Today’s scheduled Pete Plan activity was to do no rowing. So I took Pete’s recommendation seriously and didn’t do any serious rowing. But I did try something which involved the rowing machine.
To test an Apple watch’s accuracy in measuring calories burned while rowing, I told it I was going to row and rowed slowly until the watch indicated that I’d burned 125 calories.
The results from the watch were vaguely similar to the precisely calibrated results from the Concept 2’s ergometer readout. Very vaguely. But, that’s to be expected, since the watch could only base its calculations on 1. elapsed time, 2. The fact that I was using a workout designation corresponding to one of its labeled algorithms (Rowing ) and 3. My heart rate, which was slightly elevated.
The watch’s results showed Duration=20m 5.76s, Total Active energy of 132.37 kcal (1 kcal is the physics term for one food Calorie. So it was what most people would call 132.37 Calories) and Total Resting Energy of 35.3 kcal (35.3 Calories).
I don’t know if the “resting energy” is a portion of the “Active energy” or if they are separate, but I think they are separate because from the time I pressed “go” on the watch and it started measuring time, heart rate and calories, until the time I actually started rowing, was the elapsed time it took for me to put on my socks and shoes. It was the first time I’d used that app and so I didn’t realize I was making it start until… it started its countdown.
I gave the workout app a target goal of 125 Calories. When “active calories” on its display reached 125, it vibrated to let me know the goal had been met. The “total calories” on the display were higher and were probably the sum of “active” and “resting,” but I didn’t jot that number down.
If I ever do that again and write about it in this blog, I’ll include a screenshot of the results. But I didn’t know how to take a screenshot on the watch, when the rowing was done.
Below is a screenshot of the pertinent results as they were recorded in the watch app, after the rowing “workout” results were saved and below that is a view of the session results summary from the RowPro report.
This is what the Apple watch app shows for the brief time rowing.Finish screen for today’s experiment with rowing while Apple watch measured the workout.session report for the above. The session report doesn’t have any split details or graphs because it was done in the “just row” mode.
Today’s Pete Plan scheduled session was specified to be a distance of from 8K to 15K at a rating of from 22 to 25 and at a recovery pace. I chose 8K as the distance. DF was 125. No warmup or warmdown. Straps were loose, as usual.
Finish screen after completing the 8K8K report. Disregard the reported pace for the last split in the RowPro session report. I’m using a beta version of RowPro 5 for the Mac and it is calculating the pace for the last split by using the elapsed time for the last split, but the distance for the previous splits, which are longer than the last split.Charts for the 8K. Disregard the reported pace for the last split in the RowPro chart. I’m using a beta version of RowPro 5 for the Mac and it is calculating the pace for the last split by using the elapsed time for the last split, but the distance for the previous splits, which are longer than the last split.
Today’s scheduled training session was to be a “hard distance” of anywhere from 5K up. I chose to do a 30 minute timed session with a goal of making a new season best result which would be well over 7K.
I also thought it would be nice, if the session could be used to get a new measure of LTHR. It’s possible to get a very accurate LTHR reading if a 30 minute session is raced and then the average heart rate is calculated for the last 10 minutes. That didn’t work out, because I didn’t do the 30 minutes hard enough. (I haven’t raced much lately and so I didn’t know how fast I could go for 30 minutes. It turned out that I had a lot of energy left so this 30 minutes would give a very low and inaccurate reading for LTHR. At any rate it felt good and was refreshing.
I did a 1250 meter warmup and a 1250 meter warm down. Straps were loose. DF was 140.
The session for today’s portion of the Pete Plan was designated a steady distance, recovery session. It was supposed to be anywhere from 8K to 15K and was supposed to be done at a recovery pace, with a rating of from 22 to 25. I chose the 8K distance. No warm up was needed or done. The targets in order of priority for compliance were: First: heart rate was to be no higher than 75% max. For that purpose, a HR target zone of was painted on the RowPro screen. The only part of the target zone that I cared about was the top of the zone, which was not to be exceeded. It never came close to the top so that target was met.
Second priority target was to keep the average rating near 22 and that worked out well. The session report shows average rating of 22.
Third and last priority target was pace, which was targeted as 2:18. That came out to be an average pace of 2:17.8, which was close enough. The session report shows an average pace of “2:18,” but that’s because the RowPro 5 for the Mac software for some reason rounds off every figure in the pace column, including the overall average pace, to the nearest whole number of seconds instead of displaying to the nearest tenth.
NOTE: IGNORE the report data for the last split – there’s something wrong with that line of data! I rowed the 8K as near to targets as I could throughout every split and DID NOT row the last split at a pace of 1:32! The total time is correct and the more precise pace average was 2:17.8 but RowPro 5 for the Mac rounds all pace values to the nearest second.
