Snake Race

October 14, 20181 Comment

It’s been a busy week. My last journal entry was on Oct 9 when I did a terrific 5 x 1500.

The rest of the 9th was a blur. I worked out, then a day full of meetings, then rushed off to go a wake (One of our best friends lost his brother to a sudden illness), then ate dinner, then to the airport to catch a ten o’clock flight to Geneva.

I slept really well on the flight. I probably got 5 hours of sleep. We landed in Zurich and then connected to Geneva, finally getting in around 2pm. I had meetings all afternoon, and then we went to dinner. I finally got back to the hotel around 10:30pm and had hoped to get right to bed. Unfortunately a time critical work issue came up and I spent the next 90 minutes on the phone.

My plan had been to do a short workout in the morning before my 10am flight home, but I decided that sleep was more important. I slept until 7:30, had a nice breakfast, called an Uber and went to the airport. The flight home was very uneventful. I did work most of the way, took a short nap, and then I was home. The worst part of the whole thing was the traffic home from the airport.

Friday – Oct 12: Drills and a little bit of race pace

My usual taper is to do a shrinking number of 500m pieces over the week before a race, and then just do a warmup on the day before. This time, I had two complete rest days but lots of inert travel time. I decided that it would be best to do some work on the day before the race to try to make sure that the race pace strokes felt OK.

I also wanted to do a lot of drill work. I find it quite calming, and it really engages my brain in the session. So the plan for the day was to do about 20 minutes of light rowing and drills, then a couple of 2′ race pace pieces, then more drills.

The summary shows the 4 – 1 minute pieces and 2 60 stroke pieces. Plus a little bonus sprint to the dock at the end. Notice the difference in power between the first 4 and the last three. The last three are against the current, so it takes a lot more watts to get the same splits.

          Workout Summary - media/20181012-1145320o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|08125|49:34.0|03:03.1|097.9|22.1|127.3|164.0|07.4
W-|02106|09:14.0|02:11.7|178.9|25.4|146.2|163.0|09.0
R-|06029|40:20.0|03:20.8|079.4|21.4|123.0|163.0|04.3
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00217|00:56.6|02:10.2|146.6|22.2|140.2|148.0|10.4 
02|00178|00:45.8|02:08.7|177.7|26.1|139.9|148.0|08.9
03|00226|00:58.2|02:08.6|199.4|26.9|145.8|155.0|08.7
04|00217|00:56.1|02:09.4|151.2|25.6|148.4|157.0|09.1
05|00119|00:31.7|02:13.1|141.7|20.9|138.7|140.0|10.8
06|00513|02:16.8|02:13.4|186.9|25.8|150.5|162.0|08.7
07|00499|02:13.0|02:13.4|190.0|25.6|149.5|163.0|08.8
08|00137|00:36.5|02:13.5|202.6|27.7|139.4|149.0|08.1

Pretty easy session, only 18 minutes above a <ut2 level.

Then I loaded my boat on my car and went to work.

Saturday – 13 October: The Snake Race

This may be my only race of the season, and I hadn’t raced since my disappointing outing at last year’s Head of the Charles. I was nervous as hell before I launched, even though this was a low stakes local race. My competition was.

The rowers from Anchorage and Community scratched. As for the rest.

Maldari is a good rower from Lawrence, he’s beaten me and I’ve beaten him in other events, we are about the same speed.
Kisarale is a rower from Uganda. He’s 38, but he was in the 2015 Olympic qualifying regatta for Africa in the 2x. I’d never met him, but I suspected he was a lot faster than I am.
Haddon is a rower in my club. He was rowing this as a tune up for next weekend when he will be in the HOCR.
Krupnick was a 1st boat varsity rower at WPI and graduated in 2017. He was going to be MUCH faster than me.
Byrnes is in the other main club on the lake. I am usually faster
Sturges. Same story
Sontgerath was the guy that I wanted to beat. I had beaten him in the HOCR in 2015 and then returned the favor last year, beating me pretty badly. This may sound silly or immature, but I saw the race as between him and me.

