As Yet Undecided

This morning’s analysis of heart rate variability by the EliteHRV app is good and looks the same as yesterday’s. Which is surprising, because I had a lousy night’s sleep last night.

If I decide to do any rowing, I’ll update this post later today or this evening.

Happy rowing to you!

Passing Time

Tracking passing time.

Today’s workout didn’t happen, even though the morning analysis of heart rate variability was auspicious (see screenshot below). But I signed up for an hour session online tomorrow morning, so that will probably happen.

Today’s EliteHRV Readiness score would have permitted any level of workout.

Happy rowing to you!

A Half Marathon For Good Sleep

The green light means its okay to go row.

The night before last I had a poor night’s sleep. Yesterday the EliteHRV analysis was a red “STOP LIGHT”. So I didn’t row yesterday.

But as you can see above, today’s HRV analysis was a “green light” which I take as permission to workout as hard as I want. I decided to do a long workout instead of a hard workout and rowed a half marathon. Half marathons usually result in a good night’s sleep.

Finish screen for today’s half marathon. Though the session was online, there was no company to inspire me. I do better with company. You can see that I got a bit sloppy toward the end.
Report for today’s half marathon.
Graphs for today’s half marathon.

Happy rowing to you!

Begone, Valerian! A Half Marathon Works Better!

Today’s HRV analysis score is better than yesterday’s, despite having rowed a half marathon yesterday.

If any of you have been reading every word of these blog posts you will know that I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping. I’ve had many middle-of-the-night periods of being wide-awake insomnia.

But more important: if any of you have been reading every word of my blog posts: How do you manage to do that? I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that this blog is exceedingly boring and I totally agree. There’s no plot, etc. Just a daily splattering of bits mostly about what indoor rowing was done. To read every word of these blog posts would be an exceptional, amazing task.

Anyway… with regard to the SLEEP issues, I was somewhat amazed to have had a “perfect” night’s sleep. Deep, restful and only interrupted very briefly once, for a call of nature. Below you can see a chart of last night’s sleep. It’s actually a chart of heart rate and activity levels (movement detected by Apple Watch) during last night’s sleep. But you can see from the chart that there was only one brief interruption between 1 and 2 AM. The recent doses of Valerian to help with sleep did nothing, compared to positive after-effect of rowing the half-marathon.

This was the best night’s sleep in a long time. Do I have to row a half-marathon, to get a good night’s sleep?

Today’s workout consisted of a 30 minute online session, 2K warm down and 126 Calories burned on the SkiErg.

The 30 minute online session was recorded and uploaded to YouTube and it can be found at this link: Indoor rowing 30 minutes online 04192019

Finish screen view for today’s 30 minute online session.
Report for today’s 30 minute online rowing session.
Graphs for today’s 30 minute online rowing session.
Data for today’s 126 Calorie SkiErg workout.

Happy rowing to you!

A HM To Get Things Humming

Today’s EliteHRV readiness score was adequate for a half marathon.

Today’s main and only workout was a half marathon rowed online with two other guys. My approach was to row easy at an average pace of about 2:20 except for 8 intervals of 30 strokes each, which were done at a pace of about 2:00.

Report for today’s half marathon.
RowPro graphs for today’s half marathon.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s half marathon.

Happy rowing to you!

A Mostly Lazy 30 Minutes

Though today’s heart rate variability Readiness was a green light for any effort level, I mostly took it easy when doing other than intervals.

Today’s workout was 30 minutes rowing and 125 Calories on SkiErg.

The rowing session was done online with 3 other guys who were located an average of thousands of miles away. (Two were in Europe and one was less than 200 miles away in the US).

The SkiErg session was done with intervals.

Finish screen for today’s 30 minute rowing session.
Report for today’s 30 minute rowing session.
Graphs for today’s 30 minute rowing session.
Data for today’s SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

Can Valerian Induce Heart Strangeness?

This morning’s favorable Readiness score from the EliteHRV app left me looking forward to some energetic intervals.

Today’s workout consisted of a 10K rowing session online, with a 10 minute warm down. The 10K was originally planned to be a series of intervals of 30 strokes each and spaced to each start about 1,000 meters apart.

During the first part of the 10K, heart rate was too irregular to display. When It finally became regular enough to display, it was way too high for the effort level, so I slowed to an extremely slow pace. After about 2,000 meters, heart rate settled down to where it should be and the remainder of the 10K was somewhat normal. But I decided to skip using the SkiErg for today.

Last night, I took another dose of Valerian as a sleep aid. I suspect that it may have been at least a partial cause of the irregular and excessively high heart rate. The Valerian did help me sleep through the night, but it seemed to cause strange dreams.

Graphs of 10K rowing session as displayed on RowPro finish screen.
Report for today’s 10K rowing session. Notice splits 4, 5, 6 and 7 where heart rate is way too high for the low effort level.
Graphs for today’s 10K rowing session.

Happy rowing to you!

Valerian Skewed HRV?

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.

Happy rowing to you!

Caution: Only Do What Feels Good

This morning’s cautionary recommendation from EliteHRV Readiness analysis.

This morning’s score of YELLOW / 5 from the EliteHRV heart rate variability analysis app indicated that I should take it easy. So my interpretation of that was to only do what felt good with regard to rowing and avoid any effort that felt painful. That seemed to be the most logical approach, since I don’t know what the definition is of the term “active recovery”. But I do know what the word “active” means.

It seemed to work okay.

So the workouts today consisted of the following, in chronological order: A 3 minute rowing warmup, a 10K rowing session online with 3 other guys, a 30 minute rowing session online with 12 other guys, a 10 minute rowing warm down and finally a 123 Calorie SkiErg workout of moderate alternating 10 calorie intervals.

Below, I’ll show screenshots for everything except warmup and warmdown.

Finish screen view for today’s 10K rowing.
Report for today’s 10K rowing.
Graphs for today’s 10K rowing.
Finish screen view for today’s 30 minute rowing.
Report for today’s 30 minute rowing.
Graphs for today’s 30 minute rowing.
Data and chart for today’s 123 Calorie SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!