Today’s indoor rowing was scheduled online but didn’t garner any company so it was rowed solo. And it was somewhat so-so, without the inspiration of one or more other rowers’ avatars on the screen.
The rowing session consisted of 10,000 meters at an easy pace, with a slight pickup in effort level in the last of the session. There was no warmup or warm down.
Happy and as inspired-as-is-can-be rowing to you.
The title of today’s blog post is from among the words in a recent message generated by the sleep-tracking app that I’ve been using for quite a while. The app has a feature called “Discover,” which, if enabled, tries to find significant correlations between the health information that it has been given access to and my nightly sleep. As you see in the screenshot of its recent “Discover” message, there is more reason to believe that exercise is healthy for you.
Today’s indoor rowing was shorter than recent usual. Instead of doing at least 10K, I did only 5K. I will be doing shorter sessions between now and November 24th. On November 25th, I’ll start doing longer sessions of from 10K to half marathon or more per day and will continue doing longer sessions through December 25th. The reason for that is because Concept 2 is having its annual charity challenge and for everyone who participates, Concept 2 donates a few cents per 1,000 meters to one of the charities that they have pre-selected.
Today’s 5K piece was done online with 3 others. Two of the others were in Europe and one, besides myself, was in the U.S. The original tentative “plan” for today’s 5K was to do it at a pace of 2:02 or faster, so as to move up in the 5K world rankings at least one position. Those were very tentative plans. I ate lunch about 30 minutes before the rowing session and didn’t have time for any warm up.
After a little over 2,000 meters, I decided to slow down and do the remainder of the 5K at a warm down pace. When the remaining distance was 1,000 meters, I increased the pace to whatever it took, to keep the overall average pace at about 2:15. There was no particular reason or motivation for doing it that way – it’s just what I happened to feel like and agree to within my own mind, during the piece.
Happy rowing to you, whether short or long distance.
Today for the first time in quite a few sessions, I rowed online with a few other people instead of alone. But things didn’t go perfectly smoothly. Something went wrong with the RowPro server, which is located in Houston. Four people started out together, then the server announced that there was a “false start” but it showed two people to be rowing. One of them never came back. The other one, though he appeared to be rowing (because his chat room avatar turned into circular arrows) actually was still there, because his avatar turned into a pencil when he started typing to inform the other two of us that he was still there.
So… three of us set up a QR which stands for “Quick Row” which means it is an unscheduled row and we rowed together. I don’t know what happened to the 4th guy. He may still be tangled up in the Houston server.
The session online was 10,000 meters. Before it started, I warmed up with 10 minutes very easy. During the 10K, I rowed the first 1K at about 2:20, then picked up the pace to around 2:15 which was also about 130 BPM heart rate today. (It varies from day to day). For the last 1,000 meters, I went faster so as to elevate the heart rate with a little bit of semi-high intensity sort of rowing, but not too hard.
Afterwards, we said good bye to each other then I did 5 minutes of supplemental rowing. Because it’s almost dinner time now, I’m not going to take the time to include screenshots of the 10 minute or 5 minute sessions and will only show the 10K session screenshots.
Happy rowing to you.
A guy who’s new to rowing but not that new to other exercise said, “I get a little crabby when I’m not able to get my workouts in.” It seems that he has achieved a positive addiction to something that is healthy. That’s something to be happy about 🙂 and I know he is, because he said that since he’s taken to doing some daily exercise, he feels better than he has “in the last 15 years.”
I’m happy for him.
Happily, I too managed to do some exercise today. It was mostly indoor rowing. The main session was 10,000 meters which was done at its slowest pace for the first 1,000 meters as a warm up. For the next 7,000 meters, it was done at an easy pace with a target heart rate of from around 130 to 140. While I was rowing those 7,000 meters, the “Projected Finish” time on the rowing machine’s monitor would vary between 44 and 45 minutes.
For the last 2,000 meters, it was done at whatever pace it took to make the “Projected Finish” time on the monitor show 44:00 or less, with 44:00 being the target.
