OTW Training

[gregsmith01748]

I thought I would start a new thread for those members that are doing On The Water (OTW) training. I am the proud new owner of a boat and am planning to do most of my warm weather training that way, instead of on the erg. Please feel free to post your own OTW training updates, questions or horror stories here.

[gregsmith01748]

To get things started. Here's what I did Sunday and today.

Sunday: 15K in a club single on Lake Quinsig out in Worcester. Went reasonably hard throughout. Got pretty damn tired toward the end and the rate crept up. RIght now 2:30 is "firm" pressure. 2:20 is hard work, anything faster is basically sprinting.




Monday: I was so excited last night that I had trouble sleeping. I arrived at the boathouse at about 6:15AM and I was on the water before 6:30. My objectives were:
1. Learn the river
2. Work on form (try to row clean)
3. Keep my heart rate in the aerobic zone. (Don't go too hard)

The stretch of river is beautiful! The water was perfectly flat and glassy smooth. When I dragged my oars on recovery, the sound they made was a soft swish.

I assume there must be a little current because I saw about a 5 second difference in pace for the same effort between the downstream and upstream directions. The course has some pretty sharp turns, especially at the beginning.



In terms of the workout objectives. I had no real trouble navigating and I think I have a good idea about how to row the river. I had some good stretches of rowing, but I need to be much more disciplined about it. I should really focus on rate and stick at r18. I found myself focusing too much on pace instead. It must have been pretty humid because I was a sweaty mess by the time I finished.




The idea of being able to do most days OTW and get organized about improving has me very excited. I hope I can make enough progress to enter the Textile River Regatta as my first race this fall.

Tomorrow: L1 type workout. Probably 10 x 60 strokes with 2 minutes rest.

[gregsmith01748]

Yesterday: 8x500 r2' (OTW)

On the erg, I usually do these with a bit more rest, but I was pressed for time. I paddled about 2K up to the first stretch of river that is straight for about a 1000 meters, and then setup the speed coach for the workout. After I finished 8 intervals, I gently paddled home. It was hard work, and I am embarassed how slow I was. Here is the ugly data.



This was a learning experience. I have now have a marker for next time.

Today: 60' steady state @ r18 (OTW)

Today's objective: Steady state at r18, concentrating on cleaning up my catches and accelerating smoothly through the stroke. Try to row with pressure, but stop obsessing about pace.

I'm very happy with how I did keeping the rate. I was basically on an SPM of 18 except when I was paddling lightly or maneuvering around turns.



You can see from the plot, that my pace was kind of all over the place. At the to ends, there is about 10 minutes of futzing through the curves, but even in the main part of the row, it was still pretty erratic. I assume over time, I will get more consistent (and faster!)



Tomorrow: L2 - 4x2K, 5' rest (OTW)

[strider77]

You make it sound idyllic Greg-I am not an OTW rower but I can appreciate what you are doing and enjoy reading about it.

How do you capture the data OTW I would be interested ?

[gregsmith01748]

I have an app for that! There is Speedcoach app that uses the GPS and motion sensors in the iphone to capture position, stroke rate, heart rate. It even measure bounce and check of the boat, but I'm not nearly good enough to make use of that yet. Because we are not rowing with partners, my club has a rule that you need to bring a phone with you in a water proof case so you can call for help if you get into trouble. The phone is there anyway, so using the app is a natural fit. The data on boat speed is not as precise as the real Speedcoach which uses an impeller to measure velocity through the water, and the GPS takes a while to respond to velocity changes, but for where I am in my skill development, it's good enough.

Today, it was "Death by Intervals"

The objective was to a classic WP L2 workout, the 4x2K with 5 minute rests. I have never done a 2K TT on the water, so this was going to be a bit of a crap shoot, but I figured that since I did 2:15ish for the 500s, I could probably do 2:20ish for these. So that was what I was initially aiming at.

In terms of rate, I wanted to try to keep myself somewhat in check and keep it under a r27. All of this is very new to me and actually really refreshing. After a year of so of being stalled on the erg, I feel like I have found something that I am bad enough at that I can show improvement!

Another challenge is the river. There isn't a straight stretch of water that is 2K long. The best bit has an S-turn that if you ignore the traffic pattern you can supposedly maintain full pressure through. I think it is best to say that this is a 2K course that one gets better at with practice. My first upstream and downstream intervals were punctuated with steering errors and the second two were smoother, but somewhat handicapped by the fact that I was close enough to dying that I could see a bright light at the end of a tunnel (or maybe I was just squinting at the sun)

color code:
Int #1: red
Int #2: green
Int #3: yellow
Int #4: blue

Notice how I smoothed out the turn in the last two. See, I'm learning!



