Fun Workout – Ethereal Rowing

Strange Heart Strangenessless

Both today and yesterday’s 10K rowing sessions were done at identical pace and each had one interval of 500 meters. Today’s (on the right) was NORMAL heart rate for that effort, at about 120 BPM. Yesterday’s heart rate was HIGH for that same effort level, at about 150 BPM.

Today started out differently than yesterday in a couple respects. The first of those was that there was no atrial fibrillation overnight or this morning, as there had been the previous day and night. As a consequence of that, the second immediately noticeable difference was that today’s HRV analysis by EliteHRV was a perfect 10, the greenest “green light” possible for any sort of workout today.

Another difference between today and yesterday is that yesterday I did some sweating during both the rowing and SkiErg workouts but today there was no sweating, no drips of sweat today on either the rowing machine or on the SkiErg platform, like there had been yesterday.

Yesterday, there was “heart strangeness” and I categorized yesterday’s blog post, accordingly, with that tag of “heart strangeness”. Today, heart behaved perfectly but because the difference between yesterday and today is so surprising, “strange” to me, I’m using that same tag for today’s post.

Though I rowed yesterday and today at the same easy pace, with sweating while rowing yesterday but not today… today’s SkiErg session was a bit harder than yesterday’s but today there were NO drips of sweat on the SkiErg platform, like there had been during yesterday’s easier SkiErg session while experiencing irregular heart rate which was abnormally high.

Chart and data for today’s SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

A Green Lit 10K

Today’s EliteHRV analysis was better than yesterday’s and it was green, so I did a bit longer workouts, each at a bit brisker pace than what was done yesterday. The main workout was rowing 10K with a 2:10 pace boat, aiming to stay ahead of the pace boat. There was occasional Afib sputtering of the cardio engine during the 10K but it never persisted and was flutter-free smooth-running for most of the time. You can see the times when the ticker got irregular and fluttered with atrial fibrillation, in the RowPro graph of the rowing session where the vertical spikes to zero are located. There were five of them… possibly six, if you count the very beginning, but heart rate just before the 10K started was 46 to 49 BPM, so that thing which looks like a spike right at the beginning might just be heart rate raising quickly from its low resting rate.

After the rowing, there was a 145 calorie intervals session on the SkiErg.

Today’s green 8 was better than yesterday’s yellow 5 for HRV.

Finish screen for today’s 10K rowing. The Afib spikes in heart rate are not visible in this view but are quite visible, further below, in the RowPro software graph.

Concept 2 online logbook chart and data display for today’s SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

A Steadier Paced 10K

Today was a 10K rowing session like yesterday, only a bit steadier pace was maintained.

Happy rowing to you!

Successful Launch, Heart Systems AOK

Today’s 500 meter push and final sprint was successfully launched after the countdown on the 5,500 meter launchpad was 100% AOK with all heart systems go.

Today’s main workout was another attempt to do the SkiErg 6K which had to be scrubbed the day before yesterday.

Today’s plan was same as previous: Use a Pace Skier @ 2:19.6 and stay even or slightly ahead until distance counted down to the launch.

The “launch” was a faster pace beginning when 500 meters remained. Pace was increased from start to finish of the final 500 meters and was just short of an all-out sprint during the last 100 meters.

There was a 3 minute warmup before the 6K and there were two warm downs after the 6K. Of those warmup/warm downs, I’ll only show screen shots for the last warm down.

The “launch” is the circled area to the right of the 5,500 meter “launchpad”.

Finish screen for today’s final warm down.

Happy rowing to you!

A Cautious Day

This caution sign seemed appropriate for the top of today’s post. It was found on a website whose focus is dark matter and related stuff. A link to the website where it was found is in the text of the first paragraph below.

Today was a cautious workout day. Avoidance of atrial entropy was the reason for caution. The above image seemed appropriate as a header for today’s blog post. It was found on a website about dark matter and related stuff. Pardon my lack of precision after merely glancing at a few articles on the website, which is titled: Dark Matters a Lot

The reason for today’s caution was today’s Morning Readiness score with the EliteHRV app.

The cautious approach chosen was: Do one workout each, on SkiErg and rowing machine, but do each of them moderately without getting carried away with exuberant effort no matter how good I felt.

The SkiErg workout was done first, as a 141 Calorie session with alternating work/rest intervals of about 10 calories each. Following the SkiErg, a 30 minute rowing session was done as single combination session consisting of 2 minute warmup, four 4-minute intervals and a warm down.

Atrial entropy didn’t increase, so the two sessions must have been sufficiently moderate.

After the SkiErg session a 30 minute rowing session was done. This is a view of the finish screen for that rowing session.

