Mentally absorbing workout – Ethereal Rowing

Persistence Pays Off

Or was it the salad?

First impression from today’s first few minutes on the SkiErg were slight amazement. Heart rate remained low, even though I was starting out faster than the two previous sessions (Sept 2nd and Sept 4th) when heart rate was irregular and also insisted on being way too high for the pace / effort level.

Not sure if I should believe that it would continue normally, I watched it closely with every stroke. The heart can be tricky and deceptive, you know. But it continued to behave well on the SkiErg. In fact, it behaved very well and its average rate was less than 100 BPM during the first 100 Calories. During the second 100 Calories I added 5 intervals of 10 Calories each and heart behavior remained very good. The overall effort for today’s SkiErg session was RPE Level 2.

Once the SkiErg session was over, I wondered if the heart’s good behavior would continue through the rowing session. RowPro was set to 10,000 meters and I decided to row a bit faster than either of the previous two 10K rowing sessions to put the heart to a little test.

The results were about as good as I could have hoped for. Heart rate disappeared momentarily, nine times during the session. But I didn’t feel any fluttery feeling of irregular heart beat. The rowing session was done at RPE Level 4. For a bit more more motivation during the rowing session, I played the screen recording of a 10K session done in July 2018. It had been done at a pace of 2:17.5 and I prodded myself to stay ahead of it. It’s link is Indoor Rowing 10K 07062018 .

Eager to attribute today’s heart behavior to some cause, however illogical that is, I first decided that today’s good heart behavior was due to persisting in doing workouts during the previous sessions, even though the heart had acted cantankerously irregular and its rate was much too high during those two sessions.

But then I remembered something said by the doctor who had talked about microbiomes and the diet and how some of our most beneficial microbiomes thrive on an abundance of fiber in our food. They actually digest it and get nourishment for their little microbiome bodies from fiber in our food.

So it’s equally if not more likely that today’s good heart behavior is attributable largely to the gigantic salad which was the main course for last night’s dinner. To paraphrase something the doctor said about how fruits and vegetables are so amazingly good for us: It’s almost as if they are designed to be beneficial to us.

Heart strangeness was notable for its absence.

Finish screen for today’s 10K rowing session.

RowPro report for today’s 10K rowing session.

RowPro graphs for today’s 10K rowing session.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K rowing session.

Happy rowing to you!

Enlightninged Workout

If you were wearing a heart strap and it momentarily became electrified, it might feel like a tiny, lightning bolt.

If you are one of those people who are observant and knowledgeable about the correct spelling of words, you might have a problem with the first word in today’s title.

Nice of you to notice and I compliment you on your observational powers if you saw and concluded that the word was either misspelled and/or that there is no such word.

Some people, however, have poetic licenses. I am one of those people who is poetically licensed and today I exercised that license to make up a word. It is a combination of the words enlightened and lightning.

Perchance you recall from yesterday’s blog post that I had heart annoyances yesterday throughout all three installments of yesterday’s SkiErg workout and during the rowing workout until I’d rowed 4,001 meters.

In addition to what I reported yesterday as happening at about 4,001 meters and 18 minutes 24 seconds into the rowing session (“…heart rate suddenly became normal and dropped down into a normal, totally appropriate range for the effort level….”) there was something else. It felt like an electric shock across my chest beneath the area where the heart strap was worn.

Reluctance which amounted to total absence of its mention yesterday was because I just didn’t know what to think of it. But after sleeping on it and turning it over in my mind, I’ve concluded that it is in the same category of some other non-explainable things which have happened to me.

A medical/physiological explanation could be assigned to it, of course.

The trite (in my opinion) term with which it might be labeled and simultaneously explained would be the ominous term “chest pain.” But it wasn’t painful at all. It felt electric, definitely. And perhaps if it lingered a while instead of being so very brief, it might have been classified as pain. But it was very brief and although it felt very electric, like some mild electric shocks I experienced many decades ago when as a boy I deliberately put my fingers into sockets meant to hold the ends of fluorescent light bulbs, to see what it felt like – the electric sensation in my chest yesterday sort of tickled, which is not exactly how I’d describe the self-induced electric shocks I experienced as a boy.

