Tag: EliteHRV

A Three Alarm HRV Reading

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.

A screen recording was made for those who want to row-along.  It is located on YouTube at this link: Indoor Rowing Leisurely 10K 12182018

Finish screen for main 10K portion of today’s rowing.

Happy rowing to you.

The Fruits Of A Half Marathon

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.

For those of you who’d like to row along with it, a screen recording is available on YouTube at this link: Indoor Rowing 6K at 2min 6secs 12172018

Happy rowing to you.

10K Recovery With An Easter Egg

Today’s heart rate variability reading was the surprise you see in the above screenshot.  Last night’s sleep was interrupted with insomnia but the total time sleeping was adequate.  (see screenshot below)

A bout of insomnia interrupted last night’s sleep between 2 and 4 a.m.

Assuming the analysis and advice of EliteHRV was correct, I chose to do a recovery 10K.  “Recovery” is relative and subjective, but a pace of 2:20 seemed like a good compromise, pending what the HRV result will be tomorrow.

So the 10K was done at a target average pace of 2:20 and an “Easter egg,” as a computer programmer might call it, was inserted when the distance counted down to 1,150 meters remaining.

A screen recording was made for those of you who’d like to row along with today’s 10K.  It’s link is on YouTube here: Indoor Rowing 10K with Easter egg 12162018

Happy rowing to you.

Previous 10K Redux But Better

Today’s score is the same as yesterday’s, though I got more sleep and HR is one BPM lower, so perhaps sleep and HR aren’t influencers of the score.

Because today’s EliteHRV reading is the same as yesterday’s, I won’t row a half marathon today and will choose a shorter distance than half marathon and an easy pace. The hope is, that I’ll eventually have an HRV morning readiness score that reads somewhere in the green, like it does this morning, but also in the “Parasympathetic” zone.  However… I don’t know yet if that is either desirable or necessary.

Last night’s sleep seemed slightly better quality and definitely was longer than the previous night’s.

So the decision is:  Today I will row 10,000 meters again at the same target of steady, average pace of 2 minutes 15 seconds per 500 meters.  But first I’d like some coffee…

The rowing is done and it went almost as hoped, with two exceptions:  (1) Heart rate was a little higher than expected for the amount of rest (no rowing yesterday) and sleep (7 1/2 hours last night).  Perhaps I need more than an average of 7 hours sleep per night?? (2) There were a few skipped heartbeats and two instances where Afib lasted a few seconds, during each of which the heart rate display went to zero on RowPro software display.

The coffee was very good.  Ground from fresh beans, full-strength caffeine level (instead of the “half-caff” variety I’d been having which had 50% of normal caffeine).

So anyway… those two un-hoped for things were the only less than desirable observations during the rowing session.  Other than that, everything was fine. Could it be that the higher caffeine level of today’s delicious coffee was what led to slightly higher heart rate than the same 10K rowed two days ago?

For those who’d like to row along with the session, a screen recording is available at this link: Indoor Rowing 10K Redux only Better 12142018

Happy rowing to you.

Skipping A Day 12132018

The thing I have in common today with the girls in the lovely painting above, is that I am skipping. They seem to be skipping rope and I am skipping a day of rowing.

After a bit of philosophical, preoccupied procrastination this morning I decided to skip both coffee and also rowing and return to bed. 

One factor in today’s decision to skip rowing was that the HRV score this morning was about the same as yesterday and I’d like it to improve.

As you can see in the redundantly captioned screenshot above, the EliteHRV Morning Readiness wasn’t improved from yesterday.

Sleep may have been a factor in the lack of improvement in today’s HRV score compared to yesterday’s.  Sleep wasn’t bad last night, but it could have been a lot better.

I’m considering making up for the lack of rowing meters today, by rowing a half marathon tomorrow. 

Happy rowing to you.


Sleep Issues Complicate Things

The HRV Morning Readiness score got a little worse today.

The influence of yesterday’s target heart rate choice of recovery session rowing is unknown, because sleep issues last night probably had a larger negative influence on HRV than anything else.

The big empty space in the graph of last night’s sleeping heart rate is the period during which there was no sleep.  Only about 3 hours 25 minutes of sleep logged.

After writing the above few words, I had to dash off to jury duty.

I assumed it would last all day and prevent any rowing.  But whoever was going to be put on a trial-by-jury decided to plead guilty. So the trial wasn’t necessary and my jury duty only amounted to answering roll call, filling out a form and listening to informational talks. It only lasted half a day, allowing rowing in the afternoon.

Today’s rowing was very similar to yesterday’s, except instead of using a target heart rate as the goal, I aimed for an average pace of steady-state effort at 2:16.0/500 meters.  That average pace was 7/10 of a second faster than yesterday’s average pace, but heart rate today was lower, at 128 BPM average, compared to yesterday’s higher heart rate of 131 at a slower average pace than today.

So today’s recovery 10K should have seemed slightly easier to the body than yesterday’s 10K.  If I can get a lot more than 3 1/2 hours sleep tonight, then perhaps tomorrow’s EliteHRV Morning Readiness Score will improve.

Once the EliteHRV Morning Readiness Score moves back up into the green zone that indicates I’ve recovered, then I will do harder rowing again to push it back to the yellow zone.

For those of you who’d like to row-along with today’s 10K, a screen recording was made and it will be available in about three hours from now on YouTube at this link: Indoor Rowing 10K with target PACE 12112018


Happy rowing to you.