The above image with its amusing message was found on a web page of a British rowing website called rowperfect. The article (Chris George, champion rower with endless determination) doesn’t say whether the man pictured actually had a heart attack and rowed through it, but that is the implication. I think its an admirable attitude for a competitive rower.
Today’s indoor rowing session was another for which the main goal was to burn a lot of calories for a Concept 2 challenge. The particular challenge is in a group of challenges, the entire set of which is called “January Revolutions.” A person can only choose to work toward ONE of the challenges among the all the choices. My choice was The Big Burn, whose goal is to burn at least 20,000 calories while rowing during January 2018.
Yesterday and the day before, the distance rowed was a standard half marathon (21097 meters) each day. That worked well so I did something similar today and set up a RowPro custom session with 17 intervals of 30 seconds each, following each interval followed by 1,241 meters of rest.
However, my heart was not cooperating. It seems logical that if a heart is not cooperating, it must be doing some antonym of the word “cooperating.” The word which seems most appropriate is “attacking”. Therefore today’s title: “Rowing Through A Heart Attack”
I don’t blame my heart because I think the catalyst for its non-cooperation was a can of sardines because the last time I had a can of sardines, I also experienced very noticeable heart irregularities later that same day. It seems to be something to do with fish oil and I noted the correlation in this blog in the blog post written on November 18, 2017, when I mentioned returning fish oil to the store.
So today was a spontaneous, though not deliberately planned experiment to see if the same thing would happen after eating sardines. It was similar, but worse.
I had a can of sardines for lunch, along with some corn chips. (Fish and chips.) Everything seemed okay until about 2,856 meters into today’s rowing session, when my heart rate increased even though pace had decreased. Heart rate remained high and irregular, with the heart rate display appearing and disappearing throughout the remainder of the rowing session. I took several breaks and drank an extra amount of water, in hopes of diluting the fish oil effect, but the abnormal behavior remained throughout the session.
Unlike Chris George (see photo at top of this blog post) I did not “power” through it. Maybe I should have? Instead, I took it very easy and barely increased the effort during the half minute intervals. I varied the pace a bit, trying to fish for the right amount of effort but the heart didn’t cooperate at any of the effort levels I tried.
Hopefully, it will return to normal by tomorrow.
Finish screen for today’s seventeen intervals.Report for today’s calorie-loaded session.RowPro graphs for today’s session. The many places where the heart rate graph is a vertical line is where heart rate was so irregular that the heart strap couldn’t read it and the heart rate display went blank.Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s rowing session.
Heartfelt hopes and wishes for you to have happy rowing.
Finish screen for today’s half marathon with 16 intervals. As you might guess from looking at the two graphs, the last few meters after the last split was used as warm down.
Since I took five junk-food loaded days off from indoor rowing, I’m still playing catch-up and therefore rowed another half marathon today. It was another 1200+ calories toward the Big Burn challenge which is one of several that Concept 2 has to choose from during this month of January 2018.
The half marathon was done with a target pace of about 2:22 and included 16 intervals of about 30 seconds each.
A recording of the session is called “Indoor Rowing Half Marathon with 16 Intervals” and is in the process of uploading to YouTube. If you click on that link for the video today, it won’t be active yet because it will not be done uploading before I go to bed tonight and probably won’t be “active” until sometime tomorrow (January 16, 2018)
RowPro report for today’s half marathon.RowPro graphs for today’s half marathon.Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s half marathon.
The potato chips I ate had ruffles, but otherwise looked like these.
So I went for five days without any rowing, due to lack of a rowing machine while traveling. And during those five days, all routines were disrupted. Too much sitting. Daily junk food, including 5 large bags of very salty potato chips. Coffee all day, instead of only in the mornings.
Perhaps as a result, my heart started acting weird and getting irregular again, in the last hours of the 5th day.
