More Catching Up

Today’s EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading allowed for any distance or effort level.

Today’s rowing was mainly for the purpose of catching up on more of the “lost meters” this season. Last season my daily average meters was more than 10K. So far this season the daily average is a little over 5K, so I have a lot of catching up to do between now and the end of the season (April 30th).

More than enough sleep (8 hours 40 minutes) last night contributed to today’s favorable EliteHRV reading.

We got a late start this morning, so there wasn’t as much time for rowing as hoped. The two main indicators I use to tell me if its okay to row hard and/or long distance were both favorable. Those indicators are the EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading and whether I got sufficient sleep. The one that I currently give the most weight to is the EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading.

Since both indicators were “GO FOR IT!” I rowed 24,000 meters. None of it was hard rowing but the distance was sufficient that I feel relaxed for sleep this evening.

The four sessions rowed today were, in chronological order: (1st) 2K distance for warmup, (2nd) 10K online with two other guys, at an easy “overdistance” pace (which in this case meant a pace that would raise HR to no more than 55% to 70% of maximum). After the online 10K, there was a (3rd) 10 minute warm down which was 2,000 meters. Later in the afternoon, I decided to do (4th) another 10K and the plan was to do 2 or 3 intervals of 500 meters each and a final interval of 1,000 meters, with the pace of each interval at about 2:00/500m.

A view of the Concept2 online logbook showing the listing of today’s 4 rowing sessions.

But the heart acted up in its strange fashion and became too irregular to register a heart rate for a lot of the time. When it was registering a heart rate, HR was way too high and once got as high as 230 on the RowPro readout from the Polar heart strap. The Apple watch activity tracker, a separate heart rate logging device, showed high heart rate also. So, after a couple of 500 meter intervals at about the target pace of 2:00/500m, I slowed down for the remainder of the 10K. The main goal of completing the distance was achieved. Immediately below this paragraph is a screenshot of data for stroke number 888 through 918 of the strange-hearted 10K.

Strokes 903 through 913 are the highest heart rate I’ve ever seen displayed when my heart acts strangely.

For those of you who like to row-along with some of the rowing session screen recordings, the only session that was recorded and uploaded to YouTube of today’s four sessions was the warm up. It can be found here: Indoor Rowing Just A Warmup 01032019

Below are images of: The finish screen for today’s first 10K, the report and graphs for that first, easiest 10K and then the report and graph for the second 10K, during which heart was being strange.

Happy rowing to you.