It’s been a while – about eleven days- since I’ve blogged, but most of those blogless days have included workouts on the ergs.
Today’s erg workouts were several. All were offline except for a 30 minute rowing piece which was online.
This 30 minutes was online with a group of others. If you are feeling high energy, keep pace with one of the others. If you are feeling more like a tortoise today, keep pace with me. Have fun rowing along with the screen recording.
Though not all workout sessions for the day are always or even usually mentioned in the blog, data for any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To view a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.
Above is a list of what’s been done so far today. I seem to be getting tired of doing 20Km/day already. Or the feeling of “tired” might be related to the four hour power failure that happened last night. It cost me a couple hours of sleep, so it’s logical that it may be the significant factor.
During last night’s power failure we resorted to an oil lamp for part of the time. It looks pretty and old-fashioned, but I’d rather have electricity etc.
Though not all workout sessions for the day are always or even usually mentioned in the blog, data for any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To view a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.
Today’s erg workouts are listed above. They totaled 22,407 meters distance and 2 hours 8 minutes 25 seconds total time.
Yesterday I “talked a lot” in this blog and today is the other end of the talkative spectrum.
Though not all workout sessions for the day are always or even usually mentioned in the blog, data for any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To view a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.
Though this photo doesn’t do it justice, today’s sunrise with clouds captured my fascinated attention.
Today started as usual with a few minutes outside early in the morning.
For anyone of the few of you who have been following this blog, you will notice that as of yesterday, my daily workout time is increased over what it had been from May 1 of this year until yesterday.
The reason for the increase in daily workout time is a consequence of my most recent blood test results and visit with my doctor. She said my A1C reading has gone up. I’ve been trying to keep it down and so I was puzzled. I told her that I had “cut back” on daily aerobic exercise because “I got tired of doing 20,000 meters every day” and I asked her if she thought that cutting back on daily aerobic exercise might be a significant factor. She said yes. We didn’t discuss it any further during that visit but I resolved to return to what I’d had as a vague goal before May 1st, which had been to burn at least about 1,300 activity Calories daily, according to the activity app on my Apple Watch.
After the doctor visit, I received a written summary and recommendations from the doctor which included that in reference to aerobic exercise I should do at least 150 minutes weekly.
It might have been good if the doctor and I had talked about it a little more, because what I had “cut back” to was about 250 minutes per week, 100 minutes per week more than she recommended. But I thought about it and decided that the important thing was that in her expert medical opinion, the reduction in weekly aerobic activity could very well be a significant if not THE major factor in the rise of A1C level.
So I’m increasing it with the following approach: to do daily aerobic activity as soon as possible each day with the goal of bringing activity Calories up to 1,300 with that aerobic activity, before going on to other things.
So that is what I did yesterday and today. Today, it amounted to a little more than 2 hours and 20 minutes of time on the ergs and a total of about 22,374 meters. It took a long time because average pace was slow. But it wasn’t boring, because I alternated every 10 Calories between slower and faster. Believe it or not, that made it interesting enough to do the entire workout without music, videos, etc. Thoughts were all over the place and a good share of thoughts were on the goodness and awesomeness of God, but in between whatever the non-workout related thoughts were, it was interesting to focus on the effort level, strokes, split time, etc with each alternating slow or faster 10 Calories interval.
At this rate, I’ll be doing about 15 hours instead of merely 150 minutes of weekly aerobic activity. But 15 hours will be in the ballpark of what I used to do… a long time ago in what seems like a distant galaxy…
There were two sessions today for the total workout and there is no screen recording for either one. But there are screen shots. And for anyone interested there are “live” (interactive) charts available, as usual, at the online logbook link further down this page.
If you look closely you may notice some dust on the originally pristine Concept2 SkiErg. Arizona and our old house are a dusty place. It is mostly bare, sandy ground outside too and that is where the title for this blog post came from… from (outside) dust to (inside) dust. The above photo was taken “on the starting blocks” of today’s workout, just before starting the SkiErg session.