Report for today’s 30 minute rowing session.

RowPro graphs for today’s 30 minute rowing session.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 30 minute rowing session.

Happy rowing to you!

The Heart Cooperative

Finish screen for today’s intervals pyramid session.

Today the heart and everything else in the propulsion system cooperated and the workouts happened as planned. The main workout was a set of pyramid intervals of 2-3-4-3-2 minutes within a single 30 minute session.

A screen recording was made of that session, for those of you who’d like to row-along with it. That screen recording is available on YouTube at this link: Indoor Rowing 30 minute pyramid 05082019

After the 30 minutes of rowing, there was a 135 calorie SkiErg session.

Report for today’s intervals pyramid session.

Graphs for today’s intervals pyramid session.

Chart and some data for today’s 135 calorie SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

Tingling Afterglow

Cactus blossoms were glowing with sunlight this morning.

There were two workouts today. They were both interval sessions. One on the rowing machine and the other on the SkiErg. Afterwards, and now while this is being typed, I feel like I’m tingling all over with the afterglow of the intervals.

Today’s EliteHRV heart rate variability analysis gave permission for any level of effort.

Today’s rowing workout was selected from Concept 2’s suggestions for “workout of the day”. It was called “2 x 10 min short intervals” and the instructive description was: “Pre-set the monitor for a work time of 10:00 and a rest time of 4:00. Each interval alternate between 40 seconds fast rowing and 20 seconds easy rowing. During the rest time continue rowing at light pressure.”

Finish screen after today’s rowing workout.

Data and chart for today’s SkiErg workout.

Happy rowing to you!

Some Kind of Inertia

The above photo is a display of one result of Einstein’s formulation of the Theory of Relativity… or his contributions to quantum physics… or both. At any rate, it is showing some of the effects of converting the mass of a few ounces of uranium into energy.

After 8 days without working out, today I finally managed to do a workout on both the rowing machine and SkiErg. There was no earth-shaking result, but it seemed like there was a huge amount of some kind of inertia to overcome when I first started pulling the handle on the rowing machine. The result of today’s workout was to convert about 2 1/2 ounces of my body’s mass into a modest 552 calories of kinetic energy. There was additional energy conversion resulting in heat and myriads of other changes in the body, but those were not measured by the ergometers.

The two ergometers, rowing machine and SkiErg, only measured the kinetic energy required to operate them and that totaled to about 552 Calories. *

Today’s heart rate variability analysis by the EliteHRV app gave a green light for doing a workout.

Today’s workout was once again strictly aerobic. I need to start incorporating resistance/anabolic activity into a few days of each week’s workouts. How do I cultivate that as a habit?

The above question will have to remain unanswered for the moment. Screenshots of today’s workout reports are below. They were a series of 4 minute hard/3 minute easy rowing intervals followed by a series of 10 Calories hard/10 Calories easy cross-country SkiErg intervals:

Graphs and data for the SkiErg intervals.

Happy rowing to you!

*If you are a physicist and want to get technical, it totaled to 552 kilo calories.

Begone, Valerian! A Half Marathon Works Better!

Today’s HRV analysis score is better than yesterday’s, despite having rowed a half marathon yesterday.

If any of you have been reading every word of these blog posts you will know that I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping. I’ve had many middle-of-the-night periods of being wide-awake insomnia.

But more important: if any of you have been reading every word of my blog posts: How do you manage to do that? I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that this blog is exceedingly boring and I totally agree. There’s no plot, etc. Just a daily splattering of bits mostly about what indoor rowing was done. To read every word of these blog posts would be an exceptional, amazing task.

Anyway… with regard to the SLEEP issues, I was somewhat amazed to have had a “perfect” night’s sleep. Deep, restful and only interrupted very briefly once, for a call of nature. Below you can see a chart of last night’s sleep. It’s actually a chart of heart rate and activity levels (movement detected by Apple Watch) during last night’s sleep. But you can see from the chart that there was only one brief interruption between 1 and 2 AM. The recent doses of Valerian to help with sleep did nothing, compared to positive after-effect of rowing the half-marathon.

This was the best night’s sleep in a long time. Do I have to row a half-marathon, to get a good night’s sleep?

Today’s workout consisted of a 30 minute online session, 2K warm down and 126 Calories burned on the SkiErg.

The 30 minute online session was recorded and uploaded to YouTube and it can be found at this link: Indoor rowing 30 minutes online 04192019

Finish screen view for today’s 30 minute online session.

Report for today’s 30 minute online rowing session.

Graphs for today’s 30 minute online rowing session.

Data for today’s 126 Calorie SkiErg workout.

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!