Today I did something similar to yesterday. For inspiration, I looked to see what my training partners had done today. Two of them had done some rowing. I decided to row three sessions: The first would be 2K at the same average pace as the pre-warmdown pace (4:25.0/500m) of the slowest of those two training partners. During that session my heart rate averaged less than 74 beats per minute.
The second session would be 5K at a steady pace averaging the same (2:42.9/500m) as the faster of those two had done. During that session my heart rate averaged 92 beats per minute.
The third session would be 2K at whatever felt good and didn’t raise heart rate so it felt very high. There was no atrial fibrillation today and the theory was that if heart rate wasn’t raised too high (whatever THAT is) it would continue its good behavior.
There were five sessions in all, if the warm up and warm down are counted.
The first two of those three sessions were done at a much slower pace than seemed natural to what my body was inclined to do and that is probably as good an explanation as any for why I had to concentrate so hard during each of those two sessions. The mental focus I had to maintain during each of the first two of those three sessions was similar to the mental focus of holding one’s hand perfectly still after a butterfly has landed on it, so as not to startle it into flying away.
All today’s data and live, granular clickable graphs can be seen via this link to the online logbook. To see any session’s data & clickable interactive graph, click the corresponding “+” sign in the “Action” column for the relevant session.
Happy rowing to you!