Wednesday: 3×30’/3′ (mp,10kp,mp) – A whole lotta rowing

May 24, 20172 Comments

Weather: Overcast, 55F, no wind, humid (The Dew Point was 54F!). Nearly perfect for rowing.

Plan:

3 x 30′ / 3′

MP, 10KP, MP

90.0%

(167)

OTW Power Targets:

MP: 155 to 165W
10KP: 180W to 190W

The main problem of this session is doing 30 minute intervals on a stretch of river that is about 15 minutes long. Each of the intervals had one or two turns in it. I tried to do these turns as quickly as I could. I was generally back to full pressure strokes within 40-50 seconds of my last stroke in the other direction. And the turn itself was reasonably aerobic (or stressful), so my HR stayed high through it. I tried to extend each of the 30 minute intervals to account for the time lost in the turns, but it seems I shaved a little time off of each of them, based on the collected data.

It was basically 3 complete laps of the river.

The first interval took me down to the damn and most of the way back. I paddled the 3 minute rest upstream and then turned about 500m from the start.

The second interval took me downstream. This interval was at higher stroke rate (22) and higher power. I turned at about 12 minutes, then rowed upstream for 14 minutes, turned again and finished the last 5 minutes or so going downstream again. I finished in the middle of the s-turn. I doubled back to before the s-turn during the rest and spun to go back downstream. The turns were hard to pull off when I was going faster and breathing harder.

The third interval took me down to the dam in about 9 minutes. Then I turned and rowed all the way back up past the boat house for another 20 minutes.

Workout Summary - media/20170524-145648-SpdCoach 2182533 20170524 0639amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|18927|94:58.0|02:30.5|174.1|21.3|153.0|169.0|09.4
W-|18001|88:03.0|02:26.7|178.5|21.0|153.7|169.0|09.8
R-|00932|06:55.0|03:43.1|109.1|23.9|140.2|169.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|03838|18:30.0|02:24.6|177.0|20.4|142.2|148.0|10.2
02|02290|11:30.0|02:30.7|167.9|19.9|148.3|152.0|10.0
03|02444|11:25.2|02:20.2|191.9|22.4|155.8|161.0|09.5
04|02545|12:15.0|02:24.4|188.6|22.6|162.7|169.0|09.2
05|00962|04:30.0|02:20.3|206.5|22.5|163.6|166.0|09.5
06|01784|08:40.2|02:25.8|171.1|20.1|152.5|158.0|10.2
07|04138|21:12.7|02:33.8|169.4|20.3|158.7|166.0|09.6

I think that I should decrease my OTW slack factor. Right now I have it at 15% and in today’s session, I was consistently above the band. The middle interval was 100% above 10kp, evenly split between 5kp and 2kp. The two mp intervals were similarly above the target zone. I think that today’s power should be in the middle of the zones.

Todays powers:

10kp : 191.9, 188.6,206.5 –> 192.8W (weighted avg)
mp : 177,167.9,171.1,169.4 –> 171.7W (weighted avg)

Changing my slack to 13% brings the 10kp roughly in line. I am still overachieving a bit on mp.

The power pie chart was generated with the 13% slack number.

Here’s a collection of stroke metric plots.

Power is noisy but pretty consistent through the session. Pace is all over the place.
Drive Length and Effective length is consistent over time and stroke rate

And here are box plot of my sessions so far this spring. I excluded all open water and technique sessions. The main thing that jumps out at me is how little change over time I have seen.

Tomorrow: On the water. Another long session. This one a bit easier.

2 x 45′ / 4’30”

MP or slower

80.0%

(149)

Power target: 160W to 170W.

Friday: 75′ of steady state

May 19, 2017Leave a comment

weather: warm, around 70F and humid. light wind 5-7 mph from the WSW. This was a headwind heading up river.

Plan was 2 x 40′ / 4′ @ mp. MP is 155 to 170W OTW.

