A little running, more spinning

May 2, 2020Leave a comment

I posted last weekend, and that post covered over a month. Gotta say, it was kind of a pain to write it all down, but I was glad I did after the fact. I find it really useful to review my training after the fact and look at the volume, intensity and the other stuff that was going on. But it’s much easier to do on a weekly cadence.

Sunday – 26 April – 60′ Stationary Bike

Feeling a bit peppy, after my run on Saturday. Pushed a bit harder.

Monday – 27 April – 60′ Stationary Bike

Early morning. Feeling kind of creaky. Took it a bit easier. Watching Giada make italian desserts.

Tuesday – 28 April – 44′ minute run

The pace says it was slow endurance work. The heart rate says it was a tempo run. Two laps around my neighborhood.

Wednesday – April 29 – No Training – Rest Day

I had worked out the prior 8 days. I woke up at 6 feeling very tired, rolled over and slept another 2 hours.

Thursday – April 30 – 60′ Stationary Bike

Slightly resistance (12), slightly higher cadence (around 80) than the Sunday ride. Watching the documentary on the Apollo program.

Low heart rates. Maybe because of the rest day?

Friday – 1 May – 60′ Stationary Bike

Tried to go even further on resistance 12. Managed to tack on another tenth mile, but with a bit more effort required. Watching the end of the Apollo documentary and some more Giada.

And that brings us up to the present. The plan for the weekend is to go for a run tomorrow, and maybe give rowing a gentle try on Sunday.

Well, It’s been a month…

April 26, 2020May 1, 2020Leave a comment

Both literally, I haven’t reviewed my training since March 22, and figuratively since I don’t think anyone has experienced anything like this since 1918.

I’ve been working from home since March 12th, so I guess 43 days now. My wife and I have been fortunate enough to be able to split our time between our house in Hopkinton and our vacation place down in Wellfleet. We are also fortunate that our whole family has son far been untouched by COVID-19.

My training has been very up and down. At times, the pace of change from COVID-19 drove some really crazy work hours, but it has been much better when I have been able to maintain a routine.

At a summary level,

So…

34 total days
26 training days (target 30)
8 days with no training
- “brisk walk” on 3 days
- 5 days with no real activity
Only two or three sessions that could be considered high intensity

Other notable goings on…

The week of March 23rd was a horror show. We were moving all facilities to minimal onsite headcount, and we had to adjust policies on a daily basis. I was working very long hours and too distracted to row. We I ended up just going for long walks in the early morning down on shore. The weather was cold and misty, but the fresh air was good.
On April 18th, we headed down to the cape again. I was excited to install a new solar panel for my weather station, up on the roof. I have gone up there many times, but this time, as I reached the top of the ladder, about 10 feet up, the bottom of the ladder suddenly slid out from underneath me. I scraped up my arms and hands as I grabbed for the eave coming down. I landed on my arm and shoulder on top of the fallen ladder. I had scrapes on my right leg, cuts on three of my left fingers, a badly sprained thumb, some kind of nasty contusion on my elbow, and most disturbingly an injury to my shoulder that is limiting my range of motion. If there wasn’t a global pandemic, I’d probably get it looked at, but it seems to be healing slowly, so I’m letting it be for now. No rowing for a while, I’m afraid.

The daily doings

3/23 – three darts games.

Unremarkable scores, my best was 13890. And I was rowing too hard for it to be good Low Intensity training.

3/24 – No training

3/25 – No Training

3/26 – walk around the Island

3/27 – Walk around the Island

3/28 – Walk around the Island and a short 2 x 20’/2′ L4

Lack of rowing shows up quick!

3/29 – Sunday – Walk around the Island and 4×8′ ala Eric Murray

4×8’/30″ with a 2k warm up. This was a lot tougher than it should have been.

3/30 – Monday – Walk around the Island

3/31 – Tuesday – 4×10’/30″

I had all kinds of technical difficulties, but it seems like this was harder than it should have been. Avg HR of 153, and Max HR of 176.

4/1 – Wednesday – 5 / 4 / 3 / 2 / 1 at increasing rates

4/2 – Thursday – 4 Dart Games

Getting the hang of doing them a little easier.

And a new high score for my self 14300!

4/3 – Friday – 3 x 20’/2′ L4

Noticed that my hr was way high for this workout. Seems the lack of low intensity rowing has had a negative effect.

4/4 – Saturday – Perfect Body Weight Training

Not so perfect, but pretty damn hard!

4/5 – Sunday – Target Training and 3 dart games

Not up to the standard of the ones from the last session, all in the mid 13000s. But definitely figuring out how to do them slower.

4/6 – Monday – Flatten the Curve

A SAHRC session that was supposed to be low intensity. It wasn’t.

4/7 – Tuesday – 3×20’/2′ Steady State

Time to get back to basics and rebuild my aerobic base. Just sit on r18 and listen to a good audio book.

4/8 – Wednesday – 3×20’/2′ Steady State

4/9 – Thursday – 3×20’/2′ Steady State

4/10 – Friday – 3×20’/2′ Steady State

4/11 – Saturday – 3×30’/2′ Steady State

Now add a bunch of minutes

4/12 – Sunday – 28′ Eric Murray Session

Finally earned the right to do a hard session. It was. I even shifted it down by 2 SPM .

4/13 – Monday – 3×20’/2′ L4

Felt good about my aerobic base, so I decided to push it a little with an L4. Woreked out great.

4/14 – Tuesday – 3×20’/2′ L4

Still feeling pretty good.

4/15 – Wednesday – 6 x 750 / 3′ L1

A hard session! Not sure what pace I could hold. The session turned out well. 1:47.3 avg pace thanks to a very strong last rep.

4/16 – Thursday – 2 x 20’/2′ Steady State

I was planning to do 3 20′ chunks, but I was tired and totally not into it. I quit after two.

4/17 – Friday – 2 x 30’/2′ Steady State

Back to r18. Still feeling really tired. High HR. Dropped the power in the last 15 minutes to try to stay under HR cap.

4/18 – Saturday – fell off the roof

4/19 – Sunday – Not feeling so good

4/20 – Monday – Feeling a bit better

4/21 – Tuesday – 60′ on the stationary bike

Very easy, just trying tiomaintain some base fitness. Listening to Rebecca Caroe and Marlene Royle.

4/22 – Wednesday – 60′ Stationary Bike

Same deal.

4/23 – Thursday – 60′ Stationary Bike

Feeling a bit tired today. Watching a documentary on the Apollo program.

4/24 – Friday – 60′ Stationary Bike

Feeling a bit more energetic. Watching Giada in Italy.

