Sunday: pedalling 60 minutes

December 4, 2016Leave a comment

We went down to the cape this weekend. We left Friday afternoon and returned Sunday afternoon. I’m taking it a bit easier while I figure out what to do with my knee. Basically, a few endurance sessions a week on the bike and maybe three strength sessions. I took Friday and Saturday off.

We got home around 2:00 and I did some work around the house. I hopped on the stationary bicycle around 5 to pedal for an hour. I queued up Saving Private Ryan on the iPad and watched the movie as I cranked.

Not very exciting, but not unpleasant either.

Tomorrow: AM: 4 x 20′ endurance, probably stationary bike, PM: Strength

Why a week?

December 3, 20161 Comment

A very talented rower, who goes by the handle boston_sculler on twitter posts some interesting stuff. Today he posted a link to an article in Runners world.

Why Masters Runners Should Try Longer Training Cycles

I read through the article and it made a lot of sense to me. Right now I work on a 7 day cycle. Generally with 3 hard sessions and 3 endurance sessions. I often feel like I am inadequately recovered by the time I need to do another hard session. The article talks about an old marathoner who adopted a 9 day cycle.

There are pros and cons. The pro is pretty easy to define, you can fine tune the training cycle to match up with what works best for you. The con side is a bit more subtle. So much of how we plan our lives and communicate about our training is based on the one week unit. Breaking out of that paradigm has the potential to be very isolating, unless others will be following a similar pattern.

I’ve spent a couple of seasons creating custom fine tuned training plans and I think that they have the potential to get me in better shape than using an existing plan unmodified. The problem that I am having is that I am giving up an important source of motivation and support. It is easier to get motivated to do a specific workout if you are part of a group following the same plan. Every one gets to congratulate and cajole each other as you go along.

I know that I should be internally and intrinsically motivated by my objectives, but I think friends would help.

So, I think that’s where I am at right now. Once my leg is fixed, I think I will look for a few training partners and we can come up with a common training plan and agree on things like cycle length, numbers and types of sessions, mesocycle purposes and the lot. The way I’ve been working this is making me feel lonely.

Update on my knee

December 3, 20163 Comments

I saw the Orthopedist on Friday. We reviewed the MRI together.

He pointed out the areas on the surface cartilage of the knee where there was evidence of arthritis, he also showed me an area on the meniscus cartilage that was damaged. He said that was likely the cause of my knee clicking and locking (and hurting).

He was somewhat ambivalent about doing surgery to trim the meniscus. I asked him is the knee would get any better without it. He thought that it would not. I told him that I wanted his honest opinion. I really wanted to be able to restore the full range of motion of my knee, or at least not have it lock, so that I could resume rowing. But I didn’t want to do something that would have negative long term effects on my health just so I could keep doing this specific sport.

He said that the surgery had a low risk of complications (<1%) and that there was a better than 50% chance that it would fix the mechanical issues with the knee. There was a 5% chance that surgery could make it worse. I guess the other 40 to 45% chance is that it doesn’t help all that much, but doesn’t make it worse.

Since my knee worked well enough to row 10 days ago, I decided that trying to fix whatever damage is there would be the best course of action. I will be setting up a surgery date on Monday.

Until then, I think I will stick to very low intensity stationary bike, along with core and upper body strength work. I think I need to give the joint a rest.

Thursday: Short Slide HM

December 1, 2016Leave a comment

Well, that was quite unsatisfying.

I spent a fair amount of yesterday regretting doing the CTC. My knee was stiff and painful. I took some Ibuprofen before bed, but it was still not all together happy with me this morning.

But, I wanted to find out if I could erg without hurting my knee more. So, I thought that I would try to do a slow half marathon

Plan:

Half Marathon
3/4 slide (using the bandaid to mark max compression
Target power 180W
HR cap: 155
No rate restriction, just try to figure out how to row efficiently with the short slide.

I had a glitch with the PM5/Painsled and only got data for the first 53 minutes, but fortunately, I had my HR backup going. 😉

Here’s the partial painsled data

Workout Summary - media/20161201-154018-sled_2016-12-01T07-13-18ZEST.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|12458|53:30.0|02:08.8|170.2|18.0|139.5|148.0|13.0
W-|12225|51:30.0|02:06.4|172.9|18.0|140.0|148.0|13.2
R-|00235|02:00.0|04:14.9|068.4|18.3|124.3|148.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|04803|20:00.0|02:04.9|178.7|18.2|135.6|147.0|13.2
02|04716|20:00.0|02:07.2|169.6|17.6|142.4|148.0|13.4
03|02706|11:30.0|02:07.5|168.8|18.2|143.4|148.0|12.9

I was curious about how the shorter stroke affected how much force I needed to put into the handle. These two plots illustrate the difference. The one on the right is a HM before my injury about 2 weeks ago. The one on the left is from today. So, my drive length is about 9 cm shorter (6.3%). The peak force was 11.9% higher (193.2 vs 172.6). And this resulted in a average power that was more than 20 watts lower.

