Saturday: 6 x 1K

June 5, 2016June 5, 20164 Comments

Weather as warm (mid 60s), cloudy at first, but then the sun broke through and a light 0-3mph breeze from the NNW. This was a headwind going down river, but only a slowed me down a bit.

The plan:

6 x 1K intervals
rate r24 to r28
long rests, maybe 4 or 5 minutes. Enough time so I could get myself to a good start point
Head race pace

It was one of those workouts that makes you feel intimidated before you even start it. I have done very little harder rowing in the boat, only a few 1′ pieces and some longer pieces where I started slow and sped up. I know that I need to get going if I’m going to feel at all comfortable doing any sprint racing. My stomach didn’t feel all that great either. Arriving at the river, I had a vague feeling like I wouldn’t mind going to the bathroom and sitting for a while, but I ignored it and got out on the river.

I did a Rojabo style warmup, and I felt pretty good during it. I was winded after the last 20 stroke set at >34SPM, but that’s the point. Then I spun around, had a quick sip of water, and psyched myself up for the first interval. I got up to speed and noted the distance on the speedcoach. My rowing felt nice and smooth, all that r18 work seems to be helping, at least a little. This rep took me across the Moody street basin, up the channel, through the Prospect Street bridge and then finished up in front of the watch factory. I kind of like navigating through the bridge for pressure work. It really makes you think about steering in race-like situations. When I finished the rep, it was clear I wouldn’t be able to maintain that level of intensity for 5 more reps. I gave myself permission to do the reps at r24, but I was not going to quit. My bathroom urges were lurking in the background as well (sorry for the TMI, but I think it’s a pretty standard issue for rowers).

I paddled all the way to the downstream end of the straight 1K shot back to the start of the course, had a drink, and off I went. I felt a bit more relaxed in this rep. The speedcoach said that I was getting less run, but I felt like I was rowing with greater length. I sure was tired at the end of it though.

I paddled around a bit and then did rep #3 down stream. Uneventful, but slower because of the light headwind. I then paddled through the S-curve and did rep #4 in front of the watch factory, through the prospect street bridge, and finished at the end of the channel leading out to the Moody street basin. Turn the boat, have a drink, get lined up, and then rep #5 back under the bridge and finishing up right after the watch factory. I was really tired by this point, but I only had one rep to go. I set up at the end of the straight 1K and started nice and easy. I just rowed for length and form through the first 500m or so. I was counting strokes. Around stroke 50, I was at about 450m in. I took “10 for length”, really trying to keep my back straight, but reach wayyyy out to the catch. At Stroke 60, I took “10 for finishes”, trying to go early enough at the finish to not touch my shirt, and avoid too much layback. At Stroke 70, I took “10 for recoveries” and tried to keep my blades totally off the water on recovery. Now I was at 80 strokes and I had 40 left. I started pushing more intently to the finish. I started to push the rate higher and worked on steering. Its easy to misjudge the approach to the end of the 1K. There is a slight starboard turn that if you take it too soon, you end up in the weeds, and if you wait too long, you end up having to turn to sharply and lose speed. Once I had my line to the finish I had 20 strokes left and I noticed that my right calf was cramping up. Every time I compressed at the catch, it would cramp up, and then ease when my leg was fully extended.

It’s interesting how my brain works at moments like this. It hurt like hell, but my leg still seemed to be working, and I knew that I only had about 40 seconds more to go. My heart rate was up in the anaerobic zone and my vision was narrowing. It felt like time was slowing down. But I was able to stay focused on placing my blades, driving smoothly, finishing and recovering clean as I counted down. As soon as I finished, I was worried that I had cheated the distance by 100m, but the speedcoach says that I didn’t. Also when I finished, my calf cramped hard, and so did my abs, right under my rib cage on my right side. I got my feet out of the shoes, stretched out my legs and torso as best I could, and rowed with feet out back to the dock.

My paces were terrible, but I am really thrilled to have gotten through it.