The way the bow numbers were handed out, I was starting second to last, and Sontgerath was starting last behind me. So, it was simple, I just needed to keep my eye on him and maintain the spacing.

Bob and I launched around 8:30 for a 9am start. We warmed up going down to the start. For some reason, my speedcoach decided to stop soon after launching and I didn’t notice it until I was getting ready for the start. So, most of the warmup is missing.

It was cold and rainy, around 48F. There was a light and variable wind that seemed to be from the northwest, which is a cross/head wind. I only noticed it a couple of times during the race when I felt like I was working harder and the splits slowed down. I was quite glad to have the power meter.

Anyway, we were all at the start, and so the officials decided to move the start time up a few minutes so we wouldn’t just sit there getting cold and wet in the rain. We were called up to the start in order and off we went. The starting line was at the southern end of larger island, right about even with the label “Pinecrest”. My first target was Sturges. I saw him off my starboard side. You go up the western shore of the lake, and soon after the start is a beach that juts out. I decided that I could pass him to the shore side and still have enough room to steer out from the beach. It worked out fine and I was well clear of him by the time I steered a bit out from shore for the beach. The guy who started in from of Sturges was Kisarale, but when I looked around I saw no sign of him. I did see Byrnes, so he became my next target. He was also off my starboard side, and we had the narrows coming up. I just held my line and we slowly moved toward the buoy line that marked the starboard side of the course. I passed him right around the narrows and when I looked around I could spot anyone close enough to focus on.

Now it was time to just row. This is about where the video picks up. There is bit more than 1km from the narrows to the bridge. I was starting to feel the pain, so I started counting strokes. I got to about 130 when I got to the bridge. The whole time I was keeping my eyes on Heri (Sontgerath). At times, he seemed like he was closing the distance, and other times it seemed like I was stretching it out. Frankly, I didn’t even really remember how far back he was at the start, so I had no clue if I was ahead or not.

From the bridge to the end should be about another 200 strokes. Which I counted off as I went. It seemed like it took a lifetime to get from the bridge to the Gazebo. I thought it was almost another 1000m from the gazebo to the finish and so I just settled in and tried to avoid blowing up while I started scanning for the finish. I saw it, but in retrospect, I wish I had seen it sooner. I started my sprint later than I should have. But I finished strong. I thought the finish was going to be marked with white buoys. It was marked by a pair of oranges, which I thought represented the start of a finish chute. I continued my kick for another 100m beyond the finish to a white buoy.

That extra kick brought be me up to be close enough to chat with Maldari. Apparetly, he was trying to keep his seperation with me, like I was trying to with Heri. We had a nice chat about boats and stuff as we paddled to the docks. They I cooled down from the QRA docks to our club at regatta point.

The results

Third place, but first place amongst the old guys. I walked around 10 feet tall the rest of the day.

Here’s a video of the last 9 minutes of the race. The first 10 minutes were basically useless because of water on the lens.

Looking at the video, as always there is a lot of stuff that I need to work on. The most obvious is that I have re-established my habit of digging way too deep and rowing over a barrel. I also need to work on making the body and arms part of the stroke more powerful.

          Workout Summary - media/20181013-1355320o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|08201|58:05.0|03:32.5|097.1|21.0|140.9|179.0|06.7
W-|05624|25:27.0|02:15.8|169.3|25.2|166.3|179.0|08.8
R-|02583|32:38.0|06:19.2|040.9|17.7|121.2|179.0|03.7
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00240|01:03.0|02:11.0|155.2|26.5|154.7|164.0|08.6
02|04363|19:36.7|02:14.9|176.1|25.8|170.7|179.0|08.6 - the race.
03|00632|02:55.2|02:18.6|151.6|22.6|150.2|159.0|09.6
04|00142|00:40.4|02:22.2|143.5|22.3|155.9|157.0|09.4
05|00247|01:12.0|02:25.8|128.4|21.6|148.8|151.0|09.5

My pace was 2:14.9 this year. I did this race in 2015 in similar conditions and my pace was a 2:12.9. Here is a link. 2015 was my best year at the HOCR. Comparing the two races, I pushed hard in 2015, with the last 5 minutes above 178 bpm. My rowing looks very similar. I am probably about 15 lbs heavier now. I am ever the optimist and when you put all that together, I come to the conclusion that I can get back to and even exceed where I was in 2015. As always, it comes down to weight, technique and fitness.

