Another Plan for Another Hour

Today's approach to the hour was to row a constant pace which would gradually raise heart rate until it rose to anywhere above heart rate zone 2 and then maintain the pace to keep heart rate above zone 2 for 12 minutes.  Twelve minutes would be about 20% of 60 minutes, so as to stay with the 80/20 approach.

After that 12 minutes, effort would be reduced to bring heart rate back into zone 2 and when the time remaining counted down to 5 minutes, effort would be reduced further, to bring heart rate down into zone 1 or lower.

The graphs show effort as planned.

The session report shows zero for ending heart rate but that is incorrect.  It was 108.

Less than a Hill of Beans Difference

This morning I slept in and when time came to row, there were once again no suitable online sessions scheduled on the river. "The river" is what some users of RowPro and its online rowing server call the virtual place where everybody rows together.  As in saying, "See you on the river," after the end of a session, instead of saying "Goodbye," "Cheers," etc.

Today's hour session was supposed to be the first 10 minutes in Heart Rate zone 1, the next 30 in HRz 2 and the last 20 in HRz 1.  But when time counted down to 20 minutes remaining, I was simultaneously lost in thought with whatever part of the mind engages in daydreaming while the other part of mind was focusing on the screen to keep HR within zone 2.  So ...  zone 2 effort lasted 3 minutes longer than planned, which didn't make more than a couple calories difference and that's a lot less than a hill of beans.

See you on the river.

For Somebody in China

This morning before getting dressed to row I did what I've been doing every morning since the food poisoning incident. I looked at the Oarbits schedule (Oarbits is what RowPro calls its online rowing server) to see if there was a 1 hour session scheduled at about the time I wanted to row.

There were none, but there was a 2K session scheduled at that time.  It was named "wuyan" and had been scheduled by somebody in China who registered under the name "gang lu".  The session description which gang lu had supplied was simply the one word, "relax".

I had seen a couple of sessions in the online results list yesterday which included gang lu as a participant.  See the images below, for a view of the results of those two sessions.

In this 2K session yesterday, gang lu rowed at a pace of 2:35/500m.

In the next 2K session yesterday, gang lu rowed at an even more relaxing pace of 3:08/500m.

The time for which gang lu had scheduled todays "wuyan" 2K was 1400 GMT which was 0700 local time here in Arizona and was perfect, since I had been up since about 0545.  So I joined the session and anticipated that gang lu would row at a pace of somewhere between 3:08 and 2:35 per 500 meters, if gang lu's past performance was an indication of future intention for a "relax" rowing pace.

I looked up the word "wuyan" to see if I could determine what its English translation would be, but there were at least four possible meanings, depending on how the emphasis was placed on the syllables of wuyan.  The most likely meaning was something like "silent" or "keeping silence" and the second most likely meaning was "no smoking."  None of which meanings conveyed anything in particular to me, since I knew nothing about gang lu.

But when the time came for the scheduled session to begin, gang lu didn't show.  So, I rowed online solo, starting at its scheduled time of 1400 GMT, which was 4 minutes before the sun rose at 7:04 a.m. in Arizona.  In China, 1400 GMT would be 10:00 p.m. local time, so perhaps gang lu did something even more relaxing than rowing online.  Perhaps gang lu went to bed and did some rowing in dreamland, which could be a quite out-of-this-world ethereal rowing experience.

In case gang lu checked the results later, I decided to demonstrate that I'd been willing to cooperate, by rowing at a pace which was approximately an average of gang lu's two previous online 2K sessions. And that is why this post is titled, "For Somebody in China." The somebody in particular is gang lu, for whom I rowed at an average pace of  2:41.8/500m.

I hope gang lu appreciated the relaxed pace at which I rowed this 2K. 

Rowing 2K at that pace wasn't enough to warm up on a cool morning like today's, though.  So I didn't count that session as part of the hour's worth of indoor rowing for today.

Today's hour was done with the plan of rowing the first half at whatever pace it took to keep heart rate somewhere in heart zone 2 and then to do the second 30 minutes at whatever slower pace was needed to keep heart rate somewhere in heart zone 1.  Because the second half hour would be the slowest part, there would be no warm down session needed.

Finish screen for today's hour.

Session report for today's hour.

Easiest Zone Requires Most Attention

Today's hour was done with a very narrow target zone.  Heart rate zone 1 is the narrowest zone - at least, it is for me, with its lower boundary at 114 and the upper at 122.

