Thursday: 2×30′ fitness center

January 26, 2017January 27, 2017Leave a comment

Wednesday: First teleconference at 7am. Then another at 8. Then off to the airport to fly to LAX, then more meetings and dinner with the team from our facility there. No time to train.

Thursday: It was going to be another long day. First teleconference at 6am, which lasted until 8. I had a bit of time before I needed to drive to San Diego, so I went to the hotel gym. This session was more about stress management than training. I just wanted to do something.

I did 30 minutes on the stationary bike (rollings hills, level 15). Then 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer (rolling hills, level 15). It turns out that rolling hills are easier on the elliptical.

After that, I showered, hopped in my car and drove down to San Diego. Straight in to a prep meeting for 3 hours, then a meeting with our customer from 6pm until 8:30. That left me just enough time to drive to the airport and catch the redeye home. Well not quite home, I am now in Charlotte waiting for my connection and writing a journal entry.

After I get home, I think I’ll take a nap, and maybe do an easy erg session.

Thursday: 2 x 30′ @ mp

January 19, 2017January 22, 2017Leave a comment

After the Wednesday session, I knew that I needed to dial it back a notch, so I decided to try one of the bread and butter endurance sessions from the plan.

2 x 30′
Marathon Pace or Slower
HR Limit: 75% of HRMax

A 75% of HR max cap is very low for me. That’s a HR of 140. I decided to use 80% of HRMax instead which is 148. I used 195W as my starting marathon pace. That pace did not last very long. Even with the higher HR limit, and in fact, blowing through that limit up to 84% of HRMax, I had to continually slow down.

Yep, The high end of the range is too high.

Monday: 3 x 5K/1′ rest

January 16, 2017January 18, 20172 Comments

Not enough sleep on Sunday night, and I felt pretty tired going in to this session. The whole point was to just do something and keep it easy.

Plan:

3 x 5k
first 5k, start slow and speed up over the first 2k.
second 5k hold roughly marathon pace (2:00)
third 5k, row to a 150 HR cap.
Stick with a lighter stroke rate, 22 spm for 2:00 pace

I had a hang up with painsled today. I was rowing the session as distance intervals with 5000m and a 1 min rest. Soon after I started the second interval, I noticed that painsled stopped updating, and so did my HR on the PM5. I rowed out the rest of the second interval at a 2:00 pace and no idea about my HR. It felt like I was above the cap for the last 5 minutes or so.

After I finished the second interval, I reset the PM, hooked everything up again, and setup a single 5k to finish off the workout.

The remarkable thing to me was that painsled managed to capture the first part of the workout, right up to where the hang happened. I was impressed that it was able to recover as gracefully as it did.

The first chunk

The last interval, I played with pace to try to hold my HR right at 150.

Thursday: 10K @ 2:00 split

January 12, 2017January 13, 2017Leave a comment

I had limited time this morning and frankly, I was a little grumpy. I just decided to ignore HR and just row 10K.

Workout Summary - media/20170112-1255080o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10000|39:42.0|01:59.1|206.3|21.9|157.5|171.0|11.5
W-|10000|39:43.0|01:59.2|206.3|21.9|157.4|171.0|11.5
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|171.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01000|03:55.9|01:58.0|207.9|20.9|131.9|144.0|12.2
01|01000|03:57.1|01:58.6|209.9|21.8|148.2|152.0|11.6
02|01000|03:58.4|01:59.2|207.0|21.9|153.1|155.0|11.5
03|01000|03:58.3|01:59.2|206.6|22.0|156.1|158.0|11.5
04|01000|03:58.8|01:59.4|205.7|21.8|157.8|160.0|11.5
05|01000|03:59.0|01:59.5|205.1|22.0|160.3|162.0|11.4
06|01000|03:59.0|01:59.5|204.8|22.0|163.3|165.0|11.4
07|01000|03:59.1|01:59.5|205.1|22.0|165.0|167.0|11.4
08|01000|03:59.0|01:59.5|204.9|22.0|167.7|171.0|11.4
09|01000|03:58.5|01:59.2|206.4|22.3|169.7|171.0|11.3

It’s 1:20am and I’m on a work phone phone call :-O

I’m not sure I will have time to train. If I do, it will be just a quick 30 minutes or so.

