Tag: L2

Walking around Macau & 5 x 1500 / 5′ rest

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Sunday, 30 July:

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.

large-districts-map-of-macau

The streets were pretty confusing, but my path was something like this.

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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.

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7-30c

Tomorrow:  80 minute L4.

Thurs: No Training, Fri: No Training, Saturday: CTC, Sunday: Yard Work

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Well, you make your choices and you own them.  This week was quarterly business review week at work, and it’s a big week to prepare our status from the prior quarter and present it to executive management.  There is also a lot of activity to get ready for our earnings call.  Anyway, this quarter it meant early starts to the work day and late nights and no time for training.

Wednesday:  I was at work until around 8pm, got home around 9

Thursday:  I had meetings starting at 9, but I had to do some prep for them so I was at my desk at 7.  No time to go rowing, or even hit the gym at work.  Meetings were back to back from 9am to 7pm.

Friday:  My meetings started at 8am, and again I had prep work to do before, so I was at my desk at 7.  I had meetings most of the morning, then more prep, then a big review from 2 to about 6pm.  I got home after 7.  And I was totally exahausted.  I don;t think I had gotten more than 5 hours sleep any night of the week so far.  I decided there was no way I could get up early to row out at Quinsig.  I conked out around 11, and slept until around 9am.  It was bliss!

Saturday:  I had a another busy day.  We had our work family day at an amusement park about an hour away from home and I needed to do some shopping for a trip to China and Japan.  But I desperately wanted to get some training in.  I decided to do the July CTC as soon as I got out of bed.

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It’s always a guessing game to do these sessions when I am not erging regularly.  This looked a lot like a Wolverine L2 session, like the waterfall (3K/2.5K/2K), and I can usually hold about a <1:50 pace for sessions like that, so I thought I would go for that as my pace.

I warmed up with rate ladder 18/20/22/24/26 over the planned 2813m distance, and then paddled a bit in the 4 minute rest.  I let the flywheel completely stop so my first rep of the CTC would be legal.

I took off at my 1:50 pace and very soon realized that it was way too aggressive.  I started to bleed off speed about half way through the rep and by the time I finished, I had let the average pace creep up to 1:51.

I knew even that was too spicy and I set out on rep #2 targeting 1:52.  Again, it was too much for me and I slowed in the middle.

The last rep, I figured i was toast.  I started off trying to hold the 1:52.6 from the last rep, but it was not working out very well.  I saw lots of 1:55s and some 1:56s in the middle, but with a bit less than 2K to go, I found a bit of energy (and pride) and started to bear down.  The split came back in line and I was seeing 1:54s and 1:53s.  Then I started seeing 1:52s.  With 1000m left, I was counting down strokes.  My avg pace was still above 1:54, but I was seeing it come down.  As Rocket Roy describes it, the “red mist” descended and I sudenly thought I might be able to equal my previous rep.  Turns out I missed it 3 tenths of a second.  I dug my way out of a really deep hole.

I did a quick cool down and then had some breakfast.

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The rest of the day was a blur.  Shopping, off to the picnic, back from the picnic, laundry and packing.

Sunday:  I had to leave for the airport around 11am, and I really needed to get some yard work done before I took off.  There were trees to be pruned, and a bunch of shrubs and hedges that needed trimming.  I was hoping to dispatch it quickly and do an hour on the erg, but it took nearly 3 hours and I finished with barely enough time for a shower before I had to head off to the airport.

Now I am in a plane somewhere over canada, near mackenzie bay.  I am on my way to Shanghai for some customer meetings on tuesday.  Wednesday, I fly over to our plant in Kumamoto Japan.  Our building was essentially destroyed by the recent earthquakes and the folks we have working for us there have been doing an amazing job improvising, finding space, and supporting our local customers.  I’m visiting to see the damage and review our reconstruction plans.  I fly home during the day on Friday.

In other words.  More cross training this week.

