Tag: concept2

Saturday: 3 x 20′ / 1’30” rest (with lactate)

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My wife and I went to see Weezer outdoors at the Xfinity Center last night.  Aside from a terrible warmup band, and a massive thunderstorm that pushed through right before they went on stage, it was a very fun night.  We didn’t get home until nearly midnight, so I opted for sleep instead of rowing this morning.

I slept like a log and woke up around 9:30.  After various chores and errands, I decided to keep things ticking over with another easy erg session.  I’ll hit the time trial hard tomorrow on Quinsig.

Today, I wanted to turn down the power a bit to see if I could hit the endurance sweet spot.  Very little HR drift, end HR below 155, and a lactate below 2.0mmol/l.  I set up my meter, wet and dry towels and test strips.  As Eminem would say…”It’s back to the lab again”.

Plan:

  • 3 x 20′
  • 1:30 rests to accommodate lactate testing with minimal panic
  • target power: 185W
  • target rate: 19spm
  • HR limit: 155
  • Lactate tests after each 20′ piece.

Lactate test results were:

  • 20′: 1.8 mmol/l
  • 40′: 2.1 mmol/l
  • 60′: 1.9 mmol/l

So that is the difference that 6 watts makes.

Tomorrow:  1k TT, plus starts, plus some other sprint pieces.

3 x 20′ / 1′ rest @ 192W

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I decided to just do an erg session today.  A nice easy erg session.  I’ll do my race prep tomorrow.

Plan:

  • 3 x 20′
  • 1′ rests
  • Power target: 190W
  • Rate target: 19-20spm
  • HR Cap: 155

Today, my HR started low, but just kept going up.  I think that means that I was just the slightest bit faster than my ideal training power.  I really should have setup to do some lactate testing, but I forgot until I had gotten going.  But in the past, when my HR keeps drifting up, my lactates generally came in high.  When I plateaued and the drift decreased over the session, then they were generally in range.

Next session, I’ll go for 185W.

Tomorrow:  1K hard.  Additional sprints as I see fit.

Saturday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ r L4

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Stayed up too late, and decided to sleep instead of heading to the lake.  I’ll row tomorrow instead.  Got up around 9:30 and hopped on the erg.

After yesterday’s very long row, I decided to only do 60 minutes today.  I also decided to stick with a stroke sequence and let my HR do what ever it wanted to do.

I did the following sequence: 2′ @ 16, 2′ @ 17, 2′ @ 18, 2′ @ 19, 2′ @ 20

Power was 10W * stroke rate (so 16spm = 160W)

One interesting thing in the charts is the drive length.  As usual, you can see my drive length increasing over the first 10 minutes.  I think it is cool how it becomes more erratic as I get tired.  I like all the data that you can get out of painsled.

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Started off feeling great.  But I kind of hit the wall in the last 20 minutes.  HR was a lot higher.  I’ve decided to try to do my LIT endurance workouts in a fasted state.  I think the research is pretty clear that it helps keep you metabolizing fats to a higher intensity than if you have eaten recently.  The thing that I am trying to work out now is intensity.

I have the feeling that if I had limited to high end of this workout to 190W, I probably would have maintained a lower heart rate.  It might be better to go back to a constant power level for these workouts.  My suspicion is that there is a fair amount of hysteresis in the crossover between fat and CHO metabolism.  Once you flip the switch to start burning glycogen, that you have to go way down in intensity to flip the switch back to fat.  I think that where I am now, that going above 180W I am flipping the switch.

For now, if I have to do any steady state on the erg, I think I will start doing lactate testing again, and stick to constant power.  Pity.  It is very boring.  But I want to get some unequivocal data on where my base fitness is right now.

