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.
The session was uploaded to YouTube and is available as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing with 12 One minute intervals 03102018”
Happy rowing to you.
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.
One minute every 5 minutes felt good.
It was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and is available at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 11 one minute intervals with 4 minutes rest 03092018”
Happy rowing to you.
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.
The session was uploaded to YouTube and will be available at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 11276 meters 03082018“.
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s rowing session was 12,000 meters. It was done without targets. The only goal was to row at a pace that felt good.
The session was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 751 Calories 03062018“.
Happy rowing to you.
Yesterday, the heart’s little brain got confused and wouldn’t slow down. Today, the same kind of rowing session was done, but at a significantly slower pace and the heart behaved itself.
Instead of aiming for yesterday’s original target pace of 2:00/500m or faster. today’s pace was targeted at just a bit faster than 2:10/500m. Not as much fun as something faster than 2:00, but a lot more fun than yesterday’s stuck-in-high BPM problem.
The session was uploaded to YouTube and is available as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 2x15minR3min Moderate 03052018“.
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s indoor rowing session was supposed to be fun but it turned out not to be and I think the reason it was spoiled was because I skipped doing a thorough warmup.
The session was setup to be two intervals of 15 minutes each, according to the requirement for this month’s challenge on the c2ctc.com website. The rules are: “Row two unrestricted reps of 15 minutes with 3 minutes rest between each rep. Start each 15 minute row from a standing start. No rolling starts. Record the distance rowed for the slowest of your 15 minute rows. So you can’t do one easy and one hard. You need best effort for both. ”
The problem that happened was that after the 3 minutes rest, heart rate wouldn’t slow down and remained above 140. Another contributing factor in addition to me not having warmed up sufficiently might be that after the first 15 minutes, I totally stopped rowing, got off the erg and walked around the house for most of the 3 minutes rest time. The heart is supposed to have its very own little brain and I probably should have kept rowing at an easy pace, to avoid confusing that little brain.
So… the results for today’s session won’t be entered on c2ctc.com. I can get a faster result for the slowest 15 minutes of the two, if I do them both again but slower and thereby don’t confuse the heart’s brain into doing a repeat of what it did today. You can see what it did today, graphically, on the graphs among today’s screenshots.
Today’s rowing session fail was uploaded to YouTube and is available as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 2×15 min R3 min Fail 03042018“.
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s indoor rowing session was another 10K done at an average pace of 2:18/500 meters. But this time, there were 8 intervals thrown in the mix. It was a nice change of pace and felt a lot more invigorating, than the recent 10Ks done at 2:20 to 2:18 pace.
The session was uploaded to YouTube and is available as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing Eight 2 min Intervals In 10K 03022018“.
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s indoor rowing session was a 10K done with the goal of 133 Watts average while rowing a constant pace. That power level of 133 Watts translates to about 2 minutes 18 seconds per 500 meters – which sounds familiar…
There have been no bothersome heart irregularities following yesterday’s 2K time trial fail and today there was only one single blip of irregularity, which can be seen where there’s a vertical line in the HR graphs.
The session is uploaded to YouTube and is available as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 10K at 133 Watts 03012018“.
Happy rowing to you.
It’s all in the mind, some say.
Today I decided at the last minute to do the Indoor Rowers League challenge for the month of February. So … it wasn’t literally at the last minute, but was literally on the last day for which results could be entered.
I wanted to avoid stirring up another bout of irregular heartbeat, which the doctors have been referring to as atrial fibrillation. So I started out with a 3K warmup. Before doing the 3K warmup, I did a 1K warmup warmup.
Before doing the actual 2K time trial, I did another 2K at what seemed like a reasonable warmup pace.
For the 2K TT itself, I thought it would be reasonable, barring any irregularities from the ticker, to pace it at between 1:52 and 1:53. So I started out at 1:49 and it felt good. But anything, no matter how fast the pace, ALWAYS feels good right at the start … so I slowed to 1:53 and maintained an average of between 1:52 and 1:53 for the first 1,000 meters.
At about 900 meters, it started to feel like I had bit off more than I could chew and that I wouldn’t be able to maintain that pace for the last half. I didn’t like the idea of rowing slower than 1:53 for a 2K, so I just gave up and slowed way down.
One hundred meters passed at the super slow pace and I watched the average pace slow from 1:52 point something, to 1:55 point something. Another hundred meters passed and the average pace got nearer to 2:00. After about 300 meters passed, the average pace became slower than 2:00/500 meters and I decided I couldn’t allow it to be slower than 2:00/500 meters, so I picked up the pace to around 1:57 and rowed at that pace until the remaining distance counted down to around 250 meters. Then, I gave a bit more effort and rowed faster for the final 250 meters, consoling myself by finishing in less than 8 minutes total for the 2K.
There was some GOOD NEWS, as far as I was concerned: Heartbeat only went irregular one time. I could feel it as it happened and then the HR display confirmed it by going blank. But it only lasted a few seconds. That one occurrence was during the final warm down and think it was because I may have been slowing down a bit too much, too soon. So I picked up the pace a bit and slowed down more gradually. It has behaved itself since then.
The 3K warmup was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and is available at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 3K Warmup 02282018“.
The 2K Time Trial fail was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and is available at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 2K Time Trial And Fail 02282018“.
First, the screenshots for the 3K warmup:
Next, screenshots for the 2K TT fail:
Happy rowing to you.
Yesterday there was no rowing done here. Today was a 10K done once again at the average pace of 2:18/500m. This one had a lower average heart rate than the previous one which was done on February 25th.
Average heart rate two days ago on the 25th was 123 BPM and average heart rate today was 116 BPM which is a 7 BPM reduction. So that’s good, but I don’t know why the difference. Maybe there was less stress, by the time the rowing was done this afternoon.
The session was uploaded to YouTube and will be available as a screen recording at the following link:”Indoor Rowing 10K at 2m18s Pace 02272018“.
Happy rowing to you.