Living my best pandemic

June 28, 20201 Comment

Maybe this sounds hokey, but I’ve been feeling very, very fortunate lately. Thank goodness, my job has not been affected by the downturn, and no on in my family has caught COVID-19. At this point, I have gotten used to working from home and improved my ability to use remote work tools, and I am enjoying the temporary respite from both commuting and business travel. For sure, I miss seeing my friends at work, and I worry about losing touch with my customers and business colleagues, but the change has meant that I get more sleep, get more exercise and spend more time with people I care about.

So, it’s been a good month for training.

In the past 27 days:

3 rest days, sessions for the last 12 days in a row (I’ve been doing easy bike rides instead of taking full rest days lately)
24 workouts
- 13 days flat water rowing
- 3 days coastal rowing
- 3 runs
- 2 erg sessions
- 3 rides on my new BikeErg

Training Diary

Sunday – June 7 – No Training

I worked on the stairs down on the cape and didn’t have time for a workout. Nice day in the sun though.

Monday – June 8 – 15K on Lake Quinsigamond.

I am cartopping to the lake. I get up around 6, launch around 6:45 and row until 8:00 or 8:30 depending on whether or not I have a meeting at 9.

The club I row with is being good and safe. Masks on the dock, social distancing, time slots for launching to keep the docks from getting crowded. And the lake is just wonderful to row on.

Today was just some steady state. Down to the south end, all the way up to the north end, then back past the boathouse to the narrows, then finally back to the boathouse. Working with a HR cap of about 150. There was a bit of a headwind going North.

       Workout Summary - media/0407a4c8a1-20200608-125553o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15033|01:22:42.3|02:45.0|132.6|20.4|133.6|151.0|08.9
W-|14070|01:12:11.8|02:33.9|142.4|20.5|136.7|151.0|09.5
R-|00967|00:10:30.9|05:26.2|065.3|19.8|112.3|151.0|07.2
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|03268|16:26.5|02:31.0|133.4|19.3|126.8|141.0|10.3
02|05758|30:04.8|02:36.7|148.5|20.8|140.1|151.0|09.2
03|03579|17:58.9|02:30.7|136.7|20.3|138.8|146.0|09.8
04|01466|07:41.6|02:37.4|151.0|22.1|139.9|147.0|08.6

Tuesday – June 9 – 15km steady state

Just beautiful. Flat water. A few waterskiers, but I didn’t mind the brief stops for that.

       Workout Summary - media/ee32ce273d-20200609-123554o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15020|01:21:27.1|02:42.7|133.4|21.0|135.9|154.0|08.8
W-|13893|01:09:05.2|02:29.2|150.0|20.3|140.5|154.0|09.9
R-|01131|00:12:22.2|05:28.2|041.2|24.9|109.7|154.0|06.3
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|03194|15:48.1|02:28.4|147.4|19.5|132.8|143.0|10.3
02|05731|28:43.6|02:30.4|150.9|20.7|141.0|150.0|09.7
03|03562|17:39.1|02:28.7|148.9|20.0|145.3|154.0|10.1
04|01406|06:54.4|02:27.4|154.5|21.2|144.2|152.0|09.6

Wednesday – 10 June – Descent to Hell

This is a Push it / Don’t Pull it workout. It is decreasing length pieces from 6′ down to 30″ with 90″ rests. so, 6′, 5’30”, 5′, 4’30″…

It was brutal. I did pretty well through the first four, but then when I turned into the wind, I blew up in the fifth interval. From there, I hung in there OK.

This workout is a keeper. Definitely doing it again later.

        Workout Summary - media/658d149feb-20200610-123056o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|13546|01:14:30.4|02:45.0|137.4|22.8|152.4|175.0|08.0
W-|07995|00:36:26.4|02:16.7|189.7|25.6|159.4|175.0|08.6
R-|05561|00:38:05.1|03:25.4|087.4|20.3|145.7|175.0|04.6
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01328|06:02.5|02:16.5|178.8|23.5|151.3|160.0|09.4
02|01200|05:33.2|02:18.9|171.6|24.0|156.7|166.0|09.0
03|01110|05:00.0|02:15.1|188.0|25.0|163.1|173.0|08.9
04|00989|04:26.3|02:14.6|192.4|25.4|165.2|175.0|08.8
05|00212|00:59.8|02:20.7|186.8|25.1|151.1|161.0|08.5
06|00346|01:37.8|02:21.2|190.1|25.8|162.7|167.0|08.2
07|00736|03:22.8|02:17.7|194.5|26.0|165.9|174.0|08.4
08|00516|02:20.9|02:16.5|201.7|26.8|162.1|174.0|08.2
09|00499|02:20.6|02:20.8|189.7|26.9|162.4|172.0|07.9
10|00410|01:51.6|02:15.9|211.0|28.5|162.7|174.0|07.8
11|00294|01:21.8|02:19.2|201.7|28.6|155.1|167.0|07.5
12|00216|00:55.5|02:08.3|221.1|30.1|154.2|164.0|07.8
13|00137|00:33.6|02:02.6|255.2|31.9|148.8|158.0|07.7

Thursday – June 11 – No Training

I earned a day off.

Friday – June 12 – Charles River GPS Speed Order

Another go at the speed order. My goal this time was to steer a better line. I ended up going out too hard and blowing up in the middle.

But my line was beautiful! Here it is compared to Carlo Zezza, who rowed a really tight and short line. (I’m the brown line)

From the start around magazine beach, I’m looking really good. I drifted out just a hair too much at the end (I was worried about cutting too close to the Riverside docks). I decided to use the cambridge arches, vs the center arches going up the powerhouse stretch.

I took a good line into weeks and made the turn from there to Anderson really well. This is where I ran out of energy and really slowed down. After Anderson, it looks like I took a good straight line to the apex of the eliot turn. And I did a good job hugging the curve for last turn as well.

I shaved 190m off the distance rowed from the prior attempt. And even though I rowed more slowly, I cut 30 seconds off my time.

4773m / 22:38 / 2:22.3
4583m / 22:08 / 2:23.9

Maybe for the July challenge, I can put steering and fitness together for a good row!

Saturday – June 13 – 12k on Lake Quinsigamond with Randall Foils

I’ve embarked on an experiment to see if Randall Foils help me row faster. I’ll be writing up some impressions of the Randall Foils eventually on https://analytics.rowsandall.com/

But in order to give them a fair test, I need to learn how to row with them and make sure that I understand how they feel. This row was the first step to try do that. Just a steady state row in choppy conditions to try to figure out how they work.

       Workout Summary - media/7f555d2212-20200613-133055o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|12026|01:08:10.4|02:50.1|123.3|21.0|140.4|170.0|08.4
W-|11008|00:57:02.3|02:35.5|138.6|20.5|143.7|170.0|09.5
R-|01023|00:11:08.5|05:26.8|044.7|23.7|123.7|170.0|04.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01415|07:34.1|02:40.5|116.9|18.0|125.1|138.0|10.4
02|01925|09:53.4|02:34.1|130.9|19.1|137.7|145.0|10.2
03|05784|30:40.9|02:39.2|140.4|20.7|147.5|165.0|09.1
04|01884|08:53.9|02:21.7|159.7|23.4|153.0|170.0|09.1

Overall, I did not enjoy my first experience with the foils. They sure feel solid at the catch, but they increase the wind resistance of the oars, and smacking a wavetop with the foils was a pretty violent feeling. Also, they were a pain when coasting, and maneuvering. More to come.

Sunday – June 14 – No Training

We drove down to the cape on Saturday afternoon, and I slept in. I spent most of the day finishing up the stairs to the beach.

Monday – June 15 – 6 Darts Games

Just a nice easy base builder in the basement.

Tuesday - June 16 - Easy Coastal Row

Just a nice day for a row.

Wednesday – June 17 – Another longer coastal row

In this one, I went over into where the Herring River comes out into Wellfleet Harbor. Beautiful area over there.

No real useful data fro the row, because both crewnerd and the speedcoach managed to get mucked up. My phone was splashed seriously enough to think that I had swiped away from crewnerd. And I ran out of memory on the speedcoach during the row.

Thursday – June 18 – 7km run

I crossed the bridge and ran a loop around a woodsy neighborhood.

Friday – June 19 – Experimenting with foils

Pushed hard for about 2km, then took a break for about 1km, then finished hard.

        Workout Summary - media/c535caef77-20200619-120554o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10712|00:58:38.1|02:44.2|133.3|21.7|147.2|182.0|08.4
W-|09723|00:47:31.7|02:26.6|154.4|21.9|152.7|182.0|09.4
R-|00994|00:11:06.7|05:35.2|043.0|20.8|123.5|182.0|06.3
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00185|00:58.4|02:37.9|128.4|18.7|112.1|123.0|10.2
02|03159|15:50.8|02:30.5|145.3|19.7|143.9|156.0|10.1
03|02114|10:01.0|02:22.1|171.2|23.9|157.4|168.0|08.8
04|02857|13:08.5|02:18.0|175.3|24.3|168.6|182.0|08.9 - Nice!
05|01408|07:33.0|02:40.9|118.1|20.4|142.6|153.0|09.2

Saturday – June 20 – Rate Ladders with Foils

Trying to work specific stroke rates with the foils. I think it works a bit better to try to row lighter and rate up.

Sunday – June 21 – 40 minute BikeErg

Unfortunately Boatcoach quit after 20 minutes. But it was lovely. Nice easy cross training session.

Monday – June 22 – Steady State

Still rowing with foils. This was supposed to be a nice easy steady state session, but as luck would have it, a sculler ended up right next to me as I pulled out from the dock, and his steady state pace was a bit quicker than mine. I just refused to let him go and pushed too hard.

I got to talk to him at the south end of the lake. Nice guy, student at University of Delaware. Getting back in shape in case there is rowing this fall.

       Workout Summary - media/f2e1dce094-20200622-122554o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11848|01:08:44.6|02:54.1|121.9|20.1|143.7|166.0|08.6
W-|11293|00:56:39.9|02:30.5|141.2|19.5|150.3|166.0|10.2
R-|00559|00:12:05.0|10:48.9|031.5|23.0|112.3|166.0|03.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|03533|17:10.2|02:25.8|144.5|19.0|148.0|163.0|10.8
02|05723|29:16.4|02:33.5|142.7|19.7|155.9|166.0|09.9
03|02037|10:13.3|02:30.5|131.4|19.8|138.3|162.0|10.0

There was a bit of wind blowing from North to South.

Tuesday – June 23 – Lake Quinsigamond Speed Order

When I rowed on Saturday, I met a nice guy from Western Mass who came to row the GPS Speed Order on the lake. He handily beat my team and my course standard score. I found that highly motivating. I decided to give the course another go.

I started with a nice long warmup to the south end of the lake, and then set off. There was a very light tail wind (about 2mph) and I was seeing splits between 2:15 and 2:20, which was encouraging. My HR was high, but I didn’t feel distressed. The last 2k was kind of difficult, but I would fiddle around with rate and pressure a little bit to try to distract myself.

