Category: Ethereal Rowing

Today’s indoor rowing session was another 10K in a sequence of 10Ks being done to explore the correlation of effort level and average heart rate.  First, I did a 10K with a heart rate target of 110 BPM from start to finish. HR was virtually a constant 110 BPM from start to finish, but in order to do that, the pace had to start out faster and then slow down from start to finish, to maintain 110 BPM HR.  The average pace for that 10K was about 2:26.

Next, a 10K with a target of 2:20/500m average pace, to see what heart rate would do. Pace was maintained at 2:20 from start to finish and HR started out below 110 and finished above 110, to average about 109.9 BPM.

Next, a 10K at an average pace of 2:19/500m.  Average HR for that session was about 115 BPM which is about 5 BPM increase for that increase in pace.

Today, 10K at an average of 2:18.  Average HR today was quite a bit higher than expected, based on the results of yesterday compared to the day before yesterday.  Instead of average HR increasing another 5 BPM, it increased by about 8 BPM, to about 123 BPM.

I haven’t decided what to try tomorrow.  But one happy result so  far is that there have been no incidents of irregular heartbeat at these very low effort levels. So I might hang out in this region for a while and see what happens with some more tweaking of pace or with the same pace and see if HR slows down at that pace.

Today’s session was uploaded to YouTube and is available as a screen recording at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 10K Target Pace 2m18s 02252018“.

Happy rowing to you.

Today’s indoor rowing was another 10K.  It was done with the goal of an average pace -1 second/500 meters faster than yesterday’s pace, to see what effect that small change had on average heart rate.  Result:  Today’s average HR was 115.4 BPM which was about 5 BPM higher than yesterday’s 109.9 BPM average.  The increase in calories was a total of 3 for the entire session.  The difference in Watts was also 3 more average Watts than yesterday’s.

Today’s 10K was uploaded to YouTube and will be available a few hours from this moment, at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 10K Target Pace 2m19s 02242018“.

Happy rowing to you.

As the title implies, today’s indoor rowing session was 10K with a target pace of 2 minutes 20 seconds per 500 meters.  After the session was finished, I downloaded a CSV file of the session from the Concept 2 online logbook and had a spreadsheet compute the average heart rate for all the recorded heartbeats.  It came out to be an average of about 109.7 BPM.  It was interesting to me, because yesterday’s 10K was done with the goal of keeping HR as near as possible to 110 throughout the session and the comparison of results, comparing yesterday’s bottom line to today’s, weren’t what I expected.

The session was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and will eventually be available at the following link: “Indoor Rowing 2m20 sec Target Pace 02232018“.

Happy rowing to you.

Today’s indoor rowing session was inspired by an indoor rowing acquaintance who said he is going to try rowing ordinary daily sessions at a target HR rate of 110 BPM.  The inspiration was also related to what a cardiologist, Dr. Joel Kahn, wrote on pages 175-176 of the hardback copy of his book, “The Whole Heart Solution,”  where he referred to studies which showed that endurance athletes who push themselves too hard, for too much of the time, have higher rates of death from heart attack than even couch potatoes.

Based on the results of the studies he mentions, Dr. Kahn recommends that endurance athletes spend most of their time running “like a turtle.”  So I suppose that would apply to rowing also.  Relish the hard rowing occasionally but avoid over-indulging in hard, high heart-rate rowing.

Inspiration for today’s title was partly because I ate lunch immediately before doing today’s 10K.  It was a small lunch – just two slices of toast with peanut butter and unsweetened dill relish (instead of sugary jelly).  Inspiration was also because I remembered David Churbuck’s comment to the post of March 24th, 2017 when he mentioned the risk of eating a meal immediately before rowing, if the rowing would be hard, competitive rowing.  He has a unique blog called Churbuck.com which relates to many things, including rowing.

At any rate… today’s rowing session for me was neither competitive nor hard. But it was fun and mentally absorbing, because of the constant focus on keeping HR as near as possible to the target.

This 10K was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and will be available a few hours from now, at this link:”Indoor Rowing 10K w Target HR of 110 BPM 02212018“.

Happy rowing to you.

 

 

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.

It was fun.

It was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and may be viewed at this link: “Indoor Rowing 2K with HR limit 02172018”

Happy rowing to you.

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.

The session was uploaded to YouTube and will eventually be available at this link: “Indoor Rowing 10K Target 148 Watts 02122018“.

Happy rowing to you.