Tues: 60′ fitness center, Thurs: 3×20, Fri: 3×20

April 8, 2016April 8, 20162 Comments

Monday morning: My flight was cancelled, and I rebooked on a later flight to San Diego, arriving there right around dinner time. No training.

Tuesday: hit the tiny gym in the Courtyard Marriott. 30 minutes on the elliptical, and then 30 minutes on the treadmill set to max incline and a fast walk.

Wednesday: I was originally going to fly straight from California to Germany, but I changed plans and took the red eye home, then a full day on the phone in meetings. No Training

Thursday: Working from home and shuffling my wife to a doctor’s appt. I finally found some time for a workout in the evening.

I was lacking in creativity, so I just stole Sander’s session from earlier in the week, an L4 with alternating r18 and r20 segments.

Easy.

Friday: Back to routine. Up at 5:15, into the gym at 7. Still getting used to rowing on slides. Started with a alternating 18/20, then let that slide up to 19/21. This was pushing my HR a bit too much, so I backed off in the second 20 minutes to 180W at r20. Even this was a bit to much for me. So I backed off to r18 and about 170W for the last 30 minutes. I guess you could say that this session was just “shoveling it”.

One interesting thing (at least to me) is to look at the drive length. In my session last night on a static erg, my drive length was around 1.46m. Today on slides, it settle in around 1.42m. As far as I can tell, I am getting just about the same amount of compression at the catch, but I row with less layback on slides than I do on a static erg. Not sure what to make of that, it’s just an interesting data point. Another interesting data point, peak force was higher on slides, even though the average was about the same. Some of this might be due to the difference in drag factor (126 yesterday, 117 today). I really like painsled. Having this data to mull over is great.

Tomorrow: On the water in the morning, and flying off to Germany in the evening.

“Grit”

April 8, 20163 Comments

Today while I rowed, I listened to a podcast called “Hidden Brain” on the topic of “Grit”. Here’s a link if you are interested.

There is a fair amount of research that links success in many fields not to innate talent, but rather to the tenacity, passion and drive needed to put in the work. The key appears to be a willingness to engage in the most unpleasant type of practice, the deeply mindful concentrated work on the things you find most difficult. I think another aspect to “grit” is the ability to take setbacks and then just go back to work on improving. To quote a slightly different source, there is a lyric in the musical “Hamilton” that is stuck in my head. There is a character in the play named Hercules Mulligan, a spy in the revolutionary war. I have no idea what he was like actually, but in the play he is a brash talking, tough guy. Here’s the quote…

MULLIGAN:
To my brother’s revolutionary covenant
I’m runnin’ with the Sons of Liberty and I am lovin’ it!
See, that’s what happens when you up against the ruffians
We in the s**t now, somebody gotta shovel it!
Hercules Mulligan, I need no introduction
When you knock me down I get the f**k back up again!

I like the attitude embodied in “somebodies gotta shovel it” and “When you knock me down I get the F back up again”. I think success has a lot more to do with getting back up again, than anything else.

Sorry to get all philosophical, but the past month and half have been difficult for me. My new role at work is demanding a lot more travel, and frankly a much deeper commitment, and I have been dealing a bunch of minor disruptions at home as well. The result is a dramatic reduction in training volume.

Week 41 is the beginning of February, and I went from averaging over 100km per week to around 50km per week. This is just rowing meters, so, there was training volume in week 42 (while on vacation), and other weeks while on travel, but it is inevitable that I will have a decline in rowing fitness with this reduction.

So, the plan is to just keep on plugging. I will train as much as I can, and make maintaining my aerobic base the priority until things are a little more under control. So, as much endurance training as I have time for and then 1 or 2 spicier sessions a week.

Sunday: 4 x 20′ / 1′ easy

April 4, 2016April 4, 20162 Comments

I am concerned about the elevated heart rates that I’ve been seeing and I decided that I am pushing my endurance sessions too hard. I need to accept that with the lower training volume and with my training gap from having the head cold, that my training power needs to be lower.

Today was an exercise in patience. 80 minutes at 18 SPM and 180W. Keep it nice and simple, and make sure that my HR stayed low throughout the session.

Mission accomplished.

Now I am at the airport on my way out to San Diego. Rest day today. Tomorrow, a session at a Crossfit box near my hotel.

Losing Fitness

April 3, 20166 Comments

Things are hectic right now. I haven’t had a spare minute over the past week so just a quick recap.

