Fun Workout – Page 2 – Ethereal Rowing

Valerian Skewed HRV?

I was skeptical of this morning’s Readiness score by EliteHRV app.

I don’t know for certain why the Readiness score and resulting “advice” from EliteHRV app’s heart rate variability analysis was so poor this morning but I suspected Valerian. The reason I suspected it is because last night I took a dose of Valerian before bed and again in the middle of the night, to aid sleep.

The Valerian made me feel very relaxed or tired. I don’t know if it influenced my heart rate to slow down, but I did notice that heart rate dropped as low as 44 BPM during the morning. (See screen shot below)

I was surprised to see the Apple Watch display heart rate as low as 44 during the day when I was awake and moving around. Was this an aftereffect of the Valerian?

Other than feeling exorbitantly relaxed (I know… “exorbitant’ isn’t an appropriate adjective here, but I’m using sloppy poetic license and will use it anyway)… I felt okay.

So I ignored the recommendation of EliteHRV and rowed the way I normally would. And “skied” the way I normally would, on the SkiErg after rowing.

Speaking of rowing and skiing, those were today’s workouts in that order: 10K of rowing with intervals every 1K, followed by 10 minute rowing warm down, followed by 124 Calories of alternating 10 calorie intervals on the SkiErg.

Finish screen for today’s 10K rowing session. Did I mention that it was done online, in the good company of another rower who was a few thousand miles away on the East Coast of USA?

Some data and a chart for today’s 124 Calorie SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

Caution: Only Do What Feels Good

This morning’s cautionary recommendation from EliteHRV Readiness analysis.

This morning’s score of YELLOW / 5 from the EliteHRV heart rate variability analysis app indicated that I should take it easy. So my interpretation of that was to only do what felt good with regard to rowing and avoid any effort that felt painful. That seemed to be the most logical approach, since I don’t know what the definition is of the term “active recovery”. But I do know what the word “active” means.

It seemed to work okay.

So the workouts today consisted of the following, in chronological order: A 3 minute rowing warmup, a 10K rowing session online with 3 other guys, a 30 minute rowing session online with 12 other guys, a 10 minute rowing warm down and finally a 123 Calorie SkiErg workout of moderate alternating 10 calorie intervals.

Below, I’ll show screenshots for everything except warmup and warmdown.

Finish screen view for today’s 10K rowing.

Finish screen view for today’s 30 minute rowing.

Data and chart for today’s 123 Calorie SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

An Online Hour+

The EliteHRV morning readiness score was good but not quite as good as yesterday’s.

Today’s workout started with a 60 minute session online with three other guys. But one of those three didn’t show, so it was just two others besides me who actually rowed. During the 60 minutes I did most of the rowing at a pace of about 2:15 with the exception of once ever 10 minutes after the first 10 minutes doing an interval which lasted 60 seconds.

After the 60 minute session, there was a 10 minute warm down and then I switched from rowing machine to SkiErg and did 118 Calories on that.

Finish screen view of today’s 60 minute session.

Some data and a chart for today’s 118 Calorie SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

Some Online Rowing & Offline SkiErging

The EliteHRV Morning Readiness analysis of heart rate variability was as good as I could hope for.

Today’s workouts consisted of an online 10K session, a 10 minute warm down online then a 6779 meter online session (all rowing). After those three, I did a SkiErg session that was 117 Calories.

This is a finish view of the graph section of the 10K RowPro session. You can readily tell that I did intervals. They began after the first 2K meters, lasted one minute each and were repeated every 1K after the first interval.

RowPro report for today’s 60 minute online session. I won’t bother to display data or graphs for the other two rowing sessions – a 10 minute warm down and a 6779 meter piece, but if you really want to see them all you have to do is log into your concept2.com logbook account and view them in my logbook, which is viewable by all logged-in users.

This is a view of some of the data for the 117 Calorie SkiErg session. It consisted of 10 Calorie intervals with recovery periods of about 10 calories each.

Happy rowing to you!

Inspired By Dr. Ormsbee

Today’s EliteHRV heart rate variability Morning Readiness analysis was a green light for any effort level.

