Though I haven’t mentioned insomnia / sleep problems lately, it was sleep issues that factored the most into missing three days of rowing recently. And skipping rowing led to more sleep issues. But yesterday I managed to get in some rowing and also the SkiErg – but just barely managed to do those workouts, before dinner yesterday evening. But they were done! And they were probably the main reason I slept very well last night.
As a result, I managed to wake earlier today, a little after seven a.m. Today’s workouts were adjusted for earlier and finished in the morning.
The first workout today was 10K rowing with the goal of rowing as constant a pace as possible, targeting an average pace of 2:16/500 meters at a target stroke rate of 28 spm. After the rowing, a SkiErg session of 164 Calories was done.
Today’s workout was a rowing 10K done targeting a constant pace like the previous seven 10Ks, but this one was done one second faster, 2:16/500 meters instead of 2:17. It made an incremental difference, but a difference in the right direction.
The rowing was followed by a constant-paced session of 163 Calories on the SkiErg.
Report for 10K rowing session.
RowPro graphs for 10K rowing session.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for 10K rowing session.
Chart and some data for today’s 163 Calorie SkiErg session.
Finish screen view for today’s 10K rowing session.
Today’s 10K was the 7th of 7 with goal of: Rating 28, constant pace and average pace of 2:17. Heart rate behaved normally during both rowing and its sister-workout of 162 calories on the SkiErg. Tomorrow’s 10K will have goal of everything the same except average pace of 2:16 instead of 2:17.
The SkiErg session today was similar, with a goal of: No particular stroke rate, constant pace and average pace of 2:40. Tomorrow’s will be targeting average pace of 2:39.
Today’s total workout time was one hour, 4 minutes and 1.5 seconds, including a 2 minute warmdown which will not be shown here. For all but the last 5 minutes 44.5 seconds, heart rate was too high for the effort level, based on past experience. Then it became normal and remained normal, for those final 5 mins 44.5 seconds, which was about 9.4% of today’s total workout time.
That qualified as strange behavior on the part of the heart and therefore the category tag, “heart strangeness” is added for today’s blog post.
The first portion of today’s workout was 10,000 meters rowing, aiming for an average pace of 2:17 and a rating of 28. Heart rate was about 10 BPM too high for the effort, all the way through the rowing session, based on a lot of past experience. The rowing session was screen-recorded and is available on YouTube at: Indoor Rowing ASMR 10K 06202019
The next portion of today’s workout was 161 Calories on the SkiErg. Heart rate immediately climbed to be too high for the effort and remained too high until after 12 minutes and 40 seconds, then it went down into its normal BPM range for that effort level. You can see what I’m referring to, on the chart for today’s SkiErg session, where I circled the too-high HR area.
Report for today’s 10K rowing.
Report for today’s 10K rowing.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K rowing.
Chart and data for today’s 161 Calorie SkiErg session.
Finish screen view for today’s 10K rowing session.
Although intervals are something I like a lot, today I decided to completely avoid them. The reason I avoided doing any intervals is because they are possibly correlated with episodes of strange heart behavior such as arrhythmia or heart rate elevated too high. Coincidentally or not, heart strangeness was absent today.
The workouts today were: first, another 10K rowing session at the constant pace of about 2:17/500m. That was followed by a 160 Calorie SkiErg session also done at a constant pace. The target pace for the SkiErg session was chosen to be about the same as the average pace of the most recent SkiErg session which had both included hard intervals and also had completely normal heart behavior. That most recent session was the one done on June 16th at an average pace of 2:42.4. Today’s SkiErg session was done at a constant average pace of about 2:42.0 and heart behaved normally in the absence of any intervals.
Report for today’s 10K rowing session.
RowPro graphs for today’s 10K rowing session.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K rowing session.
Normal heart behavior during today’s boring interval-free SkiErg session.
Today’s workouts started out normal with everything okay through the first session of two. The first session was 10K rowing.
The second session was 159 Calories on the SkiErg. It was going to be another alternation of 10 Calories work, 10 Calories rest. But after less than 3 minutes, during the second rest interval, heart rate turned around and spiked up. It stayed too high for all the remainder of the Skierg session.
