![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The fun of circadian experiments: I got up at 4 this morning, made lunch, and headed in to work to remove food from today's group of 5-day-old adult crickets at 5 am. Then I took a 20-minute nap and after that I headed over to the boathouse to row.
Serious Double has reverted to a 6:30 am start time, so the boathouse was quiet at 6 aside from one guy on an ergometer.
I need to keep working on my catches. While we were in Sacramento, I took a look at the structure of the foot plate in the blue Hudson and determined that I could indeed raise the heels to a less atrocious height. I think I got the adjustment most of the way to where it needs to be for me, but maybe if I do another half-inch or so I'll have my feet in a rock-solid spot that will make it easier to release cleanly and come up to take good catches.
This morning, I did some alternating square-feather drills. The basic idea is that every other stroke is on the square, alternated with strokes on the feather. The feather strokes help keep things relaxed, while the square strokes help with cleaning up the catch and release because they ensure that the entry and exit of the oar to/from the water is separated from the motions of squaring and feathering the blade. This drill was all right but I am not sure that it is encouraging me to change bad habits or reinforce good habits. What I might need to do is more catch drills and half-slide pause drills.
After the square-feather drills, I did two sets of 10 strokes on, 10 strokes off, with an emphasis on high, high power through the water and low stroke rates. One of the things that Iz has had me do is strokes with 50-75% pressure at the catch, building to 100% pressure at the release, which helps emphasize acceleration through the water and good control when taking the catch. I could feel that, on the high-power strokes, I tend to hit the catch too hard, sending the blades too deep, and then I tend to wash out by the time I reach the release. Even so I managed to get in a few good strokes here and there.
Things to work on.
After a quick breakfast in the lab, I injected crickets with fluorescently-labeled inulin and then collected hemolymph samples 20 minutes later.
Serious Double has reverted to a 6:30 am start time, so the boathouse was quiet at 6 aside from one guy on an ergometer.
I need to keep working on my catches. While we were in Sacramento, I took a look at the structure of the foot plate in the blue Hudson and determined that I could indeed raise the heels to a less atrocious height. I think I got the adjustment most of the way to where it needs to be for me, but maybe if I do another half-inch or so I'll have my feet in a rock-solid spot that will make it easier to release cleanly and come up to take good catches.
This morning, I did some alternating square-feather drills. The basic idea is that every other stroke is on the square, alternated with strokes on the feather. The feather strokes help keep things relaxed, while the square strokes help with cleaning up the catch and release because they ensure that the entry and exit of the oar to/from the water is separated from the motions of squaring and feathering the blade. This drill was all right but I am not sure that it is encouraging me to change bad habits or reinforce good habits. What I might need to do is more catch drills and half-slide pause drills.
After the square-feather drills, I did two sets of 10 strokes on, 10 strokes off, with an emphasis on high, high power through the water and low stroke rates. One of the things that Iz has had me do is strokes with 50-75% pressure at the catch, building to 100% pressure at the release, which helps emphasize acceleration through the water and good control when taking the catch. I could feel that, on the high-power strokes, I tend to hit the catch too hard, sending the blades too deep, and then I tend to wash out by the time I reach the release. Even so I managed to get in a few good strokes here and there.
Things to work on.
After a quick breakfast in the lab, I injected crickets with fluorescently-labeled inulin and then collected hemolymph samples 20 minutes later.
