Cactus blossoms were glowing with sunlight this morning.
There were two workouts today. They were both interval sessions. One on the rowing machine and the other on the SkiErg. Afterwards, and now while this is being typed, I feel like I’m tingling all over with the afterglow of the intervals.
Today’s EliteHRV heart rate variability analysis gave permission for any level of effort.
Today’s rowing workout was selected from Concept 2’s suggestions for “workout of the day”. It was called “2 x 10 min short intervals” and the instructive description was: “Pre-set the monitor for a work time of 10:00 and a rest time of 4:00. Each interval alternate between 40 seconds fast rowing and 20 seconds easy rowing. During the rest time continue rowing at light pressure.”
The above photo is a display of one result of Einstein’s formulation of the Theory of Relativity… or his contributions to quantum physics… or both. At any rate, it is showing some of the effects of converting the mass of a few ounces of uranium into energy.
After 8 days without working out, today I finally managed to do a workout on both the rowing machine and SkiErg. There was no earth-shaking result, but it seemed like there was a huge amount of some kind of inertia to overcome when I first started pulling the handle on the rowing machine. The result of today’s workout was to convert about 2 1/2 ounces of my body’s mass into a modest 552 calories of kinetic energy. There was additional energy conversion resulting in heat and myriads of other changes in the body, but those were not measured by the ergometers.
The two ergometers, rowing machine and SkiErg, only measured the kinetic energy required to operate them and that totaled to about 552 Calories. *
Today’s heart rate variability analysis by the EliteHRV app gave a green light for doing a workout.
Today’s workout was once again strictly aerobic. I need to start incorporating resistance/anabolic activity into a few days of each week’s workouts. How do I cultivate that as a habit?
The above question will have to remain unanswered for the moment. Screenshots of today’s workout reports are below. They were a series of 4 minute hard/3 minute easy rowing intervals followed by a series of 10 Calories hard/10 Calories easy cross-country SkiErg intervals:
Finish screen for the rowing intervals.
Report for the rowing intervals.
Graphs for the rowing intervals.
Graphs and data for the SkiErg intervals.
Happy rowing to you!
*If you are a physicist and want to get technical, it totaled to 552 kilo calories.
I was skeptical of this morning’s Readiness score by EliteHRV app.
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)
I was surprised to see the Apple Watch display heart rate as low as 44 during the day when I was awake and moving around. Was this an aftereffect of the Valerian?
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.
Finish screen for today’s 10K rowing session. Did I mention that it was done online, in the good company of another rower who was a few thousand miles away on the East Coast of USA?
Report for today’s 10K rowing session.
Graphs for today’s 10K rowing session.
Some data and a chart for today’s 124 Calorie SkiErg session.
Today’s heart rate variability analysis by the EliteHRV app gave a green light to workout at any effort level.
Today’s main workout was one hour of rowing, like yesterday’s session. It was also done online, like yesterday’s session. But nobody else signed up for this session, so I did it alone.
After the 60 minutes of rowing, I did a couple hundred calories on the SkiErg.
Finish screen for today’s 60 minutes of rowing.
Report for today’s 60 minutes of rowing.
RowPro graphs for today’s 60 minutes of rowing.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s SkiErg session.
Finish screen for today’s 5000 meter rowing session.
Today’s aerobic workouts consisted of first doing 5K on the rowing machine. The 5K was wrapped around three intervals of 500 meters each, like yesterday’s rowing 5K. It was RPE Level 4.
After the rowing, I did six intervals of 500 meters each, on the SkiErg. The target pace for each of the 500 meter intervals was going to be 2:10 to 2:11, but after the first interval at target pace, I faded during the second interval and went a lot slower during the final 5 of 6 intervals. The SkiErg session was RPE Level 10 for sweating but RPE Level 7 for breathing.
Report for today’s 5000 meter rowing session.
RowPro graphs for today’s 5000 meter rowing session.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 5000 meter rowing session.
Finish screen for SkiErg intervals.
RowPro reportfor SkiErg intervals.
RowPro graphs for SkiErg intervals.
SkiErg Interval 1 of 6.
SkiErg Interval 2 of 6.
SkiErg Interval 3 of 6.
SkiErg Interval 4 of 6.
SkiErg Interval 5 of 6.
SkiErg Interval 6 of 6.
Today’s Morning Readiness reading,Last night’s sleep was fairly good quality, 5 hours 35 minutes.
The above photo shows a view of the back of my wind-swept head when I was standing on the bow of a whale watching catamaran recently. That photo is a screenshot taken from a video of the whale-watching. That video is on YouTube at this link: Gray Whales Rub Against Boat (Seen From UNDERWATER VIEWING PODS)
The whale watching was enjoyable, but it would have been a lot more fun if we had been rowing instead of just idly standing and sitting on the boat.
