At around 3 AM this morning after I woke and then returned to bed, heart rate became irregular.
Mostly it was annoying but it happens so often that I didn’t lose any sleep over it.
Early in mid morning I started doing the daily workout by setting the SkiErg for a 250 Calorie countdown.
Leisure skiing should have resulted in a low heart rate of around 100 BPM but it was still irregular and heart rate immediately went much higher than normal for that low effort level.
Instead of skiing for the entire 250 Calories, I quit after 50 Calories and took a break for water and 80 mg of aspirin.
Ordinarily, if there is such as thing as ordinary with irregular heartbeat, it has been my experience that it is inclined to become regular after taking an aspirin.
Returning to the SkiErg after waiting more than 30 minutes for the aspirin to circulate, I set up a session to count down 200 Calories, which was the remainder of the original 250 Calorie session.
After skiing for 100 Calories, heart rate was still irregular and much too high for the effort level so I cut the session short and took another break for more aspirin and water.
Taking that much time to do so few Calories on the SkiErg is very unusual. After another 30 minutes to allow the second 80 mg dose of aspirin to enter the system, I returned to the SkiErg and setup a session for the last remaining 100 Calories.
Even though I started out easy in the third installment of the SkiErg session, heart rate continued to be irregular and too high. So I increased the pace a bit to see if perhaps going a bit faster would nudge the heart into normal behavior. But it remained irregular and too high for the effort from start to finish of the third piece of the total time on the SkiErg.
Determined to do a total daily workout of 250 Calories on the SkiErg and 10,000 meters on the rowing machine, I kept my workout clothes on and took a long break before going to the rowing machine.
During that long break I had a substantial breakfast and about 12 ounces of home-brewed Starbucks coffee. By the time I was about half way through the coffee, more than four hours had passed since I’d taken the last portion of aspirin. So I took some more aspirin with a bowl of cereal and followed it with the remainder of the coffee.
The rowing session would be the 4th workout session of the day. When the 10,000 meter rowing session started, heart rate was still irregular and too high. Heart rate got as high as 192 BPM. There are two screenshots, below, which illustrate that heart rate reached 192 during the rowing session. There were two separate heart rate monitors worn during the session. One was on the chest and the other on the wrist. Each of them recorded high heart rate before heart rate behavior was ameliorated, but the Apple Watch shows that heart rate went even higher than 192 and reached as high as 202 BPM. I wouldn’t have known it, without the chest strap or the Apple Watch on the wrist. It just felt a bit fluttery, with no other symptoms.
I wasn’t rowing especially easy, but wasn’t rowing hard either. It was probably RPE Level 1 or Level 2 at the very most. Breathing easy, but rowing at a sufficient level to have a nice little bit of sweat.
After 4,001 meters of rowing, which took about 18 minutes and 24 seconds, heart rate suddenly became normal and dropped down into a normal, totally appropriate range for the effort level. It remained regular and at a normal rate for the remaining 5,999 meters of the rowing session.
Happy endings are nice. 🙂
Happy rowing to you!