As the title implies, today’s indoor rowing session was 10K with a target pace of 2 minutes 20 seconds per 500 meters. After the session was finished, I downloaded a CSV file of the session from the Concept 2 online logbook and had a spreadsheet compute the average heart rate for all the recorded heartbeats. It came out to be an average of about 109.7 BPM. It was interesting to me, because yesterday’s 10K was done with the goal of keeping HR as near as possible to 110 throughout the session and the comparison of results, comparing yesterday’s bottom line to today’s, weren’t what I expected.
Stats summary for today’s 10K. A calorie rate of 683 per hour is much more than I would have expected at heart rate of 110.
Today’s indoor rowing session was inspired by an indoor rowing acquaintance who said he is going to try rowing ordinary daily sessions at a target HR rate of 110 BPM. The inspiration was also related to what a cardiologist, Dr. Joel Kahn, wrote on pages 175-176 of the hardback copy of his book, “The Whole Heart Solution,” where he referred to studies which showed that endurance athletes who push themselves too hard, for too much of the time, have higher rates of death from heart attack than even couch potatoes.
Based on the results of the studies he mentions, Dr. Kahn recommends that endurance athletes spend most of their time running “like a turtle.” So I suppose that would apply to rowing also. Relish the hard rowing occasionally but avoid over-indulging in hard, high heart-rate rowing.
Inspiration for today’s title was partly because I ate lunch immediately before doing today’s 10K. It was a small lunch – just two slices of toast with peanut butter and unsweetened dill relish (instead of sugary jelly). Inspiration was also because I remembered David Churbuck’s comment to the post of March 24th, 2017 when he mentioned the risk of eating a meal immediately before rowing, if the rowing would be hard, competitive rowing. He has a unique blog called Churbuck.com which relates to many things, including rowing.
At any rate… today’s rowing session for me was neither competitive nor hard. But it was fun and mentally absorbing, because of the constant focus on keeping HR as near as possible to the target.
This is an automatic engine governor and if you really want to know more about it, search images for “engine governor” and it should be one of the first results. At least… it was one of the first results when I used Bing to do the search. My engine governor was discretionary instead of automatic and required a little attention to the heart rate display.
Today’s rowing was brief. It consisted of 5 minutes of easy and non-scientific warmup, followed by the main 2,000 meter piece and finished with a 5 minute warm down.
The 2,000 meter plan was to row at an average pace of 2:00 minutes per 500 meters (about 203 Watts) but to limit heart rate to a maximum of 140 BPM and slow the pace if it exceeded 140 BPM.
Finish screen for today’s 2,000 meter portion of the total rowing.Report for today’s total rowing.RowPro graphs for the 2,000 meters portion of today’s rowing.Concept 2 online logbook chart for the 2,000 meters portion of today’s rowing.
My rowing companion today was a lovely young woman from Israel.
There have been far too many days without rowing recently but today was a happy day in that respect because it was possible to fit in a 10K. Today’s 10K was done with the sole target and goal of averaging 149 Watts.
The 10K was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and may eventually (a few hours from this moment) be found at this link: “Indoor Rowing 10K 148 Watts Target 02152018“.
Finish screen for today’s 10K.Report for today’s 10K.RowPro graphs for today’s 10K.Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K.
After two days of zero rowing, today resumed with the series of 10K sessions increasing by one average Watt per session. Today’s 10K was done at 148 Watts average power and heart rate, which had been unchanged for the past 2 or 3 increases of one Watt, finally increased by the end of this session.
Today’s indoor rowing was different from yesterday’s in that the average power was increased by one more Watt, from 146 to 147 Watts. That resulted in a small increase in pace and a total increase of 1 “large” calorie but there was no resulting increase of heart rate at the end.
Tomorrow’s session is planned to be 148 Watts.
Today’s session was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and will eventually be available at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 10K at 147 Watts 02092018“.
Report for today’s 147 Watt 10K.RowPro graphs for today’s 147 Watt 10K.Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 147 Watt 10K.
Today’s session was another 10K and today’s goal was to achieve an average effort, in Watts, of one Watt more than yesterday’s average Watts. It didn’t feel any different. There is probably a margin of error of about 1/2 of an average Watt.
Comparing today’s session report to that of February 7th (yesterday) the total calories increased by one calorie, the pace was faster by -0.2 seconds per 500 meters and the ending heart rate was the same today and yesterday, at 133 BPM. It should be noted that officially the number of calories increase from yesterday to today was one “unofficial” calorie because it is in layman’s terms, which is a “large” calorie or… in official physics terms the “kilogram calorie” or one “kilo-calorie”.
There are so MANY official calories in the food we eat that the number is made to seem a smaller and also more easily manageable number by dividing them by 1,000 and using an unofficial term for units of energy. The link immediately preceding this sentence is to a Wikipedia article and though many things in Wikipedia are untrue, biased or part of the truth is censored… the article on calories seems accurate. (I took a few courses in high school and college physics.)
So… that little Snickers candy bar (yummy!) which is listed as having a “mere” 250 calories actually has 250 kilo-calories which in normal physics terms is 250,000 actual official calories. Yes, it is a lot of energy.
Tomorrow’s goal: Increase average power by one more average Watt.
Report for today’s 146 average Watts 10K.RowPro graphs for today’s 146 average Watts 10K. Heartbeat briefly went irregular at least 4 times, where the vertical HR lines are graphed. I could feel it, each time.Concept 2 chart for today’s 146 average Watts 10K.
Today was another in a string of indoor rowing 10Ks. Yes, I’m addicted to the ethereal* results of indoor rowing. Thus, today’s title.
The plan for today was to aim for a target pace of 2:14/500m and then to increase the effort for tomorrow’s 10K by 1 (one) Watt for tomorrow’s average power. And increase average power by one more Watt the next day, etc until the session’s End HR is about 140 BPM. Its something to do that shouldn’t be overworking the heart, between now and the date of my next cardiologist appointment.
Report for today’s 10K.RowPro graphs for today’s 10K.Concept 2 logbook chart for today’s 10K.
Happy rowing to you.
*Happiness is ethereal. Working or exercising at a sufficient level stimulates the body to produce the hormone serotonin, which is the hormone associated with happiness.
Today’s session was 10,000 meters with a pace target of 2:14/500m average pace while giving attention to heart rate. The heart rate zone painted on the screen wasn’t the same as the mental heart rate zone being used. The mental zone was an upper boundary of around 140.
Today I decided to see what happened if I rowed slow enough that heart rate would be a lot lower than 120 BPM. But the extra-slow rowing only lasted about 3,500 meters. Someone started text-messaging me, so I replied by taking a brief video of the rowing monitor with one hand and continuing to row with the other hand. The text I sent along with that brief video was “I’ll be done in about 30 minutes.”
