A Text Message Invitation To Row

Do you check your email frequently or have notifications turned on so that your phone alerts you every time you receive a new email? I don’t. Too many emails. So the only time I know there’s new email is when I log in to the email account.

A problem with that, it turned out, was that once recently when one of my training partners wanted to do a rowing session online, I didn’t see his email until too late. So I told him that it would be okay if he wanted to send a text message for any scheduled online rowing sessions, to make sure I knew about them enough in advance to say yea or nay.

Today, he took me up on that and sent a text message. (Screenshot of that text message is at the top of this post.) About 40 minutes after his text, we were online and rowing an hour session together even though we are each located somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 miles away from each other. One of the nicer “wonders” of the internet. Even though it is “virtual” company when you row online with one or more other people, it makes the session a lot more enjoyable than rowing alone.

Today’s EliteHRV Morning Readiness analysis was that any kind of workout would be okay.
Plenty of sleep last night, at 7 hours 15 minutes.

So the main rowing done today was a 60 minute piece, online at a breezy pace which felt like RPE 2. A screen recording was made for those of you who’d like to have it to row-along with. It is available at this link: Indoor Rowing 60 mins online 01142019

After the 60 minute piece, I rowed a 4 minute session. Did that because I hadn’t yet rowed a 4 minute session this season and I thought it would be nice to put it in the rankings. It was done with a pace boat and a target pace of about 2:05. It felt like about RPE 4. A screen recording for rowing-along with it is available at this link: Indoor Rowing 4 minutes 01142019

Finish screen view of today’s 60 minutes online.
Finish screen view of today’s 4 minute piece.
There was only one brief moment of heart strangeness (Afib) today and it happened during the last half of the 4 minute session, where you can see a downward spike to zero in heart rate. That’s where heartbeat fluttered briefly, becoming irregular and the heart strap transmitter couldn’t provide a coherent signal to display.
Concept 2 online logbook chart of today’s 4 minute session.

Happy rowing to you!

Maybe Tomorrow

Not as good as yesterday, but still a very good EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading today.

Though HRV reading (above) was good and sleep (below) was likewise, there was no rowing done here today. 🙂

6 hours 50 minutes sleep last night seemed quite sufficient.

Happy rowing to you!

Heart Strangeness In Uncharted Territory

This morning’s EliteHRV Readiness reading was optimal for any kind of rowing…

Today began with a good HRV reading, so there were no restrictions regarding rowing. Also, it followed a good night’s sleep, which was another plus.

Seven hours and forty minutes of good quality sleep last night.

Today’s indoor rowing consisted of two sessions. First, a one minute session which was done just for the sake of putting anything in the rankings for the 1 minute sprint category. Second, was a longer session of 8,224 meters, which was done just for the sake of logging more calories for a current Concept 2 challenge.

The one minute session was preceded by a 750 meter warmup and followed by a 750 meter warm down. The one minute sprint was done with a target pace that would rank me at about the lower 25% of those who had ranked 1 minute sessions to date. That was a pace target of about 1:49/500 meters. I didn’t want to row any faster than that, because the warm up was too short and I wouldn’t really be warmed up enough for an all-out 60 second sprint.

After the one minute sprint was finished, I did an easy 750 meter warm down and that is when the “heart strangeness” happened. It felt like a bit of fluttering and heart rate spiked and remained higher than it should have been for the easy warm down pace. Another strange thing about that strange heart rate behavior during the warm down was that when it spiked, it spiked up to 150 BPM, which is exactly as high as heart rate managed to climb, before the ultra-short 1 minute sprint was finished. Was that a coincidence? Or was that the heart’s way of saying it wanted to sprint for longer than one minute? One minute wasn’t enough indulgence in sprinting? The heart is eager, and “rarin’ to go” racing?

That “strangeness” happened in uncharted territory, because the warm down was tacked on to the 1 minute RowPro session and RowPro does not include tacked-on warmups or warm downs in its charts for the main session report. Below is a screenshot of what heart rate looked like when it spiked during the warm down.

Heart rate had been in the mid- to low-120s during the warmdown, until abour 426 meters remaining, when it spiked up to 150 even though rowing effort remained at a constant, easy level.

