Tuesday: 80′ L4 1x

August 8, 2017August 9, 2017Leave a comment

It was so nice getting back in my fluid that I stayed out extra long. I did over 18km in the session including warmup and cool down.

The plan was to do an L4 session, adapted for OTW

L4 format
10′ sections
- 4′ at 16 spm
- 3′ at 18 spm
- 2′ at 20 spm
- 1′ at 22 spm
Take 1′ breaks when I needed to turn, roughly every 14 minutes or so.
No HR limit
No target pace or power to just set a marker for future sessions.

Workout Summary - media/20170808-154104-Greg Smith 20170808 0642amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|18347|102:15.0|02:47.2|134.2|18.6|151.8|173.0|09.6
W-|15585|80:00.0|02:34.0|148.6|18.2|156.1|172.0|10.8
R-|02780|22:16.0|04:00.3|075.5|19.4|135.0|172.0|06.7
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00769|04:00.0|02:36.1|147.3|15.9|143.4|148.0|12.1
02|00592|03:00.0|02:32.2|170.2|17.6|150.6|154.0|11.2
03|00413|02:00.0|02:25.2|143.0|19.9|156.2|159.0|10.4
04|00218|01:00.0|02:17.3|202.4|21.7|161.7|163.0|10.1
05|00782|04:00.0|02:33.4|152.2|16.4|156.7|165.0|11.9
06|00592|03:00.0|02:32.1|152.6|17.8|150.0|156.0|11.1
07|00410|02:00.0|02:26.5|155.3|19.3|158.4|160.0|10.6
08|00209|01:00.0|02:23.3|172.1|21.4|162.7|164.0|09.8
09|00734|04:00.0|02:43.4|136.1|16.3|154.3|165.0|11.3
10|00383|02:00.0|02:36.8|154.6|17.3|155.2|158.0|11.0
11|00414|01:60.0|02:24.9|170.3|19.8|152.9|161.0|10.5
12|00211|01:00.0|02:22.0|183.1|21.5|161.6|164.0|09.8
13|00758|04:00.0|02:38.3|130.0|16.4|156.0|165.0|11.6
14|00590|03:00.0|02:32.4|148.5|17.5|155.7|158.0|11.2
15|00407|02:00.0|02:27.4|168.4|20.2|161.4|164.0|10.1
16|00214|01:00.0|02:20.4|191.6|21.9|139.1|156.0|09.8
17|00570|03:00.0|02:37.9|133.7|16.3|157.3|162.0|11.6
18|00572|03:00.0|02:37.4|138.4|17.9|156.2|158.0|10.6
19|00389|02:00.0|02:34.4|157.3|19.9|158.2|162.0|09.8
20|00204|01:00.0|02:27.0|160.7|21.6|164.0|166.0|09.4
21|00735|04:00.0|02:43.4|133.8|16.5|158.9|166.0|11.1
22|00587|03:00.0|02:33.3|138.9|18.3|151.3|158.0|10.7
23|00396|02:00.0|02:31.6|159.8|20.1|158.6|162.0|09.9
24|00202|01:00.0|02:28.6|179.2|21.6|162.7|164.0|09.3
25|00740|04:00.0|02:42.1|118.9|16.7|156.9|164.0|11.1
26|00582|03:00.0|02:34.6|141.1|17.9|157.8|160.0|10.8
27|00198|01:00.0|02:31.3|153.2|20.3|160.0|162.0|09.8
28|00198|01:00.0|02:31.5|153.9|19.6|146.5|152.0|10.1
29|00206|01:00.0|02:25.3|167.2|21.7|159.9|164.0|09.5
30|00730|04:00.0|02:44.5|117.8|16.4|155.6|165.0|11.1
31|00563|03:00.0|02:39.8|144.9|18.2|155.7|158.0|10.3
32|00398|02:00.0|02:30.8|151.8|19.8|162.1|166.0|10.1
33|00619|03:00.0|02:25.4|185.1|22.0|169.7|172.0|09.4

Average by stroke rate:

16: 2:39.8, 134W
18: 2:34.7, 149W
20: 2:28.8, 157W
22: 2:24.6, 179W

A few fun charts. The only insights I got from this was a gradual reduction of effective length as I got more tired. This was caused by my wash getting bigger.

I sure missed this. 14km 2x

August 6, 20171 Comment

I got home at 2:15am on Saturday morning. It was pure bliss getting back into my own bed. I slept like a log. I was stunned to see it was 11am when I finally woke up.