My river is not 40 minutes long, so I did this as all the way downstream, quick turn, all the way upstream. Then the rest, then repeat. I could get about 36 minutes in each rep this way. Close enough. This was supposed to be a HR capped session at 150. I changed my mind and tried to row to a 155 cap, which worked until almost the end.

Workout Summary - media/20170519-151239-SpdCoach 2182533 20170519 0633amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|13837|71:44.0|02:35.5|153.4|18.9|152.6|163.0|10.2
W-|13591|69:47.0|02:34.1|155.3|18.8|152.6|163.0|10.3
R-|00249|01:56.0|03:53.5|084.3|19.6|150.5|163.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|03991|18:55.8|02:22.3|169.7|19.0|145.8|156.0|11.1
01|02813|14:54.0|02:38.9|156.4|18.6|154.7|158.0|10.1
02|02846|13:58.8|02:27.4|153.9|18.5|153.5|158.0|11.0
03|03941|21:59.3|02:47.4|143.1|19.1|156.6|163.0|09.4

So, power was OK at the start, but by the third interval, I had to ease up to stay under the cap. I guess that means that the 15% “OTW Slack” derating is a bout right for me.

The paces for the speedcoach impeller are still a bit slow. Here’s the GPS pace.

Workout Summary - media/20170519-173116-87736o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14818|75:16.0|02:32.4|000.0|18.9|0.0|000.0|10.4
W-|14558|71:20.0|02:27.0|000.0|18.8|000.0|000.0|10.8
R-|00261|03:56.0|07:32.1|000.0|17.9|000.0|000.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|04115|18:57.0|02:18.1|000.0|19.0|000.0|0.0|11.4
01|03023|15:13.8|02:31.1|000.0|18.6|000.0|0.0|10.7
02|02932|14:10.8|02:25.1|000.0|18.6|000.0|0.0|11.1
03|04488|22:59.0|02:33.6|000.0|19.0|000.0|0.0|10.3

4.2, 7.8, 2.3, and totally out of whack for the last interval. I’m sticking with the idea that the speedcoach is reading about 4 seconds slow.

A few stroke metrics

power versus pace. The bimodality is head wind versus tail wind.
pace and power versus distance. Shows the slow decline in power as I slowed down for the cap and a much more precipitous drop for the pace as the headwind increased.
Power and effective length versus distance. I tried hard to work on maintaining long strokes and just lighten the stroke pressure to slow down. This was very hard to do. you can see my stroke getting shorter at the end when I was trying to row with a long, but light stroke.

I’m off to the cape tonight. Hopefully, the weather will be good for a long row tomorrow.

Video with EmPower Data from yesterday’s row

May 17, 2017May 18, 20173 Comments

Tuesday: 4×15’/4′ (7′ @ 5KP, 8′ @ MP) Marathon Training OTW

May 17, 2017May 17, 20177 Comments

Weather: Lovely. Sunny. Temperature was around 60F. There was a moderate 5-10mph breeze from the WNW. This was a cross/tail wind heading down river and the cross/head wind going upriver. (But since I was going to row to power, that didn’t matter!)

Plan: This was the first time I would be doing one of the Fletcher Marathon Plan sessions on water. I figured I would need to be a little flexible to make it work.

4 x 15′ / 4′ rest
In each 15′ interval
- 7′ @ 5KP (which is 220 to 235W on the erg)
- 8′ @ MP (which is 180 to 195W)

As for adaptations.

I have about 3000m of river that I can row at high pressure. This takes me a little bit less than 15 minutes. I decided to keep the 7′ at 5KP and then just stop short of 8′ if I ran out of river. This would be more of problem downstream than upstream, both because of current and also the headwind.
Power: I decided to try to row to my erg power specs. I suspected that this would be really hard, and it was. After I rowed, I listened to a great podcast about rowing with power meters which said the average difference between erg and OTW powers was in the range of 13% to 16%. Interesting tidbit. If I had know that, the targets would have been substantially reduced.