Saturday: A lovely (but cold), first on the water row for the season. I was in a double with Angela. Angela a a wonderful, happy woman who was in my learn to row class, I guess it must be 5 years ago. (I just checked and it was Spring of 2011, so it has been 5 years!)

She has gone to Craftsbury a couple times and she seems to enjoy working on technique, so that’s what we did. We were trying to stay with 2 quads that we filled with a mixture of new and experienced rowers, and a launch. The water is still brutally cold and for safety we wanted to all stay within hailing distance of each other. We did tons of pause drills, we cut the cake. We took turns rowing by ourselves (good power practice!). We were quite well set in the boat by the middle of the outing so we did some starts, which were slow, but reasonably well synchronized. All together we did about 10K of rowing over about 80 minutes or so. For some reason, I was having trouble getting RIM or Crewnerd to work for me on Saturday, but the exported TCX from RIM seems to be reasonably intact, so I could plunk that into Google Earth.

After the row, I rushed home and my wife and I drove down to Cape Cod to look at a vacation house we are thinking of buying. I started feeling a bit under the weather on the way down, and by the time we were on our way back, I was sure that I coming down with something. I even fell asleep in the car (she was driving!) for a while on the return ride.

The good news is that we loved the place that we looked at and we bought it. It’s right on the water, and I guess that means that I am now in the market for a good used open water boat!

The bad news is that I went downhill fast. By bedtime I had a fully fledged head cold.

Sunday: Sick. No training.

Monday: Early morning flight to San Francisco. Still sick. No training.

Tuesday: Feeling a little better, but still congested and a bit wobbly. No Training. On the red eye home from San Francisco.

Wednesday: Busy day, including a late dinner with customers. No Training.

Thursday: Basically done with the cold. Still a bit congested, but otherwise fine. Decided to not get up at 5:15 to do a morning workout. I think when recovering from an illness, sleep is more important than exercise. Toward the end of the day, I had a time window open so I could sneak down to the gym.

In an effort to distract myself from how much my fitness has declined from the illness and layoff, I put the erg on slides. It’s OTW season, I should really be working on slides as much as I can anyway. I had a bit of a struggle with the slides. They seem to be binding a bit at one end (near the catch), so I can get into this cycle of hitting the front stops, breaking free and rowing some weird strokes to get things back centered.

I did 30 minutes. I was fine through the first 15, but my stamina was shot. My HR went up and stayed up even when I backed off the power. On slides, I am about 10W lower than static for equivalent effort, so 170W at r18, 190W at r20, etc.

Friday: Back to the routine! Up at 5:15. Into the gym around 7. I was going to do a 3 x 20′ session, but I was rudely interrupted by the sticky slides after about 10 minutes, so I stopped and tightened up the shock cords a bit and that seemed to help a bit. But still if you just push the rower to the catch, it will hang there and not return to the neutral position.

First bit.

It took about 2 minutes to do the adjustments then I started again. I decided to just do 4′ at 18, and 1′ at 22. I then let myself go to r19 for the slow bits. It was still a bit too intense for my diminished capacity. So, I rowed the second 20 minute piece as an easy 160W at a constant r19. Even that was pushing the upper end of the UT1 band.

Friday PM: I had a very frustrating day. Lot’s of challenges to overcome and “opportunities” to confront. By the time 5PM rolled around, I decided that I needed a little bit of stress relief. So I headed back to the gym to do another 30 minutes. This one was just 30 minutes at r19 and 180W. I felt like I was finally getting some rhythm on slides.

Saturday: Slept in late. Still trying to bank as much sleep as I can. Then I brought my boat to it’s home on the Charles in Newton. I didn’t have the time or inclination to go for a row though because it was rainy and I had a lot of errands to do. I had largely finished these tasks by around 5pm, and then settled in for a 3 x 20’/1′ rest session. This one on a my static erg at home.

This started fine, but again, after about 20 minutes or so, my stamina failed me and my HR started to creep up beyond the UT1 limits. I made each successive 20′ piece easier, but still, I was unable to get my HR back under control.

And that brings us to today. My plan for today is an afternoon 4 x 20′ session at very low intensity. Basically a 150 BPM cap.

Tomorrow: Back on the road again. Back to San Diego for Monday and Tuesday, then to Munich for Thursday and Friday. I am staying over in Munich for the weekend for another meeting on Monday. Then I fly home on Tuesday. It will be interesting to see how well I can get training worked into that!

Needless to say, I will have to rethink the training plan.

slept a lot on Sunday, and

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.

Quantified Rowing

Measure – Adjust – Improve

Tag: erg