Today, for the first time, I managed to set up a variable intervals session with RowPro 5 for the Mac. It involved quite a few attempts to set it up and save the session and a couple restarts of the Mac computer. The final approach that worked was to only enter two lines of the session into the “custom row studio” and then save it, download it into the custom rows, highlight it in custom rows and edit it to add two more lines. Kept repeating that process until all 14 lines were in the custom variable interval setup. As I’ve said more than once before, RowPro 5 for the Mac is a “beta” version and still has a few problems to be ironed out.
Then I tried rowing it. I thought I’d try a different approach from the first attempt (at this c2ctc.com challenge for July 2017 ) and go slower on all the intervals except the very last one, with a target pace of 1:52 for all but the last interval. If I succeeded, it would be faster than the first attempt in which I started out too fast for the first few intervals and had to slow down more than I should have after those first few intervals.
That approach worked well until heart rate became too erratic to display. When that happens, the HR display and HR graph goes to zero. It also becomes somewhat harder to breathe. The mind was willing but the body just barely made it through the middle interval of 1,000 meters and I was feeling a bit lightheaded at the end. There was a 4 minute rest after the 1,000 meters but it wasn’t enough time and I had to give up during the next interval of 750 meters because I couldn’t maintain the target pace of 1:52 due to the fact that it was too hard to breathe.
That’s the first time that’s happened. Usually, it’s my mind that complains first, and tries to get my body to slow down. This time, my body couldn’t get enough air and my mind had to decide to quit trying to go fast.
There are still about 8 days left in the month, so maybe I’ll try again in about a week. And abstain from coffee that day.
I categorized this workout as “boring,” because it’s not fun when things don’t work like they should. A better adjective for today’s workout might be “annoying”.
I think the catalyst for the irregular heart rate was too much coffee. I had 5 or 6 cups of coffee this morning, instead of the usual one single cup which I’d limited myself to for a while with success.
Here are the most pertinent screen shots for today’s rowing:
Happy rowing to you, with or without coffee.