Rate: I have somewhat arbitrarily decided to match rate to these powers as follows
- 5KP: 24-26
- 10KP: 22-24
- HMP: 20-22
- MP: 19-21

So, how’d did it go? It was a really tough, but awesome workout. I dug very deep to get it done and I definitely faded in the later reps, but I stayed focused and got it done. From a TRIMP perspective, it was the hardest workout I’ve done since the end of January (HR based TRIMP of 195)

Here’s the interval summary from rowsandall

Workout Summary - media/20170516-135626-SpdCoach 2182533 20170516 0639amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|14847|77:09.0|02:35.9|169.6|21.9|159.7|177.0|08.8
W-|11373|53:49.0|02:22.0|194.5|22.6|167.7|177.0|09.4
R-|03482|23:20.0|03:21.1|093.3|19.1|137.4|177.0|07.9
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00005|00:00.0|00:00.0|087.0|17.0|085.0|85.0|00.0
01|01613|07:00.0|02:10.2|224.6|24.3|164.0|170.0|09.5 - 255-240W
02|01258|05:51.0|02:19.5|190.8|20.1|165.0|170.0|10.7 - 180-195W
03|01454|06:48.0|02:20.3|215.7|24.8|168.0|176.0|08.6
04|01371|07:00.0|02:33.2|170.4|20.4|169.4|176.0|09.6
05|01508|06:52.2|02:16.7|204.3|25.5|167.9|176.0|08.6
06|01356|06:22.2|02:21.0|178.5|20.1|169.4|176.0|10.6
07|01445|06:55.2|02:23.7|202.0|25.1|167.9|177.0|08.3
08|01364|07:01.2|02:34.3|168.3|20.2|169.7|177.0|09.6

So, I tried hard, but I couldn’t hit the erg based targets. But I was ahead of the 15% derated targets. For now, I will aim at the top end of the OTW target range.

I’m using the impeller on the speedcoach to try to avoid stream effects on the live pace display. I’ve tried to calibrate the impeller input, but based on a comparison of the speedcoach and GPS data today, I think my cal factor might be a bit slow.

Workout Summary - media/20170517-123357-87478o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15674|81:34.0|02:36.1|000.0|21.4|0.0|000.0|09.0
W-|11886|54:28.0|02:17.5|000.0|22.7|000.0|000.0|09.7
R-|03793|27:06.0|03:34.4|000.0|18.5|000.0|000.0|08.2
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|01645|07:00.0|02:07.7|000.0|24.4|000.0|0.0|09.6
02|01325|06:00.0|02:15.8|000.0|20.2|000.0|0.0|11.0
03|01594|07:00.0|02:11.7|000.0|25.0|000.0|0.0|09.1
04|01478|07:18.0|02:28.2|000.0|20.5|000.0|0.0|09.9
05|01570|07:00.0|02:13.7|000.0|25.5|000.0|0.0|08.8
06|01314|06:10.2|02:20.9|000.0|20.2|000.0|0.0|10.5
07|01529|07:00.0|02:17.3|000.0|25.2|000.0|0.0|08.7
08|01431|07:00.0|02:26.7|000.0|20.2|000.0|0.0|10.1

I compared the paces.

So, based on this data, I think my impeller is reading about 4.5 seconds slow.

This row gave me a treasure trove of data to look at the state of my rowing technique. Here is a gallery of the plots that I did.

Power and pace vs stroke rate: pace is bimodal due to headwind. Power is not. Pretty wide spread because of the way I started faster and faded
Effective length vs stroke rate: Slightly longer at r24 than at r20. This is pretty consistent with what I’ve read in Kleshnev and other places
Wash: Wash got a little bit worse as I got more tired, but I think it is pretty good. I guess my finishes are in OK shape.
Slip: Lower slip values at r24. This is where the better length is coming from. I am attacking the catch with more enthusiasm at the higher stroke rate. Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I need to figure out if it is resulting in a more fficient generation of boat speed relative to the effort (power). That will be a longer term project.
Catch: consistent. A little degradation in the last interval. Certainly more variation from stroke to stroke.
Finish: Better and more consistent at r24. You can see how I was really struggling at the beginning of each of the r20 sections. I dug a deep hole with the higher power segments, and when I gear shifted I struggled to take full strokes.
Effective length vs time: You can see the effect of me gasping for breath at the beginning of the MP sections, especially in the later intervals
Work per stroke vs time: I filtered the data to do two plots. One for r24 and the other for r20. Very clear reduction in r24 WPS over the workout. I was rowing to lower power and slightly higher rate. This is physiological, not technique. In the r20 sections, you can see me digging out of the lactate hole through each of them and finishing stronger.

