Finish screen view of today’s main workout, 10,000 meters rowing.
There was (and still is as this is being written) some atrial fibrillation which started early this morning and persisted throughout the workout session.
So the workout wasn’t super good. But the AF wasn’t as extremely annoying as some episodes have been, so it didn’t interfere with the workout plan, which was to row at a steady pace which would average 2:34.8/500 meters.
Because of the Afib, heart rate aranged from 20 to 30 BPM higher than it would have been if the heart had been behaving normally.
The workout was 10,000 meters rowing. It was preceded by a slow 100 Calorie warmup session done on the SkiErg.
Today’s workouts consisted of a few morning sessions on the SkiErg and a 10,000 meter rowing session in the afternoon.
The title of today’s blog post refers to the fact that the two heart rate monitors I was simultaneously using during the 10K session had a pointless argument during the first fifteen minutes of that session.
I wore two heart rate monitors: A Garmin chest strap (which is what RowPro used for its heart rate data) and a heart rate monitor on the wrist. The heart rate monitor on the wrist showed a reading of near 100 BPM for the entire rowing session but the RowPro heart rate display and graph showed an impossibly low heart rate – which was about half or less than half of what it should have been, for the first 15 minutes of the session.
The two heart rate monitors continued their pointless argument, in radical disagreement for the first fifteen minutes, after which the RowPro heart data gradually rose and finally began displaying normal readings that agreed with the wrist heart rate monitor.
Report for 10K
RowPro graphs for 10K
Heart rate graph of 10K, from wrist-watch heart monitor.
Graph of rowing pace (blue) and rating (Strokes Per Minute-black) for this morning’s 30 minute session. There is no heart rate graph on this chart because I didn’t wear a heart strap monitor synched to the PM.
Today’s workouts were divided into morning and afternoon sessions. The morning session was online with six other guys, at 09:00 local time. The online session was a 30 minute “handicap chase”. It was structured so that the “turtle” (the slowest rower) would begin rowing immediately at the start and the other rowers would wait at the starting line for an amount of time depending on their planned rowing pace, that would allow them to catch up with the “turtle” after about 5,000 meters and then everybody would row together the remaining distance from 5,000 meters to the finish line when 30 minutes was completed.
I was planning to row the slow pace of 2:35 and start about 10 seconds after the “turtle” but he announced that he was going to row slower than his usual, so I waited about 50 seconds after the start signal before I began rowing.
At the top of this blog post you can see a graph for the 30 minute session. After 50 seconds of motionless waiting I started rowing, aiming for a pace of 2:35. When there was about 9 or 10 minutes of the 30 minutes remaining, I caught up to the “turtle” and for the remainder of the session I matched his pace and rowed alongside him. You can see on the graph how the effort level (pace, which is blue on the chart) is fairly constant at one level for about the first 2/3 of the session and then it becomes lower for the remainder of the time when I was matching the pace of the other rower.
I was wearing a heart rate transmitter chest strap, but it wasn’t displaying a reading, so I removed it with one hand while rowing with the other hand so that it wouldn’t distract me from focusing on pace.
I was also wearing a wrist watch to log the workout to the daily “Activity App” and the wrist watch had its own heart rate monitor which was displaying heart rate. I glanced at it several times during the session and saw that heart rate immediately climbed too high at the beginning, went even higher and then settled down to a normal rate.
I chose not to do any warm-up at all before the session began, because my planned pace of 2:35 was as slow or slower than the pace I’ve used many times for warming up.
But without atrial fibrillation happening (thank God!) my resting heart rate was almost normal at around 50 BPM. (normal resting heart rate for me is in the 40’s). I’ve read that the lower the resting heart rate, the greater the chance that some of the heart’s “rogue” timing cells will prematurely fire. I’ve also read that the hearts of competitive rowers are less “adaptable” than hearts of runners or swimmers, so perhaps the heart was being finicky / persnickety and needed either a more gradual start or an ultra-slow warmup (?) Or maybe the heart just wanted to start out full-blast at maximum effort, like a rower would do in a short distance race (?)