Well, enough for now. I think I will go do some easy rowing on the dreaded dynamic.

Wed & Thurs: Taper Triples

October 19, 2017Leave a comment

My long / hard workout on Tuesday was my last hard session before the HOCR. Yesterday and Today, I implements a very short taper. Not much need to do more because my prior training load was pretty light.

My traditional taper is guided by this paper. This is a 5 day taper, based on high intensity (115% VO2Max pace) intervals. They are intense, but short, about 75 seconds in the study and massively long 6 minute rests. Since I am making up for lost time, I decided to reduce the intensity of the intervals and make them a little longer, so that I would get additional technique practice at head race stroke rates and pressure. So, if you believe 2K pace is roughly VO2Max pace (and I do), then that would mean that I should do the intervals at about 250-275 watts. Instead, I planned to do them at closer to a 5K pace, which is maybe 40 watts lower, and extend them out to 120 seconds.

Also, I have been noticing that my rowing is pretty damn sloppy, especially my finishes. This has been making me unstable during the recovery, and messing up the whole next stroke. So, I thought the best way to use the rest time was to do some square blade rowing, so I did 2 minutes of square blade rowing and 2 minutes alternating square and feathered stroke by stroke.

So the plan was:

Wednesday: 4 x 2′
Thursday: 3 x 2′
Friday: practice row on the HOCR course. Keep it gentle. HR limit <150bpm
Saturday: race day!

Wednesday:

A beautiful morning. Clear, about 45F when I launched, but it warmed up fast and it was about 55F by the time I finished. There was a light breeze, but the water was silky flat almost all the time.

I was having such a good time that I did an extra interval at the end.

          Workout Summary - media/20171018-125059-Greg Smith 20171018 0650amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07993|45:25.0|02:50.5|143.6|20.7|146.0|176.0|08.5
W-|02159|09:39.0|02:14.1|230.6|24.7|159.3|175.0|09.1
R-|05840|35:47.0|03:03.8|112.4|19.2|141.0|175.0|06.1
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00453|02:00.0|02:12.4|238.1|24.6|157.1|166.0|09.2
02|00463|02:00.0|02:09.6|232.3|24.8|163.2|172.0|09.3
03|00450|02:00.0|02:13.5|239.1|25.1|163.1|172.0|09.0
04|00446|02:00.0|02:14.4|228.8|25.0|163.4|175.0|08.9
05|00347|01:39.0|02:22.8|211.3|23.7|147.7|166.0|08.9

230W felt like it was bit too much to be sustainable for the whole race. Maybe 220W would work though.

Thursday:

Today was a carbon copy of Wednesday. Clear, 45F, even less wind.

I enjoyed every minute of the session. I had a little bit of extra river in the last interval, so I extended it to 3 minutes.

          Workout Summary - media/20171019-164952-Greg Smith 20171019 0634amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06402|36:25.0|02:50.7|142.0|20.5|138.0|172.0|08.6
W-|01583|07:00.0|02:12.7|247.0|24.8|156.9|172.0|09.1
R-|04823|29:25.0|03:03.0|108.7|19.0|131.4|172.0|08.1
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00448|02:00.0|02:13.9|252.9|23.9|152.8|161.0|09.4
02|00456|02:00.0|02:11.6|240.4|25.0|150.7|165.0|09.1
03|00679|03:00.0|02:12.6|247.4|25.4|163.7|172.0|08.9

247W felt good today. Definitely too hard to hold for the whole race, but 255W should be workable.

After my workout I had an evaluation with a Physical Therapist. He found some imbalances in my glute strength that are causing weird stuff to happen with other muscles in an effort to compensate and this is putting strain on my SI joints. He gave me some stretches and exercises that will help me fix the imbalance. I’m pretty happy with the outcome and delighted that the PT works on a lot of rowers, including the US national team.

