Aside from the period between about 3 and 5:30 in the morning, it was a good sleep that totaled almost 8 hours of actual sleep.
Yesterday’s general plan for today’s indoor rowing was to do it first thing in the morning, before even having breakfast. But a bout of insomnia which lasted from 3 to 5:30 a.m. made everything later.
Today’s rowing was done in the mid afternoon. It was 10,000 meters at an easy pace with 4 intervals of 500 meters each at a moderately hard pace.
Today’s session was 10K with variable pacing. The pace variations were mainly during four stretches of 500 meter pace increases. Those were done with enough effort to feel like work, because I had to breathe a little harder. But no sweat dripped onto the rowing machine, so all-in-all it was an easy workout.
Finish screen for today’s 10K with variations in pace.
Today’s indoor rowing session was a deliberately conservative 10K. It was 10K, because that’s the minimum distance I can row in a day for one of the two current Concept 2 challenges in which I’m participating. It was a laid-back pace, because I’m looking for confirmation that all negatively influential traces of the intravenous chemicals (received during the cardio PET scan on March 12) are completely flushed-out.
The session went well, so perhaps they are.
If you are wondering what the title reference to “sleeping heart trail” is about, that is mentioned, along with relevant images, below the screenshots of today’s rowing results. (It mainly has to do with a sleeping-heart rhythm graph the likes of which I’d never seen before and which I’m guessing was due to the after-effect influence of one or more of the injected compounds received during the cardio PET scan. )
Today’s 10K was done with some non-periodic variations in pace. It was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and is available at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 10K with variations 03172018“.
Report for today’s 10K.RowPro graphs for today’s 10K.Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K.
Now, for the Sleeping-Heart Trail part:
Below are graphs of heart rate samples taken during the nine most recent nights of sleep, before and after the cardio PET scan which was done the afternoon of March 12th. During the scan, there was first an injection of radioactive isotope solution, to highlight the heart, whose normal behavior was the focus of the first scan. That first scan lasted 14 minutes according to the technician.
After the first scan, there was an injection which was mainly if not exclusively a solution containing regadenoson. The effect of that second injection was to greatly dilate blood vessels and thereby cause the heart to beat faster in order to compensate for the corresponding reduction in blood pressure. The regadenosone effect was definitely noticeable but lasted only for about 3 minutes.
As another side effect, it cause my rate of respiration to increase, though breathing remained very shallow, as though I was almost not breathing except for the slight increase in frequency of the chest slightly expanding and contracting more than it had been before the injection.
An additional side effect was that near the end of the 3 minutes I could feel a light degree of perspiration as though all my skin which was directly exposed to the air had been dampened with a moist cloth.
The single most noticeable side effect during the three minutes was that I felt agitated and restless and had a strong urge to get off the horizontal platform and pace around the room, instead of laying still. I remained motionless by an act of will to resist that urge.
But… three nights later the sleeping heart graph was something I’ve never ever seen before: It was totally flat for the entire night, except once when it was abnormally high. Normally, my heart rate varies slightly during the night and either gradually tapers down to an overall slower BPM or gradually tapers up, from the beginning to the end of the total recorded sleep period. In other words, the heart rate graph during a night’s sleep usually has an average slope either up or down from beginning to end.
I suspect the abnormally straight-line regularity had something to do with the regadenoson, since it is the only chemical of which I’m aware which is directly related to heart behavior and which was included in the injections during the scan.
While rowing the next day after the ultra-regular all-night heart rhythm, I experienced one of the most irregular and excessively-high heart rhythm and BPM episodes of any ever experienced during an erg session. (See the post titled Revisiting Rowing Through A Heart Attack.)
Four nights before the day of the cardio Pet scan.Three nights before the day of the cardio Pet scan.Two nights before the day of the cardio Pet scan.The night before the day of the cardio Pet scan. (There was a period of insomnia, indicated by the extensive white area from before 11 pm until after 2 am.)The night immediately following the day of the cardio PET scan.The second night following the day of the cardio PET scan. I was kept awake from before 2 am until about 4 am, by irregular heart beat.The third night following the day of the cardio PET scan. I woke to use the bathroom between 5:30 and 6 am but heart rate shows to be either absent or constant at 49 for that time. The one variation in HR during the entire night was around 1:30 a.m. while I was asleep. It generated a notification from the Apple Watch.
Also on the night of the 14th-15th which is graphed above, there was an “elevated heart rate” notification from the Apple Watch for that night:
I was asleep when this elevated heart rate was generated. Dreaming, perhaps?Details of the elevated heart rate notification.The fourth night following the day of the cardio PET scan.The fifth night following the day of the cardio PET scan. This was for last night. A very normal graph, compared to the graphs I’ve seen over the past year of using this particular sleep app.