Yesterday evening my better half and I watched some episodes of a course on diet and exercise by Dr. Michael Ormsbee. It is a very much in-depth course, on the college level. I would have to watch the episodes again and take a few pages of notes if I were to be tested on it. But the purpose of watching it wasn’t to become experts. The purpose was to expose ourselves to some teaching on the subject which is based on research studies and the evidence gathered by those.

One thing Dr. Ormsbee mentioned that I already knew was enough to both remind and re-motivate me to resume rowing again today. I can’t quote it exactly from memory, but the sense of it was something I already knew: the single most helpful thing a person can do for the sake of good health and avoiding diseases is to workout.

Today’s workout was a 10K online interval rowing session in the company of a few others, followed by 10 minutes of warm down rowing. The warm down rowing was also online in the company of others. After the rowing I topped it off with a series of six 10-Calorie intervals within a single 116 Calorie SkiErg session.

RowPro report for today’s 10K online session.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K.

Concept 2 online logbook data display for today’s 116 Calorie SkiErg interval session.

Happy rowing to you!

Unleashed For A Day

The EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading doesn’t get any better than a balanced 10.

This morning’s heart rate variability analysis gave a score of 10, which is as good as it gets with the EliteHRV app’s Morning Readiness reading.

So I decided to go for an SB (season best) in the 10K rowing. After that, there was a 115 calorie interval session on the SkiErg.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K rowing.

Concept 2 online logbook data for today’s 115 Calorie SkiErg piece.

Happy rowing to you!

A Green Light To Go

Today’s HRV reading was greatly improved over yesterday’s, so it was OK to workout as hard as I wanted.

The workout today was 10K online in the company of two other guys. There were 8 intervals of 30 strokes each during the 10K

Finish screen view for today’s online 10K.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s online 10K.

After the 10K rowing, this little session was done on SkiErg

Happy rowing to you!

Two Heart Rate Extremes

This morning’s HRV analysis gave a green light for any effort level during the workout.

Although I gave today’s workouts an overall RPE Level 4 rating, which is unremarkable, the observed lowest and highest heart rates seemed very remarkable.

One thing I have a habit of doing every morning is checking to see what my lowest/resting heart rate was during the night, and jotting it down in a notepad. The lowest heart rate during the night had been 53.

But after I changed into rowing clothes, put on the heart strap and sat on the rowing machine before starting to row, heart rate went as low as 51 BPM, which was 2 BPM lower than the lowest it had been during the night while I was laying motionless and in deep sleep!

Perhaps my body was anticipating morning coffee, with its dose of caffeine stimulant and was suppressing its own production of whatever comparable stimulant(s) it makes?

Heart rate was nice and low, before doing any rowing this morning. Just before I reached out to the keyboard to take this screenshot, displayed heart rate had been 51 BPM.

After today’s rowing session, I did a short session on the Concept 2 SkiErg. Heart rate managed to surprise me again by going to the other extreme and reaching as high as 185 during one of the SkiErg intervals.

After the workouts, I made coffee and enjoyed about 5 “cups” (30 liquid ounces) of dark black coffee during the next few hours of the morning.

After the 4th of 5 intervals during the SkiErg workout, HR went as high as 185. Its easy to work hard on the SkiErg…

The main workout today was 10K on the rowing machine. It was done online. This is a view of the finish screen for today’s 10K rowing session.

RowPro graphs for today’s 10K rowing session.

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

Happy rowing to you!

A Two Week Hiatus

Finish screen view immediately after today’s hour session.

Yes, it has been about 14 days since the most recent previous post here. In that time, some mostly invisible changes and improvements have been made to this website. Those changes are: the website is now encrypted and has an https address. It took a bit of work, but now if you post a comment and include your email address when making the comment (an email address is required to make a comment), that information is all encrypted and cannot be read by anybody who may be snooping/sniffing on any wifi network you use.

Though I took a hiatus from posting to this blog, I continued doing workouts on Concept 2 machines and have logged an additional 112,263 meters since March 9th.

Today’s Elite HRV morning readiness reading was good, so I was free to row at any effort level:

Today’s HRV analysis with the EliteHRV app.

Today’s session was done online. For those of you who would like to row-along with it, a screen recording was made and it can be found at this link: AHh Indoor Rowing 60 minutes online 03232019