a lot of noise and it does not feel smooth.  I still wonder if something is wrong with it.  I have to find another dynamic somewhere to compare.

The workout was uneventful.  My HR shot up a bit quicker than it should have, but plateaued around 150 for the first piece and 155 for the second.

3-5a

Workout Summary - media/Import_29058623.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|22116|93:59.0|02:07.5|167.1|20.2|145.8|157.0|11.6
W-|21468|90:00.0|02:05.8|173.3|20.2|147.6|157.0|11.8
R-|00648|03:59.0|03:04.6|057.2|20.5|114.3|157.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|10728|45:00.0|02:05.8|173.8|19.9|142.9|151.0|12.0
01|10740|45:00.7|02:05.7|172.7|20.5|152.3|157.0|11.7

I did this same session on a static erg back on January 27th.  Here’s a comparison

  • Power was the within a couple watts.
  • Stroke rate was a bit higher on the dynamic
  • HR was persistently higher on the dynamic.

 

 

A gift from a friend – 2 x (10 x (500m on / 200m off) / 4′ rest

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My friend Sander is in the process of adding new features on rowsandall.com that are designed to help rowing teams use data analysis to get faster.  These features let you do things like share workout results, comment on each other’s workouts and even compare your workouts graphically.

So, we even though we are following different training plans, we are trying to find some workouts which we can do as a group to try out these features.  Today, he suggested the workout from his club’s Masters training plan.  It looked like a monster.

Rowing 15km (75′) consisting of 
1. 2500m warming up
2. 2x(10x500m/80″)/4min @ 26spm (Zone 3-4)
3. Stretching 20 minutes
We talked a little about how to set it up so that the comparisons were meaningful. You could set it up just using regular distance intervals, but the issue with that is since everyone will paddle different distances during the rests, the comparison plots will get all misaligned by the end.
We decided to change it slightly, so that it was
2 x ( 10 x (500m on / 200m paddle) / 4′ @ 26 spm
This could be set up on the PM either as a 7000m row (like Sander did), or as a 10 x 700/no rest interval session like I did.  This kept the graphs all pretty.
If I were planning group workouts and I wanted to do comparison plots, I would definitely recommend time based intervals and time based rests.  It makes it much easier to compare rowers of different abilities.
Different abilities did not turn out to be a factor for this workout.  It turned out our avg power for the session was matched to less than a percent!
First the warmup, 2500m which I did with 4 20 stroke bursts at my target power for the intervals.
Workout Summary - media/20170303-1835200o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|02500|09:58.0|01:59.7|206.3|22.3|143.3|160.0|11.2
W-|02500|09:58.0|01:59.8|203.7|22.1|142.9|160.0|11.4
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|160.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00500|02:00.7|02:00.7|190.8|19.5|117.7|133.0|12.8
01|00200|00:45.2|01:53.0|239.5|25.6|138.0|141.0|10.3
02|00300|01:13.9|02:03.1|189.5|21.2|141.2|142.0|11.5
03|00200|00:45.0|01:52.4|242.4|26.0|146.1|150.0|10.3
04|00300|01:14.7|02:04.5|183.3|20.7|149.0|152.0|11.6
05|00200|00:45.2|01:52.9|237.9|24.9|151.2|154.0|10.7
06|00300|01:15.0|02:05.0|182.9|21.1|153.8|157.0|11.4
07|00200|00:44.7|01:51.8|248.5|25.3|153.3|158.0|10.6
08|00300|01:14.5|02:04.1|187.3|21.4|157.8|160.0|11.3

Then into the first set.

Workout Summary - media/20170303-1835220o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07000|31:36.0|02:15.4|177.4|24.9|156.1|173.0|08.9
W-|05000|18:29.0|01:51.0|251.1|26.1|156.4|173.0|10.4
R-|02000|13:07.0|03:16.9|061.7|22.8|155.5|173.0|06.2
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00500|01:50.7|01:50.7|245.5|24.8|146.4|163.0|10.9
01|00500|01:51.4|01:51.4|246.4|24.9|154.4|166.0|10.8
02|00500|01:50.9|01:50.9|254.1|26.1|156.2|168.0|10.4
03|00500|01:51.8|01:51.8|249.3|24.9|155.9|168.0|10.8
04|00500|01:51.8|01:51.8|245.3|24.9|155.8|168.0|10.8
05|00500|01:50.6|01:50.6|252.2|26.6|157.5|169.0|10.2
06|00500|01:50.3|01:50.3|251.4|26.4|158.7|170.0|10.3
07|00500|01:51.6|01:51.6|251.7|26.9|159.4|171.0|10.0
08|00500|01:50.3|01:50.3|253.1|27.8|158.9|171.0|09.8
09|00500|01:50.1|01:50.1|262.1|28.0|161.0|173.0|09.7

Wow.  That was tough.  And now I have to do another whole set of that!  I let the rate pop up a 1 or 2 spm.  This was the first fast-ish session that I’ve done on the dynamic and it really wanted me to rate up!

