April 2019 – Page 2 – Ethereal Rowing

Valerian Skewed HRV?

I was skeptical of this morning’s Readiness score by EliteHRV app.

I don’t know for certain why the Readiness score and resulting “advice” from EliteHRV app’s heart rate variability analysis was so poor this morning but I suspected Valerian. The reason I suspected it is because last night I took a dose of Valerian before bed and again in the middle of the night, to aid sleep.

The Valerian made me feel very relaxed or tired. I don’t know if it influenced my heart rate to slow down, but I did notice that heart rate dropped as low as 44 BPM during the morning. (See screen shot below)

I was surprised to see the Apple Watch display heart rate as low as 44 during the day when I was awake and moving around. Was this an aftereffect of the Valerian?

Other than feeling exorbitantly relaxed (I know… “exorbitant’ isn’t an appropriate adjective here, but I’m using sloppy poetic license and will use it anyway)… I felt okay.

So I ignored the recommendation of EliteHRV and rowed the way I normally would. And “skied” the way I normally would, on the SkiErg after rowing.

Speaking of rowing and skiing, those were today’s workouts in that order: 10K of rowing with intervals every 1K, followed by 10 minute rowing warm down, followed by 124 Calories of alternating 10 calorie intervals on the SkiErg.

Finish screen for today’s 10K rowing session. Did I mention that it was done online, in the good company of another rower who was a few thousand miles away on the East Coast of USA?

Some data and a chart for today’s 124 Calorie SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

Caution: Only Do What Feels Good

This morning’s cautionary recommendation from EliteHRV Readiness analysis.

This morning’s score of YELLOW / 5 from the EliteHRV heart rate variability analysis app indicated that I should take it easy. So my interpretation of that was to only do what felt good with regard to rowing and avoid any effort that felt painful. That seemed to be the most logical approach, since I don’t know what the definition is of the term “active recovery”. But I do know what the word “active” means.

It seemed to work okay.

So the workouts today consisted of the following, in chronological order: A 3 minute rowing warmup, a 10K rowing session online with 3 other guys, a 30 minute rowing session online with 12 other guys, a 10 minute rowing warm down and finally a 123 Calorie SkiErg workout of moderate alternating 10 calorie intervals.

Below, I’ll show screenshots for everything except warmup and warmdown.

Finish screen view for today’s 10K rowing.

Finish screen view for today’s 30 minute rowing.

Data and chart for today’s 123 Calorie SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

Change In Effort Leads Heart Rate

There won’t be a workout today, because I’ll be following the recommendation of today’s “Readiness” score as calculated by the EliteHRV app’s analysis of my heart rate variability.

I think EliteHRV may be mistaken, but will go along with the recommendation anyway, because there are plenty of other things to do.

Before signing off from writing in this blog today, I will note that today’s title is in reference to the clear graphical demonstration when you look at a graph of heart rate and effort level vs time, as you can see in the chart below. Notice that heart rate starts climbing after each interval begins and heart rate continues to climb for quite a while after each interval ends.

I just think that is interesting. The effect is more pronounced when the intervals are at higher effort levels.

If this chart looks familiar, it might be because you read yesterday’s blog post and saw it posted there, as a part of the screenshot view of data for yesterday’s SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

The Concept 2 Challenge Made Me Row

Great score from the EliteHRV app today. Too bad I slept in so late and didn’t feel like rowing.

Today started out very late. Or it could also be said that it started out very early, but in the latter case “early” means early in the afternoon. Which I consider very late.

Last night’s sleep was interrupted for a few hours, which was the main factor leading to sleeping so late, early in the afternoon.

One result was that I didn’t feel like doing any rowing because I prefer rowing in the morning and the earlier the better.

But I remembered that I had signed up to participate in one of the incentive challenges on the concept2.com website, “The World Erg Challenge“. To participate in the World Erg Challenge, all you have to do is join a team and follow the simple instructions explained on the World Erg Challenge web page.

Once you do that and log your first meters for the challenge, you are an athlete. Do you want to know how to become an athlete? I just told you! 🙂

Notice the word at the top of the participants’ names column. ATHLETE! If you participate, you are an athlete.

So anyway – because I felt it to be a duty and obligation to do some rowing today, “for the team” – I rowed a few thousand meters and then logged some meters on the SkiErg.

RowPro report for today’s token rowing session.

Graphs for today’s brief rowing session.

Data and chart for today’s SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

A Better Hour Than Yesterday’s

Today’s favorable Morning Readiness analysis by EliteHRV

Today started out with a good Morning Readiness analysis from EliteHRV. The EliteHRV score was confirmed in today’s main workout, a 60 minute online session with a well-behaved heart.