4/25 – Saturday – 7.25 km run

It was a beautiful day, so I decided to go for a run! It was hard work. i haven’t run since Aruba and that was all perfectly flat. But it was great to get outside and breath some fresh air.

And that brings us up to date! I hope I’ll be back on the rower in a week or so, and until then, I guess I’ll be on the bike and going for runs.

What is Low Intensity

April 17, 20205 Comments

I posted a workout on the facebook page for the Stuck At Home Rowing Club, and someone made the mistake of showing the slightest interest in what I was doing. Now I will make her regret it.

Q: What kind of low intensity pieces am I doing?

A: Let’s start by defining low intensity. The terms Low Intensity and High Intensity are generally used in the context of a polarized training, so let’s start there. Polarized training applies the knowledge that there are different systems to power your muscles, depending on how hard you are working.

Here it is in graph form, from this article

So, on the bottom of the plot is how hard you are working as a percent of your maximum power output. Think of that as your VO2Max, or when your heart rate is very close to it’s maximum. As fast or faster than 2k race pace. On the vertical are two different things. The graph that starts high at low power output is the percentage of the energy expended that comes from metabolizing fat. The other curve, that starts low and climbs is how much power you get from carbohydrate (glucose/glycogen).

Where the cross over occurs can be moved by the kind of training that you do. If you do a lot of training below the cross over point, you can increase your ability to metabolize fat and essentially push the crossover gradually to higher and higher powers. The opposite can happen too, if your training focuses on more power and sprinting work, which stimulates the sensory nervous system, the cross over point can move down.

OK, so what does this have to do with polarized training?

Well, to get faster over typical 1K to 6K race distances, we need to have both power and endurance. But we need a way to organize the training so that we get the benefit of power development, while minimizing the how much we can move the cross over point to the right. Luckily, a lot of people have done a lot of good work to figure this out. One of them is Stephen Seiler, and wrote a great survey paper about it. It seems the an optimal approach is to put in about 80% of your training time at low intensity and 20% above. This has been shown to be a good ratio for elites who train a ton. and for recreational athletes (like me).

Great, so that why polarized training works, but what does low intensity mean?

Low intensity means that you are training at a power below your cross over point. There are a bunch of ways to figure out what that power is. The key concept is that it is much better to make the mistake of going too easy than going too hard. I have known this intellectually for 7 years and I still get it wrong all the time. I have such a stubborn belief that I have to push as hard as possible that I am always sabotaging myself. Don’t be an idiot like me. go easy and you will be miles ahead.

So, with that caveat, here are a few ways to test whether you are going slow enough.

RPE: Stands for Rate of Perceived Exertion. If you care, it’s a fancy scale from 1 to 17, but what it means is if you can’t speak in full sentences while you are exercising, then it isn’t low intensity.
Heart Rate: My favorite, but a pain in the neck. If you keep your workout below 75% of you maximum heart rate, you are doing it right. Some people think 70%. But to do this you need to get an idea what your max heart rate is, and that has it’s own complications, which I helpfully described here.
Lactate Measurement: Incontrovertible evidence, but a massive pain in the finger. You can measure directly whether you are using fat or carbs by measuring the by product of carb respiration (which is lactate) as it accumulates in your blood. If it is below 2mmol, then you’re doing it right. The challenge to this method is that you have to stab your finger and dab the blood on an expensive test strip that you plug into an expensive meter. I did this for a year or so, and still go back and do it ever once in a while, but it’s way to master rower nerd-core for daily use.
20-25 seconds slower than 2k pace. Right now, if I had the guts to do a 2k test, I would probably pull a 1:45 split. I do my steady state between 2:05 and 2:10. This isn’t a great method, but if you are doing your steady state 10 seconds slower than race pace, then it isn’t low intensity.

So, the main thing is to make sure that your low intensity workout is low intensity enough, what else matters.

Duration: More is better. And then even more. Miles make champions. Since going harder is counter productive, your main variable to get better is more time. If you are just getting started, then 30 minutes will be beneficial, and over time, the improvements will start to slow down and you will need to add more time to get more gains in endurance. I find that I can make very slow gains with 60 minute sessions and much better progress with 80, but having a life keeps me from being able to do that volume consistently.
Stroke rate: I read the wolverine plan years ago and it made a ton of sense to me. The basic idea is to keep the amount energy you put into a stroke about the same, and scale down the stroke rate to do low intensity training. If you think about it, that means that the drive phase of your stroke stays the same in duration whether you are racing or cruising, but you will take far fewer strokes per minute, so you go slower. To be fancy you can can call it Work per Stroke. So, I do my low intensity training at low rates, maybe 60% at 18 spm, 30% at 20spm, 10% at 22spm and above.
Breaks: 80 minutes is a looong time. I’ve read a bunch of stuff that recommends breaking up long rows into 20 to 30 minute chunks so that you can stretch, adjust and hydrate. So, I do almost all of my low intensity work in 20 minute work / 2 minute rest format. I will sometimes do a continuous half marathon to prove I can do it, but it is much more civilized to take short breaks and I think it helps to avoid back injuries.

Here are few example workouts

3 x 20′ / 2′ L4

3×30’/2′ steady state at 165W

And here’s an example of a workout that I pushed too hard and ended up in the “black hole”. To intense to build endurance and not intense enough to build power.

So, a long answer to a short question.

Stuck at Home

March 22, 2020May 24, 2020Leave a comment

Last post was on March 8th, and although COVID-19 was already affecting people in my company, and all over the news, I had no idea how quickly and completely everything would be turned upside down.

Today is March 22nd, so 14 days have elapsed, and I keep trying to focus on the positive. My family, my friends and my coworkers are all still healthy. I am proud of how my company is responding to the crisis. I see hope in the decreased rate of new cases in places like China. But, it has been a massive adjustment to my daily life.

I’ve been working remote since March 12th. Seven work days. My wife works in an elementary school, and has been out since March 16th.

Something funny, though. I was quite happy in the week of March 9th, because it was unseasonably warm, and I was able to row on the water three times. Since then, the weather has turned, and the club is shuttered due to COVID-19 so I’m not sure when I’ll row again. It was brilliant to get back on the water though, and I’m so glad I got the chance.

Since we’ve been locked in, my friend, Sander, and I have started a Facebook group, the Stuck at Home Rowing Club (SAHRC). It started innocently enough. We were thinking that a lot of people who were used to training with others might be looking for community and structure to take the place of now cancelled or postponed races and shuttered clubs. It kind of took off (on the scale of a tiny sport like rowing) and currently has 564 members. We post 6 workouts a week, which we select by polling members. We are currently running a contest to create a logo, and I’m just delighted by the whole thing. If you are interested, ask to join. We are letting in just about anyone who want to join.

