December 2018 – Ethereal Rowing

Erg Displaces Horses

This jigsaw puzzle was completed (finally!) with the motivation that after it was completed and removed from the room, its space would be occupied with a Concept 2 ski erg. If you are wondering how big the puzzle is – its huge, compared to the average size jigsaw puzzle.

The above snapshot is of a finished jigsaw puzzle which occupied a table and took of a relatively large amount of space in the room where the Concept 2 rowing erg is located. It was an extremely challenging puzzle and so it sat, unfinished for quite a while… perhaps extending a long time into the future.

But I had been reading about doing other activities to cross train instead of only rowing and so I told my better half that I’d like to put a Concept 2 ski erg in the place where the jigsaw puzzle was located, whenever she eventually finished the puzzle.

That inspired her to attack the puzzle with analysis and a method involving sorting and even tracing a few outlines. She finished the puzzle, so hopefully we will soon occupy that table space with a ski erg.

No rowing today… and probably none for a few more days… But there was some sleeping done, as you can see in the chart below. I feel very rested… like perhaps I could easily row a season best time in a half marathon.

Almost 8 hours sleep last night. Heart rate was lowest in first half of the night, before an electric blanket was used. After the temperature was boosted with the electric blanket during the second half of the night, heart rate was a bit more elevated so I assume there is a cause and effect relationship.

Happy rowing to you.

A Rainbow But No Rowing Yet

This morning I drove to the nearest Starbucks to get coffee. A rainbow was showing its splendor while a barely perceptible drizzle misted the air during the walk from parking lot to Starbucks.

There was no rowing again today nor yesterday. Below are charts of heart rate during sleep last night and the night before last.

Last night’s sleep was good quality but the night before wasn’t as good, with Afib and high heart rate most of the night, which I unscientifically attribute to something(s) I ate when we visited a local Ethiopian restaurant.

Last night’s sleep was good – a little less than 7 hours and normal heart rate.

Sleep for the night before last wasn’t so good – very high average sleeping heart rate at around 82 BPM, which (as mentioned above) I’m unscientifically crediting to restaurant food.

Merry Christmas and happy rowing to you.

December 20th Through Dec 23rd 2018

On the above dates listed in the title, the rowing machine has been sadly idle. Because it is an emotionless, lifeless machine, the sadness is all my own. But it has to be, because other activities are displacing the time and opportunity for rowing and will be doing so for another few days it looks like.

I should be rested and ready for any kind of rowing sessions when rowing can be resumed again, because the most recent HRV readings “say so”:

Readiness score for Dec 20th but no rowing could be done.

Best score yet, on morning of December 21, 2018!! but alas! no rowing could be done today 🙁

Another good night of sleep, on December 21, 2018… all that rest and nowhere to row!

The sleep period for morning of December 22nd was mostly insomnia.

Sleep today (the morning of Dec 23rd) was actually very good. More rest, toward getting a full charge for rowing…

Happy rowing to you.

A Skipping Day

She is skipping ropes. I skipped rowing sessions.

Though today’s HRV reading was very good (see screenshot below) today was a day when rowing was skipped.

Though today’s reading said more stress would be okay, it was a low stress day with regard to rowing. Zero meters rowed.

Sleep was okay last night also – a little over seven hours (see screenshot below)

Last night’s sleeping heart rate graph shows two fairly brief out-of-bed periods.

I don’t know why I didn’t do any rowing today… my subconscious isn’t talking. Maybe tomorrow, a rowing session in the morning, Mr. Subconscious?

He’s still not talking.

Here’s hoping…

Happy rowing to you.

A Three Alarm HRV Reading

A picture of last night’s insomnia. Heart rate is plotted with red dots which are heart rate samples once about every 10 minutes. Heart rate is not plotted for the period when I was awake with insomnia.

Last night, I had a few hours of insomnia. One result was that I didn’t get back to sleep until about 05:00 a.m. This morning was a day when it was necessary to rise early, to take care of a weekly, early morning chore.

I always set at least 3 wake-up alarms, in case there is a malfunction with one or two of them. The first one sounded and I reached up from deep under the surface of an ocean of sleep and shut it off. Same with the second one and I was slightly more awake, but lay back down and closed my eyes to drift back to sleep. It took the third alarm, to get me up out of bed, but I felt awful.

So after completing the chore, I considered whether to go back to bed or stay up. I went back to bed, but despite being very tired, could not go back to sleep. So I got up, and took the daily EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading. It was the worst reading I’ve seen yet. A fruit of a bad night’s sleep? I rowed briskly yesterday, but neither terribly hard nor long..

Today’s EliteHRV Readiness reading after a three-alarm wake-up.

Whatever the reason, I limited myself to only easy, leisurely rowing today. The main rowing session was 10,000 meters at a low heart rate pace.

A screen recording was made for those who want to row-along. It is located on YouTube at this link: Indoor Rowing Leisurely 10K 12182018

Finish screen for main 10K portion of today’s rowing.

Happy rowing to you.

The Fruits Of A Half Marathon

Two days after doing a half marathon, EliteHRV calculated that I had the best Morning Readiness score since starting to use the app!

One fruit of the Dec 15th half marathon is displayed in the screenshot above, which shows the best Morning Readiness reading I’ve had so far since using EliteHRV. It came two days later and I think it is one result of the half marathon effort.

