Tag: rate of perceived exertion

Row And Ski

Finish screen for the SkiErg 5,000 meters.

Today’s workout was a pair of 5k sessions, one on the SkiErg and one on the rowing machine.

For the SkiErg 5K, I reduced the drag factor to what I hoped would allow a rating of about 45 SPM. But the drag factor still seemed a bit high and most of the session was done at a rating of 37 to 42 SPM. That seems to be the “secret” to having a faster pace on the SkiErg – the SPM has to be a lot higher than it would ever be when rowing. Arms aren’t nearly as strong as legs, so the SkiErg stroke rate using mostly the arms has to be higher for any pace than stroke rate would be on the rowing machine which mostly uses leg power.

The SkiErg 5K was done at RPE Level 7 or at least it felt strenuous enough to be that level though I wasn’t breathing as hard as the RPE Level chart seems to indicate for Level 7. (You can see a copy of the RPE chart in the Terms and Abbreviations tab on the home page of this blog)

I sweated a lot during the SkiErg session but barely perspired during the rowing session, if that counts for anything regarding the Rates of Perceived Exertion.

After the SkiErg 5K, I did 5K at a more moderate effort on the rowing machine and included a 500 meter sprint at a moderate sprint pace, every 1000 meters for a total of three 500 meter sprint intervals. The 5K rowing session was done at RPE Level 4 for the slower rowing and RPE Level 8 for the 500 meter intervals.

Report for the SkiErg 5,000 meters.
RowPro graphs for the SkiErg 5,000 meters.
Concept 2 online logbook chartfor the SkiErg 5,000 meters.
Finish screen for the Rowing 5,000 meters.
Report for the Rowing 5,000 meters.
RowPro graphs for the Rowing 5,000 meters.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for the Rowing 5,000 meters.
Today’s EliteHRV Morning Readiness reading.
Last night’s sleep of 6 hours 45 minutes was good quality.

Happy rowing to you!

Clearing Out The Cobwebs With A Half Marathon

Finish screen view of the half marathon portion of today’s rowing.

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.


For those of you who’d like to row along with this session, a screen recording was uploaded to this link: Indoor Rowing Half Marathon 12152018

Happy rowing to you.