An actual view of this blog post in progress as I’m taking a few moments to think about what to call it
Today’s session of the 12 week RowPro software-generated training session was as shown in the screenshot of training details somewhere below: 500m warmup, 6K easy, 500m warmdown.
The rowing alone wasn’t enough work to complete the “move” circle of my apple watch activity app, so I guess I’ll have to find something else to do today, like perhaps walk up and down a flight of stairs a few dozen times.
The apple watch activity app reminds me to stand up at least once every hour, exercise at least 30 minutes per day and also to move sufficiently to burn my daily quota of apple watch activity units. It actually calls them “calories,” but I call them apple watch activity units because it gives me a daily quota of so-called “calories” which currently is 570. But I burn a lot more calories than what it credits me for in exercise on the erg.
For example: The apple watch activity app counted the rowing session today as 260 calories, but the Concept 2 erg, which is a precise measuring instrument, registered it to be actually 393 calories. That’s quite a discrepancy if you really care. But that’s okay because I don’t care that the apple watch activity app isn’t a precise measuring instrument. I am not one single iota less satisfied with the apple watch because of that discrepancy. I consider the “calories” recorded by the apple watch activity app to be either apple watch units or “relative” calories. Relative, in the sense of being somehow related, like perhaps “cousins” of the actual calories.
I’m sure you will understand, because you are a genius – as was explained in yesterday’s post.
Screenshot view of finish screen for the 6K portion of today’s session.Today’s session details.
Today’s session was sort of a repeat of yesterday’s. It was the same distance, but it took longer because I took a longer break, of about 11 minutes instead of single digit minutes for a break as was done yesterday.
The session report today was glitch-free because I successfully divided it into 14 splits which resulted in all splits including the last one being of the same distance. If they are not, RowPro 5 for the Mac (beta) will give glitchy results for the last split.
I’ve done it both ways and to be early and get the rowing done first thing in the morning is always better. Coffee even tastes better afterwards.
another thing I like about rowing early is that I get a head start toward my daily goal of completing the rings on the Apple Watch activity app
Today’s session was Pete Plan designated as steady distance / recovery. Not much to recover from yesterday though. The distance chosen today was 11K. DF 120. Average rating 24. HR took a little while to climb up into zone 1 which is the lowest aerobic zone for me with boundaries of 133-142 but it got up into that area after about 8K and stayed there until the finish.
There was no rowing session done today. There was, alas, only a walk in the park. There was, however, a lass with me during the walk in the park – namely, my better half.
At the start of this walk, I set the Apple watch to track a 30 minute outdoor walk. I should have just set it to track an outdoor walk with an “open” goal since we didn’t know exactly how long it would take us to make two laps around the park. After 30 minutes, the app announced “workout complete,” but since we were not on a treadmill and hadn’t yet returned to where the truck was parked, I let the app keep running until we arrived back at the truck.
After the outdoor walk was ended and saved in the Activity app, it awarded me with something that resembled a gold star and exclaimed joyously that I had earned that award for having done my “first walk with the Workout app!” I’m still basking in that glory.
These are the results of what was recorded for the walk.
For a few days previous to today, I’ve been a bit hit-and-miss with rowing sessions. In other words, some days there was no rowing done. And on none of those days was the Pete Plan training done. I didn’t have any enthusiasm for rowing, but did not totally abstain because of various considerations such as health. And my personal obligation to blog at least to a minimal degree about doing rowing, which requires that I do some rowing. Other motivational considerations come to mind, but I won’t try to list them.
Except for one more: I’m finding the “Activity” app on the Apple Watch to be a pleasant motivation. It is a well-done app and its “social” feature is nicely done, allowing a person’s daily activity level to be automatically shared and view-able by each other person who has an Apple Watchand with whom activity is shared.
To do the minimum daily exercise portion for the Apple Watch, I need to log at least 30 minutes of some kind of workout with it.
Today, a Pete Plan session was done, but that will be in a separate post after this catch-up post is published. Below are reports and charts for the sessions that have been done since the previous post, beginning with Nov 20th:
warmup on Nov 20thcharts for Nov 20 warmupThe unenthusiastic 5K which was done after warming up on Nov 20thcharts for the 5K of Nov 20warm down Nov 20thwarm down charts Nov 20
There was no rowing done on Nov 21. For Nov 22nd, a 30 minute session was done:
Nov 22nd 30 minutes reportNov 22nd 30 minutes charts
For Nov 23rd, 30 minutes was done but it was broken up into three pieces:
Nov 23rd report 1 of 3Nov 23rd charts 1 of 3Nov 23rd 2nd of 3 pieces reportNov 23rd 2nd of 3 pieces chartsreport for 3 of 3 on Nov 23charts for 3 of 3 on Nov 23
On November 24th, the rowing was a piece of a little more than 10K:
Nov 24th 10,250 meter reportNov 24th 10,250 meter charts
For November 25th, a 10K piece was done, followed by a 5 minute warm down, extremely slowly:
Nov 25th 10K reportNov 25th 10K chartsNov 26 warm down reportNov 26 warm down charts
Today’s training plan session was supposed to be a “steady distance recovery”, from 8K to 15K, at rating of from 22 to 25. I chose 8K at r22. DF was 135. No warmup or warm down. Straps were loose as usual.
There were three targets: HR, rating and pace. Highest priority was to keep HR anywhere below 75% HRmax and that required little effort. (Pun intended.)
Second highest priority was to keep rating as near as possible to 22 and it is what got most of the portion of attention given to rowing.
Lowest priority was pace. The pace target was to average about 2:18, but most of the time I paid no attention to it, while my mind wandered in various directions and visited parallel universes. Toward the end of the session I noticed that pace was quite a bit faster than 2:18 and seemed to want to stay in that area, so I brought the average pace down by using legs only and not quite letting my legs straighten 100% with each drive. You can see on the chart that it brought the pace down quite a bit, to do that.
