In an episode of a podcast called “browshowpodcast” (which is really quite good and available on soundcloud), they talk about the difference between beginning of the week watts and end of the week watts. I feel like I experienced that today.
I did the exact same session as I did on last Wednesday in Shanghai and it felt a whole lot harder. Today’s session was the third day in a row of training and yesterday’s L2 workout was pretty intense. I also did the session on 18 hours of rest.
But anyway, I did the session and I’m glad.
The plan was the same.
4 x 20′ / 1′ rest
rate / power
16 / 155
18 / 175
20 / 195
22 / 215
rate plan
The results…
Target power for the 20′ sections was 165W and 173W. Stroke rates were right on. But the HR was a lot higher.
Here are the HR pie charts for today’s and last week’s session. The good news is that I spent longer in sub-UT2. The bad news is that I spent longer in AT and TR.
Today’s row.
Last week’s row
Gotta say, I am enjoying getting back to basics on this training.
Tomorrow: L3. 10K. According to the plan, an L# should be done at about 85% to 90% of 2K velocity. I am working off of paces for a 7:00 2K, so a 1:45 pace. 90% of that is a 1:56.6. 85% of that is a 2:03.5. I think I will aim at a target pace of 1:57 and see how it goes.
Most of the morning, I had work to do. Getting ready for a big presentation that is coming up later in August. Around 1 in the afternoon, I got bored and decided to go explore Macau.
There are two main parts of Macau. My hotel is in Cotai, which is on the southern island and has been developed quite recently. Cotai is basically Las Vegas, all hotels, casinos, and glitzy shopping malls. The other part, across a wide a shallow waterway is Macau proper. Today, I took a cab to the Ma Temple and walked through a lot of the old city.
The streets were pretty confusing, but my path was something like this.
There were some really old churches, and Temples. It was also incredibly crowded. It was also very hot. I was embarrassingly sweaty. Here are a few pictures from my walk.
Ma Temple – Incense cones
Ma Temple – Incense Cones
Ma Temple – Budda
Narrow Streets with lots of wires
St. Laurence Church – Delightfully decaying
Intimidating numbers of people
The Ruins of St. Paul
A delightfully narrow crack to walk through in the Camoes Garden
By the time I had made it through the Camoes Garden, I was done. I wander down to the main road and flagged down a cab back to the hotel. I peeled off my sweaty clothes and took a shower.
A couple hours later, I was ready to hit the gym.
The plan was a 5 x 1500 / 5′ rest. Target pace 1:55, with a faster last.
I warmed up with a 1500. I rowed at about a 2:05 pace, with 10 stroke bursts at 1:55 to 1:50 every 250 meters. That felt pretty good.
Then a 5 minute paddle to contemplate what I was doing, then into the first interval. I started a bit fast and then bled off speed to try to hit exactly 5:45 seconds, which would be a perfect 1:55 pace. I missed by a tenth. I also felt great. I decided to see if I could negative split each rep.
Rep 2 – target 1:54 pace. Again, I started hot, and around 500m, I backed off and used the predicted finish to try to nail 5:42, again, I missed by a tenth. Still feeling pretty good, but wondering if I can keep it up through all 5 reps.
Rep 3 – target 1:53 pace. This one I started even faster. I backed off at 500m, but I was still having trouble holding on to the 5:39 predicted finish. This one was a full 0.4 seconds off. Now, things were seeming a bit more doubtful. My HR was getting pretty high and I was starting to feel some cramping in my calves.
Rep 4 – Target 1:52 pace. I figured the strategy of getting a bit of cushion at the beginning was working so far, so I tried to hold 1:50/1:51 through the first 500m. Then I eased up and aimed for 5:36. This one was within 0.2. And I was very gassed at the end. But only one more rep left.
Rep 5 – Target 1:51 pace. Time to empty the tanks. I tried to keep the avg pace below 1:50 through the first 500m and it was hovering around 1:49, but I was starting to get a bit shakey. At this point my predicted finish was around 5:28. I tried to ease off to 5:33, and that gave me a new lease on life. By the time I passed 1000m, my avg pace was just a little bit above 1:50, maybe a 1:50.5. I decided to see if I could nail a 5:30. I did, right on the nose. Peak HR was 183, my maxHR is about 186.