In terms of training. Being locked in has allowed me to be a bit more consistent. On Tuesday, all I could manage was short walk after work. And Friday, I just never had a window without interruptions because of work issues related to COVID-19. If I am to be as honest with myself as possible, I am also staying up too late and not getting up early enough to reliably workout before work. I need to fix that next week.

Here’s the day by day

Monday – March 9 – 12K on Lake Quinsigamond in a double

The weather was great, and I met Joe at 6 at the boathouse. The water level in the lake is controlled by a dam at the extreme south end, and it is always allowed to get quite low in the winter. So, getting the boat down on the dock is a little bit of a production involving two sets of slings and some fast foot work.

Since this was the first row of the year for me. We just played it by ear. A nice long build during the first leg to the south end of the lake. Then a bit of pyramid on the way back north. There was a building breeze from the south during the workout, so the last bit from the north end of the lake was a bit of a slog.

        Workout Summary - media/0c93b6017b-20200309-115105o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11593|01:05:53.3|02:50.5|000.0|21.8|134.8|165.0|08.1
W-|10471|00:51:43.3|02:28.2|000.0|21.5|141.4|165.0|09.4
R-|01126|00:14:10.4|06:17.7|000.0|22.7|111.1|165.0|03.2
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|03308|16:17.8|02:27.8|000.0|20.4|129.3|164.0|09.9
02|05579|26:47.4|02:24.1|000.0|22.5|149.1|165.0|09.3
03|01585|08:38.1|02:43.5|000.0|20.5|140.2|151.0|08.9

It was great to be back on the water again.

Tuesday – 10 March – 12K on Lake Quinsigamond in a Quad

Joe and my adventure was great, and a couple more folks signed up for Tuesday morning, so we were able to take out a quad. I stroked, and they let me pick the workout. I decided to do a nice, easyish rate ladder session.

4′ @ 18, 3’@20, 2’@22, 1’@24

       Workout Summary - media/46a1d0dd94-20200310-135808o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11751|01:04:54.2|02:45.7|000.0|19.8|131.3|158.0|09.1
W-|10533|00:52:23.9|02:29.2|000.0|20.0|138.1|158.0|10.1
R-|01221|00:12:30.6|05:07.4|000.0|19.2|102.8|158.0|04.9
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|03267|16:11.1|02:28.6|000.0|19.0|132.8|145.0|10.6
02|05527|27:18.2|02:28.2|000.0|20.5|141.7|158.0|09.9
03|01738|08:54.6|02:33.8|000.0|20.2|136.9|145.0|09.7

Wednesday – 11 March – Stock Interval Stack in the Double

It was a bit colder, but not so bad at all. Mid-30s. Joe and I met at 6. He asked me what I wanted to do for a session. I inquired if he was up for something different, knowing that the answer is always yes. I suggested we do one of the short interval stack workouts that Stephen Seiler posted a 2 part video about.

The session was 2 x (15 x 30″ on 15″ off) / 5′ rest between.

It was wonderful. We did the fast bits at r30. It feel so good to go fast. And doing it in such short intervals meant that we could focus a bit on technique, at least in the early reps. By the end of each set, I was definitely feeling it.

If I don’t get to row on the water for a while, this was a great workout to remember.

Thursday – 12 March – 2 x 30’/2′ L4

At home in the basement on slides. Isolation begins! I had a window in my schedule in the afternoon and took advantage to row.

Friday – 13 March – 2 x 30′ / L4

Another mid day row. Another L4. Slightly better HR response

Saturday – 14 March – 3 x 30′ steady state

On slides. Low intensity base builder.

Sunday – 15 March – 20 minute test (SAHRC Session)

We are recommending to SAHRC member to do a 20 minute test to get a reasonable threshold power estimate for other workouts. Today it was my turn to get it done.

Down on the cape. If we are going to be isolating, it might as well be someplace nice!

On slides, which is new. Previously I have done all testing on a static erg. Not happy with the result 230 W (1:55.0). High HR, fade at the end. Not so great, but a good marker for upcoming SAHRC workouts.

Monday – 16 March – 3 x 20′ rate ladders (SAHRC Steady State Session)

This was harder than I hoped it would be. Very close rate changes. Leaving out the rests didn’t help!

Tuesday – 17 March – 30 minute walk

On the cape. I had a busy and stressful day, with no breaks. When I quit around 6pm, I just needed to stretch my legs and get some fresh air.

Wednesday – 18 March – 40′ HR limit at 75 HR Max (SAHRC Steady State Session)

On the cape, On Slides. I managed to get up early to do the session. Good thing. My day was a tornado of COVID-19 task force meetings and other tasks. Oh, and it was my 57th birthday. Yay.

Thursday – 19 March – 8 x 2’/4′ (SAHRC Hard Session)

Back in Hopkinton. A slight variation on the classic 8x500m. Using time based intervals to make it better for a wider range of rowers to use. I did this at the end of the work day and I didn’t have time for a warmup, so I just dove right in. I took it easy on the first couple reps, then got into a good groove. I killed the last rep! That felt good.

Friday – 20 March – No Training

I had an 8am meeting and I was going strong for work stuff until about 7 at night. I never came up for breath.

Saturday – 21 March – 2 x 30′ L4 in the morning, strength in the afternoon (SAHRC Body weight session)

I felt crappy in the L4. High HR. I was originally wanting to do 3 x 30, but I decided I’d had enough after 2.

Then in the afternoon, I steeled myself to do the body weight session. It kicked my ass.

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I made it through the squats and the bulgarian Split squats, and the squat jumps. But after the first set of 10 burpee/split lunges, my knees, lungs, thighs and glutes all informed me that we were done with squatting. I did rally to do the 75 sit ups and planks.

Sunday – 22 March – easy HM with a hard 2k at the end.

I woke up this morning, paralyzed from the waist down. My core muscles were sore, but not so bad. My thighs were another story. Going down stairs was miserable. Bending over to pick things up made me feel like I was eighty. I had to lie on my back with my legs in the air to put on my socks. I guess this body weight stuff is probably a good idea, but I have to say, I am not enjoying the day after!

I wanted something long and easy. After all, I have time to kill. So I dialed up a half marathon and started rowing, aiming at a 2:10 pace. 2:08 felt a bit better, so I went with that. After about an hour, I needed to ease up a bit to limit HR drift. With 2k to go, and a projected time of 1:30:30, I decided I wanted to finish below 1:30:00. So I increased the rate, brought the pace down to around a 1:58/1:59 and finished it off.

Mission accomplished 1:29:40.

I have another busy week of isolating coming up. A blur of webex meetings, instant messages, conference calls and emails. At least I have rowing to keep me somewhat sane.

Stumbling into rowing season

March 9, 2020Leave a comment

I feel like I am training without purpose right now.

