Cactus blossoms were glowing with sunlight this morning.
There were two workouts today. They were both interval sessions. One on the rowing machine and the other on the SkiErg. Afterwards, and now while this is being typed, I feel like I’m tingling all over with the afterglow of the intervals.
Today’s EliteHRV heart rate variability analysis gave permission for any level of effort.
Today’s rowing workout was selected from Concept 2’s suggestions for “workout of the day”. It was called “2 x 10 min short intervals” and the instructive description was: “Pre-set the monitor for a work time of 10:00 and a rest time of 4:00. Each interval alternate between 40 seconds fast rowing and 20 seconds easy rowing. During the rest time continue rowing at light pressure.”
The above photo is a display of one result of Einstein’s formulation of the Theory of Relativity… or his contributions to quantum physics… or both. At any rate, it is showing some of the effects of converting the mass of a few ounces of uranium into energy.
After 8 days without working out, today I finally managed to do a workout on both the rowing machine and SkiErg. There was no earth-shaking result, but it seemed like there was a huge amount of some kind of inertia to overcome when I first started pulling the handle on the rowing machine. The result of today’s workout was to convert about 2 1/2 ounces of my body’s mass into a modest 552 calories of kinetic energy. There was additional energy conversion resulting in heat and myriads of other changes in the body, but those were not measured by the ergometers.
The two ergometers, rowing machine and SkiErg, only measured the kinetic energy required to operate them and that totaled to about 552 Calories. *
Today’s heart rate variability analysis by the EliteHRV app gave a green light for doing a workout.
Today’s workout was once again strictly aerobic. I need to start incorporating resistance/anabolic activity into a few days of each week’s workouts. How do I cultivate that as a habit?
The above question will have to remain unanswered for the moment. Screenshots of today’s workout reports are below. They were a series of 4 minute hard/3 minute easy rowing intervals followed by a series of 10 Calories hard/10 Calories easy cross-country SkiErg intervals:
Finish screen for the rowing intervals.
Report for the rowing intervals.
Graphs for the rowing intervals.
Graphs and data for the SkiErg intervals.
Happy rowing to you!
*If you are a physicist and want to get technical, it totaled to 552 kilo calories.
This morning’s analysis of heart rate variability by the EliteHRV app is good and looks the same as yesterday’s. Which is surprising, because I had a lousy night’s sleep last night.
If I decide to do any rowing, I’ll update this post later today or this evening.
Today’s workout didn’t happen, even though the morning analysis of heart rate variability was auspicious (see screenshot below). But I signed up for an hour session online tomorrow morning, so that will probably happen.
Today’s EliteHRV Readiness score would have permitted any level of workout.
The night before last I had a poor night’s sleep. Yesterday the EliteHRV analysis was a red “STOP LIGHT”. So I didn’t row yesterday.
But as you can see above, today’s HRV analysis was a “green light” which I take as permission to workout as hard as I want. I decided to do a long workout instead of a hard workout and rowed a half marathon. Half marathons usually result in a good night’s sleep.
Finish screen for today’s half marathon. Though the session was online, there was no company to inspire me. I do better with company. You can see that I got a bit sloppy toward the end.
Today’s HRV analysis score is better than yesterday’s, despite having rowed a half marathon yesterday.
If any of you have been reading every word of these blog posts you will know that I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping. I’ve had many middle-of-the-night periods of being wide-awake insomnia.
But more important: if any of you have been reading every word of my blog posts: How do you manage to do that? I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that this blog is exceedingly boring and I totally agree. There’s no plot, etc. Just a daily splattering of bits mostly about what indoor rowing was done. To read every word of these blog posts would be an exceptional, amazing task.
Anyway… with regard to the SLEEP issues, I was somewhat amazed to have had a “perfect” night’s sleep. Deep, restful and only interrupted very briefly once, for a call of nature. Below you can see a chart of last night’s sleep. It’s actually a chart of heart rate and activity levels (movement detected by Apple Watch) during last night’s sleep. But you can see from the chart that there was only one brief interruption between 1 and 2 AM. The recent doses of Valerian to help with sleep did nothing, compared to positive after-effect of rowing the half-marathon.
This was the best night’s sleep in a long time. Do I have to row a half-marathon, to get a good night’s sleep?
Today’s workout consisted of a 30 minute online session, 2K warm down and 126 Calories burned on the SkiErg.
Today’s EliteHRV readiness score was adequate for a half marathon.
Today’s main and only workout was a half marathon rowed online with two other guys. My approach was to row easy at an average pace of about 2:20 except for 8 intervals of 30 strokes each, which were done at a pace of about 2:00.
Report for today’s half marathon.
RowPro graphs for today’s half marathon.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s half marathon.
Though today’s heart rate variability Readiness was a green light for any effort level, I mostly took it easy when doing other than intervals.
Today’s workout was 30 minutes rowing and 125 Calories on SkiErg.
The rowing session was done online with 3 other guys who were located an average of thousands of miles away. (Two were in Europe and one was less than 200 miles away in the US).
The SkiErg session was done with intervals.
Finish screen for today’s 30 minute rowing session.
This morning’s favorable Readiness score from the EliteHRV app left me looking forward to some energetic intervals.
Today’s workout consisted of a 10K rowing session online, with a 10 minute warm down. The 10K was originally planned to be a series of intervals of 30 strokes each and spaced to each start about 1,000 meters apart.
During the first part of the 10K, heart rate was too irregular to display. When It finally became regular enough to display, it was way too high for the effort level, so I slowed to an extremely slow pace. After about 2,000 meters, heart rate settled down to where it should be and the remainder of the 10K was somewhat normal. But I decided to skip using the SkiErg for today.
Last night, I took another dose of Valerian as a sleep aid. I suspect that it may have been at least a partial cause of the irregular and excessively high heart rate. The Valerian did help me sleep through the night, but it seemed to cause strange dreams.
Graphs of 10K rowing session as displayed on RowPro finish screen.
Report for today’s 10K rowing session. Notice splits 4, 5, 6 and 7 where heart rate is way too high for the low effort level.
