Today’s EliteHRV Morning Readiness analysis was very low. But I had problems going to sleep and staying that way last night which resulted in staying in bed until a little past NOON(!) today. Therefore, the EliteHRV reading was several hours late. The readings are supposed to be taken about the same time every day. I decided to disregard today’s reading, since it was taken much later than it should have been.Last night’s sleep was more than enough at 9hours 10minutes but it was poor quality due to an interruption of wide-awakeness and some Atrial fibrillation.
Today’s main rowing session was 30 minutes online. It wasn’t a race, because there was an agreement between the other guy and me that we’d aim for a pace of 2:10 and I would pace him. I enjoy pacing another rower. I also enjoy racing, which might be why thoughts, cognition and imaginations of racing came to mind during the session. In the midst of that cloud of race-themed neuron activity, entered the thought that both the other guy and me are each in a race against the fictional figure, “Father Time”. We row daily and do other workouts, to avoid being ravaged by some of the effects of passing time which can be mitigated or avoided through aerobic activity.
The 30 minute online session was done at RPE Level 5 and it’s available as a screen recording for those who’d like to row-along. It’s link is: Indoor Rowing Online 30 mins 01252018
Like last night’s sleep was bothered by atrial fibrillation, today’s 30 minute session was also visited by Afib. However it wasn’t the kind of Afib that changes into tachycardia – it just manifested itself with occasional feelings of fluttering and causing the heart strap to lose track of its count which caused the heart rate display to go blank. After about 15 minutes it settled down and went steady again.
The Afib did not reappear after that first 30 minute session. I did 8 more sessions after the 30 minute piece, some on the rowing machine and the rest of them on the SkiErg and there was no more Afib with any of those.
The RPE Levels for the sessions after the 30 minute session were: RPE Level 2 for the 2K warm down, RPE Level 3 for the 3,000 meter piece, RPE Level 10 for the 100 meter sprint and all the rest of them were done at RPE Level 4.
Finish screen for the main 30 minute session.
Report for the main 30 minute session.
The atrial fibrillation was during the first part of the 30 minutes, where heart rate kept disappearing.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for the main 30 minute session.
Chart of the session following the 30 minutes – a 2K warm down with no Atrial fibrillation.
Chart of the 3rd of nine sessions today. This was a 3K and there was no atrial fibrillation.
This is a listing of all nine of today’s sessions on rowing machine and SkiErg. The one that was the most fun was also the shortest – the 100 meter sprint on SkiErg.
This is a graph of this morning’s heart rate samples, taken every few minutes by the Apple Watch. You can see that at about 5 AM heart rate spiked a bit and stayed elevated from 5 AM until this screenshot was taken at about 9 AM. HR returned to normal sometime before noon.
There is no HRV analysis reading for this morning because I was having a bit of Afib at the time the HRV reading should have been taken. Afib during an HRV reading skews the reading and basically makes it worthless. So the EliteHRV app was skipped for today and instead I savored and drank black coffee.
The Afib started early this morning after I woke for a bathroom call at about 0500 and returned to bed. So… rather than lay awake, I got up. Sleep had been good until then but total sleep was a little short, at 5 hours 50 minutes.
Sleep was good and without interruptions from about 11 PM to 5 AM.
I felt okay, so I assumed the HRV reading would have been a “GO” for doing any workout. The goal for today’s aerobic activity was to burn 800 calories. The goal was reached with 3 sessions on the SkiErg and one on the rowing machine.
From first to last they were (1st): A 99 calorie warmup on SkiErg at RPE Level 3, (2nd): 1K on SkiErg at RPE Level 5 (3rd): 2K on SkiErg at RPE Level 6, (4th) 540 calories in 8,995 meters on rowing machine at RPE Level 5.
A screen recording for those who’d like to row-along was made of the rowing session and it is available at this link: Indoor Rowing 540 Calories 01232019
Summary data and chart for the SkiErg warmup.
Summary data and chart for the 1,000 meter session on SkiErg
Summary data and chart for 2,000 meter session on SkiErg
Finish screen for 540 Calorie session on rowing machine.Report for main calorie session on rowing machine.RowPro graphs for main calorie session on rowing machine.Concept 2 online logbook chart for main calorie session on rowing machine.
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 rowing was a half marathon done at RPE Level 5, followed by an RPE Level 1 ten-minute warm down.
