Tag: sleep debt

Oiled The Chain

This is the kind of oil recommended by Concept 2 for occasional oiling of the chain on the rowing machine.

Today there was no rowing or SkiErg session, but I did oil the chain on the Concept 2 rowing machine. It doesn’t need to be done very often.

Today’s HRV morning readiness score continued to be good.
Last night’s sleep made up for the previous night’s insomnia, at 8 hours and 55 minutes logged.

Happy rowing to you.

An Upright Rest Day

Though today was a rest day from rowing, I didn’t recline or take a nap like this guy appears to be doing.

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.

Today’e EliteHRV Morning readiness score.
Heart rate graph of last nights sleep. It was a good night’s sleep, but the sleep logging app says I’m still low on sleep. The way the sleep app puts it, I’m at 75% of what it calculates to be my “3-Day Sleep Target”

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).

Happy rowing to you!

Skipping A Day 12132018

The thing I have in common today with the girls in the lovely painting above, is that I am skipping. They seem to be skipping rope and I am skipping a day of rowing.

After a bit of philosophical, preoccupied procrastination this morning I decided to skip both coffee and also rowing and return to bed. 

One factor in today’s decision to skip rowing was that the HRV score this morning was about the same as yesterday and I’d like it to improve.

As you can see in the redundantly captioned screenshot above, the EliteHRV Morning Readiness wasn’t improved from yesterday.

Sleep may have been a factor in the lack of improvement in today’s HRV score compared to yesterday’s.  Sleep wasn’t bad last night, but it could have been a lot better.

I’m considering making up for the lack of rowing meters today, by rowing a half marathon tomorrow. 

Happy rowing to you.


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.