I paddled a bit to cool down and staggered to room. Mission accomplished.
My ride to the airport was smooth, well, except for the part where I discovered that I was short of money to pay the driver and had to run inside the terminal to an ATM to fix that little problem.
My flight from Taiwan to Macau was delightfully short and very comfortable. Customs was a breeze, and the shuttle to the hotel was easy to find and extremely well air conditioned. I’ve never been to Macau before. If it wasn’t for the humidity, I would swear that I am in Las Vegas. The hotels and casinos are nearly indistinguishable! I am staying at the Sheraton, which boast of having 4000 rooms. I can tell you that 4000 is a lot of rooms in a hotel. The front desk had about 40 clerks working and the queue was quite long. Luckily, I’m a member of the sheraton frequent guest program and they had a nice, special check in desk for us away from the hoi poloi 😉
I went to my room and this was the view from my window.
Basically what the brochure promised. I settled in, did some work, and around 3:30 I decided to check out the fitness center.
My plan was to do an easy workout to see if my stomach would give me troubles.
It took me about 10 minutes to walk to the fitness center. (Did I mention that it’s a large hotel?) Lo and behold, what did I see?
Yep, a brand new Model E rowing machine complete with a PM5 monitor. Alas, I couldn’t get the monitor to link up with my phone, but still, two ergs in one trip. I felt extremely lucky!
I settled in for an L4 session.
2 x 30′ / 2′ rest
10′ sections
rate / power targets
16 / 155
18 / 175
20 / 195
22 / 215
rate plan
I was hoping that this would be a reasonably easy workout and for the most part it was. My stomach was a bit grumbly in the middle of the first 30 minutes, but settled down. My hr climbed a bit higher than I was hoping it would as the workout wore on, but nothing weird. All in all, a very pleasant session.
So, the stroke rate for the first 30 minutes should have been 17.2 and the second 30′ should have been 17.6, so that’s OK. The power target for the first 30 minutes was 167W and the second was 171W, so I was 3W ahead of m=plan.
Now it’s about 5:30 and I’m trying to figure out what to do tonight. I guess find some dinner and do some more work.
Tomorrow: Sticking with the WP theme, I think I will do a very tame L2 workout.
5×1500/5′ rest
At my best I could do this workout at a 1:45 pace. In general, I’m closer to 1:50. Since I’m just restarting, far from home and not in the mood to try to hard, I’m going to do it at 1:55 with a faster last.
In an effort to get back to basics, I have been thinking about getting away from fancy training plans and just get back to doing the Wolverine Plan. It was my mainstay for the run up to my first CRASH-Bs and it has the advantage of simplicity and flexibility.
My life is too hectic to try to implement meso-cycle based training, and while I might tailor my sessions a bit to focus on head race distance instead of 2K performance, doing the basic WP would probably get me in much better shape.
Over the past 6 months I have been trying to follow the Eddie Fletcher Marathon Training Plan. I haven’t been very successful with it, but that is not the plan’s fault. My lack of success is directly related to not having enough time to do the sessions, and having travel disrupt the progressions built into the plan. Nevertheless, my endurance is much better than my sprinting ability right now. It’s been a long time since I pulled any sessions at a pace faster than 1:50.
So, today was going to be a shock to the system. At least I had the advantage of going in with very low expectations.
Here’s the CTC definition.
I added a 2K warmup (with some power10s at 1:45 or faster), and a 2k cooldown at 2:15 pace.
Warmup: The 1:45s were hard! And I had a lot of trouble getting the rating up. I haven’t really had my stroke rate much above 25 for the last 6 months. It showed.
The into the main event. I decided to target a 1:45 pace. Mainly because I had no idea what else to do. That proved a little too spicy in the 1000m piece, but otherwise it was a fine target. Based on the HR data, I didn’t phone this one in. I was working at very close to my limits.
My total time added up to 13:53.1 (1:44.1 pace), which puts me in Free Spirits Boat 3 and at 127 of 370 entries. The last guy in Boat 2 is significantly ahead of me in the rankings (13:38.7, 1:42.3 pace), so that is not a good motivation to take another shot at this. The other is that I probably won’t see another erg until I’m back in Boston. Notice how horribly low the stroke rate is. I guess sprinting is something you need to actually train for. Who knew?
