Two Online Pieces

two pieces but not online rowing
On-the-water rowing always appears more ethereal than the look of the indoor rowing which is the only kind I do. The ethereal part of indoor rowing is the landscape, waterways and inner lighting of your mind.

Today’s indoor rowing was done 100% online except for a brief preliminary warmup.

The above photo, for those who are interested, was found on row2k.com on THIS PAGE. It is a photo of OTW rowing somewhere in Oklahoma.

The first piece was a 20 minute session scheduled by a guy in England who called it “20 minutes easy” but when I asked him what his easy was, it was 2:00 which I consider hard.  He decided to row at 2:05 and I did too.  About halfway through the session, RowPro 5 for the Mac had a case of graphics freeze, so I could no longer see what the other guy was doing.  But otherwise, the session seemed to be still in progress, so I watched the PM (personal monitor) on the rowing machine instead of the computer screen and aimed for an average pace of the 2:05 that we’d agreed to.

As far as the other guy was concerned, it worked out fine because apparently I kept pace with him fairly well and we finished within a boat length of each other.

The second piece was a 6K that I scheduled.  I called it “6K Super Easy” hoping that whoever joined would have a preconceived notion of a pace that wasn’t too fast.  The guy who joined said he was fine with a pace of from 2:10 to 2:15, so we did that and finished with an average pace of about 2:10.

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Happy rowing at your own definition of easy or whatever you like.

Some Zippity Doo Dah But Mostly Easy

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The 12 intervals of 30 seconds each were the Zippity Doo Dah part and the rest was easy or super easy.

Today’s rowing session was chosen because it is supposed to help increase a person’s VO2 max, if it is done twice a week on non-consecutive days.   It was a set of twelve 30 second intervals with 2 1/2 minutes rest after each interval.

The workout suggestion was found on a website called Healthy Living (healthyliving.azcentral.com) and was found on THIS PAGE (<-click to get to that page).  It’s a big page, so if you don’t want to bother going to that page, the relevant part of that page where I got the idea for today’s workout was: “VO2 Workout: According to Bicycling.com, sprinting all out for 30 seconds in the red line zone followed by 2 1/2 minutes of easy recovery can improve VO2 max by 3 percent in just four weeks. Do the intervals 12 times per workout, and work out no more than twice a week on nonconsecutive days.”

The website’s definition for the term “red line zone,” is 90% to 100% of maximum heart rate.  But it’s not possible to get heart rate up to maximum or even 90% maximum in a mere 30 seconds, so I just rowed as hard as I could for each 30 second interval.  Except the first one… during which I had to take my hand off the rowing machine handle for a bit, to make an adjustment.

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Most of the intervals spiked up to over 1,500 calories per hour for their brief duration.

Thirty seconds passes very quickly and you can row very hard for 30 seconds.  Most of the 30 second intervals were done at a calories-per-hour rate of between 1,500 and 1,800 calories per hour.

The rowing session was scheduled and done online, but nobody noticed it in time to join, so I had the fun all to myself and rowed alone.

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Happy rowing with a nice measure of zip, to you.

Every Rowing Piece Is A Hill Climb

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Today’s indoor rowing was composed of two 30 minute pieces and a 9 minute warm down. All three were done online with plenty of inspirational company. I won’t bother to show any screen shots of the warm down – just the two 30 minute pieces.

You can treat each piece as a hill climb and decide in advance whether or not you want to be breathing hard by the time you reach the top of each hill.

I chose to be breathing easy by the time I reached the top of the first 30 minute hill and to be breathing a little harder at the top of the second one. The second of the two 30 minute sessions consumed 29 calories more than the first, so I didn’t work very much harder, though I was breathing a lot harder at its finish, because the second session ended with a sprint.

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This was the EASY workout of today’s two pieces.
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This was the MEDIUM workout of today’s two pieces.

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Happy indoor rowing hill climbing to you.

Rowing Up The Stairs

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Today’s main piece was a 30 minute online session with three other rowers.  Two of the others were in Europe and one was in the US (Connecticut).

Each person rowed to the beat of his own drummer.  My plan for the 30 minutes was to keep the average pace at 2:15 for the first five minutes and then at the beginning of each subsequent five minutes, to increase the pace enough so that the average pace of the session would increase by -1 seconds.

So the first five minutes was done with the Concept 2 monitor displaying an average pace of 2:15.0/500 meters.  The second five minutes was completed with the average pace sped up a tiny bit, to 2:14/500 meters and so on until the session ended with the final average pace displayed to be 2:10.0/500 meters.

It felt good. I seem to be coughing up a tiny bit of phlegm lately for some reason and the rowing helps to clear it out.  To help a bit more, today I started taking doses of an expectorant syrup whose active ingredient is guaifenesin and which has only a small amount of the toxin known as high fructose corn syrup.  (Dr. Robert Lustig, MD, has identified high fructose corn syrup as a toxin).

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Happy and easy-breathing rowing to you.

It Was Called 10 Km Of Bliss

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Plenty of bliss to go around but no rowing in this picture.

Today’s indoor rowing piece was online.  A session was scheduled at 10:30 am local time, called “10km_of_bliss”.  It was at about the right time and distance, so I signed up for it.  But the guy who scheduled it didn’t show, so I had the 10K of bliss all to myself.

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For this bliss session, I rowed easy for the first 5K and then for the last 5K I increased the effort level, to aim for a HR of 142, with a couple of shorter faster intervals toward the end of the 10K.

It was indeed blissful.

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Blissful rowing to you.

 

Faster Near The Finish

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Today I reminded myself of a rented horse which moves reluctantly away from the stable but moves eagerly when returning.  The indoor rowing distance was 12,000 meters and while rowing I watched an educational video which featured a speaker with an accent which made him difficult to understand.  So I rowed very slowly and quietly, so as to better hear and focus on the video.  And took breaks.

But near the very end of the 12,000 meters, the video had finished and the end was near, so I eagerly rowed faster, to get it over with.

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Happy finish stretch of rowing to you.