Wednesday: Very Slow Half Marathon

January 11, 2017January 13, 2017Leave a comment

I’ve been ramping volume pretty hard since last week. I’ve put in a total of 93km since January 5th. I probably should have ramped more slowly, but I haven’t had any knee issues (which is pretty cool)

I know I need to show a little patience, but it really bugs me to be as slow and unfit as I am right now. Today, the plan was to row a nice, slow half marathon and keep my Heart Rate below a HR cap of 150. It did not work out that way.

I thought I would be able to hold a 2:05 split, which is just about the 180W. I held that for about 10K, but by then, my heart rate had cruised up to nearly 160bpm. I dropped the power down to 170W, then 160W (2:10), but my heart rate just stubbornly stayed up around 160. I didn’t feel too bad, and I had no trouble sustaining this level of effort, but seriously? That kind of HR for this effort is horrifyingly bad for me.

Workout Summary - media/20170111-1350080o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|21097|89:01.0|02:06.6|172.3|19.9|153.6|161.0|11.9
W-|21097|89:02.0|02:06.6|172.3|19.9|153.6|161.0|11.9
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|161.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01000|04:05.2|02:02.6|183.2|19.3|125.3|137.0|12.7
01|01000|04:07.4|02:03.7|184.8|19.9|139.0|143.0|12.2
02|01000|04:07.8|02:03.9|184.1|19.8|144.3|147.0|12.2
03|01000|04:07.7|02:03.8|184.3|19.9|148.1|152.0|12.2
04|01000|04:08.1|02:04.0|183.5|19.9|150.7|154.0|12.1
05|01000|04:08.2|02:04.1|183.2|20.1|152.8|155.0|12.1
06|01000|04:08.7|02:04.4|182.0|20.0|155.2|157.0|12.1
07|01000|04:08.9|02:04.5|181.4|20.0|156.4|159.0|12.0
08|01000|04:11.3|02:05.7|176.3|20.1|156.2|158.0|11.9
09|01000|04:12.7|02:06.3|173.7|19.9|156.9|158.0|11.9
10|01000|04:14.0|02:07.0|170.7|20.0|157.2|159.0|11.8
11|01000|04:15.9|02:07.9|167.2|19.8|156.8|157.0|11.9
12|01000|04:16.2|02:08.1|166.3|19.8|156.9|158.0|11.8
13|01000|04:17.1|02:08.5|164.7|19.9|157.0|160.0|11.7
14|01000|04:17.8|02:08.9|163.6|19.9|156.8|159.0|11.7
15|01000|04:17.6|02:08.8|163.8|20.0|157.8|159.0|11.6
16|01000|04:18.7|02:09.4|161.5|20.0|159.0|160.0|11.6
17|01000|04:18.3|02:09.1|162.5|20.0|158.7|160.0|11.6
18|01000|04:17.2|02:08.6|160.7|20.0|158.9|160.0|11.7
19|01000|04:20.7|02:10.3|161.9|20.0|158.7|160.0|11.5
20|01000|04:18.2|02:09.1|162.5|19.6|159.6|161.0|11.8
21|00097|00:24.6|02:07.0|172.1|21.1|159.7|160.0|11.2

3 x 20′ / 1′ rest @ r20 plus rowpro experiment

January 10, 2017January 10, 20172 Comments

Last night I downloaded the new version Rowpro. I used to use it a lot on my machine at home, but since upgrading the PM5 and the release of ergdata and especially PainSled, I haven’t. Rowpro still provides an unmatched ability to row online with other people in different places, and since their is a pretty big user base for it, I thought I should give it another try.

RowPro5 is the first release that supports macOS, so I decided to download and try that one. It doesn’t seem like the mac version is very mature. It worked, but the UI seems incomplete. For example, I could not find a way to save the strokes from my row, or to export the row as a CSV file the way I did on the old windows version. That made it pretty useless to me.

I did a quick 5 x 250m / 0:30 rest session as a test. Here is the rowpro report that it generated.

One interesting thing about rowpro is that it connects to the PM by the USB port. You can, in parallel connect the PM to ergdata or painsled and use that at the same time. Why would you do that, you might ask? I have a few good reasons.