I was pretty shattered at the end of it, and I dialed up a 2k cool down. I was originally thinking that I would do a happy ending cool down with 500m at 2:00, then 500m at 2:05, 500m at 2:10 and 500m At 2:15, but I got the feeling I might pass out or throw up during the first 20 strokes at 2:00 pace, so I backed off and just tried to hit exactly 9:00 for the whole thing. I missed by 0.4sec. Another thing I’m out of practice at, I guess!
Here’s the HR data for the whole workout. That’s a whole lotta red! Nearly 6 minutes of it.
I still felt a bit funny after the cool down. I went to my room, and lay down for about 30 minutes. After that I was feeling much better and was ready to start my day.
Tonight I fly to Taiwan. I’m there for a day, then fly on Saturday to Macau. My plan is to do a 60 minute endurance session tomorrow morning at the hotel.
Monday, July 24 and Tuesday, July 25: (No Training)
I woke up at the ungodly hour of 4:30am to get to the airportfor my 7am flight. I was flying to Shanghai via Chicago, total flight time 17 and a half hours. Total travel time 22 and a half hours. With the time zone changes, I got into my hotel room at 3:00pm Tuesday afternoon. I took a shower and went to work, then a customer dinner.
I was back in my hotel room by 9:00pm and asleep at 9:01pm (approximately)
I guess you’d call that 2 rest days, but it didn’t feel very restful.
Wednesday, July 26:
I slept pretty well considering the jet lag. I woke up around midnight, but got right back to sleep. I woke up at 3:00am and slept fitfully until 5am. I was in the gym by about 5:30am and what a gym it was.
I’m staying in the Kerry Hotel in Pudong and the fitness center is incredible. The main gym has ceilings two stories high, there is a spinning room and a group room off to the side. They have lots of treadmills, ellipticals, bikes, weight machines, TRX, free weights, kettle bells, all in brand new condition. And they had 2 perfectly maintained concept2 Model D rowing machines with PM4s. I couldn’t believe my good fortune.
When I arrived there was someone using one of the rowers, and so I settled into the second one.
Plan:
80′ L4
4×20’/1′ rest
rate/power
16 – 150W
18 – 170W
20 – 190W
22 – 210W
stroke sequence: I decided to go for my all time favorite classic L4 sequence. In shorthand it’s a 2x(168/172/176/180). That means 168 strokes in the first 10 minutes, then 172, then 176, then 180. So, here’s how that looks.
I had a blast! The intensity was just about perfect. The fastest bits pushed me above the top of my UT1 zone, but my HR dropped back in the slower pieces.
I really should get a USB cable so I can use ergdata with the PM3 and PM4, but for now all I get is HR data.
Last week’s row
Tomorrow: I think I’ll stick with the Wolverine theme and do this month’s CTC. It will be slow, but I’d like to put a score on the board.
Once every calendar quarter we have business reviews. As an engineering company, we are naturally enthralled with applying acronyms to everything, so the weeks of reviews is QBR week. I am in a position where I am the principle reviewer for a set of them, and then later in the week, I try to put together a summary review for my supervisors. At the same time, we have to prepare for board meetings, get ready for employee communications meetings, and also actually take care of business.
Tuesday, 18 July: No training
I managed to find a brief window to exercise on Monday, and I was hopeful that I would be able to do some OTW rowing on Tuesday morning, but that was spoiled by a bit of a stomach bug that hit me Monday night. I was up for a lot of the night and I needed to be at work for an 8am meeting. After that, I was in meetings until 8pm. After that, I worked until 10pm catching up on email. I got home around 11:00 and didn’t get to bed until nearly 1am.
Wednesday, 19 July: No training
I slept until 7am and hustled off to work for more business review meetings which started at 9am. These went straight through to 6pm. After that, I needed to prepare for meetings with my boss that were happening on Thursday. I was at work until 10pm again, and got to bed after midnight
Thursday, 20 July: No Training
I was up at 6am, and right out the door. Thursday was a bit less stressful, with only 7 hours of meetings, but 4 of those hours were with my boss, so I needed to be on my toes. I needed to get right out the door at 6pm to get to an appointment. The evening was filled with domestic chores because I’d be leaving right after work for Cape Cod. Again, it wasn’t until after midnight when I got to bed.
