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Great tales from London! Your boat mates look serious and daunting On Sat, Nov 22, 2025 at 2:02 PM Hank Koerner < hank.koerner@gmail.com > wrote: Hey guys, London was great. What a fun town. We had what seemed like a very full week and we barely - BARELY - scratched the surface. I'm so glad Katherine came - she rarely joins rowing outings - she seemed to have a wonderful time. I would say the emphasis was 70-80% fun to 20-30% rowing. That said, it was also worthwhile to have the trip centered around a local activity, the Veteran Fours Head. And to meet some British rowers and hangout in Hammersmith, the neighborhood of their boathouse. We rented an Empacher 4+ and oars from The Sons of the Thames and launched from their dock. The tidal nature of the Thames must be seen to be believed - 20' twice a day. Their dock floats, but, at low tide, rests on the bank and one has to wear wellies to put the boat in the water.  The Sons and nearby boathouses have docks. But most on the...

Hey guys, London was great. What a fun town. We had what seemed like a very full week and we barely - BARELY - scratched the surface. I'm so glad Katherine came - she rarely joins rowing outings - she seemed to have a wonderful time. I would say the emphasis was 70-80% fun to 20-30% rowing. That said, it was also worthwhile to have the trip centered around a local activity, the Veteran Fours Head. And to meet some British rowers and hangout in Hammersmith, the neighborhood of their boathouse. We rented an Empacher 4+ and oars from The Sons of the Thames and launched from their dock. The tidal nature of the Thames must be seen to be believed - 20' twice a day. Their dock floats, but, at low tide, rests on the bank and one has to wear wellies to put the boat in the water.  The Sons and nearby boathouses have docks. But most on the "Championship Course" - the famous Oxbridge course from Putney to Chiswick bridges - do not and water launch each time they row. There are ov...

To my coaches, Megan, Ellen and Lilly.  Subject: Strength Friday v Speed Sunday  I thought the recent Friday and Sunday workouts would be interesting to compare. I think I've got a couple findings. While there's more to be gained from a closer look, here's what I've got so far.  To recap, Friday's otw strength workout was 3 x 5 x 1 minute on, 1 minute off, @ 18, 20, 22, MAX pressure. Sunday's otw speed workout was 3 x 6 x 1 minute on, 1 minute off, @ 30, 32, 34, open, MAX speed. For the record, both were hard.  I met expectations at a B-B+ level.  Friday we lost a rep to wakes in the Cut; finished one shy before returning to the dock on time; and I was over the the prescribed rates 2-3 beats. Sunday lost 2 reps to turns and was generally over 30, but not much variation.  Findings.   I don't gain as much speed as I should at higher rates. I don't row as well at rate. I think this is related to not hingi...

Amazing! On Aug 3, 2025, at 12:00 PM, Hank Koerner < hank.koerner@gmail.com > wrote: Hey all, As a break from the usual litany of depressing news (e.g. T. Cotton, R Senator, Arkansas, urging the Special Counsel to investigate good guy and hero Jack Smith under the Hatch Act - Cotton, a self professed patriot and no dummy, should know and act better, imo...), consider the following. 3 years ago, following a great gravel cycling trip in Bavaria, I traveled to Hamburg, to visit the son of a good friend, Angus, and his charming girlfriend, Saskia.  <image.png> A side trip I earmarked was to Miniatur Wunderland , the largest miniature world / model railroad globally housed in a repurposed Hamburg warehouse. Incredible, if a bit overwhelming for a ½ day visit. I suppose this visit added fuel to my eventual toe-dipping into MRR'ing.  <image.png> Apologies for the full size images, but I wanted to include detail. Scale = 1:87 (HO).  An AP story ra...

Hey all, As a break from the usual litany of depressing news (e.g. T. Cotton, R Senator, Arkansas, urging the Special Counsel to investigate good guy and hero Jack Smith under the Hatch Act - Cotton, a self professed patriot and no dummy, should know and act better, imo...), consider the following. 3 years ago, following a great gravel cycling trip in Bavaria, I traveled to Hamburg, to visit the son of a good friend, Angus, and his charming girlfriend, Saskia.  A side trip I earmarked was to Miniatur Wunderland , the largest miniature world / model railroad globally housed in a repurposed Hamburg warehouse. Incredible, if a bit overwhelming for a ½ day visit. I suppose this visit added fuel to my eventual toe-dipping into MRR'ing.  Apologies for the full size images, but I wanted to include detail. Scale = 1:87 (HO).  An AP story ran in today's Seattle Times  by Melina Walling about the recent partnership between an Argentinian MRR business, United Sc...

Thanks Hank, I agree, today was not a "base" workout.  :-) I appreciate your and Mark's comments that it's not reasonable for me to expect to get up to max HR in 2 minutes (maybe max HR is possible if we were more strict on following the proscribed rest...) FYI - Here are the numbers from my pieces (I think the even-numbered pieces were down-wind) Piece, Time, avgSPM, HR avg/max 1, 2:26, 24.2, 132/151 2, 2:19, 25.1, 142/156 3, 2:16, 26.0, 143/160 4, 2:16, 26.0, 143/162 5, 2:12, 28.6, 149/166 6, 2:09, 28.3, 146/165 7, 2:16, 29.6, 151/169 8, 2:11, 29.3, 150/167 9, 2:15, 30.7, 148/167 10, 2:09, 31.8, 150/169 Of course, 70% of my starts were bad-to-atrocious...  Dale On Fri, Jul 4, 2025 at 1:19 PM Hank Koerner < hank.koerner@gmail.com > wrote: Thanks for the row and coffee, gents.  Follow-up to the morning's discussion: I think today's workout was designed to put us at lactate threshold (AT) multiple times. This  helps develop the ability to handle and susta...

Thanks for the row and coffee, gents.  Follow-up to the morning's discussion: I think today's workout was designed to put us at lactate threshold (AT) multiple times. This  helps develop the ability to handle and sustain intense efforts and build a higher threshold.  I think it worked, at least in my case.  You can see the 10 pieces* pretty clearly in the screenshot. I hit AT heart rate by the 5th piece. It went higher from there.  I conclude that I was at AT or better at stroke rate 28 and above.  As Mark pointed out, HR is a lagging indicator - it lags effort and is an imperfect measure, especially for shorter, intense intervals.  If we had rowing power meters tightly integrated with our rowing telemetry, as cyclists do, we'd see that the duration of these pieces were at our AT power threshold. But we don't and use what have -HR - instead.  As an aside, I think Garmin could do a better job capturing the physiological cost of this sort of workout and related impact on ...