A second fruit was improved sleep. The above chart shows last night’s sleeping heart rate. Though it seemed to me like it was good sleep, you can’t tell much of anything about the quality of sleep from that chart. But – this morning I received a notification and “inquiry” from my sleep logging app about my sleep the prior night, immediately following the half marathon. (see screenshot below)

Its analysis reports that sleep quality for the previous day’s sleep period (the night immediately following the half marathon) was “higher than is typical” and it presented a couple dozen possible reasons, asking me to check off “all that apply” to that improved sleep quality, so as to contribute to its cause-and-effect analysis. The only one I checked was exercise, because the half marathon was the only thing out of the ordinary, since it’s 21,097 meters had been about 5 times my average daily volume so far this season and about double my recent several weeks’ daily volume.

“The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much…” Ecclesiastes 5:12

Since today’s EliteHRV “Morning Readiness” reading said it was okay to train harder today, I decided to do another 10,000+ meters, arranged as a 10 minute warmup, a 6,000 meter piece at a target pace of 2:06/500 meters and a 10 minute warm down.

For those of you who’d like to row along with it, a screen recording is available on YouTube at this link: Indoor Rowing 6K at 2min 6secs 12172018

Happy rowing to you.

10K Recovery With An Easter Egg

Today’s heart rate variability reading was the surprise you see in the above screenshot. Last night’s sleep was interrupted with insomnia but the total time sleeping was adequate. (see screenshot below)

A bout of insomnia interrupted last night’s sleep between 2 and 4 a.m.

Assuming the analysis and advice of EliteHRV was correct, I chose to do a recovery 10K. “Recovery” is relative and subjective, but a pace of 2:20 seemed like a good compromise, pending what the HRV result will be tomorrow.

So the 10K was done at a target average pace of 2:20 and an “Easter egg,” as a computer programmer might call it, was inserted when the distance counted down to 1,150 meters remaining.

A screen recording was made for those of you who’d like to row along with today’s 10K. It’s link is on YouTube here: Indoor Rowing 10K with Easter egg 12162018

Happy rowing to you.

Clearing Out The Cobwebs With A Half Marathon

Finish screen view of the half marathon portion of today’s rowing.

Sleep was good and more than adequate last night (see image below) almost 8 hours…

But the EliteHRV morning readiness score still refused to climb out of the “sympathetic” zone or higher than 7. (see image below)

So, I concluded that it may be as good as its going to get(?) and decided to be happy with 7. Its a good number.

Today’s indoor rowing session was a half marathon with a simple plan. The plan was to aim for and maintain an average pace of 2:14.4/500m until the distance counted down to 500 meters remaining. When there were 500 meters remaining, the hope was to row faster to the finish line, depending on how I felt by then.

I felt okay, so somewhere during the final 500 meters, I decided to pick up the pace enough to aim for an overall average pace of 2:14.0.

There was a 750 meter warmup before the HM and a 1K warm down afterwards.

Happily, the heart behaved itself and wasn’t a spoilsport today.

For those of you who pay attention to the blog post categories: I’m going to stop using the categories of Easy Workout, Medium Workout, Medium Hard Workout and Hard Workout. Instead of those four categories, I’ll use one of 10 categories of RPE, which stands for Rate of Perceived Exertion. Today’s session is categorized as Rate of Perceived Exertion 3 (refer to chart below). Because I was breathing easy (not “breathing heavily”) during 98.5% of today’s half marathon, it is categorized as RPE 3.

For those of you who’d like to row along with this session, a screen recording was uploaded to this link: Indoor Rowing Half Marathon 12152018

Happy rowing to you.

Previous 10K Redux But Better

Today’s score is the same as yesterday’s, though I got more sleep and HR is one BPM lower, so perhaps sleep and HR aren’t influencers of the score.

Because today’s EliteHRV reading is the same as yesterday’s, I won’t row a half marathon today and will choose a shorter distance than half marathon and an easy pace. The hope is, that I’ll eventually have an HRV morning readiness score that reads somewhere in the green, like it does this morning, but also in the “Parasympathetic” zone. However… I don’t know yet if that is either desirable or necessary.

Last night’s sleep seemed slightly better quality and definitely was longer than the previous night’s.

So the decision is: Today I will row 10,000 meters again at the same target of steady, average pace of 2 minutes 15 seconds per 500 meters. But first I’d like some coffee…

The rowing is done and it went almost as hoped, with two exceptions: (1) Heart rate was a little higher than expected for the amount of rest (no rowing yesterday) and sleep (7 1/2 hours last night). Perhaps I need more than an average of 7 hours sleep per night?? (2) There were a few skipped heartbeats and two instances where Afib lasted a few seconds, during each of which the heart rate display went to zero on RowPro software display.

The coffee was very good. Ground from fresh beans, full-strength caffeine level (instead of the “half-caff” variety I’d been having which had 50% of normal caffeine).

So anyway… those two un-hoped for things were the only less than desirable observations during the rowing session. Other than that, everything was fine. Could it be that the higher caffeine level of today’s delicious coffee was what led to slightly higher heart rate than the same 10K rowed two days ago?

For those who’d like to row along with the session, a screen recording is available at this link: Indoor Rowing 10K Redux only Better 12142018

Happy rowing to you.

Skipping A Day 12132018

The thing I have in common today with the girls in the lovely painting above, is that I am skipping. They seem to be skipping rope and I am skipping a day of rowing.

After a bit of philosophical, preoccupied procrastination this morning I decided to skip both coffee and also rowing and return to bed.

One factor in today’s decision to skip rowing was that the HRV score this morning was about the same as yesterday and I’d like it to improve.

As you can see in the redundantly captioned screenshot above, the EliteHRV Morning Readiness wasn’t improved from yesterday.

Sleep may have been a factor in the lack of improvement in today’s HRV score compared to yesterday’s. Sleep wasn’t bad last night, but it could have been a lot better.

I’m considering making up for the lack of rowing meters today, by rowing a half marathon tomorrow.

Happy rowing to you.