Friday: 8 x 500 / 3′ rest

March 25, 20161 Comment

Training plan called for short intervals, so I defaulted to the classic…8×500/3′ rest. I decided that it was OK to work against a pace target of 1:45. This is a pretty tame since I was able to post a 1:40.8 for a 6×750/4’rest session at the end of January.

I haven’t done much sprint work and my training volume in February and March has been way down. For November, December and January, I was averaging almost 100km a week. Since the beginning of February, my weekly average is 43km. Now, I have done my best to supplement that with cross training, but there is not way to make up for that kind of a “time on erg” deficit. Anyway, so much for my excuse codes for a slow target.

Warm up was a standard fletcher. It felt hard.

Then in to the main event. I focused on trying to hit 30 SPM and get my heels down fast. I’ve noticed that I have been rowing on my tip toes when I rate up and that will be bad news in the boat. This pace was hard, but doable, and I managed a fair bit better than target. I did the first one at 1:44, and knew I could go harder. Same thing in the second where I did 1:43. The rest were in the 1:42.x range, with a nice faster last. There were some annoying drop outs in the HR data. Looking at the Strava data, I see exactly the same thing, so it’s the strap, not the PM5. I only seem to see it on these short interval sessions. I wonder if the fast HR increases are confusing the algorithm in the strap.

I was pretty much toast after that. I did a 2K cool down.

I decided to pass on doing a weight session tonight. Not enough time and I’m still suffering DOMS from the last session.

Tomorrow: OTW!

Thursday: Insomnia and 3 x 20′ L4

March 24, 20161 Comment

Last night I went to bed a bit before 11, and then woke up for good around 1:45. I tossed and turned for 2 hours and then gave up. got up and did some reading until it was time to go to work. I felt worn down and tired, but not at all sleepy. I’m working through a fair amount of stress right now, so it’s not surprising. It is, however, annoying.

So, I had plenty of time for a long session this morning, but, as it turns out, I didn’t have the energy. I plugged through the first 20 minutes, but I just sort of gave up the will to row in the middle of the second 20 minute piece. I sat around for a minute or so, trying to decide what to do, and then restarted at a light paddle and just sort of coasted through the last 12 minutes of that chunk.

I wasn’t sure if I should quick or continue after that, but I decided to give it a go. I elected to invent a new L4 stroke sequence, which I shall hence forth call the “Dash of Spice”. It is 1 minute at 21 SPM (and 210W), and then 4 minutes at 18 spm (180W). I did 4 sets of that and it was the right choice for this morning. I could hold the 180W sections with a nice stable HR, and the 1 minute sections at 210W were a good way to break up the piece.

I consider it a session well rescued.

Tomorrow: I think another 3 x 20′. Saturday will likely be my first OTW outing of the season. Probably in a quad. I’ll try to convince my boat mates that a session that is half technical and half 30″ on / 60″ off is a good way to open up the season.

Wednesday: 3 x1500 / 3′ rest

March 24, 20162 Comments

Original plan was 5×1500 / 5′ rest, but I needed to squeeze the workout into lunchtime, so I only had time 3 reps and I needed to cut the rest down and skip the cool down.

Despite that, it was pretty taxing. I was feeling some DOMS from my adventures with weights the day before. I used the first 1500 rep as a warm up and then focused on staying under a 1:50 split for the next three. I used the final rest as a cool down, pushing the pace a little bit more than normal, mainly to get the total meters above 8000 for the session.

I was working harder than I would have hoped for the achieved pace. Probably because of the lingering effects of the weight session, but also because I haven’t done much middle distance work for the past month.

First Cut at an OTW Training Plan

March 22, 2016March 22, 20164 Comments

Tuesday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ rest L4

March 22, 20162 Comments

Tough rowing today. Felt quite tired. HR was correspondingly high. I didn’t measure lactate, but it would have been too high if I did.

Later today, I will try to start some strength training. I will probably do some work to estimate 1RM for a few major exercises (Back squat, Front Squat, Strict press, bench press, power clean, dead lift, good mornings). I will not go to failure on these, but use the method of getting to a weight where you can do less than 10 reps and then use the formula

to figure out an estimate for what my 1RM would be.

Tomorrow morning: Long Intervals : 5 x 1500 / 5′ rest, target pace 1:50

Monday: 10K reasonably hard

March 21, 20161 Comment

I was short on time this morning so I did a 10K. I was in the mood for a bit of intensity, so I started off targeting 1:57. Then pushed the pace down to around 1:54 as I went along. It was about a 80-90% effort.

Doing it strapless was a bit of challenge.

I won’t have time for the strength session tonight. I will push that to tomorrow night instead. Tomorrow morning, 3 x 20’/1’rest.

Sunday: 3×20’/1′ rest L4

March 21, 20161 Comment

Saturday: Rest Day!

Sunday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ rest L4.

This is my first erg session in 9 days. I did 5 sessions of cross training during that period, but it felt weird being back on the rowing machine. I expected my HR to be a bit high and it was.

Check out the new plots derived from Painsled data.

HR Statistics.

Monday: 40 minute steady state session in the morning and a strength session in the afternoon.