Start_|_Dist_|__Time_|_Split Pace_|_Strokes_|_SPM__|_DPS__|_Remarks
00000_|_4100_|_25:29_|_3:06.5_____|_461_____|_18.1_|_08.9_|_warmup
04100_|_1000_|_04:22_|_2:11.0_____|_119_____|_27.3_|_08.4_|_Upstream/tailwind
05100_|_0750_|_06:27_|_4:18.0_____|_088_____|_13.6_|_08.5_|_
05850_|_1000_|_04:23_|_2:11.5_____|_121_____|_27.6_|_08.3_|_Upstream/tailwind
06850_|_0300_|_05:01_|_8:21.8_____|_025_____|_05.0_|_12.0_|_
07150_|_1000_|_04:31_|_2:15.5_____|_119_____|_26.4_|_08.4_|_Downstream/headwind
08150_|_0350_|_03:58_|_5:40.1_____|_039_____|_09.8_|_09.0_|_
08500_|_1000_|_04:32_|_2:16.0_____|_122_____|_26.9_|_08.2_|_Downstream/headwind
09500_|_0460_|_04:40_|_5:04.5_____|_049_____|_10.5_|_09.4_|_
09960_|_1000_|_04:33_|_2:16.5_____|_119_____|_26.2_|_08.4_|_Upstream/tailwind
10960_|_0590_|_04:59_|_4:13.4_____|_074_____|_14.8_|_08.0_|_
11550_|_1000_|_04:36_|_2:18.0_____|_119_____|_25.9_|_08.4_|_Upstream/tailwind
12550_|_1356_|_10:12_|_3:45.7_____|_160_____|_15.7_|_08.5_|_Feet out

Distance_|_Time__|_Pace___|_Strokes_|_SPM__|_DPS__|_Remarks
4100_____|_25:29_|_3:06.5_|_461_____|_18.1_|_08.9_|_warmup
6000_____|_26:57_|_2:14.7_|_719_____|_26.7_|_08.3_|_Main set
1356_____|_10:12_|_3:45.7_|_160_____|_15.7_|_08.5_|_Cool down

2450_____|_25:05_|_5:07.2_|_275_____|_11.0_|_08.9_|_rest meters
13906_____|_27:43_|_3:09.2_|_1615_____|_18.4_|_08.6_|_Total

After that, jumped in my car, drove up to Marblehead, bought a boat (more on that later), drove back to Hopkinton, unloaded the boat, put the canoe on the car, went canoeing with my wife and some friends of ours for a couple hours, and then went out for dinner. By the time we got home, I was exhausted!

Sunday: Rest day.

Friday: Steady State R18

June 3, 20162 Comments

Cloudy, very light wind, maybe 2mph. Flat water. Around 65F. A wonderful morning to be on the river. Didn’t see another soul the whole time I was out there.

I originally planned to do a hard session (6x1K), but I was a bit stiff from my run, and not really in the mood to push so hard today, so I decided to stick with the steady state and work on technique and efficiency. I think it was a good call. I loved every minute of it, and I felt like I spent enough time that I could get a feel for what made me faster (Really getting out at the catch, smoothly increasing power on the drive – versus really hitting that catch hard, and finishing “early” and getting my oars out very cleanly) and what slowed me down (holding the oars in the water too long was the main sin, but getting lazy about getting a good long reach was also a transgression).

Tomorrow: The 6x1K I didn’t do today, and then go and buy a boat.

Wednesday: Rate Ladders

June 1, 20164 Comments

Gorgeous day. Mid 60s, dry, wind from the NNE 5mph with gusts to 10mph. This was a head wind going down river.

The plan was rate ladders. 4′ @ 18, 3′ @ 20, 2′ @ 22, 1′ @ 24. I planned to do single ladders and rest a minute or two and turn the boat around. This would take me from the start of the 2K stretch (including the s-turn) to the end of it. I was hoping to do 6 full ladders for a nice long workout.

I did some square blade rowing from the dock out past the cut. And then started the first ladder. From the HR data, I am obviously pushing too hard at all the rates, but the paces were so depressingly slow, it was hard to lighten up and see the pace slow down past the 2:40 mark. I hope that I can blame this on the boat, or else, I’ve managed to lose about 5 to 10 seconds of pace from last season. If being on the water wasn’t such a treat, it could get depressing. But, as much as I could, I just focused on trying to take good strokes, get my blades off the water on recovery and keep the pressure on.

Back to excel plots today because the ones generated from the TCX data have ugly plateaus at the peak HRs when I stopped rowing for minute or so. The excel plots derived from the CSV data blank out data that doesn’t have strokes with it.

Now, I am it the airport heading to Chicago. I return to Boston Thursday night.

Tomorrow: Either a run or a fitness center biathlon.

Tuesday: 14K of Technique

May 31, 2016May 31, 20165 Comments

Monday: I inadvertently slept until about 10 AM. zThere was no other time during the day to grab a workout. Instead, I drove into Cambridge, collected my sons and brought them back out to the house for a Memorial Day feast. Steak, salad, corn on the cob, beer, strawberries. A fine dinner and great company.

