Weathering The Stormy Heart

Notice, that though the needle is in the green area of relative balance, it is also in the “sympathetic” area, which is the “fight or flight” mode for the nervous system.

Today’s HRV readiness reading says harder training is okay.  But it is still in the “Sympathetic” zone.  A bit of ambiguity/uncertainty there, it seems.  Because of that ambiguity,  the question: Row harder today? Or easier?

10 1/2 hours of actual sleep last night erased all of the recently acquired sleep debt.

The biggest factor which helped improve the Morning Readiness score today was probably sleep.  I was able to sleep in and got about 10 1/2 hours total sleep, which completely erased all the recent sleep debt.

So after careful though HRV-reading-inexperienced consideration, my decision is to row a session similar to the recovery sessions of yesterday and the day before yesterday, but to row today’s session at a pace which will be a mere 1 second per 500 meters faster than yesterday’s.  The total calorie and Wattage difference between yesterday’s and today’s should be small?  We shall see.  Now… I’m off to do the rowing and will return to compose and publish the remainder of this blog post afterwards…

Afterwards – The title of this post was relating to HRV before today’s rowing session was done.  But during the last 2000 meters of today’s 10K, the heart started acting up, so I deleted the original title and gave it the one you see at the top now. 

By the time I’d rowed about the first 8,000 meters, heart rate was lower than at the same point in yesterday’s 10K.  I thought that was good news which could be credited to more rest and an improved HRV score for “Morning Readiness”.  But things got stormy during the last 2,000 meters.  Heart rhythm got so erratic that it sometimes disappeared from HR display.  I could feel it flit and flutter in my chest. Other than those two symptoms, I felt the same in every respect.  And since I REALLY WANTED to finish the 10K with an average pace of 2:15, I kept on rowing.

Today’s rowing session was screen-recorded for those of you who’d like to row along with it.  It’s link will be available in about three hours from now (the current time is 03:45 GMT on Dec 13th) at about 06:45 GMT on Dec 13th, according to the uploading predictor, at this location: Indoor Rowing 10K Through the Storm 12122018

Finish screen today

Happy rowing to you.