Tag: steady state

Saturday: 3 x 20′ / 1′ r L4

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Stayed up too late, and decided to sleep instead of heading to the lake.  I’ll row tomorrow instead.  Got up around 9:30 and hopped on the erg.

After yesterday’s very long row, I decided to only do 60 minutes today.  I also decided to stick with a stroke sequence and let my HR do what ever it wanted to do.

I did the following sequence: 2′ @ 16, 2′ @ 17, 2′ @ 18, 2′ @ 19, 2′ @ 20

Power was 10W * stroke rate (so 16spm = 160W)

One interesting thing in the charts is the drive length.  As usual, you can see my drive length increasing over the first 10 minutes.  I think it is cool how it becomes more erratic as I get tired.  I like all the data that you can get out of painsled.

2016-06-25 10.34.09

 

Started off feeling great.  But I kind of hit the wall in the last 20 minutes.  HR was a lot higher.  I’ve decided to try to do my LIT endurance workouts in a fasted state.  I think the research is pretty clear that it helps keep you metabolizing fats to a higher intensity than if you have eaten recently.  The thing that I am trying to work out now is intensity.

I have the feeling that if I had limited to high end of this workout to 190W, I probably would have maintained a lower heart rate.  It might be better to go back to a constant power level for these workouts.  My suspicion is that there is a fair amount of hysteresis in the crossover between fat and CHO metabolism.  Once you flip the switch to start burning glycogen, that you have to go way down in intensity to flip the switch back to fat.  I think that where I am now, that going above 180W I am flipping the switch.

For now, if I have to do any steady state on the erg, I think I will start doing lactate testing again, and stick to constant power.  Pity.  It is very boring.  But I want to get some unequivocal data on where my base fitness is right now.

Friday: 20K Steady State / Technique

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I got home around 11pm and got to bed around 1AM.  There was no way that I was getting up at 5:15 to go rowing.  I did pack my rowing stuff in case I was able to sneak out and go for a row in the afternoon.  It turns that I did.

I was not in the mood for the planned 6 x 750.  I still felt pretty worn down from all the plane flights and jet lag.  Also, I had not been in a boat since the previous Sunday.  Even that didn’t entirely count since it was my chubby boat.  So, I thought it would be a good idea to work on technique.  I went to my go session for working on balance and technique

  • 2′ square blade rowing
  • 2′ alternating square and normal
  • 2′ normal
  • Rate target: 18 to 20
  • Pace target: none
  • HR cap:  < 150  (hopefully a lot under 150 for most of it)

It was beautiful out today.  Around 80F, but with a nice breeze from the ENE around 5mph, with gusts higher.

It was a really nice outing.  Nice and easy.  It’s hard to concentrate for that long, but I had stretches where I felt like my rowing was fluid and natural.  I also had periods where it was just wobbly and awful.

The XGPS160 was acting up badly today.  It froze and I cycled power four times.  Each time, the symptoms were identical.  The pace and distance would stop updating.  I would power it off, power it back on, it would start talking to the iphone again and everything worked fine.

It was also navigating horribly.  Here’s the map of the whole outing.

Screen Shot 2016-06-24 at 10.16.50 PM.png

Some of the lines look a little jagged.  When you zoom in it gets much more apparent that the position it is reporting has a lot of uncertainty to it.

The first map is the leftmost third.  The jaggy line is the beginning of the row.  Look at the sudden jumps in the position.  Further over, notice that the position is just wrong.  It has me rowing through the penisula.

The second picture also has navigation errors showing me rowing into the north bank of the river coming out of the s-turn.  I assure you, I did not.

The third picture is the Moody street basin and you can see the weird results by the bridge.  Also, the lines down the canal are wrong.  The good water is very narrow and I tend to follow it quite consistently, the lines are all over the place.

At this point, I think I am going to be leaving the XGPS160 in my kit bag until I hear something back from the vendor.  With this much error in the position and the impact it has on the instantaneous pace display, which is jumping all over the place, it’s worse than the much slower updates of the internal GPS of the iphone.

Tomorrow:  The promised 6×750.

 

Thursday: 4 x 20′ / 1′ L4

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Tuesday:  Arrived in Munich at 10AM.  Showered, connected by plane to Stuttgart.  Meetings with customer in the afternoon, back to the airport, flew to Paris, connected to Marseille.  Got to my hotel at midnight. No Training

Wednesday:  Decided to sleep in, instead of trying to workout.  Prep sessions all morning, customer meeting in  the afternoon, then back to the airport to fly back to Munich.  Arrived at the airport around 8:30PM, took the s-bahn  to my hotel.  Met with a couple of colleagues at the hotel.  Got  to bed around 1AM. No Training

Thursday:  Up at 7:30AM for a breakfast meeting with a customer.  That finished around 10AM.  My flight leaves around 4:10PM, so finally, I had a window to go to the gym.  I went to the hotel fitness center and saw a meticulously clean Concept2 Model E with a PM4.  Yesss!!!