Now I am flying out to LAX. I will take today as a rest day. Tomorrow morning, I have two possible plans. If I stay over I’m planning to visit Crossfit Anaerobic in Irvine and do this session…

4 x 20′ / 2′

MP, 10KP, HMP, MP

90.0%

(167)

I might take the red eye home. If I do that, I have my rowing gear in my car and my plan would be to stop and row on my way home from the airport. The plan would then be to do a version of this OTW. Each section would probably be closer to 15 minutes.

Friday: Groggy 10K of technique

May 13, 2017May 13, 20171 Comment

The red eye was pretty miserable. I was in a seat with extra leg room, but because it was in front an exit row, the seat didn’t recline. I got some sleep, maybe 2 to 3 hours in fits and starts, but I eventually gave up and just read.

Boston was cloudy, drizzly and about 45F when I landed. I wasn’t sure if rowing was the best idea, but it seemed to be clearing up a bit, so I went for it. I’m very glad that I did. It was glorious out there. I wasn’t working terribly hard, and I wasn’t out for very long, but I felt a thousand times better when I finished.

The plan for the day was to just do 2 minute intervals of SBR, then 2 minutes of alternating SBR and feathered and then 2 minutes of r20. It’s sort of become my go to low intensity workout.

I finished 1 lap of the river and had a little bit more time, so I did 6 minutes down river in the 2 minute chunks. Then I turned around and rowed at r22 back to the cut. It was about 6 minutes of high UT1 rowing, and it felt nice and clean. I tried to row it to 190W or so. I think I’m about 10w different between erg and boat (erg higher for the same HR repsonse). When I got back to the lagoon when I launch, I did a 30 stroke set at r26. It sure felt hard. I was doing that for 30 minutes in head races not that long ago.

Tomorrow: My big adventure row.

Friday: 90 minutes of near-bliss

May 5, 20171 Comment

I felt like crap all day Thursday. My stomach was a little upset, and just felt lethargic and slow. We went to bed early again and I got a good 8 hours of sleep. I woke up this morning feeling a whole lot better.

The weather was gray and it rained off and on. The temperature was in the mid-40s. But there was very little wind and I was looking forward to just taking it easy and working on technique. My morning schedule was pretty open, so I didn’t have to rush to much either.

I launched and got going. My plan was:

2′ SBR
2′ alternating square / feathered
2′ r20
repeat over and over again.

As I rowed out to the useful part of the river, I decided that today would be a good day to get the impeller mode of the speedcoach calibrated. Right now there is enough current that my upstream and downstream speeds are different by 10 or 15 second per 500, and since the impeller is already mounted on the boat, I might as well use it.

I had never done the calibration with the speedcoach GPS, so I fumbled through the menus a bit until I found it under the advanced setup menu. Once I found it, it was easy and intuitive to use. Just start it up, it tells you to start rowing, and once you are up to speed, it uses the GPS to measure 500m of true distance. Then it tells you to turn around and press start when you are ready to do the same thing in the other direction. After all that, it tells you what the cal factor is.

So, I did 2 moderately hard 500m pieces to setup the cal. I was suspicious that it might not be a good cal because my boat speed looked a bit too good.

After that, I just rowed. I went all the way down river, back up to the cove, then back down to the dam. The basin down by the dam is pretty broad and the I can do 500m without much of a turn, so I did the cal again. The cal factor came out close to the first time (1.069 vs 1.061), but I did pull one massively bad stroke in the first 500, so I am wondering if I could get it better. Maybe I’ll do it again on Quinsig this weekend over 1000m.