Tomorrow: Afternoon, I will be bringing my boat down to the launch site and doing a practice row on the course.

Thursday: 2×500 taper.

October 20, 2016November 2, 2016Leave a comment

On the charles in my fluid.

Last taper day.

2×500

Workout Summary - media/20161020-152810-77630o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|04143|24:30.0|02:57.5|21.1|141.4|175.0|08.0
W-|01000|03:55.0|01:57.5|29.5|161.7|174.0|08.6
R-|07344|46:00.0|03:08.0|02.4|016.4|174.0|08.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
02|00500|01:55.2|01:55.2|30.2|161.5|174.0|08.6
03|00500|01:59.9|01:59.9|28.9|161.8|174.0|08.7

Wednesday: 3 x 500 Taper (in 2x)

October 19, 20164 Comments

On Lake Quinsigamond in the Vespoli double with Joe.

Weather: Wicked dark! Warm, around 65F. Wind from the SW around 10mph, but it felt like it was lighter in middle and kicked up a bit again at the end.

Plan:

Long Rojabo style warmup
3 x 500
- Pace: ~2:00
- Rate: 28-30
Long rests with square blade drills
Long cool down with some more sets of 20 to work on technique

No Heart Rate data. I assume the battery in the H7 gave up the ghost.

The intervals were basically at a 2:00 pace. I feel like that’s pretty good boat speed for us.

Workout Summary - media/20161019-125836-77588o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07192|43:07.0|02:59.9|22.0|0.0|0.0|07.6
W-|01503|06:01.0|02:00.4|29.0|000.0|0.0|08.6
R-|09690|61:51.0|03:11.5|03.8|000.0|0.0|06.4
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
02|00502|02:00.4|01:59.9|29.1|0.0|0.0|08.6
03|00503|02:01.2|02:00.6|28.4|0.0|0.0|08.8
04|00499|02:00.3|02:00.7|29.7|0.0|0.0|08.4

I stuck the GoPro camera on the stern today to get a look at how well we were rowing together. It was way too dark to see much for the first 45 minutes of the outing, but it was light enough during the last 10 minutes or so during our row back to the boathouse at the end. We did four sets of 20 strokes on / 20 strokes off you can see in the rate plot above. They were at 28, 24, 26, and 24 spm.

So, it looks like you will have to sneak over to youtube to see the video, I can’t seem to embed it anymore. Here’s the link.

Tuesday: 4 x 500 taper

October 18, 2016October 19, 20162 Comments

In my single, down in Newton. First day of the taper for the HOCR.

Following the same taper plan I always do. (The paper it’s based on is here)

The idea is to do a decreasing number of high intensity intervals as you approach race day. By doing this you maintain your VO2max while also lightening the training load to get some supercompensation. If you compare the approach with pure rest, and a low intensity taper, you get a longer time to fatigue.

So, today was 4 intervals. Tomorrow is 3, Thursday is 2. Friday should be a total rest day, but we will be doing a slow scouting run on the race course.

Weather: Dark! I boated at 6:30 and it was overcast so the full moon was blocked. There was very little light at first, but it got better over the first 30 minutes. There was a bit of wind at first, but it died down during my warmup. It was unseasonably warm, around 62F.

Plan:

Full Rojabo style warmup
4 x 500m intervals
As much rest as I wanted, 2 to 5 minutes
Pace target 2:00 (I was stunned to see that I did these with a 1:55 pace target in July)
Rate: 28 spm

My warmup was my version of the Rojabo warmup. I like it because it fits the length of the river really well and is just taxing enough.

10 strokes at 20spm / 10 paddle
20 strokes at 22 / 20 paddle
30 @ 24 / 30 paddle
20 @ 26 / 20 paddle
20 @ 28 / 20 paddle
20 @ 30 / 20 paddle
20 @ 32 / 20 paddle

Then I had a drink and did the first interval, which took me to the bridge. I paddled through the bridge and felt pretty good, so I took off on the second one with only a couple minutes of rest. That one hurt a bit more, and I had a taste of the lactate rush after I finished it (nausea, feeling like I would pee my pants, stuff like that). I paddled through the s-curve, and then setup for the third interval. I took this one a bit easier and felt few ill effects afterwards. This one took me past the island and left me a bit too close to the end to keep going straight, so I paddled back to the end of the straight 1k chunk and set up. My legs felt it in the last one. But it was the last one.