I was very happy with the end result. No where near my competitor on raw time, but I edged him out on course standard score.

I also shaved nearly 30 seconds off my previous time. (22:37). Boom.

Wednesday – June 24 – 40 minute BikeErg

I like the bike erg! It’s a great change of pace and a good way to get some low intensity aerobic minutes in. I started watching Ford v. Ferrari, which was highly entertaining.

Thursday – June 25 – Steady State (without Foils)

It felt so good to row without foils! Still not sure if they make me faster. They certainly do not slow me down, but I do not like rowing with them.

Nice, reasonable speedy steady state session. I was able to keep on the fast side of 2:30 for most of it.

       Workout Summary - media/7a3eb7d12d-20200625-202055o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11945|01:03:09.1|02:38.6|134.6|20.6|139.8|159.0|09.2
W-|10644|00:52:28.8|02:27.9|146.4|20.4|143.4|159.0|09.9
R-|01309|00:10:41.0|04:04.7|076.8|21.1|122.2|159.0|06.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00278|01:24.8|02:32.8|127.8|19.0|116.4|121.0|10.3
02|01974|09:34.9|02:25.7|149.8|20.4|136.4|147.0|10.1
03|00534|02:35.4|02:25.6|158.6|20.9|137.7|149.0|09.9
04|01306|06:27.5|02:28.3|145.2|20.5|138.5|147.0|09.9
05|04446|22:00.1|02:28.5|148.8|20.5|148.4|159.0|09.9
06|01891|09:21.6|02:28.5|137.6|20.3|147.8|153.0|10.0
07|00216|01:04.5|02:29.1|143.8|22.3|144.3|146.0|09.0

Friday – June 26 – 45 minute BikeErg

I had an 8 am meeting, so not enough time to go to the lake and get in a row. I slept in an extra half hour, and did a short session on the Bike. Watched more of Ford v Ferrari. Still really fun.

Saturday – June 27 – 80′ Coastal Row

It was warm and windy today. I thought it would be fun to go bash into some waves. I was right!

I launched at 12:15, so right as the wind was building up past 15mph. It peaked around 1pm when I was up near Wellfleet inner harbor, and moderated back down to 15 on the way back.

You can tell that the water is rough when the speedcoach starts having all those spikes on the stroke rate.

It was just past low tide when I launched, so I had to take a short leg to the northwest to stay clear of the shoals, then I turned SW and headed to the red buoy. The wind was blowing from the SSW, so on my port bow. The waves were very steep over the shallow water as I got close to the buoy, and I was filling the footwell every ten or so strokes. I opened the bailer and left it that way the rest of the row.

I turned at the buoy and had a downwind ride with the tide all the way to the harbor. The waves hissing and sizzling under the boat as I went. I turned into the harbor and grabbed a quick drink. I knew the next bit was going to be the tough part.

I headed back out, and as soon as I cleared the breakwater, I started getting slammed by 12 to 18 waves. They seem pretty big when your boat sits 3 inches above the water line. I pounded my way out and picked a point on the shore to focus on. I concentrated on just controlling my oars and reacting to the waves. I paid a lot of attention to my heart rate. With the waves and headwind, it was easy to push too hard.

The footwell was filled most of the time. By the time the bailer reduced the water level, another wave would run the length of the boat and fill it again.

Finally, I came into the lee of the Island and the water flattened out. The last bit of rowing on flat water was a nice change to adventure through the waves.

Great fun!

5/29 – 6/6 – Having some fun now

June 7, 2020June 7, 2020Leave a comment

Friday – 5/29 – rest day

I was murdered by the GPS Speed Order. I took the day off.

Saturday – 5/30 – beach run

This was a very hard slog. My HR was through the roof and I was incredibly slow. Halfway through, I was convinced that I was coming down with COVID-19, my lungs just didn’t seem to be working.

It was still a very nice day to be out though.

Sunday – 5/31 – 6 darts games

New high score! 14775! Higher HR drift though 5.7%

Monday – 6/1 – 5km run

Just a short run. Limited time before my first meeting. Kept it easy.

Tuesday – 6/2 – Lake Quinsigamond GPS Speed Order

Our club has been given permission to open, and we have developed our procedures to keep everyone safe. Singles and Doubles only. Doubles have to be people living in the same house. We have 10 minute windows for launching from the dock to keep people from congregating. Also, temp check, mandatory masks on the dock and sign in. I’m really pleased that the club is being this careful.

I have setup a GPS Speed Order on Lake Quinsigamond to try to lure some of my worcester rowing buddies to get out and do a little competing. The challenge is running all of June, and I wanted to get an early marker in.

So, I launched and headed down to the south end of the lake, doing a reasonable warmup on the way.

I turned around and planned to cover the course at r24, which seems to be about the limit of my fitness right now.

The row was pretty uneventful. I felt good up through the islands and past the narrows. I started to get kinda tired in the long span from the narrows to the bridge. About 500m short of the bridge, I got waked by a waterski boat, and managed to catch a nasty crab as I tried to row through it. It basically stopped me dead and it took a lot out of me to get back going.

The row from the bridge to the gazebo was endless, as it always is. In my mind, the gazebo is halfway, but actually it is much closer to the finish at the DRC docks. I counted strokes from the Gazebo to the finish and it was about 60.

You can explore my race by going here.

        Workout Summary - media/7f8779b0f6-20200602-142054o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11658|01:04:33.7|02:46.1|131.0|21.2|144.6|178.0|08.5
W-|04855|00:22:36.7|02:19.7|175.6|24.1|166.1|178.0|08.9
R-|06804|00:41:57.0|03:05.0|107.0|19.6|133.0|178.0|07.6
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|04855|22:36.7|02:19.7|175.6|24.1|166.1|178.0|08.9

So, a nice improvement on pace from the Charles River GPS Speed Order.

In terms of course, a much easier course to row than the Charles River GPS Speed Order, and I rowed it better. But there is still room for improvement.

I like my course from the start past the little island and toward Drake Island. But I held that course too long. As soon as I was on a line between Drake Island and the point of land with Smith Lane, I should have set my point right on that point. That would have put me on a straight line for the Narrows, and I would have avoided the s-curve.

Same deal after the Narrows.

I have been taught to take a couple of port strokes at the narrows to get out of the way of boats coming down lake to the Narrows. I think I took it way too far. I could have just taken a point to the Island off the beach and that would have taken me straight to the bridge.

I also did an s-turn thingy after the bridge.

I need to figure out a good point south of the bridge to pick up and focus on to keep from drifting to middle. By the map, it’s the last house before the little marina south of the bridge, but I don’t know exactly what that looks like.

It was another really fun row. Highly motivated to keep plugging. Fun to play with the results afterwards.

Wednesday – 6/3 – Steady State – Lake Quinsigamond

I wanted a nice long row, and that’s what I got.

There was a bit of a wind from the south which sped things up on the way up the lake and slowed me down on the way down.

I was having such a good time that I added a bit extra. Instead of just doing the normal 12K loop of the lake, I kept going back down to the narrows and back again.

        Workout Summary - media/a83f56f61b-20200603-133055o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14871|01:19:48.6|02:41.0|130.9|19.6|141.4|155.0|09.5
W-|13938|01:10:27.4|02:31.6|140.0|19.3|144.2|155.0|10.2
R-|00938|00:09:21.6|04:59.4|062.2|21.7|119.9|155.0|07.6
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|03420|17:21.8|02:32.3|140.5|18.9|137.1|146.0|10.4
02|05664|28:02.7|02:28.5|142.5|19.7|148.1|155.0|10.3
03|03554|18:28.1|02:35.9|136.9|19.5|146.3|153.0|09.9
04|01300|06:34.8|02:31.8|136.7|18.5|140.3|150.0|10.7

I am delighted to be back on the water.

Thursday – 6/4 – Drills on the 5s

Between the GPS speed order on Tuesday and the long session on Wednesday, I woke up sore and tired. I decided to do a technical session and keep it light.

So, I did 4 minutes of rowing at about r20, and then one minute of drills

On the square
Slow roll ups
Delayed Feather
Pause at body over
Open hands on recovery

I was really feeling the effort in the steady state sections and looked forward to the drills as a bit of a break. I think I have ramped up volume significantly and I was feeling it.

Friday – 6/5 – quick run

Well a short run, done slowly. I was planning to go rowing on Friday morning, but ended up staying up too late. So I scrubbed out of my launch window, and slept in instead. This might have been intelligently listening to my body, or just laziness.

I think I needed the sleep. I got up in time for my first meeting of the day and then at lunch time, I snuck out for a short run, just 2 miles around my neighborhood.

Saturday – 6/6 – 6 Darts Games

Down on the cape, but too windy for a coastal row. So, it was time for Darts! Chasing after high scores. My best is 14775. Today, I came close, but didn’t beat it. 3.98% drift.

After that, me and my son spent about 4 hours working on rebuilding our stairs down to the beach which have been destroyed for the third season in a row. Very sore and tired now.

Tomorrow: I think I will go for a run, or a coastal row, if the weather is nice.

Charles River GPS Speed order

June 7, 2020Leave a comment

The coolest thing I have been a part of are GPS Speed Orders. This is a case of taking a couple of great ideas and putting them together.

The first great idea was from Greg Benning, who reached out to find out if there was a way to setup on the water competitions to take the place of all those cancelled regattas. The second great idea came from Sander Roosendaal, who has been working on a capability called Virtual Racing as part of the rowsandall platform.

We batted the idea back and forth via email and came up with the idea of “GPS Speed Orders”. These would be free challenges open to all single scullers. You just row the course with some kind of GPS devices, like a smartphone, fitness watch or Speedcoach, and then upload your data. The software one rowsandall measures your time to do the course, and that you went through all the required “gates” through the course. Then it ranks all the competitors, just like a head race. You can learn all about it here.

Sander did a ton of coding and enhancements to make it easier and more fun. Seven folks did a dry run during the last week of May and it worked out great! Check out the results here.

Now we have open up two new events, which will run the whole month of June. The first is over the same course on the Charles River. The other challenge is out in Worcester on Lake Quinsigamond. Even more exciting, I’ve started to get inquiries about setting up challenges in other venues in Pennsylvania, Seekonk Massachusetts. Let me know if you want to run a challenge over the course of your favorite race.

Thursday – May 28 – Charles River GPS Speed Order

I was so excited (and nervous) about doing this, that I had trouble sleeping the night before, just like a race. Knowing that I was going to post my result, made me work really hard. I knew that I was not in the same league as the other people that were rowing, but I wanted to do as well as I could.

As it turned out, I was satisfied with my boat speed, but not so happy with my steering. I made a lot of mistakes in my line, and the race software is incredibly helpful at showing that.

I launched at CRI, which is nearly 8km upstream from the start line, so I tried to row nice and easy down to basin. It was still a pretty good distance for this early in the season and I was feeling fatigued by the time I got to the Dewolfe boathouse.