For me, this was a very valuable illustration of how important length is to delivering power. The good news is that my knee held up well and is pretty much pain free right now. I guess I need to be satisfied with the idea of going slow until my knee is better.

Tomorrow: Dr’s appt in the morning. I might have time for a short workout during the day.

Wednesday: November CTC

November 30, 2016Leave a comment

After my cortisone injection yesterday morning, my knee felt better almost immediately. I think the combination of getting the excess fluid out of the joint, and the anti-inflammatory effect of the steroid made things a lot better. There is still a lot of instability in the joint. I have a vicious clicking if I fully flex and although the pain is much reduced, I still notice that my joint has two modes of operation; good and not so good.

Needless to say, I want to avoid the not so good mode of operation. And as far as I can tell that is done by avoiding fully flexing my knee.

Yesterday evening, I went and had an MRI done of the joint. That was a new experience for me. The imaging center (Metrowest MRI) was prompt, professional and friendly. They did 4 image sequences. Each took about 4 to 5 minutes, during which I was instructed to keep my knee perfectly still while the machine banged and buzzed. I looked at the pictures, which were very clear, but I don’t know enough about knees to figure out if there is anything good or bad going on.

This morning, I was pain free and so I headed off to workout in the morning.

The Plan:

20 minute warmup on the stationary bike
If I was pain free, try some erging
- 1k at 2:00
- 1k at 1:55
- 1k as hard as I could tolerate for the CTC
Strength training

Here is heart rate data for the bike warmup and the 3 intervals on the erg

Here’s the details on the erg stuff. I was concerned about bending my knee too far so I put a bandaid on the rail at a point before my knee would click. This provided enough of a bump when the seat rollers hit it that I was reminded to keep my strokes shorter. Over the intervals, I was able to modify my recovery timing so that I would be fully rocked over before I hit the bump. This enabled me to get a bit longer drive. On the last interval, I pushed past the bandaid with no significant pain. That was heartening.

I was interested in looking at my drive length.

So, for the first interval, I was pulling about a 1.3m stroke. For the second, around 1.35m. For the final interval, it was about 1.4m. Compare that to the 8x750m workout that I did last week.

For this workout, I was maintaining over 1.4m for all but the last interval. It looks like I had gone back to just about my full stroke in the final rep.

A couple of other interesting plots.

The left shows the peak and average force. This shows a very consistent increase in both peak and average. The right is the drive time. You can see that the drive time was slowing down as my drive length increased. I was surprised by this since the pace on the last rep was much faster.

After that, I went and changed my shirt and did a few strength exercises

Chin ups
unassisted x5
red band assist 3 sets of 4 reps

standing dumbell press
2×25 10
2×30 2 sets of 10 reps

Bent over barbell rows
45 x 10
95 x 10 x 3 sets

dumbell bench press
2×30 x 10
2×35 x 10 x 2

Tomorrow: Slow HM (limit compression)

Tuesday: 60′ stationary bike

November 29, 2016November 29, 20163 Comments

My knee continues to be mysterious and painful. The joint has two modes of operation. The first mode is entirely normal. No pain, no weakness, nothing. The second mode is extremely painful. It limits the range of motion (I can’t fully extend it). I have trouble bearing weight on my leg. Going between the two modes is a bit erratic, but I am getting the hang of it. The best way to transition from pain free to painful is to fully flex. Adding in radial movement of my foot while flexed seems to encourage the transition. Getting from painful to pain free is more hit and miss. Sometimes, if I put steady pressure to extend it fully, my leg, which stops at about 10 degrees from fully extended, will slowly finishes extending and the pain will diminish. Other times, if I get off my feet and put my leg up for 15 minutes it will get back into working order. Last night it hurt when I went to sleep, and was fine when I woke this morning.

I had an appointment with the orthopedist today. I was pain free walking in and thinking he might pat me on my head and send me on my way. I was wrong. He grabbed my leg, pushed to full flexion, he and I felt the click in the joint as it flexed and it hurt like hell when he extended the leg again. He did some more manipulations of the joint to see which motions hurt and which did not. Then he sent me for x-rays.

