Ethereal Rowing – Page 34

Swing Low, Heartbeat

A surprisingly low heart rate of 44 BPM just before the start of today’s rowing session.

Today started a bit later than usual so I had coffee and breakfast first, instead of working out first. Then there was a father’s day phone call that lasted about 90 minutes. By the time I got around to doing today’s workout, it was early afternoon.

So I was a bit surprised after changing into rowing clothes, strapping on the heart transmitter and sitting on the erg, to see heart rate at only 44 BPM.

44 beats per minute was the lowest it dipped during the night while I was deeply, soundly asleep. (I wear a watch while sleeping and it monitors heart rate all through the night.) I was now wide awake. Breakfast, 4 cups of coffee and moving around to change clothes should have raised it a bit. But… as I sat there and watched, it even dropped as low as 43 BPM while I looked at the bottom right corner of the RowPro display.

It seemed remarkable enough that I decided to do something I haven’t done for a while and make a screen-recording of today’s rowing session, in case I wanted to replay it and watch how heart rate had behaved. So there is a screen recording of today’s 10K, for those of you who’d like to row along with it or use it as background noise while you fall asleep. It is on YouTube at this link: Indoor Rowing 10K at 2m17sec:500m avg pace 06162019

Though heart rate started out surprisingly low, in the mid 40’s instead of in the 60’s where I would have expected it, it behaved very well during the entire 10K piece. So… I won’t be watching the screen recording.

After the 10K rowing, there was a SkiErg session of alternating work/rest intervals and did the work intervals a lot harder than yesterday’s restrained effort level due to yesterday’s heart strangeness.

No heart strangeness today, unless the surprisingly low heart rate while sitting at the start line counts… and it might… so this blog post is therefore tagged with a “heart strangeness” category label for that reason.

Finish screen for today’s 10K rowing session.

RowPro report for today’s 10K rowing session.

RowPro graphs for today’s 10K rowing session.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K rowing session.

Chart and data for today’s SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

Mostly Clear With Scattered Irregularity

Today’s workout resembled yesterday’s, with a few small differences. Today’s pace boat was set to a bit faster pace of 2:17 instead of 2:18. The difference amounted to an increase of 4,000 calories work. (4,000 calories = 4 “food Calories” / kilocalories.)

Heart behaved mostly okay during today’s rowing session but occasionally became irregular, causing heart strap receiver to lose count of BPM and display a blank reading for heart rate.

Because of the scattered irregularity during the rowing session, I decided to take it easy on the SkiErg session which immediately followed. Like yesterday’s SkiErg workout, today’s was alternating work/rest intervals of 10 Calories each, to a total of 156 Calories. The total amounted to 1 “food Calorie”) more than yesterday’s 155 Calorie SkiErg session. (See the Terms and Abbreviations page for a bit more about the term calorie or Calorie).

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K rowing.

Happy rowing to you!

Heart-Warming Rate, Rhythm and Recovery

Finish screen for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

One of the categories associated with today’s blog post is “Heart Strangeness”, which is the category I use when there is abnormal heart behavior during a workout. The abnormal behaviors have been: atrial fibrillation (irregular heart rhythm), excessively high heart rate, a slow or non-recovery of heart rate after hard work, or a combination of two or more of those.

There have been so many workouts recently with “heart strangeness,” that I was surprised to have everything normal today. Therefore, the category of “Heart Strangeness” was tacked on today to take note of and celebrate its ABSENCE.

The three r’s of heart rate, heart rhythm and heart rate recovery after hard intervals were all normal or – as some astronauts used to say – they were AOK.

There were two workouts. First, 10,000 meters at a constant pace of 2:18/500 meters on the rowing machine. The rowing session was a nice warmup for intervals on the SkiErg. The SkiErg session was preset to continue until 155 Calories had been burned. It was done with alternate intervals of hard/easy 10 Calorie work/rest intervals. The graphical picture of normal heart rate recovery after each interval on the SkiErg was heart-warming to behold.

Report for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

RowPro graphs for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.

Chart and data for today’s 155 Calorie SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

Mostly Just Dandy

Today’s workouts: SkiErg 154 Calories, rowing 10,000 meters at 2:19/500 meter average pace. Heart acted normally for first 4 minutes of the SkiErg session, then it shifted to irregular mode and remained too high for effort level for remainder of that session and for all of the following 10K rowing.

Otherwise, everything was normal and just dandy.

Report for 10,000 meters rowing at 2:19 average pace.

RowPro graphs for 10,000 meters rowing at 2:19 average pace.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for 10,000 meters rowing at 2:19 average pace.

Happy rowing to you!

A 12,985 Meter Warm-Up

Today’s workouts were very similar to yesterday except they were topped off with something a bit more fun, a 500 meter SkiErg dash. The first session was 10,000 meters rowing at constant pace of 2:20/500 meters. The second session was a very gentle version of work/rest intervals on the SkiErg. Total meters of those two sessions was 12,985 meters.

I’d been thinking about trying a 500 meter dash on the SkiErg, so those two sessions served as a warm-up and they were followed with an exploratory piece of 500 meters on the SkiErg. It was paced at about 2:00 for the first 400 meters and then a bit faster for the last 100 meters. The result was an average pace of about 1:58 and it was placed in the SkiErg rankings online.

