Today’s indoor rowing session was inspired by an indoor rowing acquaintance who said he is going to try rowing ordinary daily sessions at a target HR rate of 110 BPM. The inspiration was also related to what a cardiologist, Dr. Joel Kahn, wrote on pages 175-176 of the hardback copy of his book, “The Whole Heart Solution,” where he referred to studies which showed that endurance athletes who push themselves too hard, for too much of the time, have higher rates of death from heart attack than even couch potatoes.
Based on the results of the studies he mentions, Dr. Kahn recommends that endurance athletes spend most of their time running “like a turtle.” So I suppose that would apply to rowing also. Relish the hard rowing occasionally but avoid over-indulging in hard, high heart-rate rowing.
Inspiration for today’s title was partly because I ate lunch immediately before doing today’s 10K. It was a small lunch – just two slices of toast with peanut butter and unsweetened dill relish (instead of sugary jelly). Inspiration was also because I remembered David Churbuck’s comment to the post of March 24th, 2017 when he mentioned the risk of eating a meal immediately before rowing, if the rowing would be hard, competitive rowing. He has a unique blog called Churbuck.com which relates to many things, including rowing.
At any rate… today’s rowing session for me was neither competitive nor hard. But it was fun and mentally absorbing, because of the constant focus on keeping HR as near as possible to the target.
This 10K was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and will be available a few hours from now, at this link:”Indoor Rowing 10K w Target HR of 110 BPM 02212018“.
Happy rowing to you.