After I finished the second cal, I decided to row steady state the whole way back. I was pulling really hard in the 2 minute chunks of r20, and I wanted to try to practice at a feathered at a lower stroke pressure. This was very pleasant rowing.

The whole outing was about 17km on RIM, and I was on the water for 96 minutes. It was glorious.

This is the GPS data from RIM. You can see the extra loops at each end of the river where I did the cal pieces. You can also see a place in the middle where the was some kind of glitch with the data. I did not, in fact, row through the headland, not even close.

Here is the same thing using the GPS coordinates from the speedcoach. In this one, the cal pieces are missing, but look at how much smoother the path is.

Here’s the summary plot from the speedcoach. Still suspicious about the impeller based pace, but it sure is less noisy! It is also missing the cal pieces.

Here is the summary plot from RIM.

In this plot, I have smoothed the pace data twice, and it is still a lot noisier than the speedcoach data.

I am trying to figure out the best set of parameters to have live in the boat. Today, I setup the speedcoach to have pace, HR, effective length and wash. On RIM, I had stroke rate and elapsed time. This worked out OK, but I think I like using the RIM for HR. For example, today I don’t have any HR data for the cal pieces. In a similar way, if I setup the speedcoach for an interval workout, I would miss the rest data. If I use RIM essentially as a logger, and the speedcoach more interactively, I think that would work out.

I think I will always want to see pace, stroke rate, heart rate and elapsed time. And I would like to have two fields for empower related stuff. Right now I am working on finishes, so it makes sense to have wash. But eventually, I think I will mainly have work and effective length as the main screens.

Feeling so bad yesterday and so good today has gotten me thinking.

I have never really figured how much business travel interferes with training. I used to just think of travel days as enforced rest days and tried to just hit my training goals working around the travel. From that perspective, the only impact was essentially from reduced training hours when I couldn’t squeeze in the sessions.

Now I think it’s worse than that. Spending 6 hours squeezed into a plane (or 15 hours) and shifting multiple time zones is nothing like a real rest day. But it does nothing to improve my fitness level. Right now, I am thinking that it puts the same stress on my body that training does, but without the beneficial training effect.

So the question is…what to do about it? The answer is…I don’t know. It seems pretty clear to me that maintaining a very regular training schedule helps me manage jet lag and stress. It’s also clear that my performance in training sessions after travel is compromised. So, I think I keep doing what I’m doing. I will try to rearrange my schedule to put low intensity sessions after trips and I will focus on base endurance cross training or strength while I travel.

The other thing that is really clear to me is that the best thing I can do to improve performance right now is to lose weight. Losing weight requires no extra time, it can be done while I’m at home or on travel, and every 10 pounds is worth a full second off my 500m split in the boat. The problem with losing weight is will power. It takes a lot of effort for me to lose weight and it’s easy to lose motivation. But, I need to give it a try. It will help my fitness, performance and health.

Tomorrow: yardwork all day. Time to mulch.

Monday: 2′ Intervals OTW

May 1, 2017May 3, 20176 Comments

Weather: Cool and misty. Around 45F. A little bit of wind, head wind when going upstream generally. After Saturday in Wellfleet, I have a new standard for wind and waves. 😉

Plan:

2′ On /2′ Off
3 sets of 4 intervals
Each set at 22, 24, 26, 28 spm

As I set off from the dock, I noticed how much more cramped I felt at the finish than I did in my Alden. I turned around and headed back to the dock and moved the footstretcher 2 cm toward the bow. I noticed the change immediately and I felt a lot more comfortable at the finish.

I rowed the 1km out to the start point and I set off. The 22 was easy, so I only took 1 minute of rest. After the 24, I was starting to feel it so I took the full 2 minutes. This setup worked pretty well. I was pretty gassed at the end.

