Finish screen view for today’s 10K rowing session.
Although intervals are something I like a lot, today I decided to completely avoid them. The reason I avoided doing any intervals is because they are possibly correlated with episodes of strange heart behavior such as arrhythmia or heart rate elevated too high. Coincidentally or not, heart strangeness was absent today.
The workouts today were: first, another 10K rowing session at the constant pace of about 2:17/500m. That was followed by a 160 Calorie SkiErg session also done at a constant pace. The target pace for the SkiErg session was chosen to be about the same as the average pace of the most recent SkiErg session which had both included hard intervals and also had completely normal heart behavior. That most recent session was the one done on June 16th at an average pace of 2:42.4. Today’s SkiErg session was done at a constant average pace of about 2:42.0 and heart behaved normally in the absence of any intervals.
Report for today’s 10K rowing session.
RowPro graphs for today’s 10K rowing session.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K rowing session.
Normal heart behavior during today’s boring interval-free SkiErg session.
Today’s workouts were another in the recent string of typical 10K rowing followed by 100+ calories on SkiErg. But the HRV morning readiness analysis (using the EliteHRV app) advised taking it easy, so both the rowing and SkiErg sessions were relatively boring. Especially the rowing session… it was so boring that I stood up and walked away from the machine for a minute or so during the session.
The rowing session was done online, but nobody else joined it today.
After rowing and ski-erging, I started sipping coffee. Had some breakfast. Finished all the coffee. The coffee was “regular”, caffeinated and quite strong but after finishing alllll of the coffee – five cups – I felt like taking a nap and slept for about 90 minutes. Perhaps that nap will improve tomorrow’s HRV reading?
The first cup of black coffee always tastes especially good.
Report for today’s 10K rowing session.
RowPro graphs for today’s 10K rowing session.
Concept 2 online logbook data for the SkiErg session.
Today’s two main training signals, amount of sleep and EliteHRV morning readiness reading were both “GO” for it being okay to row as hard and long as I wanted. But my body/and or mind felt reluctant. Where exactly is the dividing line between mind and body? Each hugely influences the other…
HRV app said “Go for it!”
Amount of sleep was 7 hours, which was well within the fully rested target zone with 30 minutes to spare, based on recent sleep…
But when I sat down to row, I couldn’t seem to find the accelerator pedal. So I took it easy, sampled a few YouTube videos on the topic of using HRV with training and watched two of those videos in their entirety.
The second of those two videos was titled “Heart Rate Variability Training & Grouse Grind // Vlog 001” and it sort of fit with what I was wrestling with, which was whether to push myself to row vigorously or to take it easy. I decided to not take the advice of the EliteHRV app and to do just a little bit of easy rowing. The guy in the video also did not take the advice of his HRV app, only in his case the app told him to take it easy and rest. Instead, he climbed a mountain. The next day, his HRV score had greatly improved. So it makes you wonder about HRV – there’s more to the picture than just the HRV reading, it seems. I’m curious how my HRV reading will react to my having taken it easy today?
There were no screen recordings made of any of today’s rowing pieces. It doesn’t work well, to make a screen recording of a rowing session while watching YouTube videos…
Here’s a summary list of today’s lackadaisical rowing:
All totaled, today’s calorie count came to a lot less than 1,000 calories.
The guy who scheduled today’s half marathon may have been doing a lot of them recently (?) because he named it “Another_HM”. Everybody except the starter started rowing at the beginning. The starter himself didn’t row a single stroke and three of the others rowed only part way before they either had technical problems or decided they’d had enough… so only three rowers finished.
Today’s session is categorized as both fun and also boring. It was fun, because it’s always fun to row in the company of others and it is fulfilling to finish what was started. What was started for today’s session was an online half marathon.
But it was also boring, because the others were a lot faster than me, so there wasn’t any element of competition, which is always a happy possibility when rowing online with others.
I was also bothered by a little bit of irregular heartbeat but it didn’t persist.
The guy who scheduled it was there at the start. But about a minute before the start he announced that he’d had a change of plans and would be going for a hike instead of rowing the half marathon. So … since he was there and he was the designated starter, he clicked the start sequence but he didn’t do any rowing. I guess the weather where he was and also the company he had where he was, was just a lot more appealing to him than rowing an indoor half marathon today.
This is a screenshot of the starting line a fraction of a second after the session started. I thought it was interesting that Canadian rower whose initials are EG managed to pull his very first stroke at a pace of 2:03 and he moved two meters before anyone else got off the starting line. He’s got quick reflexes. He also has a lot of power and he showed it for the entire distance.
Finish screen for today’s half marathon. By the time I reached the finish line, everyone else had already left and gone on to their warm downs, showers, etc.