My “traffic lights” for whether its okay to do anything more than very easy rowing are three. Two of those are numbers: The EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading/analysis of heart rate variability and the total time of actual sleep. If EliteHRV says its okay to train harder today, then as far as that criteria is concerned I can row as hard as I want, for as long a distance or time as is possible. But my occasional irregular heart rate is casting a shadow of doubt on the EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading because according to the analysis so far of one who has expertise in the analysis of data – the reading may be skewed to result in being inaccurate, by the way EliteHRV deals with “artifacts” which in my case would be paroxysmal Afib.
So now I’m leaning more to another couple of “traffic lights” as “GO,” “CAUTION” or “STOP” signals for long and/or hard rowing: The amount of sleep I got the night before and, perhaps even more importantly, how I feel after waking in the morning.
This morning, all three of my “traffic lights” were “GO”. (1) EliteHRV, which is the one in doubt, said it would be okay to train hard. (2) I logged plenty of sleep and, even more importantly, (3) I felt good and slightly in the happy zone of emotions this morning. 🙂
EliteHRV Morning Readiness today
Last night’s sleep was 7 hours 25 minutes and I felt very good – happy- about waking and getting out of bed.
So today’s rowing was a half marathon scheduled online about 45 minutes in advance. At about 10 minutes before the appointed time, I checked in and was all alone. So I figured I would either row the HM solo online or cancel it and row it offline. While waiting for the scheduled time to arrive, I started typing text messages and sort of forgot about the online rowing session. When I next lifted my head to look at the computer monitor, there were two other guys who had joined and checked in and they were asking me if I was going to start the session or not because it was a few minutes past the starting time.
So I apologized for keeping them waiting and we started. One of them rowed for about 30 minutes and then disengaged from the online session. The other one rowed 10,000 meters in about 40 minutes and then he checked out also. So I rowed a bit more than the last half of the distance alone.
Today’s rowing was done first thing in the morning, before eating anything. I chose to do it that way, because from some of what I’ve read and heard in lectures on the topic of the body’s critically important mitochondria, there is some particularly important and even critical “repair and replacement” work that the mitochondria only does if a person has been fasting for at least 12 hours. Fasting at least 12 hours from evening meal to next day’s first meal seems, in my experience, to be very helpful for “repairing,” “resetting,” or some such thing with regard to my heart and its rhythm. That particular benefit of fasting is enhanced if a person is also active physically during the period of fasting.
By the time I started this morning’s rowing, I’d already been fasting almost 14 hours and by the time I finished rowing and ate something, more than 16 hours had passed. So – the heart’s mitochondria got the benefit of extra-special “attention and repair” during the last 4 of those 16 hours.
Finish screen for today’s online half marathon.
Report for today’s half marathon.As you can see in this RowPro graph, heart rate sputtered a bit and had several brief periods of irregularity, before it smoothed out and behaved very well.
Concept2 online logbook chart for today’s half marathon.
Today’s EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading allowed for any distance or effort level.
Today’s rowing was mainly for the purpose of catching up on more of the “lost meters” this season. Last season my daily average meters was more than 10K. So far this season the daily average is a little over 5K, so I have a lot of catching up to do between now and the end of the season (April 30th).
More than enough sleep (8 hours 40 minutes) last night contributed to today’s favorable EliteHRV reading.
We got a late start this morning, so there wasn’t as much time for rowing as hoped. The two main indicators I use to tell me if its okay to row hard and/or long distance were both favorable. Those indicators are the EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading and whether I got sufficient sleep. The one that I currently give the most weight to is the EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading.
Since both indicators were “GO FOR IT!” I rowed 24,000 meters. None of it was hard rowing but the distance was sufficient that I feel relaxed for sleep this evening.
The four sessions rowed today were, in chronological order: (1st) 2K distance for warmup, (2nd) 10K online with two other guys, at an easy “overdistance” pace (which in this case meant a pace that would raise HR to no more than 55% to 70% of maximum). After the online 10K, there was a (3rd) 10 minute warm down which was 2,000 meters. Later in the afternoon, I decided to do (4th) another 10K and the plan was to do 2 or 3 intervals of 500 meters each and a final interval of 1,000 meters, with the pace of each interval at about 2:00/500m.
A view of the Concept2 online logbook showing the listing of today’s 4 rowing sessions.