So a bit more attention to the monitor was required today than yesterday.

More Easy-Does-It After an Hour in the Forbidden Zone

Yesterday's hour of rowing was labeled a recovery because the day before yesterday had mostly consisted of an effort level that kept heart rate in the "FORBIDDEN ZONE" for anyone who is aiming to maintain an 80/20 ratio of heart rate during daily aerobic work outs.  That is, it is FORBIDDEN for more than 20% of the time during workouts.  Races.... are something else.

So I considered the day before yesterday a race and am therefore fully in compliance with staying within the 80/20 safety zone.

There were no ill effects yesterday.  Ill effects of working too much at too hard a pace in the past have included irregular heart rate and extreme tiredness.  But yesterday everything looked and felt okay.

And today, everything looked and felt even better than yesterday.  Resting heart rate before today's session was low enough to indicate that it had recovered and had not been excessively strained by the workout of two days ago.

Resting HR while sitting before today's hour began was 49 to 51 bpm.

So with all that in mind, I decided to do today's hour at an effort level that would keep HR near the boundary of Zone 1 and Zone 2 (the center of the RowPro generated pink zone on the heart rate graph below) and to skip doing any warm down.  It felt good, with no strain and resulted in a little more than 13,000 meters for the hour.

The finish screen after today's hour of rowing.

Today's session report.

So the "plan" that is forming with regard to the next few rowing sessions is to continue taking it easy and maybe even do some sessions entirely in Zone 1, then to try for a "season best" to enter into this season's rankings for the hour.  The distance to exceed would be anything greater than 14,029 meters for one hour.

It's nice to have a goal, even if it is a short term goal in one of the rankings that most people don't pay any attention to.

Recovery and Brain Maintenance

Because yesterday's session was a bit of a push above and beyond the easiest aerobic HR zones, today's session was intended to be R&R.  The plan was to keep heart rate somewhere near the middle of the HR zone 1 and 2 area until the last 3 minutes and then warm down.

As for "Brain Maintenance," a TED talk we watched recently focused on how daily aerobic activity is both a huge stimulus to the growth of brand new brain cells and also has other benefits which ward off things like Alzheimer's and other factors of deterioration in the general category of dementia.

The RowPro finish screen at completion of today's hour. There are several down spikes in effort level which happened when I briefly paused to answer text messages.

Even though this session was done at a very easy pace, it still amounted to more calories than if I had been jogging for the same amount of time at my customary jogging pace.

Remembering Matthew

Today's plan was simply to focus on the Projected Finish and maintain a pace throughout the session which would result in finishing with about 14,000 meters.  A secondary plan was to start out with a higher than necessary effort and then reduce the effort throughout the session, with the aim of keeping heart rate near the top edge of heart zone 2.

After about 15 minutes, the secondary plan was abandoned in favor of achieving the first goal of 14K+.

Some of my thoughts during today's session were of Matthew. 

Matthew at age 5 or 6

Today was his birthday and he would have been 48 years old.  Matthew once told me that his favorite work was physical labor. He would have liked the wide range of experience possible in that regard with a rowing machine and would have enjoyed a session like this one today. But he probably would have aimed for 16K+ instead of the 14K which was my goal.

The projected finish is shown in the bottom field of the PM3 display in the photo below, which was taken about 15 seconds after finishing today's session.

Projected finish is the bottom line of this view of the PM3 display.

When the countdown reached 3 minutes, pace was reduced for warm down effort.

Total calories was about 100 more than I would have burned at my usual jogging pace.

Nudge and Follow the Heart

The plan for today's session of intravenously-administered anti-depressants was to have an hour+ session with a visible target heart zone of zone 2 (the second to lowest of 5 aerobic heart rate zones).

The rest of the plan was: start vigorously enough to elevate heart rate to anywhere in zone 2 and then ease off & adjust the effort so as to keep heart rate as constantly in zone 2 for the first 30 minutes.

At the 30 minute mark, the plan was to increase effort to raise heart rate to anywhere at all above zone 2 and then keep it up there for 3 minutes.

After those 3 minutes then reduce effort to bring heart rate back into zone 2 until 10 minutes remained.

For the last 10 minutes, effort would be reduced enough to bring heart rate into or below zone 1 for the warm down.

Mission accomplished and another generous dose of natural anti-depressants received!

