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.

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.