Today’s training session was endurance intervals, 5×1500 R5:00. There was a 2500m warmup and warmdown. DF was 135. Straps were loose. Target pace for all but the last interval was 2:00.3, which was the average pace for all 5 intervals in this same session of the first cycle.
The resulting average pace for all 5 intervals this session was 1:59.5. That will be the target pace for all but the last interval, three weeks from now when this is repeated in Cycle 3.
Happy trails to you.
Today’s episode of Pete Plan was the first day of cycle 2, my second time through the 3 week plan. The session was 8×500 R3:30. I set up the intervals on RowPro, with only 3:20 of rest and when each 3:20 of rest ended, I sat motionless for another 10 seconds to allow the flywheel to come to a rest before starting the next 500m interval.
Before and after the 8×500 there was a warm up and warm down of 1,250 meters. The target pace for the first 7 intervals was 1:55.6, which had been the overall average pace for the previous instance of the 8×500 in the first cycle. DF was 125.
I put the Apple watch into workout mode/rowing before starting the warm up, intervals and warm down and then ended its recording of the workout after the warm down.
The Apple watch doesn’t provide any data that is of interest to rowers but at least it does give me “credit” for meeting the daily exercise portion of what is set as a daily activity goal.
Here are the finish screens, reports and charts for the warm up, 8×50 R3:30 and warm down:
Happy trails to you.
Today’s Pete Plan scheduled session was specified to be a distance of from 8K to 15K at a rating of from 22 to 25 and at a recovery pace. I chose 8K as the distance. DF was 125. No warmup or warmdown. Straps were loose, as usual.
Happy trails to you.
The session for today’s portion of the Pete Plan was designated a steady distance, recovery session. It was supposed to be anywhere from 8K to 15K and was supposed to be done at a recovery pace, with a rating of from 22 to 25. I chose the 8K distance. No warm up was needed or done. The targets in order of priority for compliance were: First: heart rate was to be no higher than 75% max. For that purpose, a HR target zone of was painted on the RowPro screen. The only part of the target zone that I cared about was the top of the zone, which was not to be exceeded. It never came close to the top so that target was met.
Second priority target was to keep the average rating near 22 and that worked out well. The session report shows average rating of 22.
Third and last priority target was pace, which was targeted as 2:18. That came out to be an average pace of 2:17.8, which was close enough. The session report shows an average pace of “2:18,” but that’s because the RowPro 5 for the Mac software for some reason rounds off every figure in the pace column, including the overall average pace, to the nearest whole number of seconds instead of displaying to the nearest tenth.
NOTE: IGNORE the report data for the last split – there’s something wrong with that line of data! I rowed the 8K as near to targets as I could throughout every split and DID NOT row the last split at a pace of 1:32! The total time is correct and the more precise pace average was 2:17.8 but RowPro 5 for the Mac rounds all pace values to the nearest second.
(The software version of RowPro I’m using on a Mac is a Beta version with a few bugs left in it. I use a Windows version of RowPro for any Pete Plan variable interval sessions, because this Beta version for the Mac won’t do variable intervals… but for everything else, including this session today, I use this Beta version of RowPro 5 for the Mac, which usually works perfectly.)
After the Pete Plan 8K steady distance recovery session was done, I decided to watch a movie and do another 10K for the sake of the current concept2.com challenge. But first, here’s the stuff for the Pete Plan 8K:
The additional 10K “ocean rowing” was done with an effort level which is the equivalent (as near as I can calculate with the information I have) of the average level of effort with which Sami Inkinen rowed for 18 hours every day, for 45 days while rowing 2,750 miles across the Pacific Ocean from California to Hawaii.
One of the interviews I viewed which featured Sami Inkinen answering questions about that voyage included answers to questions about what he ate every day during those 45 days, how many calories consumed daily, how many hours he slept daily and how much weight he lost during the 45 days of rowing 18 hours daily.
With the above information, I calculated what was his average rowing effort and translated that to a pace at which someone would have to row a Concept 2 rowing machine, if rowing 18 hours a day for 45 days and be rowing the same daily calories burned.
Sami said that he ate 7,000 calories per day. He also said that he lost 26 pounds during those 45 days. And he said he slept for 6 hours each 24 hour period. So I disregarded any consideration for calories he burned while awake and not rowing during the 18 awake hours per day and used the Concept 2 rowing machine monitor to translate calories per hour to pace.