Afterwards, I rested for about 3 to 5 minutes, so the Apple Watch could measure and graph HR recovery. Then I did an additional 5 minutes very easy, to get a few hundred more supplemental meters, to help keep my daily average above 10K per day.
Happy rowing addiction to you.
Today’s indoor rowing started with a 10K session which was done at a pace of 2:20/500 meters. It served as a warmup for the “race” which followed. The Apple Watch graph of HR recovery for two minutes immediately following the 10K warmup is below this paragraph:
The “race” was 4 intervals of 750 meters, with 3 minutes of rest after each 750 meter interval or 4×750 r3:00 in rowing shorthand. The latter was done for this month’s c2ctc.com challenge, called The Red Line Rev Up, after the rowing club whose idea it was. The Apple Watch graph of HR recovery for two minutes immediately following the 4×750 r3:00 is below this paragraph:
As a final warm down, I rowed gently for 5 minutes. The recovery graph after the 5 minute warm down is not worth looking at since the heart rate was already so low at the end.
A comment about the “race”: Since I so seldom row hard, I wasn’t sure what pace to attempt. The first 750 meters was attempted at a pace of 1:48 but that turned out to be too fast, when I started having trouble getting enough air into my lungs with each inhalation. So I did the next two 750 meter intervals quite a bit slower. Those seemed a bit too easy, so I did the final interval a bit harder than the middle two, but slower than the very first interval. As a result, the graph of pace for the string of 4 intervals is shaped a bit like a lop-sided bowl.
Here are screenshots relating to the rowing done today:
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s indoor rowing took a lower priority than visiting the dentist, running errands and other things not worth listing. One thing that might be worth listing among “other things” is that I printed a few cards onto business card stock and will carry some of them with me when out of the house, so that I can give them to anyone who shows what seems to be any real interest in exercising on an erg. What the cards look like is shown immediately below this paragraph.
Because today’s rowing was started late, it was less than the usual minimum goal of 10K in order for me to finish before dinner time. But at 8K, it was close and it felt like it did some good.
If you look at the heart rate graphs for today’s session report and notice that the graphs are messy again, I think that’s because in addition to the strap transmitter having a low battery of between 40% to 60%, the strap wasn’t wet enough when the session started. It’s a cloth strap and only works when it is wet. Also, my skin was dry. And the room was a bit cold. So, with the moderate pace of rowing, it took quite a while before there was perspiration enough for the heart strap to be optimally conductive to the heart signal.
The session was at an easy pace but it was fun and mentally absorbing because once again I avoided watching a distracting movie and instead just focused on the rowing, counting strokes and other mindful rowing-oriented thoughts.
Here are today’s rowing session screenshots:
Looking forward to a couple of race-pace sessions sometime this month: For c2ctc.com, I’ll do this month’s challenge which is called The Red Line Rev Up. And for the Indoor Rowers League, the challenge event for November is to do 6,344 meters at race-pace. I’ll probably do the c2ctc challenge first. For the Indoor Rowers League challenge, I’ll wait until toward the end of the month to do it, so I can see how the others in my age group do, and choose which of those times to use as a target to beat. 🙂
Happy rowing to you.
Sunday and Monday were days without rowing so today’s resumption was a special treat, in the respect that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Today’s session was 10K online but alone. I started out with the intention of rowing 1,000 strokes with my eyes closed and then opening them to see how pace and heart rate compared to my subjective estimates. But Diane came into the room to chat for a bit and so I rowed with eyes open most of the time.
Below are screenshots of the Apple Watch’s views of today’s warmup + 10K and the post-10K HR recovery graph:
There was a 5 minute warmup/down which I won’t bother documenting here. If anyone really wants to see them, just say so.
Happy rowing treats to you.
For today’s rowing, I decided to apply a bit more than usual effort, so as to raise heart rate enough to get a relevant reading of heart rate recovery. One of the nicer additions/improvements to the capabilities of the Apple Watch is that it will measure and display heart rate recovery after a workout. The image at the top of today’s blog post is a screen shot of the results today, for the two minutes after the main rowing session ended. A heart rate decrease of from 15 to 25 BPM, by the time two minutes has elapsed immediately after stopping exercise, is healthy. A heart rate decrease of 12 BPM or less is unhealthy.
