Apple Watch – Ethereal Rowing

From Wacky To Normal

Finish screen for today’s 6,000 meter rowing session. Though my pace was a constant and easy average of 2:22/500 meters, heart rate started out too high and got even higher. Most of the time the heart rate readout was blank, as it was for this screenshot.

If you read yesterday’s entry you might remember that yesterday was a not fine day 9 which was plagued with atrial fibrillation. That Afib persisted the rest of yesterday evening, all night and was still present this morning when the workout session started.

For today’s first session I decided to start with rowing instead of the SkiErg. First, I did a 3 minute rowing warmup and didn’t even bother putting on the heart strap because I could feel the heart flip-flopping around. After that warmup I donned the heart strap for the main rowing session which was an online 6,000 meters with two other people. One of them was a guy in Spain and the other was a woman in England. My heart rate display was too erratic to display most of the time and when it did make its appearance its rate was quite a bit too high for the low effort level.

After the online 6K I did an offline 4K and the heart continued to be wacky with atrial fibrillation. But at least I did a tiny bit of sweating.

I had a brief inner debate as to whether to do anything on the SkiErg because atrial fibrillation really takes all the fun out of it. I decided to do a leisurely 200 Calories on the SkiErg because the lazy part of me was too lazy to work very hard at winning the debate against a SkiErg workout.

Though the SkiErg pace was very easy, heart rate started out too high and climbed even higher for a little over 8 minutes. At about 8 minutes and 17 seconds heart rate normalized. An exclamation mark is appropriate because I was surprised!

Screenshots of the Apple Watch ECG analysis before (on your left) and after (on your right) the SkiErg workout.

Here’s the part relating to the “Apple Watch” tag for this blog entry: I recently got a new Apple Watch which has the capability to take an ECG measurement. Before the Before today’s workouts I used its ECG feature to see if it would agree with what I felt in the heart area (that fluttery, flippy-flop feeling which is rather annoying) and it did. It announced that I was having Atrial Fibrillation. After the SkiErg session, I used it to take another ECG reading. This time it announced the result of “Sinus Rhythm,” which is the medical jargon for normal heart rhythm.

Perhaps the additional SkiErg workout was what was needed to straighten out the heartstrings.

Report for today’s 6,000 meter rowing session.

Graphs for today’s 6,000 meter rowing session.

Finish screen for the 4K rowing session.

Chart and data for today’s 200 Calorie SkiErg session.

Closeups of points on 200 Calorie SkiErg session before and after Atrial fibrillation went away.

Happy rowing to you!

Pac Man Motivation

Glutathione in your body acts like many little Pac Men working on your behalf to gobble up toxins.

Detours and excuses abound, to avoid working out.

Entertain some rational consideration of any one of the benefits of working out, however, and you can gain some motivation to detour the detours.

Today’s featured motivation is something you can either pay about $20 an ounce for or which you can get for free if you workout. It is called glutathione.

One doctor whom I heard mention glutathione recently said that glutathione in your body acts like a Pac Man which gobbles up toxins.

Xlnt! A new motivation to add to the list of good reasons for working out!

In other words (if you don’t know what “xlnt” means), “Excellent!”

Funny that I’ve never before thought of Pac Man as anything other than one of the first and most wildly popular of early video games.

You can buy glutathione supplement at places like Results RNA website which features bottles of it like the one pictured below, for either about $40 or $75 for the 2 or 4 ounce bottles. But why buy it? How do you know that spraying it in the mouth is an effective way to boost glutathione? I’d rather have it made “in-house” in my own body. Of course for some people who are perhaps bedridden or for some other reason not able to workout, it might be worth considering. My personal opinion is that personally manufactured glutathione probably works best of all. (I have no affiliation with the “Results RNA” website and can’t say anything pro or con regarding their products.)

