VO2 Max testing

As part of this years Masters Paddle Camp, we went along to PotentRx, and did VO2 max testing using the Kayak Pro Erg again.  That was this mng, so now I have my new report with my updated HR Zones, which you can see below.

Zone	New	Old
1	106-122	110-123
2	123-128	123-136
3	129-137	136-149
4	137-143	149-162
5	144-170	162-175

 

What is interesting here is how similar the are at the very bottom, then the new zone 2 + 3 fit into what was Zone 2, with the old zone 3 covering new zone4.  One big difference is that the top of Zone 4 is now set at Anaerobic Threshold, which pushed new Zone 4 down, and makes new Zone 5 a lot wider.

The other big difference is the update to HRMax, which came down from 175 to 170.

Now I just need to reprogram my HRM, and start working out a lot easier in the new HR Zones.

Mountains to Sound relay 2011

Yesterday was the Mountains to sound relay race.  The team I have raced with over the past 2 years wasn’t racing this year, and after getting no bites from a post offering my speedy kayaking skills to other teams, I posted on FB looking for others to make a team.

Pretty much immediately I had a team put together of Shannon, Sarah, Bart, and Mike.

My goals for the race were to get a top 10 finish, and come in under 2 Hrs.  I managed to meet the top ten finish, coming in 7th place on the kayak leg, but just missed the sub 2 Hr official time by 3 seconds with a time of 2:00:03.  However my unofficial time from the Garmin 310 XT on my boat was 1:59, so I am pretty happy with that.

The MTS site now has results up for previous years, so I was able to look back all the way to my first race in 2006, and see how my times have improved since then.  My best time was in 2008, when I managed it in 1:57:33

After this years performance, I think I have to step up big time next year, and aim for a top 5 finish, and a sub 1:50 time. How well I can achieve that is going to depend on how well my winter training goes.

But it does give me some specific speed targets to work at. To get a 1:50 time, I need to average 11 kmh, which is just 10% increase from my current avg speed of 10 kmh.  Now how hard could that be

Just for comparison, last years winner – Greg Barton – completed the kayak leg in 1:28:00.  That’s an average speed of 13.5 kmh – there is no way Im going to hit those kind of speeds, but its something to keep in mind.

Back to the Team – we reused the old AR team name of “Just a flesh wound”.  We were in the Coed Open division, and came in 32nd overall which was 10th in class, in a combined time of 09:01:47.

Paddling with the Kids Sprint team

After a week in Texas for business ( warmth, sunshine ), I got on the water again this mng, and paddled the Sat mng workout with the Kids sprint team.

Some of them are of to National team trials soon, so the focus today was on time trials. The workout plan was for warmup, then 2 x 1Km, 2 x 500m, 2 x 200m, then cool down.

I ended up as the only “adult” there, and paddled with the faster kids, which meant I was going to be racing for last place most of the time, but that was OK, as it meant they wouldn’t be slacking of, as they had to try and beat the old guy at the back

Anyway, we had the typical Green lake wind, blowing up from the South, so it made for a very nice warmup, then it turned cold when we turned into it.

The 1Km went of prety well, but I went out to fast, and blew up totally around the 300m mark, and ended up cruising home pretty slowly.

then we had a change of plan, and dropped the second 1Km ( thank goodness ) so straight into the 500m’s. I got a reasonable start on the first, and was actually keeping up with a bunch of the kids, but was going to fast again, and blew up again with around 150m to go

My second 500m, I ended up sandwiched between two faster kayakers, so got totally waked out on the start, which made for a very slow 500m

The 200’s were super fast and furious as always. On the first I didn’t get a good start ( I never do, but this one was particularly bad ) the last one, was a reasonable start, but I had a couple of large lurches as I was getting pretty tired by now, so while parts of it were faster, overall it was pretty ugly.

At the end of the morning, I was just happy to be back in the boat again.

The only time I got for the morning was my 1Km time which was 6:20, which is way outside my PB of 5:01, but then I havent been training, there was an appalling headwind which was adding around 1 min to everyones times, so 5:20 is not to bad for this early in the season

Whats been going on …

Another prolonged period of no blogging.  Facebook and twitter integration with Windows Phone 7 makes it so easy to push info out that way. That along with the change from spaces.live.com to wordpress which was a PITA has kept me of the blog for a while.

Anyway, here we are with an update.

Kayak wise, I was getting out at least twice a week after the clocks changed, and then spent most of a week paddling twice a day at the end of season paddle camp on Green Lake. I feel a separate post about that may be in the air, but in case it doesn’t happen, here is some info.

This was the second year the camp has run, and this time there were even more great athletes and coaches from around the country, and from Canada.

Because of the large number of athletes ( and coaches ) the on water sessions were split into canoe and kayak, and then within each boat type, we were further split by on water speed. Without going into the gory details of every workout, it was a great way to finish the season, learn from the coaches. Both last year, and this year I have picked up a few amazing tips that will keep me busy trying to fully assimilate them into my paddling.

After a mostly easy week focused on technique, the week finished with a monster day of 20K plus on Friday, then a 10K race on Saturday.  After that I was totally done.

Now that the weather has turned bad, I am trying to make sure I get out at least once a week, which is still a struggle.  Unfortunately my work schedule doesn’t let me get out for those early mng paddles like I was doing last year  

In their place I have been doing regular weight workouts 3 x per week, and am building the weight up slowly for a month before hitting heavier weights with low reps during Feb / March before ramping down again as I am able to get on the water more.