I put the sensation, along with the eventual outcome of all of yesterday’s wrestling match of trying to do the workout and shake off heart rate irregularity, into a category that includes an incident once upon a time decades ago when a radio turned on without human intervention and the voice on the radio spoke a message consisting of three brief sentences which I was primed and ready to hear.

Objectively and plainly speaking, I have opted to classify it as a miracle that the heart irregularity suddenly just stopped and the “electric shock” as a symptom of whatever transpired with that miracle inside my chest.

Naive I may be, but that’s how I’m taking it and filing it away in my memories.

At any rate and no matter what you or anyone else chooses to opine or believe about it, the totality of yesterday’s experience was fresh in my mind this morning and was more than enough motivation to get me to the ergs and start today’s workout without any undue delay. I have been struggling with motivation for workouts recently so I was “primed and ready” for motivation from the ethereal realm today.

The totality of today’s workout consisted of two sessions. The first session was 250 Calories on the SkiErg. At the start of the SkiErg session, I wondered if I could remain focused enough to count every stroke so that my stroke count would agree with what the monitor reported after the results were uploaded to the Concept 2 logbook. I counted 593 strokes. After downloading the CSV file for the session, examination showed the final stroke count was 593. Hurray for John’s brain! It remained focused for 24 minutes and 45.8 seconds!

The second session today was 10,000 meters rowing. To turn the rowing session into a sort of friendly “race,” I played a YouTube video of a moderate 10K rowing session and made it my goal to finish about 500 meters ahead of that 10K screen recording. The particular YouTube indoor rowing screen recording I watched while rowing was Indoor Rowing 10K 07122018. Though I watched it for the sake of the “race,” I muted it for the sake of keeping the noise down to normal levels of only the actual live sounds in the room.

The first 150 Calories of the session was very leisurely. The last 100 Calories included a few intervals.

The number for the final stroke count of today’s SkiErg session can be seen in the bottom left corner of this screenshot of the last part of the CSV file for the session.

Concept 2 online logbook chart & data for today’s 10K rowing session.

Happy rowing to you!

Endorphin Rush Runs Down But Not Out

Some people get an endorphin rush from doing things like this. I prefer a tamer approach via the Concept 2 ergs. (For photo credits, see the note at the end of this post)

Hints of the early light of dawn were glowing through the window blinds when I woke this morning. The hint of a glimmer of pre-sunrise glow didn’t cause me to wake.

A finger of a more mundane reason flicked the wake-up switch in my brain. Let’s name it a call of nature. Definitely mundane.

Precisely a few minutes later, I returned to bed with hope of getting another 90 minutes of sleep.

Precisely less than ten minutes after returning to bed, I was wide awake after thinking about the day and realizing that I had some chauffeuring to do in a few hours. The chauffeuring appointment would limit or eliminate the possibility of a morning workout was another realization.

Yen for sleep vanished as I checked the mental dashboard and realized everything would remain in balance if I got out of bed immediately and began the day’s workout right away.

So that’s what I did. Almost. I went directly to the SkiErg right away. But I was thirsty and my water bottle was empty. So I detoured to the water cooler. Filling the water bottle emptied the water cooler. So I went to the garage to get five jugs of purified water. Then I noticed a spider. So I went to get the vacuum cleaner and dispose of the spider. Before turning on the vacuum cleaner, I realized I could save the spider’s life by capturing it in a jar. So I did that. Then turned back to refilling the water cooler. After refilling the cooler I finally went to the SkiErg and set it for 250 Calories. 250 Calories was okay yesterday, so I thought I’d try it again today.

The SkiErg session started slowly and sleepily in spite of the fact that I was wide awake. For the first 150 Calories on the SkiErg, it seemed luxuriously enjoyable to keep the stroke exaggeratedly slow, with each stroke’s drive time lasting about a second or even longer than a second.

The SkiErg pace very gradually quickened during those first 150 Calories. Once the remaining Calories counted down to 100, it felt like the most natural and logical thing to do to indulge in some moderate intervals of 10 calories per interval. So that’s what I did and there was a satisfying harvest of endorphins.