I spent the day just puttering around the house. I did some grocery shopping and laundry. I didn’t feel like training, so I didn’t. I got to bed around midnight. Even though I didn’t feel that sleepy, I fell asleep quickly and slept until 5. I woke up and I knew instantly that I was done sleeping. I tried to sleep a bit more, but a thought crept into my head. If I’m awake anyway, maybe I should head out to Worcester and go rowing. This seemed like a much better thing to do than to toss and turn in bed not sleeping.

So, I did. I got up, put my name on the sign up list, got my stuff together and headed out to Quinsigamond. When I got there, I was delighted to see Joe and Bob. Bob suggested we take out the Wintech. I thought that was a great idea. I haven’t been in a boat since July 16th. A nice stable double sounded perfect. I could let him steer and I could just focus on trying to remember how to row.

It came back quickly.

I didn’t have much of a plan. I ultimately decided that I should do some kind of an approximation of the L3 workout that was scheduled for Yesterday. But mostly, I was just really enjoying the feeling of being in the boat. The feeling of connection. The sound of the bubbles running along the hull.

We headed south and I fell into a groove at around 23 SPM. I just went with it. We had a bit of a tail wind and the pace was generally between 2:10 and 2:15. I was working pretty hard, and by the sound of Bob’s breathing, he was working pretty hard too. We got waked a couple of times by waterskiing boats, but generally it was just a nice hard row all the way down lake.

We turned to go north, and I suggested we take it down a bit and do some easy rate ladders. This plan didn’t last all that long though. As we were coming out of the cove at the south end of the lake, we saw the quad from our club going the other way, so we looped around the little island and followed them back into the cove.

We stopped and chatted for a few minutes and then we both started up again. Bob said he would feel ore comfortable ahead of them than behind them, and the rest, as they say, is history. I brought the rate back up to about a 24 and decided that we would “do the lake”. This is a nice 5+km piece. Basically a perfect head race distance.

Now I didn’t push it as hard as a full on head race simulation, but I wanted it to be a good threshold L3 training piece. Now the wind was ahead of us and it was building. We launched at about 7:10 and we would have started up lake around 7:40.

The row was close to uneventful. One or two wakings, but generally we just clicked along. The wind got a bit gusty once we were north of the Rt 9 bridge, but the water was flat. Bob asked for a hard twenty at the end, and then tacked on another 10 for fun. We were both puffing hard by the time we finished.

Then we turned around and took it easy almost all the way back. Bob asked for 50 hard strokes at the end. It was a good way to finish.

Today made it easy to remember why I really like this sport. Pushing hard is easy on a crisp, sunny morning like today.

Tomorrow: Schedule calls for a rest day, but I did that yesterday. I think I will try to do an L4 OTW in Newton.

Ugh. Jet Lag. 40′ L4 plus some junk meters

August 4, 2017Leave a comment

What day is it? Oh yeah, Friday.

So, let’s back up. I got to Tokyo on Wednesday afternoon, and had a very nice dinner with a customer on Wednesday night. I entertained notions of working out on Thursday morning, but decided to sleep instead. I headed off to the office at 8am, had a bunch of meetings until about 3 in the afternoon.

At 3, I headed off to the airport. I caught a 7 pm flight to LAX. The flight was flawless. Left on time, arrived on time, and the food was good. I even got about 6 hours of sleep. I arrived at 1:30 Thursday afternoon, five and half hours before I left (I am endlessly fascinated by flying east and getting in before I leave). At LAX, I grabbed a rental car and drove 3 hours south to San Diego.

I checked into my hotel and made it to a conference call with about 1 minute to spare. Total travel time from office in Yokohama to Hotel in San Diego… 16 hours.

I went to bed around 9 and slept great. Until 1:00. Then I didn’t sleep any more. Not even a little bit. I didn’t even doze. I was WIDE AWAKE. The time from 1:00 to 5:00 was the longest 4 hours of my life!

At 5, I got up and headed off to Cross Fit Del Mar. They were accommodating as usual. I was rowing by 5:30.

The plan was for an 80 minute L4 as 2 40′ chunks. It all seemed to be going OK until I got about 25 minutes into it. I was doing my usual 168/172/176/180 routine. I was in the middle of the 176 and I shifted up to the 20spm section. It just felt so hard. It took a long time to recover as I came back down to 18 and then 16 spm. Then when I did the 180, my HR started blasting off as I shifted up to 18, and it felt very hard. I stuck to it knowing that I was going finish the forty minutes.

I had some water and decided to just do 168/172/168/172 for the second 40′. But it was tough even rowing at 16 spm. I was just out of energy. I basically just piddled along trying to keep my HR below 155 for 20 minutes and then called it a day.

