Sunday, March 27, 2011
News Article of the World Record Attempt
Row2k.com, a leader in Rowing news, race schedule, and rumors, has interviewed Tim Myers from the National LW team about the upcoming 100km World Record Attempt. I was excited to read I was mentioned.
World Record Attempt - National Team LW!
Check this out.
Now, when I first heard about this possibility that I could be invited to join I was obviously really excited but, in all seriousness, I was secretly worried that I wouldn't be able to even get near the power that is needed to hit a 1:18-1:20/500m split. I went all alone to the erg-room at the boathouse one afternoon and just pulled and pulled as hard as I could...
....turns out I could just hit 1:21 on my own. I then went to a practice run of 2x2km at WR pace with the LW guys at PISE on Thursday. I was a bit shy and didn't want to participate in the fear that I wouldn't even hit the pace or screw up with something else. But, with adrenalin pumping and taking the lead from the other guys I was able to pound out some high speed (low split) intervals. On Saturday (March 26th) I joined the LW again for a 20km trial. If we (I mean the national team and me) can hit the WR split (1.24/500m) for 20km, then there is no problemo for the next 80km. Not sure how much of reality it is, but I enjoyed it.
Watch the video:
The WR attempt is on Wednesday, March 30th Downtown Vancouver @ Ringside Bar/Bentall Centre Athletic Club. 9am start. If interested, please donate to Canadian National Rowing.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Elk Lake Spring Sprints March 6th
I entered in a Double (two-person sculling) in with Andy Guiry, a fellow VCRC training partner, in the Sunday race. We practiced once together... the idea to race the double didn't present itself until the week before the race. On Thursday morning we had a practice session the week prior to the race and felt decent (In my mind). My technique had to step up to row with an experienced and very accomplished athlete.
Turns out we were going to be racing against some real competition. In direct quote by Andy "we are racing the two of the fastest doubles in Canada... so it should be a good race. I hope they are eating their wheaties 'cause they aint gonna know what hit 'em" We entered into the heavyweight race (over 165lbs) because Andy has been building muscle lately and wouldn't be able to make weight. I felt it was going to be just good experience.
The race was enjoyable, a bit of a side-tail wind with minimal waves on the water. I ate my honey-drop my mother gave me minutes before the start of the race - maybe a boost of energy!
Side note: Andy recommended we wear matching clothes... So I wore black like he said. But, instead of wearing ALL black, I wore the brightest most flamboyant red-tights I could find (or my clearance rack purchase).
Watch it:
Monster Erg
The pain-train that IS the monster erg is my ROWING anniversary! Something that is both painful, graceful and motivating all at the same time is a very good rowing analogy. The winter before I moved to Victoria full time I took a weekend off studying and drove back to Canada to show my stuff against the other local guys (UVic, Gorge Rowing, VCRC) and any other national team member. That first erg test PR was 6:37 for 2000m. Race plan was for any new personal record, but 6:30 is what I wanted.
I showed up bright and early and eight lightweights from the National Team arrived shortly after! These are the VTC lightweight guys (Victoria Training Centre) that I look up to immensely. Instantaneous motivation for this race. I had my plan and was going to stick to it. The race organizers were 45min behind schedule so I had a solid hour of warm-up which may be important in future events.
I was able to score Dylan Cunningham, a teammate turned cyclist, as my personal motivator and he was excellent; yelling at me almost every stroke and keeping me strong.
I missed the starting signal - I was tying my shoes, typical! So, I immediately was behind by probably 1-2 seconds. But, I had my race plan all sorted in my head so I just locked into my technique. I wanted to hit 1:35-1:36/500m split for first 1200m, then pick it up where I could to 1:34 split and in the last 400 drop it to 1:32 all out... For the actual race I hit dead-on for 1200m, the next 5oom was an increase to 1:34, but the last 300m I just maintained - I couldn't see straight and was mostly just closing my eyes and pulling all out - I felt I slowed a bit in the last 300 that I need to work on next time.
My time in the end was 6:25.1! I was in 5th place. Four National team guys were ahead of me and by a few seconds but I was a second or two ahead of the four other VTC (Victoria Training Centre) guys.
1 Terry McKall victoria training center 06:15.7
2 Tim Myers victoria training center 06:17.5
3 Mike Lewis victoria training center 06:19.6
4 Morgan Jarvis victoria training center 06:21.8
5 Derek Vinge victoria city rowing club 06:25.1
6 Rares Crisan victoria training center 06:26.0
7 Simon Gowdy victoria training center 06:28.8
8 John Sasi victoria training center 06:32.9
9 Zhongming Huang gorge rowing and paddling 06:39.2
10 Matt Jensen victoria training center 06:39.3
11 George Kostaros university of victoria 06:42.3
12 Hugh Wallace university of victoria 06:49.8
Lactate Threshold Testing
I completed the lactate threshold in the Pacific Institute for Sports Excellence Lab (PISE), with James Brotherhood. He happens to be a former National Rowing team member and current physiologist for Rowing Canada.
The first part of the test was the Anthropometric measurements... a skin fold fat test. With complex calculations and many pinches' later I turned out to be 8.6% body fat. I found out that the elite guys try to get to 6% during the peak/climax phase of training. I was very surprised to hear that I will loose weight or fat mass before the end of this project.
Second part is the Lactate Threshold. Rowing on Watts setting on the Erg, I started at 180W and held it for 3 minutes, after which I gave a blood sample 1 min rest, and increased 30W. Second intensity was 210W, then 240W and so on and so forth. After a peak level of of lactate (0.6 mmol/DL) the test involves increasing 30W every 1min until capacity. This last step was the exhausting part. Going hard until I could no longer pull - which is much longer than I thought. I actually said 2-3times to James in a high-pitched voice "I can't - I can't do it" but he explained if you have enough energy to say that then I had enough energy to keep going... Catch 22.
I got to 450Watts! I don't directly know what that means until I can compare it to additional tests. James explained that most National Lightweights were at the same level and a few pushed into 480W. That is were I need to get.
Summary: I have poor efficiency in the low-effort rowing - I spin the flywheel with no real power. This causes my Lactate to jump up right away when it should be really steady until the Threshold of power near Aerobic/Anaerobic conversion. When I started pulling at high-effort and intensity my Lactate curve would normalize to the elite level guys. This is good news to me - I need to work on low intensity technique and effort.
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