 

Saturday: 4 x 2K / 4′ rest

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At home.  Static erg.  Over cooked the first rep and never really recovered.  Hung in there at progressively slower paces, and finished the set, but at very high heart rates and by digging very deep.

Glad I finished.  Depressed I was that slow.

No rowing on the lake this weekend because of some big collegiate racing going on.  Today it was the NERC, which is the New England championships.  Tomorrow is the Women’s Eastern Sprints, which is for bigger schools.  We lend out our boathouse to some crews and there are tents set up all around so it’s impossible to get to our boats.

Tomorrow:  Recovery row.  Something easy.

Sunday: 3 x 7′ / 5′ rest – February CTC

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I was going to go to the lake this morning, but I we went out for a big dinner last night and between that and the jet lag, I was feeling a bit off before bed.  I decided to sleep in and do the session at home later in the day.  This turned out to be around 2 in the afternoon.

Plan:

  • 7 minute warmup
  • 4 minute paddle
  • 1 minute with no rowing to let the wheel run down
  • 3 x 7′ / 5′ rest
    • target pace 1:48
    • target rate:27
    • active rest for 4′ and static for 1′ to let the wheel run down
  • 7′ cool down

This is the February CTC.  And the tricky bit is that you have to log the rep with the lowest meters.  So, there is no point to negative splitting or positive splitting or anything like that.  Just the fastest, flat split that you can hold across all reps.

Here are my results.  I did this on rowpro, but the no rowing for a minute during the rests seemed to really screw up the spreadsheet calculations, so I took these off the PM3 manually.

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So, my worst rep was my first with 1964m.  Puts me 18th overall right now and in the Free Spirits Boat #1.  Another Free Spirit is tantalizingly close ahead of me at 1966m.  I guess I’ll have to give it another go.  I was pushing pretty close to my limits in the later reps, but I think I can squeeze a few more meters out.

Screen Shot 2016-02-07 at 5.11.40 PMScreen Shot 2016-02-07 at 5.11.23 PM

Tomorrow:  Should be some long slow distance, but I have an early meeting at 8am.  I think I will try to squeeze in as much as I have time for, and maybe do a second session later in the day.

 

 

4 x 8′ / 4′ rest – solid

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Plan:

  • 4 x 8′
  • 4′ active rest with a stop for a quick drink
  • Pace target: <1:48.8 (from last time on January 3rd)
  • Rate: 27-28

8′ warmup up, with 3 – 10 stroke bursts at faster than target pace (strapless)

Then into the main event.  Rep 1 was tough, but never in doubt, I finished with 2211 meters (1:48.5), so I kept that as my target for all the reps.  Rep 2 was HARD.  I was ahead of target through 100 strokes, fell behind through the next 100, and made up the lost ground in the last 20.  I wondered if I could do it again for rep #3, but felt OK by the end of the rest.  Same story for rep #3, but an even bigger ask to try to make up the lost ground in the last 20 strokes.  I was sure that I couldn’t hold the last rep, and through most of the rest, I was thinking I would see if I could hit 1:50 for it instead.  But at the end the rest, I decided to try to hit target for the first 100 strokes and see how I did.  At the 100 stroke point, I was really struggling, so I dropped back to about a 1:50 and tried to hold on.  I was seeing some 1:51s, and feeling the HD-demons peering over my shoulder, but I just kept pushing.  With 20 strokes to go, my projected finish was around 2180.  A push at the end got me to 2203 (1:48.8).  Session average was 1:48.6.

4′ rest was about 2 minutes of gasping and 2 minutes of light paddling, then an 8 minute cool down starting at 2:00 splits and slowing down from there.

I wish I could have laid down a faster time on this workout, but I am proud of my execution.  I was really hurting in the last rep and I pulled back from the edge just enough to make it instead of bailing out.

Screen Shot 2016-01-14 at 11.44.37 AM

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Tomorrow:  4 x 20′ / 1′ rest

Tuesday: 3 x 10′ / 5′ rest – Tough!