It’s been a month since I reviewed my training. It has been a busy month, but not so good for the state of my fitness.

From the beginning 9th of February:

28 days
Target 24 training days, actual 21 training days (but two of them were very short)
Target is 6 sessions a week. Actual was 5.1 sessions a week.
Travel in 3 of the 4 weeks
- 2 day trip to San Jose
- 1 week trip to Aruba
- 1 week trip to Texas and Costa Rica

With so much disruption, I dropped back to a maintenance mode, and did very few high intensity sessions.

Target High intensity days 12, actual 3

So, heres the daily activities…

Sunday – Feb 9 – No Training (not sure why)

Monday – Feb 10 – Short Stack – 3 x (13 x 30″/15″)/5′

Based on a tweet from Stephen Seiler. A pretty intense workout.

Blew the start of the 3rd to last interval. Paddled it out.

Findings about these workouts were posted in a youtube video. (link)

Tuesday – Feb 11 – 2 x 30′ / 2′ L4

Based on the HR, things are going in the wrong direction.

Wednesday – Feb 12 – No Training

6AM flight to San Francisco. Straight into meetings.

Thursday – Feb 13 – No Training

8AM flight home.

Friday – Feb 14 – 3 x 20’/2′ L4

High HR. Travel and lack of endurance minutes catching up with me.

Saturday – Feb 15 – WU + 2 x 20’/2′ L4

I started with the intent of doing a hard distance workout. So I did a 20 minute workout, but felt so awful that I abandoned those plans and just did 2 20 minute L4 pieces. HR was better than Friday, which was good to see.

Sunday – Feb 16 – No Training

My wife and I flew to Aruba for vacation!

Monday – Feb 17 – 5km beach run

Aruba is wonderful. The sand is nice and hard near the water. Perfect for running barefoot. I ran from our hotel, which is at the extreme north end of Palm Beach to the other end, where the Divi is. It’s about 2.5km each way. I ran one way and took breaks on the way back. The killer is the piers. You need to leave the hard sand and run up the beach through the soft dry sand and then back down.

Tuesday – Feb 18 – 30′ Stationary Bike / 20 minute swim

Legs a bit sore from beach running, so I started with a 30 minute easy stationary bike ride in the fitness center.

Then I headed down to the beach and went for a swim. I swam for about 20 minutes and did four complete lengths of the swimming area at our hotel. I later found out that was about 0.4 miles.

Wednesday – Feb 19 – 5km beach run and 30′ swim

The run was better than the first. I paced it a bit better (slower) and took fewer breaks on the way back to the hotel.

The swim was also better. This time, I had goggles and got into a very relaxed groove. The HR data was suspect though.

Thursday – Feb 20 – 5km run and 30 min Swim

Another nice beach run. Good pacing and pushed it a bit harder at the end.

Then another swim. Really enjoying this. Makes me wish I lived on a tropical island where I could do this every day!

Friday – Feb 21 – No Training

Flying home

Saturday – Feb 22 – 3 x 30′ / 2′ L4

Had technical issues with BoatCoach. There was a glitch and it lost my first 60 minutes of rowing. Here’s the last 30′

Here’s the whole thing as witnessed by my watch. Equally boring, but necessary base work.

Sunday – Feb 23 – 3 x 30′ / 2′ L4

More meters in the bank

Monday – Feb 24 – No Training

Flew to Austin, straight into meetings

Tuesday – Feb 25 – 30′ Inclined walk / 30′ row

The walk.

The row – felt terrible

Wednesday – Feb 26 – 30′ inclined walk

Needed to be quick. I was heading off to the airport to catch a 9am flight to Dallas

Thursday – Feb 27 – 30′ Inclined Walk

I had a morning flight to Costa Rica, so another quick stop in the fitness center.

Friday – Feb 28 – No Training

I was in Costa Rica for just the afternoon. I had dinner with the team there and then headed to the airport. I caught an 11:30pm flight to JFK, and then caught the shuttle flight to Boston, arriving around 10am. I had a set of meetings and then scooted home. My wife and I went down to the Cape that night.

Saturday – Feb 29 – 4 x 20′ steady state

Just coasting along on slides. Longer rest between #2 and #3 was me going and switching the laundry.

Sunday – Mar 1 – 3 x 20′ / 2′ L4

Not a bad session, all things considered. On slides in Hopkinton.

Monday – Mar 2 – 8 x 500/3’30” L1

Holy cow! An L1 workout. Very gentle targets. Started with the thought of just doing better than 1:45. After 1, decided 1:44 was a better pace to aim at. The last one was good.

Tuesday – Mar 3 – 2 x 30′ / 2′ L4

Started OK, but I got tired and my HR was climbing freely in the second piece. Decided to just row it out at 18spm for the last 10 minutes.

Wednesday – Mar 4 – Short Interval Stack 3 x (13×30″/15″)/5′

An encore of the workout from February. Less ambitious power target this time, but better execution. I think I was also in worse shape, but man…It’s a great workout.

Thursday – Mar 5 – 3 x 20′ / 2′ L4

I was sick of the high heart rates of some previous L4 workouts, so I dialed it back to an easier stroke sequence. That did the trick and this was a good, enjoyable workout.

Friday – Mar 6 – No Training

We went into Cambridge on Thursday night to celebrate my sons’ birthday. We got home late and I slept in a bit on Friday.

Saturday – Mar 7 – No Training

We went to go see my wife’s cousin’s daughter play in the Big East Women’s Hockey championship. I should have gotten up a bit early and gotten a row in, but I didn’t, and by the time we had got back home, there was a ton of other stuff to do. I felt bad about missing a weekend day though.

Sunday – March 8 – 3 x 30′ / 2′ Steady State

Looking for low heart rates and easy rowing. This session delivered. Got a bit greedy i the last 30 minutes and pushed the power. Nice flat HR though.

The good news is that today, I got back on the water. I’ll write that one up soon. But I’m going to just play it by ear for a week or two and then figure out an OTW training plan.

2/3 – 2/8 – Feeling worn down

February 9, 2020February 9, 20202 Comments

I was supposed to be in Korea this week. I was going to be presenting at a conference in Seoul, but the conference was cancelled because of concern over the Coronavirus.

So that should have been a great thing from a rowing perspective, but it wasn’t. I feel down and unenergetic all week. I did all my sessions, but missed power targets and didn’t look forward to training.

Monday – 2/3 – 8 x 500/3’30” L1

OK, at least I had one good session. I totally slayed this session.

I started with a full fletcher warmup. I felt pretty good. Then into the session. Target was 1:41. I managed 1:40.1.

Well controlled, hard work.