Workout Summary - media/Fusion_20170502-211209.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|09687|54:00.0|02:47.2|172.2|22.5|151.1|179.0|08.0
W-|05553|24:00.0|02:09.6|246.8|25.5|158.4|176.0|09.1
R-|05345|37:06.0|03:28.2|108.4|20.2|145.3|176.0|08.2
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00007|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|08.5|102.0|102.0|00.0
01|00458|02:00.0|02:11.0|198.3|22.5|153.1|160.0|10.2 - tail wind/curr
02|00467|02:00.0|02:08.4|242.9|24.5|158.6|165.0|09.5
03|00491|02:00.0|02:02.1|266.5|26.5|160.5|169.0|09.3
04|00500|02:00.0|02:00.0|279.3|28.0|162.5|173.0|08.9
05|00437|02:00.0|02:17.4|216.7|22.8|150.1|165.0|09.6 - head wind/curr
06|00442|02:00.0|02:15.8|240.3|24.8|160.8|169.0|08.9
07|00459|02:00.0|02:10.7|231.6|26.7|164.3|173.0|08.6
08|00463|02:00.0|02:09.6|274.4|28.1|164.8|176.0|08.2
09|00451|02:00.0|02:12.9|235.3|22.6|146.2|165.0|10.0 - tail wind/curr
10|00469|02:00.0|02:07.9|272.0|25.3|158.0|170.0|09.3
11|00448|02:00.0|02:14.1|228.9|26.3|159.2|171.0|08.5 - head wind/curr
12|00462|02:00.0|02:10.0|275.2|28.4|162.6|175.0|08.1

This shows some of the power of the interval editor on rowsandall. By isolating each interval, you can see how much the wind and current was effecting pace. Compare intervals 1,5, and 9. In # 1, I was in a tail current the whole way. In #5, I was against the wind and current for the whole interval. In #9, I started in a dead end section and finished with a tail current. You can see that in the variations in pace. More interesting was how I was working at higher powers in each one of them. Look at the consistency of power at r28. 275 to 279W. But the pace was 2:00 with the current and 2:10 against!

To look at the effect of moving my feet, I compared this workout with the a rate ladder workout I did back in April. This workout was at r18,20,22 and 24, so I plotted a few parameters versus stroke rate to see what changed.

Effective stroke length: Improved about 2-4 degrees
Slip: roughly the same, strongly correlated with stroke rate.
Catch angle: Maybe a little higher. I was surprised, I would have thought 2cm would have caused a bigger change.
Wash: 2-4 degrees better. This where the longer effective length came from. By giving myself a little more room, I could tap down better.
Finish: I was expecting this to get smaller since I moved my feet, but it didn’t change all that much.

I am like the new foot position, and I like being able to correlate it with a single parameter (wash) that got better.

Good workout. It’s fun to row hard sometimes.

More catching up.

April 16, 20174 Comments

Last time I posted was April 5th. It’s been a while. Work has been keeping me very busy and I’ve been struggling to find time to workout, just not enough time to keep good records. Which is a shame because I’m trying to remember what the heck I did way back on the 6th.

Thursday, 6 April: Flew out to San Diego on the 7:30AM flight. No training. Flew home on the red-eye.

Friday, 7 April: Worked from home. Felt really beaten up from the flight. No training

Saturday, 8 April: Slept for a very long time, nearly 11 hours. I had to drive all over to try to organize what to do with my late father’s possessions. No training. I think this might be the first time I’ve taken three days off in a row in a long time.

Sunday, 9 April: A glorious morning. I took my boat out to Worcester for a row with my friends at Lake Quinsigamond Community Rowing. It was an exciting day for us. We bought a used WinTech Double from Saugatuck over the winter and today was the inaugural row. I was in my single, Joe was in the new (to us) double with Gretchen, and we also boated a quad.

The northern end of the lake was off limits because it was being used for a collegiate regatta. We snuck a little ways up the lake before things got going, but otherwise stuck to the southern 2/3.

I wanted to try rowing a bit harder with the Empower oarlock, so I decided to do rate ladder workout.

4′ @ 18
3′ @ 20
2′ @ 22
1′ @ 24
Repeat 4 times.

This was much harder work than it should have been.

But it was delightful. I used the speedcoach mainly to look at effective length, which was darn short.