As with the 500m intervals, I am horrified at how slow I am. With the slow starts, steering errors and other comic interludes, my average pace was around a 2:24. If you ignore that, it appears to me that I could have averaged about a bit better than 2:20. I guess I have to look it as an opportunity to score an easy improvement next time. Since I have never timed myself over 2K before, I guess I would have to take the 9:15 as my current PB. Embarassing, isn't it.



Here is the pace and rate plots for my best interval (#3)




When I was finished, I barely had the energy to paddle back to the boat house, and my ass was so sore that I wanted to dive out of the boat and swim it back home. I barely had the strength to carry my boat back to the rack.

By my low standards, it was epic!

Tomorrow: 60' r18 OTW

[strider77]

That definitely counts as Epic-a lot of red at the end -I guess that show you were trying =D>

[gregsmith01748]

I was working really hard, but I'm very inefficient. The other tricky thing is that I am used to a 2K interval lasting about 7:20 seconds on the erg These bastards took 9 to 10 minutes! My hope is that I am in a phase where my times will improve based on technique refinement, not improved fitness. Fitness based gains take a long time!

Today's session was a carbon copy of Wednesday's.

It was hotter today (80F at 6AM), and quite humid. Again, the goal was to row at a prescribed low rate (r18) and focus on taking clean strokes. Today I wanted to row with a little more pressure and try to maintain pressure through the turns.

I had one mishap. I was trying to negotiate the s-turn in the middle of the 2K and I didn't keep turning long enough and ended up in the weeds. I got this huge clot of heavy weeds entangled on the blade of my starboard oar and it took some real effort to wiggle the oar around vigorously enough to shed the weeds. For a few moments I thought I might be stuck there forever or flip myself trying to rip out a bunch of weeds by the roots.

Although today's outing was a bit faster than Wednesday's, I think that Wednesday was, in general, a better outing. My balance was better and I could hold at the catch a little bit more easily. Today, I did feel like I was rowing better at the very end, as I was going through the turns back to the boathouse.

I did not maintain the rate as well today, but it was still pretty reasonable.


Here is the pace chart.


I'm going to use distance on the x-axis from now on, because that way it is easier to figure out where I was.

A few notes on the plots.

1912m - slow down in the "cut". This is a narrow channel between weeds which is just wide enough for 2 boats to squeeze by each other. I have not yet mastered the line through this chunk so I need to slow down.

4122m - going under the Prospect Street bridge. The bridge has 3 narrow spans and is angled across the river, so lining up and hitting the line is a challenge going downstream.

4787m - turn around at the moody street dam. Did these turns quicker today than last time.

5590m - Since I wanted at least an hour of rowing I turned again at the Prospect Street bridge to row back to the Moody Street Dam.

6280m - second turn at the Moody Street dam.

7169m - back under the Prospect Street bridge. Missed the edge of the span by less than a foot with my starboard oar. Still learning the line.

7945m - ran into the weeds and entangled my starboard oar. Notice panic induced spike in heart rate. I was pretty spooked that I couldn't get free. Then I settled down a bit and methodically shook the weeds free.

8118m to 8321m - It took me a while to get my head back in the boat after the weeds. I was misaligned on my seat and everything just felt wrong

8551m - found the groove and started rowing with some more pressure. Rate crept up a bit.

Rest of the way, rate spikes correlate with the turns. I needed to stroke a bit faster to stay on the line.

Tomorrow: L3 - 6K at r24 on Quisigamond

[gregsmith01748]

Today: 12.5K at a UT1 HR and r18.

As per usual for these r18 sessions, the main objective is to: set the boat, get the oars off the water, get good compression at the catch, drop the oars in cleanly, keep my body forward at the catch, accelerate smoothly with the leg drive, keeping the oars at the proper depth, finish strongly with the back, and then arms, avoiding too much or too little lean back, then extract the blades cleanly on the square, and the smoothly, but quickly feather for the recovery keeping the blades off the water. Repeat about 1000 times.

Simple, really. :S

At times, I felt rock solid and I was taking very nice strokes and balancing the boat very well.. Most of the time, I was taking OK strokes, and maybe lightly dragging one oar on the surface of the mirror smooth water. There were a few horrendous strokes, which could mostly be attributed to picking up weeds on the blade. At this point in my incompetence, any little external factor has a hugely magnified effect.