Oh well. Chalk it up to travel related fatigue, lack of sleep or whatever. I’m still glad I went and rowed.

Fall 2017 Training Plan – Back to Basics

August 3, 20179 Comments

Here I sit in the ANA lounge in Narita Airport. I’ll be taking off for Los Angeles in about an hour. During this two week trip to Asia, I’ve been lucky enough to have access to an erg for 7 training sessions. Tomorrow, I’ll be in San Diego and hopefully, I can sneak over to Cross Fit Del Mar for another session then.

During this trip, I’ve had plenty of time to think about training routines and rowing in general. I was very disappointed about cancelling out of the Blackburn Challenge. I was, and still am, looking forward to the adventure of such a long race under such unpredictable conditions. I’ll have to try again next year. But I won’t plan my training around it. In fact, I’m going to violate the first rule of training planning. I am not going to plan around my events at all.

I am hoping to do some head races this fall. I want to do the Head of the Charles if I get an entry. And I’m hoping I can do at least one or two other races. But I don’t want to disappoint myself or other people because of my unpredictable schedule.

What I think I need to do is come up with a “chaos tolerant” training plan. So, what does that mean?

Here are the principles

It needs to be simple. I should never be at a loss for what to do in a session
It should be progressive, so I can hold my self accountable for making progress and see how much missed training impacts my fitness
It should be balanced, so that my performance across all distances improves

I’ve decided that using the Wolverine Plan is the best option for me right now. Here are the salient points

6 sessions per week
3 L4 endurance sessions
1 each L1, L2 and L3 session

I have set up a schedule for the core L1, L2 and L3 workouts that I will go through.

L1: 8 x 500 / 2’30”, 4 x 1000 / 5′, Pyramid (250/500/750/1000/750/500/250)
L2: 5 x 1500 / 5′, 4 x 2000 / 5′, Waterfall (3000/2500/2000)
L3: 10K, 30′, 15 x 3′ / 1′
L4: The duration of the L4s will be dictated by the amount of time that I have. When I have time, I will aim for 80′ sessions. I will leave the format open and decide on the day. In general, I will be trying to increase the stroke counts over the next 4 months.

As I have done before, I will substitute workouts in for L1/L2/L3 to keep myself from getting bored. This will include ranking pieces, CTCs, and interesting OTW workouts. I will sub them in in accordance with what type the pace and duration is closest to.

I will follow the same plan on the erg and on the water. The only difference is that i will generally do the intervals in time based format instead of distance. I will follow the plan whether I am on the erg, in my fluid or in my Maas Aero.

As an example, the August workout is a 200m sprint. I think I would probably do that as the first piece of a pyramid in place of the 250 and take a bit of extra rest.

I’ve laid out a rough session plan to get me through the fall.

This link will take you to a google sheet.

As always, comments and feedback are very welcome.

60′ L4

August 2, 20171 Comment

60′ L4

168/172/176/180/168/172

8-2a

Tough sweaty work.

Then I packed up and headed to the airport and flew to Tokyo. I’m posting this from the back of a Tesla on the way to my hotel (in car wifi is pretty cool!)

Tomorrow: We’ll have to see what kind of a gym the hotel has.

L3 – 10K

August 1, 2017Leave a comment

Restarting on the WP has certainly been a humbling experience. I did my best 10K ever in 2014. It was a 36:33, which is a 1:49.7 pace.

Now today was not intended to be a time trial, but still, it is a little daunting how much work it will take to get back to that level of fitness.

I was pressed for time, so I skipped the warmup.

I set my target pace for this session at 1:57. But I could tell by the time I got to 3000m that I wasn’t going to be able to hold it. My legs and lungs were both complaining and I found myself playing with stroke rate to futilely try to find a groove. I told myself that if I could stick it out to 5K, then it would be OK to slow down to a 2:00 pace.

This took off enough pressure that I could get through the piece, but even at a 2:00 pace, my HR plateaued and then started rising again. It was a struggle, counting strokes all the way to the end. It was 460 strokes by the way.

I skipped the cool down too.

But the session got done, and now I have a marker for next time. That’s the magic of the WP. There is no mystery about your goals for the next work. Just try to do a little better than how you did today. I need that simplicity right now.

So, I finished with a 1:57.9 average pace. I guess I try for 1:57 again next time.

Tomorrow: 60′ L4 before I take off for Tokyo.

