The night before last I had a poor night’s sleep. Yesterday the EliteHRV analysis was a red “STOP LIGHT”. So I didn’t row yesterday.
But as you can see above, today’s HRV analysis was a “green light” which I take as permission to workout as hard as I want. I decided to do a long workout instead of a hard workout and rowed a half marathon. Half marathons usually result in a good night’s sleep.
Happy rowing to you!
Today’s EliteHRV heart rate variability analysis was in the RED zone, so I did no rowing or other workout.
I took an aspirin with a lot of water and then took a long afternoon nap.
Happy rowing to you!
If any of you have been reading every word of these blog posts you will know that I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping. I’ve had many middle-of-the-night periods of being wide-awake insomnia.
But more important: if any of you have been reading every word of my blog posts: How do you manage to do that? I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that this blog is exceedingly boring and I totally agree. There’s no plot, etc. Just a daily splattering of bits mostly about what indoor rowing was done. To read every word of these blog posts would be an exceptional, amazing task.
Anyway… with regard to the SLEEP issues, I was somewhat amazed to have had a “perfect” night’s sleep. Deep, restful and only interrupted very briefly once, for a call of nature. Below you can see a chart of last night’s sleep. It’s actually a chart of heart rate and activity levels (movement detected by Apple Watch) during last night’s sleep. But you can see from the chart that there was only one brief interruption between 1 and 2 AM. The recent doses of Valerian to help with sleep did nothing, compared to positive after-effect of rowing the half-marathon.
Today’s workout consisted of a 30 minute online session, 2K warm down and 126 Calories burned on the SkiErg.
The 30 minute online session was recorded and uploaded to YouTube and it can be found at this link: Indoor rowing 30 minutes online 04192019
Happy rowing to you!
Today’s main and only workout was a half marathon rowed online with two other guys. My approach was to row easy at an average pace of about 2:20 except for 8 intervals of 30 strokes each, which were done at a pace of about 2:00.
Happy rowing to you!
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).
The SkiErg session was done with intervals.
Happy rowing to you!
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.
Happy rowing to you!
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.
Happy rowing to you!
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.
Happy rowing to you!
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.
Happy rowing to you!
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.
Happy rowing to you!