30r20 70% HRR - technique work - fast - hard - drive - speed

after seeing my heels lifting again yesterday I have vowed to sort this out - so this morning before work I went after a 30r20 HRR 70% and concentrated on
1) fast drive away
2) drive the heels down and keep them there
3) shallower lean
4) fast hands

suprisingly this led to a decent score - I did think that the alterations would drive the HR up more than it did

60r20 70% HRR snail pace ...

felt like the slowest 60r20 70% HRR ever - it wasn't - but only by 25m.... WTF like - thinking of taking up jogging

 

although when getting the screen shot above I spotted this was on my phone from yesterday - Lilly Rose doing her "Boo" impression from Monsters Inc - that's cheered me up :o)

Turn a negative to a positive - perseverance - 30r20

So crappy week of training what with coming back sick from a Spa weekend (I knew relaxing was bad for you!) missed training due to "life", blisters from my new ruby slippers, a HD yesterdayand basically being pooped I was one training session away from the weekend which often means no training for me - I could of gone down and done a light 30min piece but after seeing Al Taylor post that he'd been off for the week and that he came back with a 75% 30r20 I got a spark (so thanks Al) that was a 30r20 at 80% HRR but first I needed to sort something out with the Ruby slippers and my blisters

So blister pads on the heels and foam padding in the shoes - 2 min warm up and a pop to the loo

So off I set and with the aim of hitting a HR of 160 then dropping pace all went quite well - especially bearing in mind the rubbish week of training I've had - in fact I was only 12m off my age group PB for the 30r20 (set in October of 8686m) and if I had of taken one more stroke I would have had it - but as I got ahead of myself I had to stop rowing with about 7 or 8 seconds left on the clock lol - next time then - I did have issues with the heels slipping up the back of the shoes today - but that I think was due to having the loo break and not tightening them up properly afterwards as I did a two minute cool down and I tightened them and rowed without that issue. So ended the week on a positive :o)

Nicely padded out 

 Got a bit sweaty alright!

Blistering pace - my ruby slippers need to know who's boss BATLogic

Didn't get time to write this up yesterday - basically my heels where in a bad state from the new Nike Omada rowing shoes after Tueasday - I went a size bigger than what I am as I heard the shoes where narrow fitting - maybe that caused the issue - could just be "new shoe syndrome" though as I tend to get blisters every time I buy new shoes no matter what they are for (hmm maybe I have weak skin) on Wednesday I wasn't rowing anyway as had appoinments for my daughter which took up a few hours during the day. So yesterday even though my heels looked like this ....

 I wanted to erg got set up and took a few strokes - yep that's feckin hurting! So i went and raided the first aid and got some padded plaster things and put them on - they where enough to reduce the pain to where I could row. Set up a 5k race warm up and got through that then set up a 1k just to test the waters and to get a film of the BAT Logic in action - unfortunately I HD'd - just too tired - been a long week. The good news is that my heels are staying down which is the big reason for the BAT Logic for me :o)

The vide below is from Bristol in October 

I set up a 500m just to get a completed row and recorded that also - even struggled to finish that - reckong the "relaxing Spa weekend" wore me out!

30r20 70% HRR - 1min blast on the Batlogic

Well I got all excited like a kid on Xmas morning - almost literally as my Bat Logic erg system arrived - it's something I've been looking at for a while now as one of the issues I face in my technique is a lift in the heel on the drive phase which is causing other issues and I thought that the Bat Logic might help me correct this. Also in a lot of recent power and speed ergs I've found that my feet come lose from my shoes and even the shoes come lose from the straps - so figured this system would help with that - needless to say even though I'm not 100% I put the various bits together at my desk this morning and then at lunch went down to try it out :o)

 So attached the ergadapter to the erg which was pretty quick once I got my brain in gear and then tried the shoes in - click - click and I'm fixed in 

So the session was a 30r20 and I found it a little odd to start with - feels like my feet where slightly wider than the norm but soon adapted to that and from the get go I discovered that I was able to get more power outage - or at least it felt that way - will obviously need a few more sessions to be sure - but this is my strongest 30r20 70% HRR erg for some time - in fact looking it up the last time I went faster on this piece was in October 2014 with 8298m - but that was also the month I broke my 2k PB so looking promising indeed. Now I will admit to having got blisters :o( but then I always get them with new shoes no matter what it seems. Looking forward to getting some hard training in with this :o)

 More info on the system here http://www.batlogic.com.au/

I thought I'd see how it held up to some power - not bad at all - no feeling of the feet about to fly out or the shoes coming unstuck like I do with just the gym shoes and straps

a very slow 30r20 60% HRR

Feel exhausted - away for the weekend and on returning home last night I just felt something wasn't right - kinda like food poisoning without any of the gruesome side effects - still feeling off this morning I had a bit of a lie in then got to work. Lunchtime I went down to get some meters done - felt quite sick at the start but a little better at the end - early night I reckon.

Aghadoe Heights Hotel model C broken monitor

Just a 30r20 HRR 70 % based on watching the watch as monitor broken :-( poor erg

No batteries in it - got some and tried - still no go

CTC r28 - 1k 300m 300m 300m 300m 1k 2r wheels wobbled - quote from Jens got me through

Firstly a 40r20 this morning before work - 70% HRR

Time for r28 CTC - maybe not the brightest idea after r24 on Monday and 26 yesterday but it's all good training as long as we give our best and do everything we can to get to the end - and that was certainly the case today lol 

Firstly the targets based off the previous 2 days 

1000	02:57.1	01:28.6
300	00:50.5	01:24.2
300	00:52.6	01:27.7
300	00:51.2	01:25.4
300	00:51.1	01:25.2
1000	03:03.5	01:31.8
	09:26.1

looks good doesn't it - started off with 5k warm up and I should have known I was in trouble then - it went so well - everything felt connected and strong - so much so I thought about going for a single distance TT - but that might have been because I was distracted by the 10 people being shown around the quite small gym and a bit of adrenalin pump I got. So first 1k and off I set - rated too high at the start (r30) so after the first minute I was fighting between getting the rate back to target (which would mean a total of 83 strokes for strict r28) and keeping the pace target - in the end I missed both and ended a single stroke over and 0.1 seconds per 500m off. Still not too far away. OK first of the 300's - only problem was I was still blowing quite hard from the 1k as I got started - also got distracted and lost focus on target so had to squint down to my piece of paper on the floor - again the rate was a little high and as I tried to control that I lost pace - no where near the optimum 1:24.2 and even off the average 1:25.6 target I had for the 300's as I let the last 20m roll past without a stroke. OK sod this time to start with a roll - just a single stroke before the 0 showed on the monitor. That didn't help and I was close to HD'ing on that rep (second of the 300's) same on the next two reps - in fact the last 300m rep was hell. Hmmm that doesn't bode well for a final 1k at 1:32 pace - so dropped target to 1:33 and even managed to hold 1:32 up to 650m left to go. Then the handle wanted to go back in the cradle and I wanted to lie down ... hollywood slow motion time ... as this was happening I thought back to a comment Jens Raab made on his CTC from yesterday about stopping on his final 1k as his legs caved in - "never! if you did it once you will do it again and again" so that was it I drilled my legs although the only thing that came out was 1:38's until I managed a last stand - finished it with total time of 9:34.5 vs 9:33.4 yesterday at r26 - I may take it easy tomorrow to let the legs recover ...