Plan:

  • 4 x 20′ / 1′ rest
  • L4 format.  Power target –> 10W x stroke rate (16spm = 160W, etc)
  • HR Cap: 156

I figured with all the flying around, irregular meals and reasonable consumption of beer, that this would be a difficult session.  I was right.

I started slow and within 10 minutes I knew that I would struggle.  Here’s the stroke sequences I did.

  • 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20
  • 16 / 17 / 18 / 19/ 20
  • 3′ @ 16 / 3′ @ 17 / 3′ @ 18 / 1′ @ 19
  • 3′ @ 16 / 3′ @ 17 / 3′ @ 18 / 1′ @ 19
  • 4′ @ 16 / 3′ @ 17 / 2′ @ 18 / 1′ @ 19 (dropped off the target power in this one)
  • 4′ @ 16 / 3′ @ 17 / 2′ @ 18 / 1′ @ 19
  • 10′ @ 16
  • 9′ @ 16 / 1′ @ 20

Very disappointed with what has happened to my aerobic fitness.  But pleased with the gigantic puddles under the erg.

Screen Shot 2016-06-23 at 12.35.23 PM

Tomorrow:  Sprint session in the boat.  6 x 750 / 5′ rest.

Sunday: 70 minutes steady state in the Alden

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Sunny, 70s, windy.  Wind SW 5mph with gusts to 15.  Sun sparking on the water.  Really beautiful.

Today the plan was a low intensity steady state session.  I decided to take my Alden out for a spin to get used to rowing it and to figure out what kind of paces are reasonable in a shorter and wider boat.   I went to Lake Whitehall, which is about 5 minutes from my house and is a popular kayaking, fishing, and canoeing spot.  No rowing though.  It works OK, but the longest straight is about 2K and that requires some fancy steering through a couple of narrow spots.  As I found today, it also builds some chop.  It was not an issue in an open water boat, the power boat wakes weren’t either.  They were kind of fun to row over.

The Dual XGPS160 acted up again today.  For the first 15 minutes of the row, the pace was just bouncing all over the place.  Getting stuck for a few seconds, then dropping down to 0:02/500, then returning to normal.  Looking at the view on the map, there were a bunch of zigs and zags as the GPS position got messed up and then locked in again.  For some reason, it started working after about 15 minutes.

whitehall

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The first half of the row was quite enjoyable.  Since the boat turns on a dime, I tried to hug the shoreline more closely than I normally would.   After that, the heaviness of the boat started to get to me.  I learned that the analogy that Concept2 uses to describe drag factor is spot on.  The heaviness on the drive and the faster deceleration were exactly the same.  The only difference is that you don’t have the magical PM making the splits faster for that extra effort.  You just go a bit slower. My best guess is about 0:20/500 slower.  So, the same effort that produces a 2:30 pace in my fluid, produces a 2:50/500 pace in the Alden.

In essence, I will be doing a fair amount of bungee rowing.  This has good and bad aspects to it.  The good is that it slows everything down on the drive so it is easy to focus on blades depth and not missing water at the catch.  The bad is that the load is heavy and I will need to adapt to two very different boat feels.  One thing is clear though.  It is much better than erging, both in terms of the stroke mechanics and also just getting outside and having some great scenery.

By rowing for over an hour, I found two additional issues with the boat.  The first is the seat.  I must have a different butt geometry than what the seat was designed for.  I started noticing some pain at my right sitz bone about halfway through the row and it kept getting worse and worse.  By the time I finished, I could barely support my weight on my right leg, and I was concerned that I might not be able to carry my boat out of the water.  After about 5 minutes, the pain subsided a bit and I could function, but it’s still quite sore today.  I’m going to try to get the exact same seat as what I have in my fluid.  I can sit on that for hours without pain.

The second issue was much more serious, and far more abrupt.  As I was rowing back from the south end of the lake to the launch ramp, about halfway, all of the sudden I heard a big bang off to starboard in the middle of my drive.  I was sure that something had broken, but I wasn’t sure what.  I looked at the rigger and I couldn’t see any damage immediately, so I took a couple of gentle paddle strokes while watching the starboard rigger.  Ah ha!  I saw that the starboard backstay on the rigger had parted right at the oarlock pin.  Every stroke, the rigger was flexing toward the bow.   This picture shows where the backstay broke.

boat

So, now I will try to get some new backstays and get it all fixed up.