Workout Summary - media/20170303-1835240o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06969|31:44.0|02:16.6|173.4|27.2|159.2|182.0|08.1
W-|05000|18:30.0|01:51.1|253.5|27.9|160.4|182.0|09.7
R-|01970|13:14.0|03:21.7|054.2|26.0|157.1|182.0|04.7
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00500|01:50.4|01:50.4|247.4|26.9|148.4|165.0|10.1
01|00500|01:52.0|01:52.0|245.5|28.4|157.0|169.0|09.4
02|00500|01:49.8|01:49.8|253.6|27.7|159.2|172.0|09.9
03|00500|01:49.9|01:49.9|251.5|27.4|159.7|172.0|10.0
04|00500|01:51.2|01:51.2|252.6|27.2|160.8|174.0|09.9
05|00500|01:51.5|01:51.5|253.1|27.6|159.8|172.0|09.7
06|00500|01:51.8|01:51.8|249.5|27.5|161.9|174.0|09.7
07|00500|01:53.7|01:53.7|248.6|26.9|162.6|174.0|09.8
08|00500|01:53.6|01:53.6|240.2|27.6|164.6|175.0|09.6
09|00500|01:46.7|01:46.7|294.8|31.7|170.1|182.0|08.9

Here is a comparison of my first and second sets.  (using the cool compare feature on rowsandall)

And here is a comparison of my two sets and Sander’s two sets using the beta features for teams on rowsandall.

You can see so much from these plots.  You can see how we both went for a fast last.  You can see how I rated up more in the second set to try to hold the training power.  You can see the similarity in the HR response showing the similar effort levels.  I think that this could be an incredible tool for a tech savvy coach to get more out of their athletes and for teammates to push each other.

Tomorrow:  Group workout at the lake on ergs.  I offered to lead a workout from the Marathon Training Plan.

M1 4 x 15′ / 4′ 6′ @ 5KP, 9′ @ MP 92.5% (172)

I’ve done two hard sessions in a row, so I think I will be aiming at the bottom of my power bands (255W and 180W)

Edit:  I just went through and looked at some of the additional parameters that painsled captures to compare the rows.  It’s very clear from this that I was struggling more in the second set than Sander was.  You can see me experimenting with higher stroke rates, and his WPS was higher throughout.

 

Wednesday: 2 x 40′ / 4′ rest (HR capped at 150)

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Back to the routine.  I’ve missed a couple weeks in the marathon training schedule, but I’ve got plenty of time before the race in july.  I’ll pick up from where I left off.

I was scheduled for a rest day today, but I wanted to do monday’s long and slow session.  This was supposed to be 2 x 45′ / 4’30” rest, but I didn’t have 2 hours.  Instead I did.

W6-B M3 2 x 40′ / 4′ MP or slower 80.0% (149)

Before I started, I updated the PM5 firmware to try to fix my Painsled hangups.  It worked fine for the first 70 minutes, but hung up in the last 10 minutes.  That kind of made me a bit mad.  I think I am going to stick to ergdata unless I specifically trying to fix this issue.

3-1a

The session was nothing too exciting.  I was happy that my HR took as long as it did to rise during the first 40 minutes and I was happy that it plateaued around 150.  I guess for now 175 is a good training power for these long pieces.

Here’s the portion that I got on painsled

Workout Summary - media/20170301-1705200o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|17893|76:39.0|02:08.5|169.5|19.2|138.1|153.0|12.2
W-|17322|72:39.0|02:05.8|175.6|19.1|139.5|153.0|12.5
R-|00573|04:00.0|03:29.5|049.7|20.3|109.7|153.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|09533|40:00.0|02:05.9|175.3|19.0|134.7|146.0|12.6
01|07790|32:39.2|02:05.8|176.0|19.3|145.4|153.0|12.4

 

Tomorrow:

M1 3 x 25′ / 5′ 8′ @ 5KP, 17′ @ MP 92.5% (172)

Tuesday: Another shot at the February CTC

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Sunday:  Flew home from Korea via Detriot.  21 hours door to door.  Didn’t sleep at all and was wedged into a coach seat the whole way.  Arrived home at 3pm.  No training.