The SkiErg session whetted my appetite for labor-derived endorphins, so I set the rowing machine up for a 10,000 meter piece. On the other monitor, I played a screen recording of the 10,000 meter session I’d rowed and uploaded to YouTube on December 27, 2017. It is one of the more popular of the screen recordings I’ve uploaded to YouTube for people to row along with and has been viewed 254 times so far. I’m guessing it is popular because it includes 8 intervals and intervals make most rowing sessions a lot more interesting.

So I got a natural emotional lift and boost to the spirits so to speak from this morning’s workout. I’ve been enjoying it all day, until late in the day/early evening when I heard some extremely weird news from a close relative who shall not be named here. It was borderline insanity type of news and it had the opposite effect of this morning’s workout. It put a heavy damper on my spirits. A black cloud. But I’m in the process of dealing with it and shooing the black cloud away because black clouds are pollution of the worst sort and I prefer joy and light.

Screenshots of today’s workouts follow. If you look at them closely, the spikes in the heart rate graphs during the rowing session can be disregarded because HR seemed to be normal and that kind of thing – if it happens on the rowing machine but not on the SkiErg and the heart is otherwise behaving normally with regard to rate range – I attribute to the more analog heart rate signal on the rowing machine. (The SkiErg uses a more digital blue tooth signal instead of an analog signal for transmitting heart rate and on any given day, the SkiErg has far fewer, if any heart rate spikes.)

SkiErg chart and data. Notice there are NO spikes in the heart rate graph for the SkiErg session which used a blue tooth heart strap transmitter.

Happy rowing to you!

Photo credit: by Masa Sakano and found on his site on Flikr.

Perhaps Better On Empty

Perhaps, but not definitively. Yesterday the question arose as to whether the cause for heart strangeness (atrial fibrillation rearing its head) during the last two of yesterday’s five 2K pieces was having eaten a large breakfast and then resumed rowing while the stomach was feeling full.

Early this morning, before having so much as a crumb of food or a sip of coffee, I began the day’s workouts.

Remembering yesterday’s words, “Perhaps I will try duplicating today’s workout again tomorrow…” but on an empty stomach from start to finish, that thought was put into action and fulfilled this morning.

Happily, there was no heart strangeness from start to finish.

Actually, I did feel a tiny bit of cardio flitter-flutter in the chest. It happened one time and was during the third 2K. But it was so ephemeral that it bordered on being imaginary, though vividly so. Heart rate did not vanish from the display like it does when Afib is more persistent, so I will attribute it to being an imagination of the heart.

Perhaps rowing on a full stomach isn’t a good idea. But on the other hand, perhaps it is merely a coincidence.

Scientific experiment, this was not. Scientific experiments are more thorough. Experiment, it was. And I will keep it in mind for future reference.

Following are screenshots and data for today’s workouts.

Chart and data for the first workout session today.

Finish screen for the fifth of five 2K sessions this morning. The ending heart rate of 119 was a normal heart rate for the effort and was within a very few beats per second of the finish heart rate for each of the previous four 2K sessions.

Report and graph for first of five 2K rowing sessions.

Report and graph for second of five 2K rowing sessions.

Report and graph for third of five 2K rowing sessions.

Report and graph for 4th of five 2K rowing sessions.

Report and graph for last of five 2K rowing sessions.

Happy rowing to you!

Burning More Than A Snickers

Burning calories is one of the common motivations people have for running on a treadmill.

Before starting today’s workout session there was no plan for what to do.

Usually, I decide what the workouts will be before entering the 10 foot by 10 foot room where SkiErg and rowing machine hang out, but not this morning. This morning, I was detachedly observing my subconscious as it tried to steer me away from that room.

Rather than give in to the subconscious nudges urging me to procrastinate, I just walked into the room and changed into workout clothes.

Normally this is enough to get things going and it worked again today.

The main workout today was a 200 Calorie session on the SkiErg. That session had a goal of keeping pace as close as possible to 2:17/500 meters. It was done at RPE Level 3.

Following the SkiErg session, there was a 1,000 meter rowing warm down which was interrupted for a few minutes after about 500 meters.