The x-rays confirmed the first part of his diagnosis. Osteo-Arthritis. There is the potential that there is additionally a tear in the meniscus cartilage. That will be checked by getting an MRI this evening.

This same doctor treated me 5 years ago for arthritis in my left knee. Back then, my knee was very sore and swollen. He treated that knee with a cortisone injection and I decided to limit the amount of running I was doing. I was running up to 5 times per week then and rowing much less. The treated and training change worked completely… until recently.

This season, I started noticing problems with my right knee. Generally the problems happened when I was doing something like putting my oars in the boat and getting into a deep crouch. My knee would lock or I’d get a sharp pain. But extending the leg would fix the problem, and I would go on with a normal rowing session. Other times, in an erg session, I would notice my joint clicking during the first few strokes, but by either limiting the amount of compression at the catch, or just by warming up, it would go away. This was not painful at all, just annoying and a little scary. Then things seemed to get much worse after my pants removal incident on Thanksgiving. Now the pain would not go away and was much more intense.

Anyway, the reason that I am writing this all down is because I am trying to process all of this. Essentially, there is no doubt that I have Arthritis in the joint, but if there is a serious tear, getting it fixed will probably make my knee work a lot better. But if the tear is minor, or there is not tear, then the prognosis is not very good. I will likely have to figure out how to live with my knee giving out on a regular basis. I have no idea what impact that will have on rowing and, frankly, that’s bumming me out.

I guess I just don’t think about that until I know more.

For training today, I was back on the stationary bike. I just set it to resistance of 10 and did 2 x 30 minute intervals. I tried to pedal hard enough to keep me right at the boundary between UT2 and UT1.

No pain from biking. Just a gathering gloom in my soul.

Tomorrow: 40 minutes on the bike plus strength training.

Monday: Easing back into it

November 28, 2016November 29, 2016Leave a comment

I had not exercised since Wednesday of last week. This morning, I am back at work and I decided that I need to get back in the gym and see what I can do that wouldn’t screw up my knee.

I wore a elastic brace on my knee mostly to remind me to not do anything stupid.

First up, 40 minutes on the stationary bike. Rolling hills program. Level 12 for the first 20 minutes, then I got bored and increased it to 13. That was a bit better.

I’m gonna need to work a bit harder than that.

Then onto some strength work.

Chin ups
5 unassisted
4 x 3 (red band)

Good mornings
45 x 10
65 x 10
85 x 10 x 3

Barbell Rows
45 x 10
65 x 10
85 x 10 x 3

Standing Dumbell Press
2×25 x 10
2×30 x 10 x 3

Lat Pull Down (My shoulder hurt when I did these with a wide grip. I’ll do it with a pull up grip next time)

Dumbell bench press
2×25 x 10
2×30 x 10 x 3

This was a pretty good session. My knee was fine with pedaling. And by going reasonably light in the strength exercises, I didn’t do any damage there either.

Tomorrow: I have an appointment with the Orthopedist at 10:30 tomorrow morning. I will probably do 40 minutes on the Stationary bike in the morning, and some core work.

Knee Injury

November 26, 2016November 26, 20167 Comments

Time to time, when I start an erg session, I get a popping sensation in my right knee at the catch. It isn’t painful, although it is noticeable and a bit alarming. I never really gave it much thought.

Then on Thanksgiving night, when I was getting ready for bed, I was pulling my leg out of my pants and I had my right leg flexed. I gave my foot a bit of a wiggle to get it free from the pant leg and I got this enormous shooting pain along the side of my leg, radiating from my knee. It was very painful to bear any weight on my leg and couldn’t straighten it all the way out. I struggled through the rest of my bedtime routine, took some ibuprofen and tried to find a comfortable position.

The next morning, it was far better. It was stiff and did not want to be flexed, but I was able to walk on it. I took a quick trip to the drugstore and bought a knee brace. I thought I would stabilize it and it would get better. That lasted through breakfast. At the end of breakfast, I bent my leg under me to get up and I got the shooting pain again, and again it was very tough to bear weight on it. Resting it for a couple hours (in the car on the way back from Vermont) let it relax and become pain free again.

Until bedtime, when I twinged it again, which set me up for a relatively restless night and it was quite painful this morning.

I’m planning to call the orthopedist on Monday, until then, I think I’ll be taking it easy.

I’m very unhappy.

Wednesday: 8 x 750 buried in a half marathon

November 23, 2016November 23, 20166 Comments

First thing in the morning, fasted. It was the only time I had to get any training in today. All my kids are coming home (with a couple of significant others) for Thanksgiving and the rest of the day is a blur of driving, baking and talking. It might be one of my favorite days of the year.

