Today’s session was about 51 minutes of mostly easy rowing, with twelve brief touches to the breathing-a-little-bit-hard work zone. Those twelve touches were one minute intervals.
The session was uploaded to YouTube and is available as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing with 12 One minute intervals 03102018”
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s indoor rowing session was setup as an 11K distance. It was done to the accompaniment of a beeping interval timer which was set for endlessly repeating intervals of 4 minutes alternating with 1 minute. I used the 1 minute intervals as the time during which to increase the pace, but you could do it the other way around if you wanted to spend 4 minutes working and 1 minute resting.
One minute every 5 minutes felt good.
It was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and is available at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 11 one minute intervals with 4 minutes rest 03092018”
Happy rowing to you.
Today I happened to be able to have a few minutes conversation with a surgeon. Those few minutes were relating to exercise. What she said was especially notable in the context of this blog because she said that the single best thing a person can do to help avoid or (if it may be the case) fight off cancer is to exercise.
She said that she herself didn’t start exercising until she was 40, but that now she exercises every day. Her preference is CrossFit, early in the mornings… something not practical for us. But she did mention the rowing machine and said that though she “hates it,” it is the very best thing for elevating a person’s heart rate. She recommends intervals for that purpose. Intervals can be arranged so that they dole out work in small but regular doses throughout an exercise session.
She is a cancer surgeon and sees that scourge up close and personal, hundreds of times a year. So she has that much more motivation than most people who rarely or seldom think about it, to live in a way which will best help her to avoid it herself.
She also said that all the cancer doctors she knows exercise,because they know the high value of exercise to help ward off cancer. She referred to another doctor we have met, an oncologist, who “rides a bike 50 miles at a time” as her personal choice of regular exercise for the sake of elevating her heart rate and getting her to the point of breathing hard for a while each day.
She said that exercising at a level that either elevates heart rate or causes a person to breathe harder and feel like they are working (some people call that approach the perceived effort approach) … is important and that she recommends 30 minutes daily of working out.
So… with all that and more in mind, I decided to make intervals a more frequent part of rowing. The intervals of choice today were 1 minute on and three minutes off – one minute of sprinting sorta fast and 3 minutes of taking it easy.
The session was setup as a half marathon but there wasn’t enough time to do the whole distance. It was a fine workout.
The session was uploaded to YouTube and will be available at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 11276 meters 03082018“.
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s rowing session was 12,000 meters. It was done without targets. The only goal was to row at a pace that felt good.
The session was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 751 Calories 03062018“.
Happy rowing to you.
Yesterday, the heart’s little brain got confused and wouldn’t slow down. Today, the same kind of rowing session was done, but at a significantly slower pace and the heart behaved itself.
Instead of aiming for yesterday’s original target pace of 2:00/500m or faster. today’s pace was targeted at just a bit faster than 2:10/500m. Not as much fun as something faster than 2:00, but a lot more fun than yesterday’s stuck-in-high BPM problem.
The session was uploaded to YouTube and is available as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 2x15minR3min Moderate 03052018“.
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s indoor rowing session was another 10K done at an average pace of 2:18/500 meters. But this time, there were 8 intervals thrown in the mix. It was a nice change of pace and felt a lot more invigorating, than the recent 10Ks done at 2:20 to 2:18 pace.
The session was uploaded to YouTube and is available as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing Eight 2 min Intervals In 10K 03022018“.
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s indoor rowing session was a 10K done with the goal of 133 Watts average while rowing a constant pace. That power level of 133 Watts translates to about 2 minutes 18 seconds per 500 meters – which sounds familiar…
There have been no bothersome heart irregularities following yesterday’s 2K time trial fail and today there was only one single blip of irregularity, which can be seen where there’s a vertical line in the HR graphs.
The session is uploaded to YouTube and is available as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 10K at 133 Watts 03012018“.
Happy rowing to you.
Yesterday there was no rowing done here. Today was a 10K done once again at the average pace of 2:18/500m. This one had a lower average heart rate than the previous one which was done on February 25th.
Average heart rate two days ago on the 25th was 123 BPM and average heart rate today was 116 BPM which is a 7 BPM reduction. So that’s good, but I don’t know why the difference. Maybe there was less stress, by the time the rowing was done this afternoon.
The session was uploaded to YouTube and will be available as a screen recording at the following link:”Indoor Rowing 10K at 2m18s Pace 02272018“.
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s indoor rowing session was another 10K in a sequence of 10Ks being done to explore the correlation of effort level and average heart rate. First, I did a 10K with a heart rate target of 110 BPM from start to finish. HR was virtually a constant 110 BPM from start to finish, but in order to do that, the pace had to start out faster and then slow down from start to finish, to maintain 110 BPM HR. The average pace for that 10K was about 2:26.
Next, a 10K with a target of 2:20/500m average pace, to see what heart rate would do. Pace was maintained at 2:20 from start to finish and HR started out below 110 and finished above 110, to average about 109.9 BPM.
Next, a 10K at an average pace of 2:19/500m. Average HR for that session was about 115 BPM which is about 5 BPM increase for that increase in pace.
Today, 10K at an average of 2:18. Average HR today was quite a bit higher than expected, based on the results of yesterday compared to the day before yesterday. Instead of average HR increasing another 5 BPM, it increased by about 8 BPM, to about 123 BPM.
I haven’t decided what to try tomorrow. But one happy result so far is that there have been no incidents of irregular heartbeat at these very low effort levels. So I might hang out in this region for a while and see what happens with some more tweaking of pace or with the same pace and see if HR slows down at that pace.
Today’s session was uploaded to YouTube and is available as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 10K Target Pace 2m18s 02252018“.
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s indoor rowing was another 10K. It was done with the goal of an average pace -1 second/500 meters faster than yesterday’s pace, to see what effect that small change had on average heart rate. Result: Today’s average HR was 115.4 BPM which was about 5 BPM higher than yesterday’s 109.9 BPM average. The increase in calories was a total of 3 for the entire session. The difference in Watts was also 3 more average Watts than yesterday’s.
Today’s 10K was uploaded to YouTube and will be available a few hours from this moment, at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 10K Target Pace 2m19s 02242018“.
Happy rowing to you.