Friday, 21 July: No Training
Again up at 6am, and quickly out the door. Meetings from 9 to 4. At four, I bolted out the door and headed home. I picked up my stuff and continued on to the cape, arriving at about 8pm (having picked up pizza right near my destination). Needless to say, I was eager to get to bed early, and I slept a long time.
Saturday, 22 July: 3 x 20’/1′ on the erg.
My schedule wouldn’t work out for a coastal row today, so before breakfast, I snuck down to the basement for a easy endurance session. I purposely kept the power really low since it had been 4 days without training.
I did the first two 20′ sections at 180w. At the end of the second, I was seeing my HR going a bit high, so I decided to do the last 20 minutes as 2×10′ L4 rate ladders
4min / r17 / 160w
3min / r18 / 170w
2min / r19 / 180w
1min / r20 / 190W
This was very entertaining, and I didn’t much mind that my HR spiked up a bit with the rate restriction and ladders.
That was good fun. I think I’ll do some more of that.
Sunday, 22 July:
I was planning on a coastal row, but I was stymied by weather. It was grey and blustery when I got up, so again, I opted for an erg session. Today’s plan
80 minute L4
4×20’/1′
Same rate vs power as Saturday
Keep it nice and easy.
Nice low HR, easy row. The low rates started to bug my back by the end though.
I notched up one stroke per minute after 30 minutes to make it a bit harder.
Well, sometimes you just have to improvise. I went to the gym at lunch and settled in on the one erg. I found the batteries dead in the PM5, so I replaced them. Then I got all set up and started pulling. The PM would not register any strokes. I reset everything, and the PM would dutifully show me my HR, but not the pace, meters or stroke rate.
I was losing time, so I decided to just set up my iphone to show me my heart rate, and then I counted strokes per minute using the elapsed time there. I tried to hold about 20spm and I pushed hard enough to do most of the row as UT1. I backed off the pressure a bit as my HR passed 157.
Very unsatisfying, but at least I rowed.
Tomorrow: Back to Fluid in Newton. I think I will do an easy rate ladder session to get re-acclimated to the flat water rowing. I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think I have been in my Fluid since June 21! :-O
Monday, July 3: We delivered my sister in law and her two sons to the ferry in the morning and spent the day doing laundry, cleaning and hanging out. It was great to have company, but it was also nice to have the house to ourselves again. Around 3:30 in the afternoon, I decided that the wind had died down enough for a row. So, I packed up my boat and headed off to the northeast beach. The wind was blowing about 10mph from the WNW, and there was a ton of chop from the wind and whole lot of motor boats.
I launched from the northeast beach of the island and headed up to wellfleet harbor. The tide was coming in, so I was going with the current up along the shore of indian neck. I went into the harbor and did a broad turn up toward “The Cove”. As I came back toward the channel, there was a sailboat coming out of from behind the jetty. It’s pretty shallow where I was, and I suspected it was even shallower where they were. Sure enough, I soon heard a grinding noise and they came to a stop, aground on a sand bar. As I rowed out of the harbor, I saw them back the sails and maneuver off the bar.
I then headed west along mayo beach. At certain points, it go pretty shallow. I could see the bottom and a couple of times one of my oars touched bottom, but it was OK. Then I took a broad turn toward the south and circled around the point of great island.
The row from there to my turning point was bouncy and somewhat unpleasant. The waves were very confused with all the motor boat traffic, and the various shallow spots. Eventually, I noticed the time and turned for home.
I had intended to row due east straight past the red buoy #10, but the waves wanted me to take a bit of a more northeasterly course. I swung around in a big arc and headed for the beach when I passed the northwest tip of the island.
Workout Summary - media/20170704-015955-Greg Smith 20170703 0352pmo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15925|98:02.0|03:04.7|000.0|21.1|154.1|163.0|07.7
W-|15470|93:50.0|03:02.0|000.0|20.9|154.6|162.0|07.9
R-|00458|04:00.0|04:22.2|000.0|25.0|142.9|162.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|04982|29:30.0|02:57.7|000.0|20.0|154.8|162.0|08.4 - to harbor
01|06740|42:47.2|03:10.5|000.0|21.0|155.6|160.0|07.5 - across and down
02|03749|21:33.0|02:52.4|000.0|21.7|152.3|162.0|08.0 - back to beach
I was working hard through the whole row, and the HR shows it. I have to avoid doing that in long races or I will burn out for sure.