80′ L4

July 31, 20172 Comments

In an episode of a podcast called “browshowpodcast” (which is really quite good and available on soundcloud), they talk about the difference between beginning of the week watts and end of the week watts. I feel like I experienced that today.

I did the exact same session as I did on last Wednesday in Shanghai and it felt a whole lot harder. Today’s session was the third day in a row of training and yesterday’s L2 workout was pretty intense. I also did the session on 18 hours of rest.

But anyway, I did the session and I’m glad.

The plan was the same.

4 x 20′ / 1′ rest
rate / power
- 16 / 155
- 18 / 175
- 20 / 195
- 22 / 215
rate plan

The results…

Target power for the 20′ sections was 165W and 173W. Stroke rates were right on. But the HR was a lot higher.

Here are the HR pie charts for today’s and last week’s session. The good news is that I spent longer in sub-UT2. The bad news is that I spent longer in AT and TR.

: Today’s row.

: Last week’s row

Gotta say, I am enjoying getting back to basics on this training.

Tomorrow: L3. 10K. According to the plan, an L# should be done at about 85% to 90% of 2K velocity. I am working off of paces for a 7:00 2K, so a 1:45 pace. 90% of that is a 1:56.6. 85% of that is a 2:03.5. I think I will aim at a target pace of 1:57 and see how it goes.

Walking around Macau & 5 x 1500 / 5′ rest

July 30, 20171 Comment

Sunday, 30 July:

Most of the morning, I had work to do. Getting ready for a big presentation that is coming up later in August. Around 1 in the afternoon, I got bored and decided to go explore Macau.

There are two main parts of Macau. My hotel is in Cotai, which is on the southern island and has been developed quite recently. Cotai is basically Las Vegas, all hotels, casinos, and glitzy shopping malls. The other part, across a wide a shallow waterway is Macau proper. Today, I took a cab to the Ma Temple and walked through a lot of the old city.

The streets were pretty confusing, but my path was something like this.

There were some really old churches, and Temples. It was also incredibly crowded. It was also very hot. I was embarrassingly sweaty. Here are a few pictures from my walk.

Ma Temple – Incense cones

Ma Temple – Incense Cones

Ma Temple – Budda

Narrow Streets with lots of wires

St. Laurence Church – Delightfully decaying

Intimidating numbers of people

The Ruins of St. Paul

A delightfully narrow crack to walk through in the Camoes Garden

By the time I had made it through the Camoes Garden, I was done. I wander down to the main road and flagged down a cab back to the hotel. I peeled off my sweaty clothes and took a shower.

A couple hours later, I was ready to hit the gym.

The plan was a 5 x 1500 / 5′ rest. Target pace 1:55, with a faster last.

I warmed up with a 1500. I rowed at about a 2:05 pace, with 10 stroke bursts at 1:55 to 1:50 every 250 meters. That felt pretty good.

Then a 5 minute paddle to contemplate what I was doing, then into the first interval. I started a bit fast and then bled off speed to try to hit exactly 5:45 seconds, which would be a perfect 1:55 pace. I missed by a tenth. I also felt great. I decided to see if I could negative split each rep.

Rep 2 – target 1:54 pace. Again, I started hot, and around 500m, I backed off and used the predicted finish to try to nail 5:42, again, I missed by a tenth. Still feeling pretty good, but wondering if I can keep it up through all 5 reps.

Rep 3 – target 1:53 pace. This one I started even faster. I backed off at 500m, but I was still having trouble holding on to the 5:39 predicted finish. This one was a full 0.4 seconds off. Now, things were seeming a bit more doubtful. My HR was getting pretty high and I was starting to feel some cramping in my calves.

Rep 4 – Target 1:52 pace. I figured the strategy of getting a bit of cushion at the beginning was working so far, so I tried to hold 1:50/1:51 through the first 500m. Then I eased up and aimed for 5:36. This one was within 0.2. And I was very gassed at the end. But only one more rep left.

Rep 5 – Target 1:51 pace. Time to empty the tanks. I tried to keep the avg pace below 1:50 through the first 500m and it was hovering around 1:49, but I was starting to get a bit shakey. At this point my predicted finish was around 5:28. I tried to ease off to 5:33, and that gave me a new lease on life. By the time I passed 1000m, my avg pace was just a little bit above 1:50, maybe a 1:50.5. I decided to see if I could nail a 5:30. I did, right on the nose. Peak HR was 183, my maxHR is about 186.

I paddled a bit to cool down and staggered to room. Mission accomplished.

Tomorrow: 80 minute L4.

Blessed be, another erg! 60′ L4

July 29, 20171 Comment

This has turned out to be a pretty nice day.

