Today’s EliteHRV Morning Readiness analysis said it was okay to do anything, so I didn’t have any excuse not to row.Last night’s sleep was okay until just before 5 AM again, when I became wide awake after the second of 3 trips to the bathroom. I tried to just lay still and fall back to sleep but it didn’t work. So I went to another room and sat and did “HRV breathing” in “coherence” for about 20 minutes. At least there was no Afib like the night before. Felt relaxed enough after that to get a total of 7 hours 55 minutes of actual sleep.
Today’s main workout was the same distance as yesterday’s main session and it was done to the accompaniment of a pace boat that duplicated yesterday’s rowing. My goal was to stay about 10 meters ahead of yesterday’s rowing, throughout the distance. Near the finish, I picked up the pace a bit more to make sure that today’s session was a few calories more than yesterday’s. The estimated level of exertion for today’s main session was RPE Level 5.
In addition to the rowing session, I also used the SkiErg, to burn almost another 300 calories. There will be no screen shots relating to the SkiErg in this post.
finish screen for today’s main sessionreport for today’s main sessionRowPro graphs for today’s main sessionConcept 2 online logbook chart for today’s main session
Today’s EliteHRV morning readiness analysis was good again.
Last night’s sleep was a little short at 6 hours 10 minutes, but it was good sleep with no insomnia interruption.
Today’s main session was rowing until arriving at a total of 800 calories, done at RPE level 7. The main session is available as a screen recording for those who’d like to row-along. It’s link on YouTube is: Indoor Rowing 800 Calories 01212019
The Concept 2 rowing machine is an ergometer and it accurately measures work. It registered 800 calories for the main rowing session today, but the Apple Watch, which independently logged the workout as a rowing session, shows quite a few less calories than the Concept 2 ergometer. So don’t rely on the Apple Watch calorie count if you do a rowing workout.
Today’s second of three sessions was another attempt on the SkiErg to do a one minute sprint. The sprint was done at RPE level 9 and it was a better result than yesterday’s because I didn’t start out too fast and was able to maintain the pace for the entire minute. The third and last session today was going to be another attempt at a 500 meter sprint on the SkiErg, but I started out too fast or didn’t have a suitable drag factor setting (or perhaps I was too tired??), so I let that “sprint” fade into a warm down and the resulting RPE for the 500 meters was Level 4.
Finish screen for 800 calorie rowing.
Report for 800 calorie rowing at RPE level 7.
RowPro graphs for 800 calorie rowing.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for 800 calorie rowing.
There is no report or graph for the 100 meter sprint on SkiErg because it wasn’t done with RowPro but above is a screenshot of the summary data.
The final session for the day was 500 meters on the SkiErg which started out as an attempt to improve the previous, ranked result. But I started out too fast to maintain it so let it fade into a warm down. Heart rate fade lagged behind the fade of effort level.
Today’s HRV Morning Readiness analysis was good, so rowing was okay to do. Of course, it has been good for several days WITHOUT having done any rowing on those days… but today some rowing was actually done!
Today’s main workout was an aerobic row of 19,384 meters. It was at RPE level 2. It was followed by a first time attempt at a one minute sprint on the SkiErg, at what started out at RPE level 10 and faded. That was followed by 500 meters on the SkiErg at RPE level 5, to serve as a warm down for a warm down. Lastly, there was a SkiErg final warm down of about two minutes at RPE level 1.
Last night’s sleep had a bit of insomnia but total sleep was good at 7 hours 50 minutesFinish screen for today’s rowing session of 19,384 meters. It started out as a full marathon in case I felt inclined to go that distance.RowPro report for today’s main session. The finish screen at the time the RowPro session was stopped showed 1,100 calories. This report shows 1,097 calories. The Concept 2 logbook shows 1,095 calories. What’s a few calories, among friends?RowPro graphs for today’s main session.Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s main session.Chart for today’s first time ever 1 minute sprint attempt on SkiErg. You can see that though my effort level faded, heart rate did not fade with the fading effort level.After the 1 minute SkiErg sprint I did two warmdowns. This was the first warm down, 500 meters on the SkiErg at RPE level 5.:This was the final warm down: two minutes on the SkiErg at an RPE 1 effort level that allowed heart rate to slow down.
