Today’s rowing session was started a few minutes after the baseball game game I wanted to watch started. It was a game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Seattle Mariners and the Diamondbacks needed to win the game in order to remain in first place in their division. There’s no TV in the room with the rowing machine, so I rowed a bit faster than I would have otherwise, in order to get the rowing over with and go watch the game.
My better half was in the other room, watching the game and she said that the Diamondbacks “needed you” because they didn’t start scoring until I finished rowing and was able to start watching. Ha ha. But anyway … they did manage to win though it was a “nail biter” in the bottom of the ninth inning.
For today, I signed up to row 10,000 meters online at 14:00 (2:00 p.m.) GMT which is 07:00 local time. But I had a bit of trouble sleeping and was awake for a couple hours in the middle of the night. I went back to bed at about 03:40 and when I woke the next time, for a call of nature, it was from a very, VERY deep at at 05:15. Nature has a way of waking a person from the deepest sleep. I decided I’d rather get more sleep than get up with the alarm at 06:00, so I grabbed my cellphone, opened the myRowPro app and signed out/withdrew from the online session. Then I disabled the wake-up alarms and went back to bed.
The next time I woke it was almost 08:00 after a total of about 6 hours sleep and I felt normally rested.
So I did 10,000 meters solo, offline. Before setting up the 10K, I checked to see if I’d ranked a 10K yet this season and yes, I had. The one I’d entered into the Concept 2 10,000 meter Indoor Rower Rankings had been at an easy pace, so I decided to try to beat it by just a little bit, with another easy-paced 10K. Today’s session was a success in that respect and moved me up one ranking, from 24th out of 53 all the way up to 23rd place, out of 53 results ranked at that point in time. Whoopee! 🙂
The “hiccup” mentioned in today’s title refers to a single episode of heart strangeness: irregular heartbeat that lasted about 5 seconds, beginning after about 3,077 meters (when the remaining distance had counted down to about 6,923). Heartbeat rhythm wavered just that one time but then settled down and returned to normal about 20 meters later when remaining distance had counted down to about 6,923 meters.
The session was screen recorded, for those of you who’d like to row-along with it. It is available on YouTube at this link: Indoor Rowing 589 Calories 08252018
RowPro 5 for the Mac has the ability to compare two similar rowing sessions and calculate if there is any improvement or other difference since a previous rowing session of the same type. I compared today’s 10K with the one I’d previously done and ranked on July 17th and RowPro said there was a “net performance increase” compared to July 17th. I’m no statistician though, so I don’t know if the difference between today’s 10K and that of July 17 is “statistically significant”.
Graphs comparing today’s 10K and heart rate performance to that of July 17th.Computer analysis results for comparing today’s 10K and heart rate performance to the session done on July 17th.
Today’s session was scheduled online but nobody showed. So I rescheduled it a little later. Still, nobody saw it and joined. I finally scheduled it a third time, about 30 minutes later with the same results. So I rowed it alone.
Heart rhythm acted up in the last half of the session, so though I categorized today’s rowing as “Fun Workout,” it was only fun for half the time. During the last half, heart rhythm was irregular and heart rate was too high for the low effort level. I felt fine, otherwise, so I just slowed down a bit, with the unfulfilled hope that it would go back to normal before the finish line. Which it did not do. But it is okay now.
Today there was no scheduled rowing session and also no wake-up alarm. Procrastination cozied up to me as I slept in this morning and I didn’t get around to rowing until after 10 in the morning.
The preset distance was 7,640 meters and it was posted to YouTube as a row-alongable screen recording at: Indoor Rowing 453 Calories 08222018
Scheduling an online rowing session with other people isn’t guaranteed to conquer any tendency to procrastinate about doing some daily rowing. Everybody knows that the “hardest thing about running” is “putting on your shoes and going out the door” or whatever is your equivalent “ON switch” that gets you started. Its hard, because you can always find something else to do first, before going out the door to run.
Same with rowing. There are always plenty of other little things that can be done first.
Yesterday, I scheduled an online rowing session for 7 a.m., set my wake-up alarm for 5 a.m. and set a second reminder alarm for 6 a.m.