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Felt a whole lot better today.  Good thing too, because I had a bitch of session on the agenda.

Plan:

  • 3 x 10′ intervals
  • 5′ active rest
  • pace target: <1:50 (Last time, my paces were 1:49.2, 1:50.8 and 1:51.4, in that order for a painful, painful session with a 1:50.5 avg)
  • rate target: 26-28

 

Still challenged by the painsled tool flow.  So here’s the monitor pic.  The first rep was the warmup, and the last 3 were the work intervals.  I rowed through the rests with about 15 seconds for a drink in each.  I rowed through the last rest as a quick cool down.

2016-01-12 08.20.53

Pretty easy to work out that average…1:49.3.  Surprisingly, it felt just as hard as the 5K at 1:46.4.  Not sure why that is.

Here’s the view from Strava.  You can at least see the bursts in the warmup and the cool down profile.  Tough to get anything else from the picture though.  Not sure what the deal is with the speed.  I would have expected the power and speed to look identical, but they don’t.

Screen Shot 2016-01-12 at 6.30.49 PM

Tomorrow:  4 x 20′ L4

Thursday: 4 x 2K / 4′ rest

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Still struggling.  All I could do to hold flat splits at 1:49.

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This was a first outing on the erg at with with a newly upgraded PM5!

2016-01-07 08.24.59

The upgrade was a bit of struggle because the monitor was setup for model D/E, and I needed to a bit of googling to find the way to change it to Model C.  By the way, if you ever want to do that, here is the help page.

After I got that sorted out,  it hooked up to my Wahoo Tickr HR belt with no drama.  And hooked up to my iphone via bluetooth seamlessly.  On the iphone, I tried it with the concept2 application ergdata.  I worked without any trouble.  After that, I started up my beta copy of the Painsled app.

The app hooked up automatically and showed a live dashboard.  The way the app works is you basically pretend that the phone is there at all and set up your workouts on the PM5.  When you finish a workout, the app is supposed to write your workout log file when you press the menu button.  This crashed the app.  But the coolest thing happened.  Overnight between wednesday and thursday the developer pushed a new version which fixed the bug.  What a delightful experience.

So, it worked great on Thursday morning.  I captured the whole workout in a big messy csv file.  Now I am trying to figure out how to massage that into my graphical tools.  A project for this weekend perhaps.

Here’s a primitive HR plot from  the file.

Screen Shot 2016-01-08 at 5.20.28 PM

Today I took a rest day.  Going to go for a hard 5K tomorrow.

Tuesday: Waterfall – 3K / 2.5K / 2K – 5′ rest

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I’m not sure what’s wrong with me right now.  I feel like my highest gear has been taken away.  To put it another way, I can’t seem to really dive into the pain box.  I’ve felt this way in today’s workout and also in the previous 4×8′ workout.  A couple weeks ago, I felt like I could push and my HR would eventually rise up to above 180.  In these past two workouts, I feel like I’m hitting a wall with my HR around 170.

Today, I pushed through the first interval on target (<1:48), but I couldn’t hold the pace during the second interval, and needed to downshift about a third of the way through.  I eventually pulled it back together and ended up with a 1:50.7 pace.  For the third interval, I reset the target to 1:49 and just pounded it out and finished at 1:48.8.  But it felt like the longest 2K of my life, and I was spent at the end.

So, I’m not all that happy with the workout.  But I have noticed this kind of thing before in my training.  I go through a week or two where it is really hard to work at high heart rates, and then eventually I push through.  This meso-cycle is also a really tough one for me.  These long interval workouts are a bitch and trying to pump myself up for 3 of them each week is challenge.  But the end is already in sight.  Soon, I will be shifting gears to the sprint and power mesocycle.  I’m looking forward to that in a twisted and perverse way.

1-5Screen Shot 2016-01-05 at 8.25.58 AM

I think I will do a 30 minute recovery row this afternoon, and tomorrow morning will be a normal 4×20 L4.