Tuesday – 2/4 – 60′ L4

      Workout Summary - media/20200204-1336340o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15257|01:06:00.0|02:09.8|169.5|19.2|138.6|161.0|12.1
W-|14433|00:60:00.0|02:04.7|180.9|19.5|139.3|160.0|12.3
R-|00828|00:06:00.0|03:37.4|056.2|15.7|131.1|160.0|08.4
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|04793|20:00.0|02:05.2|178.0|19.1|130.8|141.0|12.5
01|04809|20:00.0|02:04.8|180.5|19.5|140.6|151.0|12.3
02|04830|20:00.0|02:04.2|184.0|19.9|146.6|160.0|12.1

Wednesday – 4×2000/5′ L2

I had a customer dinner on Tuesday night and I ate a lot. I don’t know if that was the problem, or what, but I totally flamed out in this workout. It was ugly.

Target pace was 1:50. Maybe I pushed the first too hard at 1:48.7, but I don’t think so. The second rep was awful. Two major breakdowns. Then I reset expectations to 1:52 for the third and fourth and managed to do a bit better than that.

Disappointed in the workout. Glad I stuck it out though.

Thursday – 2/6 – 3×20’/2′ L4

Still feeling drained, so I just went really easy. Alternating 18/20 rate.

     Workout Summary - media/20200206-1621380o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15337|01:07:07.0|02:11.3|166.1|18.8|143.2|157.0|12.1
W-|14347|00:60:00.0|02:05.5|178.0|19.1|144.8|157.0|12.5
R-|00993|00:07:07.0|03:35.0|066.4|16.1|130.1|157.0|08.5
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|04783|20:00.0|02:05.4|178.1|19.0|136.4|147.0|12.6
02|04783|20:00.0|02:05.4|178.1|19.1|147.0|154.0|12.5
03|04781|20:00.0|02:05.5|177.7|19.3|151.0|157.0|12.4

Friday – 2/7 – 30′ Threshold L3

Still feeling less than great. But decided to keep trying. My goal was 1:54. I was secretly hoping that it would feel really easy and I could push the pace to 1:52 and get closer to 8000m. I was really proud when I broke 8000m for 30min. It was not be today,

I knew I was in trouble in the first 1000 meters. It was really hard to hold the target pace. I had my first breakdown around 8 minutes in. I wasn’t in massive distress, but I was uncomfortable and it just seemed like the amount of time stretched in front of me was impossible. I started to doubt myself and questioned why it was worth it to push so hard. This debate went on for a little bit and the quitter in my head won. I started up again, with the intent of targeting a slower split, but had trouble settling into it. Then I had a couple more breakdowns in quick succession. Finally, I got pissed at myself and resolved to just hold 1:55 and row. I almost made it I got to within 3 minutes of the end and had another attack of the demons. This one was quick and I got back it it to finish it out. End result for the full piece was 1:55.0. Without the drama, 1:54 was totally doable.

      Workout Summary - media/20200207-1331340o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11816|00:51:32.3|02:10.9|192.5|23.0|152.3|179.0|10.0
W-|11811|00:47:47.4|02:01.4|207.4|24.1|154.9|179.0|10.3
R-|00013|00:03:45.1|145:54.6|002.4|08.7|119.4|179.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|02000|08:46.0|02:11.5|190.0|24.4|134.4|156.0|09.3
01|00532|02:00.0|01:52.7|245.9|25.2|130.2|151.0|10.6
02|00528|02:00.0|01:53.6|239.2|25.1|154.6|158.0|10.5
03|00530|02:00.0|01:53.1|240.8|25.2|159.6|160.0|10.5
04|00508|02:00.0|01:58.0|223.6|27.9|158.5|161.0|09.1
05|00500|02:00.0|02:00.0|216.1|25.4|157.7|160.0|09.8
06|00498|02:00.0|02:00.4|212.3|25.3|156.8|159.0|09.9
07|00517|02:00.0|01:56.1|225.3|24.5|160.1|162.0|10.5
08|00523|02:00.0|01:54.8|228.6|25.0|163.4|165.0|10.5
09|00523|02:00.0|01:54.7|232.7|25.3|166.4|168.0|10.3
10|00524|02:00.0|01:54.5|232.6|25.3|169.4|170.0|10.3
11|00525|02:00.0|01:54.2|234.6|25.4|171.3|172.0|10.3
12|00525|02:00.0|01:54.3|236.6|25.6|173.7|175.0|10.2
13|00527|02:00.0|01:53.8|235.4|26.0|174.9|175.0|10.2
14|00512|02:00.0|01:57.1|221.9|25.8|174.8|176.0|09.9
15|00538|02:00.0|01:51.6|253.3|26.9|175.8|179.0|10.0
16|02000|09:01.4|02:15.3|142.9|19.0|147.1|153.0|11.6

Saturday – 2/8 – 2 x 30’/2′ steady state

I was planning to do 90 minutes, but I felt really tired in the first 30 minute piece and very hungry for some reason. I decided to cut it back to 60 minutes and I’m glad I did.

First piece, I rowed at 20spm and targeted 180W. Second one 18spm and 170.

      Workout Summary - media/20200208-2311280o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14581|01:04:00.0|02:11.7|168.2|18.4|134.5|145.0|12.4
W-|14369|00:60:00.0|02:05.3|177.9|19.1|134.8|145.0|12.6
R-|00214|00:04:00.0|09:21.7|021.6|07.0|129.5|145.0|06.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|07238|30:00.0|02:04.3|181.6|20.0|129.8|141.0|12.1
01|07131|30:00.0|02:06.2|174.3|18.2|139.8|145.0|13.1

So, a pretty lackluster week. But a lot of volume. I’ve done 10 days straight, including over 50km over two days last weekend. I’m going to keep rowing through Wed of next week when I take a quick trip to San Jose, and will need to miss 2 training days.

1/26 – 2/2: Just another week

February 3, 2020Leave a comment

Missed 2 days to travel, but otherwise a good week.

Sunday – 1/26 – 4 x 30’/2′ Steady State:

Long and slow. Listening to the audio book version of Ron Chernow’s “Grant”. It’s 48 hours long, roughly 672km of steady state rowing so I guess I’m good for a while. Nice low HR, so I pushed the power up a bit in the last 30 minutes.

       Workout Summary - media/20200126-1841460o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|30000|02:08:00.0|02:08.0|172.1|19.3|140.0|154.0|12.1
W-|28759|02:00:00.0|02:05.2|178.7|19.3|140.7|154.0|12.4
R-|01245|00:08:00.0|03:12.8|072.6|19.3|130.6|154.0|08.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|07150|30:00.0|02:05.9|175.5|19.2|133.3|141.0|12.4
01|07158|30:00.0|02:05.7|176.2|19.1|139.4|145.0|12.5
02|07170|30:00.0|02:05.5|177.4|19.0|141.3|147.0|12.6
03|07281|30:00.0|02:03.6|185.8|20.1|148.7|154.0|12.1

I’m very impressed with Boatcoach. No problems and I like the force curve thing. This is my force curve for steady state on slides.