A screen recording was made of the entire 1 minute session including its warmup and warm down, so if you view the screen recording, you can see how it acted in real-time on the RowPro screen. The one minute session screen recording is here: Indoor Rowing 1 minute sprint 01122019

For those of you who’d like to row-along with it, a screen recording was also made of the 8,224 meter session and it is available at this link: Indoor rowing 8224 meters 01122019

After the warm down following the 1 minute sprint, I thought I’d have to stop rowing for the rest of the day, but within a few minutes the Afib went away and heart behavior returned to normal, so I did the 8224 meter session in order to bring the day’s total to 10,000 meters and burn a few more calories.

Finish screen for 1 minute sprint.
Finish screen for 8224 meter session.

Happy rowing to you!

That Puzzling HRV

An unexpectedly unbalanced HRV analysis today. There were no artifacts to potentially “skew” the results, so I have to take it at face value.

Today’s EliteHRV morning readiness reading was expected to be good but it was not. Plenty of sleep last night at 7 hours 45 minutes. No rowing done today.

A good night’s sleep (7 hours 45 minutes) with little in the way of interruptions. Does that mean I was especially tired and there is something lurking beneath the “face value” of today’s poor EliteHRV morning readiness reading??

Happy rowing to you!

Worst Ever HRV!

On the brink of death or what? This morning was the worst reading I’ve ever had.

Yes, this morning’s EliteHRV reading was the WORST EVER reading since I’ve been taking the daily Morning Readiness reading. But I ended up discarding it, because though my actual HRV reading might have been poor, it also might have been good… the results were skewed and basically worthless because there were too many data glitches. See additional screenshot below, for what EliteHRV said about today’s reading.

The “artifacts” were due to the fact that I was having a little bout of heart flutter AKA atrial fibrillation.
I got plenty of sleep last night, at 8 hours and 20 minutes. But you can see that heart rate was elevated from about 5:30 AM through the entire remaining time of last night’s sleep – that’s when the heart fluttering happened.

Other than the fluttering heart, I felt okay. It stopped fluttering around midday and I decided to row late in the afternoon, at a moderate pace.

Today’s rowing session was 17,000 meters done for the sake of burning calories. The hope was to burn at least 1,000 calories and that goal was almost reached, with a total of 988 or 989 calories. (The finish screen reported 988 calories and the report says 989 calories).

A screen recording was made for those of you who like to have it to row along with. It is available at this link: Indoor Rowing 17000 meters 01092019

Today’s finish screen

Happy rowing to you!

An Upright Rest Day

Though today was a rest day from rowing, I didn’t recline or take a nap like this guy appears to be doing.

Today’s EliteHRV score was very sympathetic which in the case of heart rate variability isn’t good. So I took the day off from rowing. I was slightly active, moving furniture, assembling a piece of exercise equipment and other miscellaneous chores/tasks. But none of it compared to any kind of rowing.

Today’e EliteHRV Morning readiness score.
Heart rate graph of last nights sleep. It was a good night’s sleep, but the sleep logging app says I’m still low on sleep. The way the sleep app puts it, I’m at 75% of what it calculates to be my “3-Day Sleep Target”

Though last night’s sleep was quite a bit more than the night before, last night’s RHR was higher at 53 (vs 51 for night before) and last night’s average sleeping HR was higher at 59 (vs 54 for night before).

Happy rowing to you!

Rowing For The Calories

Even though I took it easy yesterday, today’s HRV score was lower/worse than yesterday’s. Puzzling.

Though the HRV score yesterday was excellent and I took it easy, today’s HRV score was worse than yesterday’s! I’m missing something here… unless this morning’s lower HRV score was due to last night’s sleep? (See caption of image below)

Perhaps the poor HRV score this morning was due to only getting 5 hours 45 minutes sleep last night, instead of closer to 8 hours?

Because of the poor HRV reading this morning, I only did easy rowing. The goal for today’s rowing was to total at least 1,000 calories, for the Big Burn Challenge (see image below)

Today’s goal of burning at least 1,000 calories while rowing easy was achieved with two pieces: A 10K followed by a 7,700 meter piece. There was a screen recording made of the 7,700 meter piece, for those of you who’d like to row along with it. It is located at this link: Indoor Rowing 7700 meters 01072019

It is now almost 6 hours since today’s easy rowing was finished. When I do “easy rowing,” it is only done by feel. It seemed that 2:20 felt easy, so I aimed for 2:20 and did each of today’s pieces near that pace. But I’m surprised that now, 6 hours later, I’m feeling slight soreness from the rowing! This isn’t “normal”. Is it because I’m “getting old”? or is it because I’m fighting off some kind of bug?

