Finish screen for today’s 1,000 meter rowing session.
Today’s longest session was the approximately 15 minutes it took to burn 180 Calories at a pace of 2:22 per 500 meters on the SkiErg. Today’s most fun session was the shortest one, which was 1,000 meters at a “notch” faster pace than the previous day’s 1,000 meter ranked session.
The 1K rowing session was uploaded to YouTube for those of you who’d like to use it for rowing along with. To add a non-sequitur here: with every word I type and every sentence that is inserted here, I’m wondering if it will pass the test of being scanned by the local household grammarian and spelling expert. She adds an element of stress, but it’s probably a healthy variety of stress.
Finish screen for today’s 1,000 meter rowing session.
Today’s total available workout time was too little, so one of the workouts had to be shortened. The one chosen was the rowing session. It was limited to 1K, but a little compensation was made by increasing the pace to 2:08. The SkiErg session was the same progression as recently. I added one to yesterday’s Calorie goal and subtracted one second/500 meters from the pace belonging to yesterday’s pace target.*
Finish screen view for today’s 10K rowing session. Gertrude is in the yellow boat.
Today the decision was made to discontinue the 7-day series of 10Ks and increase the pace of today’s 10K from the 2:14 pace which was only done in one session (yesterday’s session) to a bit faster 2:13 / 500 meters.
A pace boat was used to help me maintain a constant pace from start to finish. I gave the name Gertrude to the avatar of the female rower in the pace boat.
The most notable thing about today’s rowing session wasn’t the pace boat or it’s lovely female rower, however. The most notable thing was the lack of any heart strangeness. The reason I was so impressed with the good behavior of my heart today was because of what I was watching on another monitor while rowing today’s 10K.
The other monitor was playing a YouTube recording of an online 10K I rowed on September 30th, 2018. That particular 10K was done at an overall average pace of 2:14.2/500 meters which was slower than today’s average pace of 2:13.0/500 meters. But my heart rate was a LOT higher on Sept 30 of last year than it was in today’s 10K. So it appears that the heart is functioning better now than it was a year ago in September. I wonder if it is related to my significantly improving A1C score?? When the A1 C score improves, the red blood cells become smaller, closer to the size they should be. Could it be that larger red blood cells are more difficult for the heart to pump?
There were differences in the approach to the 10K on Sept 30, 2018: I started out faster and tried to maintain a pace of about 2:08 on that day. But by the time the distance counted down to less than 3,000 meters I could hear myself, on the recording audio track, breathing very hard. At 2,800 meters, I was struggling for breath and finally threw in the figurative towel. I finished that Sept 30, 2018 10K, but at an extremely slow pace.
Today’s workout also included a session on the SkiErg which was 178 Calories at a pace of 2:24/500 meters.
The past 25 days since I’ve been refraining from doing any intervals or speed work have been relatively boring. There was one, isolated 30 second sprint on the SkiErg a few days ago. But other than that for the last 25 days it’s been mostly constant pace on the rowing machine and likewise on the SkiErg.
The current constant pace regimen is an experiment. I’m wondering if the frequent intervals had been a factor in episodes of “heart strangeness” (atrial fibrillation etc). Since refraining from doing any intervals, heart behavior has been 99.9% normal. Heart behavior was normal today too, but the “Heart Strangeness” category is added to this post, because the subject is being mentioned.
Rowing is fun but and maintaining a constant pace isn’t as easy as it sounds. It takes mental focus. But rowing intervals is a lot more fun. However, I will continue being patient and allow more time before including some intervals again.
Today’s workouts featured the last 10K in a series of 7 at a constant pace of 2:15. Also there was a SkiErg workout targeting 176 Calories at a constant pace of 2:26.
The next 10K will be a constant pace but at 2:14 pace. I haven’t decided yet whether to do a series of seven 10Ks at that 2:14 pace. Currently, I’m leaning toward something else instead of a series of seven 2:14 rowing sessions at constant pace.
Stay tuned…
Finish screen for today’s 10K rowing session.
Report for today’s 10K rowing session.
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 176 Calorie SkiErg session.
Happy rowing to you!
*To give credit where credit is due, the shirt pictured above was found on a website called TeeShirt21. The website has quite a few other interesting shirts relating to rowing.
I very seldom get comments. There have been a few, very few, comments but the only ones lately have been in Russian. When I use Google translator to render the Russian into some resemblance to English, they turn out to be spam which I won’t dignify with a description.
Comments welcome, but only if they are on a topic shared by this blog (indoor rowing or the SkiErg, etc). No Russian spoken here, though.
Today’s workouts were two: A 10K rowing session, the 6th in a series of 7 at a pace of 2:14. Also there was a SkiErg session which had as its goal 175 Calories at a pace of 2:27.
It’s late at night, 22:00 local time and I’m wondering how quickly this blog post can be posted. Here goes…
Today’s erg workouts were: 10K rowing at a constant average pace of 2:15. This was the 5th in a series of seven 10Ks to be done at that pace. Also there was a SkiErg session, same as yesterday’s except that one more Calorie was added to the session goal and the target pace was increased by -1 second per 500 meters.
When I took a few days off from using the ergs, I thought it had only been three or four days. I was surprised, to discover that six days had passed, when workouts resumed. How did time get so slippery?
So now I’m counting the days-in-a-row of doing daily workouts. Today makes a three day streak of workouts on rowing machine and SkiErg.
Today’s rowing was another 10K, the 4th in a series of seven at a constant pace of 2:15/500 meters. The workout on the SkiErg was 173 Calories at an average pace of 2:29/500 meters.
Today is the second day back after six days off and everything worked out okay again, though heart rate was a little higher than yesterday. The rowing workout was 10,000 meters at a constant pace of 2:15. It is the third of seven in a series of rowing 10Ks at 2:15, then the pace will be increased for the next seven. The SkiErg workout today was 1 Calorie more than yesterday’s at 172 Calories and 1 second per 500 meters faster, at a pace of 2:30/500 meters.
Monitor on the left is screen recording showing finish screen of the July 2nd 10K. Monitor on the right is the finish screen for today’s 10K. Heart rate was lower, each and every second of the way through today’s 10K, than it was on July 2nd. Don’t ask me what it means because I don’t know.
“Look on the bright side of things,” says my mind to itself. After being on the not so bright side of things and doing no workouts for 6 days, today’s workout showed a net performance increase. Perhaps that’s because I was so very well rested. Over-rested.
Today’s rowing workout was a 10K done at the same constant average pace as the 10K done on July 2nd. In fact, the screen recording of the July 2nd 10K was playing on a separate monitor and we both started at the same time (see photo at the top of this blog entry).
There was also a SkiErg workout done today: 171 Calories at a constant average pace of 2:31/500 meters.
Finish screen for today’s 10K rowing.
Report for today’s 10K rowing.
RowPro graphs for today’s 10K rowing.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K rowing.
Comparison analysis result for for today’s 10K rowing vs July 2nd 10K rowing.
Chart and data for today’s 171 Calorie SkiErg session.