Tuesday, July 4: We packed up ourselves and headed back to Hopkinton. The traffic on the day after July 4th can be murderous on the cape, and we wanted to avoid it is possible. We got home in the late afternoon, and eventually, I settled down for what I hoped would be a quick and easy 40 minute session. Of course this was on the cursed, awful dynamic erg at home, so it didn’t turn out that way.
The plan for was an L4 style workout. I really enjoyed the last 20 minutes of the session I did on Saturday, so I decided to do basically the same thing. But I found doing it on the dynamic to be a whole different experience. It was massively difficult. I have never worked so hard to go so slow!
One mitigating factor was the heat and humidity. It was 70% humidity and 80F in the room when I finished. It took two towels to mop up the floor.
Wednesday, July 5th: I guess I must have been tired, because I slept until 10:30. The rest of the day was a blur of shopping and yard work. We aren’t around the house much and the outside was looking a bit shabby. All day long I was dreading the idea of doing another session on the horrible dynamic in the sweatbox.
The plan was to stick to strict HR cap at 155, no matter how slow I had to go. That turned out to be very slow, and continually slower to stay under the cap.
So, how much worse is the dynamic. I used the comparison charts to look at this workout, and the 3×20’/2′ workout that I did on the prior Saturday on a static erg.
Both sessions were endurance sessions, with a HR cap at 155. Here’s the HR compared.
The orange trace is the dynamic. The green is static. Now here’s power.
In the middle of the last interval, when the HR’s were about the same, I was pulling 50w lower on the dynamic!
Here’s a scatter plot of the HR vs power. You can on the static (green points), the expected relationship of higher powers and higher heart rates holds. The dynamic (orange points) shows a backwards relationship. It seemed as if no matter how much I backed off the pace, my HR was pegged in the 150s. This is consistent with my thought that there is something wrong with the machine which is increasing the friction on the drive.
One confounding factor is temperature. The static session was in a cool (but humid) basement. The dynamic session was in 80F/70% humidity. That could explain a bit of the difference.
Thursday, July 6th: My father passed away last December. He took up sailing in the 1970s and it became more and more important to him over the next four decades. For the last thirty years, he has been a member of the Boston Yacht Club and over that time has been the chairman of the race committee and a principle organizer of a big ocean race that the club runs every other year between marblehead and Halifax Nova Scotia.
We decided that a fitting send off for my Dad would be to scatter his ashes at sea off of marblehead. We planned it for this Thursday because the start of this race is coming on Saturday and many of the folks that he knew from Nova Scotia would be around for the race.
A friend of his has a very serious vessel, the Elizabeth M. It’s a 40′ trawler. Here’s a video of it out for a cruise on another day…
We had aabout 25 people on board, took a slow cruise around the harbor, and then, once we were off marble head light, we scattered my Dad’s ashes and left some white flowers.
It was a really nice send off for him. He had a great group of friends and he has left a legacy at the club behind him.
Then we headed home, packed up and headed back to the cape.
Friday, July 7: Rain was in the forecast starting in the late morning, so I got up early (ish), and headed out for a row around 7:30. I launched from the NE beach. It was overcast with very little wind. The wind picked up a bit about half way through the row, but only to about 8mph, from the SSE.
The plan was for an easy row. Try to get the feeling of rowing at a stroke rate of 20 SPM and stay in the UT2 HR zone. For a 3 to 4 hour race, I want to be doing a pace I can hold all day long!
I decided to explore wellfleet inner harbor a bit today. I rowed out to Buoy #10, then turned north. The trip up to the harbor was fast and smooth. There was little wind and I was rowing with the tidal current. I rowed to the breakwater that marks the entrance to the inner harbor and rowed along the town jetty, and around behind to the boat slips. The speedcoach showed that I had done 7500m.
I stopped for a drink of water, and then retraced my steps. The row back from the breakwater to buoy #10 was a lot slower. The wind had picked up a little bit and I was rowing against the current. The plots show a good 30 seconds difference in pace.