(The software version of RowPro I’m using on a Mac is a Beta version with a few bugs left in it. I use a Windows version of RowPro for any Pete Plan variable interval sessions, because this Beta version for the Mac won’t do variable intervals… but for everything else, including this session today, I use this Beta version of RowPro 5 for the Mac, which usually works perfectly.)
After the Pete Plan 8K steady distance recovery session was done, I decided to watch a movie and do another 10K for the sake of the current concept2.com challenge. But first, here’s the stuff for the Pete Plan 8K:
8K finish screen8K report8K charts
The additional 10K “ocean rowing” was done with an effort level which is the equivalent (as near as I can calculate with the information I have) of the average level of effort with which Sami Inkinen rowed for 18 hours every day, for 45 days while rowing 2,750 miles across the Pacific Ocean from California to Hawaii.
One of the interviews I viewed which featured Sami Inkinen answering questions about that voyage included answers to questions about what he ate every day during those 45 days, how many calories consumed daily, how many hours he slept daily and how much weight he lost during the 45 days of rowing 18 hours daily.
With the above information, I calculated what was his average rowing effort and translated that to a pace at which someone would have to row a Concept 2 rowing machine, if rowing 18 hours a day for 45 days and be rowing the same daily calories burned.
Sami said that he ate 7,000 calories per day. He also said that he lost 26 pounds during those 45 days. And he said he slept for 6 hours each 24 hour period. So I disregarded any consideration for calories he burned while awake and not rowing during the 18 awake hours per day and used the Concept 2 rowing machine monitor to translate calories per hour to pace.
The data used, in addition to his report of eating 7,000 calories per 24 hours, is: He slept 6 hours and the human body reportedly burns about .42 calories per hour per pound of body weight. So I assumed that he weighed an average of about 180 pounds during the voyage and that 6 hours of sleep amounts to 450 calories he burned while sleeping. Also, he lost 26 pounds of weight. But when the voyage started, he was a very fit, world-class triathlete so that 26 pounds was NOT very much in the way of fat. He said that the muscles atrophied – the muscles he wasn’t able to use enough while in the boat and only rowing for 45 days. So the calorie figure I used for the 26 pounds of his lean body which was consumed during the 45 days was the calorie figure for what is reported for “lean beef,” which is 897 calories per pound. Multiply 897 calories by 26 pounds and the number of calories his body consumed relating to his loss of weight was 897 x 26 = 23,322 calories total. Divide that 23,322 calories by 45 days and you get 518 calories average per day from weight loss.
The total figure for calories he spent to do the rowing is:
7,000 calories eaten minus 450 calories for sleeping plus 518 calories per day from his body consuming itself with weight loss = 7,068 calories remaining per 18 hours for rowing. Divide 7,068 calories by 18 and you get about 393 calories for his average hourly rowing effort.
I sat on a Concept 2 rowing machine and set the C2 PM3 to display calories per hour while the RowPro monitor was simultaneously set to display reading of pace in minutes:seconds/500 meters. After doing that I had RowPro show the simultaneous value for the 393 calories per hour in Watts, for the sake of curiosity.
393 calories per hour = pace of about 3:56/500 meters = power level of about 31 Watts.
Whatever the exact, precise numbers were, it doesn’t matter because the above numbers are excellent “ball park” numbers and should be within a very small percentage or fraction of a percentage of the actual values if they could have been measured and recorded during that ocean rowing voyage. If you’d like to see it yourself, the relevant interview with Sami Inkinen should be at this link-> Sami Inkinen interview on youtube
So I did the 10K at the ocean rowing pace of about 3:56. The session was interrupted once when I had to get off the machine for a couple minutes and help my wife carry things. I made up for the lost time by rowing a bit faster until the average pace returned to about 3:56. Then, toward the end, my wife told me that we were going to have a meal in a number of minutes that would have me still on the rowing machine by then, so I increased the pace a little bit near the end, so as to be on time for the meal. (Call me anything you want, but don’t call me late for a meal.)
The 10K ocean row session would have been extremely boring without a distraction, so I watched a documentary. One of the things Sami Inkinen did while rowing at that pace for 18 hours/45 days was to do mathematical calculations in his head and speak aloud what he was calculating while doing them. (I think he did those while his wife was sleeping – while she was awake, they talked about anything and everything and decided, among other things, that they wanted to have children).
If you compare calories burned for 8K at 2:18/500m (which was the first rowing session done today, for Pete Plan training) and 10K at 3:52/500m (for this “ocean rowing” session) you will see that though the 10,000 meter “ocean row” is 25% more distance, it only used 9.7% more calories than the much faster paced 8K. Therefore if a person wants to row maximum distance on a limited number of calories, he can row further at a slower pace.