I used both RIM and my speedcoach. I’m seeing some weird stuff on the speedcoach.

Here’s the RIM data.

Here are the splits.

Workout Summary - media/20161018-175618-77540o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|05474|32:45.0|02:59.5|21.4|139.9|174.0|07.8
W-|02000|09:02.0|02:15.7|25.0|147.7|173.0|07.9
R-|07672|49:50.0|03:14.9|20.4|137.4|173.0|08.3
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
02|00500|01:59.9|01:59.9|27.8|158.7|169.0|09.0
03|00500|02:01.6|02:01.6|28.0|158.1|173.0|08.8
04|00500|02:00.7|02:00.7|28.1|158.1|173.0|08.8
05|00500|01:59.8|01:59.8|28.7|160.4|173.0|08.7

Here’s the plots from the speedcoach.

I am struggling to explain the pace changes that occur in the first and second intervals. Parsing this data into splits shows that the first rep was a bit slower on the speedcoach. The other ones line up reasonably well.

00020_|_0078_|_00:23_|_2:27.4_|_008___|_20.9_|_09.8_|_124___|_warmup

00100_|_0499_|_02:03_|_2:03.2_|_058___|_28.3_|_08.6_|_162___|_rep #1

00600_|_0274_|_02:00_|_3:38.6_|_037___|_18.5_|_07.4_|_142___|_rest

00860_|_0499_|_02:00_|_2:00.6_|_058___|_28.9_|_08.6_|_165___|_rep #2

01360_|_0449_|_03:07_|_3:27.9_|_059___|_19.0_|_07.6_|_135___|_rest

01820_|_0485_|_01:57_|_2:00.2_|_056___|_28.8_|_08.7_|_164___|_rep #3

02320_|_0803_|_05:12_|_3:14.2_|_095___|_18.3_|_08.5_|_129___|_rest

03100_|_0396_|_01:35_|_1:59.7_|_046___|_29.1_|_08.6_|_166___|_rep #4

03500_|_1727_|_10:04_|_2:54.8_|_188___|_18.7_|_09.2_|_132___|_cool down

The best thing about a taper is that it’s fun to row fast!

Tomorrow: Back on Quinsig for 3 x 500 plus drills.

Friday: 2 x 500 taper

September 16, 20162 Comments

I got home around 2am. I slept until around 7:30, did some email and other work, and then around 9:30 went to do a quick session, just to keep from feeling stale tomorrow.

Plan

Fletcher warmup
2 x 500
- 2:30 rest
- Pace target: <1:40
- Rate target: >30
Easy cool down

First was the warmup. It felt comfortable and my HR was reasonably low.

Then into the two 500s. The first one was pretty comfortable. The second was a bit more on the edge.

Then a 3000m cool down. I used painsled today and I discovered what causes it to lose a session. While I was cooling down, I got a phone call (that I ignored). After that, painsled seemed to lose itself and did not log the session. I think I’ll stick with ergdata.

Here’s the HR for the whole session from Wahoo Fitness.

Tomorrow is my race, at 10am.

Friday: 2 x 500- still tapering

July 9, 20162 Comments

Weather: cloudy, windy around 7 mph, with gusts above 15mph. A cross wind.

I slept in this morning. Late this afternoon, I went to go for a short row and pick up my boat for this weekend’s race.

Plan:

Warmup
practice starts
2 x 500
- pace target: 1:55 to 1:57
- rate target: 30-32
cool down

I felt tired and frankly a little weird. My heart rate was really high even right after I left the dock. The wind was also a bother. A pretty stiff cross wind was kicking up some chop and also at times shifted around to be a nasty headwind.

