After today’s aerobic workouts I felt tingly, all over. It’s a good feeling.
Today’s rowing was a preset distance of 13,400 meters. That distance was chosen based on the distance rowed yesterday to reach 800 calories. That was the main workout and it was done at RPE Level 6. It was followed by another attempt at doing a 500 meter sprint on the SkiErg, which was done at RPE Level 10. Lastly there was a 2 minute warmdown at RPE Level 1.
Today’s main workout was an aerobic row of 19,384 meters. It was at RPE level 2. It was followed by a first time attempt at a one minute sprint on the SkiErg, at what started out at RPE level 10 and faded. That was followed by 500 meters on the SkiErg at RPE level 5, to serve as a warm down for a warm down. Lastly, there was a SkiErg final warm down of about two minutes at RPE level 1.
Yes, this morning’s EliteHRV reading was the WORST EVER reading since I’ve been taking the daily Morning Readiness reading. But I ended up discarding it, because though my actual HRV reading might have been poor, it also might have been good… the results were skewed and basically worthless because there were too many data glitches. See additional screenshot below, for what EliteHRV said about today’s reading.
Other than the fluttering heart, I felt okay. It stopped fluttering around midday and I decided to row late in the afternoon, at a moderate pace.
Today’s rowing session was 17,000 meters done for the sake of burning calories. The hope was to burn at least 1,000 calories and that goal was almost reached, with a total of 988 or 989 calories. (The finish screen reported 988 calories and the report says 989 calories).
A screen recording was made for those of you who like to have it to row along with. It is available at this link: Indoor Rowing 17000 meters 01092019
Today’s EliteHRV score was very sympathetic which in the case of heart rate variability isn’t good. So I took the day off from rowing. I was slightly active, moving furniture, assembling a piece of exercise equipment and other miscellaneous chores/tasks. But none of it compared to any kind of rowing.
Though last night’s sleep was quite a bit more than the night before, last night’s RHR was higher at 53 (vs 51 for night before) and last night’s average sleeping HR was higher at 59 (vs 54 for night before).
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..
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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