Today’s workout was 30 minutes rowing and 125 Calories on SkiErg.
The rowing session was done online with 3 other guys who were located an average of thousands of miles away. (Two were in Europe and one was less than 200 miles away in the US).
Today’s workout consisted of a 10K rowing session online, with a 10 minute warm down. The 10K was originally planned to be a series of intervals of 30 strokes each and spaced to each start about 1,000 meters apart.
During the first part of the 10K, heart rate was too irregular to display. When It finally became regular enough to display, it was way too high for the effort level, so I slowed to an extremely slow pace. After about 2,000 meters, heart rate settled down to where it should be and the remainder of the 10K was somewhat normal. But I decided to skip using the SkiErg for today.
Last night, I took another dose of Valerian as a sleep aid. I suspect that it may have been at least a partial cause of the irregular and excessively high heart rate. The Valerian did help me sleep through the night, but it seemed to cause strange dreams.
I don’t know for certain why the Readiness score and resulting “advice” from EliteHRV app’s heart rate variability analysis was so poor this morning but I suspected Valerian. The reason I suspected it is because last night I took a dose of Valerian before bed and again in the middle of the night, to aid sleep.
The Valerian made me feel very relaxed or tired. I don’t know if it influenced my heart rate to slow down, but I did notice that heart rate dropped as low as 44 BPM during the morning. (See screen shot below)
Other than feeling exorbitantly relaxed (I know… “exorbitant’ isn’t an appropriate adjective here, but I’m using sloppy poetic license and will use it anyway)… I felt okay.
So I ignored the recommendation of EliteHRV and rowed the way I normally would. And “skied” the way I normally would, on the SkiErg after rowing.
Speaking of rowing and skiing, those were today’s workouts in that order: 10K of rowing with intervals every 1K, followed by 10 minute rowing warm down, followed by 124 Calories of alternating 10 calorie intervals on the SkiErg.
This morning’s score of YELLOW / 5 from the EliteHRV heart rate variability analysis app indicated that I should take it easy. So my interpretation of that was to only do what felt good with regard to rowing and avoid any effort that felt painful. That seemed to be the most logical approach, since I don’t know what the definition is of the term “active recovery”. But I do know what the word “active” means.
It seemed to work okay.
So the workouts today consisted of the following, in chronological order: A 3 minute rowing warmup, a 10K rowing session online with 3 other guys, a 30 minute rowing session online with 12 other guys, a 10 minute rowing warm down and finally a 123 Calorie SkiErg workout of moderate alternating 10 calorie intervals.
Below, I’ll show screenshots for everything except warmup and warmdown.
There won’t be a workout today, because I’ll be following the recommendation of today’s “Readiness” score as calculated by the EliteHRV app’s analysis of my heart rate variability.
I think EliteHRV may be mistaken, but will go along with the recommendation anyway, because there are plenty of other things to do.
Before signing off from writing in this blog today, I will note that today’s title is in reference to the clear graphical demonstration when you look at a graph of heart rate and effort level vs time, as you can see in the chart below. Notice that heart rate starts climbing after each interval begins and heart rate continues to climb for quite a while after each interval ends.
I just think that is interesting. The effect is more pronounced when the intervals are at higher effort levels.
Today started out very late. Or it could also be said that it started out very early, but in the latter case “early” means early in the afternoon. Which I consider very late.
Last night’s sleep was interrupted for a few hours, which was the main factor leading to sleeping so late, early in the afternoon.
One result was that I didn’t feel like doing any rowing because I prefer rowing in the morning and the earlier the better.
But I remembered that I had signed up to participate in one of the incentive challenges on the concept2.com website, “The World Erg Challenge“. To participate in the World Erg Challenge, all you have to do is join a team and follow the simple instructions explained on the World Erg Challenge web page.
Once you do that and log your first meters for the challenge, you are an athlete. Do you want to know how to become an athlete? I just told you! 🙂
So anyway – because I felt it to be a duty and obligation to do some rowing today, “for the team” – I rowed a few thousand meters and then logged some meters on the SkiErg.
Today started out with a good Morning Readiness analysis from EliteHRV. The EliteHRV score was confirmed in today’s main workout, a 60 minute online session with a well-behaved heart.
Today’s main workout was 60 minutes rowing online. In addition to a low HRV score this morning (see above screenshot), heart rate was too high and irregular so I rowed at a low effort level and average pace of about 2:30/500 meters.
The above screenshot shows how heart rate was too high for the low effort. Heart rate returned to normal after the 60 minute session was over. Heart rate remained normal during the 10 minute warm down session and during a 120 calorie SkiErg session that followed today’s rowing.
Today’s main workout was a 60 minute online rowing session. The target was to row at a pace of 2:10 and then sprint near the end, for a season best time. But during the last 15 minutes heart rate spiked from a normal rate of around 150 to 198 and became irregular, so I immediately slowed and rowed slow for the rest of the hour.
Today’s workout started with a 60 minute session online with three other guys. But one of those three didn’t show, so it was just two others besides me who actually rowed. During the 60 minutes I did most of the rowing at a pace of about 2:15 with the exception of once ever 10 minutes after the first 10 minutes doing an interval which lasted 60 seconds.
After the 60 minute session, there was a 10 minute warm down and then I switched from rowing machine to SkiErg and did 118 Calories on that.