You want to see all the cool stroke data that you get from ergdata like drive length or peak force
You want to watch to cool accumulating force curve in painsled
You are paranoid about using rowpro because if you get interrupted for any reason, you tend to lose all of the data from your row.

After I did the row, I remembered the way that rowpro does intervals. It sets each interval and each rest as a completely separate row on the PM. This allows the statistics to be accurate for each interval, but it has two negative effects. First, the PM has lots of little rows so it’s hard to see what you were doing. The second effect only matters if you are using rowpro with ergdata or painsled. You get the same plethora of files as you do on the PM.

Anyway, I’m going to try to figure out how to export rows from the mac version, but I think I will only use rowpro for continuous rows, and probably only if I am going to row online. It’s too much hassle to get it all setup for no real additional benefit.

After that as a warmup, I went on to do the intended workout of the day. I was originally planning of a 4 x 20′ session, but I did nearly 10 minutes of rowing as part of my experiment, so I cut back to 3 20′ intervals.

I had originally planned to try to row to a HR cap of 150, but my HR shot up so fast, and at such low power, that I decided to be satisfied to stay under 155. Sticking to 155 required my to row at a pretty low power, but at least I found an intensity that managed the HR drift.

Workout Summary - media/20170110-1305060o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14440|63:00.0|02:10.9|177.0|19.8|151.5|159.0|11.6
W-|14347|60:00.0|02:05.5|177.2|19.8|151.5|159.0|12.1
R-|00095|03:00.0|15:51.9|152.4|22.3|154.4|159.0|01.7
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|04843|20:00.0|02:03.9|183.5|19.7|148.3|157.0|12.3
01|04763|20:00.0|02:06.0|174.9|19.8|152.3|157.0|12.0
02|04741|20:00.0|02:06.6|173.1|19.9|153.8|159.0|11.9

HR drift today:

2nd Interval–> 174.9/152.3
3rd Interval –> 173.1/153.8
2% (versus 6.5% yesterday)

Time for some patient work to build up my aerobic base.

Tomorrow: Slow HM, HR cap of 155.

3 x 5K at r20 (155 cap)

January 9, 2017Leave a comment

It’s time to get serious about marathon training. To do that, I need to rebuild my base aerobic fitness, and do some of the initial tests to set a baseline for paces.

I strongly believe that aerobic work is most effective when you limit the intensity and build duration, so this week I am going to focus on 60 to 80 minute sessions. Then next week, I will do some baseline tests. I am not in the mood to do lactate testing right now, so I am going to try to use strict HR limits for these sessions. I’m going to row the sessions below 80% HRR (157). It is probably even better to row them below 75% HRR (150), but that is just so disappointingly slow.

The other thing that I am going to work on is a lighter stroke. I have been pursuing the 10W per stroke as a goal for a while and I think I am in a bit of rut. When I rate up, I can’t seem to modulate power very well. So, I think I will try to stick with r20 for the sessions this week and adjust pace by just adjusting the pressure at that rate.

So, that meant that the plan for today was:

3 x 5000m
1′ rests
initial power target ~ 180-190W
rate : 20 spm
HR cap: 155

Based on the criteria, the session went pretty well. Of course, I wish that I was able to sustain higher power versus the cap, but that will take some time to come. I found that I enjoyed the sensation of rowing with a “fluffier” stroke.

The summary stats are a bit off compared to the PM. It shows how much the pace can vary just from a few more or less meters.

Workout Summary - media/20170109-154820-sled_2017-01-09T07-28-01ZEST.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15196|65:09.0|02:08.6|179.9|20.0|149.1|159.0|11.6
W-|15005|62:09.0|02:04.3|181.6|20.0|149.3|159.0|12.1
R-|00192|03:00.0|07:47.6|083.8|21.7|143.0|159.0|01.5
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|05000|20:27.4|02:02.7|187.0|20.0|142.8|153.0|12.2
01|05000|20:41.2|02:04.1|183.6|20.0|151.2|157.0|12.1
02|05005|21:00.9|02:06.0|174.4|20.0|153.6|159.0|11.9

A few more geeky metrics. Here’s an plot that you can use for HR drift. From Joe Friel’s book “Total Heart Rate Training”,

So, let’s consider the first 5k as warmup time and compute drift from the second to the third interval.