Today’s workout sessions were: 10K rowing followed by 158 Calories of work/rest intervals on the SkiErg. Everything was okay until “heart strangeness” happened with about 40 Calories remaining to go on the SkiErg session. Heart rate spiked too high and became a bit irregular. The “heart strangeness” is circled in the screenshot of the SkiErg session which is at the bottom of today’s images, below.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K rowing session.
Chart and data for today’s SkiErg session. When heart rate spiked too high, I slowed down and did not work hard on the intervals, but heart rate remained too high. It returned to normal after the workout was over and I’d changed clothes.
A surprisingly low heart rate of 44 BPM just before the start of today’s rowing session.
Today started a bit later than usual so I had coffee and breakfast first, instead of working out first. Then there was a father’s day phone call that lasted about 90 minutes. By the time I got around to doing today’s workout, it was early afternoon.
So I was a bit surprised after changing into rowing clothes, strapping on the heart transmitter and sitting on the erg, to see heart rate at only 44 BPM.
44 beats per minute was the lowest it dipped during the night while I was deeply, soundly asleep. (I wear a watch while sleeping and it monitors heart rate all through the night.) I was now wide awake. Breakfast, 4 cups of coffee and moving around to change clothes should have raised it a bit. But… as I sat there and watched, it even dropped as low as 43 BPM while I looked at the bottom right corner of the RowPro display.
It seemed remarkable enough that I decided to do something I haven’t done for a while and make a screen-recording of today’s rowing session, in case I wanted to replay it and watch how heart rate had behaved. So there is a screen recording of today’s 10K, for those of you who’d like to row along with it or use it as background noise while you fall asleep. It is on YouTube at this link: Indoor Rowing 10K at 2m17sec:500m avg pace 06162019
Though heart rate started out surprisingly low, in the mid 40’s instead of in the 60’s where I would have expected it, it behaved very well during the entire 10K piece. So… I won’t be watching the screen recording.
After the 10K rowing, there was a SkiErg session of alternating work/rest intervals and did the work intervals a lot harder than yesterday’s restrained effort level due to yesterday’s heart strangeness.
No heart strangeness today, unless the surprisingly low heart rate while sitting at the start line counts… and it might… so this blog post is therefore tagged with a “heart strangeness” category label for that reason.
Finish screen for today’s 10K rowing session.
RowPro report for today’s 10K rowing session.
RowPro graphs for today’s 10K rowing session.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K rowing session.
Today’s workout resembled yesterday’s, with a few small differences. Today’s pace boat was set to a bit faster pace of 2:17 instead of 2:18. The difference amounted to an increase of 4,000 calories work. (4,000 calories = 4 “food Calories” / kilocalories.)
Heart behaved mostly okay during today’s rowing session but occasionally became irregular, causing heart strap receiver to lose count of BPM and display a blank reading for heart rate.
Because of the scattered irregularity during the rowing session, I decided to take it easy on the SkiErg session which immediately followed. Like yesterday’s SkiErg workout, today’s was alternating work/rest intervals of 10 Calories each, to a total of 156 Calories. The total amounted to 1 “food Calorie”) more than yesterday’s 155 Calorie SkiErg session. (See the Terms and Abbreviations page for a bit more about the term calorie or Calorie).
RowPro report for today’s 10K rowing.
RowPro graphs for today’s 10K rowing.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K rowing.
Finish screen for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.
One of the categories associated with today’s blog post is “Heart Strangeness”, which is the category I use when there is abnormal heart behavior during a workout. The abnormal behaviors have been: atrial fibrillation (irregular heart rhythm), excessively high heart rate, a slow or non-recovery of heart rate after hard work, or a combination of two or more of those.
There have been so many workouts recently with “heart strangeness,” that I was surprised to have everything normal today. Therefore, the category of “Heart Strangeness” was tacked on today to take note of and celebrate its ABSENCE.
The three r’s of heart rate, heart rhythm and heart rate recovery after hard intervals were all normal or – as some astronauts used to say – they were AOK.
There were two workouts. First, 10,000 meters at a constant pace of 2:18/500 meters on the rowing machine. The rowing session was a nice warmup for intervals on the SkiErg. The SkiErg session was preset to continue until 155 Calories had been burned. It was done with alternate intervals of hard/easy 10 Calorie work/rest intervals. The graphical picture of normal heart rate recovery after each interval on the SkiErg was heart-warming to behold.
Report for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.
RowPro graphs for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.
Chart and data for today’s 155 Calorie SkiErg session.