All totaled, the two sessions burned a little more energy than a 1.9 ounce, 250 Calorie Snickers candy bar. It has been years since I’ve had a candy bar but I may still be carrying around some calories from a few of the candy bars I ate in the distant past.

Though the figures above are for woman who is 5’7″, 35 years old and weighs 144 lbs, its gives a good ballpark figure of comparison for how hard anyone has to work to burn a Snickers.

The total workout time for today’s two rather brief and easy sessions was about 24 minutes.

Chart and data for today’s SkiErg session.

RowPro report for today’s very short rowing session.

Happy rowing to you!

One Of Each

Today’s workout was one session each, on SkiErg and rowing erg.

While the SkiErg session was set to count down from 200 Calories, it also had another goal which was a target pace of 2:19/500 meters. I bounced around within about 0.1 second above and below the pace target throughout the session and managed to finish within 0.1 second of target pace. It was done at RPE Level 2.

On the rowing erg, the work was easier. It was set to count down from 10,000 meters but its only objective was to burn some Calories by going the entire distance at any pace. The result was a pace that varied, averaged 2:21.5 and burned 570 Calories. It was done at RPE Level 1.

This post has the tag “heart strangeness” only because it might be concluded that there was some paroxysmal atrial fibrillation due to the look of its graph. The multitude of vertical lines in the heart rate plot happen when heart rate stops displaying a reading. Though that’s what it looks like when heart rate is irregular, I didn’t feel anything unusual. There was no fluttering etc., so I suspect that the transmitter battery may be low. I can’t be certain unless I check it, but the particular model is the Polar H7, which consumes energy about twice the rate of most other heart straps. It does so because it has not just one, but two transmitters which simultaneously transmit in two different formats. The Polar H7 is on its first battery and I’ve never logged hours-of-use vs battery life for this (or any) heart strap, so it’s merely conjecture at this point.

Finish screen for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

Report for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

RowPro graphs for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

Happy rowing to you.

For The Mitochondria

For the first time in many weeks, I managed to do the day’s workouts in the morning before breakfast. That’s supposed to be very good for the mitochondria, if breakfast happens at least 12 hours after most recent previous eating and exercise is included in that 12 hours or more of fasting time.

So, the most satisfying thing about today’s erg sessions was that they were done in the morning, before breakfast and they benefited the body’s vital little buddies, the mitochondria.

The second most satisfying thing was: a SkiErg 5K in improved time.

Also, I was rewarded with a move up in the SkiErg 5K world rankings. The move up was only one place, from 6th to 5th out of 10 total entries. But it’s progress in the right direction, so I’m happy and sort of have a little smile about it, like the little smile on the face of the mitochondrion.

The SkiErg 5K was done at RPE Level 5 and was mentally absorbing because I had to focus on a pace target of 2:16 for the first 4K then tentatively explored faster paces during the final 1,000 meter split.

There was some rowing done also – a very slow 10K session at RPE Level 1. It was not “mentally absorbing,” because it was so slow that my mind wandered all over the place.

Today’s most satisfying session, a 5K on the SkiErg.

Finish screen for today’s very slow and somewhat fartleky 10K.

Reportfor today’s very slow and somewhat fartleky 10K.

RowPro graphsfor today’s very slow and somewhat fartleky 10K.

Happy rowing to you!

Fartlek Is What You Make It

Most people who are familiar with the term “fartlek” think of it in connection with running, but a varying pace can apply to any activity that involves pacing. In today’s case it was rowing. It is no coincidence that these runners look happy – happiness is one of the purposes of changing the pace.

The above photo was found among many photos relevant to fartlek, on a website called Running In India, in an article on that site, titled “Fartleking Around,” by Christine Pemberton.

Today’s workout was limited to rowing only and it was an accomplishment to simply get it done, because there was an inner wrestling match with inertia until the last minute. At the last minute, when I was comfortable and chatting like a bluejay on the sofa, the household muse provided the necessary inspiration to overcome the inertia when she inquired, “Are you ever going to row?” And … off I went, to row.