The data used, in addition to his report of eating 7,000 calories per 24 hours, is: He slept 6 hours and the human body reportedly burns about .42 calories per hour per pound of body weight. So I assumed that he weighed an average of about 180 pounds during the voyage and that 6 hours of sleep amounts to 450 calories he burned while sleeping. Also, he lost 26 pounds of weight. But when the voyage started, he was a very fit, world-class triathlete so that 26 pounds was NOT very much in the way of fat. He said that the muscles atrophied – the muscles he wasn’t able to use enough while in the boat and only rowing for 45 days. So the calorie figure I used for the 26 pounds of his lean body which was consumed during the 45 days was the calorie figure for what is reported for “lean beef,” which is 897 calories per pound. Multiply 897 calories by 26 pounds and the number of calories his body consumed relating to his loss of weight was 897 x 26 = 23,322 calories total. Divide that 23,322 calories by 45 days and you get 518 calories average per day from weight loss.
The total figure for calories he spent to do the rowing is:
7,000 calories eaten minus 450 calories for sleeping plus 518 calories per day from his body consuming itself with weight loss = 7,068 calories remaining per 18 hours for rowing. Divide 7,068 calories by 18 and you get about 393 calories for his average hourly rowing effort.
I sat on a Concept 2 rowing machine and set the C2 PM3 to display calories per hour while the RowPro monitor was simultaneously set to display reading of pace in minutes:seconds/500 meters. After doing that I had RowPro show the simultaneous value for the 393 calories per hour in Watts, for the sake of curiosity.
393 calories per hour = pace of about 3:56/500 meters = power level of about 31 Watts.
Whatever the exact, precise numbers were, it doesn’t matter because the above numbers are excellent “ball park” numbers and should be within a very small percentage or fraction of a percentage of the actual values if they could have been measured and recorded during that ocean rowing voyage. If you’d like to see it yourself, the relevant interview with Sami Inkinen should be at this link-> Sami Inkinen interview on youtube
So I did the 10K at the ocean rowing pace of about 3:56. The session was interrupted once when I had to get off the machine for a couple minutes and help my wife carry things. I made up for the lost time by rowing a bit faster until the average pace returned to about 3:56. Then, toward the end, my wife told me that we were going to have a meal in a number of minutes that would have me still on the rowing machine by then, so I increased the pace a little bit near the end, so as to be on time for the meal. (Call me anything you want, but don’t call me late for a meal.)
The 10K ocean row session would have been extremely boring without a distraction, so I watched a documentary. One of the things Sami Inkinen did while rowing at that pace for 18 hours/45 days was to do mathematical calculations in his head and speak aloud what he was calculating while doing them. (I think he did those while his wife was sleeping – while she was awake, they talked about anything and everything and decided, among other things, that they wanted to have children).
If you compare calories burned for 8K at 2:18/500m (which was the first rowing session done today, for Pete Plan training) and 10K at 3:52/500m (for this “ocean rowing” session) you will see that though the 10,000 meter “ocean row” is 25% more distance, it only used 9.7% more calories than the much faster paced 8K. Therefore if a person wants to row maximum distance on a limited number of calories, he can row further at a slower pace.
Rowing slower to go further on the same amount of calories is analogous to driving a car slower, to go further on a gallon of gasoline.
The report and charts for today’s 10K of “ocean-rowing” effort level are below:
Happy trails to you.
Today was the day for a Pete Plan SS 15K.
Though I prefer to row online in the company of other people when possible, today’s session was not done online because I’ve noticed that the 15K isn’t very popular as an online session for very many others to join, even if it is scheduled a day or more in advance. It’s not one of the standard distances for ranking is probably one reason, among many others that it is not popular.
But the main reason for not rowing it online was that I wanted to allow myself to sleep in longer than usual, if the body felt so inclined. Therefore I didn’t know for sure when I’d be getting out of bed. Therefore I didn’t schedule an online session due to uncertainty of what time I’d be ready to start.
I didn’t sleep in. But that was okay. Instead of virtual human company while rowing online, I listened to music and it worked out well.
For this 15K recovery session there were three target zones set on RowPro. The most important one was to keep heart rate somewhere in the range from 60% to 75% maximum. As long as HR was in range, the next most important target was to keep rating equal to or very near 22. And the lowest priority target was to keep pace at about 2:11 or anything slower.
Another “review note” regarding RowPro 5 for the Mac that I’ve noticed is: It’s session report results disregard tenths of a second in pace. It seems to round any figure for pace off to the nearest second instead of to the nearest 1/10 of a second. The actual average pace for today’s 15K was 2:10.4 but RowPro 5 for the Mac reports it as 2:10.
RowPro for Windows is a bit more precise and it always shows the pace results to the nearest 1/10, which would be my preference.