I turned around Buoy #10 and headed due east to get back to the beach. When I reached the place where I launched, I was about 500m short of 15km, so I continued on a bit, turned around and beached the boat right when the speedcoach passed 15000m.
It was a very happy row.
Workout Summary - media/20170707-170512-Greg Smith 20170707 0739amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15049|87:41.0|02:54.8|000.0|20.5|139.6|157.0|08.4
W-|14836|85:11.0|02:52.3|000.0|20.6|139.7|157.0|08.5
R-|00216|02:30.0|05:47.9|000.0|18.0|119.6|157.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|02397|15:00.0|03:07.7|000.0|20.8|133.1|146.0|07.7 - to buoy #10
01|02947|15:00.0|02:32.7|000.0|20.4|141.4|146.0|09.6 - to bkwtr
02|01704|09:00.0|02:38.4|000.0|20.6|139.5|142.0|09.2 - to turn
03|01163|07:00.0|03:00.5|000.0|20.0|130.1|136.0|08.3 - back out of hbr
04|04753|29:00.0|03:03.1|000.0|20.5|141.7|147.0|08.0 - back to buoy #10
05|01872|10:11.7|02:43.4|000.0|20.9|148.4|157.0|08.8 - back to beach
Now it is raining like crazy.
Tomorrow, hopefully another row just like this one!
Thursday, June 29: I posted about my workout in the morning. I had the morning in the office, and then headed to the airport at 2pm Korea time. I took off at 5:30pm, arrived in Dallas, around 4:30pm. Connected to Boston, taking off at 6:25pm and arrived in Boston around 11pm. I got my car and pulled around to a different terminal to meet my daughter who was flying in from St. Louis.
She took over driving duties and we headed off to Cape Cod, arriving at 1:30AM. My total travel time 24 hours and 30 minutes. I was surprised to see my sons when I got to the house. I guess they keep late hours.
Friday, June 30: Honestly, I don’t remember much about Friday. I was tired. It was very windy. The highlight of the day was my quest to make great lobster rolls. First stop, great bread from this amazing french bakery near us (PB Boulangerie in Wellfleet). The traditional lobster roll is on a buttered split top hot dog bun. I prefer a fresh Croissant. Still buttery, but also flakey and light. Next stop, Mac’s fish market on the pier to buy some cooked lobster. Finally, the Wellfleet market for celery, since lobster salad needs a little crunch.
Lobster Salad (serves 2) (I quadrupled the recipe)
Two big flakey, fresh croissants
1/2 pound cooked lobster, cut into biggish chunks
1 stalk celery, diced
Hellman’s Mayonaisse to taste
dash of salt
dash of ground black pepper
dash of italian seasoning
1/4 lemon squeezed
Warm up the croissants in the oven while you make the salad. mix the lobster, celery, salt, pepper and italian seasoning in a bowl. Add a tbsp of mayo and mix, and then add a tsp at a time until the salad just barely clings together. Squeeze a bit of lemon juice over the top
Slice the croissants, add the lobster salad and enjoy.
Ummmm. No training
Saturday, July 1: More hanging around. More wind. It was above 40mph sustained winds for a while. I did an erg session.
3 x 20′ / 2′
I just wanted to keep it easy so I set off at 2:08 pace and held it for the first 2 pieces. I got bored so I did the last 20 minutes L4 style
Later in the day, I went and gathered some oysters from the sand bars in front of the house. Then it was my first attempt at solo shucking. I got a quick lesson last summer, and I managed to shuck a dozen or so oysters without impaling myself.
Sunday, July 2nd: Too much stuff going on all day. We dropped our daughter off at the ferry in Provincetown, and I went for a nice walk around the island, but no training.
There was a very nice sunset on Sunday though.
And later that night the next town had their fireworks. They were pretty far off in the distance, but it was fun to be able to see them from our porch. They were down in Rock Harbor, which is 10.7km SSE from where we are. The fireworks plainly visible, but not very impressive from that distance.
Wow. I haven’t posted since last Monday. It’s been a busy week.
If you recall, Monday’s workout was terrible.
6/20 – Tuesday: The plan called for a massive workout…
M2
3 x 30′ / 3′
MP, 10KP, MP
90.0%
(167)
I was up late on Monday night and slept in instead of trying to go on the water. I thought I could do the workout on the erg later in the day when my schedule was freer. I was wrong.
