I’m not complaining, but….

April 21, 2017Leave a comment

…my occupation seems to be be getting in the way of taking a disciplined approach to training.

I was planning to do 80 minutes of endurance work this morning, but getting through email took longer than planned, and I needed to keep it to 60 minutes.

Since I was bored, I decided to change up the workout a little. I decided to do power ladders.

Here’s my revised plan.

3 x 5000m intervals
1 minute rests.
break each 5K into 5 1K pieces
first 5K: 160W, 165W, 170W, 175W, 180W
second 5K: 165W, 170W, 175W, 180W, 185W
third 5K: 170W, 175W, 180W, 185W, 190W

Based on yesterday, i figured that 175W was a good UT1 power, so this workout would start out pretty easy and push a bit beyond aerobic for the last 2K or so.

Of course, since I was in a rush, ergdata decided to hangup within 5 minutes of starting. Now I’m wise to it’s tricks, so I had started the wahoo app to collect HR data as a backup, so I just kept going.

The time passed very quickly and I had fun doing it. And I made it to my first meeting just on time.

Tomorrow: I’m really tired. I’m not sure what I’ll do. Probably an erg session in the afternoon.

Better than nothing! 3 x 20′ / 1′ rest

April 20, 2017Leave a comment

Easy day today. Early meetings, so no time for OTW. I planned 3×20′, and I decided to go very easy at the beginning. I did the first 20′ at 165W, then ramped it up to 175W, and then rowed to a HR cap of 155.

I started to exceed the cap towards the end, but a couple of big belches kept me in the proper HR zone. Amazing how that works. It’s usually worth about 3 to 5 bpm. 🙂

Weather forecast is lousy for tomorrow morning. 45F and 99% chance of rain. So I guess I’m inside again tomorrow. I have a bit more time, so I think I’ll do 4×20′ with a HR cap at 155.

A little bit of speed

April 19, 2017May 3, 2017Leave a comment

Note: Just realized that I never posed this workout. I had a draft written and never published it.

I had an 8 am meeting today, so not enough time for OTW. I was sick of slow and steady sessions so I decided to dip a toe back into an easy speed session.

8 x 500 / 2 min rest.

Target was to do a couple 500s as warm up and that start at 1:50 and do each one faster than the last.

It was fun, and it helped me calibrate what a reasonable pace would be for this session.

For some reason, nothing was working in terms of electronics.

I set up in erg data and it hung up in the 4th interval. Then I setup in pain sled and that hung up after 2 intervals. At that point, I just kept going without capturing any data. Kind of disappointing.

Here are the first four intervals. The first two were warm ups. Then:

target actual

1:50, 1:49.9
1:49, 1:48.7

Then I reset the workout and continued. I think I cheated myself out of a little rest.

1:48, 1:47.5
1:47, 1:46.5
1:46, 1:45.5
1:45, 1:44.6 (slipped a tenth!)
1:44, 1:43.3 (got it back with interest)
1:43, 1:37.9 (The irresitable lure of the faster last!)
Then a “cool down” rep. It turns out I wasn’t in the mood to cool down.

So, I think aiming at 1:45 for all reps would be totally reasonable.

10K – ticking over

April 18, 2017Leave a comment

I spent the morning working on the house down on the cape and then we drove home in the afternoon, arriving home just after 5pm. I had a work call at 7pm, so I squeezed in a quick 10K workout.

I started at about 180-185W and then bled off speed to keep myself at or below a HR cap of 157.

Workout Summary - media/20170418-2300220o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10000|41:58.0|02:05.9|174.9|20.1|151.1|160.0|11.8
W-|10000|41:59.0|02:06.0|174.8|20.1|151.1|160.0|11.8
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|160.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01000|04:05.6|02:02.8|184.2|19.4|131.2|142.0|12.6
01|01000|04:07.7|02:03.8|184.3|20.5|146.9|150.0|11.8
02|01000|04:08.2|02:04.1|183.0|20.4|151.8|154.0|11.9
03|01000|04:11.3|02:05.7|177.0|20.8|150.8|153.0|11.5
04|01000|04:11.8|02:05.9|174.9|20.0|149.7|152.0|11.9
05|01000|04:11.2|02:05.6|176.9|20.1|153.5|156.0|11.9
06|01000|04:13.6|02:06.8|171.7|19.9|155.5|157.0|11.9
07|01000|04:15.7|02:07.9|167.6|19.9|156.7|158.0|11.8
08|01000|04:17.7|02:08.8|163.5|19.9|156.7|158.0|11.7
09|01000|04:16.2|02:08.1|166.4|20.1|157.3|160.0|11.6

More catching up.