I lined up and got going. I decided to try to keep it to around a r24 and concentrate on not running into anything.

Here is the whole race, with my track compared to Greg Benning, the winning of the Challenge (also winner of the MGM1x at the HOCR).

So, let’s zoom in and look at the things that I did wrong, shall we? I am Red, Mr Benning is Green.

Mistake #1: Started too far out from the Dewolfe dock, and not hugging the cambridge side of the arch in the BU bridge. This allow GB to be setup right on the bank coming out of from under the bridge and following the tightest line. I eventually clued in and jogged to the bank. I managed to do the right thing for maybe 200 meters.

Mistake #2: The curve tightens halfway around Magazine Beach, and I didn’t sense it right away. I continued out wide and did a big loop away from the docks at the Riverside Boat Club. I should have been right up on it.

Mistake #3: Having swung too wide away fro the RBC docks, I over corrected and ended up heading for the cambridge side arch on the Cambridge St Bridge. That arch is fine, but onkly if you’ve taken a really tight line out from riverside. This was just a waste.

The rest of the power house stretch was not very offensive, but not really arrow straight either

The approach to the Week’s footbridge was also pretty good. Not as tight as GB’s, OK.

Mistake #4: Compound error. The first mistake was not turning quickly enough coming out of Week’s so that I ended up with a big s-turn on the way to Anderson. The other was playing it safe on the Anderson bridge. The normal river traffic pattern allows rowers to use the cambridge arch of this bridge and you can see that GB used it effectively to cut the corner. I on the other hand swung way out in the central arch and made a tough corner even worse.

The eliot turn was just a shambles.

Mistake #5: Instead of getting a good point to the apex of the turn coming out of the Anderson Bridge, I followed the cambridge bank and realized it quite late, so I was going wide into the turn. Which led into

Mistake #6: I over corrected to get the right line, but panicked that I was too far into the downstream lane and faded back to the outside. All the steering slowed me down and the outside arc added a lot of distance.

The Eliot bridge was OK. I like my line there.

Mistake #7: The correct line for the end of the course is to get as close as you can to the Belmont Hill School docks, and then hug the Cambridge bank. In the fog of oxygen deprivation I was experiencing, I totally missed to turn and swung way wide. Again, I added a huge amount of distance.

How much distance you ask? GB rowed 4670 meters. I rowed 4773 meters. That’s a cool thirty seconds of extra rowing. Of course he beat me by three full minutes, so steering is only part of the difference. The bigger factor is that he is a MUCH better rower than I am.

       Workout Summary - media/dbc08d619a-20200528-141554o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15724|01:28:36.3|02:49.1|128.4|20.6|146.8|180.0|08.6
W-|04781|00:22:40.4|02:22.3|171.1|24.7|168.9|180.0|08.5
R-|10944|01:05:56.1|03:00.7|113.7|19.2|139.2|180.0|07.5
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|04781|22:40.4|02:22.3|171.1|24.7|168.9|180.0|08.5

/static/plots/dbc08d619a-20200528-141554.png

Another thing you can do is compare your results with other rowers. Here is a boat speed comparison of me, Greg Benning and Jeff Nelson. Jeff beat me by almost a minute.

You can see that GB has a huge boat speed differential, but Jeff and I were quite well matched. He 3.54m/s and me at 3.51m/s. The difference was that he managed to row the course in 4601 meters, versus my 4773 meters.

I was pretty tired by the time I finished. Rowing the 3 k back to CRI was a slog. But I was exhilarated. This was a blast. And I can’t wait to row it again, hopefully a few times to work on my steering.

Back on the Water – Huzzah!

May 24, 20201 Comment

Another week on social isolation. I’m getting better at it. A few very exciting developments.

First, I retrieved my boat from winter storage, rigged it up and went for my first row of the season, not counting that amazing week in early March when we managed to get on the water three days (3/9, 3/10, 3/11) before the pandemic hit.

Second, I am working with Sander and some Boston based rowers to try to figure out a way to have some competitive fun with rowing when all regattas and events are cancelled. Take a look at the instructions for the first event.

Want Some Hot Singles Action? – The GPS Speed Orders

It will be a “Speed Order” challenge over the same course that the Head of the Charles follows. Through the miracle of GPS and rowsandall, people can run the course in their single anytime next week and upload their rowing data to compete.

I’m hoping that this will turn into a full season of challenges on the Charles, and spread to other venues. If anyone is interested in running a GPS Speed Order on your favorite course, get in touch and I’ll get you set up.

And it was a good week of training. I am enjoying running more than I expected, and I am now able to row for longer periods without a lot of shoulder pain.

Monday – 5/18 – 5.7km run on Lt Island

We decided to stay an extra day on the Cape and on Monday morning, I headed out for a slow run. Some parts of it were on the beach, and that was slow, hard work. Other parts of it were on sandy roads and I have no excuse, but I was still slow.

Tuesday – 5/19 – Quick row

It was an exciting morning. I headed out to the Lake and met Joe who let me in the boathouse and helped me load up my boat. I brought it home and only had enough time for a quick and easy row before my 8am meeting.

        Workout Summary - media/4eb43c721c-20200519-122216o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|09670|00:42:00.0|02:10.3|165.3|18.9|129.7|140.0|12.2
W-|09461|00:40:00.0|02:06.8|171.3|19.2|130.3|140.0|12.3
R-|00210|00:02:00.0|04:45.7|045.6|11.9|119.0|140.0|08.9
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|09461|40:00.0|02:06.8|171.3|19.2|130.3|140.0|12.3

Wednesday – 5/20 – 45′ Bike / 2 dart games

Sticking to base work. Still limiting total rowing time. I was watching the movie John Wick, and I noticed that my HR was going way up when there was any kind of physical conflict in the movie.

Then down to the basement for a couple of dart games.

        Workout Summary - media/09b2b54c05-20200520-161816o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07468|00:33:09.4|02:13.2|159.3|18.4|143.3|151.0|12.3
W-|07441|00:31:51.4|02:08.4|165.2|19.0|144.0|151.0|12.3
R-|00028|00:01:18.0|23:32.0|013.9|02.0|125.8|151.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|03813|16:20.0|02:08.5|164.7|18.6|143.4|151.0|12.5
01|03628|15:31.4|02:08.4|165.7|19.5|144.7|151.0|12.0

Getting better at keeping my effort down in the dart games and good results for these two 14375, and 14305. Still not challenging Sanders 14625 though.

Thursday – 5/21 – Fast (for me) run – 6.3km

This was basically the same course as I ran on May 8th at an average pace of 6:01. Today, I shaved that down to 5:57, but worked a bit harder. I had a really wonderful time, especially the last mile or so.

Friday – 5/22 – 12k on Lake Quinsigamond

It’s so exciting going for the first row of the year in my single. There’s an element of fear. Do I still remember how to row? Do I still remember how to get in an out of the boat? How cold is the water? And this year, I had the extra anxiety of wondering if my shoulder would be OK for carrying the boat and rowing.

I got to the lake right around 7am. I launched without any issue and headed down lake. I didn’t bother with a pick drill or anything, I just started rowing easy, and kept that up basically the whole outing. There was a bit of breeze blowing from the SW, which was only bothersome during the row back to the boathouse from the north end of the lake.

The good news. I remember how to row. The boat was setting well. To be honest about it, my shoulder is not great. But if I limited how far I extended to the catch, took the catch smoothly and lightened up my stroke a bit, I was able to row pain free.

There were a couple of waterskiers out and I got waked a bunch of times. I generally just stopped rowing for a few seconds to let the wakes pass. This early in the season, I didn’t really see the point in trying to finesse my way through the waves.

        Workout Summary - media/3d93653fd3-20200522-134050o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11673|01:05:42.5|02:48.9|125.3|20.4|138.9|156.0|08.7
W-|10124|00:52:25.4|02:35.3|134.5|19.7|142.0|156.0|09.8
R-|01558|00:13:18.0|04:16.0|089.1|23.2|126.8|156.0|03.6
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01201|06:13.8|02:35.6|135.1|18.1|133.8|143.0|10.6
02|00504|02:38.5|02:37.1|135.1|18.9|135.0|142.0|10.1
03|01003|05:10.3|02:34.7|138.8|19.1|143.1|149.0|10.2
04|00257|01:21.4|02:38.2|126.9|19.1|137.3|142.0|09.9
05|01981|10:16.7|02:35.7|131.3|19.3|138.1|148.0|10.0
06|01860|09:31.6|02:33.6|134.5|19.9|146.0|152.0|09.8
07|00452|02:22.3|02:37.3|124.9|20.3|141.8|146.0|09.4
08|01049|05:18.3|02:31.8|140.8|20.6|148.2|156.0|09.6
09|00933|04:52.4|02:36.7|132.3|20.7|141.8|151.0|09.2
10|00883|04:40.1|02:38.6|137.7|20.8|150.3|154.0|09.1

Saturday – 5/23 – 3 x 30’/2′ on slides

Down on the Cape. We drove down on Friday evening and lazed around Saturday morning. In the early afternoon, I headed down to the basement for some easy rowing. The goal was to do the full 90 minutes below a HR of 145. I needed to ease up on the pace a bit in the last 30 minutes to respect the cap. I also found it easier (and easier on my shoulder) to row at r20. With the higher rate, I tried to increase power just a few watts.

        Workout Summary - media/479e44f499-20200523-183516o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|22012|01:36:00.0|02:10.8|164.4|19.7|136.8|147.0|11.7
W-|21304|01:30:00.0|02:06.7|171.9|20.0|137.4|147.0|11.8
R-|00712|00:06:00.0|04:12.7|052.8|14.3|127.8|147.0|08.7
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|07126|30:00.0|02:06.3|173.3|20.1|129.1|137.0|11.8
01|07102|30:00.0|02:06.7|172.0|20.0|139.4|145.0|11.8
02|07076|30:00.0|02:07.2|170.3|20.0|143.7|147.0|11.8

Sunday – 5/24 – Run to Bob’s Sub and Cone

Still down on the cape. The weather was beautiful, but cool. Good for running. I stuck to the roads today, but running here just feels harder. Maybe it’s the little but steep ups and downs. But it was a nice run.

After I got home, I had showered and I was just looking out the window when I saw a young fox, just napping at the end of our walkway. I must have disturbed him when I snapped his picture through the screen.

Septum Mirabilis

September 22, 20191 Comment

Since last Saturday, I rowed my single 6 days in a row! It’s a miracle. I think the first time all season.

Sunday – Sept 15 – 16km on the Lower Charles

I met my friends from Worcester at the public docks at CRI in Brighton. I brought my single. They brought a single, double, quad and believe it or not a triple. Our club bought a couple of lightly used Swift Triples. These boats are going to be great. Having the option of using a triple when we have an odd number of rowers, or if we want to balance lineups will be awesome.