Last night, I had terrible trouble sleeping because I got so much sleep over the weekend. I probably slept about 2 hours in little 15 minute snatches. Still I managed to get out of bed at 5:15 and headed down to the river.

I was pretty tired, so I opted for a low intensity, technique oriented session

500m square blades
500m alternating square blades and easy r18
500m of slow rollups, finish normally feathered, but immediately start to roll to square during the recovery.
The objective with all of these is to keep the blades clear of the water on recovery, and keep my shoulders relaxed and low. Also to try to be very precise with my recovery, arms first, then body, then finally legs.
Repeat as many times as possible, so roughly 4 sets of the 3 – 500m chunks.

Tomorrow (Wednesday): Steady State, r20. HR cap around 155.

Tomorrow around noontime, I am flying out to Chicago for a customer dinner, and then meetings on Thursday. I fly home Thursday night.

On another note, I am looking at an open water boat to use down on Cape Cod. This Saturday, I will be checking out a used Alden Star, a 22′ open water boat.

It’s a good price and it should be a reasonable choice for the conditions. Now, I jut need to figure out how to get it up and down these stairs.

Maybe something like this.

Thursday to Sunday: Ticking along

May 30, 20164 Comments

Thursday: Up at 4:30 to catch a 7AM flight to San Francisco. Spent the day out in San Jose including a couple of meetings and a customer dinner. Caught the red eye back from San Jose to Boston. I arrived at about 6AM.

Friday: My intent was to go home, get my rowing stuff and the then head out to the river. But I felt pretty awful from the flight. I managed to sleep, but it was pretty fitful. Anyway, I climbed in bed around 8:30 and I thought I would just doze for a little while. Next thing I knew the clock said 11:45. I guess I needed the rest.

I finished up work stuff around 2pm and hopped on the erg for a gentle endurance session.

The plan was for 3 x 20′ / 1′ rest at r18 and 180W. That’s exactly what I did.

Saturday: I wanted to head down to the river to install the stainless steel hardware for the oarlock and then try it out. By the way, if you are in the US and you need hardware, check out boltdepot.com. Great website, good selection and fast service.

I arrived around 7:30, and I had replaced the hardware and launched by about 8. I was expecting to have to make some rigging adjustments, but it felt good as is. No more clicking and the oarlocks were swiveling smoothly.

I haven’t had much time in the boat, so I just felt like rowing. Nothing too intense, just steady state. For whatever reason, I was dead slow and that was disappointing.

Sunday: We took a drive out to Cape Cod to take some measurements in our new house. We have to wait until mid-August before we close on it, and we want to be ready with furniture and everything that we need right away, so we wanted to measure all the rooms. It’s a nice place. Just visiting it makes me happy. Here’s a picture.

It’s on a 60 foot bluff above the water and it overlooks Cape Cod Bay. I’ll be able to launch from the base of the steps you see on the right.

We got home around 4pm, and did a bit of yard work. Around 6, I snuck off to do an erg session. I wanted a bit more intensity, and I really enjoyed the 10K push from last weekend, so I did it again. This time starting at 2:03 pace, and counting down.

I started with a 2K warmup. 2:03 pace with 10 stroke bursts at 1:50 or faster.

Then into the 10K push.

Cool down, another 2K very slow.

Tomorrow: It’s supposed to rain like hell. So, I think another erg session, probably another 3×20.

8 x 500 / 3′ rest – 1x

May 17, 20161 Comment

Nice weather. Light breeze (3 mph) from the WNW. A cross head wind going up river and a cross tail wind going down river.

To put it gently, I had limited expectations for this session. I’ve done no significant speed work in the boat this spring so far, and this was really to just to get reacclimated to higher stroke rates.

I was in Newton, in Alex’s boat.

Workout Plan:

8 x 500
3 minute rest (paddling)
Stroke rate 26 to 30
4K warmup all the way to the Moody street dam, including power 20s at 26, 28, 30 and >32
3 intervals up stream, then turn in the rest
3 intervals down stream, turn in the rest
2 intervals up stream
Cool down (SBR)

This plot is from Google Earth Pro. The SW accepts TCX files and can provide plots of speed, cadence, hr and elevation. To do that you right click on the path, and choose “show elevation” from the menu. It’s a pretty cool feature.

These plots were generated from rowsandall.com. This is an online tool that provides data analysis support for rowing data files from painsled, RowPro, Speedcoach, and Crewnerd (TCX). It was developed by Sander and is still evolving rapidly, but if what you want is a quick way to generate graphical summaries of workouts, it’s very cool.

