A guy who’s new to rowing but not that new to other exercise said, “I get a little crabby when I’m not able to get my workouts in.” It seems that he has achieved a positive addiction to something that is healthy. That’s something to be happy about 🙂 and I know he is, because he said that since he’s taken to doing some daily exercise, he feels better than he has “in the last 15 years.”
I’m happy for him.
Happily, I too managed to do some exercise today. It was mostly indoor rowing. The main session was 10,000 meters which was done at its slowest pace for the first 1,000 meters as a warm up. For the next 7,000 meters, it was done at an easy pace with a target heart rate of from around 130 to 140. While I was rowing those 7,000 meters, the “Projected Finish” time on the rowing machine’s monitor would vary between 44 and 45 minutes.
For the last 2,000 meters, it was done at whatever pace it took to make the “Projected Finish” time on the monitor show 44:00 or less, with 44:00 being the target.
Afterwards, I rested for about 3 to 5 minutes, so the Apple Watch could measure and graph HR recovery. Then I did an additional 5 minutes very easy, to get a few hundred more supplemental meters, to help keep my daily average above 10K per day.
Finish screen for today’s 10K session.Report for today’s 10K session.RowPro’s graphs for today’s 10K session.Concept 2 online logbook’s graphs for today’s 10K session.Since the latest Apple Watch update, I like to look at its feature which shows heart rate recovery after exercise. It is only relevant if HR gets somewhat elevated. The watch only stores the HR recovery graphs like this for workouts done that day. (The next day, when you do workouts, those results overwrite the previous day’s). This shows HR recovery for today’s 10K session.The Apple Watch workout graphs only show heart rate versus time for workouts logged with the watch. It’s not as much information as provided by RowPro and the rowing machine, but it’s nice that the watch has that new feature. This is its graph for today’s 10K session.Finish screen for the easy, lazy 5 minutes of rowing to get a few more meters after today’s main rowing.Report for the 5 minutes.Graphs for the 5 minutes.
Today’s indoor rowing started with a 10K session which was done at a pace of 2:20/500 meters. It served as a warmup for the “race” which followed. The Apple Watch graph of HR recovery for two minutes immediately following the 10K warmup is below this paragraph:
The “race” was 4 intervals of 750 meters, with 3 minutes of rest after each 750 meter interval or 4×750 r3:00 in rowing shorthand. The latter was done for this month’s c2ctc.com challenge, called The Red Line Rev Up, after the rowing club whose idea it was. The Apple Watch graph of HR recovery for two minutes immediately following the 4×750 r3:00 is below this paragraph:
As a final warm down, I rowed gently for 5 minutes. The recovery graph after the 5 minute warm down is not worth looking at since the heart rate was already so low at the end.
A comment about the “race”: Since I so seldom row hard, I wasn’t sure what pace to attempt. The first 750 meters was attempted at a pace of 1:48 but that turned out to be too fast, when I started having trouble getting enough air into my lungs with each inhalation. So I did the next two 750 meter intervals quite a bit slower. Those seemed a bit too easy, so I did the final interval a bit harder than the middle two, but slower than the very first interval. As a result, the graph of pace for the string of 4 intervals is shaped a bit like a lop-sided bowl.
Here are screenshots relating to the rowing done today:
Finish screen for the 10K warmup. It was done online but nobody else noticed it in time to join, so it was done alone.Report for the 10K warmup.Graphs for the 10K warmup.Concept 2 online logbook charts for the 10K warmup.Finish screen for the 4×750 r3:00 “race”.Report for the 4×750 r3:00 “race”.Graphs for the 4×750 r3:00 “race”.Report for the 5 minute warm down.Graphs for the 5 minute warm down.
The Apple Watch’s new workout recovery measuring feature showed a satisfactorily steep recovery curve during the two minutes after today’s 8K.
Today’s indoor rowing took a lower priority than visiting the dentist, running errands and other things not worth listing. One thing that might be worth listing among “other things” is that I printed a few cards onto business card stock and will carry some of them with me when out of the house, so that I can give them to anyone who shows what seems to be any real interest in exercising on an erg. What the cards look like is shown immediately below this paragraph.
If some of the people who are lucky enough 🙂 to get one of these cards take up indoor rowing and also row on the internet, perhaps I’ll have a bit more company in this time zone when rowing online. That would be nice. The image above shows the front view (left) and the back view (right) of what each card looks like.
Because today’s rowing was started late, it was less than the usual minimum goal of 10K in order for me to finish before dinner time. But at 8K, it was close and it felt like it did some good.
If you look at the heart rate graphs for today’s session report and notice that the graphs are messy again, I think that’s because in addition to the strap transmitter having a low battery of between 40% to 60%, the strap wasn’t wet enough when the session started. It’s a cloth strap and only works when it is wet. Also, my skin was dry. And the room was a bit cold. So, with the moderate pace of rowing, it took quite a while before there was perspiration enough for the heart strap to be optimally conductive to the heart signal.