We launched around 7:30. The goal was to scout the river for the people that we going to do the CRI Fall Classic the following weekend. My goal was to have some fun and maybe do a threshold piece.

I succeeded at having fun, but by the time, I tried to settle in for a 5k threshold piece, I was already pretty tired and gave it up halfway through.

We made our way down river, and ultimately got to the beginning of the powerhouse stretch. I asked the other boats if they wanted to do a race pace 1K, since this is the best place to do it. They acquiesced and off we went. I felt pretty good for the first 500 or so, but I rapidly ran out of oomph.

We continued down to the basin, and waited for everyone to regroup. From there, we headed upriver to the area where they marshall the start of the CRI Fall Classic. We regrouped again and then we took off. they continued to just scout the course, but I wanted to do my threshold piece, so I got pretty far ahead of the group. I made it around 2500 meters, then the combination of river traffic, a bit of headwind and lack of training got to me and I pulled up instead of trying to pass a big group of boats as the river was narrowing. I put on a few bursts of speed the rest of the way, but I was really tired out.

        Workout Summary - media/20190915-1631070o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15880|02:00:44.3|03:48.1|107.2|21.8|137.1|178.0|06.0
W-|10841|00:53:27.1|02:27.9|148.1|23.0|153.6|178.0|08.9
R-|05056|01:07:18.7|06:39.4|074.7|20.9|123.9|178.0|02.4
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00403|02:04.8|02:34.9|139.7|19.1|134.3|140.0|10.1
02|00541|02:39.8|02:27.8|137.1|20.6|140.1|147.0|09.9
03|00578|02:57.5|02:33.5|138.1|19.6|141.9|147.0|10.0
04|00205|01:03.4|02:34.4|106.2|19.9|137.7|142.0|09.8
05|00206|01:02.6|02:32.2|143.7|20.2|139.7|144.0|09.8
06|00182|00:56.4|02:34.5|111.6|19.1|139.9|143.0|10.2
07|00576|02:49.0|02:26.7|160.0|22.3|155.9|162.0|09.2
08|00742|03:46.4|02:32.6|126.2|20.1|143.2|150.0|09.8
09|00876|03:46.4|02:09.2|209.0|27.6|164.6|176.0|08.4 - most of a 1k
10|00632|03:07.9|02:28.7|126.3|21.4|150.7|157.0|09.4
11|00695|03:34.6|02:34.3|152.1|22.6|144.6|154.0|08.6
12|00316|01:38.2|02:35.2|142.7|21.4|153.0|156.0|09.1
13|00398|02:04.9|02:37.1|121.7|20.2|141.2|147.0|09.5
14|00604|03:03.4|02:31.9|127.5|21.2|150.7|157.0|09.3
15|02561|12:10.2|02:22.5|164.9|26.1|167.9|178.0|08.1 -- a bit of hard rowing.
16|00462|02:21.7|02:33.5|125.7|24.6|164.6|169.0|08.0
17|00241|01:10.3|02:25.9|182.3|27.3|170.4|174.0|07.5
18|00409|02:04.4|02:32.2|141.5|24.0|160.3|167.0|08.2
19|00214|01:05.2|02:32.1|133.0|23.9|144.3|155.0|08.3

An incredibly enjoyable outing.

Monday – 16 Sept – Drills on the 5s

After Sunday’s exertions, I took it easy on Monday.

So, I did a technical session, with 4 minutes of steady state and 1 minute of these drills.

open hands on recovery
half slide
delayed feather
square blades
pause at body over

By the way, the weather was perfect!

Tuesday – 17 Sept – 4 x 2k/4′

Another perfect morning. A scary workout. I decided to go easy on myself and rate limit it. r22, r24, r26, r26.

It was a great workout. I felt good throughout.

The summary shows where I am. Now that my impeller is calibrated. When I was in good racing shape, I was knocking these out around 2:15 or faster. It is what it is.

        Workout Summary - media/20190917-1607180o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11117|01:05:23.0|02:56.4|127.2|22.6|145.5|176.0|07.5
W-|07957|00:36:49.3|02:18.8|173.5|24.6|160.3|176.0|08.8
R-|03166|00:28:33.9|04:30.7|067.6|20.0|126.4|176.0|07.3
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00118|00:35.0|02:27.7|143.5|20.6|129.2|132.0|09.9
02|01952|09:06.7|02:20.1|165.8|22.5|152.1|165.0|09.5
03|01989|09:07.0|02:17.5|178.1|24.4|161.9|174.0|08.9
04|01923|08:50.5|02:18.0|178.1|25.9|164.6|176.0|08.4
05|01975|09:10.1|02:19.3|174.3|25.9|164.8|176.0|08.3

Wednesday – 18 Sept – Steady State

Working on piling up the meters and rowing clean. Did the session with Humon to keep me honest about intensity, Halfway through, I decided to pop up to r22 and row lighter. It seemed to work quite well. I needed to cut it about 10 minutes short because I needed to get to work for an early meeting.

        Workout Summary - media/20190920-1546120o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11969|01:08:32.5|02:51.8|125.2|21.0|133.6|157.0|08.3
W-|10145|00:51:16.7|02:31.6|143.6|20.8|140.0|155.0|09.5
R-|01833|00:17:16.6|04:42.8|070.6|21.4|114.6|155.0|06.5
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00209|01:07.2|02:40.5|142.5|19.5|126.2|131.0|09.6
02|02722|14:16.9|02:37.4|141.3|19.7|137.5|148.0|09.7
03|02679|13:21.8|02:29.6|138.1|19.8|137.4|148.0|10.1
04|00589|03:04.4|02:36.5|131.6|22.3|136.4|144.0|08.6
05|01314|06:41.6|02:32.9|150.2|22.2|146.8|154.0|08.8
06|02005|09:46.0|02:26.2|149.3|21.5|145.9|155.0|09.6
07|00341|01:33.8|02:17.6|182.7|26.3|139.4|153.0|08.3 - nice ending
08|00286|01:25.0|02:28.7|132.2|22.6|135.2|143.0|08.9

Thursday – 19 Sept – 3′ on / 1′ off

Again using rate limiting to manage intensity. (22,24,26,28) The annoying thing is that I must have bumped the speedcoach I got my drink of water after the first set, because that’s where the data ends!

Here’s the heart rate from my apple watch

And here’s the view from Humon.

Another really good workout.

Friday – 20 Sept – Steady State

Just like wednesday. Using Humon to keep me honest and trying to get the best speed with the least effort. The key seems to be a nice, clean, early tap down.

That and maintaining good body posture through the leg drive. When I open up my back early, I work much harder and go slower.

      Workout Summary - media/20190920-1557290o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|13521|01:15:46.3|02:48.1|127.4|20.4|138.0|164.0|08.8
W-|11593|00:57:48.7|02:29.6|147.9|20.3|144.6|161.0|09.9
R-|01935|00:17:58.2|04:38.7|061.4|20.6|116.7|161.0|03.4
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00150|00:46.3|02:34.1|134.2|19.4|117.4|125.0|10.0
02|02746|13:45.0|02:30.2|144.0|19.6|138.1|148.0|10.2
03|02584|12:52.8|02:29.5|150.0|19.9|146.2|154.0|10.1
04|02698|13:25.5|02:29.3|146.0|20.1|147.3|155.0|10.0
05|02717|13:46.1|02:32.0|144.7|20.1|148.4|155.0|09.8
06|00358|01:35.0|02:12.8|211.5|27.7|146.9|161.0|08.2
07|00340|01:38.0|02:24.1|151.4|25.1|141.9|153.0|08.3

When I got back to the dock, I turned around and it was just so pretty that I had to take a picture.

I felt great, and headed off to work. In the evening, we drove down to the cape.

Saturday – 21 Sept – No Training

Our house has a huge deck surrounding 3 sides of the house. Today’s mission was cleaning it with the pressure washer so that I can seal it tomorrow. It took me 5 hours. The Apple watch tells me that it was about 15000 steps. I am tired and sunburnt, buy the deck looks fantastic!

Treading water (but no actual swimming)

September 14, 2019Leave a comment

Last post was on Sept 3rd, quite a while ago. That covered my row on Sept 2.

Tuesday – Sept 3 – Drills on the fives

Back in my single, back in Newton. Feeling a bit unfamiliar. Best way to cure that…Drills!

The plan is simple, row for 4 minutes and then do 1 minute of drills.

square blade
late feather
open palms on recovery
half slide rowing
pause at body over

It was a nice morning, and there some other boats out. Even if I’m not really prepping for an event, it’s still nice to be out and working on getting better.

        Workout Summary - media/20190904-1621000o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|13861|01:16:02.4|02:44.6|000.0|19.8|142.8|164.0|09.2
W-|08194|00:39:47.2|02:25.7|000.0|20.0|147.2|162.0|10.3
R-|05685|00:36:16.6|03:11.4|000.0|19.6|138.0|162.0|09.4
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00084|00:25.1|02:29.4|000.0|19.2|124.5|126.0|10.5
02|00318|01:31.2|02:23.2|000.0|19.0|135.2|141.0|11.0
03|00189|00:54.2|02:23.5|000.0|19.8|132.9|137.0|10.6
04|00850|04:03.6|02:23.2|000.0|19.6|146.0|153.0|10.7
05|00840|04:06.4|02:26.7|000.0|19.5|147.8|151.0|10.5
06|00341|01:38.0|02:23.7|000.0|19.5|149.5|153.0|10.7
07|00832|04:04.2|02:26.7|000.0|19.6|145.4|149.0|10.5
08|00735|03:37.2|02:27.7|000.0|19.5|149.0|153.0|10.4
09|00487|02:22.0|02:25.8|000.0|20.2|148.5|153.0|10.2
10|00237|01:10.9|02:29.8|000.0|19.4|141.8|147.0|10.3
11|00179|00:52.8|02:27.3|000.0|19.2|141.6|143.0|10.6
12|00535|02:37.2|02:26.8|000.0|19.8|150.6|155.0|10.3
13|00576|02:45.6|02:23.7|000.0|20.7|152.9|159.0|10.1
14|00736|03:34.7|02:25.9|000.0|20.1|148.8|156.0|10.2
15|00311|01:31.9|02:27.7|000.0|20.2|149.0|152.0|10.0
16|00343|01:40.6|02:26.8|000.0|20.3|156.2|157.0|10.1
17|00128|00:38.0|02:28.2|000.0|20.6|145.7|148.0|09.8
18|00072|00:22.6|02:36.7|000.0|21.2|131.3|133.0|09.0
19|00400|01:51.0|02:18.9|000.0|23.1|151.1|162.0|09.3

Wednesday – 4 Sept: 2′ on / 1′ off increasing rates

This was a hard and fun session. There was a reasonable headwind going upriver. I ran out of oomph in the last set, which I did the first three downriver and then turned to come back. I bailed on the r28 rep, and then basically did 1′ and 1′ off of r28 instead for a few reps, just to get a bit more time at rate.