Monday – 1/27 – Pyramid:

I had not successfully completed a pyramid workout since I started this workout plan in December. I picked what I thought was a reasonable target of 1:44. I was running short of time, so I did a short 2K warmup. I held on to 1:43 through the first 3 reps. I let myself drift up toward 1:44 in the 1000, and then really killed myself in each of the last three reps. One thing about this workout, the rests are so long, you can come back from going really hard to do it again in the next rep.

Tuesday – 1/28 – 3×20’/2′ L4

Flew out to San Diego on a 7:00 am departure. Had an afternoon of meetings, and then a customer dinner.

Wednesday – 1/29 – No training

Up at 5:00am to catch my return flight. Got home around 6pm.

Thursday – 1/30 – 3×20’/2′ L4

Back at it.

Friday – 1/31 – 10K Threshold

I was conflicted about doing this workout. I was worried about the effect of 2 missed sessions, but I figured it was good to just keep plugging, Besides, I didn’t have enough time for a long steady state session, might was well go hard.

I did a 2K warmup. Then I set off. Last 10K I had done was at 1:54.9 (on slides). I thought I might be able to pull off a target of 1:54. On another day, I think I might have. I made it just about 30 minutes and I had a breakdown. I paddled for about 15 seconds and then picked it back up. Slow at first, and then back on pace. I ended with a 1:54.8 pace, but i was disappointed that I wasn’t able to just slow down a little bit and work through the tough bit instead of blowing up,

Saturday – 3×30’/2′ – Steady State

More steady state, more Ulysses Grant.

        Workout Summary - media/20200201-1921280o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|22368|01:36:01.9|02:08.8|167.7|19.1|143.6|155.0|12.2
W-|21471|01:30:00.0|02:05.8|174.9|19.1|144.3|154.0|12.5
R-|00899|00:06:01.9|03:21.3|059.3|18.9|133.7|154.0|08.1
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|07175|30:00.0|02:05.4|176.2|19.6|137.7|148.0|12.2
01|07154|30:00.0|02:05.8|174.9|19.4|146.4|153.0|12.3
02|07142|30:00.0|02:06.0|173.8|18.4|148.7|154.0|12.9

Sunday – 2/2 – 4×30′ / 2′ Steady State

      Workout Summary - media/20200202-1926410o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|29378|02:08:00.0|02:10.7|164.3|18.1|142.3|153.0|12.7
W-|28478|02:00:00.0|02:06.4|172.7|18.3|143.1|153.0|13.0
R-|00904|00:08:00.0|04:25.4|037.6|15.5|130.9|153.0|07.4
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|07115|30:00.0|02:06.5|172.2|18.1|136.3|145.0|13.1
01|07114|30:00.0|02:06.5|172.1|18.3|144.1|148.0|13.0
02|07123|30:00.0|02:06.4|173.2|18.3|145.0|150.0|13.0
03|07125|30:00.0|02:06.3|173.4|18.3|147.0|153.0|13.0

1/12/20 – 1/25/20 –> Work wins!

January 26, 2020January 26, 20201 Comment

Well, I’ve lost a bit of momentum. The past couple of weeks, I’ve been focused pretty intently on work.

Here’s the damage

I’ve missed 3 training days in the past 8, and two of my workouts were less than stellar fitness center cross training sessions.

Sunday – 1/12/2020 – 4 x 30’/2′ Steady State

Glorious long steady state row on slides, listening to a good audio book.

       Workout Summary - media/20200112-1951170o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|29536|02:07:59.9|02:10.0|167.4|18.4|139.6|154.0|12.6
W-|28579|01:59:50.8|02:05.8|176.0|18.3|140.3|153.0|13.0
R-|00960|00:08:00.0|04:10.0|041.2|19.5|129.9|153.0|09.1
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|07126|29:50.8|02:05.7|176.2|18.3|132.4|143.0|13.0
01|07147|30:00.0|02:05.9|175.5|18.3|138.2|144.0|13.0
02|07149|30:00.0|02:05.9|175.8|18.3|142.6|151.0|13.0
03|07156|30:00.0|02:05.8|176.5|18.3|147.9|153.0|13.1

Monday – 1/13/2020 – 4×1000/5′ L1

At workout. On a static erg. Feeling pretty good. Target pace 1:45.

Started with a quick warm up.

That was a bit over exuberant, so I paddled a 1000m

No avoiding it any longer.

Wow! That was great.

I am getting more comfortable at stroke rates around 30.

Tuesday – 1/14/2020 – 2×30’/2′ L4

Wednesday – 1/15/2020 – 5×1500/5′ L2

Pressed for time so I did the first 1500 as a warmup. My target was 1:48.

Leave off the warmup and that’s a 1:47.7 pace vs my 1:48 target. Tough work, but a big success.

Thursday – 1/16/2020 – No Training

Big day for quarterly business reviews. They started at 8am and I felt like should spend time prepping for the meetings.

Friday – 1/17/2020 – 15 x 3’/1′ L3

This is a very intense workout. Pretty grumpy that Painsled hung up on me. My target was 800m per interval, which I think is about a 1:52.5 pace.

Here’s the hear rate data from my apple watch (hooray for redundancy!)

And here are the old school monitor shots.

Actual: 1:50.7, and nearly a complete negative split. I certainly layed out a really strong last rep.

Saturday – 1/18/2020 – Ergsana

I went out to Worcester to row with my friends. There were two parts to the workout. First was an erg session, then about an hour of yoga. I have never done yoga before in my life and this was the seventh of eight sessions. I was definitely the slow learner of the session.

But the erg session was fun. I have never done any of the games that are built into the concept2 PM5. It was very fun doing them as a group because for each game you could compete both on points, and on other things like distance covered.

First up was the fish game. As far as I could tell, this game rewarded what I will charitably call unconventional technique. You needed to make constant adjustments to stroke rate and stroke power to eat little fishes and avoid big fishes. But, it definitely rewarded pushing yourself because the harder you go, the more of the screen you can cover to eat them fishies.

Each fish game is 4 minutes long and I found myself finishing each at about a 1:50 pace. Since there was a lot of speeding up and slowing down, this was more challenging that you might imagine. My scores ranged from 1170 to 1440. I pretty much stunk at the game play, but after 4 games, I was pretty bushed.

