
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.




Happy rowing to you!

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.




Happy rowing to you!

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)

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.




Happy rowing to you!

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.







Happy rowing to you!

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.




Happy rowing to you!

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.



Happy rowing to you!

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.




Happy rowing to you!

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.





Happy rowing to you!

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





Happy rowing to you!

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?

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.





Happy rowing to you!

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 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



Happy rowing to you!