Ethereal Rowing – Page 34 – Ethereal Rowing

Heart-Warming Rate, Rhythm and Recovery

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

One of the categories associated with today’s blog post is “Heart Strangeness”, which is the category I use when there is abnormal heart behavior during a workout. The abnormal behaviors have been: atrial fibrillation (irregular heart rhythm), excessively high heart rate, a slow or non-recovery of heart rate after hard work, or a combination of two or more of those.

There have been so many workouts recently with “heart strangeness,” that I was surprised to have everything normal today. Therefore, the category of “Heart Strangeness” was tacked on today to take note of and celebrate its ABSENCE.

The three r’s of heart rate, heart rhythm and heart rate recovery after hard intervals were all normal or – as some astronauts used to say – they were AOK.

There were two workouts. First, 10,000 meters at a constant pace of 2:18/500 meters on the rowing machine. The rowing session was a nice warmup for intervals on the SkiErg. The SkiErg session was preset to continue until 155 Calories had been burned. It was done with alternate intervals of hard/easy 10 Calorie work/rest intervals. The graphical picture of normal heart rate recovery after each interval on the SkiErg was heart-warming to behold.

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

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

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

Chart and data for today’s 155 Calorie SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

Mostly Just Dandy

Today’s workouts: SkiErg 154 Calories, rowing 10,000 meters at 2:19/500 meter average pace. Heart acted normally for first 4 minutes of the SkiErg session, then it shifted to irregular mode and remained too high for effort level for remainder of that session and for all of the following 10K rowing.

Otherwise, everything was normal and just dandy.

Report for 10,000 meters rowing at 2:19 average pace.

RowPro graphs for 10,000 meters rowing at 2:19 average pace.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for 10,000 meters rowing at 2:19 average pace.

Happy rowing to you!

A 12,985 Meter Warm-Up

Finish screen for today’s 10K rowing session.

Today’s workouts were very similar to yesterday except they were topped off with something a bit more fun, a 500 meter SkiErg dash. The first session was 10,000 meters rowing at constant pace of 2:20/500 meters. The second session was a very gentle version of work/rest intervals on the SkiErg. Total meters of those two sessions was 12,985 meters.

I’d been thinking about trying a 500 meter dash on the SkiErg, so those two sessions served as a warm-up and they were followed with an exploratory piece of 500 meters on the SkiErg. It was paced at about 2:00 for the first 400 meters and then a bit faster for the last 100 meters. The result was an average pace of about 1:58 and it was placed in the SkiErg rankings online.

Chart and data for today’s 153 Calorie SkiErg session.

Chart and data for today’s 500 meter SkiErg dash.

Happy rowing to you!

Small Changes To Yesterday’s

Today’s sessions were like yesterday’s: A 10K rowing session was first, with a pace target of 2:20 but today I used a pace boat for pacing. The rowing was followed by a SkiErg session of alternating 10 calorie intervals of work/rest for a total of 152 calories. The effort level of the intervals in today’s SkiErg session was easier than yesterday’s, with the exception of the last interval which was hard. Heart rate behaved normally today.

RowPro graphs for today’s 10K rowing session.

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

Chart and data for today’s SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you.

Followup of Yesterday’s Approach

Finish screen for today’s first workout, a 10K done at constant pace of 2:20/500m.

With strange heart behavior still in mind, today’s workout was a followup of yesterday’s. I may not have mentioned it lately, but I’m also making sure to do these daily workouts before breaking fast for the day, with the hope in mind that it will help the mitochondria better sort out any problems they might be having in relation to the strange heart behavior.

Today’s first session was rowing 10,000 meters at a constant, average pace of 2:20. Heart rate behaved normally again today as it had during yesterday’s similar 10K.

The second session was a SkiErg session similar to yesterday’s, but with one more calorie added to the goal. Heart rate acted up and got strange again during today’s SkiErg session: At 2 minutes 42 seconds into the session, heart rate spiked even though I was in a rest interval. It remained way too high for remainder of the session.

RowPro report for today’s 10K rowing session.

Happy rowing to you!

A Bit Experimental

Today’s erg workouts were like yesterday’s only they were different in minor respects. Today’s 10K was a constant pace. It did not include sprinting or interval(s) like yesterday’s. I’m unscientifically experimenting to see if there is any correlation between higher effort levels and heart strangeness.

Today’s SkiErg session was similar to yesterday’s, with a total goal of one calorie more, 150 Calories. The SkiErg session was not constant paced and consisted of alternating work/rest intervals of 10 calories each.

Heart behavior was normal during today’s rowing session of constant-rate 2:20/500 meter paced 10K. Heart strangeness happened on the SkiErg, in that it took longer than normal for heart rate to recover after each work interval.

