Today’s rowing session was 10,300 meters done with eyes closed while rowing at an effort level that felt good.
It’s available on YouTube as a screen recording at: “Indoor Rowing 71 years old Eyes Closed 03252018”
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s rowing session was 10,200 meters with a few changes of pace and rating throughout.
The session was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and can be found at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 71 years old A Change of Pace 03242018”
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s indoor rowing was done at a low rating which worked out to be an average of about 17 strokes per minute for the entire distance. Rowing at a low rating is highly rated in the sense that it is supposed to be a good activity for improving strength.
The session was uploaded to YouTube and is available as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 71 Years Old 10100 meters 03232018”
Happy rowing to you.
To say it another way, the rowing chart of a well-behaved heart is not messy, like the charts for yesterday’s session, with all the gaps and vertical lines for every time the heart rate was too irregular to be measured by the heart strap.
And yes, today’s rowing session was unblemished by irregularity or tachycardia of any sort.
Today started a bit late and so when I was able to get to the rowing machine, I was in a “just do it” frame of mind. The 10K was done at an easy pace, slightly increasing for most of the session and then it tapered during the last part, especially the last 2K which served as a warm down.
The session was uploaded to YouTube and is available as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 71 years old 10K Tapered 03212018”
Happy rowing to you. Just do it.
Yesterday’s general plan for today’s indoor rowing was to do it first thing in the morning, before even having breakfast. But a bout of insomnia which lasted from 3 to 5:30 a.m. made everything later.
Today’s rowing was done in the mid afternoon. It was 10,000 meters at an easy pace with 4 intervals of 500 meters each at a moderately hard pace.
The rowing session was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and can be viewed at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 71 Years Old 10K 03192018“.
Happy rowing and insomnia-free sleeping to you.
Today’s session was 10K with variable pacing. The pace variations were mainly during four stretches of 500 meter pace increases. Those were done with enough effort to feel like work, because I had to breathe a little harder. But no sweat dripped onto the rowing machine, so all-in-all it was an easy workout.
The session was uploaded to YouTube and may be found at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 71 Years Old 10K Variable Pace 03182018“.
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s indoor rowing session was a deliberately conservative 10K. It was 10K, because that’s the minimum distance I can row in a day for one of the two current Concept 2 challenges in which I’m participating. It was a laid-back pace, because I’m looking for confirmation that all negatively influential traces of the intravenous chemicals (received during the cardio PET scan on March 12) are completely flushed-out.
The session went well, so perhaps they are.
If you are wondering what the title reference to “sleeping heart trail” is about, that is mentioned, along with relevant images, below the screenshots of today’s rowing results. (It mainly has to do with a sleeping-heart rhythm graph the likes of which I’d never seen before and which I’m guessing was due to the after-effect influence of one or more of the injected compounds received during the cardio PET scan. )
Today’s 10K was done with some non-periodic variations in pace. It was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and is available at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 10K with variations 03172018“.
Now, for the Sleeping-Heart Trail part:
Below are graphs of heart rate samples taken during the nine most recent nights of sleep, before and after the cardio PET scan which was done the afternoon of March 12th. During the scan, there was first an injection of radioactive isotope solution, to highlight the heart, whose normal behavior was the focus of the first scan. That first scan lasted 14 minutes according to the technician.
After the first scan, there was an injection which was mainly if not exclusively a solution containing regadenoson. The effect of that second injection was to greatly dilate blood vessels and thereby cause the heart to beat faster in order to compensate for the corresponding reduction in blood pressure. The regadenosone effect was definitely noticeable but lasted only for about 3 minutes.
As another side effect, it cause my rate of respiration to increase, though breathing remained very shallow, as though I was almost not breathing except for the slight increase in frequency of the chest slightly expanding and contracting more than it had been before the injection.
An additional side effect was that near the end of the 3 minutes I could feel a light degree of perspiration as though all my skin which was directly exposed to the air had been dampened with a moist cloth.
The single most noticeable side effect during the three minutes was that I felt agitated and restless and had a strong urge to get off the horizontal platform and pace around the room, instead of laying still. I remained motionless by an act of will to resist that urge.
But… three nights later the sleeping heart graph was something I’ve never ever seen before: It was totally flat for the entire night, except once when it was abnormally high. Normally, my heart rate varies slightly during the night and either gradually tapers down to an overall slower BPM or gradually tapers up, from the beginning to the end of the total recorded sleep period. In other words, the heart rate graph during a night’s sleep usually has an average slope either up or down from beginning to end.
I suspect the abnormally straight-line regularity had something to do with the regadenoson, since it is the only chemical of which I’m aware which is directly related to heart behavior and which was included in the injections during the scan.
While rowing the next day after the ultra-regular all-night heart rhythm, I experienced one of the most irregular and excessively-high heart rhythm and BPM episodes of any ever experienced during an erg session. (See the post titled Revisiting Rowing Through A Heart Attack.)
Also on the night of the 14th-15th which is graphed above, there was an “elevated heart rate” notification from the Apple Watch for that night:
Another thought is, that whether or not the unusual heart behavior recently was due to the lingering presence of one or more of the injected chemicals, it may have been also related to the heart’s recovery from whatever it was that it experienced during the chemical stress test.
Happy and heart healthy rowing to you.
Today’s session was virtually the same to yesterday’s in that it was 11K with 4 un-timed intervals. But it was deliberately done at an average effort level slightly higher than yesterday’s, so as to cause me to sweat a few drops. In other words, it was almost but not quite like work. I still classified it as an “easy” session, which is where I’ve been keeping the perceived effort level of most of the sessions recently, since the phenomenon of irregular heartbeat seems to appear if I row any harder than “easy” for the average session effort level.
Yesterday I was the subject of a cardio PET scan, so the cardiologist could see a moving picture of my heart. As part of that process, there was an injection of a radioactive isotope solution into my bloodstream.
I’m trying to drink lots of water, to help flush out the radioactivity. Some of it was expelled during the rowing session this morning, in the form of radioactive sweat.
The effort level today was a total of only 7 “food calories” more than yesterday but that resulted in a few (very few) drops of sweat on my face. The effort level resulted in touching the face of the work zone but not getting all the way into that zone, so there was not enough sweat for any of it to even get past my beard and rain onto the rowing machine. The erg remained completely dry.
The four intervals were each from 300 to 700 meters and were separated from each other about 2,000 to 3,000 meters. The remaining distance after the 4th interval was used as a warm down.
The session was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and is available at the following link: “Indoor Rowing with 4 Widely Spaced INTERVALS 03132018”
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s indoor rowing began in a bit of a fog. There was no plan, except to complete the entire distance, which was 11K.
What I ended up doing was rowing a couple K at around 2:19, then sprinting moderately faster at around 2:10 for a few hundred meters and repeating that, with slight variations, three more times for a total of 4 intervals during the 11K.
The last 1,000 meters was used as a warm down.
The session was recorded and uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing with four 500m intervals 03122018”
Happy rowing to you.
The object of today’s 11K rowing session was to do a few intervals, so as to feel the “work” aspect of the workout and to row moderately in between the intervals at a level that would keep heart rate above 110 during the “rest” times.
Instead of using a timer, I somewhat randomly decided when to do the intervals and how long to do each one. Is it possible to “randomly decide”? Call it what you want, that’s what I did. Most of the intervals were about one minute but some were a bit longer. When I did each interval, I counted strokes to at least 30 strokes. But it was always more than 30 by the time each interval finished and sometimes more than 40 strokes.
The session was uploaded to YouTube and is available as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 8 Intervals 03112018”
Happy rowing to you.