Rowing slower to go further on the same amount of calories is analogous to driving a car slower, to go further on a gallon of gasoline.
The report and charts for today’s 10K of “ocean-rowing” effort level are below:
Today’s training event was a waterfall. It consisted of 3 intervals: 3K, 2.5K and 2K. There was supposed to be five minutes active rest after the 3K and the 2.5K. The RowPro for Windows software would not allow combining distance intervals with timed rest, so I set the rest distances to a number of meters that could be rowed in 5 minutes at a pace of about 3:00. While rowing easy during each active rest, I watched the projected finish time and adjusted the pace so that the distance would be finished in a total of 5 minutes or less.
The target pace was 2:01.7 for the first two intervals. The final 2K was supposed to be as fast as I could go but I adjusted that a tiny bit slower to a pace target of about 1:55 which I was certain I could maintain for the last 2K.
The resulting average pace for all three intervals of the waterfall was 1:59.8. That will be the target pace for the first two intervals, when I do this training session three weeks from today in the next cycle.
There were no target zones for rating or heart rate. A 1,000 meter warmup preceded the waterfall.
warm up finish screenwarm up reportwaterfall finish screenwaterfall session report
Today’s schedule was recovery rowing, from 8K to 15K. I chose 15K.
According to the plan it was supposed to be done at a rating of at least 22 but no more than 25. I made the rating first priority, at 22.
I’m starting to feel a bit tired, which is good because it means the training plan is drawing on what had been surplus energy and using it for building a stronger and more efficient infrastructure for rowing. It’s also good, because I’m sleeping more deeply and soundly and the alarm is waking me, instead of me waking first and shutting off the alarm before it can make a sound.
But feeling tired is also a sign that if the session is a recovery session, I should ease back and make more room for the element of recovery.
Therefore the second priority was HR and target HR was “anything less than 75% max, the lower the better.”
Third and last priority was pace and target pace was “the slower the better.”
Rating was kept near 22 throughout, except briefly in the middle of the session when I totally stopped rowing for a minute or so, to start another documentary video after the first one had finished.
HR started out just a little over 100 and by the end of the session it was in the 80s.
Pace started out at about 2:23 and by end of the session it was down to about 3:05.
Today’s designated rowing was to be the interval session 4x1K R5:00. I decided to modify it slightly but to do so without changing its essence.
My ranked time this season for the 1K was very soft and not much faster pace than the 2K, so I decided to go for a new season best 1K and separate the 4th interval from the first three while still limiting the time between the 3rd and 4th intervals to 5 minutes rest. By having the 4th interval as a standalone, it would qualify to be entered into the online world rankings.
First, there was a slow warmup of 2500m. Next, I sat on the rowing machine and stared at the PM3 for quite a while. I seemed to have an inertia problem. For any of you who are rusty on what the definition is for the word “inertia,” it means: “a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged”.
After sitting there like that for maybe 10 minutes, I took a photo of the PM3 because it shows how relaxed and inert I was, as evidenced by HR.
Finally, I sighed and started rowing in silence. Actually, there was music playing and it was fast music but I had muted it and it didn’t occur to me to un-mute it before beginning.
The session plan was simple: do the first three intervals each at about 1:57 and the 4th interval as fast as I could, for a new 1K season best. But I didn’t know from recent experience how fast to realistically expect I could do it so there was quite a bit of “gas left in the tank” by the time the standalone 1,000 meters was completed. That’s good though, because I’d rather have it that way than to fade and bog down or crash near the end. As it was, I stopped rowing one stroke too soon and by the time I noticed, the momentum had carried me across the finish line at a fading pace. But all was well because it was nonetheless a new season best by quite a margin and looks a lot better among the rankings in comparison to the result for SB 2K.
I sat inert, gazing off into space or at this screen, for quite a few minutes before pulling the first stroke to begin today’s Pete Plan session.
First, the warm-up which you can see was very sedate:
warm up finish screenwarm up reportwarm up charts
Next, I sat and stared off into space or at the PM for a while (see image of PM3 further above). Some time later, I decided I didn’t want to sit there all day and started rowing. Below, are images relating to the first three of the four 1K intervals:
Finish screen for 3x1K
3x1K reportcharts for 3x1K
Next is the best part, which was the standalone 1K:
Today was the designated Pete Plan rest day. I originally intended to fully comply and do no rowing whatsoever. But I noticed two online sessions scheduled, each only 10 minutes’ duration. The person who scheduled them was an unfamiliar name, Annabel F.