Happy trails to you.
Today’s rowing session was a scheduled online half marathon. There were no others who joined. The half marathon distance was chosen, to make up for zero meters rowed yesterday. It was rowed at a moderate pace and was refreshing.
I noticed a flaw in the RowPro 5 for the Mac half marathon session report which reported the average pace as 2:13/500m but it was actually 2:12.5/500m.
Happy trails to you.
Today’s rowing session was done in the mid-afternoon instead of a more usual time in the early half of morning. Instead of rowing right after breakfast, I moved RowPro 5 for the Mac from one computer to another, to see if I could get its recalcitrant sound-at-the-start-of-a-race to function. But it remains mute in that regard.
Anyway… after de-activating RowPro 5 for the Mac on one computer, moving that computer and setting up a different one with an earlier and supposedly more compatible incarnation of the operating system, downloading and re-activating RowPro 5 for the Mac again, only to find out that the little feature of the voice at the start of a race still did not work… I felt disappointed that it was all for nothing.
But don’t get me wrong as to how I feel about RowPro 5 for the Mac. I love it – it is fantastic to have a version of RowPro that runs on “bare metal,” so to speak, instead of on Microsoft Windows inside a Parallels virtual machine which runs on the Apple OS X which is the only one running on bare metal (so to speak).
If I really want to hear a voice at the start of a race, I can ask Diane to stand by me and emphatically speak the word “ROW!” when it appears on the screen.
Maybe I should try that… it might help me row faster if she was there to cheer me on.
So I sat for a while and meditated about things including today’s rowing and realized that the sleep debt I’d been accumulating was catching up. In other words I was drowsy.
So I took a nap.
Today’s rowing session was 30 minutes scheduled online after the nap. Carl W., a rower in England, joined the session. Carl said that his back was bothering him and therefore he was only going to “paddle,” which means the person is going to row slow and easy.
Slow is relative. Carl rowed at a pace of about 1:59, which would be more like a race pace for me in a 30 minute piece. His pace was inspiring and I rowed more energetically than my lethargy would have inspired me to.
Happy trails to you.
Today inadvertently began 3 hours before dawn, which is almost three hours earlier than usual. I was wide awake, so I found a boring book to read about a computer operating system. It didn’t lead to any yawning, so I guess it is wrong to call it a boring book. Then I took a couple of super-strong Valerian pills, called “Formula 303.” I seldom resort to them. Their normal use is as a muscle relaxant but they can be a sleep aid if not resorted to very often.
Then I went back to bed and waited for the Valerian to relax me to sleep. But the muscle relaxant must have disagreed with one or more heart muscles, because I started to have irregular heartbeat. Which is very distracting if you are trying to go to sleep. It beats normally, then stops long enough to miss a beat every once in a while. So I gave up waiting for sleep and got up. Before sunrise. As has been normal lately.
Next I made coffee and did all the usual things with the exception of getting ready to row.
I hadn’t decided to do any rowing at all today because I’m signed up for a 5K race tomorrow. And I don’t know anything about training for a race or if there is anything special a person should do before a race… I just joined it for the fun of the experience. Though I don’t know anything about training, resting before a race sounds reasonable. So I contemplated not rowing today.
While I was contemplating not rowing today, I remembered that my driver’s license is about to expire, so I made a trip to Department of Motor Vehicles and renewed my driver’s license. That wasn’t very involved – just a vision test and a new photograph.
Continued contemplating whether or not to do any rowing today.
There was another 5 minute practice session scheduled today, for the Fitness Matters Devon online races. But I didn’t join it because I still hadn’t made up my mind whether to do any rowing today.
By late afternoon, I decided to do 30 minutes of rowing, for the sake of contributing some meters to the concept2.com Fall Team Challenge. So I setup a 30 minute QR (it stands for “Quick Row,” which is what Digital Rowing calls an impromptu, non-scheduled online rowing session). Nobody else joined, for the simple reason that nobody else was online at the moment. Except for someone named “Billy”. But Billy has had a presence in the chat room for a couple days now, so I don’t think he’s really there, though his instance of RowPro has remained logged in and connected.
So I rowed the 30 minutes at a very easy pace and watched part of a documentary about overseas sweat shops where clothes are made for the fashion industry. Another reason, besides budget economy, to ignore fashion and use clothes until they wear out.
Below, is the screenshot and data for today’s slow 30 min QR.
By the way… heart rate returned to normal after I gave up trying to go back to sleep. So it looks like “all systems are go” for racing a 5K tomorrow.