       Workout Summary - media/20190904-1621460o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11736|01:07:54.1|02:53.6|112.8|22.1|144.4|179.0|07.8
W-|06742|00:30:02.8|02:13.7|174.3|23.9|153.6|178.0|09.5
R-|05008|00:37:52.6|03:46.9|064.0|20.7|137.1|178.0|07.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00112|00:33.0|02:27.7|128.7|19.8|127.0|129.0|10.3
02|00415|01:57.0|02:21.1|130.8|20.0|135.0|145.0|10.6
03|00430|01:57.0|02:16.0|165.5|22.4|139.2|152.0|09.8
04|00473|02:03.4|02:10.5|159.0|24.2|149.0|160.0|09.5
05|00477|02:02.5|02:08.3|182.3|26.0|155.0|166.0|09.0
06|00246|01:00.4|02:02.8|222.8|27.9|152.2|161.0|08.8
07|00411|01:55.7|02:20.7|151.6|20.2|142.1|159.0|10.6
08|00459|02:04.6|02:15.8|171.3|22.1|157.1|167.0|10.0
09|00441|01:57.9|02:13.7|201.0|23.8|160.6|172.0|09.4
10|00476|02:04.8|02:11.1|183.0|25.4|164.8|175.0|09.0
11|00456|01:55.9|02:07.2|217.0|28.0|168.8|178.0|08.4
12|00418|01:56.1|02:18.9|134.6|19.6|145.1|160.0|11.0
13|00447|02:00.2|02:14.4|164.5|21.5|155.3|166.0|10.4
14|00442|01:56.4|02:11.6|149.9|24.1|161.5|171.0|09.5
15|00433|01:56.0|02:13.9|210.9|26.4|164.9|176.0|08.5
16|00147|00:39.9|02:16.1|179.1|28.6|162.0|164.0|07.7
17|00226|01:01.1|02:15.1|192.7|27.5|154.8|167.0|08.1
18|00234|01:00.9|02:10.1|213.8|27.6|158.6|167.0|08.4

Thursday – Sept 5 – crappy static 10K

I had a conference call that went until after 10pm, so I slept in instead of getting up to row. Later in the day, I went to the gym for a quick session. I decided to do a threshold piece, and 10K has been giving me a lot of trouble lately. I might as well work on that. I set a target to just keep the pace under 2:00, and if you looked at the monitor picture, you’d conclude that it wasn’t so bad.

Sure, a little bobble in the middle, but no big deal. Here’s the summary plot though.

3 HD’s! I am in a tough place right now. My stroke power is great, but my aerobic capacity is not anywhere near it was. So I go too hard, under rate, and get discouraged. I also don’t have a hard training objective, or trackable plan so, it is easy to start playing mind games when it gets a little scary in the middle of a long row. Finally, ergs are boring. I think I have to do a better job at rowing to stroke rate and pace goals. I have to stop over cooking the beginnings of these rows.

Friday – Sept 6 – No training

I was working from home on Friday, so I didn’t go off to row in the morning. I planned to do an erg session, but I didn’t have a gap in my schedule to go do it.

Saturday – 7 Sept – Aborted 10K

We stayed in Hopkinton this weekend, and so I planned to do an erg session in the afternoon. I was so pissed off about the 10K row that I thought I would try again (today on slides).

I didn’t warm up on Thursday, so I did a nice 2K warmup.

Then I decided to be very careful and stick to the 2:00 pace. I made it less than 2k before I gave up. I was having some stomach issues and I really needed to stop the row.

That was massively depressing. I really seem to be struggling.

Sunday – 8 Sept – 3 x 30′ / 2′

I was feeling very spooked about how badly things had been going. I decided to step back and do a very consistent, low intensity session and go extra long.

It was a good call. I was relaxed, enjoyed some good podcasts, and felt much better afterwards.

        Workout Summary - media/20190908-2135590o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|21997|01:34:41.3|02:09.1|166.7|19.3|140.6|157.0|12.0
W-|20623|01:26:46.5|02:06.2|174.1|19.1|142.2|157.0|12.4
R-|01379|00:07:55.2|02:52.3|084.8|21.7|123.5|157.0|09.6
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|06551|27:36.3|02:06.4|173.4|19.2|133.5|144.0|12.4
02|07045|29:41.7|02:06.5|173.2|18.9|142.9|149.0|12.5
03|07028|29:28.5|02:05.8|175.8|19.3|149.6|157.0|12.4

Monday – 9 Sept – Steady state OTW with Humon

--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|13655|01:16:06.2|02:47.2|120.6|20.1|133.4|158.0|08.9
W-|11821|00:58:46.1|02:29.1|138.2|19.5|139.6|158.0|10.4
R-|01839|00:17:20.7|04:43.0|061.2|21.9|112.4|158.0|06.6
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00152|00:45.6|02:29.8|130.5|19.7|130.3|133.0|10.1
02|02793|14:09.2|02:32.0|129.3|17.9|135.9|141.0|11.0
03|02716|13:46.6|02:32.2|131.8|18.3|135.3|148.0|10.8
04|02721|13:22.5|02:27.5|144.3|20.5|143.4|158.0|09.9
05|02777|13:39.0|02:27.5|142.8|20.1|144.9|154.0|10.1
06|00290|01:19.2|02:16.6|172.4|25.7|141.7|153.0|08.5
07|00372|01:44.0|02:19.8|155.5|25.4|137.5|154.0|08.4

Paces are slower because I used the data from the 2′ on 1′ off workout to do an analysis comparing gps and impeller data for up river and down river segments. My calibration was off by about 3 seconds per 500m. Bummer. I’m slower than I thought I was. 😞

On the plus side, this session was just delightful from beginning to end. I rowed it with Humon and tried to dance on the edge between green and orange. I found that I am working a lot more efficiently at r20 than r18.

Tuesday – 10 Sept – No Training

I was out late because of a work celebration. One of my coworkers was celebrating their 40th work anniversary. So, I slept in on Tuesday morning. I intended to go to the gym, but too many interruptions and too much work to do.

Wednesday – 11 Sept – Steady State OTW with Humon

Same session as monday. tried to stick to r20. I decided to do some higher rate work in the warmup to see if it hurt or helped later on.

At the end of my warmup, as I approached the dam in Waltham, I passed a sculler going the other way. I’ve talked to him a number of times, a nice guy in his seventies. Anyway, I got to the end, turned my boat, had a drink and then set off after him. I knew it was just a steady state session, but the knowledge that there was a boat out there ahead of me was stuck in my head. I maintained my rate, but there might have been a little extra pressure in my stroke. I caught up with him as we went through the s-turn. He pushed a bit harder as I passed to mark time with me. He’s going to be in the HOCR in a couple weeks (lucky guy) and he’s out most morning now training.

After I finished that leg, I spun around and followed him into the cove, which is now “protected” by a set of booms. I had no trouble navigating the gap in the booms to get in the cove, and I had a nice chat with him as he docked. But when I went to leave the cove, there was a reasonably strong tail wind and I got pushed into the booms. It took me a lot of backing and forthing to extricate myself and at times I was really worried that I was going to end up going for a swim. I think I’ll avoid the cove until those booms are gone.

     Workout Summary - media/20190914-1451000o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|12637|01:17:24.7|03:03.8|111.0|21.5|136.9|172.0|07.6
W-|07963|00:39:33.5|02:29.0|148.4|21.4|147.6|169.0|09.5
R-|04688|00:37:52.4|04:02.4|071.9|21.6|125.8|169.0|06.5
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00217|01:03.5|02:26.3|130.4|19.9|121.7|136.0|10.3
02|00212|00:59.6|02:20.8|156.8|22.0|128.8|140.0|09.7
03|00219|01:01.2|02:19.7|171.4|23.5|131.0|141.0|09.1
04|00207|00:56.4|02:16.2|129.4|25.4|138.8|150.0|08.7
05|00204|00:51.1|02:05.4|222.4|28.2|144.1|157.0|08.5
06|00205|00:49.8|02:01.5|249.2|31.3|146.8|163.0|07.9
07|00201|00:46.2|01:54.8|277.3|34.9|154.5|169.0|07.5
08|00791|04:04.0|02:34.2|134.5|20.1|146.4|154.0|09.7
09|01195|06:11.6|02:35.5|142.5|20.3|158.9|166.0|09.5
10|00391|02:00.6|02:34.1|151.9|19.9|158.2|162.0|09.8
11|00084|00:26.4|02:36.2|153.0|22.5|127.7|131.0|08.5
12|01680|08:22.2|02:29.4|130.9|20.0|144.4|151.0|10.0
13|01434|07:29.5|02:36.8|136.8|20.4|149.6|155.0|09.4
14|00427|02:12.8|02:35.5|144.9|19.8|153.0|154.0|09.8
15|00339|01:35.6|02:20.9|179.1|25.0|146.0|161.0|08.5
16|00156|00:43.0|02:18.3|200.7|26.6|140.9|153.0|08.2

Thursday – 12 Sept – 3 x 20′ / 2′

Another late night. We had dinner with a customer, and we had meetings setup to start early Thursday morning. I decided to not row before the meeting so I could be on time and not sweaty when we got started. Later in the day, after the meeting was over, I went to the gym and did a steady state session. R19, 170w.

Weird misbehavior of the HR monitor at the start of the second piece.

Friday – 13 Sept – 10 x 3’/1′ Threshold

Another early meeting, so not enough time to row OTW. I only had time for an abbreviated session. I usually do 15×3′, but I cut back the number to fit the time and pushed a little harder. It was a good session. I was really happy with it.

Pretty remarkable smo2 swings…68% to 54%. I still don’t really understand what it means when the algorithm goes from red back to orange or green in the depths of a hard interval.

This was a very satisfying workout. I felt better all day afterwards.

Today: Steady state on the erg.

A week of mostly vacation

July 7, 2019Leave a comment

Friday – June 28 – On the cape – No Training

I arrived at Logan at about 7:30AM. I was in my car and on the way to the cape by 8:00AM. The traffic leaving the city was pretty heavy, but by the time I was down to Weymouth, things were moving better. I got to the house around 11, with donuts!

I had a couple of work calls and hung out. I was massively tired and didn’t feel like working out.

Saturday – June 29 – 3 x 20′ / 2′ (Humon)

Down on the cape, in the basement. Feeling tired from travel.

Humon kept me honest.

I saw that I was dipping into the orange with r20, 180 stuff, so I kept away from any higher power segments.

We headed out late to go home on Saturday night.

Sunday – June 30 – No training

I was feeling lazy, but I managed to head outside and do a few hours of yard work. After that, I wasn’t in the mood for any training.

Monday – July 1 – Steady State with a few higher rate bursts.

I’m not getting to do a lot of rowing in my single these days, so this session was a treat. I decided to do an extensive warmup, all the way to the dam at Waltham center. I did a Rojabo style warmup, with stroke sets of increasing intensity.