 

Tuesday: 3 x 10′ / 5′ rest

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Tough row.  I did it in the late afternoon after painting the kitchen ceiling.

I went out a bit too quick in the first rep and was in tough shape for the last 2.  These 10′ intervals are awful!  The seem to go on forever.  And my pace today was not much faster than what I held for my magical 60′ piece, but it took a real toll on me.

I seem to have caught the rowpro crashing bug.  I tried to start it up twice and both times it stopped responding within 30 seconds of startup and crashed.  I have to assume that there was some kind of a toxic windows update.

So I did this with HR data on my iphone and manually transcribed data from the PM.

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Tomorrow:  4 x 20′ / 1 rest  (L4 Format)

Sunday: 5 x 1500 / 5′ rest

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Pace target: 1:48.  Actual: 1:47.2 (thanks to a faster last at 1:44.7)

2K warm up with a three 10 stroke bursts.

Rowed on a static erg.  The last rep stung.  Other than that, it was just good hard training.  Glad to see that I can get the rate up.

2K happy ending cool down.

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Workout Summary – Dec 27, 2015
–_|_Total_|_-Total-_|_–Avg–_|_-Avg-_|_Avg-_|_-Avg-_|_–Avg–_|_-Avg_|_-Avg
–_|_Dist-_|_-Time–_|_-Pace–_|_Watts_|_SPM-_|_-HR–_|_-%HRR–_|_-DPS_|_-SPI
–_|_15500_|_62:51.5_|_02:01.7_|_194.4_|_23.0_|_150.3_|_ 75.4% _|_10.7_|_08.4
Workout Details
#-_|_SDist_|_-Split-_|_-SPace-_|_Watts_|_SPM-_|_AvgHR_|_Avg%HRR_|_DPS-_|_-SPI

01_|_02000_|_08:01.6_|_02:00.4_|_200.5_|_19.9_|_133.3_|_ 63.4% _|_12.5_|_10.1
02_|_01500_|_05:23.7_|_01:47.9_|_278.6_|_25.9_|_156.4_|_ 79.7% _|_10.7_|_10.7
03_|_01000_|_04:49.2_|_02:24.6_|_115.8_|_19.9_|_129.0_|_ 60.3% _|_10.4_|_05.8
04_|_01500_|_05:23.7_|_01:47.9_|_278.6_|_26.3_|_161.0_|_ 83.0% _|_10.6_|_10.6
05_|_01000_|_04:52.2_|_02:26.1_|_112.2_|_19.7_|_134.3_|_ 64.0% _|_10.4_|_05.7
06_|_01500_|_05:23.5_|_01:47.8_|_279.1_|_26.3_|_163.7_|_ 84.9% _|_10.6_|_10.6
07_|_01000_|_04:54.8_|_02:27.4_|_109.3_|_19.9_|_137.5_|_ 66.3% _|_10.2_|_05.5
08_|_01500_|_05:23.0_|_01:47.7_|_280.4_|_27.5_|_165.5_|_ 86.2% _|_10.1_|_10.2
09_|_01000_|_04:55.5_|_02:27.8_|_108.5_|_19.9_|_138.5_|_ 67.0% _|_10.2_|_05.5
10_|_01500_|_05:14.0_|_01:44.7_|_305.1_|_29.8_|_170.2_|_ 89.5% _|_09.6_|_10.2
11_|_02000_|_08:30.2_|_02:07.6_|_168.6_|_20.1_|_144.9_|_ 71.6% _|_11.7_|_08.4

_____________|_SDist_|_-Split-_|_-SPace-_|_Watts_|_SPM-_|_AvgHR_|_DPS-

Intervals____|_07500_|_26:48.0_|_1:47.2__|_284.4_|_27.2_|_163.3_|_10.3
Other Meters_|_08000_|_36:03.6_|_2:15.2__|_116.4_|_19.9_|_136.9_|_11.1

Tomorrow: 4 x 20′