The session was at an easy pace but it was fun and mentally absorbing because once again I avoided watching a distracting movie and instead just focused on the rowing, counting strokes and other mindful rowing-oriented thoughts.
Here are today’s rowing session screenshots:
Finish screen for today’s 8K session.RowPro report for today’s 8K session.RowPro graphs for today’s 8K session. It took a while for the heart strap to become sufficiently wet with perspiration, for it to conduct the heart signal reliably.
Looking forward to a couple of race-pace sessions sometime this month: For c2ctc.com, I’ll do this month’s challenge which is called The Red Line Rev Up. And for the Indoor Rowers League, the challenge event for November is to do 6,344 meters at race-pace. I’ll probably do the c2ctc challenge first. For the Indoor Rowers League challenge, I’ll wait until toward the end of the month to do it, so I can see how the others in my age group do, and choose which of those times to use as a target to beat. 🙂
The plumber, while he was locating and dealing with the root-stoppage yesterday evening.
As warm-up before today’s rowing, I cut down three small trees. They were the most likely culprits for an invasion of roots into sewer pipe behind our house. The stopped- up drainpipe from house to sewer was somewhat of an emergency yesterday evening, which warranted a weekend and nighttime visit by a plumber who specialized in that problem.
Some of the results after cutting down two of the three small Palo Verde trees.
The area where the roots invaded was right under three small Palo Verde trees, so they were all three cut down today.
The catty trees left a few scratches.
Palo Verde trees are pretty when they bloom, but they are not nice to be physically close to. They are covered with stiff, needle-sharp thorns. The three scratches on my arm are three of a few scratches received while cutting and carrying away branches. A few cactus thorns managed to get stuck in my legs also. Ordinary results, it seems, when working near and among native desert foliage and plants.
Palo Verde trees don’t make good firewood either. If burned in a fire, the wood burns quickly and the smoke stinks.
As for today’s rowing: It was more fun than it had been the previous few days. The reason it was not boring and was fun today is: I didn’t watch any movies or videos to distract from the experience of rowing. The rowing was mindful, focused and sufficiently ethereal to be fun and mentally absorbing. Even though I rowed alone…. online, but alone. Sigh.
Finish screen for today’s 10K.Report for today’s 10K.RowPro charts for today’s 10K.Concept2.com online logbook graph for today’s 10K.
One appropriate word that comes to mind which rhymes with Chappie is the word “crappy”.
Today while rowing I watched the last half of a movie called Chappie, which included Sigourney Weaver and Anderson Cooper (of CNN) in its cast. It was a huge disappointment and I couldn’t recommend it to anyone, except as a movie to watch if you want to see how badly done a movie can be. It had problems with logic, script, dialogue, screenplay and … not the least by any means… problems with not being believable by any stretch of rational imagination.
Today’s rowing was 10,000 meters done at a slow pace while I endured watching most of the movie at its normal pace. for about 15 to 20 minutes of the movies playing time, I increased the playing speed so that it played faster and displayed captions but there was no sound… it wasn’t worth playing at its normal speed.
Finish screen for today’s 10K session.Report for today’s 10K session.RowPro graphs for today’s 10K session.Concept2 graphs for today’s 10K session.
Today’s rowing session was 10K done at an easy pace while watching part of a movie. It was boring, to row at such an easy pace, but the movie distracted from the boredom.
The warm-up for today’s rowing consisted of using a pick, a shovel, a caliche bar (also called a San Angelo bar) which is a 7 foot long, 16 pound steel rod digging tool, a couple of trowels, a couple of buckets, gardening gloves and a couple of knives, to do everything necessary from start to finish to accomplish the planting of the above-pictured bush, whose flowers are favored by hummingbirds. A hummingbird visited, while I was outside doing the work.
Because today was sunny and the temperature was in the 80s F (27 Celsius), it caused me to do more sweating than today’s easy paced 10K.
The 10K was scheduled and done online, but it was done alone.
Finish screen for today’s 10K.Report for today’s 10K.Charts for today’s 10K.
The above photo shows what seemed to take the largest part of my energy today – planting the flowering bush, for the local hummingbirds. It looks rather disheveled, but we expect it to look more sheveled and at-home in a couple weeks after it gets over the transplanting shock.
Today’s indoor rowing was low energy and in addition I was very distracted because I watched part of a British sci-fi comedy movie and gave almost all my attention to the movie and almost none to rowing. I could have rowed slower, but not much slower, if I’d focused only on rowing slowly.
The distance was 10,000 meters and it was done online but alone.
Finish screen for today’s 10K.Report for today’s 10K.Graphs for today’s 10K.