As for course, I wanted to row a bit longer today, so I rowed downstream to the moody street dam, then turned back, rowed under the prospect street bridge and continued to the public landing at the s-turn. Then I turned and rowed back to the moody street dam, made the final turn and rowed the 5K+ home. I had no close encounters with the banks of the river today. However, I drifted out of the traffic pattern near one turn and came too close to a guy in a single heading down river. I shouted an apology, I hope he heard me and wasn't pissed off. We were close enough that our oar tips just missed each other. No danger to either of us, but as the new guy on the river, I want to avoid disturbing the natives. When I got back to the boathouse, no one had signed out after me, so he must be a cartopper who launched from the public landing.




I managed to stick to a good UT1 heart rate and pegged the rate between 18 and 19 (except when lightly paddling or in tight turns). That's all good.



When I was rowing steadily today, I was seeing numbers mainly around the 2:30 to 2:40 range. Turns, bridges, and other stuff brought down down the average pace.



Rather than pace, I am starting to think of these sessions in terms of efficiency. I really am trying to maximize the run of the boat and take the most efficient possible strokes. Therefore the best metric is probably distance per stroke. That way if I cheat by edging the stroke rate up to get a better pace, it will show up.

To facilitate that I added a new view to the speedcoach data.



Today, I was averaging about 10.3m per stroke. Here is some context:
- Today: rate: 18.5, DPS: 10.3
- 5K with headwind and waves: rate: 24, DPS: 7.9
- 2K intervals: rate: 26, DPS: 7.9
- 500m intervals: rate: 28, DPS: 7.9

I would have expected that my DPS would decrease gradually as my stroke rate went up. By that metric the 500m intervals were better than the 2K and way better than the 5K. Anyway, I will be looking to try to increase the DPS in all the session. I guess a good immediate target for the r18 sessions would be 11m.

Also, since I am interested in looking at how I'm doing when I am rowing with pressure versus just paddling, I added some logic to the spreadsheet to filter out data for anything slower than a 3:10 pace. Basically anything slower than 3:00 is paddle pressure so that way I should be able to get a fairer comparison of different outings.

Todays stats:

Measured time: 1:02:07
Measured distance: 11344m (missing first 1000m)
Avg Rate: 18.2 (raw), 18.5 (filtered)
Avg Pace: 2:44.3 (raw), 2:36.9 (filtered)
Avg DPS: 10.3
Avg HR: 145

Tomorrow:
L1 - 8x500 / r2'
target pace: 2:12 (last time 2:14.3)
target rate: 28

[strider77]

Great write ups-it sounds like you need to feel the force rather than force the feel with OTW-I am sure your technique will improve dramatically and your speed will follow

[gregsmith01748]

Strider: You are totally right. I do need to feel the force, unfortunately, I am no Luke Skywalker, so it will take a while.

This morning was a step in the right direction, though. I was back to the L1 session I did last week: 8x500m r2'

Last time avg pace: 2:14.2
Today avg pace: 2:09.9

How 'bout that. I was on the same stretch of water. It was raining steadily. I brought a sponge so I could get the water out of the foot well every once in a while.

The rain totally flattened the water. The rowing was awesome. I felt great. In every way, today's session was so much better than last time. Better steering, longer distance per stroke, lower heart rates, faster splits. And I felt rock solid in the boat at this pace. There is definitely more to come. I was able to sometimes get my blades clear of the water. Most times, I ended up dragging one blade lightly.





Best Interval detail (#3)



Last Interval (#8) with some rowing faster than 2:00! (not much though)



Tomorrow: 12K - r18 steady state

[strider77]

Great improvement Greg-well done =D>

Obi-Wan Kenobi out

[gregsmith01748]

Hi,

Long time no post. I've been on vacation on Cape Cod, here in Massachusetts. No rowing down there, but I managed to do some running and biking.

The three times I went running, i did was 4 to 5 miles distance over rolling hills at my usual, embarrassingly slow, pace (basically 9 minute miles I guess). Here's a view of my long run (5.25miles)


I went biking twice and did 25 to 28 miles on roads and trails on a mountain bike. The highlight is about 7 miles of bike trails in the Provincelands national park out by Provincetown. The path is well maintained, and has lots of short steep hills. Imagine that they paved the sand dunes and you get the picture.


Mid week, we rented a cool looking "fat tire bike", suitable to ride on the beach. I took this for a quick 20 minute spin. This was hard work, but worth it, if only for the comments of the other folks on the beach.


I was back on the water in my boat this morning.