So today I did a half marathon, for the purpose of helping the heart to flush itself out and return to normal. That’s the working theory, at least. It seemed to work because heart rate was irregular before the HM started and was not regular enough for the heart strap to be able to display it. After rowing for less than 200 meters at a very easy pace, heart rate became regular enough to be measured and displayed, but was about 130, which was way too high for the effort. When its acting normally, it will start out 20 or 30 BPM slower at that effort – somewhere a little above 100. But as I kept rowing, it settled down and acted more and more normally. It’s feeling and acting normal now, after the half marathon.
The background sounds for today’s half marathon recording posted on YouTube include a fan, the rowing machine, and instrumental from this album by the artist 2Bough.
The HM was done at an easy pace, with intervals starting about every 1,241 meters. The intervals were varied paces and lasted from about 30 seconds to around a minute each. Most of them were about 30 seconds.
I did a few intervals during the 15 minutes, with the last interval starting with 4 minutes remaining in the session, and tapering down all the way to the finish.
Finish screen for today’s 15 minutes.RowPro report for today’s 15 minutes.RowPro graphs for today’s 15 minutes.Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 15 minutes.
Happy and hopefully longer rowing sessions for you.
A view of today’s rowing session screen, during the seventh and final interval.
Today’s rowing session was, as the title suggests, 39 minutes. It included seven intervals of one minute each, with 4 minutes of rest after each interval.
The heart strap was a bit too dry at the beginning and as a result, heart rate didn’t show up and remain displayed until near the end of the first interval, almost 5 minutes into the rowing session. Heart rate when rowing is like a tachometer on the dashboard of a car… useful information, once you get used to watching it.
Finish screen for today’s 39 minute session.Report for today’s 39 minute session.RowPro graphs for today’s 39 minute session.Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 39 minute session.
A screen shot taken near the beginning of the first of today’s two rowing sessions. The plan for the session was typed and displayed while I used its display as a teleprompter and read it aloud.
Today’s indoor rowing consisted of two separate pieces. First, was a 20 minute session which included four 3 minute intervals. The 20 minute session was recorded as a screen recording and uploaded to YouTube. It is called Indoor Rowing 20 minutes with Four 3 minute Intervals. For background music, I used some non-copyrighted music from the YouTube library.
The second session was 30 minutes at a mostly constant pace, with one minute of “indulgence” done at a higher pace about midway in the session and also little pickup of pace right near the end. The main purpose of the 30 minute session was to maintain a very moderate heart rate most of the time.
Today’s indoor rowing time wasn’t as long as I would have liked, but at least it was enough to result in 649 calories toward the “Big Burn,” which is one of the concept2.com challenges I’m doing for the month of January 2018. Click the link in the previous sentence, if you want to learn more about it.
This is the finish screen for today’s 30 minute session. It is the only session today that made it to YouTube without somebody making a copyright claim on some of the sounds in the room while I was rowing. On YouTube it is called Indoor Rowing 30 Minutes With 5×4 Minute Intervals.
Today’s indoor rowing started with a 20 minute session that included twelve 30 second intervals. It was recorded as a screen recording and uploaded to YouTube as a replacement for the similar one recorded on Dec 31, 2017, which supposedly had copyrighted material (the music that was playing for me in the background). The recording of this session has music playing in the background, that was supposed to have no copyright. But YouTube claimed that a few minutes of the music was copyrighted. So… I deleted that video from YouTube and there is no link for it.
The next rowing session was 30 minutes with 5×4 minute intervals with one minute rest after each interval. That video made it to YouTube without any copyright claims for any of the background music. It’s YouTube link is: Indoor Rowing Workout 30 Minutes With 5×4 Minute Intervals .
After both those rowing sessions were done, there was as 15 minute warmdown.
Finish screen for 20 minute session with 12 intervals.Report for 20 minute session with 12 intervals.RowPro graphs for 20 minute session with 12 intervals.Concept 2 Online logbook chart for 20 minute session with 12 intervals.Finish screen for today’s 30 minute session.Report for today’s 30 minute session.RowPro graphs for today’s 30 minute session.Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 30 minute session.
The above screenshot is from the opening scene of the screen recording of today’s first of two videos. The room pictured in the computer desktop background is an artist’s perspective of Cactus John’s rowing studio on the Moon. Note: This video will eventually be deleted from YouTube, when I can replace it with something that has not had its sound track muted and mutilated by YouTube (see note regarding the YouTube problem, below)
Today’s indoor rowing consisted of two pieces. The first was a 25 minute session which included some intervals. Specifically, it was 4×4 min r 1 min, with 3 minutes at the beginning and end, for warmup/down. The 25 minute session was recorded as a screen recording with ambient sounds of the room, plus some brief words from me at the beginning. Those brief words were somewhat incorrect, however, because though I intended for the session to be 5×4 min r 1 min, I didn’t allow enough total time when I setup the RowPro session for 25 minutes. It should have been 30 minutes or longer, to include all 5 intervals. As a result, if you watch and listen to the screen recording on YouTube, you will hear me announce that it will be 5 intervals but you will only see four intervals. Also, you will hear a timer beep during the last 3 minutes of warm down, which has to be ignored because there isn’t enough time to do the 5th interval for which the Gymboss interval timer had been programmed to announce with its beeps.
The 25 minute session was deleted from YouTube by me, because of the “copyrighted content” claims made against it. Instead of that one, you can watch this one which is titled Indoor Rowing Workout 30 Minutes With 5×4 Minute Intervals which I did and recorded on January 4, 2018.
NOTE REGARDING VIDEO POSTED TO YOUTUBE JANUARY 3 (25 minute session mentioned above): after posting it to YouTube, I noticed that it had been tagged as “containing copyrighted material” which turned out to be some of the music that was playing over the speakers in the room. YouTube said that because of that, there would be Ads placed on the video and the advertising profits from the videos thus being monetized would go to whoever had claimed copyright rights. So I used YouTube’s tools to “remove” the copyrighted tracks. After taking a long time to re-process and “edit” the video, YouTube announced that it hadn’t been able to remove the song and gave the option of leaving it as is and having ads displayed, or muting the song. So… rather than have ads plastered over it while someone is trying to watch it during their rowing, I chose the “mute” option. The worst case is that there will be blank areas of audio. In the future, I will only have sounds playing from the speakers that are not copyrighted!
ADDITIONAL NOTE REGARDING THIS VIDEO WHICH WAS POSTED TO YOUTUBE: After YouTube “edited” the sound track of the video, the sound track was ruined and the relevant signals (interval timer beeps) are either removed or re-positioned. So … I will put other videos up to replace these, when I can. After those videos are up, I will delete these videos from YouTube. Once that is done, I will also delete the links to them. It has been educational, to learn about how the music industry is listening to the sound tracks of all videos posted in public places on the internet and making copyright claims so that they have the right (and so that they are the only ones who have the right) to “monetize” the video by placing whatever advertisements they like on the video. Screen recordings of indoor rowing sessions aren’t nearly as helpful or relevant if the actual sounds, including the signals from any interval timer used, are audible.
Don’t get me wrong, with regard to anything I’ve said above about copyrighted music. Whoever owns the copyrights should get appropriate payment – but if I’d known that the muted audio of the music I played was recognizable and would in essence make the videos I posted the “property” of copyright holders, with regard to plastering advertisements on them, I would have rowed without any music playing over the speakers.
Here are the screenshots etc for today’s 25 minute piece:
Finish screen for today’s 25 minute session with four intervals of 4 minutes each.Report for today’s 25 minute session with four intervals of 4 minutes each.RowPro graphs for today’s 25 minute session with four intervals of 4 minutes each.Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 25 minute session with four intervals of 4 minutes each.
After the 25 minute piece, I rowed for another 40 minutes for the sake of BURNING MORE CALORIES! for the sake of one of the Concept 2 challenges in which I’m enrolled this month. That particular challenge is called The Big Burn and the challenge is to burn at least 20,000 calories while rowing this month.
The second session today was also uploaded to YouTube and it should not have to have its sound track muted or mutilated to remove “copyrighted material,” because the only sounds coming from the speakers during the 40 minutes were “white noise” type sounds of ocean surf. As far as I know, the composer & creator of those sounds (God) has not filed a copyright. The title of the YouTube video version is “Indoor Rowing 40 Minutes For Target Heart Rate” and you can find it on YouTube by clicking that link.
Here are the screenshots etc for the 4o minute session:
Finish screen for today’s second of two sessions, the 40 minute piece with a target heart rate zone.Report for today’s second of two sessions, the 40 minute piece with a target heart rate zone.RowPro graphs for today’s second of two sessions, the 40 minute piece with a target heart rate zone.Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s second of two sessions, the 40 minute piece with a target heart rate zone.
Starting out 2018 with some indoor rowing on the Moon and a nice view of Earth.
Today’s indoor rowing was several pieces, but the main and most fun piece was 40 minutes which included eight 1 minute intervals. A screen recording of the session was uploaded to YouTube with the title “Indoor Rowing 40 Minute Session With 8 One Minute Intervals” Note: This video was deleted from YouTube. A similar one was uploaded to YouTube on Jan 7th, 2018 and you can find it at THIS LINK (see note regarding the YouTube problem, below)
NOTE REGARDING VIDEO POSTED TO YOUTUBE JANUARY 1 (40 minute session mentioned above): after posting it to YouTube, I noticed that it had been tagged as “containing copyrighted material” which turned out to be some of the music that was playing over the speakers in the room. YouTube said that because of that, there would be Ads placed on the video and the advertising profits from the videos thus being monetized would go to whoever had claimed copyright rights. So I used YouTube’s tools to “remove” the copyrighted tracks. After taking a long time to re-process and “edit” the video, YouTube announced that it hadn’t been able to remove the song and gave the option of leaving it as is and having ads displayed, or muting the song. So… rather than have ads plastered over it while someone is trying to watch it during their rowing, I chose the “mute” option. The worst case is that there will be blank areas of audio. In the future, I will only have sounds playing from the speakers that are not copyrighted!
ADDITIONAL NOTE REGARDING THIS VIDEO WHICH WAS POSTED TO YOUTUBE: After YouTube “edited” the sound track of the video, the sound track was ruined and the relevant signals (interval timer beeps) are either removed or re-positioned. So … I will put other videos up to replace these, when I can. After those videos are up, I will delete these videos from YouTube. Once that is done, I will also delete the links to them. It has been educational, to learn about how the music industry is listening to the sound tracks of all videos posted in public places on the internet and making copyright claims so that they have the right (and so that they are the only ones who have the right) to “monetize” the video by placing whatever advertisements they like on the video. Screen recordings of indoor rowing sessions aren’t nearly as helpful or relevant if the actual sounds, including the signals from any interval timer used, are audible.
For today’s 40 minutes, I rowed “like a turtle” and for the intervals within the 40 minutes, I rowed “like a sprinting turtle.” In other words, I deliberately took it easy, based on the advice of a cardiologist, Dr. Joel Kahn, whose book, The Whole Heart Solution, I’m reading. Based on studies done with competitive endurance runners, it seems that those who frequently push themselves long and hard are as likely to die of premature heart attack, as are potato couch (sedentary) people. Bummer. The most enjoyable rowing is to row hard and race, but apparently “a little dab will do,” of the high intensity, fast rowing or running. So… I just had one little dab, of around 80% full-intensity rowing today, during the second-to-last (7th) of today’s 8 intervals.
All in all, it was a quite enjoyable balance of restraint and relaxation of restraint.
Finish screen for today’s 40 minute session.Report for today’s 40 minute session.RowPro graphs for today’s 40 minute session.Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 40 minute session.