The warmup was slow and I felt sluggish throughout. I was also paranoid because there were quite a few other boaters out. Kayaks, canoes, fishing boats. All randomly puttering along blissfully unaware that the river has a traffic pattern at all.

The past few days, I’ve been doing exactly the same warmup, but today, my heartrate was a good 10 to 15 beats higher throughout for about the same effort. Maybe too much caffeine or something.

After the warmup, I paddled to the end of the basin, turned and setup Crewnerd as instructed by Sander. Sounds on, speech on, autostart off, and then I set up the workout for practice starts. This is a 15 second countdown, 15 strokes, 1 minute rest. I planned 4 reps. With the speech on, Crewnerd gives you a tone warning at 15 seconds, then it says “ready” at 2 seconds to go, “attention” at 1 second, and “go” at zero. It works well and gives it a little more realism.

I played the first start conservatively, working on stability and crisp blade work. The next three I pushed harder. Each time, the same sequence. Comfortable at the catch at about 3/4 slide. Smooth push to get the boat moving. Early finish, blades high, barely feather, half slide, get blades in, finish early. Try to get the rate up around 45 for the first 5 short strokes. Then lengthen out to full slide in strokes six and seven, keep the rate high up through stroke 10. Then settle down to 32 and let the pace drift up toward 1:55 by stroke 15. I think these starts were good and solid. I was happy with them. None were perfect, but none were botched.

The last start put me about 20m away from the bridge, and I drifted under it and got myself lined up for the first 500. Again with autostart off, a 15 second countdown and speechified starting commands. It was basically flat calm as I started, but when I got out to around stroke 15, I was hit with a pretty strong gust of head wind, and it persisted through about 10 strokes, then eased a bit, and then slammed me again. This interval was right by the watch factory and I think the wind was swirling around the building. By the fortieth stroke, I was clear of the building and the wind calmed right down. I pushed the pace back down and really hammered the last 25 strokes. I paid the price after I finished.

I then paddled through the s-turn, and setup at the end of the straight section. The wind was still blowing, and here it was a cross/head wind. It felt like it was around 6-8mph and pretty constant. There wasn’t much chop where I started, but the river opens up to the port side of the boat after about 100m and there is enough room to build up a little bit of wave action. Nothing impressive by lake standards, but enough to make it tough to get out to full compression and maintain good balance. My start was good, and I just slogged my way through the breeze. Steering in sprints is always a challenge. I try to get a good look in about every ten strokes. In this piece, when I looked around at the 10th stroke, I saw a fishing boat to my port, safely clear. At 20, I looked again, and they appeared to be puttering along on a course that was converging with mine. I then steered to starboard to give myself some room. At thirty strokes, they seemed to have adjusted their course to try to get in my way. I steered more and snuck a look in at 35 strokes. They were right off my port bow, but clear by about 20m or so. I picked it up and pushed past them and it really started to hurt. So at 50 strokes, I pulled back and tried to set a rate and pressure that I could have sustained longer. This was a good way to finish, because I didn’t feel so bad after this rep.

I paddled with square blades most of the way back to the dock.

I decided to take a full rest day today and recharge my batteries for the race tomorrow.

The race tomorrow.

I’m in lane 2. This lane shares the center arch of the bridges. Scott Hornney is the guy who beat me by a little in last year’s Cromwell cup, and by a lot in a couple of head races. He’s a good rower, and pulled a 6:27 at last year’s CRASH-Bs! I have no expectation of beating him. Thomas Beretich was in the Cromwell Cup last year and he was a bit slower than I was. I don’t think that I’ve raced against James Ball before.

This year there might be a new twist. It looks like they are using the US Rowing age based handicaps. So, I get a 2.5 second of advantage against Thomas and Scott, and 3.7 vs James. That’s an intriguing twist, and one that I plan to ignore. I like racing on raw time.

The race meeting is at 6:20, so I plan to get there around 6 to unload and park. Then it will be a couple hours of waiting for (hopefully) less than 4 minutes of rowing. I’m very excited.

Thursday: 3 x 500 taper

July 7, 20163 Comments

Weather: Cloudy, cool. A bit more wind this morning. About 4mph from E, but swinging randomly around from NE to SE.