Friday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ rest L4

March 11, 20162 Comments

Felt good this morning. Higher stroke counts and lower HR.

More fun with Pain Sled. Consistent drive times across stroke rates. Consistent average force across rates (and peak force too) across rates, but it drops slightly over the hour, and my drive length increases. I have no idea if this a good or a bad thing.

Painsled review

March 10, 20167 Comments

When I compared Ergstick and Ergdata last week, I wanted to also include Painsled (simple website here), but I is still in it’s beta test phase and was still working through a bug with the developer (Rick Terrell).

By the way, participating in the beta test process has been really positive. Rick has been very engaged and a steady stream of fixes have been included at a very rapid pace. The product is nearly done and totally useful in it’s current state.

Painsled is an interesting product concept. It is multiplatform (iOS, Chrome, Andriod), it works with PM5, PM4 and PM3. The PM3 and PM4 are supported using a usb cable connection, the PM5 via bluetooth). It provides TCX and CSV output options. Workout files can be exported from your phone via email, itunes, dropbox, or other iphone options. In the future, they are looking at export to fitness apps like strava, training peaks, concept2.

When you launch the app you get a simple dashboard, very much like ergdata, which mirrors the data on the PM5, but provides a few additional fields. I am hoping that some of the other parameters that get logged will become options for the dashboard in the future. But for my primary use mode, where I start up an app to log my data and then stuff my phone into a holster on my belt, I don’t much care what is going on with the screen.

The data output is TCX format, which I have successfully uploaded to Strava Or CSV. There are 2 different CSV file format options. One is a CSV event format which includes a record for every data update that comes from the PM5, so there are lots of records per stroke, maybe 10 or so. To be clear, this is not like the ergstick force curve data, but rather, and event for each stroke “state”. I played around with the file, but it is a ton of data and getting plots out of it outstripped my excel coding skills. In a recent release, they add the CSV stroke format. This concatenates all the data for each stroke into a single record and ships it out. This is very cool because that is exactly like the output from rowpro, and one of the ways that data comes out of a speedcoach. Adapting existing tools to use this data was a simple task.

One of the nice things about painsled is that it provides a richer set of data fields than ergdata. Here they are:

TimeStamp (sec) : Incomprehensible format, but increments in seconds through the whole workout across all reps and rests. A nice thing to have for graphs

activityIdx: Unknown

lapIdx : Increments for each interval

pointIdx : As far as I can tell the same data as stroke count

ElapsedTime (sec) : elapsed time for the current interval, resets to 0 at the start of each

Horizontal (meters) : distance within each interval, resets to zero.

Stroke500mPace (sec/500m) : standard pace seconds per 500 (ie 2:00.0 = 120s)

Cadence (stokes/min) : SPM

HRCur (bpm) : Heart rate

Power (watts) : stroke power, watts as displayed by the PM

Calories (kCal) : calories as displayed by the PM

Speed (m/sec) : self explanatory

StrokeCount : strokes with an interval

StrokeDistance (meters) : Yes, indeed directly logged DPS!

DriveLength (meters) : Another good bit of data that ergdata displays but does not log. painsled ships out for your pleasure.

DriveTime (ms) : How fast you pull!

StrokeRecoveryTime (ms) : How consistently you recover!

WorkPerStroke (joules) : Kinda like watts, but integrated into energy.

AverageDriveForce (lbs):

PeakDriveForce (lbs): I think this is cool, because it gives an idea of how consistent drive force across different rates

DragFactor: This is great because I never remember to look, and it’s good to have it logged.

My specific setup is as follows:

Model C or D erg with PM5
Wahoo Tikr HR belt connected to the PM5 via ANT+
HR sensor also connected via BT-LE to my iphone and logging HR data in the wahoo fitness app (I know I’m obsessive, but it embarrasses me to admit that I do this in writing!)
Also running on the iphone, either spotify, or stitcher, or another audio app.

Today, I tried out painsled using this month’s cross team challenge. I also updated my excel workbook to process the CSV stroke output file. Here are the outputs for my warmup session today.

A couple of note son the graphs. I was happy to see that my drive time and drive force was pretty consistent from 18 to 22 SPM, and showed a proportional bump up for the higher rate, higher pressure parts of the warmup. I was also to happy to see that my drive length was staying consistent through all the rates and did not get shorter as my rate went up. So, yay for me!

The CSV file has the data to generate splits and tabular summaries, but I haven’t done that work yet. If anyone wants what I have now, drop me a line.

By the way, I am very happy with Painsled and recommend it to any data junkies out there. The only down side is the lack of direct integration with the Concept2 logbook. If that is added, then I think it matches all my needs!

Thursday: 9 x 300 / 30″ rest – March CTC (Better)

March 10, 20162 Comments

I felt better today in the warmup and in the main set. I set a target of 1:42 and I was able to beat it on each interval. Mainly I focused on trying to keep my stroke rate pegged at 30 and my strokes long and smooth.

Last time, total time 9:15.4 (1:42.8 pace)
Today – Total time 8:58.2 (1:39.6 pace)

Very happy with this workout.

I also used Painsled, which worked perfectly. I’ll do a separate post reviewing it, but here are the plots from the workout.

The warmup: