This morning’s workout session was rowing a total of about 11,500 meters in two sessions. The first was an extended warmup which also helps to wake me up. The second part was a bit brisker. Strange thing is that heart rate was about the same in both warmup and brisker session. Stranger thing is that for most of the time heart rate as displayed on the monitor and recorded for the session was less than 60 BPM. If my heart was a “sweet chariot,” it would indeed have been swinging low “for to carry me home” to the finish line of the rowing session.
Graph for one of today’s two morning rowing sessions.
Today’s and any day’s workout sessions can be seen via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data & interactive graph click the corresponding “+” sign in the “Action” column for that session.
Today’s workout sessions consisted of 11,490 meters rowing in the morning and a SkiErg session in the afternoon.
As today’s title says, an incentive for morning rowing is black coffee afterwards. The above list of benefits doesn’t mention the most immediate benefit which is the taste. If you are interested in visiting the rest of the article for the above screenshot it is at this link: Health Benefits of Black Coffee.
Today’s and any day’s workout sessions can be seen via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data & interactive graph click the corresponding “+” sign in the “Action” column for that session.
Though “Yesterday” is the name of a song by the Beatles, the title isn’t referring to them or any other beetles. It is referring to yesterday, August 25th 2020.
I intended to do this blog post yesterday but bedtime arrived before that happened. Yesterday’s workout time consisted of two single sessions: A morning rowing session and a late afternoon SkiErg session.
Before the afternoon SkiErg session began the temperature and humidity in the room was 80 degrees and 40% humidity. Immediately after the SkiErg session, the humidity had climbed to 46% even though the air conditioner was working to remove water from the air. There is a bowl outside under the outlet of the air conditioner condensation drain. This time of the year it is always kept full to overflowing with “distilled” water that has been removed from the air in the house. Though it is hot outside – over 100 degrees – the water in that bowl is always cool. Local birds, rabbits and an occasional bushy-tailed squirrel visit that bowl to sip the water.
I was the source of the elevated humidity because my glasses and body were covered with sweat before the session ended. There was a large wet spot on the platform under where I’d stood on the SkiErg. It felt good to sweat without working hard.
Temperature and humidity before SkiErg session.
Immediately after the SkiErg session.
Screenshots of the charts for each of the two sessions are immediately following this paragraph. More details and data for each session are available with a click on the link in the second to last paragraph.
Yesterday morning rowing session
Yesterday afternoon SkiErg session.
Any day’s workout sessions can be seen via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data & interactive graph click the corresponding “+” sign in the “Action” column for that session.
The background sound for today’s workout time was randomly selected classical music streamed through a loud speaker in the room. Classical music reminds me of being outdoors in the weather, feeling the breath of the climate as it inhales, exhales and continuously changes from moment to moment.
Today’s workout activity consisted of an 11,490 meter rowing session first thing in the morning followed by some time on the SkiErg in the afternoon.
The rowing session started out slow while warming up and then became a little bit less slow the rest of the distance to the finish.
The SkiErg was a bit more fun because it consisted of 14 short intervals within a total session of 340 Calories. Screenshots of the SkiErg activity are shown below.
Any day’s workout sessions can be seen via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data & interactive graph click the corresponding “+” sign in the “Action” column for that session.
Today’s workout activities consisted of an 11,490 meter rowing session in the morning and a 376 Calorie SkiErg session in the afternoon.
Heart rhythm behaved mostly okay in the morning and was even better, on very good behavior in the afternoon.
Screenshot of graphs and some data for today’s afternoon session on the SkiErg.
Any day’s workout sessions can be seen via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data & interactive graph click the corresponding “+” sign in the “Action” column for that session.
There have been workout sessions every day of the past few weeks since the previous blog post.
Any day’s workout sessions can be seen via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data & interactive graph click the corresponding “+” sign in the “Action” column for that session.
Today I decided to take a break from taking a break from posting to this blog. Today’s workout time was typical of recent: A rowing session in the morning and a SkiErg session in the afternoon.
You can see data and graphs for today’s rowing session at the link to the online logbook mentioned in a paragraph above. A screenshot of the graph and data for today’s SkiErg session is just below this paragraph.
The SkiErg session was made a bit more interesting by alternating from tortoise-slow to rabbit-fast paces. The faster intervals were limited to ten calories each.
Today’s time spent working out consisted of three rowing sessions in the morning and one on the SkiErg in the afternoon. Two of the morning sessions were online with three other guys.
Heart rate/rhythm came and went in flurries on the HR display during all of the erg sessions.
Finish screen view for today’s main online rowing session.
RowPro report for today’s main online rowing session.
RowPro graph for today’s main online rowing session.
Any day’s workout sessions can be seen via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data & interactive graph click the corresponding “+” sign in the “Action” column for that session.
What does this picture have to do with rowing? The runner is engaged in an aerobic activity and like the title of today’s post the runner is touching base.
It’s been 19 days since the previous post but there have been workouts on each of those days.
Today’s sessions consisted of rowing 11,490 meters in the morning and using the SkiErg for 300 calories in the afternoon.
Screenshot of chart and data for today’s 11,490 meter rowing session.
Any day’s workout sessions can be seen via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data & interactive graph click the corresponding “+” sign in the “Action” column for that session.