8K finish screen8K report. Disregard pace figure for the last split (see the RowPro 5 for the Mac note near the end of this post)8K chart
RowPro 5 for the Mac (beta version) note: disregard the pace of 1:39 displayed in the session report for the last split. That is incorrect because the algorithm seems to be using 300 meters instead of the correct value of 200 meters for that last split.
Apple watch note: As I said in an earlier post regarding the apple watch workout app when it is in rower mode, the data isn’t really useful for serious rowers because there is virtually no data except elapsed time from the time you start it until you stop it on the workout app. It also gives an estimate of calories burned, based on an algorithm using HR, body weight and I don’t know what else. The calories burned are usually in the ball park and might be useful for someone who needs that figure for purposes of dieting. It also continuously records HR until the workout is stopped, instead of only sampling it once every 10 minutes when the HR app is not being accessed.
Don’t get me wrong – I like the app and very much appreciate that a rower category is included among choices of workout types. The reason I use it, is so that the “activity” app on the watch will give me credit for doing some kind of a workout and say nice things to me about it. Anyway – – the note regarding it today is that I did use it to record the workout activity but forgot to start it until I’d been rowing for a while. When I remembered, I didn’t have to totally stop rowing, to initiate the logging of a rowing workout. All I had to do was take one hand off the C2 handle and keep rowing while holding the watch near my mouth and say “Hey Siri, start a rowing workout.” Three seconds later (there’s a ready-set-go type of 3 second countdown when it starts recording a workout) it was recording the rowing workout and continuously displaying HR.
After the 8K I forgot to stop the rowing workout on the watch. About 15 minutes later I stopped its recording and it had registered 325 Calories and an elapsed time of 49 minutes. That calorie figure looks about right, for the portion of rowing and then the non-rowing afterwards which included standing, sitting, walking and changing clothes.
Today’s episode of Pete Plan was the first day of cycle 2, my second time through the 3 week plan. The session was 8×500 R3:30. I set up the intervals on RowPro, with only 3:20 of rest and when each 3:20 of rest ended, I sat motionless for another 10 seconds to allow the flywheel to come to a rest before starting the next 500m interval.
Before and after the 8×500 there was a warm up and warm down of 1,250 meters. The target pace for the first 7 intervals was 1:55.6, which had been the overall average pace for the previous instance of the 8×500 in the first cycle. DF was 125.
I put the Apple watch into workout mode/rowing before starting the warm up, intervals and warm down and then ended its recording of the workout after the warm down.
The Apple watch doesn’t provide any data that is of interest to rowers but at least it does give me “credit” for meeting the daily exercise portion of what is set as a daily activity goal.
The 634 total calories credited by the Apple watch is in the ballpark for 643 total calories measured on the rowing machine if calories are totaled for warmup, main rowing session and warmdown.
Here are the finish screens, reports and charts for the warm up, 8×50 R3:30 and warm down:
warm up finish screenwarm up session reportwarm up chartNotice the charting problem circled in green for pace and heart rate on the RowPro 5 for the Mac finish screen. That was during the 6th split, and the graphs appeared to move back in time when starting to graph data for the 6th split. It is a software bug in the Beta version of RowPro 5 for the Mac. The session report is okay, though.8×500 R3:30 session report. Note that the active rest times were 3:20 in RowPro. I added another 10 seconds passive rest to each of them, to allow 10 seconds of inactivity on my part so that the C2 flywheel could stop spinning before I began each 500m sprint.8×500 R3:30 chartwarm down finish screenwarm down reportwarm down chart
Today’s scheduled Pete Plan activity was to do no rowing. So I took Pete’s recommendation seriously and didn’t do any serious rowing. But I did try something which involved the rowing machine.
To test an Apple watch’s accuracy in measuring calories burned while rowing, I told it I was going to row and rowed slowly until the watch indicated that I’d burned 125 calories.
The results from the watch were vaguely similar to the precisely calibrated results from the Concept 2’s ergometer readout. Very vaguely. But, that’s to be expected, since the watch could only base its calculations on 1. elapsed time, 2. The fact that I was using a workout designation corresponding to one of its labeled algorithms (Rowing ) and 3. My heart rate, which was slightly elevated.
The watch’s results showed Duration=20m 5.76s, Total Active energy of 132.37 kcal (1 kcal is the physics term for one food Calorie. So it was what most people would call 132.37 Calories) and Total Resting Energy of 35.3 kcal (35.3 Calories).
I don’t know if the “resting energy” is a portion of the “Active energy” or if they are separate, but I think they are separate because from the time I pressed “go” on the watch and it started measuring time, heart rate and calories, until the time I actually started rowing, was the elapsed time it took for me to put on my socks and shoes. It was the first time I’d used that app and so I didn’t realize I was making it start until… it started its countdown.
I gave the workout app a target goal of 125 Calories. When “active calories” on its display reached 125, it vibrated to let me know the goal had been met. The “total calories” on the display were higher and were probably the sum of “active” and “resting,” but I didn’t jot that number down.
If I ever do that again and write about it in this blog, I’ll include a screenshot of the results. But I didn’t know how to take a screenshot on the watch, when the rowing was done.
Below is a screenshot of the pertinent results as they were recorded in the watch app, after the rowing “workout” results were saved and below that is a view of the session results summary from the RowPro report.
This is what the Apple watch app shows for the brief time rowing.Finish screen for today’s experiment with rowing while Apple watch measured the workout.session report for the above. The session report doesn’t have any split details or graphs because it was done in the “just row” mode.