But the heart acted up in its strange fashion and became too irregular to register a heart rate for a lot of the time. When it was registering a heart rate, HR was way too high and once got as high as 230 on the RowPro readout from the Polar heart strap. The Apple watch activity tracker, a separate heart rate logging device, showed high heart rate also. So, after a couple of 500 meter intervals at about the target pace of 2:00/500m, I slowed down for the remainder of the 10K. The main goal of completing the distance was achieved. Immediately below this paragraph is a screenshot of data for stroke number 888 through 918 of the strange-hearted 10K.
Strokes 903 through 913 are the highest heart rate I’ve ever seen displayed when my heart acts strangely.
For those of you who like to row-along with some of the rowing session screen recordings, the only session that was recorded and uploaded to YouTube of today’s four sessions was the warm up. It can be found here: Indoor Rowing Just A Warmup 01032019
Below are images of: The finish screen for today’s first 10K, the report and graphs for that first, easiest 10K and then the report and graph for the second 10K, during which heart was being strange.
This morning I drove to the nearest Starbucks to get coffee. A rainbow was showing its splendor while a barely perceptible drizzle misted the air during the walk from parking lot to Starbucks.
There was no rowing again today nor yesterday. Below are charts of heart rate during sleep last night and the night before last.
Last night’s sleep was good quality but the night before wasn’t as good, with Afib and high heart rate most of the night, which I unscientifically attribute to something(s) I ate when we visited a local Ethiopian restaurant.
Last night’s sleep was good – a little less than 7 hours and normal heart rate.Sleep for the night before last wasn’t so good – very high average sleeping heart rate at around 82 BPM, which (as mentioned above) I’m unscientifically crediting to restaurant food.
Notice, that though the needle is in the green area of relative balance, it is also in the “sympathetic” area, which is the “fight or flight” mode for the nervous system.
Today’s HRV readiness reading says harder training is okay. But it is still in the “Sympathetic” zone. A bit of ambiguity/uncertainty there, it seems. Because of that ambiguity, the question: Row harder today? Or easier?
10 1/2 hours of actual sleep last night erased all of the recently acquired sleep debt.
The biggest factor which helped improve the Morning Readiness score today was probably sleep. I was able to sleep in and got about 10 1/2 hours total sleep, which completely erased all the recent sleep debt.
So after careful though HRV-reading-inexperienced consideration, my decision is to row a session similar to the recovery sessions of yesterday and the day before yesterday, but to row today’s session at a pace which will be a mere 1 second per 500 meters faster than yesterday’s. The total calorie and Wattage difference between yesterday’s and today’s should be small? We shall see. Now… I’m off to do the rowing and will return to compose and publish the remainder of this blog post afterwards…
Afterwards – The title of this post was relating to HRV before today’s rowing session was done. But during the last 2000 meters of today’s 10K, the heart started acting up, so I deleted the original title and gave it the one you see at the top now.Â
By the time I’d rowed about the first 8,000 meters, heart rate was lower than at the same point in yesterday’s 10K. I thought that was good news which could be credited to more rest and an improved HRV score for “Morning Readiness”. But things got stormy during the last 2,000 meters. Heart rhythm got so erratic that it sometimes disappeared from HR display. I could feel it flit and flutter in my chest. Other than those two symptoms, I felt the same in every respect. And since I REALLY WANTED to finish the 10K with an average pace of 2:15, I kept on rowing.
Today’s rowing session was screen-recorded for those of you who’d like to row along with it. It’s link will be available in about three hours from now (the current time is 03:45 GMT on Dec 13th) at about 06:45 GMT on Dec 13th, according to the uploading predictor, at this location: Indoor Rowing 10K Through the Storm 12122018
My heart’s behavior during today’s rowing fit the definition of this word.
I was looking forward to the rowing session today. It was a 6,000 meter piece and the plan was to row at about 2:06 until the last 500 meters and then row faster to the finish. If all had gone according to plan, the 6K would have been done in about 25 minutes or less. But the plan assumed regular heart rhythm.
And today, for whatever reason it has not shared with me, my heart was a spoilsport and began acting erratically after 4 or 5 minutes of rowing. Everything felt fine and I might not have known anything was irregular, if it had not been for the heart strap. When heart rate spiked from around 130 to 180, I decided to slow down and let the heart computer* sort things out in its programming pathways and circuits. After 20 something minutes, the rhythm settled down to what seemed like normal. But by then there was no chance of finishing the piece in 25 minutes or less, according to the original hopeful plan. So I picked up the pace a little bit but kept it very easy from there until the finish.
After finishing the 6K, I did another 1K, to bring the grand total up to the day’s minimum distance goal of 10K.