Plan: Day 2 of the taper

warmup
practice starts
3 x 500
- pace target 1:55-1:57
- rate target: 30-32
cool down technique work

Here are zoom views:

Zoom1: 4 practice starts
Zoom2: rep #1
zoom3: rep #2
zoom4: rep #3 (headwind gust right around 6800m)

I think I must have been feeling a bit tired today. I felt sluggish in the boat and it took a ton of effort to hit paces that I was doing yesterday. My balance was also off a little bit. Maybe the light wind upset my balance and timing a bit?

My first practice start was horrific. My initial stroke was off balance, and that screwed up my next two strokes. I was working on getting the boat set right and not able to really put power into the little half slide strokes. It wasn’t until the fourth stroke that I was really laying down some power. The next 3 starts were much better.

I blew the start of the first 500, but recovered well. I took my time settling down to pace, and paid a pretty steep price. I was in real pain during the last 20 strokes, and I was a mess for a minute after I finished. The good news, a 1:56.1 pace, even with the lousy start. Even Crewnerd liked this one…1:54.8 on crewnerd.

I paddled through the s-turn, and got setup at the downstream end of the 1K straight section. Today, I remember to setup Crewnerd correctly. This start was better, but still not all that dynamic. I settled more aggressively and tried to stick to 30spm to try to save myself from the mild discomfort I had experienced in rep #1. I needed to do a bit of steering in the last 20 strokes, but all in all a pretty good rep. 1:56.9 on speedcoach, 1:59.0 on CrewNerd.

More paddling around, and then the final rep. When I spun at the uptream end of the 1K, I noticed that the wind was a bit fresher, and for this part of the river, right on my bow. Resigning myself to a slower rep, I got set for the start, and pretty much nailed this one. I settled to 30, and was even seeing some 29s. The boat felt a fair amount heavier, and the pace was hovering around 2:00. Then around the 40th stroke, I noticed the water flattened, and the pace pick up a bit. I was in a lull. But then the inevitable gust happened after that and it slowed me right back down again. At this point there were about 15 strokes left, and I really didn’t want to have the pace be over 2:00, so I pushed the rate and pressure up. On Speedcoach, the average pace was 1:59.6. On Crewnerd, it came out 2:08.6?????? I assume that I must have accidentally triggered the timer at the start before I actually went.

After all that, I rowed with square blades most of the way back to the dock.

Tomorrow: 2 x 500.

Wednesday: 4 x 500 – Race Taper

July 6, 2016July 6, 20165 Comments

Weather: Sunny and Hot 75F, 75% RH. Light breeze 1-2mph from the NW. This was basically a cross wind, although it was at it’s strongest and a bit of a head wind during the final rep.

I have used the same taper plan for racing for the past couple of years and I really like it. It’s documented here. It’s very simple. The theory is to maintain intensity, and reduce volume as you approach the race. Today, I did 4 – 500m intervals, tomorrow I’ll do 3, then 2 on Friday, one on Saturday, and race on Sunday. The approach was shown in the linked study to improve the time to exhaustion at 1500m running pace by 22% (from 250 seconds to 320 seconds) when compared to taking rest days and 14% compared to a low intensity taper. I like it because it gives me the chance to keep practicing starts and work on race pacing.

So today’s plan:

Long Rojabo style warmup finishing with 20 strokes at faster than race pace.
A few practice starts
4 x 500m intervals
- 1:55 pace
- 30-32 spm
Long rests
Cool down

Here’s a map view of the whole session. The river level is quite low and the water is getting really murky. There are a lot of floating weeds, but I didn’t have any issues with them today.

The warmup was uneventful. I was hitting some sweet paces, and I felt like I was rowing clean. I was having some intestinal troubles. These continued through the whole session. I hate that.

After the warmup, I did 4 practice starts. None of the four were disastrous, none of them were great either. The last one was the best one.

Then into the intervals. I pushed the first one really hard, and really smashed into the lactate wall at about 50 strokes, the last 15 really hurt. I had massive shivers after I finished. On CrewNerd, it was a 1:57 pace, upstream. On the speedcoach, it was a 1:54.1. That was definitely a bit too fast.

