Friday: WTF?

May 14, 20161 Comment

My dinner in NYC lasted until about 11:30. I got to bed around 12:30. Up at 7:00. On the road by about 8:15AM. Drove home and arrived about noon. Then straight into a couple of work phone calls. My day finished up around 3. I hopped on the erg for what I planned to be a 60 minute steady state L4.

I lasted 20 minutes. My HR was in bounds, but my RPE was very high. I was sweaty and breathing very hard. I started the second 20 minute piece and then decided to just bin the session. I have no idea what was wrong with me. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood.

I was very tired in evening. I wondered if I was getting sick. But I felt much better this morning.

Thursday: 14K of technique work

May 12, 2016May 12, 20165 Comments

Another perfect morning! Sunny, 60F. Very light wind (0-2mph) from the north. This is basically a cross head wind going downriver, and a cross tail wind heading up river, I only noticed it a couple of moments in the row. Otherwise, it was just little ripples on the water.

I changed my mind about my workout plan this morning when I woke up. I was tired and sore all over. I decided that doing an High Impact session was a bad idea, and a better idea would be to just work on technique the whole time.

So, I did my favorite technical workout.

500m of square blade rowing
500m of alternating 1 stroke square blade and 1 stroke normal
500m of r20, trying to row with perfect form
Repeat over and over again.

One thing that works out well about this workout is that the useful length of the river is 3000m, so I can fit two sets in each direction very neatly.

I ended up rowing 1000m through the twists and turns, then did 8 sets of the 3×500 technique drills. That got me back to the cut. At that point I pulled my feet out of the shoes and rowed the 1000m back to the dock “strapless”. This is also really good practice to get clean finishes.

This was a really enjoyable workout. And I felt like my finishes got a lot better. I was tapping down earlier, and getting the oars out of the water with less disturbance. It didn’t hurt that it was a glorious morning and I was on a beautiful river.

This afternoon, I’m driving down to New York City to have dinner with a customer, and then I’ll drive home tomorrow morning. I think I will probably do an erg session when I get home.

14K of bliss (rate ladders and a hardish 1K)

May 11, 2016Leave a comment

The weather was just about perfect. Not a cloud in the sky. The temperature started around 50F, and by the time I finished, it was around 60F. Tee shirt weather!

There was a light, but building breeze from the west. This averaged around 5mph from the West, which was a head wind heading upstream.

My plan was to do the same workout as Monday. Rate Ladders.

3′ @ 18
2′ @ 20
1′ @ 22

The length of the river is not precisely right for these ladders, so I just turn around and get going in the other direction.

I am not happy with my boat speed, but I’m not quite sure what’s wrong. I guess I will just keep working on stroke technique. Breaking down the stroke into phases:

Recovery to Catch: Inconsistent in terms of my body position and reach. For some sections of my row today, I felt like I was doing really well getting my body over before I broke my knees and then smoothly moving to the catch position. I got that “glimpse out of the corner of my eye” feeling on some strokes.
Drive: I was working on building power through the stroke, so easing into the stroke a little bit. I was also trying to row lighter at r20 and r22.
Finish: Very messy. I am still a little crowded at the finish, mainly due to being about 10 pounds heavier than I should be. I was working on tapping down early enough and then feathering, but on many strokes, I was getting hung up trying to extract the oars cleanly.

I think I need to add some drills to try to work on specific parts of the stroke. The good thing is that the boat is setting reasonably well.

My workout took an unexpected turn on my first trip back up the river. I was coming through the s-turn and I saw the Brandeis boats lining up to go up river as well. Before I got to where they were, a pair of fours took off side by side with much splashing and squawking from the cox boxes. Behind them, two pairs (W2-) were turning around and lining up. I paddled around to the far side of these boats and then took off when they did. I wasn’t sure exactly what they were working on, but I decided that my plan was to get ahead of them and stay there. It turned out it wasn’t that hard to do. They were rating around a 26, and I was rating between 24 and 26 and opening up some distance with them. Over about 1100m, I managed to put 100m between us. Pride compels me to point out that the GPS derived pace over this piece was impacted by both current and head wind. That felt good. Then it was back to the regular workout.

Tomorrow: I think I will do a split session. About 20 minutes of drills, then some 2′ intervals and then another 20 minutes of drills.

Tuesday: May CTC

May 10, 20162 Comments

I had a meeting at 8am, so no time for OTW or even a workout before work. I had a hole in my schedule around lunchtime, so I ducked into the gym to take a crack at the May CTC.

Being simple minded, I decided to just use 1 minute rests, and target faster than 1:45 for the long intervals and 1:40 for the short intervals.

I was doing the session on slides.

First up was a fletcher warmup.

Then into the main event. I felt a little panicky after the first rep, but then settled into a reasonable groove. I was disappointed to see the wahoo tickr having the same problem with tracking my HR in the later reps. I has happy that I survived the session. It was very hard.

So, 13:40.8, an average pace of 1:42.6. The pace for the long intervals was 1:43.6. The pace for the short intervals was 1:38.9, so I beat my totally arbitrary targets. (and I felt good about that)

I think in peak form, I could probably maybe do this at 1:40, but for where I am right now, I am pretty pleased.

Tomorrow: OTW, Steady state. Probably rate ladders again.

Monday:14K OTW rate ladders

May 9, 2016Leave a comment

Partly cloud. Temps started in the mid-40s but climbed rapidly. By the time I finished, it was nearly 60F. Winds were light at first, but built through the session and for most of the time, the wind was out of the west at about 10mph with gusts to 15mph. It was a nasty headwind going up river.