I’m thinking that a more intense warmup, even when doing an endurance session “opens up” the circulation in the muscles and raises the smO2.

This certainly seemed to be the case today.

After the warmup, I rowed, focusing on technique. If I dipped into orange, I would ease off the pressure and focus on really easing into the drive from the catch. At the end of the trip back up the river, I saw a guy I knew, so I did a quick segment at higher rate to go say hello. After a quick chat, I did another twenty strokes or so of harder rowing, and then after navigating a set of booms across the cove, I settled back into normal endurance rowing. Something I am noticing is that I am tending to overload at the start of these intervals, notice the sliver of red. I slowed down to fix that , and again focused on form. The rest of the row was unremarkable, but I did another couple of quicker bits right at the end.

It was a really nice session and I managed to find a bit of boat speed in some of the harder bursts.

        Workout Summary - media/20190701-1335500o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14790|01:23:57.4|02:50.3|119.5|20.2|136.1|167.0|08.7
W-|12254|00:59:17.2|02:25.1|135.8|20.1|140.6|165.0|10.4
R-|02546|00:24:41.3|04:50.9|080.2|20.4|125.2|165.0|03.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00324|01:37.2|02:29.8|135.0|17.8|127.1|135.0|11.2
02|00791|03:46.9|02:23.4|130.5|19.5|134.1|149.0|10.7
03|00853|04:01.0|02:21.2|145.9|22.1|146.7|157.0|09.6
04|00227|00:59.6|02:11.2|190.2|25.1|151.3|162.0|09.1 - 1' at r24
05|00314|01:23.4|02:12.7|182.1|24.2|142.3|164.0|09.3 - 30 strokes @ r24
06|00162|00:36.8|01:53.9|289.7|34.2|150.0|165.0|07.7 - 20 strokes @ max
07|02932|14:25.9|02:27.7|125.3|18.3|144.3|152.0|11.1 - back upriver
08|00165|00:41.7|02:06.1|216.3|27.3|140.2|151.0|08.7 - 20 strokes @ r27
09|00134|00:36.2|02:15.0|194.3|24.9|126.7|140.0|08.9 - 20 strokes @ r25
10|00136|00:37.0|02:15.9|185.6|26.0|114.8|128.0|08.5 - 20 strokes @ r26
11|02583|12:57.1|02:30.4|129.0|19.3|139.6|156.0|10.3 - back down river
12|01508|07:29.2|02:29.0|118.0|18.5|135.8|141.0|10.9 - back upriver
13|01484|07:18.0|02:27.6|124.2|20.0|142.6|154.0|10.2 - part 2
14|00234|00:55.6|01:58.6|241.4|30.3|147.4|163.0|08.4 - cut to turn
15|00406|01:51.6|02:17.6|140.5|24.7|142.6|160.0|08.8 - across lagoon

Tuesday – July 2 – 12 x 3’/1′

I got up early, mainly because I couldn’t sleep. It seems like trips to Asia mess me up for about a week. We were going to be heading down to the cape later in the day, and I wanted to get a session in. I also wanted to get back to some semblance of a training plan, so I decided to make this session a bit more intense.

I used to do this session as 15×3’/1′ Today, since I was pressed for time, I decided to take the first few intervals as warmup.

I wore the Humon, to see what these kind of intervals look like from an smO2 perspective.

So, they look kinda cool! You can see the quick trip into the red in each interval. You can also see the recovery. I was generally flipping from blue to green right when I was starting the next interval. You can also see the effect of cumulative fatigue in the lower peak smO2 as I get deeper into the session. I also slowed down. I was really having issues. I trust the power in the summary more than the pace.

        Workout Summary - media/20190702-1250500o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14244|01:04:09.9|02:15.1|168.3|23.4|150.5|178.0|09.5
W-|09284|00:35:53.1|01:56.0|228.5|24.8|156.3|178.0|10.4
R-|04970|00:27:10.0|02:44.0|091.9|21.6|142.6|178.0|11.4
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00791|03:00.0|01:53.8|237.1|25.1|143.2|156.0|10.5
02|00797|03:00.0|01:52.9|240.2|25.1|148.1|160.0|10.6
03|00762|02:53.1|01:53.5|236.7|24.6|148.8|162.0|10.8
04|00794|03:00.0|01:53.4|237.6|24.6|153.8|165.0|10.7
05|00791|03:00.0|01:53.8|238.9|25.3|157.2|168.0|10.4
06|00778|03:00.0|01:55.7|233.0|24.7|157.1|170.0|10.5
07|00768|03:00.0|01:57.2|229.7|25.4|159.3|171.0|10.1
08|00754|03:00.0|01:59.4|217.4|24.6|158.7|170.0|10.2
09|00762|03:00.0|01:58.0|213.9|23.5|159.5|171.0|10.8
10|00766|03:00.0|01:57.5|219.1|24.8|162.2|172.0|10.3
11|00756|03:00.0|01:59.1|213.6|24.8|163.0|172.0|10.2
12|00765|03:00.0|01:57.6|225.0|24.8|164.7|178.0|10.3

I guess that’s why I need a training plan.

Wednesday – July 3 – 16km Coastal

A beautiful, sunny day. Not a lot of wind. A great day for a nice long row. I launched from the beach by Loagy Bay, and headed out to the red buoy. For a change, I decided to row down south a bit along the shore of Lt Island. There are a couple of big rock that are visible almost until high tide, and I could see them clearly, so I rowed down to the big rock to the south of the island. Then I doubled back and rowed on the inside of the other big rock back to the red buoy. Then I set a course for the harbor, basically due north. I threaded my way into the inner harbor and dodged a few power boats. On the way back to the beach, I hugged the shore of Indian Head, mainly to avoid the wakes from the boats in the channel out of the harbor.

It was a nice, low intensity session. No Humon today, but I kept the HR below 150. The pace varied all over the place because of tide (it was coming in) and breeze.

Thursday – 4 July – 4 x 10′ hard rate ladders

In the morning, I went for a low tide walk. I love doing this. I walked a little more than 3 km, and explored the sand flats going south from our house.

I didn’t feel ready to take on full power long intervals, especially in coastal conditions. It was another beautiful sunny day. A bit more wind, and with the holiday, every power boat was on the water and throwing up wakes. To make the session a bit more tolerable, I decided to make them rate ladders.

4′ @ r24
3′ @ r26
2′ @ r28
1′ @ r30

Why I do these intervals in the 1x, I usually aim between 26 and 28. But I usually am doing a 4 x 2K which is a lot closer to 9 minutes. I also have a lot less navigating to do and it’s a lot less choppy.

I rowed out to the red buoy as my warmup. I threw in a couple of hard 20s to get used to the idea. Then I had a drink and got ready. When I was within a minute of starting, I was swamped by a wake, so a quick flip of the autobailer was needed. Then I was off and rowing.

I focused on keeping my stroke light and hitting the rate. This was made challenging by the fact that I was doing the piece close to and parallel to the main channel. Someboats were nice to me and either steered wide, or slowed down a bit to minimize the wake. Others did neither of those things and I ended up with a cockpit full of water. As I got to the r28 and r30 sections, the boat traffic became a bit thicker and the wakes were pretty constant.

The second interval, I decided to row away from the channel. This was a good idea, but didn’t help entirely. I made it through 3 minutes of the first 4′ section and was totally swamped by a huge wake. I dropped a couple strokes and opened the bailer. I rowed the rest of the piece with the bailer open, which slowed me down a bit and made the boat feel a bit heavier, but it was better than sliding the seat through water, since I was flooded all the way to cover the seat deck.

I rowed the rest continuing toward Loagy Bay, and turned the boat in time to start the third interval. I did the usual bargaining with myself, that if I did a good job with this one, I’d stop the workout there. It was a fine interval. Less wakes, but I got swamped again near the end of the r26 section. I flipped the bailer on again and finished it out.

I felt a bit better than I feared I would, so I decided to do the last interval. I needed to get back to the beach anyway. This one went right to plan. No interruptions, no swampings, and no stops for the bailer. I just didn;t have much power left in my legs.

Good workout.

Tough to get a lot of metrics on this one because of the wind, current and waves, but the HR shows pretty consistent effort.

Friday – 5 July – 3 x 20’/2′ on slides

Another walk in the morning. This time going to the north side of the island. This time, about 4km.

Then in the afternoon, my wife and I kayaked around the island. This was huge fun, we saw a bunch of cool birds. We stopped at the bridge and I jumped off into the water. This activity is a summer tradition, as illustrated on the webpage for our residents association.

after that, we paddled back along the south edge of the island, this was a bit of slog into the freshening breeze. Fantastic.

Later in the afternoon, the wind had freshened some more, and I didn’t feel adventurous, so I went and did a 3×20 endurance session in the basement.

The first twenty minutes, I did in warmup format. Again trying to maximize smO2. I was pretty tired after the long walk and kayak adventure. It was interesting watching it climb even through the second 20 minute piece. Heart rate was quite low, but I felt taxed throughout.

Saturday – 6 July – 10K threshold

Another beautiful morning, another walk on the sand flats. I hit it right at low tide and it was a particularly low tide today, so I was able to walk all the way out to the big rock that I rowed around on Thursday.

From out there, the island looks very small.

I was able to walk around both of the rocks that I had rowed around on Thursday.

I lazed around for most of the day, and finally got up the oomph to go erg in the late afternoon. I definitely was not feeling too sharp, and I had a limited time window. I dove into a hard 10K without any real warmup and boy did I struggle at the start. I was having trouble getting into any rhythm and my breathing was all messed up. I stopped a couple times in the first 500m, and then rowed well below target power through 1000m. Then I tried to ramp up the power to target and bailed out again. I sat there for a few seconds and then I just started paddling.

My smO2 started rising. And I started to feel a lot better. I started pulling 200W and it was OK. Then as I went along, I pushed a little harder, and then a bit more. When I first targeted 200W, my projected finish was around 40:30. Then I pulled it down to 40:20. With 3000m to go, I pushed a bit more and saw a projected finish hovering around 40:00. With 1000m to go, I rated up and pushed the power up to around 230W which enabled me to finish in about 39:50.

        Workout Summary - media/20190706-2055480o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|09997|00:39:48.7|01:59.5|213.2|24.9|153.2|174.0|10.1
W-|10000|00:39:49.2|01:59.5|213.2|24.9|153.2|174.0|10.1
R-|00000|00:00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|174.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01000|04:15.1|02:07.5|196.7|23.5|123.2|140.0|10.0
01|00973|04:12.9|02:09.9|196.5|24.1|138.4|146.0|09.6
02|01027|04:05.1|01:59.4|206.0|24.3|149.2|151.0|10.3
03|01000|03:57.0|01:58.5|210.5|24.7|152.3|154.0|10.3
04|01000|03:55.8|01:57.9|213.5|24.9|154.1|156.0|10.2
05|01000|03:55.4|01:57.7|214.5|25.0|157.7|159.0|10.2
06|00964|03:46.8|01:57.6|215.1|25.0|159.8|162.0|10.2
07|01036|04:01.9|01:56.8|220.0|25.2|163.4|165.0|10.2
08|00967|03:45.8|01:56.8|220.2|25.4|166.5|168.0|10.1
09|01033|03:53.5|01:53.0|242.9|27.3|172.0|174.0|09.7

The smO2 shows the struggle with lack of a warmup. Once I was past the 10 minute mark and my muscles were actually working well, things were pretty good.