In this session, the heart rate dictated the level of effort.

743 calories is about the same amount as I would have burned if I'd been jogging slowly.

At Age 85 She Took Charge and Started Rowing

This is an article I found on a British site focused on the Concept2 rowing machine.  Its about an 85 year old woman who got frustrated with her rehabilitation after 2 knee replacements and 2 hip replacements.  She wanted to GET OUT of the wheelchair, so she took charge of her own rehabilitation.

I'm especially impressed, that this woman at age 85 not only took charge of her own rehabilitation in order to get out of a wheelchair, but that she also loved to do the various rowing challenges and distance challenges.  More 85 year olds are needed in the Concept2.com world rankings!

Here's the text of the article, along with a link to the website at the end of the article's text:

"85 year old wife and mother Mickey Pearmain's incredible zest for life has been given a boost, thanks to the Indoor Rower.

"In the last few years Mickey has had both knee and hip replacement operations and was left with limited mobility. After six months of physiotherapy her doctor told her that she couldn't receive any more treatment. Not wanting to resign herself to her wheelchair she joined her local gym and decided to start her own rehabilitation.

"Mickey joined Wye Valley Sports and under the supervision of personal trainer Wendy Chaplin began a fitness programme designed to get her back to her active life. As part of her training programme she was introduced to indoor rowing using the Concept 2 Indoor Rower - something she was very keen to have a go at.

"I love exercising on the Concept 2, explained Mickey. It's a great machine and I've loved attempting the different distance records. I decided to do an indoor rowing challenge for Sport Relief and my trainer Wendy suggested I rowed for one mile. I didn't think that was a challenge enough in itself so I decided to attempt the distance in less than 10 minutes. I did it and ended up raising nearly £100.

"Since her first effort, Mickey has attempted a number of distance challenges and now rows for a mile each day on the Indoor Rower. She's also checked out the Concept 2 website and found that there is plenty of scope for tackling distance records in her age group. "These are my next challenges," she added confidently.

"Her personal trainer, Wendy is pleased with the progress of her new charge, adding: "Mickey's doing really well with her exercise programme, especially on the Indoor Rower. The gym is thinking of organising a Concept 2 team event and Mickey was the first person to put her name down. She's an inspiration to all the gym members - both young and old."

"She constantly rises to any challenge and her health has improved beyond recognition. She continues to inspire younger members and it just goes to prove that you can take up exercise at any point in your life."

"Mickey only set foot in a gym last year following her operations and now she can't get enough. She even bought herself her first ever pair of trainers last month!

"I feel better now than I did five years ago!" she said. "I'm at the gym four days a week and I feel so much better for it. I've even sold my wheelchair and I'm down to using one walking stick. I can't wait to get down there again tomorrow.""

If you'd like to see the above article by directly visiting the website, it is here: Mickey Pearmain

Loping Along with Loperamide

Today's rowing session was another 61 minute arrangement of guided heart rate through focused adjustment and maintenance of effort level.

It was an all-in-one session that started out slightly fast for a quick warm-up and gradually slowed down by a measure of about one more second per 500 meters each minute from the start until 15 minutes into the session. 

Then, the effort was reduced to what amounted to a gentle pace of 2 minutes 20 seconds per 500 meters and held as constant as possible until the time counted down to 10 minutes remaining. 

The last 10 minutes were rowed at an effort level low enough to reduce heart rate to just a little above 100 beats per minute.

The blue graph is effort level and the red one is heart rate.

Today's session seemed more invigorating but no more taxing than the previous two days.

The title, "Loping Along with...." refers to the fact that last night I had to resort to a dose of loperamide hydrochloride to bring things under control when a partial repeat of food poisoning symptoms got a bit out of control.  Things in that regard seemed totally normal this morning.  It would have spoiled the rowing session, if I'd been forced to interrupt it for something like what loperamide is used against.

Last night was the first time I've needed to resort to a dose of loperamide in about 10 years.

If it seems to you that I'm being a bit vague or avoiding saying some explicit things, you are right and you can look up loperamide, if you don't know and want to know what it is used for.

Thanks, Chloe!

Today was another session of "mindful" rowing for which blaring (or otherwise) music was not at all necessary.  During the one hour session, the room was absolutely quiet and calm except for the white noise generated by an air cleaner and the whooshing sound accompanying each stroke on the Concept 2 Model D.

