Tag: rowpro software

26,954 Assorted Meters

The above photo shows a view of the back of my wind-swept head when I was standing on the bow of a whale watching catamaran recently. That photo is a screenshot taken from a video of the whale-watching. That video is on YouTube at this link: Gray Whales Rub Against Boat (Seen From UNDERWATER VIEWING PODS)

The whale watching was enjoyable, but it would have been a lot more fun if we had been rowing instead of just idly standing and sitting on the boat.

Today’s EliteHRV readiness score indicated that it was okay to row a lot of meters at virtually any pace.
Last night’s 7 hours 15 minutes of sleep contributed to this morning’s good HRV readiness reading.

Today’s rowing consisted of 8 sessions. If you count the warm ups and warm downs as sessions unto themselves, it consisted of a total of twelve pieces. Here is a listing of today’s rowing (see image below):

A screen recording was made of only one of the sessions, a 500 meter piece plus its warmup/down. That screen recording can be found on YouTube at this location: Indoor Rowing 500 meters with warmup/down 01022019

The various sessions were mostly easy, with an RPE rating of 2 or 3, with the exception of the above screen-recorded 500 meter piece, which was done at an RPE level of what felt like 9.

Happy rowing to you.


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.

Previous 10K Redux But Better

Today’s score is the same as yesterday’s, though I got more sleep and HR is one BPM lower, so perhaps sleep and HR aren’t influencers of the score.

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.

Last night’s sleep seemed slightly better quality and definitely was longer than the previous night’s.

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?

For those who’d like to row along with the session, a screen recording is available at this link: Indoor Rowing 10K Redux only Better 12142018

Happy rowing to you.