Weather: Basically like yesterday. Sunny, cool and blustery. Generally WNW, 5 mph with gusts to 15 mph.
Plan:
- Rojabo style warmup to the moody street dam
- Do as many starts as I can stand
- 15 strokes each start, 10 stroke paddle, then stop the boat, reset and do it again
- In each start work on:
- Get set comfortably at the catch.
- Do NOT go to full compression, stop when it feels like my heels are beginning to lift. The key is to be rock solid at the start of the first stroke.
- First stroke: Smooth, powerful acceleration, very early finish, get the blades way off the water, barely feather.
- Second Stroke: get back to 1/2 slide fast! get the blades in, keep it smooth, finish early, get the blades clear
- Third through fifth: keep taking short strokes and focus on balance and finishes
- fifth through tenth: extend out to full slide. Keep stroke rate up above 38, but keep recovery smooth.
- 10 to 15: full pressure, good strokes
- Long cool down focusing on technique
Here is the whole session in google earth. I paddled to the lap02 flag, then did the Rojabo warmup. That took me to the end of the basin in Waltham. Then I turned and did 14 starts going up river and generally with a cross/tail wind. That took me back to the beginning, I had a drink, turned again, and did another 14 starts going back down river, now with a bit of a head wind. A few of them, especially #’s 22 to 25 were definitely impacted by a reasonable strong headwind at the time.
Here’s the whole session as interpreted by Rowsandall
This is time based, so it gives you a better picture of the gap between intervals. There is something fishy about the pace display. The graph from google earth is in km/h. Here is a closer view of the speed.
The top speed is 18.7 km/h. This is a foreign unit to me, so here’s the translation
- 15 km/h = 2:00.0/500
- 17 km/h = 1:45.9/500
- 19 km/h = 1:34.7/500
This intrigued me enough that I exported the CSV file from crewnerd and plotted it in Excel.
That matches Google earth.
Next time, I will set it up as a predefined workout in Crewnerd. 15 strokes on and about 1:30 rest would be about the same thing. I’ll have to pause it sometimes to get to a fortuitous starting point, but it should workout OK.
Other than the interesting pace discrepancies, it was a useful and interesting workout. The key really is the first stroke. Being a little conservative and finishing clean is the biggest thing. Once the boat starts to build a little momentum, it gets easier.
I’ve registered for the Cromwell Cup. This is a 1km sprint race on July 10th. So, that should provide some motivation to do some more start practices.
I also had a useful live demonstration of the value of magik oarlocks. Right now, one of the tension bands, the one on my port oarlock, is busted. So that oarlock acts just like a normal C2 oarlock. The tension band on the starboard oarlock is intact, so the little lever applies pressure to the stern side of the oar.
In normal rowing, I can detected no difference between port and starboard, but sitting at the catch with blades buried, I sure could. With the wind today, there was a bit of chop, and I could feel my port oar rattling around at the catch, my starboard oar was just solid. No movement at all. I don’t know if it was coincidence, or self fulfilling prophesy, but most of the problems that I had with imperfect first strokes were on the port side.
I enjoyed the cool down. I did two repetitions of 500m SBR, 500m of alternating SBR and normal, and 500m of slow roll ups. That took me back to the cut. From there it was just a paddle back to the dock.
Tomorrow: Another session of easy rate ladders. HR cap at 155.
Quantified Rowing 