RowPro graphs for today’s half marathon.
Report for today’s half marathon
Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s half marathon. My heart acted up a bit during the first 20 minutes but then it smoothed out and behaved for the remainder of the time.
Today’s indoor rowing session was early morning to get it out of the way before a busy day. There was a problem: The heart, that necessary nuisance, wasn’t cooperating again. It was so irregular that many times the heart strap couldn’t track it and the HR display would go blank. When it was regular, it was beating way too fast for the effort level.
I didn’t find anything to stimulate the evacuation of that problem so the session was simply finished at a very slow pace. Extremely slow. But the 10K was done and another day can be checked off towards fulfillment of one of the current Concept 2 challenges, which requires at least 25 days of minimum (either 5K or 10K per day) rowing. I opted for doing 10K per day for 25 days this month.
Today’s indoor rowing workout didn’t happen. Instead, I worked on the kitchen wall again, removing the rest of the sheetrock that needs to be replaced.
My thoughts of rowing were ethereal but the actual rowing didn’t become part of today’s reality.
Happy realization of expectations of rowing to you.
The longer distance indoor rowing sessions are like symphonies. Symphonies of inner music, ambient sound, thoughts and feelings, sweat and emotions. Today’s rowing piece was scheduled online a few hours in advance, but not in time for anyone who was interested to notice it and sign up. It was a half marathon, which is one of the longer of the standard indoor rowing sessions or “events” (they are events, if part of a competition).
But this was no competition and because nobody else joined in, it wasn’t much of a symphony either.
After a little more than halfway through the 21,097 meters, at about 14.5K, I sort of lost interest and stopped.
If any of this blog’s readership are wondering how the “symphony” of replacing and installing a new water heater has progressed, above this paragraph is a photo of one perspective of the current state of things in that rearrangement of arrangement. The old water heater was removed and replaced by the new one. But the new one was a little bit too big, from its front to its back, to allow the door to be closed on its metal enclosure. So the enclosure had to be removed and a larger one obtained.
But the larger one is different from the original enclosure, because the larger one has two horizontal braces across its back. The original enclosure had no braces across its back. There are pipes, both vertical and horizontal, which are in the way of placing the new enclosure with its braces. So I’m going to have to remove the horizontal metal braces and attach the enclosure directly to the wall of the house. A bit of a bother, but it will have to be done. In the meantime, the “symphony” of removing and replacing the hot water heater is unfinished. But neither half marathons nor the hot water heater installation have been forsaken.
View of the screen at the stopping place for today’s half marathon.
Report at the stopping place for today’s half marathon.
Graphs at the stopping place for today’s half marathon.
Concept 2 online logbook graphs at the stopping place for today’s half marathon.
Happy rowing to you and may you have plenty of hot water for your shower afterward.
One appropriate word that comes to mind which rhymes with Chappie is the word “crappy”.
Today while rowing I watched the last half of a movie called Chappie, which included Sigourney Weaver and Anderson Cooper (of CNN) in its cast. It was a huge disappointment and I couldn’t recommend it to anyone, except as a movie to watch if you want to see how badly done a movie can be. It had problems with logic, script, dialogue, screenplay and … not the least by any means… problems with not being believable by any stretch of rational imagination.
Today’s rowing was 10,000 meters done at a slow pace while I endured watching most of the movie at its normal pace. for about 15 to 20 minutes of the movies playing time, I increased the playing speed so that it played faster and displayed captions but there was no sound… it wasn’t worth playing at its normal speed.
Today’s rowing session was 10K done at an easy pace while watching part of a movie. It was boring, to row at such an easy pace, but the movie distracted from the boredom.
The warm-up for today’s rowing consisted of using a pick, a shovel, a caliche bar (also called a San Angelo bar) which is a 7 foot long, 16 pound steel rod digging tool, a couple of trowels, a couple of buckets, gardening gloves and a couple of knives, to do everything necessary from start to finish to accomplish the planting of the above-pictured bush, whose flowers are favored by hummingbirds. A hummingbird visited, while I was outside doing the work.
Because today was sunny and the temperature was in the 80s F (27 Celsius), it caused me to do more sweating than today’s easy paced 10K.
The 10K was scheduled and done online, but it was done alone.
The above photo shows what seemed to take the largest part of my energy today – planting the flowering bush, for the local hummingbirds. It looks rather disheveled, but we expect it to look more sheveled and at-home in a couple weeks after it gets over the transplanting shock.
Today’s indoor rowing was low energy and in addition I was very distracted because I watched part of a British sci-fi comedy movie and gave almost all my attention to the movie and almost none to rowing. I could have rowed slower, but not much slower, if I’d focused only on rowing slowly.
The distance was 10,000 meters and it was done online but alone.