183.6W/151.2bpm – 174.4/153.6bpm = 1.214 – 1.135 = 0.079 / 1.214 = 6.5% drift

Ideally, I would like to see drift well below 5% for aerobic sessions.

I checked drive length and it looks OK. I see that characteristic where my drive length increases over the first 10 minutes as I loosen up.

Since I was working on keeping the stroke the same as I eased off the pressure, I was looking for a vertical line in the work per stroke graph. That’s what I got.

And since I eased up from 10W per stroke, I expected the peak and average power to be lower than early sessions. Here it is compared to Saturday’s aerobic session done at 10W per stroke. Peak force was down by about 2.5%, average force was down by 6.5%.

Tomorrow: 4 x 20′ at r20, HR limit of 150 (let’s see if I can do it!)

30′ at MP

January 7, 2017January 7, 2017Leave a comment

I’m still working out exactly how to train for my long open water race. I’m also trying to get myself back in the swing of things after a pretty chaotic past month. I’m keeping the sessions a bit shorter and a bit higher intensity, not for any really good reason, but because I think I want to push a bit harder right now.

I did my last erg marathon on December 26th, 2013. Just over 3 years ago. I was in terrific shape at that time and I did it with an average pace of 1:59.1. I don’t see a reason why I can train back to that level of fitness over the next six months, so I have been doing some shorter rows at around a 2:00 pace, since that is likely where my marathon pace will be once I am in the training plan for real. On Thursday, I did 20 minutes at that pace. Today, I did 30. Both times I did an L4 style warmup and similar cooldown.

As was the case on Friday, I was disappointed at how high my HR went, but I was pleased that I did seem to plateau in the last 10 minutes around 165.

Looks a bit like a “Black Hole” workout, but with the minuscule volume I’m doing right now, I don’t think that will be a problem.

On Thursday, my drive length was 1.43, today it was 1.45, which is identical to my pre-injury drive length. I proclaim myself cured.

Here are the individual sections. I did a rate ladder from 16 to 19 to warmup up, then the 30 minutes (in 6 – 5 minute splits), and then a rate ladder cool down.

Workout Summary - media/20170107-2235100o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|12368|51:01.0|02:03.8|189.9|20.1|153.3|166.0|12.0
W-|12250|50:01.0|02:02.5|191.5|19.6|152.7|166.0|12.6
R-|00260|02:00.0|03:51.0|069.4|30.0|142.2|166.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00936|04:00.0|02:08.2|163.9|16.2|119.6|135.0|14.5 - warmup
01|00714|03:00.0|02:06.0|174.5|17.2|136.3|139.0|13.8
02|00485|02:00.0|02:03.6|185.4|18.0|141.3|145.0|13.5
03|00248|01:00.0|02:00.8|197.9|19.1|144.0|147.0|13.0
04|01251|05:00.0|01:59.9|204.9|20.6|146.8|154.0|12.1 - main set
05|01251|05:00.0|01:59.9|203.3|20.8|155.5|159.0|12.0
06|01258|05:00.0|01:59.2|206.5|21.6|160.1|163.0|11.7
07|01258|05:00.0|01:59.3|206.4|21.8|163.4|164.0|11.5
08|01256|05:00.0|01:59.5|205.1|21.8|164.4|166.0|11.5
09|01252|05:00.0|01:59.8|203.7|21.6|165.7|166.0|11.6
11|00239|01:00.0|02:05.4|202.3|19.2|144.8|149.0|12.5 - cool down
12|00484|02:00.0|02:03.9|185.3|18.0|158.4|161.0|13.5
13|00698|03:00.0|02:08.9|163.8|16.1|157.3|160.0|14.4
14|00919|04:01.9|02:11.7|154.0|16.0|151.9|158.0|14.2

Here’s a quick comparison of the Thursday 20 minutes to the 30 minutes today. Today’s session is on the left and Thursday is on the right. On Thursday, see how I hit 167 after 20 minutes and the slope is pretty linear. Today, I plateaued around the 15 minute mark and drifted up slowly from there. I like that a bit better.