I’m still trying to figure all this stuff out, so here’s a bunch of charts over the distance and versus stroke rate. I blanked out the rest strokes from all of it.

After I got back to the dock, Joe asked me if I wanted to take a short spin in the new double. I sure did! It’s a big improvement from the vespoli we rowed last year.

Monday, 10 April: Back down in Newton on the Charles. Sunny and nearly 50F. Back to steady state work. My hands were a mess. Blisters on blisters. I decided to keep working on technical stuff like maximizing effective length.

I was rowing at at a consistent (albeit slow) power, dropping off about 10 watts during the session. The interesting thing to me was how much the current effected things. There was very little wind for the first half. A bit of breeze picked up in the second half which was a tail wind for the downriver and had wind upriver. The current was essentially making me 0:05/500 faster going downriver and 0:05 slower going up river. And even more is certain places.

Power and work per stroke faded a bit over the workout as I stayed under my HR cap.
Length was reasonably consistent, effectively length faded.
Catch and slip was very consistent.
Finish and Wash told a real story. The wash went through the roof as I did my last 4K up river. I was not watching wash on the display and it got really bad toward the end.

Tuesday, 11 April: I had a meeting at 8:30 so I had to be quick. I still wanted to get out on the water. My hands continued to be an issue. More light technical rowing. I managed to forgot to start the speedcoach again.

Wednesday, 12 April: Another day, pressed for time. Today, I decided to stick to technique stuff. I did one of my favorite workouts.

2 minutes square blade
2 minutes alternating square and feathered
2 minutes feathered
keep repeating

Thursday, 13 April: Steady State. Watching wash on the speedcoach.

My technique was better today.

Friday, 14 April: Rest day

Saturday, 15 April: Down on the cape. Busy all day. Just popped down to the basement for a quick 10k.

Sunday, 16 April: Still on the cape. 60 minutes at 180W.

Wednesday: 15km OTW

April 5, 2017April 7, 20172 Comments

Weather: Cold and misty. Around 37F. Wind 3-5 mph from the North. This was a head wind heading down river and a bit of a tail wind going up river.

Plan for the workout was the same as Monday. Focus on technique and learn how to incorporate feedback from the EmPower oarlock into really focused practice.

I also wanted to experiment with the idea of using my phone with RIM to complement the speedcoach display. So, I hooked up my HR monitor to my phone instead of the speedcoach.

I spent the whole workout looking at the work per stroke screen and trying to keep my drive length greater than 100 degrees.

It was another really joyful row. Up and down the river a couple of times focusing on form versus pace. By having my HR on the RIM display, I was able to watch and try to keep the intensity in the aerobic zone. I let it go a bit higher if I was comfortable and working on technique.

So, now I had one set of data on the phone and one set of data on the speedcoach. How do I put them together. Well, it turns out that rowsandall.com has a feature called “Sensor Fusion”. This feature let’s you take specific fields from two different data sources, align the start points manually, and create a workout entry that combines the two. In the plot below, the SPM comes from RIM, and so it goes to the very beginning. The pace and power comes from the speedcoach, and I started that about 6 minutes into the row.

There are some interesting features in the power part of the summary plot. The blue bars showing the higher power levels are when I needed to apply a lot of port pressure to go around a turn in the river.

The pace shows the effect of the current. Today is was a good 10 seconds difference on pace. Notice how consistent the power is, even though the pace is very different.

It’s going to take a while to really know how to use all the data I’m getting. Here’s a sampler. A few thoughts..

Power is lower than I was expecting at 154W avg.
Finish angle was consistent, but Wash got progressively worse
Catch and slip were remarkably consistent
Effectively drive length is a short 80 degrees. This is probably driven mostly by critical body dimensions (like my stubby legs), but it will pay dividends if I can figure out how to get a longer drive angle and less wash at the end.

I finished up and put away my boat. When I looked in the car window at my reflection, I could see that a nice layer of dew had formed on my hat because it was so misty.