Pleasant and relaxing. So thanks again to Chloe, who suggested the idea of "mindful rowing."

As you can see on the Concept 2 monitor snapshot which was taken just before the session commenced, it was actually one minute more than an hour, chosen so it would be an hour plus - an hour-cup's worth, running over.

Before starting, all data fields are zero except for preset time and current heart rate.

The mindful effort is the blue and the heart's reaction is the red graph.

The mindful/thoughtful purpose was to have an all-in-one session with warm up at the beginning and gradually increasing the effort until heart rate reached and stayed at around 137+ for one minute, followed by gradually reducing effort until heart rate was below 114 and then repeating the process until heart rate was at 137+ for about 3 minutes and finishing with gradual reduction of effort to finish with heart rate between 110-114.

Focusing on the effort level took some thought but left plenty of room for thinking of other things.  Such as: At the moment at which the universe began to exist, what was the speed of light? Why do some scientists assume the beginning of the universe was something, such as a body of matter the size of a grapefruit instead of having come into existence from a point, which is by definition a location with no dimensions at all?  And was the speed of light vastly greater at the moment of the beginning of the universe than it is now? And ... since nobody knows the answer to those questions, why are so many scientists inclined to state assumptions relating to them as fact? And on and on and on, on those and several other topics .... while constantly watching and adjusting effort level.

The session report gives another view of today's mindful rowing session.

Accelerate, Decelerate, Gently, Gradually

So today I finally managed to do some rowing again, after 4 days off. 

The result was well worthwhile and left me feeling very relaxed and one or more quantum levels happier.

The session was preset to 12,021 meters and it took about an hour.  I started out slow and very gradually increased the effort until reaching peak desired heart rate after about 33 minutes.  Then gradually decreased the effort until the distance had counted down to about 2000 meters remaining.  At that point, decreased the effort with the aim of lowering heart rate to just above 100 for the remaining distance.

For aerobic exercise according to one methodology I like, there are 5 heart rate zones, with zone 1 being the lowest and 5 the highest.  I was aiming to gradually raise heart rate to the upper edge of heart zone 2, hold it there for only one minute, then gradually lower heart rate to the bottom edge of heart zone one.

It felt good.  Ethereal, even ... but it was done solo, offline because there was nobody online with whom to row at that particular late afternoon time. Company while rowing is nice, but not an absolute necessity. Music was not needed, because the mental focus and attention on effort and feeling was sufficient escapism and distraction from the world.

Blue graph on left is watts/effort level and red graph is heart rate.

Resuming Rowing After Four Days Rest

The purpose of this post is to make a commitment in writing which will prod me to get back in the habit of daily rowing. The making of a commitment was accomplished with the publishing of the subject line.  (The four days rest, in case you haven't read earlier posts, were involuntary due to an experience of food poisoning from a local restaurant)

On to the next train of thought:

Whether or not today's rowing shall be ethereal depends on whether or not it is done via the ethernet.

In our case, as in most people's, the local area network/ethernet is connected to the world wide network of the internet.

I like the word ethernet, because of the first two syllables, "ether" but not for its currently most common meaning as the name of an organic molecule.  I like it, rather, for its literary and archaic scientific usage, which are the second and third definitions shown below:

Those definitions of ether, the usage of ethernet in some references to connecting to the internet, and an even more favorite word, "ethereal," are what played together to come up with the name for this blog and the corny pun incorporated into this blog's description on the home page.

Rowing can be an ethereal experience.  Rowing can be a stormy, stressful and sweat-drenching experience.  Rowing can be any level between those two extremes.  God himself, when he took upon the form of a man by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, did a little traveling in a boat propelled by rowers.

For the most ethereal experience possible in rowing, make room for Jesus in your boat at all times but especially when the waters are stormy.

 

Women Who Row A Bit More Than Average

This evening’s video watching time included two TED talks that were each focused on women who rowed solo across one or more oceans.  The first was given by Roz Savage, who is a British woman who rowed solo across both the Atlantic AND the Pacific oceans.  The second was by Dawn Landes, titled “A song for my hero, the woman who rowed into a hurricane” and was about Tori Murden McClure, the first woman and also the first American to row solo across the Atlantic. The second one brought tears to my eyes … but that was because I didn’t know yet that she survived her first, failed attempt.  They were each well worth watching, even for people who’ve never touched an or or even sat on an indoor rowing machine.