I am thinking that this year I need to keep some element of weight work going thru the season, as it feels like there is some real benefit in this, rather than falling back to cardio only workouts during the rest of the season ( spring, summer, and fall )

To help supplement my weight workouts, I would love to get in a couple of kayak erg sessions a week, but don’t have the time to get down to Seattle to use the erg there, and $2500 for a kayak erg is just a bit to much to swallow right now

In retrospect what I should have done was cancel my membership at the pro club, which I havent used for over a year now, and used the saving from that to fund the kayak erg.  Oh well, that’s something to put in the calendar for next years open enrolment in November

Wow, what a load of rambling, I had better get outa here and go do something else.

Hoping the next post wont be quite so long coming, especially as I now have windows Live writer setup to point to wordpress

Cheers

Steve

Flat water sprint kayak links

Saving these here, so I don’t loose them

How not to do it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F2A0q2xeGU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfwvXznNuBM&feature=fvw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1fgWB4XLEE&feature=related

And now a few examples of doing it right 🙂

Tim Brabants is the current 1000m K1 Olympic champion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mhpY3jyPys

A short video I put together from the worlds in 2006, shows K1, K2, K4, C1, C2, C4 🙂

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvCSWDyScGE

Pacific Cup Regatta last weekend.

Last weekend was the Pacific Cup regatta at Maple Ridge, BC, Canada.

I drove up on Friday and dropped Caity with my brother Nick, then headed out to Mission to the Best Western, which is the preferred accommodation for the weekend.

Saturday was 500m Races, and my race card had K1 heats, K2 straight final, an K4 which was another straight final.  I managed to just squeeze into the top 3 on the K1 heat, which was mostly because I had the easy heat, with all the fast guys in the other heat, but it was a big improvement for me to make it thru the heats and into the final.  My time wasn’t anything special at 2:32.  I don’t know what my 500m PB is, but have a feeling it was under 2:30 which would have been at Nationals in Oklahoma back in 2008.

K2 was up next, and John and I had actually been practicing which is a first for any masters team boats, so we had our boat all sorted, and knew what to expect.  We had a good race, though not as fast as we could go, and made it to 4th ( I think )  I think our time was around 2:28, maybe a bit faster?

K4 next, and this was an amazing boat, with 3 other incredible paddlers. The speed we went at was truly amazing, and we managed a first place in a pretty phenomenal time of 1:48

Last race of the day was the K1 final.  Now I had all the serious competition, and my goal here was not to fall in at the start, and try not to be last.  well I just managed to not fall in at the start, but im not sure how the rest of the race went with regard to time, or final place, so I my have placed last in this one, but just getting to the final was a win

Sunday was 200m races. Same race card, K1, K2, and K4.  I don’t like 200m races so much as I always start badly, and with only 200m, there isnt much time to catch up

So K1 time came around, and I managed to squeeze a 4th place after a pretty appalling race, a bad start followed by getting washed out all down the course didn’t help much, but I was happy to get into another K1 final .

K2 with John again, and this time we had a better race, quite a bit faster, and I think we managed a 4th this time

K4 next, a slightly different crew this time, but still some amazing paddlers. The boat didn’t groove quite so well this time, and after a poor start, we only managed a second place.

K1 final time, and a slightly better race this time, still not a good start, still washed out all the way down the course, but I wasn’t last this time I got 8th place out of 9.

I have my 200m times around somewhere and will post them when I finally dig them out.

Will this work?

Maybe this will finally work.  Days after migrating my blog from Windows Live Spaces which is no more, over to wordpress, I may finally be able to make a blog post, but NOT thru the crappy wordpress interface which continues to fail to work with IE9   I finally found the update for Windows Live Writer to 2011, and that’s how I am hoping to finally be able to blog again?

Lets see what happens when I press “Publish”

K2 practice

Drove over to Green lake this afternoon to paddle K2 with John. This is in prep for our chance to race K2 in the Pan Am cup next weekend.  We used an SRS boat that’s one of the only 2 heavy weight boats the club has ( I think) the other is a Van Deusen that’s a lot finer / faster, so also tippier.

After spending time fixing the boat up so we could adjust it enough to fit us, w headed out for a couple of laps of Green Lake.  Definitely wobbly for the first few hundred meters, but we didn’t tip in, and the balance slowly came together.

Today we just worked on the balance, so kept the stroke rate, and work intensity down. By the second lap of the lake, the balance was feeling pretty good.  We finished the workout by heading out onto the course, and doing a running start 200m at 80-90% effort. 

As soon as we tried to step up the power, the balance suffered, but we made it without swimming

Sunny paddle :)

Had a great paddle yesterday, and it was warm and sunny again!  For yesterdays paddle I went long again, 15Km at zone 2.  The sun was out, it was warm, most of the traffic on the slough was kayaks, a canoe, and a couple of paddle boards   Mostly leaf and weed free, apart from a 1-2 mile stretch in the middle which was annoyingly full of leaves.

Zone 2, when I have settled into it and found the right pace, is a great opportunity to work on my technique.  I am still working on keeping my left hand up, turning on my leg drive on the right, and getting the balance right on the exit on the right.

Next week it’s the Pan Am cup at Maple Ridge, so that’s a bunch of sprints, so next long paddle ( 20Km ? ) will be in 2 weeks time.

calorie counting

Have to admit to slipping with the calorie counting over the past 2 days.  Not sure why its been so hard, probably because I have been staying up to late, and then am tired at the end of the following day.

 

I have actually done a good job of counting my calories, what I havent done is stuck to my calorie ration each day.  Wed, and Thu, my calorie intake crept up to 2200 to 2500, and the end result of that is that my weight crept up from 187.4 back to 189.9.  Thats still the low side of the 190 mark, but is now back above tracking for meeting my weight goal of 160 Lbs by the end of December.