That’s right – yesterday I only worked out for 400 meters. It was, however, at RPE level 10. The 400 meters yesterday consisted of four 100 meter sprints on the Concept 2 SkiErg. Summary screenshot below:
Of the four 100 meter sessions, the lastest was the fastest at 22.8 seconds, so I included it in the Concept 2 Online Logbook World Rankings for 100 meters on a SkiErg. I placed second to last…Second to last is …. better than last, but not by much!
As today’s title implies, there was no workout on rowing machine or SkiErg today. But… the daily EliteHRV readings and sleep log graphs were captured and those exciting screenshots are displayed below:
January 17, 2019 EliteHRV Morning Readiness readingJanuary 17th, 2019 logged 7 hours 10 minutes sleep in spite of a bout of insomnia.Today (January 18, 2019) also had a good Morning Readiness reading.Only logged 5 hours 20 minutes sleep on the morning of January 18th, after a longish bit of insomnia and the necessity to get out of bed with an alarm clock, to assist in keeping a doctor’s appointment for my better half.
Today’s workout consisted of 5,027 meters on the SkiErg followed by 5,027 meters on the rowing machine. All done indoors, of course.
Today’s EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading was okay for any workout, though the HRV score wasn’t as high as yesterday’s.
The day began with a green light from EliteHRV (see above) and a good night’s rest of 7 hours 40 minutes (see below)
The first of the two workout sessions was set up to be 10K on the SkiErg. That’s what yesterday’s SkiErg session was supposed to be also, but I quit that one yesterday after about 2 miles. Today I got further with it and quit today’s 10K on the SkiErg after a little over 3 miles, logging 5,027 meters.
So for today’s rowing session, I set the rowing machine for the exact same distance, 5,027 meters to compare results. You can see from the session reports that I went a lot faster, with a lower heart rate, rowing than SkiErg-ing.
SkiErg session finish screen.SkiErg session report.SkiErg RowPro graphConcept 2 Online logbook chart for SkiErg. The chart is messy with black lines because there were many false readings for strokes, with the SkiErg connected to RowPro.Finish screen for rowing the 5,027 meter distance.Today’s rowing reportToday’s rowing session RowPro graphsThe Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s rowing session is a lot cleaner looking than the SkiErg chart because it is displaying correct data for strokes and stroke rate.
This morning’s EliteHRV readiness reading was good, but the most remarkable thing was the HRV score of 54. This was the first time HRV score has ever been higher than mid 40s.
Last night’s sleep was interrupted by a long stretch of insomnia from about 2:30 to about 5:00 AM. One thing I did during that insomnia was to resort to an emWave2 device and breathe following its breath pacer, which resulted in a longest-ever “meditation” of 36 minutes in a state of “coherence”. I wonder if that was a factor in getting the higher-than-ever HRV reading with EliteHRV today?
Today’s main indoor rowing session was indoor skiing on a Concept 2 SkiErg. I connected it to RowPro for the sake of logging it and getting a bigger screen display of data. Since RowPro is only designed with rowing machines = boat avatars in mind, it looked like I was rowing a boat on the digital river. Something was going on with the stroke rate not translating well to the display and instead of displaying what should have been a stroke rate in the 20s or 30s, it was all over the place and very frequently displaying a false stroke rate of over 100 SPM. But the other data looked okay.
I preset the distance to 10,000 meters on the SkiErg, but by the time I reached between 2K and 3K I was breathing hard and sweating profusely, though my average pace was a mere 3:00 minutes/500m. So I guess it will take a lot of getting used to as an unfamiliar workout for my underused upper body.
Instead of going the full distance of 10K, I stopped skiing after about 2 miles, which was 3,250 meters. Since I’m brand new to the SkiErg, I started out with the lowest possible damper setting at 0 (zero) and that was a Drag Factor of about 51 according to the PM5.
I rated both the SkiErg 3250 meters and the rowing machine 1,000 meters as each RPE 5.
After the shortened session on the SkiErg I switched to the familiar Concept 2 Model D and rowed 1,000 meters plus a 750 meter warm down.