After that, we tried the darts game. This game was my jam. It rewarded consistency, and I have done an awful lot of steady state rowing. With the darts game, a “dart” comes on the screen at the left and at some point begins to drop down. You must judge the trajectory of the dart and decide when to pull and how hard. The drive sends the dart climbing and the rate of climb is rated to how hard you pull. If you get it right, the dart lands in the center of the dartboard and you get 50 points. A game is 300 darts, so a maximum of 15000 points.

You get 5 strokes to set a rhythm and I guess I was a bit amped up because I set out at a stroke rate of 24. But I was also in a groove. I was nailing the bullseye on most of my strokes. But I couldn’t ease up. If I did, then the darts started to go low. the game was incredibly reinforcing. I kept digging deeper and deeper, and finished with 1:52.2 average over 3225 meters. (13785 points in the game) I also finished with a heart rate of 182. Doing a 12 minute piece after the 4x4min was a pretty big ask.

Sunday – 1/19/2020 – No Training

I flew out to California in the afternoon and arrived quite late. I discovered there was a Furry Convention at my hotel.

Well, that was not what I expected!

Monday – 1/20/2020 – 2 x 30′ in the fitness center

30 minutes on the treadmill and 30 minutes on a recumbent stationary bike.

A cool thing is I discovered that the apple watch would link up magically to the exercise gear. There is a little note on the screen of the treadmill or bike that says “Connects to Apple Watch”, and you just put the watch close to the screen and a little bowtie symbol shows up.

After that, what ever the machine is recording shows up in the watch.

30 minutes at max incline on the treadmill at 3mph. Then rolling hills on the stationary bike.

I had meetings all day, and then a business dinner in the evening. Back at the hotel at a reasonable hour and right to bed.

Tuesday – 1/21/2020 – 9km run

I had a very important meeting in the morning and then a bunch of other meetings until mid afternoon. We headed back to our hotel, now entirely devoid of furries and I decided to go for a run.

I decided to follow Guadalupe Park, and discovered there are a LOT of homeless people in San Jose. There is so much wealth in silicon valley, but it has squeezed people on the margins out of their homes and into tents. Profoundly depressing.

It was also a lot of running for someone who doesn’t run. I was sore for days afterward.

After a shower, I headed to meet up with my work friends. We watched some basketball (and I drank a couple of beers), then we met some other work folks for an excellent greek dinner.

Another good night’s sleep.

Wednesday – 1/22/2020 – 2×30′ fitness center

Feeling quite sore and not quite motivated.

30 minutes on the elliptical and 30 minutes on the bike. Both magically connected to the apple watch!

Short intervals on the elliptical, Rolling hills on the bike

Pretty tame.

Meetings during the day and a business dinner that night with the unit of our company in San Jose. They had a fantastic year, beating all targets and launching an important new product. This was the dinner to congratulate them.

Thursday – 1/23/2020 – No Training

Up at 5am to drive to the airport. Arrived in Boston around 5pm.

Friday – 1/24/2020 – 3×20’/2′ L4

At work in the fitness center. HR a little high.

Saturday – 1/25/2020 – More Darts games and Boatcoach!

After Painsled betrayed me for my 15×3 workout, I decided that I wanted to check out boatcoach. For rowing apps , there are three serious choices. Ergdata, which is cheap and reliable, but it does a terrible job handling interval based workouts. It doesn’t record the rest times reliably and that messes up analysis in rowsandall. Painsled is proving to be more and more annoying because of dropped strokes and workout hangups. And then there is boatcoach. Every one that uses boatcoach raves about it. The only problem is that it runs only on Android, and until today, I was an iOS only kinda guy. I broke down and bought a small Android Tablet. A Samsung Tab (Model A).

I went and downloaded boatcoach. That was easy. Then I tried to get it hooked up to the erg. This required a bit of fumbling around, but eventually I mastered that. Then I took my inaugural row. A “Just Row” of 501 meters.

That out of the way, I was thinking that the darts game would be an excellent way to pass the time for steady state workouts. 300 strokes at 20spm would be a 15 minute piece and the game definitely rewarded good steady rowing. So, I set it up and off I went. My goal was 14000 points, and to keep my HR below 150. I had time for 4 games.

       Workout Summary - media/20200125-2122030o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15131|01:04:40.2|02:08.2|182.3|19.6|139.4|152.0|12.0
W-|15131|01:04:40.4|02:08.2|182.3|19.6|139.4|152.0|11.9
R-|00000|00:00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|152.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|03739|15:01.2|02:00.5|201.0|20.3|137.2|152.0|12.2
01|00211|01:37.5|03:51.0|091.7|11.8|131.8|151.0|11.0 - abort!
02|03724|15:25.7|02:04.3|187.5|19.8|143.2|149.0|12.2
03|00281|02:36.3|04:38.1|076.9|09.6|110.1|131.0|11.2 - abort!
04|03634|15:05.6|02:04.6|184.8|20.3|141.7|147.0|11.9
05|03542|14:54.1|02:06.2|183.8|20.4|141.1|149.0|11.6

I got worse at the game each time! First time, I score 14485, 515 away from a perfect score. The second try was close at 14335, but then I seemed to lose the hang of it at the start of the third and it took almost 10 strokes to get into a consistent groove. The same thing happened in the last game.

It was a fun and absolutely “in the zone” steady state workout.

Oh, and boatcoach worked perfectly! One cool feature of boatcoach and rowsandall. You can look at your force curves!

For a workout like this, it could be useful to look at how tight you can get the q25 to q75 band.

Tomorrow – I think I will do a long, slow steady state session.

Randall Foil Test Plan

January 14, 2020January 14, 20204 Comments

Randall Foil Test Plan

Hypothesis: Randall Foils provide a measurable improvement in boat speed for an experienced Master sculler.

Equipment:

– My boat

– two pairs of oars

– existing smoothie2 soft shaft skinny oars

– new pair of matching oars, prepitched to deliver 0 degrees with 4 degree oarlocks
Instrumentation:
• Speedcoach GPS, with Empower oarlock and HRM
• Quiske pod

Preparation:
1. Row at least 10 sessions with Foils oars to acclimate and adjust style
2. Row 6 sessions alternating between foil and standard oars to acclimate to switching back and forth.

Experiment:
Test day #1 – sprint performance
• calm day
• lake quinsigamond, so I can do the lengths close to the dock
• 8 x 500m (all same direction), super long rests)
• What’s the best way to split the trials?
◦ 2/4/2
◦ 3/4/1
◦ 1/2/3/2

Test Day #2 – starts
• 4 x 5 starts (20 strokes each)
• 1/2/1

Test Day #3 – head race performance
• 4 x 2k
• 1/2/1

Analysis:
• segment elapsed time
• avg power
• end HR
• speed per watt
• blade flight path
• effective length
• peak power angle

* side video of all sessions, analyzed to overlay data

12/30/2019 to 1/12/2020

January 12, 2020January 12, 2020Leave a comment

Another couple of weeks have gone by and I’ve done some good training. I’m back in the groove, with no business travel and limited crises at work. It’s been good.

