Today’s HRV Morning Readiness analysis was good, so rowing was okay to do. Of course, it has been good for several days WITHOUT having done any rowing on those days… but today some rowing was actually done!
Today’s main workout was an aerobic row of 19,384 meters. It was at RPE level 2. It was followed by a first time attempt at a one minute sprint on the SkiErg, at what started out at RPE level 10 and faded. That was followed by 500 meters on the SkiErg at RPE level 5, to serve as a warm down for a warm down. Lastly, there was a SkiErg final warm down of about two minutes at RPE level 1.
Last night’s sleep had a bit of insomnia but total sleep was good at 7 hours 50 minutesFinish screen for today’s rowing session of 19,384 meters. It started out as a full marathon in case I felt inclined to go that distance.RowPro report for today’s main session. The finish screen at the time the RowPro session was stopped showed 1,100 calories. This report shows 1,097 calories. The Concept 2 logbook shows 1,095 calories. What’s a few calories, among friends?RowPro graphs for today’s main session.Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s main session.Chart for today’s first time ever 1 minute sprint attempt on SkiErg. You can see that though my effort level faded, heart rate did not fade with the fading effort level.After the 1 minute SkiErg sprint I did two warmdowns. This was the first warm down, 500 meters on the SkiErg at RPE level 5.:This was the final warm down: two minutes on the SkiErg at an RPE 1 effort level that allowed heart rate to slow down.
Though today was a rest day from rowing, I didn’t recline or take a nap like this guy appears to be doing.
Today’s EliteHRV score was very sympathetic which in the case of heart rate variability isn’t good. So I took the day off from rowing. I was slightly active, moving furniture, assembling a piece of exercise equipment and other miscellaneous chores/tasks. But none of it compared to any kind of rowing.
Today’e EliteHRV Morning readiness score.
Heart rate graph of last nights sleep. It was a good night’s sleep, but the sleep logging app says I’m still low on sleep. The way the sleep app puts it, I’m at 75% of what it calculates to be my “3-Day Sleep Target”
Though last night’s sleep was quite a bit more than the night before, last night’s RHR was higher at 53 (vs 51 for night before) and last night’s average sleeping HR was higher at 59 (vs 54 for night before).
Today’s two main training signals, amount of sleep and EliteHRV morning readiness reading were both “GO” for it being okay to row as hard and long as I wanted. But my body/and or mind felt reluctant. Where exactly is the dividing line between mind and body? Each hugely influences the other…
HRV app said “Go for it!”
Amount of sleep was 7 hours, which was well within the fully rested target zone with 30 minutes to spare, based on recent sleep…
But when I sat down to row, I couldn’t seem to find the accelerator pedal. So I took it easy, sampled a few YouTube videos on the topic of using HRV with training and watched two of those videos in their entirety.
The second of those two videos was titled “Heart Rate Variability Training & Grouse Grind // Vlog 001” and it sort of fit with what I was wrestling with, which was whether to push myself to row vigorously or to take it easy. I decided to not take the advice of the EliteHRV app and to do just a little bit of easy rowing. The guy in the video also did not take the advice of his HRV app, only in his case the app told him to take it easy and rest. Instead, he climbed a mountain. The next day, his HRV score had greatly improved. So it makes you wonder about HRV – there’s more to the picture than just the HRV reading, it seems. I’m curious how my HRV reading will react to my having taken it easy today?
There were no screen recordings made of any of today’s rowing pieces. It doesn’t work well, to make a screen recording of a rowing session while watching YouTube videos…
Here’s a summary list of today’s lackadaisical rowing:
All totaled, today’s calorie count came to a lot less than 1,000 calories.
We made a brief holiday trip to visit some of our children. I did virtually no rowing while we were away from home. But we did get to take a little trip in a charter boat and see some whales up close. One of the whales came up out of the water briefly.
It’s been about two weeks since I’ve sat and rowed on a Concept 2 rowing machine. A few hours of the time during which there was no rowing was occupied with a trip on a chartered boat, to watch whales. The whales occasionally came up out of the water, to watch us watching them. Here is the best video I got of the whales coming up out of the water: A gray whale surfacing briefly
I didn’t take any HRV readings for about two weeks. Today’s was the second day in a row of EliteHRV readings, after we returned home so the HRV baseline is just getting started again.
Today’s EliteHRV morning readiness reading indicated caution (see above screenshot) but I was more than cautious and didn’t do any rowing today.
The only indoor rowing I did during the past two weeks was done in my street clothes. I didn’t want to get sweaty, so I took it easy while trying out a strange rowing machine called “Matrix”. It was quieter than a C2, but I’ll take a C2 over a Matrix any day. It felt weird/strange.
The only other machine I tried while on the trip was a Stairmaster step machine. The above screen shows the results of what I did, which burned 150 calories.
Now, for those of you who are wanna-be sleep-researchers, here’s the exciting recent record of heart rate during sleep periods for Dec 27th through the most recent night’s sleep:
7 hours 55 minutes total sleep.7 hours 45 minutes total sleep.4 hours 50 minutes total sleep.8 hours 40 minutes total sleep.8 hours 5 minutes total sleep.9 hours 25 minutes total sleep.
A picture of last night’s insomnia. Heart rate is plotted with red dots which are heart rate samples once about every 10 minutes. Heart rate is not plotted for the period when I was awake with insomnia.
Last night, I had a few hours of insomnia. One result was that I didn’t get back to sleep until about 05:00 a.m. This morning was a day when it was necessary to rise early, to take care of a weekly, early morning chore.
I always set at least 3 wake-up alarms, in case there is a malfunction with one or two of them. The first one sounded and I reached up from deep under the surface of an ocean of sleep and shut it off. Same with the second one and I was slightly more awake, but lay back down and closed my eyes to drift back to sleep. It took the third alarm, to get me up out of bed, but I felt awful.
So after completing the chore, I considered whether to go back to bed or stay up. I went back to bed, but despite being very tired, could not go back to sleep. So I got up, and took the daily EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading. It was the worst reading I’ve seen yet. A fruit of a bad night’s sleep? I rowed briskly yesterday, but neither terribly hard nor long..
Today’s EliteHRV Readiness reading after a three-alarm wake-up.
Whatever the reason, I limited myself to only easy, leisurely rowing today. The main rowing session was 10,000 meters at a low heart rate pace.