The piece of rowing was 10,000 meters done as a fartlek. Fartlek is a somewhat strange word (unless you speak Swedish) which means a variable pace. But depending on which source you consult for a definition of fartlek, the definite meaning will vary. However, no matter which particular definition you prefer, all definitions have one thing in common which is a varying pace.

I chose to understand the word to mean a deliberate and somewhat chaotic varying of pace, without further specification.

Sometimes, a constant pace is what my inner rower desires. But not today. Today my inner rower wanted a measure of chaos and variety.

Concept 2 chart, and more, for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

Happy rowing to you!

A Sixteen Year Old Heart Rate

Finish screen view for today’s moderate 500 meter sprint. Heart rate was 196 at finish but it got a bit higher earlier in the 500 meters (see one of the screenshots below).

Are you familiar with the formula for determining your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220? The formula may be written: 220 – AGE = HRmax.

If you know a person’s maximum heart rate, you can thereby deduce the person’s age by rearranging the formula as: 220 – HRmax = AGE.

Today in one of the workout sessions my heart rate maxed out at 204, therefore today it was acting very juvenile. To be precise, it was acting 220-204= sixteen years old. I was so focused on the effort during that 2,000 meter SkiErg piece, that I didn’t notice how high my teeny-bopper heart rate reached until afterwards. After uploading the results, I looked at the graphs closely, the way the Concept 2 online logbook lets you do if you use their app (ErgData) and it if it was wirelessly connected to the SkiErg monitor during the session.

Heart was in the range of a 16-year-old’s and it also seemed interested in hip-hop dance moves of some sort.

One session was recorded and posted on YouTube, the 500 meter rowing sprint. It can be found at this link: Indoor Rowing 500 meters in 1 minute 58 seconds 07232019

In total there were five sessions today, which were in this chronological order, one right after the other. A summary list of the workouts is below, (but I will only include data/graph screenshots for three of them):

A brief warmup on SkiErg
An attempt at a 2,000 meter sprint on SkiErg
A brief SkiErg warm down
A 500 meter moderate rowing sprint and
A 2000 meter supplemental warm down.

Summary list of today’s 5 workouts, with chronological order from first to fifth displayed on left.

Report for today’s 500 meter rowing at a moderate sprint effort.

Chart of the moderate-effort 500 meter rowing sprint.

Close up of area on 500 meter rowing chart where heart rate reached 204.

Chart and data for 2,000 meter SkiErg sprint. The place where my effort/pace suddenly drops was after about 1,500 meters when I started feeling a bit too tired. I had been trying to do it in a time that would have placed me second in the current world rankings for my age bracket. After I gave up and was breathing easier, I

Close up of area on SkiErg 2000 meter chart where heart rate reached 200.

I was aiming for second-place in the 70-79 year-old current SkiErg world rankings, but had to settle for 3rd.

Report for final session today, a very easy 2,000 meter warm down.

Graphs for today’s 2000 meter rowing warm down. Heart rate was mostly absent from the display because it was doing some kind of a hip-hop dance and the heart strap transmitter had a hard time counting the beat.

Happy rowing to you!

Mostly Low Energy With A 1,000 Meter High

This is a photo of a snail because I felt a sluggish kinship with snails today.

Today was a low energy day but I did manage to include some time on both SkiErg and rowing machine. The sessions and their chronological order were: 2,331 meters warmup on SkiErg at 2:48 pace, 1,000 meter time trial on SkiErg at 1:59.1 pace, 324 meter SkiErg warm down, 5,107 meters on rowing machine which started out with the goal of 10K but I got tired and quit and finally a 1,510 meter session on the rowing machine which started out as a distance session of 4893 meters (the balance of the original 10K) but I got tired and quit that one also.

Screenshot from my Concept 2 online logbook, showing summary listing of today’s SkiErg and rowing erg sessions. The 1K SkiErg session is highlighted because it was a personal best on the SkiErg and ranked in the online world rankings.

Above is a summary listing of today’s sessions. The only screen shot of today’s charts and data is for the 1,000 meter time trial. It was done at RPE Level 8 and everything else was at RPE Level 1.

Chart and data for today’s 1,000 meter SkiErg time trial, the high point of today’s workouts.

Happy rowing to you!