Here is a screen shot of the heart rate graph from the watch, so you can see how heart rate behaved during the 30 minute session:
During the 30 minute session, heart rate while waiting was 53 BPM then it shot up to 130-140 after the start of rowing and climbed as high as 189 before settling down to a normal rate.
For the afternoon workout session, I did an ultra-slow warmup on the SkiErg, of 50 Calories at a pace of about 3:00/500m. The heart didn’t seem to complain about that.
Following the SkiErg warmup, the main and final workout of the day was 10,000 meters on the rowing machine at a steady average pace of 2:35.0/500m. The heart rate and rhythm were both well-behaved during the 10K.
The screen recording is a silent. No sound track. Supply your own sound effects or preference of background music if you want to hear more than the singing of the chain of your rowing machine.
Here are screenshots relating to today’s afternoon 10,000 meter session:
Finish screen view for today’s 10,000 meter session.
Last night everything was normal about heart rhythm and I slept wonderfully well.
Today’s 10,000 meter rowing session was done at a steady pace which averaged 2:35.0 and heart rate was steady within a few beats per minute of 100 for the entire session.
I didn’t realize how much stress there was with atrial fibrillation happening. But after 8 days of continuous Afib, it feels extremely peaceful without it. It’s a very peaceful, easy feeling.
Today’s main workout was the 10,000 meters indoor rowing. There were also four 50 Calorie pieces on the SkiErg, each done at a pace of about 3:00 or slower and one supplemental rowing piece of a little more than 2,000 meters. But the only screenshots featured in this blog post are of the 10,000 meter session.
Finish screen for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.
Today was the eighth day in a row of continuous atrial fibrillation all day and all night. Last night I was awake all night. I did a lot of praying and thinking about God. It was just before sunrise when I finally got to sleep and then I slept until after noon.
For today’s workout: After a week of keeping the daily 10K rowing pace at 2:35.3, yesterday I decided to tweak it a little bit faster, to 2:35.2/500 meters. Atrial fibrillation continued.
Today, though atrial fibrillation was continuing, I decided to try tweaking the 10K rowing pace by another 1/10th second, to 2:35.1/500 meters. Heart rate seemed to get a bit more stable as the 10,000 meter session continued and by the time the 10K was completed, heart rate definitely seemed better though still not normal. An ECG reading was taken and it reported “INCONCLUSIVE” which means heart rate wasn’t normal but it wasn’t atrial fibrillation either.
After the 10K, I did a couple of supplementary 2,000 meter sessions. After the first of those two 2K sessions, heart rate returned to feeling normal and the ECG reading reported “SINUS RHYTHM” for the first time in 8 days.
Answered prayers? I’m thankful to God.
Report for today’s 10K.
Graphs for today’s 10K rowing session.
Report for one of the two supplementary 2,000 meter rowing sessions.
Finish screen view for today’s main piece of indoor rowing.
Yesterday a reader and fellow indoor rowing enthusiast commented and said he hopes I’ll continue blogging. So perhaps I will. But because it takes a lot of time, perhaps I’ll only post to this blog once in a while.
For days when I don’t post to this blog and if I do any rowing workouts, their data and graphs may be viewed at this link: my logbook at Concept 2.
For what seems like quite a while, I’ve been bothered by atrial fibrillation. A month ago (Christmas 2019) my wife gave me the gift of a book titled The Haywire Heart. When I opened the gift wrapping to discover that book inside, she remarked “You probably won’t like it.”
The focus of the book is about “How too much exercise can kill you and what you can do to protect your heart.” I looked through the book, read a few chapters and then told her that I liked it very much and that it is the best or one of the best Christmas presents she has ever given to me.
You would have to read the book yourself to appreciate it. It seems that if people indulge in too much high-intensity activity, a result can be that those people will develop atrial fibrillation or injure their hearts in other ways.
I have read somewhere that the most common cause of death for competitive rowers is heart failure.
