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.