Emulating Smooth Was Raggedy Jagged

Beauty is as near as the blush of early dawn light before the sun makes its appearance.

Today my rowing inspiration was from one of my training partners who recently made her workout graphs much more interesting by using a heart strap to add heart rate to her charts.

Compared to my heart rate graphs recently, hers are beautiful smooth lines. You can see one of her beautiful HR graphs immediately below this paragraph.

Notice how smooth is the graph of her heart rate. It mainly varies and makes dips only when her pace briefly dips while she slows for sips of cocoa (that is my surmise).

After gazing at her heart graph for a bit and admiring its smooth line I decided to make this morning’s rowing an emulation of sorts, to try to plot a smooth HR graph of my own. To do that I maintained a steady pace with only small adjustments for the sake of keeping HR in the vicinity of just over 100 BPM. You can see the raggedy, jagged and non-beautiful heart rate graph that resulted for my workout chart, immediately below this paragraph.

Notice how very smooth is the blue line graphing pace for my session today. My pace line looks even smoother than that of my training partner, because I did not make any pauses with their resulting dips. Heart rate seemed like it was ready to gallop, though, if I would just give it sufficient excuse, so I had to continually make incremental pace adjustments in reaction to heart rate suddenly starting to climb or plunge.

Any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.

Happy rowing to you!

Entangled With Coherence

If my heart was engaged in quantum entanglement today, the other heart was behaving coherently most of the time.

After yesterday’s consistently incoherent inconsistency of heart rate relative to effort level, I expected more of the same today. But it was as if I’d had a change of heart, because for most of the time heart rate did what it would be normally expected to do. It’s rate rose when effort level increased and vice versa. A pleasant surprise.

The workout time today was divided into 4 pieces. The morning started with 3 rowing sessions: 4,515 meters, 7,000 meters and a 70 Calorie, 1,316 meter piece. In the afternoon was a single 390 Calorie session on SkiErg.

4,515 Meters rowing.
7,000 meters rowing.
Seventy Calories rowing.
Afternoon session: 390 Calories on SkiErg

Any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.

Happy rowing to you!

Consistently Inconsistent

Other titles that came to mind for today’s blog post were “Inappropriate Relationships” and “Constantly Inconstant.” All of the title choices are in reference to how the heart behaved today as its rate didn’t necessarily make any sensible relationship to the effort level.

Morning activity was two rowing sessions and afternoon activity was one session on the SkiErg.

Graph for the morning rowing session. Heart rate is the red line and effort level is the blue line.
Second rowing session in the morning- a 70 Calorie piece at constant easy pace.
Afternoon SkiErg session done at a fairly constant and moderate pace.

Any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.

Happy rowing to you!

Warming For The Activity

The cozy fire in a fireplace is a common example of oxidation to produce heat. There is an oxidative system in the human body which also produces heat, though without any colorful flames. That oxidative system is put into action during warmup activity and other gentle movement of the muscles.

Today’s workout time consisted of rowing in the morning and SkiErg in the afternoon. You can see on the graphs that heart rate was a bit whacky/abnormal until 10 or 20 minutes was spent warming up for the sessions.

Chart for the first session, which was 11,500 meters.
Chart for the second morning session, which was 60 Calories at easy pace.
Chart for the first of two afternoon SkiErg sessions.
Chart for the second of two afternoon SkiErg sessions.

Any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.

Happy rowing to you!

A Long Warmup

One way to warm up…

Today’s workouts were about 12K of rowing in the morning and a 430 Calorie SkiErg session in the afternoon.

There was atrial fibrillation during all of the rowing and those graphs look weird and messy because of the afib.

When it was time for the afternoon SkiErg session, afib seemed to be gone. I did a long warmup on the SkiErg and heart rate acted 100% normal for the entire SkiErg session.

Graph for afternoon SkiErg session.

Any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.

Happy rowing to you!

Interesting

Every morning I check to see if HR is normal and what RHR (resting heart rate) was for the night before. Today it was normal and RHR was 51. But as I got ready for the rowing session this morning, heart rate felt a bit like it was on the brink of atrial fibrillation, with an occasional flippy sort of feeling.

So when I did the rowing session I decided to spend at least 20 minutes at a nice slow warmup pace before making any changes toward a faster pace. After about 20 minutes at a very easy effort level between 80 and 90 Watts, I started to feel the warming sensation that the warmup is named for, but heart rate stayed low in the 50 to 60 BPM range. I increased the pace and varied it a bit, going as high as around 120 Watts sometimes, but heart rate seemed to want to stay in the 50s and changed very little from that range. I decided to spend the rest of the rowing session with a low effort level between 80 and 120 Watts, which resulted in an average of about 89 Watts for the session. Heart rate remained very low for the entire time. Some of its behavior seemed to indicate that when I rowed a little harder, heart rate would slow down. I thought that if that were really the case and I wasn’t imagining it, then perhaps when I rowed a bit harder and the legs and other muscles were contracting a bit harder, those leg and other muscles were assisting to pump blood and therefore that would be why, with certain small increases in effort level, heart rate would slow down instead of increasing – because it was getting assistance from the pumping action of the contraction and relaxation of the other muscles during the rowing.

Heart rate remained in the 50s most of the time during this rowing session, except near the very end when I reduced rowing effort to such a very low level that the legs and other muscles were barely contracting at all and therefore virtually no assistance at all in pumping the blood – On the graph, that’s where you can see heart rate went the very highest… when it had to do most of the pumping of the blood with no assistance from other muscles. You can see in the chart of that session (below) how heart rate elevated the most when I slowed down to a barely perceptible effort level just before the end.

After that main rowing session of the morning, I decided to do a little experiment with a single short rowing session. During that session I deliberately changed rowing effort up and down and watched heart rate. You can see in several places on the graph of pace and heart rate, how a reduction in rowing effort was followed by an increase in heart rate and vice versa.

After all rowing was finished and while I effortlessly changed from rowing clothes to normal clothes, heart rate felt flippy and stayed that way with atrial fibrillation that lasted all day and is still persisting as this is being written.

Interesting.

Any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.

Happy rowing to you!

Skittish Near the Beginning

Today’s workouts consisted of an early morning low energy rowing session and a SkiErg session in the afternoon which was a bit more energetic.

The plan for the SkiErg session was to do 450 Calories at a pace of about 10 Calories per minute while varying the pace in 10 Calorie intervals which would alternate slower and faster.

Near the beginning of the session, heart rate was a bit skittish and its beat was too fast but it soon settled down and the remainder of the SkiErg session went well.

Graph for today’s afternoon SkiErg session.

Any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.

Happy rowing to you!

Hi and Low

Today’s morning workout was 11,500 meters rowing. Heart rate wasn’t doing the atrial fibrillation thing today, but it seemed either a bit high or way too low. I didn’t push it hard and everything felt normal.

Screenshot of graph for today’s 11,500 m rowing.

Any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.

Happy rowing to you!

Fits and Starts

There were many pauses and interruptions during this morning’s rowing session but none of them had to do with tying shoes or adjusting socks. I didn’t find any photos of people obviously pausing during rowing, though, so these pauses during running were chosen instead.

This morning’s rowing was 11,500 meters done at a slow average pace. Heart seemed to be acting almost normal but I mostly took it very easy anyway. As the blog title suggests and as you can see from the graphs, there were many pauses and interruptions during the rowing session.

Screenshot of the graph for today’s morning rowing session.

There will be an afternoon session on the SkiErg of somewhere from at least 400 to 500 Calories or more.

Any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To see a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.

Happy rowing to you!