Good lesson to learn about how a warmup affects things.

Today is our last day down on the cape. Hopefully I will get to do another coastal row. Then tomorrow I have an early flight out to San Francisco for a big conference.

The past three weeks

May 27, 2019May 27, 2019Leave a comment

Last post on May 7th. I had just had a very good 4 x 2k session on the water.

Wednesday – May 8th – 30 min L4

I had a busy day ahead of me and in the morning, when I got to work, I ended up getting distracted with emails. I finally looked up and I only had about 45 minutes until my first meeting. I zipped down to the gym and did a quick 30 minute L4.

5 x 6′, where each 6′ was 3′ @ r18, 2′ @ r20, 1′ @ r22

       Workout Summary - media/577a150d295c4f34_38173149.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07313|30:00.0|02:03.1|187.8|19.0|150.0|000.0|12.5
W-|07313|30:00.0|02:03.1|187.8|19.0|150.0|000.0|12.5
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|000.0|00.0

Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01453|06:00.0|02:03.9|184.1|20.0|000.0|0.0|00.0
01|01465|06:00.0|02:02.9|188.7|19.0|000.0|0.0|00.0
02|01465|06:00.0|02:02.9|188.7|19.0|000.0|0.0|00.0
03|01462|06:00.0|02:03.1|187.5|19.0|000.0|0.0|00.0
04|01468|06:00.0|02:02.6|189.9|19.0|000.0|0.0|00.0

I was aiming at a slightly lighter stroke, so I made my targets

r18 – 170W
r20 – 190W
r22 – 210W

Thursday – May 9 – 8 x 2′ / 2′ L1 – On the Water

Back in Newton. I was not trying to set any records and I haven’t done much work at higher stroke rates. I did 4 intervals going down stream, then 4 coming back up. Each set, I aimed at r24, r26, r28, r30. The summary shows that I wasn’t all that great at hitting the stroke rates.

       Workout Summary - media/20190510-1638000o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|08168|45:50.0|02:48.4|127.6|22.2|144.2|172.0|08.0
W-|03727|15:40.0|02:06.2|215.1|27.4|153.1|172.0|08.7
R-|04448|30:11.0|03:23.6|082.1|19.6|139.6|172.0|07.4
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00465|02:02.4|02:11.6|185.9|24.0|149.1|158.0|09.5
02|00498|02:07.6|02:08.1|207.2|26.3|151.0|164.0|08.9
03|00422|01:43.2|02:02.2|245.8|29.1|153.0|168.0|08.4
04|00457|01:50.4|02:00.7|254.9|30.3|153.6|170.0|08.2
05|00451|01:55.7|02:08.2|193.1|25.4|147.8|163.0|09.2
06|00485|02:04.5|02:08.3|192.5|27.1|154.5|168.0|08.6
07|00467|01:57.3|02:05.5|223.7|29.1|158.3|169.0|08.2
08|00481|01:59.4|02:04.2|226.6|28.6|157.8|172.0|08.4

Good workout though.

Friday – May 10 – No Training

Don’t remember why.

Saturday – May 11 – Threshold 10K (on slides)

Down on the cape. Started slow, and then pushed harder. Nice to get through one without a bobble in the middle.

Sunday – May 12 – 3 x 20′ / 2′ L4

Down on the cape. On Slides

Nice and easy.

Monday – May 12 – 5 x 1500 L2

At work. Having all kinds of issues. The workout ended up in 3 different files. While doing the first interval, I discovered that I needed to go to the bathroom. It was remarkably unpleasant getting through the last 300m or so. I rushed off, too care of business, and then decided to try “rerow”, which I thought would just bring up a normal distance interval session. I was wrong. Since I had done one rep the first time, that what it did for the rerow. So, I needed to reprogram the P5 for the last 3 intervals. When I glued them together, the start time for the set of three intervals looks wrong. I didn’t wait 20 minutes between the 2nd and 3rd interval. I did however, you out too aggressively in the thrid interval and I needed to dial it back, which I did.

Tuesday – May 14 – No training

I was hoping for a quick row in the middle of the day, but work got in the way.

Wednesday – May 15 – Alternating 2′ SBR or Slow roll ups / 2′ Steady State

Back in my single in Newton. I would 2 minutes of square blades, then 2 minutes of steady state, then 2′ of slow roll ups, then 2′ of steady state. And then repeat.

Felt like a very productive session. Good to work on balance, and oar control.

Thursday – May 16 – OTW Steady State

Trying to continue to work on technique. Needed to keep it to an hour to get to work in time for my first meeting.

        Workout Summary - media/20190516-1555460o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10608|00:56:16.1|02:39.1|133.5|19.8|146.8|158.0|09.5
W-|09928|00:49:34.5|02:29.8|141.0|19.9|149.1|158.0|10.1
R-|00685|00:-197:29.8|-143:-24.7|71028479286579533185024.0|41576773771231976488960.0|310807103207674254196736.0|158.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|03808|18:16.0|02:23.9|146.1|19.6|146.9|158.0|10.6
02|02834|14:36.6|02:34.7|138.0|19.4|151.2|156.0|10.0
03|01122|05:30.6|02:27.3|139.0|19.3|145.6|152.0|10.6
04|01317|06:42.9|02:32.9|141.3|21.4|150.2|156.0|09.2
05|00356|01:51.0|02:36.1|145.5|21.0|155.0|157.0|09.1
06|00491|02:37.4|02:40.3|122.8|21.5|152.8|156.0|08.7

Friday – May 17 – No Training

I was up until very late on Thursday night on conference calls. My company is impacted by some of the new developments in the trade dispute between the US and China. We were on the phone with our team there working out plans to deal with it. I slept in a bit on Friday morning.

Saturday – May 18 – Mulching

5 hours and 47 minutes of mulching. The process works like this.

Weed the bed, shovel out and excess soil along the edging
load wheelbarrow with mulch
dump and spread
repeat 2-3 until bed is finished
move to next bed, repeat 1-4

This requires about 5 cubic yards of mulch and about 8 hours of work.

On Saturday, I set out to get as much done as I could. It turns out to be good endurance exercise. Sub-UT2, but still quite taxing after you do it for hours.

The span from 2:10 to 3:20, I was working but the HR sensor in the watch was dirty from the mulch. You can tell that I was motivated to get done in the last hour or so. You can also see a clear 3-4 minute pattern for each load of mulch in that last section.

Sunday – May 19 – More Mulching, then an aborted L4.

Just finishing it off, less than 2 hours.

Then later in the afternoon, I thought I should do an erg session. I was wrong. I got 20 minutes in and decided to pack it in. I was sore and tired.

Monday – May 20 – 2 x 20′ / 2′ L4

At work. I was up until 2am on the phone with China. I slept in and then planned to go to the gym at lunch. I was pressed for time, so I only did a 4 minute session. HR was quite high. I think work stress is getting to me.

Tuesday – May 21 – Drills on the fives

A glorious day on the water. Continuing to work on technique. Today, I was doing 4 minutes of steady state, then a minute of drills. They were

pause at body over
open hands on recovery
half slide
square blades
slow roll ups

Wednesday – May 22 – No Training

I was up at 4:15 to head to the airport. I flew out to San Jose for an afternoon meeting and dinner. Then I caught the red eye home.

Thursday – May 23 – 40′ L4

I came home after the red eye and slept from about 8 to 10am. Then I was on calls just about the rest of the day. Around 5pm, I decided to do a quick session. I decided to just do a 40′ L4 without the break in the middle. It felt good.

Friday – May 24 – 5 x 4′ / 4′ L1(ish)

I’ve been thinking about coming up with a training plan that fits my current situation a bit better. With the situation in China and various other things going on, I am finding it challenging to put as much time into training. I am also spending more time on the erg this season (compared to water time) than in prior seasons. I attribute this to the time constraints, plus the fact that I am now equipped with slides at home instead of the dynamic, which I hated using enough to avoid sessions.

Anyway, I am toying with a 40 minute version of the WP. Basically, try to fit all the different types of sessions into a 40 minute block. Keep it time based.

So, today, I was aiming for a session that was a little more aerobic than the 4x1k, so I decided to slice the session up into 5 – 4 minute intervals with 4 minutes of rest. I would aim at holding splits below 1:50.

        Workout Summary - media/20190524-2140480o.csv
--|Total|-Total----|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time-----|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|09675|00:39:26.8|02:02.3|198.1|23.9|152.5|183.0|10.3
W-|05483|00:19:51.1|01:48.6|275.5|27.6|163.5|183.0|10.0
R-|04196|00:19:36.3|02:20.2|119.7|20.1|141.3|183.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01103|04:01.2|01:49.3|269.5|26.2|155.4|167.0|10.5
02|01111|04:03.3|01:49.5|273.2|26.7|160.9|174.0|10.2
03|01108|03:59.5|01:48.1|279.8|28.2|165.4|178.0|09.8
04|01056|03:49.2|01:48.6|273.8|28.0|166.0|180.0|09.9
05|01106|03:58.0|01:47.7|281.4|29.1|170.3|183.0|09.6

That was great! Good choice on pacing. I arranged it so I did the rest first, which was essentially a quick warmup. Then the interval. Easy programming a good change.

Saturday – May 25 – 40′ L4

Just like Thursday. A bit better HR response.

Sunday – May 26 – Caprentry plus 8 x 1’30″/3’30” L1

Down on the cape. Around noon, I set to work on replacing the stairs down to the water from our house on Cape Cod. This winter (like last winter), there was pack ice that ripped the stairs away. It ended up looking like this.

I started 2 weekends ago and managed to replace the frame for the bottom platform. This weekend, I wanted to get that planked and get the stairs back to the beach.

The challenging part of this was anchoring the stairs at the bottom. There used to be a pair of angle irons that I could bolt to, but the were destroyed last winter. I decided to put in a bottom landing, anchored to the bank using snow fencing posts. Snow fencing is put up on posts that you can drive into sand. The posts are about 8 feet long, and I have a heavy tool that slips over the top of the post, and can be lifted and dropped to drive the post down through sand. It looks like this.

So, I would drive 4 posts around a piece of 2×8 that would act as the landing for the stairs. I would drive them about 5 feet into the sand, which I figured would at least hold the stairs for the season. The finished product looked like this.

Hard to believe each of those posts goes down 5 feet! Driving the posts was hard! Each one took about 200 blows, which I did in sets of 20. My sons came and helped for the last 2, where we switched off to drive them in.