Today’s challenge was to massage a sprint workout into a half marathon. I want to stick to a polarized workout plan, and I also want to keep working on the Crazy Bear Challenge. So here is today’s workout plan:

Fletcher warmup. 20 minutes, usually comes in just over 5000m. This gets me to ~16070m.
paddle until I get to 15750
8 x 750m/750m rest. so, 15×750 is 11250 (leaving off the last rest), which takes me down to 4500m
paddle down to 4000m
happy ending cool down. 1000m at 2:00, then 2:05, then 2:10, then 2:15

It worked out fine. I didn’t lose any intervals or miss any transitions. The cool down was a bit long, but I was entertained by the fact that I could aim for exactly 1:30:00 by a coincidence. This kept me very focused as I tried to keep the projected finish 10 seconds ahead during the 2:10 and right on 1:30:00 during the 2:15 bit.

The intervals themselves were perfectly miserable. I would have expected to be able to do these below 1:45. But my legs were completely trashed from my strength session last night. They felt empty at the beginning and were burning in the second half of each interval. I really felt like I was working with a lot less power today.

But, I’m pretty happy that I stuck it out. I experimented with different stroke rates and ended up feeling most comfortable at 26/27 and I worked to lengthen my stroke after the first three intervals. You can see that in the drive length plot.

Heart rate was not that high, but I was pushing about as hard as I could. The rests were nice and long.

A few metrics. First the drive length. On the left, showing it versus time, on the right versus stroke rate. You can see the change in the fourth interval when I settled into a longer stroke at r26. You can also see that the drive length is definitely getting shorter with higher stroke rates. Interesting because it gets longer from 18 up to about 24spm.

Here is the work per stroke. The notable thing here is the increased stroke power in the fourth interval when I consciously pulled down the rate. It’s also interesting (at least to me) that the work per stroke is pretty constant versus stroke rate through this range of rates.

Finally, here is a view of peak and average force, and the ratio of these values. It seems logical that the higher the ratio, the more efficient the stroke. But I gotta say, there is really no trend in the intervals or relationship with stroke rate across this workout.

And finally, just because I like the way it looks. Here’s the power versus stroke rate.

Here are the splits:

Workout Summary - media/20161123-205340-sled_2016-11-23T08-50-06ZEST.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|12000|51:20.0|02:08.4|195.5|22.4|149.1|176.0|10.4
W-|06000|21:17.0|01:46.5|289.1|26.9|156.8|176.0|10.5
R-|15097|68:40.0|02:16.5|155.7|20.5|145.8|176.0|11.3
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
02|00750|02:43.8|01:49.2|267.8|25.2|149.8|161.0|10.9
03|00750|02:39.7|01:46.5|288.0|27.0|155.5|166.0|10.5
04|00750|02:38.3|01:45.5|296.7|27.7|156.5|168.0|10.3
05|00750|02:39.3|01:46.2|292.0|26.7|157.6|170.0|10.6
06|00750|02:41.2|01:47.5|281.1|26.3|156.5|169.0|10.6
07|00750|02:40.8|01:47.2|282.6|26.7|157.6|169.0|10.5
08|00750|02:40.9|01:47.3|282.0|26.3|157.7|170.0|10.6
09|00750|02:33.7|01:42.4|325.0|29.7|163.5|176.0|09.9

Tomorrow: Thanksgiving. I’m giving thanks by taking a rest day!

Tuesday PM: Strength

November 22, 2016Leave a comment

Squat (could potentially go up in weight, but I think I will shift to Deadlifts for a couple weeks)

45 x10

135 x6

185 x6 x6 x7

Chin ups (pleased to squeeze out another rep unassisted, felt stronger)

unassisted x4

Red band x6 x4 x4

Cleans (new exercise, at 145, I couldn’t hold form, so I backed off. Still felt the burn in my quads in the last set. I need to tape myself doing these and make sure my back is right)

Bar x6

95 x6

145 fail

115 x6 x6 x6

Superset

AB rollouts x8 x8 x8 (holy moly these hurt a lot!)

Push-up x10 x10 x10 (my thumb joint has been hurting when I did pushups, so today I tried them on some twisty handle pad things. The pushups felt harder because my hands could rotate, but it didn’t hurt my thumbs)

Tomorrow: I think I will try to pack an sprinty workout into a HM. I’m sick of all this slow stuff. So, it will be a 5097m warmup, then 8 x 750 with 750 rest (12K) and a 4K cool down.

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