This is the CSV summary from CrewNerd, just prettied up a little bit.

My average pace for this session was 2:08.5. While it is tough to compare sessions on different days, Last year on June 5, I did a 5 x 500 with an average pace of 1:57.7. There are a number of differences between the sessions.

Different boat (mostly psychological)
fewer reps last year
longer rests last year, around 4 or 5 minutes of rest, so I was better rested
Standing starts last year (so I should have been slower)
real speedcoach versus GPS last year (so no current effect on rep times)
no wind last year (probably worth about 4 seconds)
I had been doing speed work on the water for more than a month. I did a 5 x 1K with an average pace of 2:08.1 on April 16, 2015, a full month before now.

But, this is a starting point. When I get my boat, with my speedcoach, and get settled back in, I will start working on improvement. Right now, it’s really about technique and fitness. In terms of a training plan, it’s basically 4 sessions of steady state endurance training and 2 high intensity sessions (one short sprints (1′ to 5′) and one longer intervals (6′ to 12′)) either on the water or on the erg. Gotta keep it simple right now.

I’m still having the annoying problem with the wahoo strap getting stuck when I do these kind of interval sessions. I think I will go back to my Polar H7 to see if that works better.

Saturday: 12K variety 1x session on Qinsig

May 14, 20164 Comments

The weather was beautiful. There was a very flukey breeze, building from nothing to about 5 mph. It felt like a head wind while we were rowing uplake, but it wasn’t much of a factor.

The lake was buzzing with activity today. Tomorrow is the Eastern Sprints, which is the most important east coast regatta for Men’s Division 1 Collegiate rowing. All the big name teams were here. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Navy, Penn, Cornell. We lend out our little boathouse to Navy. Their rowers are tall and lean. Very impressive.

We had a good group today, 11 people. 3 of us in singles, 2 doubles and a quad. I was pretty much rowing with Bob in another one of the singles.

One confusing thing is that the lake run a reverse pattern on race weekends. So, we headed up lake along the worcester shore and down lake along the shrewsbury shore. It’s very weird because you get very used to steering the other pattern and you have to find all different points to use on the reverse patterns.

I was in a reasonably nice Drew Harrison single. The boat is a good fit for me weight wise and it’s rigged pretty well for my height. Bob and I headed up lake first along the outside of the buoyed course. I tried to hold about 18 SPM and get out over my oars. I was also trying to keep my oars off the water on recovery. About halfway up lake, I needed to stop to fix the foot stretcher. One of the wing nuts was not properly tightened and it slipped noisily as I started to push the pressure up.

I finished fixing that as Bob was right beside me and we basically rowed side by side all the way up to the rt 290 bridge. I put in a little burst at the end to see if I could hold technique as I pushed up the rate. It was a really beautiful morning for a row.

We puttered around a bit until the quad showed up, and then we headed over to the buoyed lanes. I was in the lane closest to the shrewsbury shore (Lane 6). It looked like Bob was over in Lane 4. The wind was behind us now, but pretty light. I just wanted to work on technique at r18. I tried to see how fast I could go at r18 without pushing my HR up past 155. You can see the GPS spike where I went under the Rt 9 bridge. From there, I kept doing the same thing for another 2K, which took me through the narrows. Then I started to push the rate up to something resembling head race rate and pressure and did the final 2K down to the bottom of the lake. I have a lot of work to do. It was exhausting and I was remarkably slow.

After hanging around and reassembling our group, we took off back up lake. For this section I rowed alternating square and regular strokes, trying to work on finishes. I also tried to keep up with Bob who was doing low rate steady state. I did this for about 2K up to the narrows. After the narrows, it is about 1K to the bridge, so I pushed the rate up to 22 and tried to keep my finishes clean and keep reaching out for the catches. There was a little bit of head wind. Again, it was a lot more tiring than it should have been for the pace I was getting.

When we got back to the boathouse, it was madness. People everywhere. Very cool to see some of the best rowers in the country here.

Tomorrow: Probably a steady state session. Very easy though. I’m a little freaked out by Friday.

Thursday: 14K of technique work

May 12, 2016May 12, 20165 Comments

Another perfect morning! Sunny, 60F. Very light wind (0-2mph) from the north. This is basically a cross head wind going downriver, and a cross tail wind heading up river, I only noticed it a couple of moments in the row. Otherwise, it was just little ripples on the water.