After the rowing and SkiErg sessions, a 2 minute rowing warm down was done. The w/d was done at a very easy pace but heart rate remained high during those 2 minutes.

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

Chart and data for today’s SkiErg session. Heart rate went too high after the 2nd of seven intervals and remained too high through the end of SkiErg session and the warm down afterwards.

Finish screen for the two minute warm down.

Happy rowing to you!

Normal Start, Strange Finish

Finish screen for today’s 10K. See below for a closer-view of the graphs…

Today’s erg workouts were planned to be a repeat of yesterday’s. Today started out with a 10K, targeting a pace of just faster than 2:20 and a rating of 28, like yesterday. Also like yesterday, a single 500 meter interval was done at a pace of about 2:00, beginning when the remaining distance counted down to 4,000 meters.

Every thing was normal from the start, through the 500 meter interval and a little beyond the end of the 500 meter interval. Then things got strange, like the day before yesterday. Heart rate became irregular with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation and heart rate also spiked up to a rate too high for the low effort level of 2:20/500 meters rowing.

On the heart rate chart you can easily see that heart rate shifted/jumped from a normal rate of around 120 BPM when pace was 2:20, to an abnormally high rate of around 150 BPM.

Heart behavior and rate remained strange after the rowing session was over and all through the SkiErg session which immediately followed the rowing session. After I changed from workout clothes back into regular attire (jeans and T-shirt), heart rate became normal again. Perhaps it is something to do with the clothes? 🙂

Chart and data for today’s SkiErg session. Heart rate was way too high for the moderate effort levels.

Happy rowing to you!

Strange Heart Strangenessless

Both today and yesterday’s 10K rowing sessions were done at identical pace and each had one interval of 500 meters. Today’s (on the right) was NORMAL heart rate for that effort, at about 120 BPM. Yesterday’s heart rate was HIGH for that same effort level, at about 150 BPM.

Today started out differently than yesterday in a couple respects. The first of those was that there was no atrial fibrillation overnight or this morning, as there had been the previous day and night. As a consequence of that, the second immediately noticeable difference was that today’s HRV analysis by EliteHRV was a perfect 10, the greenest “green light” possible for any sort of workout today.

Another difference between today and yesterday is that yesterday I did some sweating during both the rowing and SkiErg workouts but today there was no sweating, no drips of sweat today on either the rowing machine or on the SkiErg platform, like there had been yesterday.

Yesterday, there was “heart strangeness” and I categorized yesterday’s blog post, accordingly, with that tag of “heart strangeness”. Today, heart behaved perfectly but because the difference between yesterday and today is so surprising, “strange” to me, I’m using that same tag for today’s post.

Though I rowed yesterday and today at the same easy pace, with sweating while rowing yesterday but not today… today’s SkiErg session was a bit harder than yesterday’s but today there were NO drips of sweat on the SkiErg platform, like there had been during yesterday’s easier SkiErg session while experiencing irregular heart rate which was abnormally high.

Happy rowing to you!

A Trial Of Fibrillation

This morning’s EliteHRV analysis on the left and EliteHRV’s graph of my irregular Afib in the graph on the right.

Today started with a very poor HRV analysis by the EliteHRV app and today’s workouts were both blah.

They were blah, because atrial fibrillation happened throughout. Not only did the heart go flutter-flutter, but it also went way too fast for the low effort level. I thought that maybe it would “straighten up and fly right,” before the end of the 10K rowing or the SkiErg session but it didn’t. Hopefully, it will straighten up today or tonight.

But on the BRIGHT SIDE: Though both rowing and SkiErg workouts were very moderate, at least I was able to work up a bit of a sweat. Eventually… it took quite a while, but eventually, sweat happened during the rowing session and continued, through the SkiErg session. The sweat was not profuse, by any means, but it was drippy like proper, respectable sweat should be.

Concept 2 online logbook chart and data for today’s SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you.

A Long Minute

Each second seems longer than normal, when sprinting with maximum effort.

Today’s main session was the shortest, a one minute rowing sprint. It was the “main” session, mainly because it was the most fun. The other, longer session was 146 Calories on the SkiErg, which was done first, as a sort of warmup for the one minute rowing sprint.

Time does seem to pass more slowly, when doing something like sprinting with maximum effort. In contrast, each minute of today’s much lower effort-level session on the SkiErg seemed to pass relatively quickly.

The report for the one minute sprint is divided into 3 splits of 20 seconds each. First split was slower than the second split, though I was freshest during the first split – because it took extra time to accelerate from a stop. The third split was slower than the second split for a different reason: because after 40 seconds I was getting tired and involuntarily slowing.

Concept 2 online logbook chart and data display for the SkiErg session

RowPro finish screen for the one minute sprint.

RowPro report for the one minute sprint.

Happy rowing to you!