After yesterday’s heart misbehavior of wacky rhythm and either excessively fast or unbelievably slow rates, I didn’t expect anything close to normal today.
The workouts started with a 5,000 meter rowing session at a mostly constant and completely easy pace from start to finish. Heart rate was virtually regular and completely within its normal range for the effort level. I was surprised but very okay with that.
After the rowing session, I wondered if I should try to do another SkiErg workout to practice for the SkiErg World Sprints or just give up that idea. I decided to give it a try by starting with a SkiErg warmup to test the waters. The SkiErg warmup consisted of 7 minutes of easy effort that included three bursts of ten hard strokes at the beginning of each of three of the last minutes of the warmup. I figured that if the heart was going to get crazy, it would show signs of doing so during those three bursts of hard strokes. But heart behaved like it should with each burst of 10 hard strokes during the warmup.
So I decided to try to do the last remaining training workout prior to the upcoming SkiErg World Sprints, in the hope that the heart will cooperate on one of the days from November 7th to 10th and I can do a 1,000 meter time trial/race session for the SkiErg World Sprints event on one of those days.
The training workout consisted of 5x250m r 15 seconds. To those of you who aren’t familiar with interval workouts, that means 5 intervals of 250 meters each, with 15 seconds of rest after each interval. The target pace for each of the 5 intervals was supposed to be 1:57.5/500 meters or faster.
I did the first three intervals each at the target pace or faster but during the 4th interval I felt too tired to maintain that pace so I slowed way down, to about 2:05/500 meters during the 4th interval. The easy-paced 4th interval made a big difference and I was well able to go faster during the 5th and final interval, with an average pace of 1:52.8/500m.
Heart rate and rhythm behaved well during and recovered normally after each 250 meter interval.
After the SkiErg training session I did 1,000 meters rowing as a warm down and heart rate & rhythm continued to be on good behavior.
Happy rowing to you!