That’s what this blog post is about: just the facts of what I observed and experienced during today’s rowing workout. The verdict is anybody’s guess, though I do offer my opinion/theory.
Blog posts have become less frequent and at the start of today I once again wasn’t intending to write one but today’s heart rate behavior was strange enough that I decided to say a little about it and also mention my vague theory as to why two heart monitors were in such radical disagreement.
For today’s rowing session I wore two heart monitors. One was a Garmin chest strap which detects periodic electric pulses from the heart. The other was a Scosche armband which uses lights instead of an electric pulse detector and which detects periodic variations in reflected light for pulse measurements.
The Garmin chest strap gave a much lower BPM reading than the Scoshe armband. By that I mean the Scosche displayed a heart rate which was between 140-160 BPM most of the time while the Garmin was giving a reading ranging from 30 BPM to as high as around 125 BPM. For much of the time the Scosche heart strap reading was 200% to 300% higher than that from the Garmin heart strap.
I experienced atrial fibrillation all of last night and it persisted to and through the rowing session so that was probably the main reason for the strange difference in heart rate readings. My vague theory as to why the big difference is: I assume the Garmin uses an algorithm that chooses the strongest periodic electrical signals which are also above a certain level and then averages those. When atrial fibrillation is happening the heart beats a lot faster than normal but some of its beats are stronger, others are noticeably weaker (if a finger is held on the wrist to feel the pulse) and heart rate varies & wobbles with incoherent rhythms. Therefore since the Garmin was (I assume) paying attention to only the strongest signals and ignoring weaker signals, that’s my opinion as to why it resulted in a much lower heart rate display: it wasn’t actually counting each and every beat of the heart, only the stronger ones.
Contrastingly the Scoshe heart strap doesn’t detect or measure electrical signals at all. Instead it only detects periodic variations in reflected light as the blood flow speeds up and slows down with each beat, no matter how strong or weak each heartbeat is. So based on that assumption that’s my opinion as to why the Scosche heartstrap always shows a higher heart rate than the Garmin, when atrial fibrillation is happening: It “sees” more heartbeats because it counts not only the heartbeats associated with the stronger electrical pulses that the Garmin counts, but also the heartbeats associated with the weaker electrical pulses which the Garmin does not count.
Screenshots below show heart rate graphs from both the Garmin and Scoshe heart straps so you can see a bit of what I’m trying to write about. Below those two sets of screenshots is another screenshot of a typical ECG reading of what my heart rate is doing right after I finish a workout session on the rowing machine. I don’t discern any particular heart rate in that graph, do you? Based on a non-mathematical analysis of that graph I’d be at a complete loss as to what heart rate should be displayed by any heart rate monitor.
Full view screenshot of today’s rowing workout data and graph as it is presented in the Concept 2 online logbook.
Closer view of the Concept 2 online logbook graph for today’s rowing workout. This HR graph was made from data supplied by the Garmin electric-pulse sensing chest strap. Notice how much lower the heart rate range is in this graph than in the ones (below) from the Scosche optical heart straph.
This heart rate graph for the same rowing session was made using data from the Scosche optical blood-flow-pulse sensing heart strap. It shows an average heart rate of 147 BPM, which is much higher than the highest heart rate displayed by the Garmin chest strap.
Though I didn’t mention it above, this is a two minute graph using Scoshe optical heart strap data of my heart rate recovery. It should go down, not up, during the two minutes immediately after a rowing session ends. The average heart rate during this two minutes of recovery is 152 BPM, which is higher than the average 147 BPM it measured when I was actually rowing. There is no heart rate recovery graph from the Garmin chest strap so no comparison can be made between them for the 2 minute recovery time.
When I’ve taken a 30 second ECG immediately following a rowing workout, this is usually a typical result: neither sinus (normal) rhythm nor atrial fibrillation, but “Inconclusive” because no sensible periodic readings can be detected.
Though there hasn’t been a blog post made since June 25th, there have been daily workout sessions from then through today. Any session can be seen via this: link to the online logbook. To see any session’s data and interactive graph click the corresponding “+” sign in the “Action” column for that session.
Today’s daily rowing session was the same distance as yesterday’s, 11,490 meters. It was a bit faster than yesterday’s session but it felt easier and was definitely more fun than yesterday’s. The average pace for yesterday’s was 2:35.7/500 meters and the average pace for today’s was 2:26.9/500 m. That amounted to a calorie burn difference of 20,000 calories more today than yesterday.*
Screenshot of today’s chart and data.
Screenshot of yesterday’s chart and data.
Though there hasn’t been a blog post made since June 14th, there have been workout sessions every day from then until today. Any of the workouts can be seen via this: link to the online logbook. To see any session’s data and its interactive graph, click the corresponding “+” sign in the “Action” column for that session.
Happy rowing to you!
* The 20,000 calorie difference between today’s and yesterday’s sessions is actual calories. For those of you who are acquainted only with the analysis listed on the backs of food packages, those energy values are kilo-calories or “food Calories”. The difference in energy expended in today’s rowing session compared to yesterday’s was 20 kilo-calories or 20 food Calories. But I like the sound of 20,000 calories better because though it is the same amount of energy it sounds like a lot more.