The plan was steady state rate ladders. 3′ @ 18, 2′ @ 20, 1′ @ 22 over and over again. Breaks at the ends of the river, but just long enough to turn the boat around. I am still not happy with my boat speed, but I am setting the boat OK. The main issue is not being able to really get out over the footstretcher without hitting the stops on the slide. My finishes are still rough, but improving.

Today, rowing into the headwind was very heavy work. You can see the 20 second difference in pace and higher heart rates. The good thing about the river was that even with the wind, there was basically no chop. It just felt like I was dragging a bucket!

I worked a little bit harder than I should have for an ideal endurance session, but only a little bit.

Tomorrow: I have an early meeting, so I plan to do a session around noontime. I’m thinking that I might take a shot at this month’s CTC.

Sunday: 3 hours of yard work

May 9, 2016Leave a comment

Finishing up the mulching. Worked from about 9:30 to 12:30. I was stiff at first, but loosened up with the first 30 minutes or so. The labor was dominated by a huge flower bed on front of our house that required 24 wheelbarrows of mulch to cover.

I didn’t wear a strap, but by my rule of thumb, this was 3 hours of sub-UT2 exercise and burnt 1800 calories.

Saturday: 5 hours of yard work

May 9, 2016May 9, 20163 Comments

I was wondering how to think about yard work as a form of exercise. What I was doing this weekend was preparing our flower beds for summer. This entails raking the bed, edging, weeding, and then spreading mulch. It is pretty demanding work, it works the core mostly, but arms get it pretty good too.

I decided to wear a heart rate monitor to get an idea of how much aerobic benefit there is. I did two “sessions”. The first was an hour and forty three minutes. The I needed to run an errand and grab a drink. Then I did another 3 hours and 12 minutes.

My average HR for the first session was 104bpm, so well below the threshold for UT work, but a bit more than 2x my resting HR. And my peak HR was only 125. Over the first hour and 43 minutes, I burnt 957 calories. More than I expected.

The second session wiped me out. About the same average HR at 102bpm. A slightly higher peak at 131. Total calories burnt over the 3 hours and 12 minutes was 1905. By the end, I was having trouble getting up from my knees if I crouched down.

By the evening, I was basically paralyzed with stiffness in my back.

A good days work. And now I know that yard work is basically 600 calories an hour.

Friday: OTW – 1x – 4 x ( 7 x 1′ / 1′ rest) x 3′ rest

May 6, 2016May 6, 20162 Comments

Cool, cloudy, Wind was flukey, from the WSW. Generally about 5mph, but with gusts up to 10mph.

I was originally intending to just do a steady state session, but I was in the mood to try to work on full pressure and rate technique. I wasn’t in the mood to kill myself, so I decided to do 1 minute intervals at about 26 t0 28 spm. I can do about 7 of these in in a row on my river, and then I would need to turn around. I took a bit more rest on the turn arounds.

It was basically a head wind rowing downriver (1st and 3rd set) and a tail wind rowing upriver (2nd and 4th). Since this is GPS based data, the upriver paces were probably about a couple seconds slower than actual. And the downriver ones a couple seconds faster, basically enough to counteract the wind.

I moved the footstretcher one notch to the bow and I was much more comfortable at the finish. My blade work was really mess though. I guess that would be expected for my second real outing in this boat. The slide doesn’t really have quite enough travel to the stern to me. Whenever I really got out to full extension at the catch, I was running into the stops on the slide. Things did get better as I went along and in the last set of intervals, I was getting good clearance on recovery and felt a lot smoother with the application of power during the drive.

This weekend, my focus is on yard work. Time to get all the flower beds in shape for the summer. So basically 4 hours of low intensity exercise per day. I might wear a HR strap to get an idea of what kind of aerobic benefit it has.

Thursday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ L4

May 5, 2016Leave a comment

Wednesday: after getting home around 12:30, I skipped the gym in the morning. I was hoping to sneak in a workout later in the day, but things got pretty hectic and it was 6:30PM by the time I looked at my watch. So, it turned into a rest day. But, I was due. I had managed to get sessions in every day for the past 7 days.

Today: In the gym, normal steady state session. On slides. Repeating sequences of 4/3/2/1 at 18/19/20/21 spm. On a static erg, I do these at 10W * stroke rate. On slides, I scale back by 10 watts, so 18spm is 170W, and so on.

My legs were hurting a bit from my 10K run on Tuesday. But it didn’t seem to effect anything.

Tomorrow: OTW, steady state and technique.

Tuesday: 10km run in Marina Del Rey

May 4, 2016May 4, 20162 Comments

A beautiful morning. Much too beautiful to be in the fitness center, especially when this is outside.

I decided to go for a run. I don’t run much and I am a very slow runner. I wanted to try to keep this at a reasonable low intensity. I did OK through the first 2/3 or so, but as I got closer to the end, I pushed harder, and when I saw that I could do a full 10K, I knew I had to.

The layout of Marina Del Rey is a series of fingerlike peninsulas, most of which have a foot path around the outside. I basically ran from my hotel to the first one of these fingers and then traced the outsides of them all the way back looking at all the boats along the way.

Here’s my pace and HR for the outing. I ended up doing 10K in just about 58 minutes, or just slightly faster than 6′ per km. I told you I was slow!

Now I am flying back home and I get in around midnight. I will try to grab a quick session on the erg sometime during the day tomorrow, and hopefully get back on the water Thursday morning.

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