It’s been a long while since anything has been posted to this blog because though I’ve continued doing daily rowing and cross-country ski workouts, enthusiasm for blogging has greatly waned.
There have been many, many episodes of atrial fibrillation which have interfered with sleep and hampered working out at any sort of vigorous speed.
After a few too many days spoiled by atrial fibrillation, on the last day of 2019 I adopted the current approach to daily workouts:
On December 31st I was experiencing no atrial fibrillation before doing any workout. From past experience, it seemed that Afib would frequently be triggered by indulging in rowing hard or sprinting. So on Dec 31st I decided to try exploring how fast and hard I could row without triggering atrial fibrillation. My approach was to focus on heart rate that day and try to maintain heart rate at the very low rate of 100 BPM for 10,000 meters.
After that 10K was completed I noted what the average pace had been and rowed at a slightly faster average pace target for the next day’s 10,000 meters on the first day of 2020.
On January 2nd and each day from then until now, I’ve increased the pace by 1/10 second/500 meters faster than the day before, while carefully watching heart rate during each day’s 10,000 meter rowing session. If atrial fibrillation develops during any of those sessions or is happening when it is time for the next day’s 10K, then the target pace for the next day is not increased. But if there is no Afib connected with or following each day’s 10K, then the pace the next day will be increased by that 1/10th second per 500 meters.
Hopefully, this will have a positive effect on whatever has been messing up the heart rhythm.
Atrial fibrillation started during the last part of yesterday’s workouts and continued all night and was still doing its flutter-flutter dance in the chest at the start of today’s workouts, so pace for today’s 10,000 meter session was not increased. After about 17 minutes of today’s 10K, the atrial fibrillation disappeared, heart rate settled down to normal and remained normal for the rest of the 10K rowing session and for the approximately 20 minutes of workout on the SkiErg which immediately followed the rowing.
If I don’t post every day or even every month, don’t be surprised because with no evidence of or interaction with an audience of even one, I have almost no motivation to continue spending time with this blog.
Here are screenshots for today’s workouts:
Happy rowing to you, whether you have an audience or are all alone in your endeavors on the erg!
Hi John,
I am always on your website and enjoy reading your texts. I would be happy if I could continue to read your written stories in the future!
On the subject of heart rate: I will be 62 the next Thursday and my maximum heart rate is 159 beats per minute. You are 11 years older than me and you occasionally have more than 170 beats per minute! I think that is clearly too much! I’ll send you an overview for your age group.
Until next time . . .
Greetings from Germany
Reinhold
Hi Reinhold and thanks for your comment. I’ve visited two different cardiologists and neither one of them would talk about any guidelines for heart rate, intensity or duration of exercise. I guess they are more accustomed to seeing patients who are candidates for heart surgery, pacemakers etc. For quite a few years of running (until 2004) and rowing (since 2004) I thought my maximum heart rate was 189. Then, during one 10,000 meter race when heart rate had reached 189, I pushed a lot harder during the last 500 meters to sprint to the finish line and saw heart rate rise to 190. I thought “so that’s my maximum heart rate!” As I continued to push and when there were less than 200 meters to the finish line, there was a sensation in my chest as if some little thing in the vicinity of my heart sort of “snapped” though there was no sound or other sensation. At that moment, my heart rate rose to 191 and remained there to the finish line. Within the past few years I’ve been having episodes of atrial fibrillation. A book was published in 2018 about endurance athletes and atrial fibrillation. It is called The Haywire Heart, by 3 authors: Christopher Case, Dr. John Madrola and Lennard Zinn. The subject is: how people can develop atrial fibrillation or other heart problems by indulging in too much high intensity, long duration activities. So I’m sure that your thoughts are generally correct about some kind of safe heart rate limits and the potential danger of exceeding those limits. And I may have done it to myself by participating in a few too many races. But apparently it is a subject that most cardiologists are ignorant of. When I tried to ask one cardiologist for advice or guidelines about intensity and duration of rowing workout sessions, he responded as if he was annoyed with me and said, “You’re 71 years old! Workout as hard as you want!” I haven’t seen a cardiologist since then and am trying to find a solution through reading books like the one mentioned above (The Haywire Heart). Happy rowing!