Start_|_Dist_|__Time_|_Split Pace_|_Strokes_|_SPM__|_DPS__|_Remarks
00010_|_4190_|_14:23_|_1:43.0_____|_276_____|_19.2_|_15.2_|_corrupted data
04200_|_1872_|_11:29_|_3:04.1_____|_224_____|_19.5_|_08.4_|_headwind
06072_|_3000_|_16:33_|_2:45.5_____|_327_____|_19.8_|_09.2_|_tail wind
09072_|_0078_|_01:13_|_7:51.1_____|_013_____|_10.6_|_06.0_|_rest
09150_|_2800_|_16:25_|_2:55.8_____|_337_____|_20.5_|_08.3_|_headwind
11950_|_0150_|_01:18_|_4:21.6_____|_019_____|_14.5_|_07.9_|_rest
12100_|_1800_|_10:06_|_2:48.3_____|_195_____|_19.3_|_09.2_|_tailwind
13900_|_1303_|_10:06_|_3:52.7_____|_177_____|_17.5_|_07.4_|_broken rigger

Distance_|_Time__|_Pace___|_Strokes_|_SPM__|_DPS__|_Remarks
4190_____|_14:23_|_1:43.0_|_276_____|_19.2_|_15.2_|_warmup
9472_____|_54:32_|_2:52.7_|_1083_____|_19.9_|_08.7_|_Main set
1531_____|_12:38_|_4:07.6_|_209_____|_16.5_|_07.3_|_rest meters
15193_____|_21:34_|_2:41.0_|_1568_____|_19.2_|_09.7_|_Total

Today:  I skipped rowing this morning because I didn’t get to bed until after 1AM last night.  I’m hoping to get a sprint session in on the erg before I fly to Germany tonight on the red eye.  The plan is 4 x (6 x 1′ on / 1′ off) 5′ rest.

 

 

 

Wednesday: Steady State Rate Ladders

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Weather: Sunny, 70F, light shifty wind from the WNW about 2-4 mph.  Wind was not really a factor, but slowed me down at times.

Plan:

  • 6′ Rate Ladders
  • 3′ @ 17 / 2′ @ 19 / 1′ @ 21
  • 1′ rests when I turned at the ends of the river.
  • Technique Notes:  Keep the drive smooth.  Get the blades off the water.

Screen Shot 2016-06-15 at 9.22.44 AM

Notice the purple box?  If you look over to the right hand side at the speed scale, it indicates that I was going 4600 km/h.  Pretty nice acceleration, eh?

What actually happened was the Dual XGPS160 unit and it took me a little while to notice.  The interesting thing is that the pace and distance seemed to update for a while after the point where the straight line started.  I thought it was only about 30 seconds or so where I saw the pace and distance frozen before I stopped and cycled power on the unit, but the data is missing for nearly 9 minutes.  Some weird s**t going on here.

Cycling the power made everything happy again.

Today was a day of mishaps.  On my last trip down the river,  Was trying to squeeze in the end of a ladder and I pushed it too far.  There is a cable across the river with big orange floats (about 18″ in diameter) strung on it.  I put on the brakes, and tried to turn, but managed to get my bow and starboard oar blade under the cable between two floats, and my boat basically parallel to the float line.  What ensued was an ungainly display of backing and forthing and turning and wobbling as I tried to get my bow extracted, my boat turned around and get myself clear.  It was an ugly demonstration of what not to do in a boat.

After that, I finished the journey up river and was approaching the dock.  There are a few challenges to deal with.  First, there was a bit of cross wind.  No big deal.  Second, there is an underwater propeller under one side of the dock that is artificially creating a current to try to keep area by the dock clear of weeds.  Also no big deal if you approach the other side of the dock.  Third, is the weeds themselves.  They are floating in great clumps right now.  This was the cause of my downfall today.  I was aiming to put my bow about a foot away from the side of the dock, so I would come in on the port side of the boat.  But when I was about 6 feet from the dock, my port oar caught a great hunk of weed, and turned my bow to the port side.

With a small bump, I hit the end of the dock.  No big deal, right.  The bow ball is there, right?  Well, on this specific dock, there is a 4″ wide gap between the board along the side of the dock and the one on the end of the dock, and my bow hit that gap with extraordinary precision, and the bow became wedged between the two bits of wood.  I had to back the boat with a fair amount of pressure to get it free, and it took a couple of strokes to do it.