Perhaps the HRV reading tomorrow morning will shed some light on the answer to that question?

10K finish screen
10K report
10K graphs
7700 meter finish screen
7700 meter report
7700 meters graphs

Happy rowing to you!

Listen To Your Body?

Today’s two main training signals, amount of sleep and EliteHRV morning readiness reading were both “GO” for it being okay to row as hard and long as I wanted. But my body/and or mind felt reluctant. Where exactly is the dividing line between mind and body? Each hugely influences the other…

HRV app said “Go for it!”
Amount of sleep was 7 hours, which was well within the fully rested target zone with 30 minutes to spare, based on recent sleep…

But when I sat down to row, I couldn’t seem to find the accelerator pedal. So I took it easy, sampled a few YouTube videos on the topic of using HRV with training and watched two of those videos in their entirety.

The second of those two videos was titled “Heart Rate Variability Training & Grouse Grind // Vlog 001” and it sort of fit with what I was wrestling with, which was whether to push myself to row vigorously or to take it easy. I decided to not take the advice of the EliteHRV app and to do just a little bit of easy rowing. The guy in the video also did not take the advice of his HRV app, only in his case the app told him to take it easy and rest. Instead, he climbed a mountain. The next day, his HRV score had greatly improved. So it makes you wonder about HRV – there’s more to the picture than just the HRV reading, it seems. I’m curious how my HRV reading will react to my having taken it easy today?

There were no screen recordings made of any of today’s rowing pieces. It doesn’t work well, to make a screen recording of a rowing session while watching YouTube videos…

Here’s a summary list of today’s lackadaisical rowing:

All totaled, today’s calorie count came to a lot less than 1,000 calories.

Happy rowing to you!

Main Goal Was > 1,000 Calories

Today’s Readiness was taking with a grain of salt as I mentioned in yesterday’s post… but the grain of salt was later dispensed with after I received more knowledge about the app from a reliable expert on the matter.

There was no indoor rowing goal at the start of the day, except to do some rowing before eating anything. The goal of burning more than 1,000 calories rowing today was decided upon after rowing a 60 minute session, warming down, looking at the total calorie count and noticing it was less than 1,000. One of the current Concept 2 challenges is called “The Big Burn”. The object of that challenge is to burn at least 20,000 calories on a C2 machine this January.

This morning a friend explained how to easily check to see whether or not the EliteHRV app had detected any “signal artifacts” during its morning reading. If it has detected any artifacts, the reliability of its reading is in question, according to his analysis. Checking simply involves clicking/touching a few particular places on the app, but I had been unaware of that.

The happy news was that there were no artifacts and the morning readiness reading today is worthwhile as a training signal.
Another important training signal, quantity of sleep, was also “GO” for training today, at more than 8 hours sleep.

Resting heart rate was a little high at 55 BPM. That was not a drastic difference from normal and was probably due to the virus that tried to get a foothold the previous day. So I took the RHR as a “GO” training signal also.

There is another possible training signal that I don’t know what to think of yet, so I guess I’ll just have to keep watch on it from day to day to form an opinion. It is a relatively new data feature of the sleep logging app I use (SleepWatch): Average heart rate during sleep. It seems to me that average sleeping heart rate would be influenced by things like how much a person ate before bedtime, how much time passed after eating and before going to bed and room temperature, to name a few things that come to mind. I don’t know if it is as relevant as RHR or relevant at all, as any kind of a training guide or signal.

There is a screen recording of the main piece, a 60 minute rowing session today. For those of you who’d like to row along with it, the link for the screen recording can be found here: Indoor Rowing 60 minutes 01052019

Screenshots for the 60 minute piece are below. It was done at about RPE Level 5. The other two shorter shorter pieces were done at RPE Level 1 and I won’t bother posting anything about them. But they are visible to anyone who has a Concept 2 logbook account and who is logged in to the online logbook.

I didn’t get a very early start today and my legs felt a bit tired, so I put off rowing until after noon. For the sake of getting more critical repair and replacement work on my mitochondria, especially the heart mitochondria, I also put off eating until after rowing was finished. So the time before breaking fast was more than 20 hours, which was a solid 8 hours of special benefit to the mitochondria. Happily, both heart rate & rhythm behaved perfectly.

Finish screen for today’s 60 minute piece.

Happy rowing to you.