Monday:  Slept in to try to make up for the lost night of sleep.  No training

Tuesday:  Woke up at 5:15am and felt pretty tired.  Dragged myself to work and after an hour of email, went down to the gym.  The goal for the day was to make another attempt at the February Cross Team Challenge and get all the rowing data onto rowsandall so we could try out some cool new team functionality.

But, I have to admit that I was not feeling too good about doing a hard workout.

I set up a 10 minute warmup.  I rowed a minute nice and gently, then I worked as 30 seconds on / 30 seconds off.  For the Ons, I did a rate ladder starting at 20spm, and going up by 2 spm in each one until I got up to 30 spm.  I’m sure the data would have looked really cool.  But, we’ll never know because painsled hung again about 6 minutes into the row and stopped storing data.  😦

2-28g

I felt a bit better as I went along, but I was still not optimistic about the session.  I bailed on using painsled and reverted to using ergdata, and got myself setup.

Last time I did the CTC, I did it at 24 spm.  This time I figured somewhere between 26 and 28.  As for splits, I was thinking I wanted to improve on the 1:49.1 pace in Taiwan, so maybe around 1:47.

As soon as I started the first interval, I settled into a much faster pace.  I was worried that I would flame out in the later reps, but I just went with it anyway.

2-28a

Workout Summary - media/Import_28998017.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|05080|20:00.0|01:58.1|262.3|26.6|165.2|178.0|09.5
W-|04336|15:30.0|01:47.2|305.7|27.5|165.3|178.0|10.2
R-|00754|04:30.0|02:59.1|093.8|23.5|166.3|178.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00444|01:30.0|01:41.3|317.1|27.2|142.9|158.0|10.9
01|00438|01:30.0|01:42.8|307.8|26.9|160.0|164.0|10.9
02|00442|01:30.0|01:41.8|304.8|27.5|161.8|166.0|10.7
03|00428|01:30.0|01:45.2|302.0|26.4|164.2|169.0|10.8
04|00431|01:30.0|01:44.4|298.4|27.9|166.2|171.0|10.3
05|00425|01:30.0|01:45.9|301.7|27.2|168.7|173.0|10.4
06|00430|01:30.0|01:44.7|299.5|27.5|168.1|173.0|10.4
07|00433|01:30.0|01:44.0|300.8|27.7|170.8|175.0|10.4
08|00435|01:30.0|01:43.3|301.1|27.7|173.0|177.0|10.5
09|00431|01:30.1|01:44.5|319.1|28.4|174.6|178.0|10.1

After the second rep, I decided to try to aim at 1:45.  I managed to stay under it except for the 7th rep, where I struggled a bit.  Not a full blown crisis, but I coasted in the last few strokes to give myself a bit of a longer rest.

This was a big improvement and I’m very pleased with it.

Tomorrow:  2 x 40′ / 4′ rest

 

 

 

 

 

Monday: 4 x 15′ / 4′ rest (6′ @ 5kp, 9′ @ mp)

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It was snowing during the day on Sunday and the forecast was that the storm was going to last all night long and into the morning.  So, I figured that I would be stuck in the house.  But by 11:30PM, it was pretty clear that the storm was clearing out sooner and the snow totals were going to be smaller than predicted earlier.  So, I set my alarm for 6:15 and headed to work.

I did this session in the deserted fitness center at work.

Plan:

  • 4 x 15′ / 4′ rest
  • 6′ @ 5kp (225W to 240W) / 9′ @ mp (180W to 195W)
  • HR Cap at 92.5% HRMax (172)

This was pretty tough work, but I successfully completed this and even hit the last interval a bit harder.

2-13a

Stroke metrics.  Always fun to look at.

Finally, I compared this workout to the same session done on January 20th.  Today I had higher HR’s.

I think the HR difference is mainly due to lack of sleep and time of day.

Sunday: Fitness Center 2 x 30′ easy

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Saturday was a travel day.  No Training.

In Korea.  At the Sheraton.  A really beautiful hotel.

Plan for today was to just work out the kinks from the flight and get adjusted to my new time zone.

30 minutes inclined march (15% grade, 3mph)

30 minutes stationary bike (rolling hills, level 14 of 25)

Heart rate cap at 150.  I ended up up lower than that.

2-5a

2-5b

Tomorrow:  I will try to do a version of the 5kp,mp step down workout.

  • 4 x 15′ / 4′ rest
  • 6′ at 5KP / 9′ at MP

I think I will try to do this on a treadmill with 15% grade.  The 6′ at 4.5mph and the 9′ at 3mph.  I will see how my HR responds to that and adjust so that the 6′ blocks are pushing HRs in the high 160s by the end and the 9′ blocks bring it down into the low 150s.