It ended up that I didn’t have time to do the whole workout, so I thought I would change it to be 20′ @ MP, 30′ @ 10kp and 20′ @ MP.
I had hopes that my workout on Monday was just a fluke, so i set out with aggressive power targets. 200W for MP, and 230 for 10KP.
I didn’t last.
I did the first 20 minutes per plan, but my HR was too high and I was struggling. I backed off the 10KP to the bottom of the power range (210W), but I busted through the HR cap within about 8 minutes and was flailing around and struggling for breath. I handled down. I tried to start again, and HD’ed again. I decided to just paddle it out to 20 minutes and then pack it in for the day.
Workout Summary - media/20170620-183745-sled_2017-06-20T13-28-55ZEDT.strokes.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|09995|42:07.0|02:06.4|192.6|21.7|154.9|168.0|10.9
W-|09633|39:07.0|02:01.8|198.3|21.7|155.5|168.0|11.4
R-|00365|03:00.0|04:06.3|068.2|21.2|137.4|168.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|05008|20:00.0|01:59.8|203.0|21.4|151.5|162.0|11.7
01|01791|07:00.0|01:57.3|218.1|23.5|158.6|168.0|10.9 -HD
02|02834|12:07.4|02:08.3|179.2|21.1|160.4|166.0|11.1 - paddle it out
Very Frustrating.
6/21 – Wednesday: Tuesday night I was up late yet again. Again, I decided that missing sleep to row was a bad call. But on Wednesday, in an attempt to find my bliss, I left work a bit early, blew off the training plan and just went rowing. The goal to keep my HR under 150 and just enjoy being out in the sunshine.
It was glorious. It was quite windy, and there was a lot of kayaks and canoes out on the river. I haven’t had a chance to upload the speedcoach data, all I have handy is the RIM data, without HR.
It was slow, both because of the breeze, and also because of the HR cap. I am still getting used to the new oars. This was a very nice, easy way to get some strokes in.
6/22 – Thursday: I was up until 1:30AM on Wednesday night, getting my car packed. We are getting the house down on the cape ready for visitors. I slept until 7 and rushed off to work. I was going to take Thursday as a rest day. I was due for a rest day. I worked until around 4 and then headed off to the cape. The traffic was horrifying. I didn’t get there until 7:30!
6/23 – Friday: Open water rowing seems to be a probabilistic endeavor. The tides are really big right now, so I wanted to avoid low tide, which was just before am.
So, I slept in and I thought I would go in the early afternoon. That’s when the wind changed my plans.
Around noon, the wind just started building, and building. By seven pm the sustained wind speed was over 40 mph with gusts nearing 50.
Instead, I got busy with a bunch of work around the house. The most involved of these chores was repairing the bottom 8 steps of the stairs down to the beach. The bottom 3 or 4 steps are actually submerged at high tide and they take a terrific beating during the winter. On Friday, I jacked up and braced the stairs, fixed the handrails, and fixed 4 steps. The steps I’m talking about are the ones below that final platform you can see at the end of stairs in this picture.
There was a bit of aerobic benefit from going up and down the stairs about 6 times, but beyond that, there was no training on Friday.
6/24 – Saturday:
Again, I was hoping for a late morning row. But again, the weather did not cooperate.
In the morning, when I got up, the wind was blowing and the sky was grey and angry. It got steadily worse. The weather log tells the story.
The wind howled overnight, with gusts up to 50mph. The wind stayed up above 30 mph all morning and there was intermittent rain. Right around 11:00, dark storm clouds rolled in across the water and the sky opened up. It rained hard for about an hour. During that hour I decided to erg. When I came back upstairs, the sky was clearing, the wind was dropping, and I had other stuff that needed to get done.
The session was an easy one.
3 x 20′ / 1′ rest @ 180.
This went better than the workouts earlier in the week, but was still a sweaty slog. I guess the 90% humidity took a bit of a toll. I had to back off in the last interval to keep my HR below 155.
So now I am on a plane to Tokyo, then connecting to Korea. I’ll be there through Thursday. It’s a challenge to maintain a training plan with summer vacations and work travel. I just have to play it by ear, be flexible and try to focus on having some fun with it.
Quantified Rowing 