Monday – 12/30 – 4×2000/5′

I had spent the christmas vacation just rebuilding my aerobic base with lots of base work. I wanted to ease into doing the hard stuff. So, even though this was a hard session, I rate limited it to try to make it a bit more doable. It didn’t work, I still blew up in the last rep.

I started with a 2k warmup at 2:00 pace, then the main session.

Note: this session is on slides. I think you’ll see a trend develop.

Tueaday – 12/31 – 3 x 20’/2′ L4

On the cape, on slides. Nothing to report.

Wednesday – 1/1/2020 – 3 x 20’/2′ L4

A little hungover, but not a bad session. Session done at home after we returned from the cape.

Thursday – 1/2 – 10K push – L3

Back at work! Again, trying to ease into the harder stuff. Change 10K hard into a 10K push, starting at 2:05 and ending at 1:56.

First a 2k warmup.

Then…

       Workout Summary - media/20200102-1336170o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10000|00:39:44.3|01:59.2|206.8|22.8|151.4|177.0|11.1
W-|10000|00:39:44.9|01:59.2|206.8|22.8|151.4|177.0|11.1
R-|00000|00:00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|177.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01000|04:07.8|02:03.9|181.8|20.5|122.3|134.0|11.8 - 5
01|01000|04:06.6|02:03.3|187.0|21.4|138.5|142.0|11.4 - 4
02|01000|04:04.9|02:02.5|190.4|21.7|144.3|146.0|11.3 - 3
03|01000|04:02.7|02:01.3|195.8|22.1|147.5|149.0|11.2 - 2
04|01000|04:00.8|02:00.4|200.5|22.4|150.5|152.0|11.1 - 1
05|01000|03:58.2|01:59.1|207.0|23.0|154.2|156.0|10.9 - 0
06|01000|03:56.6|01:58.3|211.4|23.2|157.5|160.0|11.0 - 9
07|01000|03:54.2|01:57.1|218.0|23.8|162.5|166.0|10.8 - 8
08|01000|03:51.0|01:55.5|226.8|24.3|167.2|171.0|10.7 - 7
09|01000|03:42.2|01:51.1|255.6|25.9|173.5|177.0|10.4 - 6

That went well. Next push starts at 2:04.

Friday – 1/3 – 3×20’/2′ L4

Tired, high HR for this one.

Saturday – 1/4 – Rest day

first rest day in 14 days, although I stopped one workout after 30 minutes.

Sunday – 1/5 – 3 x 30/2′ steady state

And I had a problem with painsled so the data did not get captured. Steady state at 18 spm and ~170W.

Monday – 1/6 – 8 x 500 / 3’30” L1

At work, static erg.

2k warmup with lots of little bursts

Then… Target of 1:44. Actual 1:42. <– pretty happy about that

Tuesday – 1/7 – 2 x 30’/2′ steady state

Not in the mood for L4s right now. On a static erg, I can just about hold 180W at 18 spm.

       Workout Summary - media/20200107-1351170o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15018|01:04:00.0|02:07.8|172.0|18.1|141.0|156.0|12.9
W-|14389|00:60:00.0|02:05.1|178.7|18.4|141.3|156.0|13.1
R-|00631|00:04:00.0|03:10.3|071.3|14.7|135.8|156.0|10.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|07179|30:00.0|02:05.4|177.4|18.3|135.1|146.0|13.1
01|07210|30:00.0|02:04.8|180.1|18.4|147.6|156.0|13.0

Wednesday – 1/8 – 3×30’/2′ steady state

I’m into a good audio book right now, so the steady state rows are fun and easy. I had extra time on Wed morning so I tacked on an extra 30 minutes. Right about 176W.

       Workout Summary - media/20200108-1406210o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|22239|01:36:00.0|02:09.5|168.5|17.7|140.8|153.0|13.1
W-|21473|01:30:00.0|02:05.7|176.2|18.0|141.2|153.0|13.3
R-|00770|00:06:00.0|03:53.9|052.2|12.7|136.2|153.0|12.6
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|07164|30:00.0|02:05.6|176.2|17.9|133.5|142.0|13.4
01|07156|30:00.0|02:05.8|176.2|18.0|142.9|151.0|13.3
02|07153|30:00.0|02:05.8|176.2|18.1|147.0|153.0|13.1

Thursday – 1/9 – Waterfall L2

Warmup

Then the main session. I was really worried about this session because the 4×2000 was so bad. But I decided to just go for it. I set a aggressive target of 1:51, which was about what I had done back a few weeks ago. I smashed it!

Incredibly gratifying. So, this one was on a static erg.

Friday – 1/10 – 2 x 30′ / 2′ steady state

Saturday – 1/11 – Hard 5K

Start with a 20′ fletcher warmup.

The warmup was unexpectedly hard. It didn’t bode well for the 5K. Since I had gotten the 1:49.4 for the waterfall, I thought that a 1:51 would be in reach for the 5K. That dream lasted 1K. I reset my sights on 1:52. That lasted to about 2500m, when I reset for 1:54. I kind of lost it around 3750m, but brought myself back in focus to just try to finish the piece out. I suspect if I had set out at 1:53, I would have been able to accelerate in the second half and done better.

So the interesting thing to me is the big difference in performance between the waterfall workout and this one. Here are the differences.

waterfall	5K
Static	Slides
Morning	Afternoon
2k warmup	5k warmup
3 days after rest	5 days after rest day
room 20C	room 18C

Looking at it, it seems like the biggest differences are static versus slides and length of warmup.

So, I looked at the previous time when I did the waterfall workout, and discovered it was on slides. Here’s the plot. (ignore the HR in the second rep, the sensor went screwy)

And here’s a direct comparison. The first one on 11/25, was done when I was in better shape as measured by the Strava fitness and freshness metric.

So, I think that I am about 11W more efficient on a static erg than I am on slides. In pace terms. 1:51.0 on slides vs 1:49.4 on static. If I can figure out why this is, and how to fix it, I might be able to go faster in a boat.

Quantified Rowing

Measure – Adjust – Improve

A little running, more spinning

Well, It’s been a month…

What is Low Intensity

Stuck at Home

Stumbling into rowing season

2/3 – 2/8 – Feeling worn down

1/26 – 2/2: Just another week

1/12/20 – 1/25/20 –> Work wins!

Randall Foil Test Plan

12/30/2019 to 1/12/2020