First, we spent an hour bringing in the dock for winter storage. As the lake’s water level lowers, our dock comes to rest on stands that we have built, concrete structures with a car tire on top. Like that, it would survive the entire winter, if random people wouldn’t feel attracted to use it as a trampoline.
The lake I see covered with a thin layer of ice. A few cm.
We need about 10 people ideally to do this, but there were only six of us. Only the Masters showed up. The Juniors and the Elite didn’t bother. So it was a pretty hard strength workout. After that, I retreated to the club’s erg room to do a very light steady state workout. A little under an hour at 2:05 to 2:08 pace.
The biggest holiday in the Czech Republic. First thing in the morning, Romana and I headed to the shop to get fresh fish and seafood. Then we made a stop at the swimming Stadium. I did 2km. Romana outswam me by a lot, but what do you expect from somebody who in her youth held a regional record.
The rest of the day went by in traditional fashion with lots of food, lots of presents, and too much alcohol.
Happy Christmas! And time for another ranking distance. The 30 minute.
I did this one before lunch, in the only time slot available. The CP chart suggested 224W as a lower limit and 240W as the upper limit. I wanted to at least row faster than my 10k of 3 days ago, but a few strokes into the row I realized that even that was going to be hard. I decided to row flat, between 225 and 230W, count down 3 minute intervals and hang on as long as possible.
Such rows on bad days are harder than the PB or SB rows on good days!
We had a simple leftover lunch. Pasta sprinkled with black truffle.
The title of this post doesn’t imply that they are becoming routine. But using the CP chart reduces the risk of blowing up. Still, the stars have to be aligned to achieve a really good result.
Today, it was the 10000m row, also known as the 10k. According to the CP chart, I should aim at a power between 220 and 235 Watts. I have already learned that the higher end of this range is to be done with a real taper and in a really well prepared manner. It requires a super focused effort. The lower end of this range is something that I have probably done recently, probably as part of a longer piece. That made sense this time, because 219W is one Watt above my Full Hour effort of three days ago.
I have also learned that starting off at the lower limit, then increasing the pace according to how I feel, is the best recipe to get a good score and minimize the risk of blowing up during the row. Today, I did just that.
I religiously held 220W in the first 4 km. Then I allowed myself to go higher, taking the planned step increases as a fall back scenario. It was nice to see the average power value gradually increase. (Yes, I have the PM now permanently showing Watts. I am less interested in pace.) At every point in the row, I knew I could finish the row at the average Watts shown on the monitor, so rowing at higher power seemed a risk worth taking, especially past the 5km point.
I did go a little too high, though, because around 235W I found that I couldn’t really increase much. I tried with 750m to go, counting strokes, but as you can see from the graph, I was strangely attracted to a 235W value.
I ended up doing the piece at 95% of my PB power, but I do think that my 37:45 PB is one of the strongest rows I have done after the year 2010.
I was pretty happy that I managed to move the average power from 228W to 229W in the final 100m. Here is the updated CP chart, and a close-up in the region around 10k.
In the close-up, the two red points on the right are from my Half Marathon. Moving to the left, the next two points are from my 60 minute row, and the rest is from today’s 10k.
My last day at work. I have a couple of vacation days to take up, so I can enjoy being free from now to the end of the year. Well, there are a couple of work related things that I’d rather finish before January, but I can do them from home, and I can enjoy prioritizing slightly differently.
I am doing a couple of a holiday challenges. The first holiday challenge is the classic Concept2 Holiday Challenge ($0.02 per kilometer rowed and logged on the Concept2 logbook goes to a charity).
The second Holiday challenge is to get the Christmas presents without visiting a mall. More about that later.
The third holiday challenge is to row a ranking distance every third day, starting with the Half Marathon and working my way systematically to the shorter distances. I did the HM on Saturday.
So Monday was still a day for a recovery training, and I decided to do no rowing. I opted for swimming, a sport that I rarely practice, mainly because I am a super slow swimmer.
So after work I headed to the municipal swimming stadium Za Lužánkami, built in the communist early 1980s.
When I first visited this pool 10 years ago it was in very bad need of maintenance. Now, the pool has been renovated and it is a basic 50m pool, mainly used by people who want to train.
I go swimming rarely, and hadn’t been in this pool for 10 years, so everything was new to me. I figured out that some lanes were reserved for swimming clubs. Then there were a few lanes for the general public, some of which had a minimum swimming speed of 2 minutes per 100m.
The problem was that I was slightly slow for the 2 min/100m lanes and slightly fast for the slower lanes. Anyway, I quickly figured out that 20 pools was achievable in under an hour, so I had my target. I swam 2km, and evening I fell asleep early.
First full vacation day. In the morning, I worked a bit on a top secret rowing data project. That was fun.
Then I did some groceries. I figured that 9:30 was an ideal time for doing them. Hopefully, the wave of shoppers who wait in front of the store to open at 8am would already have left, and the pre lunch wave would arrive later. Turned out to be a good bet. I managed to get all the stuff I need for ur Christmas dinners, and only fresh stuff is left for later. Oh, and for the wines I intend to visit a local vineyard. No supermarket wine. I note that I visited a supermarket, not a mall. No anonymous place that looks the same all over the country.
Then it was time to head to the center of Brno to buy some Christmas presents, combined with a lunch, and a coffee in my favorite book store. Brno is a smaller version of Vienna, so imagine lots of Christmas markets, a really nice atmosphere. There is also an abundance of coffee houses with good Italian espresso, so everything was good.
Then it was time to row. The Hour of Power, today. After Saturday’s debacle, I made a point of not looking up my Personal Best and row at a conservative pace. Rowsandall.com suggested a range between 207 and 223W, with the higher number being the best I could achieve. As the calculation is based on very few rows, I ignored the upper limit and decided to start off at 207W, which was not by coincidence the average power of Saturday’s half marathon row. I was pretty skeptical I would be able to put in a good effort. I was still pretty sore from the swimming.
The irony is that after the row, I found out I was just 14 meters short of a PB. Just one Watt more and I would have equaled my PB. As a rower at my club used to say, I missed a PB by a “pičí chlup”. Do not google this, just believe me it is a very small margin.
Two easy days, then a 10k.