Another thought is, that whether or not the unusual heart behavior recently was due to the lingering presence of one or more of the injected chemicals, it may have been also related to the heart’s recovery from whatever it was that it experienced during the chemical stress test.
Finish screen for the first of today’s two rowing sessions, the 2,710 meter “just row”. Heart rate was way too high and also irregular throughout that session.
I’m more and more inclined to believe that yesterday’s heart problems (irregular and way too fast) were mostly if not all related to after effects from the dose of regadenoson given to me during a cardio PET scan on March 12th. I consulted “Dr. Google” and found that a couple of the possible side effects of regadenoson are irreglar heartbeat and tachycardia, both of which manifested themselves during yesterday’s rowing session.
Heart rate was irregular yesterday evening/last night and was much higher than normal all of last night, with its lowest being 70 BPM instead of its usual lowest being in the 40s.
This morning I did two rowing sessions. The first was an easy “Just Row” that had to stop at about 7:00. Heart rate was irregular and too high for the effort during that short (2,710 meters) session.
The second session was started about a half hour later and during that session, heart rate settled down to normal and remained regular.
Hurray!!
So perhaps all the residual effect of the regadenoson was finally shaken off this morning.
There isn’t much to see in a report row a “just row” session. This was for the 2,710 meter “just row”.Concept 2 online logbook did generate a chart for the “just row” session. Most of the heart rate graph is missing because heart rate was too irregular to measure.Finish screen for the second of two sessions today, the 7,291 meter session.Report the 7,291 meter session.RowPro graphs the 7,291 meter session.Concept 2 online logbook chart the 7,291 meter session.
Of course, it wasn’t actually a heart attack because heart attacks are painful and cause people to faint, collapse etc. But the way my heart was acting today had me wondering for a while. It was a bit uncooperative. Guess I’m going to have to set aside some time for a heart to heart talk with it.
It’s uncooperative behavior included rhythm irregularities and beating too fast for the effort being expended. I’m guessing that its an after effect of the radioactive chemicals and the regadenoson injection that I had a couple days ago during a cardio PET scan. It probably hasn’t all been flushed out of the system yet.
The chemistry of what regadenoson does in the body and especially the heart is beyond my amateur understanding but from what I do understand, it is quite potent at what it does.
Today’s session wasn’t fun and wasn’t nearly as high an average effort level as anticipated. I didn’t even work up a single drop of sweat, on the heart strap transmitter. Normally, the heart strap transmitter is quite wet, when it is removed from the chest. The lack of sweat was partly because, in addition to the uncooperative heart behavior, I dismounted the rowing machine somewhere after the middle of the session, got a drink of cold water and walked around a bit, in hopes that things would settle back to normal. They didn’t, so I just finished the 10K at a slower pace.
Gotta get at least 10,000 meters per day for at least 25 days this month, to complete one of the current Concept 2 rowing challenges. 🙂
Finish screen for today’s radioactive 11,000 meter session.
Today’s session was virtually the same to yesterday’s in that it was 11K with 4 un-timed intervals. But it was deliberately done at an average effort level slightly higher than yesterday’s, so as to cause me to sweat a few drops. In other words, it was almost but not quite like work. I still classified it as an “easy” session, which is where I’ve been keeping the perceived effort level of most of the sessions recently, since the phenomenon of irregular heartbeat seems to appear if I row any harder than “easy” for the average session effort level.
Yesterday I was the subject of a cardio PET scan, so the cardiologist could see a moving picture of my heart. As part of that process, there was an injection of a radioactive isotope solution into my bloodstream.
I’m trying to drink lots of water, to help flush out the radioactivity. Some of it was expelled during the rowing session this morning, in the form of radioactive sweat.
The effort level today was a total of only 7 “food calories” more than yesterday but that resulted in a few (very few) drops of sweat on my face. The effort level resulted in touching the face of the work zone but not getting all the way into that zone, so there was not enough sweat for any of it to even get past my beard and rain onto the rowing machine. The erg remained completely dry.
The four intervals were each from 300 to 700 meters and were separated from each other about 2,000 to 3,000 meters. The remaining distance after the 4th interval was used as a warm down.
Finish screen for today’s early morning 11,000 meters.
Today’s indoor rowing began in a bit of a fog. There was no plan, except to complete the entire distance, which was 11K.
What I ended up doing was rowing a couple K at around 2:19, then sprinting moderately faster at around 2:10 for a few hundred meters and repeating that, with slight variations, three more times for a total of 4 intervals during the 11K.
Report for today’s early morning 11,000 meters.RowPro graphs for today’s early morning 11,000 meters.Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s early morning 11,000 meters.
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.
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.
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.