April 16, 20174 Comments

Last time I posted was April 5th. It’s been a while. Work has been keeping me very busy and I’ve been struggling to find time to workout, just not enough time to keep good records. Which is a shame because I’m trying to remember what the heck I did way back on the 6th.

Thursday, 6 April: Flew out to San Diego on the 7:30AM flight. No training. Flew home on the red-eye.

Friday, 7 April: Worked from home. Felt really beaten up from the flight. No training

Saturday, 8 April: Slept for a very long time, nearly 11 hours. I had to drive all over to try to organize what to do with my late father’s possessions. No training. I think this might be the first time I’ve taken three days off in a row in a long time.

Sunday, 9 April: A glorious morning. I took my boat out to Worcester for a row with my friends at Lake Quinsigamond Community Rowing. It was an exciting day for us. We bought a used WinTech Double from Saugatuck over the winter and today was the inaugural row. I was in my single, Joe was in the new (to us) double with Gretchen, and we also boated a quad.

The northern end of the lake was off limits because it was being used for a collegiate regatta. We snuck a little ways up the lake before things got going, but otherwise stuck to the southern 2/3.

I wanted to try rowing a bit harder with the Empower oarlock, so I decided to do rate ladder workout.

4′ @ 18
3′ @ 20
2′ @ 22
1′ @ 24
Repeat 4 times.

This was much harder work than it should have been.

But it was delightful. I used the speedcoach mainly to look at effective length, which was darn short.

I’m still trying to figure all this stuff out, so here’s a bunch of charts over the distance and versus stroke rate. I blanked out the rest strokes from all of it.

After I got back to the dock, Joe asked me if I wanted to take a short spin in the new double. I sure did! It’s a big improvement from the vespoli we rowed last year.

Monday, 10 April: Back down in Newton on the Charles. Sunny and nearly 50F. Back to steady state work. My hands were a mess. Blisters on blisters. I decided to keep working on technical stuff like maximizing effective length.

I was rowing at at a consistent (albeit slow) power, dropping off about 10 watts during the session. The interesting thing to me was how much the current effected things. There was very little wind for the first half. A bit of breeze picked up in the second half which was a tail wind for the downriver and had wind upriver. The current was essentially making me 0:05/500 faster going downriver and 0:05 slower going up river. And even more is certain places.

Power and work per stroke faded a bit over the workout as I stayed under my HR cap.
Length was reasonably consistent, effectively length faded.
Catch and slip was very consistent.
Finish and Wash told a real story. The wash went through the roof as I did my last 4K up river. I was not watching wash on the display and it got really bad toward the end.

Tuesday, 11 April: I had a meeting at 8:30 so I had to be quick. I still wanted to get out on the water. My hands continued to be an issue. More light technical rowing. I managed to forgot to start the speedcoach again.

Wednesday, 12 April: Another day, pressed for time. Today, I decided to stick to technique stuff. I did one of my favorite workouts.

2 minutes square blade
2 minutes alternating square and feathered
2 minutes feathered
keep repeating

Thursday, 13 April: Steady State. Watching wash on the speedcoach.

My technique was better today.

Friday, 14 April: Rest day

Saturday, 15 April: Down on the cape. Busy all day. Just popped down to the basement for a quick 10k.

Sunday, 16 April: Still on the cape. 60 minutes at 180W.

Tuesday: Back indoors – 60 minutes

April 4, 2017April 6, 2017Leave a comment

Tuesday’s weather was horrible. Windy, driving rain, temperature around 35F.

I decided to sleep in and try to squeeze in a session in the afternoon at work.

I hit the gym instead of eating lunch. I did 60 miutes straight. Target power was 170W. Erg Data hung up on me with about 20 minutes to go and didn’t save any data.

Here’s the HR data from the wahoo app.

4-4a

Sunday: 3 x 5000 / 1′ rest (HR Capped)

April 2, 2017April 6, 2017Leave a comment

Basically the same as Saturday, but I had less time, so I stopped after 3 instead of doing 4. Still working at a low power. Not sure why HR was this high.

4-2b

In the afternoon, I picked up my boat from winter storage, installed and calibrated my new Empower Oarlock, got rid of the old Speedcoach XL wiring for the HR sensor and stroke rate sensor, and shined up the seat rails. I really enjoyed puttering around on my boat.