Finish screen view for today’s 60 minute rowing session.

Report for today’s 60 minute rowing session.

Graphs for today’s 60 minute rowing session.

Happy rowing to you!

A Low Power Hour

The low pace during today’s hour session was in line with the recommendation of EliteHRV’s analysis.

Today’s main workout was 60 minutes rowing online. In addition to a low HRV score this morning (see above screenshot), heart rate was too high and irregular so I rowed at a low effort level and average pace of about 2:30/500 meters.

The graph of today’s 60 minute rowing session shows the “heart strangeness” symptom that caused me restrict the rowing effort to the slow side. When heart rate was regular enough to be displayed, it was way too high, at about 150 BPM, for the low pace which averaged about 2:30/500 meters.

The above screenshot shows how heart rate was too high for the low effort. Heart rate returned to normal after the 60 minute session was over. Heart rate remained normal during the 10 minute warm down session and during a 120 calorie SkiErg session that followed today’s rowing.

Happy rowing to you!

Regular Until Irregular

The EliteHRV Morning Readiness analysis was a good score but it may have been a false reading because there were two artifacts visible on the EliteHRV HR graph which were not detected.

Today’s main workout was a 60 minute online rowing session. The target was to row at a pace of 2:10 and then sprint near the end, for a season best time. But during the last 15 minutes heart rate spiked from a normal rate of around 150 to 198 and became irregular, so I immediately slowed and rowed slow for the rest of the hour.

Finish screen view for today’s online 60 minutes.

RowPro report for today’s online 60 minutes.

RowPro graphs for today’s online 60 minutes. You can see how HR went nuts during the last 15 minutes.

On this chart you can clearly see where HR first started acting up, at the tall spike.

Happy rowing to you.

An Online Hour+

The EliteHRV morning readiness score was good but not quite as good as yesterday’s.

Today’s workout started with a 60 minute session online with three other guys. But one of those three didn’t show, so it was just two others besides me who actually rowed. During the 60 minutes I did most of the rowing at a pace of about 2:15 with the exception of once ever 10 minutes after the first 10 minutes doing an interval which lasted 60 seconds.

After the 60 minute session, there was a 10 minute warm down and then I switched from rowing machine to SkiErg and did 118 Calories on that.

Finish screen view of today’s 60 minute session.

Some data and a chart for today’s 118 Calorie SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

Some Online Rowing & Offline SkiErging

The EliteHRV Morning Readiness analysis of heart rate variability was as good as I could hope for.

Today’s workouts consisted of an online 10K session, a 10 minute warm down online then a 6779 meter online session (all rowing). After those three, I did a SkiErg session that was 117 Calories.

This is a finish view of the graph section of the 10K RowPro session. You can readily tell that I did intervals. They began after the first 2K meters, lasted one minute each and were repeated every 1K after the first interval.

RowPro report for today’s 60 minute online session. I won’t bother to display data or graphs for the other two rowing sessions – a 10 minute warm down and a 6779 meter piece, but if you really want to see them all you have to do is log into your concept2.com logbook account and view them in my logbook, which is viewable by all logged-in users.

This is a view of some of the data for the 117 Calorie SkiErg session. It consisted of 10 Calorie intervals with recovery periods of about 10 calories each.

Happy rowing to you!

Inspired By Dr. Ormsbee

Today’s EliteHRV heart rate variability Morning Readiness analysis was a green light for any effort level.

Yesterday evening my better half and I watched some episodes of a course on diet and exercise by Dr. Michael Ormsbee. It is a very much in-depth course, on the college level. I would have to watch the episodes again and take a few pages of notes if I were to be tested on it. But the purpose of watching it wasn’t to become experts. The purpose was to expose ourselves to some teaching on the subject which is based on research studies and the evidence gathered by those.

One thing Dr. Ormsbee mentioned that I already knew was enough to both remind and re-motivate me to resume rowing again today. I can’t quote it exactly from memory, but the sense of it was something I already knew: the single most helpful thing a person can do for the sake of good health and avoiding diseases is to workout.

Today’s workout was a 10K online interval rowing session in the company of a few others, followed by 10 minutes of warm down rowing. The warm down rowing was also online in the company of others. After the rowing I topped it off with a series of six 10-Calorie intervals within a single 116 Calorie SkiErg session.

RowPro report for today’s 10K online session.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K.

Concept 2 online logbook data display for today’s 116 Calorie SkiErg interval session.

Happy rowing to you!