Once the base was in place, The rest was pretty easy, but it took about 3 hours.

Later in the evening, I decided to do an erg session.

Another adaptation of an L1. This one aiming to be slightly more intense than a 8 x 500 by shortening the work period.

Lots of missing strokes. Which messed up the summary. But the workout was great. Very challenging at the end. By using the flex plot and suppressing all strokes below 24 spm and all strokes with a WpS below 200, I could get an idea of the interval power. Here is is shown as an avg of 320. (1:43 pace)

I was happy with this session, especially since my upper body had gotten a good workout from the post driving.

Today, we are back in Hopkinton (It’s a three day weekend). I will do a 40 minute L4 later.

The Canals of Milan

April 14, 2019Leave a comment

Tough week to maintain any training momentum.

Tuesday – 4/9 – 8km run

I was staying Cernusco, a suburb of Milan. On Monday night, I got back to my room around 10pm, and set an alarm for 5:30. I planned to go to the gym, but discovered it opened at 7, too late for me since I had to be in the office at 8am.

I decided to go for a run, without a lot of research about a route. I knew that there was a canal nearby to run along, but I wasn’t sure how to get to it.

My hotel was right near the “C” of “Cernusco”. So first, ran north and saw that that I was crossing over the canal, but I couldn’t see a path from the overpass down to canal level, so I continued over, then ran around the outside of a park. I intended to go into the park, but that seemed to be locked up for the night as well (it was still dark). I turned back south and ran back over the canal, and saw that there were pedestrian stairs down to a train station. I jogged down the stairs, and along the train tracks to the station. I had hoped to use the pedestrian bridge over the tracks to get the the canal side, but there were turnstiles going into the station. I kept running along, and then found an overpass. That’s the curved path going to the north. That went right to the side of the canal, and I was home free.

I was running slowly, really slowly, like 10-11 minute mile pace. But I was really enjoying myself. Running along the canal was wonderful. It was cool, the sun was starting to come up. There were dog walkers and other runners out. Along the canal were farms, and old houses, and across the canal a huge classic building. I later found out it was the hospital. A very classy looking hospital.

I managed to run slowly enough that I was having fun. I got to a park and across the canal was a sports complex. Then, I saw the coolest thing. A stretch of the canal had been outfitted with Olympic white water kayak gates. They must have the ability to increase the flow in the canal, because there was no impressive whitewater, just the gates.

A little past this, I noticed the time. I’d been going for a bit more than 30 minutes. I noticed my shoe was untied, so I stopped, retied it and turned around to go home.

The run home was just as nice. I ran all the way back to the same overpass, and then continued south on the same road to the main route that would take me back to my hotel. I was starting to get pretty tired by this point, and I didn’t like running along the morning rush hour, but when I finally got back to my hotel, I was just delighted. I ran for nearly an hour. The longest run I’ve done in years and it felt really good. Almost all of it was good aerobic HR, then at the end, I picked up a bit.

I need to run more often.

Then I had some less than happy meetings with our customer, some meetings back at our office, and then we went into Milan for dinner, along the canals.

I didn’t even know that Milan had canals! Apparently they were covered over in the late 19th century and then uncovered in the late 20th century to beautify the city.

A little background on Milan’s canals

Wednesday – 4/10 – No Training

Up at 5:30am, cab to the airport at 6:15. Flight from Milan to Frankfurt. Then Frankfurt to Boston. Arrived around 4pm.

Thursday – 4/11 – No Training

I was bone tired by the time I got to bed on Wednesday night. I had a red eye flight on Sunday night, jet lag sleep issues on Monday night and a late bedtime and early start on Wednesday. I figure I got 12 hours of sleep over the 3 nights. So, I slept in instead of getting up to train.

Friday – 4/12 – No Training

I had a doctors appt on Friday morning. So, no time to train

Saturday – 4/13 – 3 x 20’/2′

Finally, I had a chance to train! Back to basics. I felt terrible. High heart rate. No rhythm. But it felt great to work up a sweat. I felt like a new person after I was done.

Compare this to the same thing a couple weeks ago. Except that session was a more challenging stroke count!

Amazing how quickly I can lose fitness!

Sunday – 4/14 – 15km OTW 1x

The weather forecast was for partly sunny skies, no wind and temps in the high 50s. I was very excited to get back on the water. I headed down to Newton and launched around 8am.

Since I’ve only been on the water twice so far this season, and hadn’t been out since the 28th of March, I felt that the right thing to do today was to just do some r18 steady state rowing and maybe try to focus on technique. The key things I wanted to work on were:

draw my hands in higher on my chest at the release to try to stop washing out.
work on getting my blades farther off the water on recovery
Work on hinging at my hips and maintaining body position forward during the leg drive.
Work on keeping my knees close to each other at the catch. I think letting my legs splay out at the catch is the primary thing that is irritating my SI joint issues.

So it was a lot to think about and my success level was mixed at best. But boy was it awesome to be out on the water!

I started off and headed up river to go take a peek at the Lasalle Boathouse. Looked the same as always. Then I spun around and headed down river, all the way to the dam. Then back upriver to turn in the cove. Back down to the dam again. By then I had been going for about 70 minutes and I was pretty tired. I decided to alternate 40 strokes of drills and 40 strokes of steady state for the trip back to the dock. I did the following drills

square blades
pause at arms away (This was good practice to work on the whole body position thing
half slide
slow roll up

While I was on the way back down river, my phone died. Not sure why it tapped out the battery so quickly this morning, but once it was kaput, I had didn’t have a stroke rate. (I used the speedcoach for pace, HR, Power and Eff Length. I use RIM for boat acceleration curves and SPM). I kind of enjoyed not having the SPM for a while.

       Workout Summary - media/20190414-1705430o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15408|86:19.0|02:48.1|116.5|18.5|144.1|162.0|09.6
W-|12506|63:49.0|02:33.1|128.1|18.2|148.4|162.0|10.8
R-|02917|22:31.0|03:51.7|083.4|19.3|132.1|162.0|05.4
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00334|01:51.6|02:46.9|106.7|18.7|128.7|136.0|09.6
02|00927|04:21.4|02:21.0|143.9|18.8|137.9|147.0|11.3
03|00472|02:18.4|02:26.5|121.6|18.2|145.8|149.0|11.3
04|00152|00:46.9|02:34.6|110.2|17.8|132.0|135.0|10.9
05|02646|12:55.0|02:26.4|131.3|17.8|149.8|158.0|11.5
06|02424|13:03.7|02:41.7|123.4|17.3|150.4|156.0|10.7
07|00260|01:19.8|02:33.5|139.5|18.0|150.3|154.0|10.9
08|02775|13:56.1|02:30.6|128.1|17.8|151.4|159.0|11.2
09|00450|02:25.4|02:41.4|122.7|18.5|142.7|152.0|10.0
10|00435|02:13.4|02:33.3|155.6|19.4|151.9|159.0|10.1
11|00815|04:16.6|02:37.5|127.3|19.6|156.3|162.0|09.7
12|00162|00:51.9|02:40.5|095.0|19.6|144.8|150.0|09.5
13|00272|01:28.8|02:43.2|127.3|19.6|141.8|151.0|09.4
14|00381|02:00.4|02:37.9|124.5|22.4|147.1|156.0|08.5

Now my hands are pretty torn up, but I feel great!

3/24 – 3/28: Back on the Water!

March 28, 2019Leave a comment

Sunday – 3/24 – 3 x 20′ / 2′

On slides, in my basement. It felt so easy that I ramped up the stroke counts in each section. Looks like something is behaving badly between PM5 and painsled, there a lot of dropped strokes.

But look at nice low heart rate!

Monday – 3/25 – On the water! Just rowing

I rowed down to the dam, and then turned around and did the impeller cal so I could switch over the speedcoach to use that. (The gps data seemed to go a little nutty during that)

Then I rowed back and went way up into the cove. When I turned around, I saw a guy I know in his back yard chasing away the geese with a homemade slingshot! I stopped for a chat. He keeps a bunch of shells in his back yard and last fall, a tree destroyed 3 of them. Then I rowed about halfway back to the dam. When I came out of the s-turn, I ran into the headwind. It wasn’t so bad, but it seemed like a lot of work at the time, so I turned around a rowed home.

As I expected my form was sloppy and my pace was slow, but I was so happy to be back on the water.

Tuesday – 3/26 – The Murray Sprint workout

I don’t know if anyone is following Eric Murray on YouTube, but I have to say it’s pretty amazing. He is posting a new workout almost every day and the videos are great! He describes the workout and then he does the full session on camera. How often do you get to see a former gold medalist training in his sport! It’s awesome to see him laying down these incredible splits. It’s also fantastic to see him in a pretty ruined state at the end of session. This workout is a great example of both. It’s a sprinting workout and if I cued it right, you should be right at the end of the last 2 minute race pace interval. He put a fair amount of work into it!

I was pressed for time on Tuesday, but I wanted to get a hard session in. I decided to give his workout a try. The workout as designed was

1′ @ 30 / 1′ rest
2′ @ 30 / 2′ rest
1′ @ 32 / 1′ rest
2′ @ 32 / 2′ rest
1′ @ 34 / 1′ rest
2′ @ 34 / 2′ rest
1′ @ 36 / 1′ rest
2′ @ 36 / 2′ rest

As a feeble old master rower, I scaled back the rate to 32 to match my most likely 2k race rate for the last segments.

I did a quick 2k warm up.

Then I started up with my 26 spm intervals. I settled on a pace of 1:46ish, then for each interval, I tried to pull down the pace by 2 seconds. I held on OK until the last interval, but I couldn’t hold the target 1:40 pace and needed to back off a smidge. I also wasn’t able to keep the rate up at 32. I kept falling back to 31 or even 30, just because I guess I haven’t practiced these rates much.

I was sweating for 30 minutes after I finished. This workout was hard!

Wednesday – 3/27 – 3 x 20’/2′

Done at work on a static erg.

Heart rate really high. really tired. I backed off to the easiest stroke counts and just piled up some slow mo meters.

Thursday – 3/28 – 4 x 2k / 5′ OTW!

It is still cold, about 28F when I launched this morning, but it was clear and sunny. There was just a little bit of wind and the water was nice a flat. I have decided to try to stick to a basic training plan on the water alternating hard and easy sessions and following the WP template for three types of hard workouts. Today, it was time for an L2 and the 4x2k is definitely the classic!

I also set myself up to use Quiske today. That was really interesting to look at when I was getting tired at the end of each interval and I would start going much deeper at the catch.

I rowed out to the little island at the start of the 2k stretch (with the s-turn in the middle). I marked on the map below with the green lines. And set out. I decided to start at 24 spm, since I’m rusty, and then let the rate rise if I felt inspired to do that later.

That was suitably hard work. Tomorrow morning I’m heading out to Lake Quinsigamond to show a high school coach how to get Quiske setup. Hopefully I can get in a row as well.

Quantified Rowing

Measure – Adjust – Improve

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