Today’s workouts were hampered to a degree by annoying heart behavior. They consisted of a 200 Calorie SkiErg session and a 10K rowing session. Each of the workouts caused some sweating and generated new Pac-Men to gobble up toxins.

The heart rate graphs for the 10K rowing are very messy looking because heart rate was so irregular that the Polar Heart Strap transmitter and Concept 2 PM3-mounted heart rate signal receiver had a difficult time figuring out what to display. Heart straps on the chest tend to be more accurate than wrist-mounted heart rate detectors but the Apple Watch seemed to have an easier time keeping track of heart rate than the Polar Heart Strap did today. Perhaps it was something to do with the irregular heartbeat.

RowPro graphs for today’s 10K rowing. It didn’t seem to matter what effort level I rowed. If I rowed moderately or a lot easier, heart rate remained in the 140 to 150 BPM range which was too high for either effort level.

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

Screen shot of Apple Watch’s heart rate graph display for 10K rowing session.

Happy rowing to you!

Fourth Time Was The Charm

Today I experienced a little amelioration. Isaiah 53:6 speaks of the best amelioration of all.

At around 3 AM this morning after I woke and then returned to bed, heart rate became irregular.

Mostly it was annoying but it happens so often that I didn’t lose any sleep over it.

Early in mid morning I started doing the daily workout by setting the SkiErg for a 250 Calorie countdown.

Leisure skiing should have resulted in a low heart rate of around 100 BPM but it was still irregular and heart rate immediately went much higher than normal for that low effort level.

Instead of skiing for the entire 250 Calories, I quit after 50 Calories and took a break for water and 80 mg of aspirin.

Ordinarily, if there is such as thing as ordinary with irregular heartbeat, it has been my experience that it is inclined to become regular after taking an aspirin.

Returning to the SkiErg after waiting more than 30 minutes for the aspirin to circulate, I set up a session to count down 200 Calories, which was the remainder of the original 250 Calorie session.

After skiing for 100 Calories, heart rate was still irregular and much too high for the effort level so I cut the session short and took another break for more aspirin and water.

Taking that much time to do so few Calories on the SkiErg is very unusual. After another 30 minutes to allow the second 80 mg dose of aspirin to enter the system, I returned to the SkiErg and setup a session for the last remaining 100 Calories.

Even though I started out easy in the third installment of the SkiErg session, heart rate continued to be irregular and too high. So I increased the pace a bit to see if perhaps going a bit faster would nudge the heart into normal behavior. But it remained irregular and too high for the effort from start to finish of the third piece of the total time on the SkiErg.

Determined to do a total daily workout of 250 Calories on the SkiErg and 10,000 meters on the rowing machine, I kept my workout clothes on and took a long break before going to the rowing machine.

During that long break I had a substantial breakfast and about 12 ounces of home-brewed Starbucks coffee. By the time I was about half way through the coffee, more than four hours had passed since I’d taken the last portion of aspirin. So I took some more aspirin with a bowl of cereal and followed it with the remainder of the coffee.

The rowing session would be the 4th workout session of the day. When the 10,000 meter rowing session started, heart rate was still irregular and too high. Heart rate got as high as 192 BPM. There are two screenshots, below, which illustrate that heart rate reached 192 during the rowing session. There were two separate heart rate monitors worn during the session. One was on the chest and the other on the wrist. Each of them recorded high heart rate before heart rate behavior was ameliorated, but the Apple Watch shows that heart rate went even higher than 192 and reached as high as 202 BPM. I wouldn’t have known it, without the chest strap or the Apple Watch on the wrist. It just felt a bit fluttery, with no other symptoms.

I wasn’t rowing especially easy, but wasn’t rowing hard either. It was probably RPE Level 1 or Level 2 at the very most. Breathing easy, but rowing at a sufficient level to have a nice little bit of sweat.

After 4,001 meters of rowing, which took about 18 minutes and 24 seconds, heart rate suddenly became normal and dropped down into a normal, totally appropriate range for the effort level. It remained regular and at a normal rate for the remaining 5,999 meters of the rowing session.