Between those strokes, I was processing what the hell I would do if I couldn’t get it free.  I guess, jump out and swim.  That would have been pretty damn humiliating!  I’m glad it didn’t come to that.  There was no damage to the boat.  In the future, I will approach the dock with less speed and more paranoia.

myimage (19)

Tomorrow:  8 x 750 / 4′ rest.

 

Monday: Easy Rate Ladders

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Weather:  Sunny, upper 50s, Windy!  Sustained winds around 10mph, with gusts to 20.  Shifting around between the west and the north.

Rowing on  the upper charles from newton down to Waltham.  In my wonderful Fluid.

Plan:

  • Rate Ladders (3’/2’/1′)
  • Rate: 17 / 19 / 21
  • Pace:  Completely useless with the shifty wind
  • Technique:  Work on getting way out at the catch and slowly squaring the oars at the catch.

I used Crewnerd with the Dual Skypro XGPS160

Screen Shot 2016-06-13 at 11.47.09 AM.png

This unit provides a 10Hz update rate for GPS information to the iPhone over bluetooth.  This is 10x faster than the internal GPS of the iPhone.  This is a good thing because pace changes should be reflected more quickly and accurately in CrewNerd.  If you are getting updates that quickly, you can turn down the smoothing from ~100m to ~20m and the annoying lag is a lot better and with the fast update rate, the pace does not hunt around.  When it works it works great, unfortunately I have never been able to complete an entire workout without the unit hanging up.  When that happens, the pace and distance on Crewnerd stop updating.  It happened to me today.  You can see it in the map below where the course goes from yellow to red.

Screen Shot 2016-06-13 at 11.45.29 AM.png

The updates actually stopped about 1km before that, at the little blue flag.  Here’s a zoom in.

Screen Shot 2016-06-13 at 11.53.24 AM

The updates stopped coming out of the s-curve.  It seemed like the display was live for at least another 2 minutes, and then froze, about 100m before the “lap001” flag.

I experimented to try to figure out what was going on.  I quit crewnerd and restarted it.  It was still not updating pace and distance.  I started up the XGPS utility app.  It took a while to open, and then finally failed, and crashed.  Next, I cycled power on the XGPS unit, and that seemed to do the trick.  But I am not sure that the iphone was actually using the XGPS anymore because the pace was madly misbehaving.  It was misbehaving just like it does when you don’t use enough smoothing and the internal GPS.

Anyway, I am not sure if it is the worth the hassle to use the XGPS.  I like the crisper pace display, but it really pisses me off when technology does not work reliably.  I’ll be glad when I get my impeller back.

So, back to the workout.  My pace was terrible and all over the place because of the wind.  I focused on trying to hit my rates and keep my HR below 155.  I also focused on the technique notes.  Even though it was windy, I really enjoyed the session.

The first plots are for the bulk of the session, up to the hang.  The second is for the last 2 minutes of the last ladder and the paddle back to the dock.  Looks like I did 12 complete 6′ ladders.

Tomorrow:  Time to start working on starts!  The plan will be to do a long warmup (Rojabo style) to the Moody Street dam, and then do starts, lots of them.  Basically 20 strokes from a standing start, paddle 20 strokes, stop the boat, repeat.  Focus is on cleanly building speed and hitting stroke rates in the mid 30s during the second 10 strokes.

 

 

Sunday: 4 x 20′ / 1′ rest L4 on the erg

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Plan:

  • 4 x 20′ / 1′ rest
  • Power: 10W x stroke rate
  • Heart rate cap at 155

It should have been easier.  I set myself up on the porch.  It was beautiful outside.  Windy and around 70F.

2016-06-12 13.42.06

It should have been a really easy row, but I started feeling the effects very soon into it.  I started conservatively at 18spm and 180W.  My HR climbed steadily through the first 20 minutes and was well into UT1 by the end of that piece.  By the end of the second, I had pushed past the HR cap, so I retreated to a L4 format sequence

  • 4′ at 16 (160W)
  • 3′ at 17 (170W)
  • 2′ at 18 (180W)
  • 1′ at 19 (190W)

Even with this downshift, I still spent a lot of time above my HR cap.  I think I need to do some lactate testing to see where I am these days.

Screen Shot 2016-06-12 at 6.27.43 PM

Tomorrow:  Back in Newton in my own boat!  Hurray!  Steady state rate ladders 3/2/1 format at 17/19/21.  HR cap at 155.

 

Friday: 8K steady state in the Miracle Shell

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Weather:  Broken clouds, occasional drizzle, windy.  WSW 5-10 mph with higher gusts.

Back in the saddle!  While I was in Phoenix, the good people from Fluidesign dropped off my boat.  I am massively impressed with the results.