Do you check your email frequently or have notifications turned on so that your phone alerts you every time you receive a new email? I don’t. Too many emails. So the only time I know there’s new email is when I log in to the email account.
A problem with that, it turned out, was that once recently when one of my training partners wanted to do a rowing session online, I didn’t see his email until too late. So I told him that it would be okay if he wanted to send a text message for any scheduled online rowing sessions, to make sure I knew about them enough in advance to say yea or nay.
Today, he took me up on that and sent a text message. (Screenshot of that text message is at the top of this post.) About 40 minutes after his text, we were online and rowing an hour session together even though we are each located somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 miles away from each other. One of the nicer “wonders” of the internet. Even though it is “virtual” company when you row online with one or more other people, it makes the session a lot more enjoyable than rowing alone.
Today’s EliteHRV Morning Readiness analysis was that any kind of workout would be okay.
Plenty of sleep last night, at 7 hours 15 minutes.
So the main rowing done today was a 60 minute piece, online at a breezy pace which felt like RPE 2. A screen recording was made for those of you who’d like to have it to row-along with. It is available at this link: Indoor Rowing 60 mins online 01142019
After the 60 minute piece, I rowed a 4 minute session. Did that because I hadn’t yet rowed a 4 minute session this season and I thought it would be nice to put it in the rankings. It was done with a pace boat and a target pace of about 2:05. It felt like about RPE 4. A screen recording for rowing-along with it is available at this link: Indoor Rowing 4 minutes 01142019
Finish screen view of today’s 60 minutes online.
Finish screen view of today’s 4 minute piece.There was only one brief moment of heart strangeness (Afib) today and it happened during the last half of the 4 minute session, where you can see a downward spike to zero in heart rate. That’s where heartbeat fluttered briefly, becoming irregular and the heart strap transmitter couldn’t provide a coherent signal to display.Concept 2 online logbook chart of today’s 4 minute session.
This morning’s EliteHRV Readiness reading was optimal for any kind of rowing…
Today began with a good HRV reading, so there were no restrictions regarding rowing. Also, it followed a good night’s sleep, which was another plus.
Seven hours and forty minutes of good quality sleep last night.
Today’s indoor rowing consisted of two sessions. First, a one minute session which was done just for the sake of putting anything in the rankings for the 1 minute sprint category. Second, was a longer session of 8,224 meters, which was done just for the sake of logging more calories for a current Concept 2 challenge.
The one minute session was preceded by a 750 meter warmup and followed by a 750 meter warm down. The one minute sprint was done with a target pace that would rank me at about the lower 25% of those who had ranked 1 minute sessions to date. That was a pace target of about 1:49/500 meters. I didn’t want to row any faster than that, because the warm up was too short and I wouldn’t really be warmed up enough for an all-out 60 second sprint.
After the one minute sprint was finished, I did an easy 750 meter warm down and that is when the “heart strangeness” happened. It felt like a bit of fluttering and heart rate spiked and remained higher than it should have been for the easy warm down pace. Another strange thing about that strange heart rate behavior during the warm down was that when it spiked, it spiked up to 150 BPM, which is exactly as high as heart rate managed to climb, before the ultra-short 1 minute sprint was finished. Was that a coincidence? Or was that the heart’s way of saying it wanted to sprint for longer than one minute? One minute wasn’t enough indulgence in sprinting? The heart is eager, and “rarin’ to go” racing?
That “strangeness” happened in uncharted territory, because the warm down was tacked on to the 1 minute RowPro session and RowPro does not include tacked-on warmups or warm downs in its charts for the main session report. Below is a screenshot of what heart rate looked like when it spiked during the warm down.
Heart rate had been in the mid- to low-120s during the warmdown, until abour 426 meters remaining, when it spiked up to 150 even though rowing effort remained at a constant, easy level.
