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.
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“.
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.
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.
*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.”
Today was another 10K with target heart rate of 120 BPM.
The average effort to maintain 120 BPM was a lot lower than that of the day before yesterday. Once again, God only knows why. I don’t have a clue as to the reason why the big difference from one day to the next at the same heart rate.
That’s the reason I’m doing the ongoing series of 10Ks with the same target heart rate of 120. Curiosity as to whether the body will adapt and there will be improvement resulting in higher power and faster pace though the heart rate is the same.
Today and yesterday were with the same target heart rate but today’s session report shows an average power of 143.6 Watts and yesterday’s an average power of 123.9 Watts. That’s quite a bit of difference, almost 15% more power today than yesterday. God only knows why because I don’t know and nothing comes to mind that was significantly different today than yesterday. Perhaps what I ate today was better than yesterday or perhaps I got a better night’s sleep? I don’t know. But God always knows why.
I’ll keep on doing 10Ks at a target HR of 120 for a while, and see what the variation in power is from day to day. Just curious, am I.
Today’s indoor rowing session was done on a Windows 7 computer with RowPro 4 instead of on a Mac using RowPro 5 for the Mac.
This may seem like déjà vu because its a different day with the same goal for a 10K – target heart rate 120. I’ve decided to do a string of them. Don’t know how many… to compare results in watts/calories/average pace and see if it remains constant or changes.