Happy endings are nice. 🙂

Report for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

RowPro graphs for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

Concept 2 logbook chart for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

The point highlighted on the Concept 2 chart shows where heart rate reached 192 according to the signal from the Polar chest mounted heart strap.

Screen shot of the rowing session heart rate graph from the 2nd heart rate detector, a wrist-mounted smart watch.

Happy rowing to you!

A HM To Get Things Humming

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.

RowPro graphs for today’s half marathon.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s half marathon.

Happy rowing to you!

Racing My Past

Today’s EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading was done at the right time, in the morning. It indicated caution, but I interpret that differently – I’ve been doing “deep breathing” sessions daily for a while, which is supposed to have many benefits, including an increase in HRV. So my opinion is that while my HRV is increasing in response to my new habit of the breathing sessions, EliteHRV needs to establish a new baseline, which may take a while.

Three interruptions of sleep last night but other than that it was good quality sleep and sufficient quantity at 7 hours 55 minutes.

Today’s main rowing session was 8995 meters with the goal of staying ahead of my most recent session of the same distance by about 10 meters and then going a faster pace a few hundred meters from the finish until calories burned added up to 545. Once reaching 545 calories, I eased up for the few remaining meters of warm down. It was done at RPE level 5. A screen recording was made for those who’d like to row along with it. The screen recording is on YouTube at this link: Indoor Rowing 547 Calories 01262019

There was another 2K done very slowly on the rowing machine at RPE Level 1 and a few kilometers on the SkiErg at an easy effort level of RPE Level 2. All totaled, the distance on rower and SkiErg today came to 16177 meters.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 8995 meters.

One of the sessions done on the SkiErg today was a very easy 5K. This is a screenshot of the Apple Watch heart rate graph for that particular session.

Listing of the four sessions done today.

Happy rowing to you!

Afib Truly Woke Me

This is a graph of this morning’s heart rate samples, taken every few minutes by the Apple Watch. You can see that at about 5 AM heart rate spiked a bit and stayed elevated from 5 AM until this screenshot was taken at about 9 AM. HR returned to normal sometime before noon.

There is no HRV analysis reading for this morning because I was having a bit of Afib at the time the HRV reading should have been taken. Afib during an HRV reading skews the reading and basically makes it worthless. So the EliteHRV app was skipped for today and instead I savored and drank black coffee.

The Afib started early this morning after I woke for a bathroom call at about 0500 and returned to bed. So… rather than lay awake, I got up. Sleep had been good until then but total sleep was a little short, at 5 hours 50 minutes.

Sleep was good and without interruptions from about 11 PM to 5 AM.

I felt okay, so I assumed the HRV reading would have been a “GO” for doing any workout. The goal for today’s aerobic activity was to burn 800 calories. The goal was reached with 3 sessions on the SkiErg and one on the rowing machine.

From first to last they were (1st): A 99 calorie warmup on SkiErg at RPE Level 3, (2nd): 1K on SkiErg at RPE Level 5 (3rd): 2K on SkiErg at RPE Level 6, (4th) 540 calories in 8,995 meters on rowing machine at RPE Level 5.

A screen recording for those who’d like to row-along was made of the rowing session and it is available at this link: Indoor Rowing 540 Calories 01232019

Summary data and chart for the SkiErg warmup.

Summary data and chart for the 1,000 meter session on SkiErg

Summary data and chart for 2,000 meter session on SkiErg

Finish screen for 540 Calorie session on rowing machine.

Report for main calorie session on rowing machine.

RowPro graphs for main calorie session on rowing machine.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for main calorie session on rowing machine.

Happy rowing to you!

800 Calories Was Just Dandy

Today’s EliteHRV morning readiness analysis was good again.

Last night’s sleep was a little short at 6 hours 10 minutes, but it was good sleep with no insomnia interruption.