Thursday: 4 x 20′ / 1′ L4

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Tuesday:  Arrived in Munich at 10AM.  Showered, connected by plane to Stuttgart.  Meetings with customer in the afternoon, back to the airport, flew to Paris, connected to Marseille.  Got to my hotel at midnight. No Training

Wednesday:  Decided to sleep in, instead of trying to workout.  Prep sessions all morning, customer meeting in  the afternoon, then back to the airport to fly back to Munich.  Arrived at the airport around 8:30PM, took the s-bahn  to my hotel.  Met with a couple of colleagues at the hotel.  Got  to bed around 1AM. No Training

Thursday:  Up at 7:30AM for a breakfast meeting with a customer.  That finished around 10AM.  My flight leaves around 4:10PM, so finally, I had a window to go to the gym.  I went to the hotel fitness center and saw a meticulously clean Concept2 Model E with a PM4.  Yesss!!!

Plan:

  • 4 x 20′ / 1′ rest
  • L4 format.  Power target –> 10W x stroke rate (16spm = 160W, etc)
  • HR Cap: 156

I figured with all the flying around, irregular meals and reasonable consumption of beer, that this would be a difficult session.  I was right.

I started slow and within 10 minutes I knew that I would struggle.  Here’s the stroke sequences I did.

  • 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20
  • 16 / 17 / 18 / 19/ 20
  • 3′ @ 16 / 3′ @ 17 / 3′ @ 18 / 1′ @ 19
  • 3′ @ 16 / 3′ @ 17 / 3′ @ 18 / 1′ @ 19
  • 4′ @ 16 / 3′ @ 17 / 2′ @ 18 / 1′ @ 19 (dropped off the target power in this one)
  • 4′ @ 16 / 3′ @ 17 / 2′ @ 18 / 1′ @ 19
  • 10′ @ 16
  • 9′ @ 16 / 1′ @ 20

Very disappointed with what has happened to my aerobic fitness.  But pleased with the gigantic puddles under the erg.

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Tomorrow:  Sprint session in the boat.  6 x 750 / 5′ rest.

Monday: 3 x (6 x 1′ / 1’r) / 5’r

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Inside, on the erg.  I originally planned to do it on slides, but I couldn’t get them set up so they were sliding freely.  They kept binding so that I would end up banging against the end while I was warming up, so I took the erg off of them for the rest of the workout.

The plan was

  • 4 x ( 6 x 1′ / 1′ rest ) / 5′ rest
  • Rate target: 30
  • Pace target: 1:40

While I did the workout, I had enough time to think through the plan.  That would be 24 minutes at faster than 2K pace.  Even with the generous rests, that seemed a bit excessive.  Compared to other sprint workouts like a 4 x 1k or 8 x 500, they have about 14 minutes of work.  Anyway, during the first 5 minute rest I decided to stop after 3 sets.  It certainly felt like enough.

I wasn’t all that sure about pace, since I haven’t been doing many sprint sessions on the erg lately, but 1:40 turned out to be a good pick.  I was able to beat it by a bit, but the last set really stung.

1min

I am very happy with that.

Now I am over Germany, about to descend into Munich. I’ll be connecting over to Stuttgart, and then going straight into meetings all day. So no training for Tuesday.  Hopefully, I will be able get a workout in tomorrow morning.

 

Saturday: June CTC – 30R24

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Friday:  “Rest Day”.  Flew to San Diego in the morning, and back on the red eye.  I arrived at 7:00AM.  Drove home and slept until around 10:30.

A little after 2, after doing some domestic chores, I found time for an erg session.  The month is passing and I hadn’t made an attempt at the Cross Team Challenge.

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I started with a 2K warmup, with 3 bursts of 20 strokes each near my target pace and rate.

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Then it was onto the main event.  I felt like an 8K target was about right.  Maybe a bit aggressive since I haven’t been doing much erging and very hard distance work, but I would have felt bad doing less.

I turned out to be doable.  I was a bit fast through the first half, and I needed to bleed off a bit of pace to keep from blowing up in the second.  It was very close to a maximal effort.

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I took 721 strokes exactly, according to the painsled file.

Then a 2K cool down

Mission accomplished.

Tomorrow:  Steady State OTW

 

 

Sunday: 4 x 20′ / 1′ rest L4 on the erg

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Plan:

  • 4 x 20′ / 1′ rest
  • Power: 10W x stroke rate
  • Heart rate cap at 155

It should have been easier.  I set myself up on the porch.  It was beautiful outside.  Windy and around 70F.