Here’s the before picture:

2016-04-08 17.40.10

And here are the after pictures:

The finish is beautiful, and there are only the the slightest hint of a ripple where the carbon had been creased and torn.

On the water, the boat felt just like before.  Stiff and responsive.  It set well and had been rerigged perfectly.  It tracked perfectly.  I am amazed at the repair.

By the time I had gotten it all unpacked and all the gadgets mounted, I was short on time, so I did a quick 8K steady session.  I wanted to take it easy and make sure that I felt confident in the boat before I did anything too intense.  I loved being back in my boat!  For the same effort, I feel like I am about 5 seconds faster on pace.  A little tough to tell because of the breeze this morning, but the speedcoach seemed much more willing to spend time below 2:30 pace than in the peinert.

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Of course there are a few nits that I need to take care of on the boat.

  1.  They reset the fin when they repainted the boat.  In doing that they did not notice the damage behind the fin from a close encounter with the sunken log (Trees and this boat do not get along!)  During my row, I shipped a little water in the stern.  I just need a dab of silicon over the area and it will be fine.
  2. When they refinished the boat, they forgot to remount my impeller.  I didn;t even notice this until I was rowing and saw the pace display on the speedcoach stubbornly staying blank.  I felt under the boat to see if the impeller was fouled with weeds and discovered that it wasn’t there!  I’ve asked them to send it back to me so I can get it put back on.
  3. I noticed that an elastic bands on one of the Magik oarlocks had snapped.  This band opens the oarlock when the latch is disengaged, so it is not critical, but I’d like to fix it.

All minor, and easily fixed.

Tomorrow:  Out to Worcester.  Time for a bit  more intensity.  I’m thinking of doing a  4 x (6 x 1′ on / 1′ off) 4′ rest at r30.

Wednesday: 50′ in the Fitness Center

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Nothing special, just trying to not lose fitness while I travel.

  • 30 minutes of a flat run (around 3% grade and 5.5 mph)
  • 1′ break
  • 20 minutes inclined walk (15% grade, 3.0 to 3.5 mph)

Screen Shot 2016-06-08 at 4.17.44 PM

Tomorrow:  Probably another session in the fitness center, or maybe a run (but it’s pretty freakishly hot here).

 

Monday: 14K steady state r20

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Weather:  Broken overcast, clearing during the row to beautiful sunshine.  Temperature in the mid 60s.  Light wind from the WSW, building from nothing to about 3 to 5 mph by the time I finished.  This was a head wind when heading up river.

The plan:

  • Steady State, basically 4 x 15′
  • 1′ rests and 5′ warm up and cool down
  • Rate: 20 spm
  • HR Cap at 155
  • Focus on rowing clean at a slightly higher rate.  Lighten up my stroke to keep HR in the aerobic band.  Apply power smoothly after the catch.

Screen Shot 2016-06-06 at 11.24.23 AM

Start_|_Dist_|__Time_|_Split Pace_|_Strokes_|_SPM__|_DPS__|_Remarks
00000_|_1100_|_06:22_|_2:53.6_____|_114_____|_17.9_|_09.6_|_warmup
01050_|_3000_|_14:30_|_2:25.0_____|_297_____|_20.5_|_10.1_|_tail
04050_|_0150_|_01:41_|_5:36.4_____|_014_____|_08.3_|_10.7_|_r
04200_|_2800_|_14:27_|_2:34.8_____|_289_____|_20.0_|_09.7_|_head
07000_|_0300_|_02:50_|_4:43.3_____|_038_____|_13.4_|_07.9_|_r
07290_|_2800_|_13:40_|_2:26.4_____|_276_____|_20.2_|_10.1_|_tail
10090_|_0110_|_02:01_|_9:10.2_____|_009_____|_04.5_|_12.2_|_r
10200_|_2800_|_14:49_|_2:38.7_____|_296_____|_20.0_|_09.5_|_head
13000_|_1202_|_07:10_|_2:58.9_____|_134_____|_18.7_|_09.0_|_c

Distance_|_Time__|_Pace___|_Strokes_|_SPM__|_DPS__|_Remarks
1100_____|_06:22_|_2:53.6_|_114_____|_17.9_|_09.6_|_warmup
11400_____|_57:26_|_2:31.1_|_1158_____|_20.2_|_09.8_|_Main set
1202_____|_07:10_|_2:58.9_|_134_____|_18.7_|_09.0_|_Cool down
0560_____|_06:32_|_5:50.0_|_061_____|_09.3_|_09.2_|_rest meters
14262_____|_17:30_|_2:43.0_|_1467_____|_18.9_|_09.7_|_Total

Tomorrow:  8 x 500 / 3′ rest, rate r28