Today was a late morning start so the distance rowed was only 3K. It was done at randomly varying paces.
I perhaps got a little carried away with some of the faster, sprinting bits… because I hadn’t warmed up and, perhaps due to that, the finicky heart rate started to climb near the end when it should have been slowing down if it was acting normally. But it wasn’t being normal, it was being tachy , as in tachycardia.
During the last 1,000 meters I did a tiny little bit of sprinting and heart rate climbed up to 145 BPM when there was about 500 meters remaining. At the 500 meters-to-go point, I slowed and rowed easy for a warm-down to the finish. Heart rate went from 145 to 139, 138, 137, 135, 134… acting normal for a warm down after a little sprint and it slowed all the way to around 121 while I was rowing easy during the last 500 meters.
But then, even though I continued to row easily, heart rate climbed to 129, 131, 146, 147 … all the way up to 150 as I continued to row very easy near the end and when I reached the finish line it was beating at 148.
It remained high for a little while after rowing stopped, even though I hadn’t worked up a sweat and wasn’t breathing hard at all – totally normal breathing, as if I’d been being a couch potato instead of rowing, but heart rate was in the tachycardia zone for a bit.
After a few minutes it dropped below 100, which is the technical boundary for tachycardia.
The tacky heart behavior was rather annoying. But perhaps I caused it? By annoying the heart? By rowing later in the morning instead of first thing, before 7 a.m.? It might be my imagination, but the heart and everything it’s connected to seems to prefer an earlier rowing session.
In addition to the tachycardia-ish behavior near the end, the heart rate went noticeably irregular a couple times during the session. I felt it each time, and the heart rate display briefly went blank at those times. You can see them on the graphs below, where the graph of heart rate spikes down to zero around the middle and near the end.
The session was uploaded to YouTube at Indoor Rowing 3K with a tacky finish 04282018.
Happy rowing to you.