Today (Thursday), I didn’t have a chance to workout. I caught the morning flight from Boston to San Diego, had a few customer meetings, and now I’m on the red eye heading home. I’m going to pick up my boat on my way home from the airport and I might be able to go for a row in the afternoon. Otherwise, it’ll be another easy hour on the erg.

Monday: Back On The Water!!!! 15km

April 3, 2017April 6, 20171 Comment

Weather: Cold and Sunny. About 35F. Basically no wind. A beautiful morning.

Today was all about just getting back in the boat and trying out my new toys.

New iPhone, case and mount –> running RIM

New Speedcoach GPS (Model 2)

New EmPower Oarlock

The iphone case and mount worked great. Much more rigid than the mount that I was using last year (and considerably cheaper). I got them from Quad Lock.

The empower oarlock and HR monitor paired with the Speedcoach very easily. I had done the angle calibration on Sunday. The force calibration was easy and quick.

I was off the dock within 20 minutes of getting there. The river is really high right now. Right up to the top of the dock, and the current is visibly faster than normal. I was the only person out on Monday morning. I had a beautiful morning all to myself.

Our population of swans seems bigger this year. There was a pretty good number of cygnets last summer. I think they’ve grown up and returned. Pretty to look at, but additional obstacles to row around.

I did my normal row, about 15km. Starting at the docks, I row 4km downstream. The first km is winding and slow. After that, it’s lovely flat water and mostly straight for 2km. Then I go under a narrow bridge and the last km is out across a small basin before the Moody Street Dam. It’s a beautiful row and I was so happy to be back outside, enjoying the morning.

After I turn at the dam, I row back upstream. This time of year, I row up into a long cove instead of completely retracing my steps. There are some nice houses along the cove, and I get a little more distance. It’s about 3km from the dam to the end of the cove. Then I spin, and head back down river to the dam. Finally, I turn back up river and row the 4km back to the dock.

The first and last km where it’s winding I think of as the warmup and cool down.

Now, for the toys. I loved rowing with the EmPower Oarlock. I tried out all the skill screens. There are screen to show catch and with slip, finish angle with wash, power, and work per stroke. I used one screen for each of the 3km sections. Unfortunately, I was enjoying the row so much that I didn’t notice that I had forgotten to start the speedcoach. The way the speedcoach works, it gives you a live screen, but just doesn’t accumulate data if it isn’t started. Of course it does say “stop” right in the middle of the screen, but I just didn’t notice that. I hope I don’t make the mistake again, I’m sure I will.

Of course, since I am obsessive enough about data that I run redundant systems, I had the whole row recorded with the Rowing in Motion app on my phone.

The skill screens on the Speedcoach are great, but I was bothered that I wasn’t able to keep an eye on my Heart Rate while I had those displays up. I know from reading the NK materials that this was a concious choice to limit the chances of information overload, but I find it pretty easy to focus in on on number in a display and only look at other ones every few strokes. I wish that HR and SPM were visible on the skill screens.

But, I have a solution to my problem. Since I am running RIM anyway, I can get that info from my phone while I use the speedcoach for technique feedback. The great part about that is rowsandall provides a cool feature to let me smoosh the data from RIM and Speecoach together before I analyze it. (More about that in my next post).

Based on that conclusion, I will most likely pair my HR monitor to my phone and use the RIM display to show pace, HR, SPM and time. I’ll stick to skill screens on the speed coach, unless I’m doing a workout where I want faster pace feedback, like short sprints.

4-3a

You can see effect of the current on pace. It was about 10 second delta

Here’s a view of just the speedcoach data for the last 30 minutes of the row.

And here’s a stroke profile for the section from 2000m to 2600m

4-3b

I need to double check the angle calibration before I draw any conclusions from this.

I did a quick very of effective drive length and work per stroke to get a baseline.

4-3d

The effective drive length has got me worried, so I wanted to compare it to total length.

I think I have some work to do to get a longer drive.

I also just looked a power for this chunk.

It’s lower than I would have expected. I guess I have some work to do on strength and fitness too!

So. Much. Data. 🙂

Quantified Rowing

Measure – Adjust – Improve

Tag: OTW