Since it is a monday, the plan called for steady state rowing at r18. It had been 10 days since I last rowed, so I was quite unstable at the start, but within the first 500m I settled back into a comfortable stroke. Generally skimming one oar, and generating a bit more back splash than I was before my hiatus.

I did all of my rowing in the section of the river beyond "the cut". It's about 2800m from end to end, so I did 5 lengths to get about 14K. Aside from a few minutes paddling into to a cove to investigate a different launch option, It was just about all steady state rowing.

It wasn't my best outing, but it wasn't far off.

Here's the summary of my r18 rows, with this one compared. A little slower, but lower stroke rate, longer distance per stroke and marginally lower heart rate.


Tomorrow: 8x500 r2

Side note: I am feeling very unsettled right now. The change of the concept2 UK forum to a new proprietor with little notice and subsequent weirdness on the forum is making me feel like I may not have a place to keep my training blog/journal. On top of that, my rowing club has just been evicted because of some dispute with the owner of the boathouse where we rent space. I'm forced to cartop my boat at least for now. All of this is injecting way too much drama and confusion into a part of my life that I was very happy with.

[strider77]

Cool bike Greg

Not to worry on the Concept 2 uk forum changing name-its all the original peeps as far as I can see

[gregsmith01748]

I do wonder how many casual users will be confused or shut out by moving the whole thing. If you didn't check the forum in a 2 day window, you'd have missed it.

One thing that has me distressed is that I have almost 3 years of training journal on that site and now I wonder if it will all just go away with no way for me to recover it.

The other thing that has me bugged is the way the folks on the forum have been going at each other over various topics. I'm not used to flame wars, deleted posts and users insulting moderators as representative of the etiquette I want to be involved with.

[strider77]

You still have us

I put all my training stuff here rather than on C2 site

[Grobi]

Hi Greg, that's a very interesting and entertaining program you're following. I'm an otw rower myself but I don't follow such a structured training program on the water (and currently not even on the erg ). So I can't give such complete training logs like you can (I don't have a GPS device for example).

We are asked to enter our rows in a logbook at the club when we want to row (for insurance reasons). Therefore I can see how many kilometers I've done so far this year. Up to now it's around 420km. I know that's not much but I hope to add another 10k in the doubles tonight which will take about an hour. Today might be the last sunny day for a while so I'm taking my chance to get on the water as long as I can.

Do you do any special technique training? Rowing without turning the blades flat for example? I find this a very useful exercise, but it's very difficult in the beginning, especially when rowing a single!

Sorry to read about the loss of the boat house. Having to cartop the boat surely is a mess but I'm sure your club will find a new boathouse soon.

Who is the maker of your boat? We usually row Empacher boats but I doubt that they are very popular in the US due to the long and expensive transport from Germany.

[gregsmith01748]

Hi peter,

I managed to rent an outdoor rack for my boat near where our boathouse was. It actually worked very well for me. Just last week, I passed my 1000km on the water for the season and back on October 6, I entered my first head race. I accomplished my goal of not finishing last! I finished 7th of 11 on raw time in my event and 9 of 11 after handicaps were applied. Not very impressive, but it's a start.

I row an old (2004) wintech competitor. It's a pretty lousy boat. It's about 4 kg over the fisa minimum weight, and it doesn't track well. It turns to port when I let the boat run. I suspect it's an issue with how the previous owner did a fin repair. But on the plus side, I can blame any performance issues on my boat instead of the rower!

I'd love to have the chance to row an empacher. They are considered the gold standard along with fillipi's over here.

I desperately need coaching. I've posted videos of my rowing online and gotten some valuable feedback, but getting real time coaching would be a huge advantage.

If you are interested, here is a YouTube link of me doing a short interval lately.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0plb8imWhKs[/youtube]

[Grobi]

Hi Greg,

Congrats on your first race! I'm sure it won't be long until we can read the report of your first otw win!

I just watched the video and your rowing looks really good! As you've asked for it, some minor issues that came to my mind:

1) Did you use to sweep before you started sculling? Your upper body swings to portside during the drive.
2) The "hands away" at the end of the drive could be a bit quicker imho. Maybe you don't feel 100% stable in the boat (in terms of balance) and don't want to go into the unstable phase of recovery so quickly?
3) The blades could be a bit higher above the water, they sometimes touch the surface. You rowed on perfectly flat water where that's not that much of an issue. But once you have wind/waves you might have a problem.