Here's a link for the first TED talk: Roz Savage

and a link for the second one: About Tori Murden McClure

So now that it’s bedtime, I’m wondering if there will be any dreams inspired and remembered tomorrow about rowing.

Sweet dreams, to anyone who is reading this before bedtime and a good day to the rest.

How to Experience Overtraining Without Doing Any Work at All

Overtraining is something that can turn a champion athlete into a has-been.  If you don't know what overtraining (alternatively spelled as over training) is, Google it.

But you don't have to work at all to experience some of the joy (NOT!) of overtraining.  All you need to do is dine at a restaurant that improperly handles or stores raw fish and get a dose of raw-fish poisoning.  (Google it)

The experience pounced on me after we had dined at a local Japanese restaurant which shall go unnamed herein.  At about 4:00 the next morning I woke from sleep, felt sick and that was the beginning of what might be technically described as stuff coming out both ends in an involuntary series of unpleasant experiences for the next 7 hours.

Yep, 7 hours of involuntary retching etc.  It stopped at about 11:00 am, after my body weight had been reduced to about 176 lbs.  The lowest weight I had seen on the scales during the past few years had been 182 to 184 lbs, so I lost between 6 and 8 lbs in 8 hours and was parched with thirst but unable to hold down even one swallow of water.  Not a swallow, not even a hummingbird's worth of water.

Dear wife came to the rescue with the suggestion that I try holding crushed ice in my mouth and let it melt.  That worked.  It was the best tasting ice I'd ever melted.

Dear wife went to the store and got 6 quarts of coconut-water based electrolyte fluid.  For about 24 hours, all I consumed was a tray of 12 ice cubes, crushed, plus 6 pints of electrolyte fluid.  By that time, I'd regained 6 lbs.  Each pint of water weighs about 1 lb, so that took care of the dehydration.

As for the experience of overtraining without working - the only work was involuntary retching and cramping.  I didn't have to run a marathon or triathlon or do any rowing at all, and I was so weak that I could only walk at the pace of a lazy tortoise.  And I was sore, especially the large muscles in the upper part of my legs.  And I had a foggy brain. It was like a less-than-extreme case of overtraining I experienced once, when I rowed a half-marathon or more every day for a couple months or so.

But now its 4 days later and I'm feeling almost completely normal again.  So the moral of this little true story is that raw-fish poisoning is better than an extreme case of overtraining, because it may not be possible to recover from an extreme case of overtraining.

This is the second post written today ... it was something to do while waiting for dinner, which is being prepared in a non-toxic kitchen right here at home.

I haven't done any rowing at all for 4 days now but wow! I'm hungry!

Behold the Rowing Machine

Hello and if you are a rower, may the oars be with you.  Or, if you are an indoor rower like me, may whatever passes for oars when you go through the motions and effort of rowing be with you.

If you have an oscilloscope interfaced with the internet, you can get a better picture of what ethernet waves look like.

From 1976 until 2004 my main physical activity for the sake of health and happiness was long distance running at an easy pace.  To win races, perhaps the "no pain no gain" approach needs to be a significant part of daily running.  But I was only running for the health of it and there was lots of gain with no pain.

But by  2004, some pain was showing itself in a knee which had been injured while I had been on active duty in the Marines and so I began looking for a replacement for the aerobic activity of running.

Behold the Rowing Machine!   Actually, I've never thought those words until a few seconds before writing them in this post.  The first time I saw a rowing machine was when I visited a YMCA in El Paso, Texas.  If my thoughts could have been translated into words at that moment, they would have been something like, "What's that?!  Why is it in the back of the room?  Why doesn't anybody use it?  I think I will walk over there and get a closer look."

Upon closer inspection, it looked like the thing to do was to sit on it and pull the handle attached to a chain.  I did.  It felt okay but didn't feel like work.  But I was cautious and decided to limit myself to 30 minutes of gentle use, and see how it felt.  I was surprised that after 20 minutes or so of doing something that didn't feel like work, I started to perspire.  The monitor mounted on the machine indicated I was burning calories almost as fast as if I'd been running and I was impressed.

I looked up Concept 2 on the internet the next day, phoned them, and a week later UPS delivered a rowing machine to behold at home.

From then on I had a way to consider the dream of life while rowing in the privacy of home.

This is the end of the beginning post in this blog.