Today’s main session was rowing until arriving at a total of 800 calories, done at RPE level 7. The main session is available as a screen recording for those who’d like to row-along. It’s link on YouTube is: Indoor Rowing 800 Calories 01212019

The Concept 2 rowing machine is an ergometer and it accurately measures work. It registered 800 calories for the main rowing session today, but the **Apple Watch**, which independently logged the workout as a rowing session, shows quite a few less calories than the Concept 2 ergometer. So don’t rely on the Apple Watch calorie count if you do a rowing workout.

Today’s second of three sessions was another attempt on the SkiErg to do a one minute sprint. The sprint was done at RPE level 9 and it was a better result than yesterday’s because I didn’t start out too fast and was able to maintain the pace for the entire minute. The third and last session today was going to be another attempt at a 500 meter sprint on the SkiErg, but I started out too fast or didn’t have a suitable drag factor setting (or perhaps I was too tired??), so I let that “sprint” fade into a warm down and the resulting RPE for the 500 meters was Level 4.

Report for 800 calorie rowing at RPE level 7.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for 800 calorie rowing.

There is no report or graph for the 100 meter sprint on SkiErg because it wasn’t done with RowPro but above is a screenshot of the summary data.

The final session for the day was 500 meters on the SkiErg which started out as an attempt to improve the previous, ranked result. But I started out too fast to maintain it so let it fade into a warm down. Heart rate fade lagged behind the fade of effort level.

Happy rowing to you.

Rock And Row

After today’s indoor rowing session was done and I touched the Apple Watch to have it stop logging the rowing workout, one of my Activity friends for that watch app sent the encouraging message, “You rock!” (The Apple Watch app gives you the option to reply each time it notifies you that one of your activity friends has completed some kind of workout. It has a varying selection of pre-formatted responses that you can opt from to send to that friend also.)

I don’t always respond back, because they don’t expect it for most of them, but this time I responded back with my pun for the day of “Rock and row.” A while later, she took a few more moments from her busy day and responded to my pun with “Ha ha” which I thought was nice also, since my puns usually only get groans in response.

Today’s session was 5,344 meters in 16 splits. A screen recording for rowing-along is on YouTube at: Indoor Rowing 321 Calories 08132018

Happy rowing to you.

Smoothing Out The Rhythm

The main goal for today’s indoor rowing session was to fix the problem of irregular heartbeat which had at about 3 a.m. today. If you’ve ever had that problem, you know it can interfere with sleep. I tried to go back to sleep but finally gave up on that and made some coffee, checked the news and did a couple chores.

Irregular heartbeat persisted, so I changed into rowing clothes and started rowing. After about 3,000 meters of easy rowing, the rhythm smoothed out. After it became regular again, I increased the pace slightly, to aim for an average pace of 2:18.9 or so for the 10K.

A screen recording is on YouTube at: Indoor Rowing 10K 07092018

If you have rowed-along with any of the screen recordings and wonder why I just sit in silence for about two minutes after the session is over, its because I’m checking heart rate recovery. The Apple Watch keeps track of and graphs heart rate for two minutes after a workout is over, so you can see how that goes. Here’s its recovery chart for the two minutes after today’s 10K:

And here are the rest of the screen shots from today’s 10K:

Happy rowing to you.

Another Non Standard Short Distance

Today’s session was 1,963 meters preceded by a 750 meter warmup.

A note about the Apple Watch: It did a lousy job of monitoring heart rate during this session. Most of the time it displayed a heart rate that was around 70 BPM even though the Polar heart strap, which is accurate, reported HR averaging well over 100 and as high as between 125 and 130. The Apple Watch was “fake news” as far as what it reported as you can see in the watch screenshot below:

Usually the Apple Watch is fairly accurate but not today.

The screen recording, with a “beat-by-beat” heart rate display, is at: Indoor Rowing 1963 meters 06082018

Happy rowing to you.