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It should have been a really easy row, but I started feeling the effects very soon into it.  I started conservatively at 18spm and 180W.  My HR climbed steadily through the first 20 minutes and was well into UT1 by the end of that piece.  By the end of the second, I had pushed past the HR cap, so I retreated to a L4 format sequence

  • 4′ at 16 (160W)
  • 3′ at 17 (170W)
  • 2′ at 18 (180W)
  • 1′ at 19 (190W)

Even with this downshift, I still spent a lot of time above my HR cap.  I think I need to do some lactate testing to see where I am these days.

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Tomorrow:  Back in Newton in my own boat!  Hurray!  Steady state rate ladders 3/2/1 format at 17/19/21.  HR cap at 155.

 

Thursday to Sunday: Ticking along

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Thursday:  Up at 4:30 to catch a 7AM flight to San Francisco.  Spent the day out in San Jose including a couple of meetings and a customer dinner.  Caught the red eye back from San Jose to Boston.  I arrived at about 6AM.

Friday:  My intent was to go home, get my rowing stuff and the then head out to the river.  But I felt pretty awful from the flight.  I managed to sleep, but it was pretty fitful.  Anyway, I climbed in bed around 8:30 and I thought I would just doze for a little while.  Next thing I knew the clock said 11:45.  I guess I needed the rest.

I finished up work stuff around 2pm and hopped on the erg for a gentle endurance session.

The plan was for 3 x 20′ / 1′ rest at r18 and 180W.  That’s exactly what I did.

Screen Shot 2016-05-29 at 10.57.27 PM

Saturday:  I wanted to head down to the river to install the stainless steel hardware for the oarlock and then try it out.  By the way, if you are in the US and you need hardware, check out boltdepot.com.  Great website, good selection and fast service.

I arrived around 7:30, and I had replaced the hardware and launched by about 8.  I was expecting to have to make some rigging adjustments, but it felt good as is.  No more clicking and the oarlocks were swiveling smoothly.

I haven’t had much time in the boat, so I just felt like rowing.  Nothing too intense, just steady state.  For whatever reason, I was dead slow and that was disappointing.

Sunday:  We took a drive out to Cape Cod to take some measurements in our new house.  We have to wait until mid-August before we close on it, and we want to be ready with furniture and everything that we need right away, so we wanted to measure all the rooms.  It’s a nice place.  Just visiting it makes me happy.  Here’s a picture.

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It’s on a 60 foot bluff above the water and it overlooks Cape Cod Bay.  I’ll be able to launch from the base of the steps you see on the right.

We got home around 4pm, and did a bit of yard work.  Around 6, I snuck off to do an erg session.  I wanted a bit more intensity, and I really enjoyed the 10K push from last weekend, so I did it again.  This time starting at 2:03 pace, and counting down.

I started with a 2K warmup.  2:03 pace with 10 stroke bursts at 1:50 or faster.

Screen Shot 2016-05-29 at 10.48.31 PM

Then into the 10K push.

Cool down, another 2K very slow.

Tomorrow:  It’s supposed to rain like hell.  So, I think another erg session, probably another 3×20.

 

Monday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ rest L4

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Sunday:  Feeling very worn down.  Did some painting.  No Training

Monday:  Decided to skip OTW this morning.  Winds were 20 to 25 mph which would have made it not very productive.  New plan was 3×20′ L4 on slides.

I felt pretty crappy.  My HR just kept creeping up and it was harder and harder to hold the target wattage.  I dialed back the stroke counts after the first 30 minutes a bit and it helped a little.

By the way, graphs were generated on line using a new tool developed by Sander.  It’s in beta test and active development right now, but has the potential to be a true cross platform to log and analyze rowing data.

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I’m in a bit of a rut right now.  I am really enjoying the time I’m spending on the water, and thanks to club boats and my friend Alex’s Pienert, can get on the water just about whenever I have time.  But doing sessions on the erg is a pain in the ass, and I am not sure exactly what I am training for.

Tomorrow:  OTW, something spicy, maybe 8 x 500.

Friday: WTF?

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

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

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

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