Nobody else had joined yet. So I decided to join those sessions and keep her company rather than leave her the lonely possibility of rowing solo, which might cause her to change her mind, cancel the sessions and miss out having the online RowPro experience.
Between the time I joined and scheduled start time, others joined. Two more women and three more guys. They were all in Europe, except for one besides me who was in the US. So Annabel had more than enough company and I modified my decision to keep her company by rowing the same pace and instead decided I’d only match her pace if she was in very last place by a wide margin and otherwise I would row very slow and make sure that I was in last place by a wide margin behind everyone else. This is a rest day, after all and technically I wasn’t supposed to do any rowing whatsoever.
Annabel was indeed new, to not only online rowing but also to indoor rowing itself. She said she’d only been rowing for a few months.
What happened in both 10 minute sessions was that another of the three women in the session kept pace with the newbie and I watched a documentary film and made sure nobody other than me finished in last place. Did the same thing in the following session.
The only glitch while rowing was that during the first session HR went irregular and PM3 HR display was blank for the first 8 splits. It shows as 85 for those first 8 splits on the session report, but I think that’s because the HR logging algorithm in RowPro 5 for the Mac just uses any valid HR it manages to pick up and then until it gets the next valid HR it keeps it as the “end HR” for each split, no matter how much time has passed between the two HR readings.
During the 9th split of the first 10 minutes the PM3 finally stopped being blank and displayed HR but it was way too high, at around 130 BPM. It gradually settled down, split by split, until it was finally acting normally again in the 18th of 30 splits for that first 10 minutes.
During the second 10 minute piece, HR was totally normal. The glitch may have been related to drinking several cups of strong, black coffee just before rowing. It is nothing unusual because I’ve seen that happen once in a while for a long time. More than a decade. And I’ve noticed coffee is one of the things that can trigger it. But I like coffee and… silly as it may sound … it just doesn’t seem like real coffee without caffeine.
Finish screen for first of two 10 minute pieces.report for first of twocharts for first of twoThere’s no screenshot for the second of two 10 minute pieces. This shows the results, from the digitalrowing.com Oarbits (online rowing) page.Report for second of two 10 minute piecesCharts for second of two 10 minute pieces
Today’s Pete Plan rowing was a recovery session after yesterday’s hard distance. It was 15,000 meters done offline. No warmup. Easy music playing. First priority was a HR zone target of 60% to 75% HRmax. Second priority was to try for a rating of 22. There was no target pace… I wasn’t going to try to control the pace today but hoped it would be within the range of no faster than 2:11 and no slower than 2:25. Drag factor 135. Straps were not tightened at all. No warm down.
Looking at the pace graph afterwards, it is a lot less volatile than for the same session two days ago. Might be in large part because today I wore a sweatband and moved the towel out of reach so I wouldn’t be tempted to take one hand off the handle while reaching for a towel and mopping sweat.
The little downward spikes in heart rate each occurred when I burped. Heart rate must be sensitive to internal pressure.
Today was Pete Plan day for hard distance. The chosen distance was 6K. Before making the choice I looked at ranked sessions and 6K was one of the softer ones. The one in this season’s rankings was a pace of 2:01.7, which seemed way too wide a spread from the recent 5K pace of 1:56 point something. So I chose 6K and a target pace of 1:59.
Just like with the recent 5K, HR was below LTHR the entire distance so obviously I was a lazybones. But there’s no prize for embracing pain. The most recent time I determined my LTHR was April of this year and the method of measuring it is mentioned in this-> blog post <- which is at the previous location of this blog. LTHR is one of the things that is printed on a paper stuck to the bottom of the PM3, as you can see in the photo below.
Other stuff: There was a 2500m warmup, drag factor was 135 and there was a 2500m warm down. I wore a sweatband so wouldn’t need to reach for the towel on nearby chair but absentmindedly reached for it 4 or 5 times anyway during the last half, when I could feel sweat tickling down through my beard. Music during warm up & warm down: Of Monsters and Men, shuffled, albums “Beneath The Skin” and “My Head Is An Animal”. The words don’t make sense, like most verses written for the sake of music, but I like the voices and music for slow and/or unfocused rowing. Icelandic. Music during the 6K: a special, custom playlist of female vocalists-with-no-name singing fast-rhythm versions of various songs.
Warm Up Finish Screenwarm up reportwarm up chartsHard 6K Finish ScreenHard 6K Report. The Avg Pace column is rounded off to the nearest whole second.Hard 6K charts. The 5 downward spikes in pace are the 5 times I reached for a towel and mopped my beard.warmdown finishwarmdown reportwarmdown graphs.Watched tv and channel-surfed a few times while warming down.