As you can see in the screenshot above, my heart rate decrease seems to be healthy, since 58 BPM is more than the minimum healthy amount of 15 BPM. So… In that regard I guess I can be a happy chappie.
The main rowing today was 10,000 meters. It was done online but alone. There was also a 5 minute warmup and warm down.
Happy rowing and heart rate recovering to you.
Today’s indoor rowing was done on earth, the best planet for that activity. The above photo might at first glance resemble a Martian landscape, but at second glance it can be seen to be infinitely more lush than any landscape ever photographed of Mars. It is a view of some unknown location in the Sonora desert.
The atmosphere where I did my rowing was indoors, so it wasn’t as fresh as any outdoors atmosphere in the Sonora desert, but it was fresh enough and far more oxygen-rich than the hostile-to-humans Martian atmosphere.
Today’s rowing was 10,000 meters done online but alas alone. It was followed by another 5 minutes of supplemental rowing for the sake of a few more meters.
After doing the rowing, I glanced at one of the new features in the Apple Watch (photo and screen shot above) for the heart rate recovery display. I don’t know what use, if any, to make of it yet, but from what little I’ve read about it, the steeper the angle of decline for the graph of recovery heart rate during the first two minutes after a workout is logged as “done” on the watch, the better. Of course, it would seem to depend on how hard or easy a person had been working out in that workout, so I don’t know if there is a chance of comparing apples to oranges by looking at the heart rate recovery results after workouts of different intensities and duration.
Some of the things I did for fun were to aim for an almost constant, gradually increasing pace and heart rate, with a maximum heart rate target today of around 130. Some other things I did for fun, were to close my eyes and count the strokes until an estimated 1,000 meters had passed. That was done about ten times, so I rowed with my eyes closed most of the time. If other rowers had been rowing with me, I would have watched their avatars to see their stroke rate and watched their numbers for distance separation and pace, on the right of the screen. But nobody else joined, as I’ve already said… so I rowed with my eyes closed and spent a fair amount of time flying through the ethereal realm of thoughts.
Happy non-Martian rowing to you.
Today’s indoor rowing started out the same way as each of the previous two days’ sessions: I set the distance for a half marathon and rowed for an hour. But today I kept rowing the entire distance and finished all 21,097 meters.
For inspiration, I watched an amateur (very, very amateur) GoPro video of a marathon. It managed to supply enough inspiration, after I’d been rowing for an hour, that I wanted to finish the distance.
I don’t know what was inspiring about it, but it did seem to make a difference and I wanted to keep going after an hour, instead of quitting like I’d done yesterday and the day before.
Today I tried to use a different heart rate monitor strap with the Apple Watch. It is called the Wahoo TICKR. It was advertised and described as working with both Bluetooth 4.0 and ANT+ devices. The Apple Watch is Bluetooth 4.0 and it would pair with the watch but it wouldn’t work with the Concept 2 rowing machine’s monitor, the PM3, which is ANT+. So I downloaded the Wahoo utility to test it and it said that to test the ANT+, I needed a “Wahoo key”. After a bit more research, I found that it was not true that the Wahoo TICKR works with both Bluetooth 4.0 and ANT+ devices… unless a person gets another device, for about $50, called a Wahoo Key. The latter device will plug in to the bottom of an older style iPhone (not a newer iPhone like mine, which has a Lightning connector) and it will convert the Bluetooth signal data into an ANT+ signal and then re-broadcast it so that the PM3 or anything else that is listening for an ANT+ signal can use it.
So the bottom line is the Wahoo TICKR won’t work with the PM3 monitor on the rowing machine because it just doesn’t work as advertised and implied in its description supplied to Amazon (which is where I got it). It is on its way back to Amazon. I will just have to be satisfied with the Apple Watch’s built-in HR detector and a separate HR strap to supply a signal to the PM3. The fact that the Wahoo TICKR will no longer work as advertised with the newer iPhones is probably the reason Apple no longer carries it in stock if you check the online Apple Store app.
Here’s today’s rowing screenshots and results:
Happy discovery of inspiration to keep on rowing, to you.