I'd work on 1) first because the swing of the body disturbs the balance of the boat. Once you have that sorted out you could work on 2) and 3). The technique training I mentioned above (keeping the blades upright during recovery) is an excellent help for that. You could start with let's say 10 strokes with an upright blade. If that is too difficult you start with rowing blade upright/blade flat alternately. If you continue with "normal" rowing after these strokes you will feel a big difference. It will suddenly feel sooo easy. But be careful!

Good luck with your trainig and racing!

[gregsmith01748]

Hi Greg,

Congrats on your first race! I'm sure it won't be long until we can read the report of your first otw win!

I just watched the video and your rowing looks really good! As you've asked for it, some minor issues that came to my mind:

1) Did you use to sweep before you started sculling? Your upper body swings to portside during the drive.
2) The "hands away" at the end of the drive could be a bit quicker imho. Maybe you don't feel 100% stable in the boat (in terms of balance) and don't want to go into the unstable phase of recovery so quickly?
3) The blades could be a bit higher above the water, they sometimes touch the surface. You rowed on perfectly flat water where that's not that much of an issue. But once you have wind/waves you might have a problem.

I'd work on 1) first because the swing of the body disturbs the balance of the boat. Once you have that sorted out you could work on 2) and 3). The technique training I mentioned above (keeping the blades upright during recovery) is an excellent help for that. You could start with let's say 10 strokes with an upright blade. If that is too difficult you start with rowing blade upright/blade flat alternately. If you continue with "normal" rowing after these strokes you will feel a big difference. It will suddenly feel sooo easy. But be careful!

Good luck with your trainig and racing!

Pete, your comments are spot on. All of those flaws are exactly what I have been working on. I have been doing at least one workout per week where I do alternating 500m stretches of square blades rowing and then rowing a 18 SPM to try to get more clearance and work on my balance at the catch.

The body movement that you see is the habit that I developed because of the problem with the boat drifting to port. I need to always put a bit more pressure on one side to keep lined up with my course. Its going to be hard to break the habit once I have a better boat. I've never tried sweep rowing, but I would like to next season if I get the chance.

In terms of faster hands away, I am working on that one too. This is a bad habit that I picked up on the erg where the pause I have at the finish doesn't really do any harm. It sure is a problem in the boat. I've been working all season trying to make it better.

Thanks for your comments. I'm going to rig up the camera to do a side view. That will show my problems even more precisely so I can be even more frustrated when I can't fix them right away.

[Grobi]

Greg, is there a boatman at your club who could fix your boat's fin? Or could you sell your boat and buy another (lighter) one? As you long as you have that drift to portside in your boat you won't solve that body swing problem I'm afraid.

I went out in the doubles yesterday evening. We discussed some minutes if we really should do it as there was a considerable wind blowing at around 4 bft. We finally decided to try it and paid for that with several litres of water coming in. But after 1k it was better and after another 1k with trees giving wind shadow the water was almost flat. By the time we turned (after 5k) wind had calmed down and the way back was a pure pleasure although it was nearly dark already

15 minutes on the erg afterwards to get some meters under my belt.

[gregsmith01748]

I'm planning to trade up to a better boat for next season. Sounds like a good outing. I don't mind the wind as much in a double or quad. Even if you get wet, it's pretty stable.

[Grobi]

Hi Greg, I have been out on the water on November 1st for the last time. Since we changed to winter time here rowing on weekdays isn't possible any more (November 1st is a friday but also a public holiday around here). Now autumn has come and its friend winter is already lurking. So I'm afraid that was my otw rowing for the season. How is your training going on?

[gregsmith01748]

My season just ended with a head race on Saturday. I posted the results over on the OTW racing thread. (spoiler alert: I won my event!)

It has been cold as hell rowing the past couple of weeks. Generally around 0C. The river I row on is pretty isolated, so I think its probably a pretty stupid idea to row it when it's that cold by myself. I'm confident in the boat, but I know that I'm one mishap away from being in the river.

Time to retreat to the erg for the winter, with dreams of a new boat in the spring!

[GrantR]

Yeah Greg, it's been below freezing most mornings the last couple of weeks as I drive to work down the mass pike past Hopkinton, and I've been wondering if you were actually still hitting the water or not. Apparently you were I also have friends at work who get up at 4am to go cycling up mt wachussetts once or twice a week, and they're just reaching their face-freezing thresholds I think.

[gregsmith01748]

If I hadn't wrapped up my boat for the season, I would have been tempted this morning. It was nearly 40 degrees at 6:30. At that temp, I could get by with shorts and just 2 layers on top.

But, alas, the season is over and did a 4x20' slow and steady on the erg instead.