There are 2 heats for tomorrow’s 5K. Quite a few have joined the first heat at 10:00 GMT which is 3:00 am here and the time when I’d rather sleep. So I joined the other 5K heat, scheduled for 2200 GMT which is 3 pm locally and a much more sensible time to be doing such a thing. But so far… I’m the only one who has joined that heat, besides the official race starter. Hmmmm.
Here’s another bit of review related to RowPro 5 for the Mac: The notes feature does not yet work, for adding notes to individual sessions logged. You can add a note to a logged session but… as soon as you close then re-open the logbook, the note is gone. If you are connected to internet, the session uploads before you can add a note. But whether or not you are connected to the internet, the note disappears or is erased or moves to a parallel universe… it is no longer there if you leave the log and then go back after adding a note.
But that is minor, compared to the wonderful freedom and relative ease of being able to run RowPro directly on a Mac without having to install Microsoft in a virtual machine, run it from “Boot Camp,” or have a separate PC for RowPro.
All in all, I’m still very happy with RowPro 5 for the Mac and if it works okay in the race tomorrow I’ll be that much happier. Happy, happy.
Happy trails to you.
Yesterday’s rowing was average but yesterday’s post was large and long. Today’s rowing was small and short and I’m tending toward minimalism with this post. I was feeling lethargic this morning and didn’t get up at my usual time. Which is why the sun is so high in the sky in this morning’s photo. Call it tired, perhaps… but it resulted in an early morning feeling of lethargy.
Today’s rowing consisted of 7 minutes warmup followed by yet another 5 minute practice session for Fitness Matters Devon online races.
Unlike yesterday, I didn’t do any fast rowing today. I watched the pace of the other rowers and they were either rowing quite a bit faster than I wanted or, in the case of only one, much slower. Or … in the case of the one whose initials are MR – he rowed both exceedingly fast and very slow but some of his fast sprints were quite a bit faster than 1:30/500 m, which I’m not currently capable of matching. So I knew I’d be no match for MR if it turned into a race like the brief time of Carpe Diem fun yesterday which had a very close finish.
RowPro 5 for the Mac is now working well and behaving like it should with the important things like uploading files to the correct final destination. The folks at RowPro were actually happy to troubleshoot it because I am using it with the Mac OS 10.11, “El Capitan” which they had not had a chance to beta test.
Happy trails to you.
Today’s rowing session was another online 30 minute piece and the second day of trying RowPro 5 for the Mac.
There was one other rower who joined the online session but I don’t know if he is in Europe or the US or elsewhere. He rowed at a constant pace of about 2:01/500 meters. I rowed at a very slow pace around 2:35 with a very low rating in the teens. After 10 minutes, I did 4×10 power strokes, R5 minutes with the last 5 minutes serving as a warm down.
About 2 hours later, there was 5 minutes of online fun. But first, the results for the 30 minute session:
As mentioned above, there was 5 minutes of fun about two hours later…
On this coming Saturday there will be some online races sponsored by “Fitness Matters” in England. There will also be venue races in England, but the good people at Fitness Matters and Digital Rowing (makers of RowPro software) got together and have made it possible for anyone anywhere in the world to join in the fun by racing either 500 meters or 5K (or both) online via the internet from wherever they are.
There is a small fee to join the race, which is the case with almost all official races. For the online races it is $7.84 per race. So I signed up for one of the online 5Ks. It will be a lot of fun, no matter how far back in the competition I place. And I’m sure that there will be many, if not all other competitors who are much younger and correspondingly faster than me.
There have been some 5 minute practice sessions every day this week, to explain to everyone protocol for checking in, starting and to answer any questions.
I’ve joined several of those 5 minute sessions. Today was my 3rd. I figure, the more people the better in a practice session, to best help any newcomer to online rowing get the feel of what it’s like to row & race online.
Yesterday and the day before, I was wearing street clothes during the 5 minute practices. Jeans and a shirt. I didn’t want to get sweaty – so yesterday and the day before I rowed exceedingly slow and even stopped a couple times during the 5 minutes.
But today I decided to dress appropriately and row the 5 minutes at least a little bit faster. So the garb was normal for rowing. Shorts and a heartstrap.
There were 4 total in the practice session. The other three were the race starter (Pam L. of RowPro Rowers & Digital Rowing), Jesper T. of Denmark with whom I’ve rowed many times before, Justine R. who was new and whose location I don’t know.