Chart and data for today’s 153 Calorie SkiErg session.

Chart and data for today’s 500 meter SkiErg dash.

Happy rowing to you!

Small Changes To Yesterday’s

Today’s sessions were like yesterday’s: A 10K rowing session was first, with a pace target of 2:20 but today I used a pace boat for pacing. The rowing was followed by a SkiErg session of alternating 10 calorie intervals of work/rest for a total of 152 calories. The effort level of the intervals in today’s SkiErg session was easier than yesterday’s, with the exception of the last interval which was hard. Heart rate behaved normally today.

Happy rowing to you.

Followup of Yesterday’s Approach

Finish screen for today’s first workout, a 10K done at constant pace of 2:20/500m.

With strange heart behavior still in mind, today’s workout was a followup of yesterday’s. I may not have mentioned it lately, but I’m also making sure to do these daily workouts before breaking fast for the day, with the hope in mind that it will help the mitochondria better sort out any problems they might be having in relation to the strange heart behavior.

Today’s first session was rowing 10,000 meters at a constant, average pace of 2:20. Heart rate behaved normally again today as it had during yesterday’s similar 10K.

The second session was a SkiErg session similar to yesterday’s, but with one more calorie added to the goal. Heart rate acted up and got strange again during today’s SkiErg session: At 2 minutes 42 seconds into the session, heart rate spiked even though I was in a rest interval. It remained way too high for remainder of the session.

Happy rowing to you!

A Bit Experimental

Today’s erg workouts were like yesterday’s only they were different in minor respects. Today’s 10K was a constant pace. It did not include sprinting or interval(s) like yesterday’s. I’m unscientifically experimenting to see if there is any correlation between higher effort levels and heart strangeness.

Today’s SkiErg session was similar to yesterday’s, with a total goal of one calorie more, 150 Calories. The SkiErg session was not constant paced and consisted of alternating work/rest intervals of 10 calories each.

Heart behavior was normal during today’s rowing session of constant-rate 2:20/500 meter paced 10K. Heart strangeness happened on the SkiErg, in that it took longer than normal for heart rate to recover after each work interval.

After the rowing and SkiErg sessions, a 2 minute rowing warm down was done. The w/d was done at a very easy pace but heart rate remained high during those 2 minutes.

Chart and data for today’s SkiErg session. Heart rate went too high after the 2nd of seven intervals and remained too high through the end of SkiErg session and the warm down afterwards.

Finish screen for the two minute warm down.

Happy rowing to you!

Normal Start, Strange Finish

Finish screen for today’s 10K. See below for a closer-view of the graphs…

Today’s erg workouts were planned to be a repeat of yesterday’s. Today started out with a 10K, targeting a pace of just faster than 2:20 and a rating of 28, like yesterday. Also like yesterday, a single 500 meter interval was done at a pace of about 2:00, beginning when the remaining distance counted down to 4,000 meters.

Every thing was normal from the start, through the 500 meter interval and a little beyond the end of the 500 meter interval. Then things got strange, like the day before yesterday. Heart rate became irregular with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation and heart rate also spiked up to a rate too high for the low effort level of 2:20/500 meters rowing.

On the heart rate chart you can easily see that heart rate shifted/jumped from a normal rate of around 120 BPM when pace was 2:20, to an abnormally high rate of around 150 BPM.

Heart behavior and rate remained strange after the rowing session was over and all through the SkiErg session which immediately followed the rowing session. After I changed from workout clothes back into regular attire (jeans and T-shirt), heart rate became normal again. Perhaps it is something to do with the clothes? 🙂

Chart and data for today’s SkiErg session. Heart rate was way too high for the moderate effort levels.

Happy rowing to you!

Strange Heart Strangenessless

Both today and yesterday’s 10K rowing sessions were done at identical pace and each had one interval of 500 meters. Today’s (on the right) was NORMAL heart rate for that effort, at about 120 BPM. Yesterday’s heart rate was HIGH for that same effort level, at about 150 BPM.

Today started out differently than yesterday in a couple respects. The first of those was that there was no atrial fibrillation overnight or this morning, as there had been the previous day and night. As a consequence of that, the second immediately noticeable difference was that today’s HRV analysis by EliteHRV was a perfect 10, the greenest “green light” possible for any sort of workout today.

Another difference between today and yesterday is that yesterday I did some sweating during both the rowing and SkiErg workouts but today there was no sweating, no drips of sweat today on either the rowing machine or on the SkiErg platform, like there had been yesterday.

Yesterday, there was “heart strangeness” and I categorized yesterday’s blog post, accordingly, with that tag of “heart strangeness”. Today, heart behaved perfectly but because the difference between yesterday and today is so surprising, “strange” to me, I’m using that same tag for today’s post.

Though I rowed yesterday and today at the same easy pace, with sweating while rowing yesterday but not today… today’s SkiErg session was a bit harder than yesterday’s but today there were NO drips of sweat on the SkiErg platform, like there had been during yesterday’s easier SkiErg session while experiencing irregular heart rate which was abnormally high.

Happy rowing to you!