[In]decent Intervals

[NavigationHazard]

16690m today on the BikeErg, 30:01.9, 1:47.9 pace, last 2 minutes at 1:43. Had I realized I was that close to my 2018 result of just over 16700m (AFAIK the best-ever 60-69 half hour) I easily could have beaten it. Oh well....

[NavigationHazard]

16805m in 30;00.0 on the BikeErg this afternoon, ranked and verified. Beats the old 60-69 best half hour result (which was mine, last fall) by 101 m. Couldn't quite hold 1:47 flat, maybe next time out.

[NavigationHazard]

CTC/TO Challenge this afternoon. First time on the erg in over a week, thanks to having fooked my back on an earlier attempt. Thought I would take things conservative. Dropped the drag, restricted the rating, forced myself to hydrate with a reduced glucose isotonic drink every two reps whether or not I felt like it was necessary. Within the reps, went hard for the first 10 strokes and coasted the next 20. 1:38.2 average. Trademark fast last....

[NavigationHazard]

22 miles on the road on my Specialized yesterday.
Hot as blazes.
8 x 500m r30 tonight on 2' rest, just ahead of a thunderstorm. It was extremely humid so I was circumspect....



Okay, there was a trademark fast last rep....

[NavigationHazard]

Took a few days off to go up to Poznan and spectate at the FISA World Cup II regatta. Met Steve Redgrave, among many others, came back inspired....

Back on the erg the last few days despite the heat/humidity. This was yesterday: 12 x 500m r24 on 2', with a fast last rep....

[NavigationHazard]

37C air temperature here yesterday afternoon. I had delusions of an hour steady-state piece. I bailed after 12 minutes. Plan B was some sprinty work on the BikeErg, not least because I could rehydrate and towel off during the intervals. 20 x 300m on 1 min:



30 mins steady-state on the bike erg just now. 1:48.1 pace, something like 16635m. It has cooled off considerably so maybe I can get in an erg workout later.

[NavigationHazard]

Erg workouts the last several days. Nothing special to report, except that yesterday I did 12 x 500m r24 on 2' in 1:41.7 pace. The first 11 were about 1:42.7 or so and #12 was 1:29.1.

Today I obliterated the previous ranked best for 4000m / 60-69 MHW on the Bike Erg. The previous best had been 6:45.8, set last year. It's now 6:39.8. I can go faster, I think, now that I know what it feels like....



I will be surprised if this doesn't win the age group in this year's inaugural C2 Bike Erg Sprints....

[NavigationHazard]

The rather odd total of 25 x 250m r24 on 1' yesterday. I'd been planning to take advantage of the cool weather and do 40 reps. However I was running ErgData and my phone announced during rep 25 that I was down to 14% battery capacity. Since that can mean it starts shutting down apps, I decided to bail so that I could be sure to capture the workout data....

1:38.6 pace, theoretically r24 if you believe the program and the PM5 when it comes to rounding/truncating. I counted out 20 strokes for the first 14 reps and tried to count 19 from then on.... Total work duration divided by actual stroke count suggests the average rating was actually 24.6. The last 20 were at 1:38.2 pace, for whatever that's worth....

[NavigationHazard]

40 x 250m r31 just now on 50 secs semi-active rest (i.e. light paddle after 20-30 seconds of passive rest).



I'm not sure I trust the HR data for the last 10 reps or so -- it's awfully flat..... OTOH it was quite breezy intermittently during the entire session, and the cooling effect of the wind definitely affects recorded HR....

[NavigationHazard]

Annoyed by my complacency re my BikeErg Sprints result (2nd in the age group; I could have gone again but I mistakenly thought my time would hold up). I took it out on the BikeErg today in a 60 min session. I broke the previous all-time best ranked distance for the hour for the age group by 782m.

True, it was my own PB that I smashed. But it's no less satisfying....

[NavigationHazard]

Haven't posted in a bit, due mainly to problems with the keyboard on the old laptop I normally use for rowing-related stuff. I think that cat fur under the keys is the cause. Unfortunately I can't seem to clean enough of it out to get everything working. I've solved the problem with an external USB keyboard....

50% BikeErg sessions and 50% erg sessions since my past post. Mainly basebuilding on the erg, alternated with speed intervals on the BikeErg.

Here was today's erg session:



14 x 1' r24 on 1'. I'd originally intended to have a go at 20 reps @ 1:42 or better. However I switched tactics after rep 6 as the sky was looking quite threatening. It never did actually rain but it came close....