I was an idiot on the second interval. I got all set up, did my start and settle, and then looked at the iphone. That’s when I noticed that I didn’t set up a 500 interval and I didn’t know where I was. I bailed out around 250m. It was a pretty good 1:55 pace though.

I took a couple minutes to get my breath back and then setup CrewNerd for another 500m. Off I went, and I was determined to get a good start and settle aggressively to my target rate at 30 spm. This one was another 1:57 on CrewNerd, but 1:55.8 on Speedcoach (still upstream, but less current here). The lactate wave was less debilitating in this interval. In think this is a better pace target for me.

Then I paddled around, had a drink, spun and setup for interval number 3. This one was downstream, and what wind there was, was a bit of a tail wind. I had high hopes. This one was a disappointing 1:59 on CrewNerd because I stopped about a stroke too soon. On Speedcoach it was a 1:57.5. Good rate discipline.

I setup for the fourth interval, now heading up river. The breeze was a little fresher and was a headwind about 30 degrees off the bow. I got a good start, and then settled. The boat felt heavier even though the headwind was light, only about 2mph. The settle took my pace above 2:00. I tried to focus on holding the rate and taking long strokes. Around the 40 stroke point, I noticed that I was a bit off course and needed to do some steering. I counted out to 60 strokes and looked at the iphone to see how much distance I had left, expecting to see about 30 meters or so. Instead, I saw 112 meters and the display was not updating. The frigging thing had frozen! I took another 2 strokes and guessed that I had finished the 500m. Turns out I was off by about 30m. This interval was at 2:00.5 pace. Part of it was head wind. Part of it was fatigue. It was close to a maximal effort.

It looks like Crewnerd kept working in the background, despite the display being frozen. And once I brought up a Just Row and started it, the display was live again. I was pretty irked. This kind of freeze had not happened to me unless I was using the Dual GPS before. I am edging closer and closer the buying a Speedcoach GPS.

After the last interval, I pulled my feet out of the shoes and rowed back to the dock concentrating on trying to get perfect finishes.

Tomorrow: Same thing, but 3 intervals.

Finally, apropos to nothing, but while I was driving to the lake on Saturday morning, the sun was rising behind me and the shadow of my boat on my car was kind of cool.

Friday: Taper 2 x 500

February 26, 20165 Comments

At work on the model C with PM5 and ergdata.

Fletcher warmup. Felt hard this morning.

Then 2 quick 500s. Target pace was 1:38, r32. Got over excited in the last rep.

Then a normal 2K cool down.

So, a confluence of events have led me to decide to scratch from the Crash-Bs. The big thing is that I will be on a business trip all next week and there are a bunch of things I need to take care of this weekend. I can’t afford the time to spend most of Sunday at the arena.

So, instead, I think I will do 2K test on my own tomorrow afternoon at home. I’m a little bummed out, but I think it’s the right call.

Based on the 4 x 1K on Tuesday and these 500s in the taper, I think I am good for something around a 6:40. I think I will target a 1:40 split at r30 and see if I can speed up at all through the last 1000m.

I will try to stick to a reasonable workout schedule next week on the road, but I will be in 4 cities in 4 days. Then the following week, I will do assessment tests (1 min, 6K, 2-speed) to see where I stand. Then I will transition to a base aerobic block. Next major events are in Late June and early July. These are 1K OTW sprints, so I will follow the same basic periodized progression to them. Base, then distance threshold, then 6 to 12′ intervals, then sprint and peak power training. I will map out the plan next week while I sit on planes.

Quantified Rowing

Measure – Adjust – Improve

Tag: taper

Snake Race

Wed & Thurs: Taper Triples

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Thursday: 2×500 taper.

Wednesday: 3 x 500 Taper (in 2x)

Tuesday: 4 x 500 taper

Friday: 2 x 500 taper

Friday: 2 x 500- still tapering

Thursday: 3 x 500 taper

Wednesday: 4 x 500 – Race Taper

Friday: Taper 2 x 500