My ride to the airport was smooth, well, except for the part where I discovered that I was short of money to pay the driver and had to run inside the terminal to an ATM to fix that little problem.

My flight from Taiwan to Macau was delightfully short and very comfortable. Customs was a breeze, and the shuttle to the hotel was easy to find and extremely well air conditioned. I’ve never been to Macau before. If it wasn’t for the humidity, I would swear that I am in Las Vegas. The hotels and casinos are nearly indistinguishable! I am staying at the Sheraton, which boast of having 4000 rooms. I can tell you that 4000 is a lot of rooms in a hotel. The front desk had about 40 clerks working and the queue was quite long. Luckily, I’m a member of the sheraton frequent guest program and they had a nice, special check in desk for us away from the hoi poloi 😉

I went to my room and this was the view from my window.

Basically what the brochure promised. I settled in, did some work, and around 3:30 I decided to check out the fitness center.

My plan was to do an easy workout to see if my stomach would give me troubles.

It took me about 10 minutes to walk to the fitness center. (Did I mention that it’s a large hotel?) Lo and behold, what did I see?

Yep, a brand new Model E rowing machine complete with a PM5 monitor. Alas, I couldn’t get the monitor to link up with my phone, but still, two ergs in one trip. I felt extremely lucky!

I settled in for an L4 session.

2 x 30′ / 2′ rest
10′ sections
rate / power targets
- 16 / 155
- 18 / 175
- 20 / 195
- 22 / 215
rate plan

I was hoping that this would be a reasonably easy workout and for the most part it was. My stomach was a bit grumbly in the middle of the first 30 minutes, but settled down. My hr climbed a bit higher than I was hoping it would as the workout wore on, but nothing weird. All in all, a very pleasant session.

So, the stroke rate for the first 30 minutes should have been 17.2 and the second 30′ should have been 17.6, so that’s OK. The power target for the first 30 minutes was 167W and the second was 171W, so I was 3W ahead of m=plan.

Now it’s about 5:30 and I’m trying to figure out what to do tonight. I guess find some dinner and do some more work.

Tomorrow: Sticking with the WP theme, I think I will do a very tame L2 workout.

5×1500/5′ rest

At my best I could do this workout at a 1:45 pace. In general, I’m closer to 1:50. Since I’m just restarting, far from home and not in the mood to try to hard, I’m going to do it at 1:55 with a faster last.

Travels and no training

July 29, 2017Leave a comment

My stomach has been a bit dodgy the whole time I’ve been in Asia. I have no appetite, and if I eat, I get stomach cramps and other bad things happen.

It wasn’t too bad on Wednesday, but Thursday after my CTC attempt, I had troubles all day long. It didn’t help that it was over 40C and humid. Basically, I was sweating the whole day, even when I was thoroughly air conditioned.

I flew from Shanghai to Taiwan on Thursday evening and I got to my hotel around 11:30. This was perfect timing because I had a conference call from midnight to 1:00AM. After that, there was a bit of email to do, so I got to bed around 2:00AM.

Friday, 28 July: No training

I was getting picked up at the hotel at 8:15AM. I decided to sleep instead of working out. I would be getting back to the hotel around 6pm, and I figured that I could workout then. My stomach was still bothering me.

I skipped breakfast, had a couple of meetings in the office, and then we went for lunch. I was feeling a bit better, but maybe the sashimi and cold noodles was a bit too much, too soon. I suffered through a long car ride, a customer meeting, and another long car ride. I was glad to get back to the hotel, but working out definitely off the agenda. So, I guess you’d call that a rest day.

I went to bed around 10 and slept until 5.

Saturday, 29 July:

I left the hotel at 7 for the airport. My stomach feeling a bit queasy, but I might have been just hungry (I thought hopefully). I’m in the lounge now, waiting for my flight to Macau. I put my stomach to the test with some toast. The reaction indicates that the rumbling I felt was definitely NOT hunger. Well, maybe this will clear and I will be able to do a light workout in Macau this afternoon. At least I hope I can do some exploring. I’ve never been there. I’ll be staying at the Cotai Grand Sheraton

I guess things could be a lot worse.

Quantified Rowing

Measure – Adjust – Improve

Tuesday: 80′ L4 1x

I sure missed this. 14km 2x

Ugh. Jet Lag. 40′ L4 plus some junk meters

Fall 2017 Training Plan – Back to Basics

60′ L4

L3 – 10K

80′ L4

Walking around Macau & 5 x 1500 / 5′ rest

Blessed be, another erg! 60′ L4

Travels and no training