Screenshot of the SkiErg session data.
Screenshot of the rowing machine session data.
Though not all workout sessions for the day are always or even usually mentioned in the blog, data for any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To view a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.
Trying to improve 100 meter sprint. The session and screen recording does not include a warmup because I was already warmed up with about 1 hour of rowing before the 100 meter piece. Drag factor was set at 116. Improved time by 1/10th second. Whoopee.
On a related topic is my heart’s behavior yesterday and today. It is related because you’ve gotta have a heart to row you know.
Yesterday from sometime around the middle of the day for the rest of the day and all evening, my heart got stuck in high gear and was beating at around 150 no matter what I was doing. For example, see the graph of heart rate during a liesurely walk yesterday afternoon, just below this paragraph.
Heart rate remained around 150 the rest of yesterday afternoon and all evening. Sometime yesterday afternoon, it finally occurred to me that I hadn’t yet talked about it with God, so I prayed about it. I’m trying to be more aware of God’s presence all the time and had a lapse yesterday until the heart behavior had persisted long enough that my slow mind turned to prayer.
High heart rate continued after I went to bed but according to the wrist-worn monitor during last night’s sleep, heart rate returned to normal somewhere around midnight or 12:30 this morning. See the graph below this paragraph for that.
According to this graph of heart rate during last night’s sleep, heartbeat was about 150 from 8:30 PM until midnight and at midnight it returned to normal rate.
Heart rate and behavior was normal during all of today’s session times on SkiErg and rowing machine.
Though not all workout sessions for the day are always or even usually mentioned in the blog, data for any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To view a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.
Graphs for today’s successful 100 meter sprint, which resulted in a move from 38th to 34th place in rankings.
Two 100 meter pieces today. For the first one, tried to beat my previous season best 100 meter by using a lower drag factor setting but it didn’t result in a faster time.
For the second one, tried a higher drag factor setting, got a faster time out of it and moved from 38th to 34th place in online rankings. The only problem was heart rate: though I felt fine, HR was too high from start to finish.
Though not all workout sessions for the day are always or even usually mentioned in the blog, data for any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To view a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.
The start of a sprint is the slowest and most critical part.
Raced against yesterday’s 100m and tied it as far as rankings are concerned but if you watch the video you can see that today’s result was actually a hair slower than yesterday! Gotta work on that but only a tiny bit per day, to coddle the afib heart.
Today’s 100 m looks about like yesterday’s but it was actually a tiny bit slower.
Though not all workout sessions for the day are always or even usually mentioned in the blog, data for any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To view a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.
The screen recording of this 100 meter sprint includes no warmup or warm down because it was done late in the day and would have taken longer to upload than I wanted to wait at that time of the day.. So you can rustle up your own warmup and warm down before rowing to race against it. 🙂
It was faster than yesterday’s, so I moved up a couple places in the online standings.
The effort displayed in this graph resulted in a move up from 40th to 38th place in the rankings.
Though not all workout sessions for the day are always or even usually mentioned in the blog, data for any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To view a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.
This 100 m was a race against yesterday’s (using yesterday’s as the pace boat in RowPro) and because I didn’t start out fast enough I only managed to tie my yesterday’s time.
Though not all workout sessions for the day are always or even usually mentioned in the blog, data for any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To view a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.
This 100 meter sprint result moved me up in rankings from 45th to 40th place.
This 100 meter rowing sprint was another increase in pace and it finally resulted in an advancement in place in the 100 meter online rankings, from 45th place to 40th place. I’m not alone in 40th place, however, because there are three other guys with the same time also in 40th place.
Though not all workout sessions for the day are always or even usually mentioned in the blog, data for any workout sessions for any day can be seen in detail via this: link to the online logbook. To view a session’s data and interactive graph click the “+” sign in “Action” column for that session.
