Today began with a good HRV reading, so there were no restrictions regarding rowing. Also, it followed a good night’s sleep, which was another plus.
Today’s indoor rowing consisted of two sessions. First, a one minute session which was done just for the sake of putting anything in the rankings for the 1 minute sprint category. Second, was a longer session of 8,224 meters, which was done just for the sake of logging more calories for a current Concept 2 challenge.
The one minute session was preceded by a 750 meter warmup and followed by a 750 meter warm down. The one minute sprint was done with a target pace that would rank me at about the lower 25% of those who had ranked 1 minute sessions to date. That was a pace target of about 1:49/500 meters. I didn’t want to row any faster than that, because the warm up was too short and I wouldn’t really be warmed up enough for an all-out 60 second sprint.
After the one minute sprint was finished, I did an easy 750 meter warm down and that is when the “heart strangeness” happened. It felt like a bit of fluttering and heart rate spiked and remained higher than it should have been for the easy warm down pace. Another strange thing about that strange heart rate behavior during the warm down was that when it spiked, it spiked up to 150 BPM, which is exactly as high as heart rate managed to climb, before the ultra-short 1 minute sprint was finished. Was that a coincidence? Or was that the heart’s way of saying it wanted to sprint for longer than one minute? One minute wasn’t enough indulgence in sprinting? The heart is eager, and “rarin’ to go” racing?
That “strangeness” happened in uncharted territory, because the warm down was tacked on to the 1 minute RowPro session and RowPro does not include tacked-on warmups or warm downs in its charts for the main session report. Below is a screenshot of what heart rate looked like when it spiked during the warm down.
A screen recording was made of the entire 1 minute session including its warmup and warm down, so if you view the screen recording, you can see how it acted in real-time on the RowPro screen. The one minute session screen recording is here: Indoor Rowing 1 minute sprint 01122019
For those of you who’d like to row-along with it, a screen recording was also made of the 8,224 meter session and it is available at this link: Indoor rowing 8224 meters 01122019
After the warm down following the 1 minute sprint, I thought I’d have to stop rowing for the rest of the day, but within a few minutes the Afib went away and heart behavior returned to normal, so I did the 8224 meter session in order to bring the day’s total to 10,000 meters and burn a few more calories.
Happy rowing to you!