A screen recording was made of the entire 1 minute session including its warmup and warm down, so if you view the screen recording, you can see how it acted in real-time on the RowPro screen. The one minute session screen recording is here: Indoor Rowing 1 minute sprint 01122019
For those of you who’d like to row-along with it, a screen recording was also made of the 8,224 meter session and it is available at this link: Indoor rowing 8224 meters 01122019
After the warm down following the 1 minute sprint, I thought I’d have to stop rowing for the rest of the day, but within a few minutes the Afib went away and heart behavior returned to normal, so I did the 8224 meter session in order to bring the day’s total to 10,000 meters and burn a few more calories.
Finish screen for 1 minute sprint.Finish screen for 8224 meter session.
On the brink of death or what? This morning was the worst reading I’ve ever had.
Yes, this morning’s EliteHRV reading was the WORST EVER reading since I’ve been taking the daily Morning Readiness reading. But I ended up discarding it, because though my actual HRV reading might have been poor, it also might have been good… the results were skewed and basically worthless because there were too many data glitches. See additional screenshot below, for what EliteHRV said about today’s reading.
The “artifacts” were due to the fact that I was having a little bout of heart flutter AKA atrial fibrillation.
I got plenty of sleep last night, at 8 hours and 20 minutes. But you can see that heart rate was elevated from about 5:30 AM through the entire remaining time of last night’s sleep – that’s when the heart fluttering happened.
Other than the fluttering heart, I felt okay. It stopped fluttering around midday and I decided to row late in the afternoon, at a moderate pace.
Today’s rowing session was 17,000 meters done for the sake of burning calories. The hope was to burn at least 1,000 calories and that goal was almost reached, with a total of 988 or 989 calories. (The finish screen reported 988 calories and the report says 989 calories).
A screen recording was made for those of you who like to have it to row along with. It is available at this link: Indoor Rowing 17000 meters 01092019
Today’s Readiness was taking with a grain of salt as I mentioned in yesterday’s post… but the grain of salt was later dispensed with after I received more knowledge about the app from a reliable expert on the matter.
There was no indoor rowing goal at the start of the day, except to do some rowing before eating anything. The goal of burning more than 1,000 calories rowing today was decided upon after rowing a 60 minute session, warming down, looking at the total calorie count and noticing it was less than 1,000. One of the current Concept 2 challenges is called “The Big Burn”. The object of that challenge is to burn at least 20,000 calories on a C2 machine this January.
This morning a friend explained how to easily check to see whether or not the EliteHRV app had detected any “signal artifacts” during its morning reading. If it has detected any artifacts, the reliability of its reading is in question, according to his analysis. Checking simply involves clicking/touching a few particular places on the app, but I had been unaware of that.
The happy news was that there were no artifacts and the morning readiness reading today is worthwhile as a training signal.
Another important training signal, quantity of sleep, was also “GO” for training today, at more than 8 hours sleep.
Resting heart rate was a little high at 55 BPM. That was not a drastic difference from normal and was probably due to the virus that tried to get a foothold the previous day. So I took the RHR as a “GO” training signal also.
There is another possible training signal that I don’t know what to think of yet, so I guess I’ll just have to keep watch on it from day to day to form an opinion. It is a relatively new data feature of the sleep logging app I use (SleepWatch): Average heart rate during sleep. It seems to me that average sleeping heart rate would be influenced by things like how much a person ate before bedtime, how much time passed after eating and before going to bed and room temperature, to name a few things that come to mind. I don’t know if it is as relevant as RHR or relevant at all, as any kind of a training guide or signal.
There is a screen recording of the main piece, a 60 minute rowing session today. For those of you who’d like to row along with it, the link for the screen recording can be found here: Indoor Rowing 60 minutes 01052019
Screenshots for the 60 minute piece are below. It was done at about RPE Level 5. The other two shorter shorter pieces were done at RPE Level 1 and I won’t bother posting anything about them. But they are visible to anyone who has a Concept 2 logbook account and who is logged in to the online logbook.
I didn’t get a very early start today and my legs felt a bit tired, so I put off rowing until after noon. For the sake of getting more critical repair and replacement work on my mitochondria, especially the heart mitochondria, I also put off eating until after rowing was finished. So the time before breaking fast was more than 20 hours, which was a solid 8 hours of special benefit to the mitochondria. Happily, both heart rate & rhythm behaved perfectly.