Justine was definitely new because she said she had “never done this before”. I asked her if she meant she’d never rowed online before and she confirmed that was what she meant. I replied that “I’ve never rowed on the water before,” which I guess was a non-sequitur of sorts but what I was wondering behind that question was whether she was totally new to rowing or simply had never rowed on an erg connected to the internet with RowPro.
Justine didn’t answer my unspoken question, which is a perfectly normal response to an unspoken question.
And then before we could chat any further the Race Starter, Pam, arrived. She welcomed everyone and gave the brief instructions on what to expect for the starting of a race and then started the 5 minute race practice session.
When the word “ROW” appeared on the PM, we all started rowing. Actually, I didn’t start immediately because I’m in the habit of hearing an authoritative announcer voice speak the word “ROW!” loudly at that same instant but the sound is still not working on this installation of RowPro 5 for the Mac.
The others probably heard a voice say ROW! but whether they did or not, they got off the starting line a bit quicker than I did.
I rowed slowly after starting and watched the pace of Jesper and Justine. They were rowing faster than me but were staying more or less together in pace. I continued to row slow (2:25/500m) with a low rating in the teens for the first 20 seconds, while I watched them. Then, I thought I’d pick up the pace a bit, catch up to them and stay even with them so we could all cross the finish line in a group.
So I picked up the pace to between 2:00 – 2:05/500 m for the next 90 to 100 seconds and was slowly catching up to them.
As the distance between my boat and the lead boat (Justine R.) became smaller, she rowed a bit faster. So I rowed a bit faster, to keep closing the distance. You can see in that session report that the 6th split was a pace of 2:00 and then from split to split my speed increased, as I had to keep increasing the effort in order to keep closing the distance.
I caught up with Justine’s boat somewhere in the last few splits and decided that it felt like a race and was having too much fun to slow down and just stay even to the finish line, so I passed her boat.
And she kept increasing her speed. I know there are a lot of strong, fast women rowers, from looking at the women rowers’ results in the Olympics… but I don’t think I’d ever before rowed with a woman rower who was this fast. I was impressed. And still having fun. And wondering how much more she could speed up.
Well, she did keep increasing her speed and by the last 20 second split, I had to row an average pace of 1:42/500m to keep her from gaining on me. I think that I got my instantaneous pace as high as 1:36 for at least one stroke, before reaching the finish line and I’m pretty sure Justine was still increasing her speed. Like I said, I was impressed. And it was a lot of fun.
Here are a few more review-type comments about RowPro 5 for the Mac. The problem with row session files not uploading to the concept2.com online logbook has been resolved by the RowPro programmers.
RowPro 5 for the Mac is different from RowPro 4 in many ways and beautiful and fun to use in the same ways.
One of the ways it is different is there are 2 logbooks in RowPro 5 for the Mac. An online logbook, which is supposed to show all sessions uploaded or waiting to be uploaded to Concept 2 and “Local logbook,” which I assumed means what it implies, that the files are stored locally on your computer’s hard drive. But I looked and there are no documents or files that are associated with RowPro.
There’s only the RowPro App, in the applications folder.
So… I don’t understand how the files are stored locally unless they are stored as “invisible” files to avoid inadvertent damage by user klutziness etc. I know that the Apple OS stores some critical files as invisible because they are essential to the operating system and there is no reason most users would ever need to do anything with them. So maybe that’s what Digital Rowing does with RowPro files on a Mac – gives them the “invisible” tag so we won’t accidentally mess with them.
If I want a printable session report for any rowing session, I must go into the “local logbook”, right click it and select details. Then if I want to print it, I choose one of the usual Mac ways such as command+P or the menu item File->Print…
But if I am in the ONLINE logbook in RowPro 5 for the Mac and want to see an abbreviated version of the session report, I can double-click the session and a window will open up. That window with an abbreviated session report has the nice feature which shows average pace and ending heart rate for each split as you hover the cursor over the graph. See screenshot below:
There is a little quirk with the display of time in GMT at the top of the online session chat which I noticed.
When RowPro 5 for Mac is opened, it always opens to maximum size and covers the entire desktop, though not in absolute full screen mode. When it is like that and covers the entire desktop, it blocks some items that I like to have access to on the right side of my desktop. If I click and grab the right side of RowPro then drag it a couple inches to the left, it leaves a couple inches of desktop that I want to see. The quirk with the display of time in GMT at the top of the online session chat happens only if you resize the window of RowPro 5 for the Mac AFTER checking in to an online session which will result in the time becoming partly hidden like in the following screenshot:
If you resize the Window of RowPro 5 for the Mac BEFORE checking in to an online session, the time in GMT is fully visible, like in the screenshot below:
Happy trails to you.