I’ll probably keep doing these sessions at or around 2:00 pace for the next week or so.

….and, I’m back.

January 5, 20172 Comments

Last session was on December 21st, the day prior to my knee surgery. The surgery was uneventful, and my recovery has been smoother than I ever imagined it would be.

I saw the doctor yesterday and he took out the stitches from the 3 ludicrously small incisions and said I was free to abuse my knee in any way I see fit.

My plan for today was to test things out with a 10 minute warmup, do 20 minutes at about 200W (which is where I’d like to be for a marathon when I am trained, and then a gradual 10 minute cool down.

It worked out great. No pain. My fitness has declined, but not as badly as I feared it would, and the best news to me was that my drive length was with 2cm of where I was before my knee was injured.

The warmup was a classic 16/18/20/18/16 L4 format.

Workout Summary - media/20170105-185444-sled_2017-01-05T07-15-22ZEST.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|02409|10:03.0|02:05.2|179.2|17.8|130.7|143.0|13.5
W-|02412|10:03.0|02:05.0|178.3|17.7|130.2|143.0|13.6
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|143.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00469|02:00.0|02:08.0|163.6|16.0|107.0|121.0|14.6
01|00479|02:00.0|02:05.2|177.1|18.0|126.3|131.0|13.3
02|00495|02:00.0|02:01.3|195.6|19.8|136.4|140.0|12.5
03|00485|02:00.0|02:03.8|184.9|18.2|140.2|142.0|13.3
04|00484|02:03.1|02:07.1|170.7|16.6|141.0|143.0|14.2

Then into the main set. 20 minutes at 200W, and then a cool down. I was a little bummed that my HR went as high as it did during the 20 minute set, but I was not really surprised.

Workout Summary - media/20170105-185524-sled_2017-01-05T07-27-52ZEST.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07393|30:00.0|02:01.7|195.3|19.9|156.8|167.0|12.4
W-|07398|30:00.0|02:01.7|194.2|19.9|157.0|167.0|12.5
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|167.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01012|04:00.0|01:58.5|204.6|20.5|140.3|151.0|12.4
01|01003|04:00.0|01:59.6|204.8|20.7|152.3|156.0|12.1
02|01000|04:00.0|02:00.0|202.2|20.9|157.3|160.0|12.0
03|01003|04:00.0|01:59.6|204.6|20.7|160.7|165.0|12.1
04|01006|04:00.0|01:59.3|206.1|20.9|163.8|167.0|12.0
05|00246|01:00.0|02:02.1|192.0|20.1|165.9|166.0|12.2
06|00484|02:00.0|02:04.1|183.3|19.1|162.8|165.0|12.7
07|00713|03:00.0|02:06.2|174.7|18.0|161.8|167.0|13.2
08|00931|04:00.0|02:08.9|163.3|17.2|158.9|162.0|13.5

The good news was drive length. About the same as before

Tomorrow: No workout

Wednesday:2 x 30′ spin

December 21, 20164 Comments

I feel like I’m falling apart. Maybe it’s psychosomatic. My knee is clicking away, over the past few weeks I’ve been bothered by some kind of a pinched nerve in my neck that hurts when I try to twist my head around (like to back up a car), and when I sleep. My most recent complaint is my lower back. I must have tweaked it when I did my “bumps” workout. It was a little sore yesterday morning and I ignored it and rowed anyway. Big mistake. The rest of the day, I had a constant lower back ache, and if I twisted or leaned wrong, I’d get a sharper jolt of pain.

Anyway, it hurt enough that I had trouble sleeping. Rolling over was pretty painful. And I have a lot on my mind. So, I felt pretty lousy at 5:15 this morning when I got up.

I decided that rowing was a bad idea. So, it would be the tedium of the stationary bike this morning.

The plan:

2 x 30′
a couple minutes of stretching between
easy pace: UT2 / UT1

The first 30 minutes, I just set the machine to manual and pedaled at level 14. The second 30 minutes, I did “rolling hills”, which was less scenic than the name implied.

Mission accomplished.

Tomorrow: Knee Surgery. Guess we’ll call that a rest day.

Quantified Rowing

Measure – Adjust – Improve

Tag: endurance