I’ve been working on improving my back position at the finish and at the catch. I still need to work on sequence during the recovery.
But things are moving in the right direction.
Category: video
Tuesday: 4 x 20′ / 1′
You might be noticing a trend by now. I’m looking at it as a rebuilding period. In this period I have a few goals
- Get competent medical advice about lower back pain and fix any issues with flexibility or imbalances. This includes stretches and exercises
- Get competent coaching to improve my rowing form for better efficiency and injury prevention. This includes drills.
- Rebuild my base aerobic fitness by doing lots of easy rowing
Today, I got to work on all three.
I started by doing my normal pre-rowing routine.
- 10 SI exercises on my left leg
- foam roll my quads
- use a lacrosse ball to get after trigger points around the front of my hips and pelvis
- 2 x 40 sec glute bridges on an exercise ball
- 4 x 10sec torso twists
After that, I did a couple of drills that were recommended to try to improve my posture at the finish. Here are links to the drills.
Since I wanted to review it after, I taped my attempt at doing it and took a few easy strokes afterward trying to maintain the posture.
I found the drill to be very useful. I was able to remember what the position felt like and try to hold it during the row. By sitting the erg next to a mirror and looking at the hands back position, and then a proper finish position, I was get that picture in my mind and then look every once in a while during the row.
After that, I did my 4 x 20. Today, I started off aiming at 175W, but HR was really high, so I backed off slightly to try to keep it under 150. Remarkably, just a few watts was enough to do that. I did a lactate test at the end, and it read 5.3, which I thought had to be a mistake. I retook it and it was 3.0. Still much higher than I would have expected, but at least plausible. Rowing while focusing so much on posture was a lot harder and felt very unnatural. I imagine it will take weeks to start feeling natural. I think next time I will stick at this 170W-175W range.
Workout Summary - media/20171114-2005300o.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|19314|84:00.0|02:10.5|169.2|18.2|145.2|153.0|12.6 W-|18926|80:00.0|02:06.8|171.8|18.2|145.2|153.0|13.0 R-|00392|04:00.0|05:05.7|096.1|19.6|144.4|153.0|02.3 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|04753|20:00.0|02:06.2|174.3|17.8|141.2|148.0|13.3 01|04725|20:00.0|02:07.0|171.3|18.1|145.2|148.0|13.0 02|04730|20:00.0|02:06.8|171.7|18.2|145.7|151.0|13.0 03|04718|20:00.0|02:07.2|169.7|18.6|148.7|153.0|12.7 - 3.0
Tomorrow: I’m getting tired of all this base building, I need a little bit of intensity, so I think I will return to an old classic, 8×500. Pace target around 1:45.
Erg Video
It’s been a while since I took side video, either on the erg or in a boat. I had a little time yesterday, so I decided to do it.
To keep it reasonably short, I did 30 seconds each at 8 different rates from 18 to 32spm.
Workout Summary - media/20171108-1200290o.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|01136|04:30.0|01:58.8|275.2|24.9|157.3|177.0|10.1 W-|01099|04:00.0|01:49.2|268.6|24.4|154.3|176.0|11.7 R-|00042|00:30.0|05:56.3|133.4|15.3|176.7|176.0|05.5 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|00124|00:30.0|02:01.2|172.7|14.5|124.0|131.0|17.1 01|00123|00:30.0|02:02.2|187.9|20.3|137.8|143.0|12.1 02|00130|00:30.0|01:55.6|221.0|22.4|147.5|150.0|11.6 03|00133|00:30.0|01:52.4|243.8|23.7|153.2|157.0|11.3 04|00139|00:30.0|01:47.8|275.8|25.5|160.8|164.0|10.9 05|00145|00:30.0|01:43.6|311.1|27.8|166.6|170.0|10.4 06|00150|00:30.0|01:40.3|344.6|29.7|170.9|172.0|10.1 07|00156|00:30.0|01:36.3|391.7|31.7|173.5|176.0|09.8
The first strokes are taken at about 30 seconds in. So to specific stroke rates start at these times.
- 18: 0:30
- 20: 1:00
- 22: 1:30
- 24: 2:00
- 26: 2:30
- 28: 3:00
- 30: 3:30
- 32: 4:00
What do I see?
- To my untrained eye, the drive looks OK. The recovery less so. I am breaking my knees too early on the recovery and my body is swinging way too late. This is going to be a bitch to try to change. It’s a pretty ingrained habit.
- It looks like I am overcompressing at the catch. My legs are not separating as much as they were, but they are not solidly together at the catch. I think earlier body prep would help with this.
15km around Wellfleet Harbor
The weather was much nicer on Sunday morning. I headed out around 8:30 and launched just before nine.
The wind was from the ESE at 10-12mph with gusts to 15mph. This was enough to kick up seas around 1 foot once I was out toward the further out part of the row.
I was following the same “long row” course that I defined a couple of weeks ago.
I didn’t have enough time to do the whole course, so I cut off the 4.9km out and back. This turned out to be a wise move for a couple of reasons. First, it was getting pretty bumpy and I was a bit concerned about rowing into the wind and waves for 7km. Second, my boat broke when I was still about 3km away from my launching point.
Here is a video of the fateful event. The breakage occurs at 50 second in.
Prior to that I was having some fun in the waves. Here is a video of the last couple of minutes heading out to Billingsgate Island. The waves were getting a bit bigger and I was surfing down some of them. Then I turn and head back toward home. It was about 20 minutes later when I broke the backstay.
Here’s my overall course, from Google Earth.
I need to recheck the course. It looks like the initial 1.2km is wrong and the heading for the leg down to billingsgate Island is a bit off too. I was glad to see that my lines were much straighter from paying closer attention to the course. The stay parted just a little bit north of the buoy nearest the “0.5km/20deg” label.
I was also happy with the HR profile of this row. I wanted to try to maintain this as a UT2 row, because I will need to stick to that kind of a pace for a 3 to 4 hour event. In the summary plot you can see that I held the same heart rate both upwind and downwind. The pace was good, bnetween 2:40 and 3:00/500 until I turned into the wind and waves. Then it was a lot slower, as you can see in the next plot. Then around 1:17, the boat broke and I was limited to a slow paddle.
So, I had a blast during this row. I am bummed out about the boat, but to be honest, I was worrying that it wouldn’t be seaworthy for the race, given the kinds of conditions that can occur. I was also feeling quite vulnerable as I got into bigger seas far away from land. I bought the boat cheaply to find out if I like coastal rowing. I have decided that I really do. So, I think I will buy a proper boat that I can trust.
Video with EmPower Data from yesterday’s row
Wednesday: 3 x 500 Taper (in 2x)
On Lake Quinsigamond in the Vespoli double with Joe.
Weather: Wicked dark! Warm, around 65F. Wind from the SW around 10mph, but it felt like it was lighter in middle and kicked up a bit again at the end.
Plan:
- Long Rojabo style warmup
- 3 x 500
- Pace: ~2:00
- Rate: 28-30
- Long rests with square blade drills
- Long cool down with some more sets of 20 to work on technique
No Heart Rate data. I assume the battery in the H7 gave up the ghost.
The intervals were basically at a 2:00 pace. I feel like that’s pretty good boat speed for us.
Workout Summary - media/20161019-125836-77588o.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|07192|43:07.0|02:59.9|22.0|0.0|0.0|07.6 W-|01503|06:01.0|02:00.4|29.0|000.0|0.0|08.6 R-|09690|61:51.0|03:11.5|03.8|000.0|0.0|06.4 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 02|00502|02:00.4|01:59.9|29.1|0.0|0.0|08.6 03|00503|02:01.2|02:00.6|28.4|0.0|0.0|08.8 04|00499|02:00.3|02:00.7|29.7|0.0|0.0|08.4
I stuck the GoPro camera on the stern today to get a look at how well we were rowing together. It was way too dark to see much for the first 45 minutes of the outing, but it was light enough during the last 10 minutes or so during our row back to the boathouse at the end. We did four sets of 20 strokes on / 20 strokes off you can see in the rate plot above. They were at 28, 24, 26, and 24 spm.
So, it looks like you will have to sneak over to youtube to see the video, I can’t seem to embed it anymore. Here’s the link.
Video Feedback
GoPro Hero2. Video feedback is very useful to try to figure out what you are doing wrong, and I use a GoPro waterproof camera to do that. I use it in one of two locations. First, I have a mount on my stern deck. This view provides a view toward the bow and shows me and my oars out to the ends. You can see issues with balance and oar height, but you can really see body mechanics all that well. This is also a good mount for races where you want something relatively unobtrusive.
This creates video like this:
For side view video, I was sent a gift by a friend in Canada. An old backstay. He had previously improvised a mount to put this on the end of his rigger to get the camera about 4 or 5 feet out to the side of the boat.
I modified the way to attach the gopro to the rigger. The end of the rigger is a 1 1/2″ OD aluminum pipe 3 1/2″ long welded to the rigger tube vertically. This tube is drilled on the stern side to mount the oarlock. Looking at it, I decided the easiest way to mount the backstay to the gopro was to put a bolt through the pipe and hold each end with a 1 1/2″ OD fender washer. It worked like a champ!
With this mount, I get videos like this:
Notice the pace, rate and HR? I’ll do another post later about how to do that.
Wednesday: 1 Minute Power Test
So, I know that I was supposed to do a light day today, but looking at my work schedule, it didn’t look so good for a power test tomorrow. I also felt pretty fresh. I didn’t need to dig all that terribly deep for the 2 speed test. Finally, thinking about the 2K test, the idea of keeping up the intensity seemed to more closely mimic the kind of taper I like to do.
The challenge was the PM on the erg. I was doing this at work and it is a older model C with an old style PM. The kind that you can’t hook up to rowpro. So, I pulled my PM3 off of my erg at home with the idea of swapping it onto the erg at work for the day. I was stymied by the fact that the mounting bracket has been changed between PM models and the new one would not fit on the old bracket. Bummer.
So, I ended up setting my iphone on a upturned trashcan, leaning against a small dumbell and aiming at the PM. Then I laboriously transcribed the power reading from each stroke into excel. If you want to watch some really boring videos, I posted them to youtube.
Why are there two, you ask? Well, there’s a story behind that. Not much of a story, but a story nonetheless.
I did a nice gentle 20 minute warmup, and then got myself psyched up for the test. Apparently I did not get myself psyched up nearly enough, because I blew up big time 32 seconds into the test. I took the go all out advice to heart and I just totally lost it round the 30 second mark. I was on slides, so I was cranking at close to 50 SPM. I was rowing mostly with my eyes closed, and then opened them after about 25 strokes. When I saw I had only made it halfway, I suffered a bout of acute despondency and dropped the handle. Pity, it would have been a good test if I had the guts to keep going. As it was, I set a new PR for peak power. 770W vs my old mark of 701W. I also maintained with 10% of that value for 25 seconds, which shows that my “Anaerobic alactic critical duration” is reasonable. “Rowing Faster” says you want to be able to hold that for longer than 20 seconds. Of course for the other measures, average power and “Anaerobic lactic critical duration” were not measurable from this failed test.
I took a few minutes to get my head together and tried again. This time, I made it less than 20 seconds into the test and I didn’t bother to transcribe the results.
I had a chat with myself, and decided to make yet another attempt, even though I knew that the test results would not be fully valid. At least I would be able to get a completed test to score. Maybe I’ll loop back to this in a week or so.
The last attempt was fine. I definitely paced myself too much. I certainly had a lot less power in the initial burst. This one peaked at 726W. AACD was 18 seconds. ALCD was 60 seconds. Average Power for the minute was 606W. Maybe I was dogging it, but I was fairly shattered after I finished and the long 20 minute cool down was a struggle even at a 2:10 pace.
To summarize:
- Peak Power: Target – 837W to 1023W, Actual: 770W
- Average Power: Target – 674W to 814W, Actual: 606W
So, basically horrible compared to the benchmarks. By the way, I don’t know too many guys my age with a low pull of 1:12. Frankly, I don’t that many guys with a low pull of 1:12, so I am not sure how realistic these targets are.
The important thing is that it gives me something to compare against in future tests. I will feel better if I redo the test in a week and get a complete first shot test done.
Here are my curves
Here’s the HR plot for the whole disaster.
Tomorrow: 40 minute steady state sometime during the day. Then 2K trial on Friday.
How it is supposed to look…Mahe Drysdale at the Head of the Charles
I came across this over on Reddit. I guess Mahe had a GoPro mounted on his boat during the head of the Charles. Basically the same perspective as mine, but mounted a lot further away from the stern so you can’t see the finishes, which I am sure would have been even more impressive.
His row was at the end of the day on Saturday, when the winds had died down a bit from earlier in the day, but was still a factor. The video shows him passing Andrew Campbell between the Western Avenue Bridge and the Weeks Footbridge. Campbell is a lightweight and was effected by the headwind a lot more than the gigantic Drysdale.
Part 1: Including a bit of his warm up, the start and the race through the Anderson Bridge
Part 2: Through the big turn, under the Eliot Street Bridge and to the finish.
Oh, what I’d give to be able to row like that. It is interesting to have a video of the same race, under similar conditions, from the same perspective but with one of the finest scullers in the world doing the rowing. It was particularly humanizing to see him take a lousy stroke now and then.
Merrimack Chase Videos
Sorry about the shaky video. I had to improvise a mount and it had a bit of wiggle to it. I decided that the videos would look better using the youtube stabilization. I’m not entirely sure. Also, for some reason, the heart rate sensor decided to not talk to my iphone yesterday. It worked fine to the speedcoach, but that was using a polar receiver. I suspect that the bluetooth connectivity is a bit squirrely.
Truth be told, it’s not all that exciting a video. I go under a bridge at about 5 minutes into the first part. And the water is nasty and rough, but since I had the first bow number for the event, I had no one to pass. I had a close call with a buoy at 1:55 in the last part. I almost got the last guy of the Master “C” group at the end of the race, but not quite. I think the sprint from 2:00 into that video to the end was pretty good.
The pre-start and about the first 8 minutes or so of the race:
The middle of the race, from after the bridge around the big bend and into the flatter water.
The last few minutes of the race.
Not the prettiest rowing I have ever done, but for the state of the water, I’m OK with it. Lots to work on for next season!
Quantified Rowing 