I actually felt reasonably proficient technically during the session. FWIW here's a force curve screenshot I made afterwards....

[NavigationHazard]

7/17. Rather heroic 30 x 1' r24 on 1', aiming for consistency. 29 reps at 295m 1:41.6 pace; fast last at 317m 1:34.6 pace. 8876m total work distance, 1:41.3 average pace.

[NavigationHazard]

Still working on base-building, combining BikeErg sessions with road rides on my Cube bike with erg sessions.

Highlights of the last week include the session on the 19th: 20' OCD warmup fail on the BikeErg to start. All 8 splits the same pace distance and cadence but the PM5 rounded the total work distance down to 9999m. Okay. Then I essayed 34 x 1 min on 1 min on the BikeErg, target 1:40.0 pace. I managed to hit 31 of the splits dead on, over/undered two, and rowed 1 extra meter on another. Net result was 20400m work distance at 1:40.0 pace, with 31 of the reps dead on at the same 74 rpms.

On the 20th-21st I was in Lodz, Poland on a brief weekend trip. The hotel gym there had an immaculately maintained Model E, which I took advantage of. The highlight session was 16 x 250m r20 on 50" rest, 1:39.6 average pace.

Back in Wroclaw, I spent the first part of the week dinking around on the ErgBike in a futile attempt to achieve a perfect OCD monitor screen. That's a session of 8 splits with exactly the same pace, distance and cadence, plus the displayed distance adding up to 8 x the split distance. It's quite hard to achieve, due to the monitor's built-in rounding. I managed maybe 7 or 8 20-minute sessions, tracking 2:30 splits, at identical 1250m/2:00 pace/cadence 62 displayed values, but with the monitor showing 9999 total meters. I also had a couple of 20-minute sessions totaling 10,000 displayed meters but with one of the splits showing 1251m and/or a cadence of 63. Grrr.

I also did the CTC on the ErgBike, doubling the distances but keeping the same rest intervals. I averaged 1:30.4, which isn't too horrible. I was 1:31.4 on the initial 1k, which is pretty good considering that the fastest age-group 1k to date is only slightly under 1:30 (admittedly a very small sample). And my standalone PB for the distance is 1:31.1. I am hampered in sprints on the BikeErg by my starts -- I haven't figured them out yet, and the first couple of splits from a dead fan can look like 3:30/ 2:10/ 1:40 etc. It takes quite a while to get the overall average down to respectability....

Yesterday was 32 road miles on the bike in the morning, with 26 x 30" r24 on 30" in the afternoon. That's basically 2 x a competition 2k distance on equal work/rest.

The thing about power 30 sec/30sec intervals like these is that if you do enough of them, HR ends up staying pretty constant. Mine will climb gradually to the low 150s and stay there, whether during the work intervals or during the rests. You end up able to stay much longer in the desired zone than you would if you were doing continuous rowing....

[NavigationHazard]

7/27 I started with what was going to be 50 x 30" on/30" off on the BikeErg, but had to bail after 17 of them on account of wrapping a shoelace round the pedal crank. Oops.

I then set up 30"/30" again and did 26 reps / 8431m work distance at 1:32.5 pace:



As I have said before, the thing about HR on these sorts of sprintervals is that it essentially goes flat at/slightly above threshold level. For whatever it's worth, this was two times a BikeErg Sprints competition distance at age-group best-ever pace minus about 7.3 seconds, on equal work/rest.

7/28 I managed a perfect OCD screen during warmups on the BikeErg:



That's 8 splits with exactly the same pace/distance/rpm, and the total distance exactly 8 times the split distances. It's extremely hard to pull off; evidently I am the second person known to have managed to do it.

I added 6 x 1k on the BikeErg on 1' rest in 1:36.5. I take the workout to be something of a 4k predictor.

7/29 I did 57.4 km mid-morning on the road on my Cube cycle, in appallingly hot conditions. At one point the thermometer built into my bike computer thought it was 40.6 C. In the shade. In the evening I added a CTC effort on the Model D: 4:28.6, 1:29.5 average pace, r34ish. In my defense my legs were tired and it was still hot on the balcony.

[NavigationHazard]

7/30 50 x 30" on 30" (BikeErg), in swampy conditions. Here's a graph of the results:



1:35.6 average pace overall, last 26 in an average 1:33.2. 15686m total work distance, average cadence 76 rpm.