The tediously excavated hole. The bar laying across the top is the digging bar which was resorted to in order to break up and then remove the hard caliche soil a couple inches at a timeThe planting pamphlet said the optimal depth is about 2 1/2 feet, which is what the measuring tape indicates.
Before writing about what’s mentioned in today’s title, the most important event of the day should be mentioned: The whole hole was completely dug today and is now ready for the planting of the flowering bush for the hummingbirds. Photos above, of the finished hole and also a close-up to show that the measuring tape indicates it is about 28 or 29 inches deep, which is supposed to be optimal depth. After the bush is planted, I’ll try to put a photo of it in a future blog post.
This is a tiny picture, courtesy of Ace Hardware, of the problem-solver tool which made it possible to dig the hole in the very hard caliche soil. It’s generic name is a digging bar but it’s also called a San Angelo bar (by Collins Axe, the manufacturer) and a “caliche bar” by local people to this area.
The title of today’s blog post was chosen because I’m wondering whether or not it was a coincidence that yesterday’s heart hiccups (palpitations), which had bothered me all day and all through yesterday’s rowing, were remedied by taking 5 mg of Cetirizine yesterday evening. Cetirizine is the chemical name for the brand name antihistimine called Zyrtec.
Yesterday evening, I was still bothered with the heart hiccups and its BPM was a lot faster than normal. In the past, I’ve resorted to 1/2 tablet of Zyrtec some evenings, because though I have no allergies I’ve noticed that it helps me sleep through the night. Yesterday evening, I thought that if the heart hiccups continued, I’d have a hard time sleeping that night, so I took 1/2 a dose of Zyrtec (about 5 mg of Cetirizine) at about 8:30 or 9:00 pm. By 10:00 pm, the heart palpitations disappeared and the pulse returned to its normal resting rate. So I’m wondering if it was a coincidence or if taking the Cetirizine helped stop the palpitations. I may never know, but if it happens again, I’ll try Cetirizine again and see if the same results happen as promptly.
The above screenshots show yesterday’s recovery after rowing, when my heart barely slowed down even though I’d totally stopped rowing (the graph on the left) and today’s recovery (the graph on the right) when my heart slowed down quite normally. Curious, to say the least.
Today’s HR graph’s are much better looking than the sloppy HR graphs of yesterday, when there were heart hiccups throughout that session.
Finish screen for today’s online 10K session.Report for today’s online 10K session.RowPro graphs for today’s online 10K session.Concept 2 graphs for today’s online 10K session.
Digging the hole could be a two-man job, as long as only one man at a time gets near the hole.
Today’s main labor, time-wise, was working at digging a hole to plant a bush. The bush has flowers that hummingbirds like. Digging the hole is slow-going, because the soil is very hard and I had to use a pick and a digging bar, more commonly known locally as a “caliche bar,” to break up the earth so it could be scooped out.
I started the job yesterday, with a shovel, like the guy in the photo above this paragraph. But soon I had to resort to a pick, like one of the guys in the top photo above is holding. Today, I had to make a trip to the hardware store to get a 16 pound digging bar which is a steel rod about 6 feet long. It weighs 16 pounds, is pointed at one end and has a chisel-head on the opposite end. It works well, a few inches at a time.
The above photo of an impressively deep hole was found on a blog called Strandbortraum. The blog doesn’t have anything about rowing that I noticed. But it did have an article about digging a hole. It was on a page where the author wrote about digging a hole for the planting of a peach tree. A peach tree would need a deeper and wider hole than the holes needed for the bushes I’m planting.
By the time the hole is complete, it will not be as deep as the impressively deep hole in the above photo. It will only be a little more than two feet deep, but each inch requires a lot of pounding and scraping. If the thought occurs to me tomorrow, I’ll take a picture of the hole I dug.
For today’s rowing, the main session was 10K online in the company of a rower who was located in Canada. I mostly rowed a constant pace and he rowed about the same average pace but he did one minute or so sprints, every thousand meters or so. There was also a 5 minute warmup and warm down before and after.
The heart rate graph is very sloppy because the heart was “hiccuping” today. But otherwise everything felt normal.
Sunday and Monday were days without rowing so today’s resumption was a special treat, in the respect that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Today’s session was 10K online but alone. I started out with the intention of rowing 1,000 strokes with my eyes closed and then opening them to see how pace and heart rate compared to my subjective estimates. But Diane came into the room to chat for a bit and so I rowed with eyes open most of the time.
Below are screenshots of the Apple Watch’s views of today’s warmup + 10K and the post-10K HR recovery graph:
There was a 5 minute warmup/down which I won’t bother documenting here. If anyone really wants to see them, just say so.
Finish screen for today’s 10K session.Report for today’s 10K session.RowPro graphs for today’s 10K session.Concept 2 graphs for today’s 10K session.