I changed my mind about my workout plan this morning when I woke up. I was tired and sore all over. I decided that doing an High Impact session was a bad idea, and a better idea would be to just work on technique the whole time.

So, I did my favorite technical workout.

500m of square blade rowing
500m of alternating 1 stroke square blade and 1 stroke normal
500m of r20, trying to row with perfect form
Repeat over and over again.

One thing that works out well about this workout is that the useful length of the river is 3000m, so I can fit two sets in each direction very neatly.

I ended up rowing 1000m through the twists and turns, then did 8 sets of the 3×500 technique drills. That got me back to the cut. At that point I pulled my feet out of the shoes and rowed the 1000m back to the dock “strapless”. This is also really good practice to get clean finishes.

This was a really enjoyable workout. And I felt like my finishes got a lot better. I was tapping down earlier, and getting the oars out of the water with less disturbance. It didn’t hurt that it was a glorious morning and I was on a beautiful river.

This afternoon, I’m driving down to New York City to have dinner with a customer, and then I’ll drive home tomorrow morning. I think I will probably do an erg session when I get home.

14K of bliss (rate ladders and a hardish 1K)

May 11, 2016Leave a comment

The weather was just about perfect. Not a cloud in the sky. The temperature started around 50F, and by the time I finished, it was around 60F. Tee shirt weather!

There was a light, but building breeze from the west. This averaged around 5mph from the West, which was a head wind heading upstream.

My plan was to do the same workout as Monday. Rate Ladders.

3′ @ 18
2′ @ 20
1′ @ 22

The length of the river is not precisely right for these ladders, so I just turn around and get going in the other direction.

I am not happy with my boat speed, but I’m not quite sure what’s wrong. I guess I will just keep working on stroke technique. Breaking down the stroke into phases:

Recovery to Catch: Inconsistent in terms of my body position and reach. For some sections of my row today, I felt like I was doing really well getting my body over before I broke my knees and then smoothly moving to the catch position. I got that “glimpse out of the corner of my eye” feeling on some strokes.
Drive: I was working on building power through the stroke, so easing into the stroke a little bit. I was also trying to row lighter at r20 and r22.
Finish: Very messy. I am still a little crowded at the finish, mainly due to being about 10 pounds heavier than I should be. I was working on tapping down early enough and then feathering, but on many strokes, I was getting hung up trying to extract the oars cleanly.

I think I need to add some drills to try to work on specific parts of the stroke. The good thing is that the boat is setting reasonably well.

My workout took an unexpected turn on my first trip back up the river. I was coming through the s-turn and I saw the Brandeis boats lining up to go up river as well. Before I got to where they were, a pair of fours took off side by side with much splashing and squawking from the cox boxes. Behind them, two pairs (W2-) were turning around and lining up. I paddled around to the far side of these boats and then took off when they did. I wasn’t sure exactly what they were working on, but I decided that my plan was to get ahead of them and stay there. It turned out it wasn’t that hard to do. They were rating around a 26, and I was rating between 24 and 26 and opening up some distance with them. Over about 1100m, I managed to put 100m between us. Pride compels me to point out that the GPS derived pace over this piece was impacted by both current and head wind. That felt good. Then it was back to the regular workout.

Tomorrow: I think I will do a split session. About 20 minutes of drills, then some 2′ intervals and then another 20 minutes of drills.

Monday:14K OTW rate ladders

May 9, 2016Leave a comment

Partly cloud. Temps started in the mid-40s but climbed rapidly. By the time I finished, it was nearly 60F. Winds were light at first, but built through the session and for most of the time, the wind was out of the west at about 10mph with gusts to 15mph. It was a nasty headwind going up river.

The plan was steady state rate ladders. 3′ @ 18, 2′ @ 20, 1′ @ 22 over and over again. Breaks at the ends of the river, but just long enough to turn the boat around. I am still not happy with my boat speed, but I am setting the boat OK. The main issue is not being able to really get out over the footstretcher without hitting the stops on the slide. My finishes are still rough, but improving.

Today, rowing into the headwind was very heavy work. You can see the 20 second difference in pace and higher heart rates. The good thing about the river was that even with the wind, there was basically no chop. It just felt like I was dragging a bucket!

I worked a little bit harder than I should have for an ideal endurance session, but only a little bit.

Tomorrow: I have an early meeting, so I plan to do a session around noontime. I’m thinking that I might take a shot at this month’s CTC.

Quantified Rowing

Measure – Adjust – Improve

Tag: OTW