Today’s EliteHRV readiness score indicated that it was okay to row a lot of meters at virtually any pace.Last night’s 7 hours 15 minutes of sleep contributed to this morning’s good HRV readiness reading.
Today’s rowing consisted of 8 sessions. If you count the warm ups and warm downs as sessions unto themselves, it consisted of a total of twelve pieces. Here is a listing of today’s rowing (see image below):
A screen recording was made of only one of the sessions, a 500 meter piece plus its warmup/down. That screen recording can be found on YouTube at this location: Indoor Rowing 500 meters with warmup/down 01022019
The various sessions were mostly easy, with an RPE rating of 2 or 3, with the exception of the above screen-recorded 500 meter piece, which was done at an RPE level of what felt like 9.
A picture of last night’s insomnia. Heart rate is plotted with red dots which are heart rate samples once about every 10 minutes. Heart rate is not plotted for the period when I was awake with insomnia.
Last night, I had a few hours of insomnia. One result was that I didn’t get back to sleep until about 05:00 a.m. This morning was a day when it was necessary to rise early, to take care of a weekly, early morning chore.
I always set at least 3 wake-up alarms, in case there is a malfunction with one or two of them. The first one sounded and I reached up from deep under the surface of an ocean of sleep and shut it off. Same with the second one and I was slightly more awake, but lay back down and closed my eyes to drift back to sleep. It took the third alarm, to get me up out of bed, but I felt awful.
So after completing the chore, I considered whether to go back to bed or stay up. I went back to bed, but despite being very tired, could not go back to sleep. So I got up, and took the daily EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading. It was the worst reading I’ve seen yet. A fruit of a bad night’s sleep? I rowed briskly yesterday, but neither terribly hard nor long..
Today’s EliteHRV Readiness reading after a three-alarm wake-up.
Whatever the reason, I limited myself to only easy, leisurely rowing today. The main rowing session was 10,000 meters at a low heart rate pace.
Two days after doing a half marathon, EliteHRV calculated that I had the best Morning Readiness score since starting to use the app!
One fruit of the Dec 15th half marathon is displayed in the screenshot above, which shows the best Morning Readiness reading I’ve had so far since using EliteHRV. It came two days later and I think it is one result of the half marathon effort.
A second fruit was improved sleep. The above chart shows last night’s sleeping heart rate. Though it seemed to me like it was good sleep, you can’t tell much of anything about the quality of sleep from that chart. But – this morning I received a notification and “inquiry” from my sleep logging app about my sleep the prior night, immediately following the half marathon. (see screenshot below)
Its analysis reports that sleep quality for the previous day’s sleep period (the night immediately following the half marathon) was “higher than is typical” and it presented a couple dozen possible reasons, asking me to check off “all that apply” to that improved sleep quality, so as to contribute to its cause-and-effect analysis. The only one I checked was exercise, because the half marathon was the only thing out of the ordinary, since it’s 21,097 meters had been about 5 times my average daily volume so far this season and about double my recent several weeks’ daily volume.
“The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much…” Ecclesiastes 5:12
Since today’s EliteHRV “Morning Readiness” reading said it was okay to train harder today, I decided to do another 10,000+ meters, arranged as a 10 minute warmup, a 6,000 meter piece at a target pace of 2:06/500 meters and a 10 minute warm down.
Finish screen view of the half marathon portion of today’s rowing.
Sleep was good and more than adequate last night (see image below) almost 8 hours…
But the EliteHRV morning readiness score still refused to climb out of the “sympathetic” zone or higher than 7. (see image below)
So, I concluded that it may be as good as its going to get(?) and decided to be happy with 7. Its a good number.
Today’s indoor rowing session was a half marathon with a simple plan. The plan was to aim for and maintain an average pace of 2:14.4/500m until the distance counted down to 500 meters remaining. When there were 500 meters remaining, the hope was to row faster to the finish line, depending on how I felt by then.
I felt okay, so somewhere during the final 500 meters, I decided to pick up the pace enough to aim for an overall average pace of 2:14.0.
There was a 750 meter warmup before the HM and a 1K warm down afterwards.
Happily, the heart behaved itself and wasn’t a spoilsport today.
For those of you who pay attention to the blog post categories: I’m going to stop using the categories of Easy Workout, Medium Workout, Medium Hard Workout and Hard Workout. Instead of those four categories, I’ll use one of 10 categories of RPE, which stands for Rate of Perceived Exertion. Today’s session is categorized as Rate of Perceived Exertion 3 (refer to chart below). Because I was breathing easy (not “breathing heavily”) during 98.5% of today’s half marathon, it is categorized as RPE 3.