The alarm woke me at 6 a.m. and when I looked to see why the 5 a.m. alarm hadn’t done its job, I discovered that it was also set for 6 a.m. Hmm. I can’t explain that.
My heart was being irregular again so I tried doing a 10 minute sort of warm up rowing session which helped it settle down a bit. The warm up session was recorded and can be rowed-along with at this link: Indoor Rowing 10 Mins 08212018
10 min warm up reportHeart rate was so extremely irregular that it wouldn’t even register with the heart strap for the first 5 or 6 minutes. Then it seemed to settle down, though it was beating too fast for the easy effort level.Concept 2 online logbook chart for the 10 minute warmup.
Heart rate was still a bit flip-floppy irregular when the scheduled session started, but I took it easy so as not to get the heart over-excited and it settled down into a well-behaved semblance of normalcy.
The scheduled session was also recorded, though I forgot to start recording it until just after the session started. The YouTube link for the scheduled session of 30 minutes is located here: Indoor Rowing About 30 minutes online 08212018
Finish screen for today’s online session.Report for today’s online session.RowPro graphs for today’s online sessionConcept 2 logbook chart for today’s online session
Today’s rowing session was scheduled a day in advance as an online session. The main reason I did that was because it is strong incentive to avoid procrastinating about rowing, if I’ve made a commitment to row online with others.
I was totally free of atrial fibrillation during the session, so that alone made it a good session. But the best thing about rowing online is having the virtual company of one or more other actual people rowing with you.
The session was a distance of 7,000 meters. It is available for rowing-along-with, at the following link: Indoor Rowing 7K online 08202018
One way to burn calories without exercising is to literally set the food on fire. In the photo above, someone is burning the calories in a single peanut.
Taste bud temptation got the better of me and I recently made the impulsive purchase of a largish bag of “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos”. The cashier tried to warn me about them, saying things like “they are just too hot!” and “they don’t have any flavor, they just hurt!”. Though I disagreed with him, I just smiled and told him I’d “give them a chance,” or something like that.
I used to indulge in the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos rather frequently. Never could eat just one … bag … of them. Always had to get another bag of them before very much time passed. I liked what I remembered of both the flavor and their heat.
So when I told the Flamin’Hot Cheetos-hating cashier I’d “give them a chance,” what I meant was that I hoped they were the same as I remembered them. They were. I ate a lot of them, to the astonishment and gracious admonishment of my better half. She (my better half) referred to the back of the bag and calculated that I had consumed about 3,000 calories.
Wow that’s quite a bit.
So today I decided to row 10K. It might be said that I took a little bit of “revenge” on that Cheeto indulgence, by burning 580 calories rowing today. Of course, that is only about 19% of the 3,000 calories… so I’d have to row four more 10Ks and then some in addition to those, to merely “break even” on the cheating with Cheetos calories fling.
Anyone feel like keeping me company for an online marathon? Those 42,195 meters ought to help finish the job of burning the remainder of the 3,000 excess calories. If you’d like to row a marathon online with me, let me know. Until then, I will be doing shorter daily distances.
Don’t believe all the tables you find on the internet. There’s something wrong with this chart that I found today because it shows that for someone of my age, according to my heart rate today I was in the “anaerobic (hardcore training)” zone much of the time. But that is simply NOT true because if anybody is in the anaerobic zone, they are breathing hard. I was breathing quite slow and easy.
Any level of exercise will burn calories. My effort level for today’s 10K was subjectively classified as “easy” because I never had to breathe harder than as if I were walking leisurely.
After today’s indoor rowing session was done and I touched the Apple Watch to have it stop logging the rowing workout, one of my Activity friends for that watch app sent the encouraging message, “You rock!” (The Apple Watch app gives you the option to reply each time it notifies you that one of your activity friends has completed some kind of workout. It has a varying selection of pre-formatted responses that you can opt from to send to that friend also.)
I don’t always respond back, because they don’t expect it for most of them, but this time I responded back with my pun for the day of “Rock and row.” A while later, she took a few more moments from her busy day and responded to my pun with “Ha ha” which I thought was nice also, since my puns usually only get groans in response.