If anyone has read the non-fiction book, “Born To Run,” by Christopher McDougall, the name “Caballo Blanco” is probably familiar as the name of one of the runners. Caballo Blanco’s name at birth was Micah True. He engaged in a lot of high-intensity, long duration running. And he died of heart failure.
So a simplistic way of summing up the message of the book, “The Haywire Heart” is that there can be too much of the good thing we call exercise. The challenge is to find out how much we can do before it is too much. 🙂
Some of the remedies or treatments for atrial fibrillation involve drugs, surgery and implanted devices which are connected to the heart. Some other possible solutions for atrial fibrillation involve “detraining” (reducing the duration and intensity of regular workouts) and discovering if the person is deficient in anything important such as iodide, magnesium or other things the body needs.
Enough of that for now. On to today’s workout: It consisted of a “detraining” session of 10,000 meters indoor rowing at 2:35.3/500 meters.
I started the “detraining” approach on December 31, 2019 by rowing 10,000 meters and ignoring pace while focusing only on heart rate and trying to keep heart rate at about 100 BPM. The average pace for that session turned out to be about 2:38/500 meters.
Since then, I’ve been rowing a 10,000 meter session daily and have increased the pace a bit. For the past few sessions I’ve been having atrial fibrillation before, during and after each session and so I have left the pace at 2:35.3/500 for each of those sessions and will only increase the pace by 1/10th of a second if and when the atrial fibrillation stops again.
A view of the finish screen for today’s main workout.
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:
Report for today’s 10K rowing.RowPro graphs for today’s 10K.
Concept 2 online logbook chart and data display for today’s 10K.
Concept 2 online logbook chart and data for today’s workout on the SkiErg.
Happy rowing to you, whether you have an audience or are all alone in your endeavors on the erg!
Continuing with the abbreviated approach started on September 28,
2019 and unless it’s a day when I feel otherwise inclined there is only a
summary listing of the day’s workout activity. (The abbreviated
approach is far less time-consuming than what I’d been doing most days
before that particular day in September.)
Comments and questions are welcome.
If you’d like to see additional detail of any of the workouts listed
in the day’s summary here’s how to do it: You must have a free logbook
account at the Concept 2 website. If you have a logbook account there,
log in to the Concept 2 online logbook, find me, click to view my
profile and you can see all the detail of any workout I’ve done by
clicking to view my log and selecting the particular workout.
If you are one of my Concept 2 logbook training partners, you just
click the training partner tab in your logbook and navigate from there.
In addition to today’s C2 workouts listed above, there was also a 2 mile outdoor run in the sun.
Continuing with the abbreviated approach started on September 28,
2019 and unless it’s a day when I feel otherwise inclined there is only a
summary listing of the day’s workout activity. (The abbreviated
approach is far less time-consuming than what I’d been doing most days
before that particular day in September.)
Comments and questions are welcome.
If you’d like to see additional detail of any of the workouts listed
in the day’s summary here’s how to do it: You must have a free logbook
account at the Concept 2 website. If you have a logbook account there,
log in to the Concept 2 online logbook, find me, click to view my
profile and you can see all the detail of any workout I’ve done by
clicking to view my log and selecting the particular workout.
If you are one of my Concept 2 logbook training partners, you just
click the training partner tab in your logbook and navigate from there.
Continuing with the abbreviated approach started on September 28,
2019 and unless it’s a day when I feel otherwise inclined there is only a
summary listing of the day’s workout activity. (The abbreviated
approach is far less time-consuming than what I’d been doing most days
before that particular day in September.)
Comments and questions are welcome.
If you’d like to see additional detail of any of the workouts listed
in the day’s summary here’s how to do it: You must have a free logbook
account at the Concept 2 website. If you have a logbook account there,
log in to the Concept 2 online logbook, find me, click to view my
profile and you can see all the detail of any workout I’ve done by
clicking to view my log and selecting the particular workout.
If you are one of my Concept 2 logbook training partners, you just
click the training partner tab in your logbook and navigate from there.
