Coffee First

Yesterday's relaxed rowing session was just a bit too relaxed, which is to say that I was so relaxed afterward that I took a long afternoon nap even though I was not at all sleep deprived. It may have had something to do with the fact that we were out of regular, caffeine-loaded coffee and so there was no caffeine fix yesterday.

Today we are still out of regular coffee, so I substituted 1/2 of a No-Doz caffeine tablet.  That did the trick and my mental state doesn't seem the least bit inclined toward a nap today.

But I expected today's pre-rowing heart rate to be somewhat higher than yesterday's of 49 bpm and there was no noticeable elevation in heart rate due to caffeine. However, my subjective opinion is that though the starting effort today was the same as yesterday, heart rate seemed to accelerate a lot more quickly today, to get right up into zone one.  Yesterday, it seemed to take a lot more time to get up into zone 1.

100 mg of caffeine didn't raise resting heart rate.

Today's ethereal hour of indoor rowing was more or less the same as yesterday's with the exception that there were a few more interruptions to operate the remote control while rewinding a few sections of a documentary on history of mathematics in the 18th century.

RowPro finish screen for today's hour session.

RowPro session report for today's hour.

Another Relaxing Hour

Today's hour of rowing was relaxing and left me with me with an ethereal, floating, tingly feeling afterwards.  But I was so relaxed before pulling the first stroke, that it took a bit more of a mental nudge than usual to get started.

The only goals for today were to do the hour and do it with a bit more consistent effort than yesterday. The results for today compared to yesterday look about the same at first glance, but I felt that I focused better and was therefore more consistent today than yesterday.

Daily average meters after today's session = 8,283 meters/day.  Getting very near the minimum goal of 8,311/meters per day for this season.

Start screen of the erg's monitor, ready to count down from one hour.

Finish screen of RowPro after the session ended.

Today's session report.

Why Row For One Hour, Part IV

A fourth reason to row for one hour is because it feels so good when its over.  But seriously, I do feel more awake and alive when the hour is finished. 

In about 3 more days, the daily time I spend rowing may be reduced, however, because my daily average meters figure is up to 8,253/day and at the current rate it may reach the minimum season goal of 8,311 meters/day in 3 days.  If I spend less than an hour/day rowing, I'll make up the difference with some other kind of activity, such as resistance training or carrying heavy things for wifey.

The RowPro finish screen for today's hour.

Today's session report.

Why Row For One Hour, Part III

A third reason for choosing an hour as the time for daily rowing sessions is because I have a goal of increasing daily average meters/day for this season to something more than 8,311 meters/day. 
After today's rowing was done, the current daily average was raised by about 15 meters, to 8253 meters/day.

Though the session was set up as an hour today, it was interrupted after about 30 minutes for a call of nature and so it was broken up into two pieces to complete a full hour.

The first half of today's hour.

The second half of today's hour.

Why Row For One Hour, Part II

Another reason for doing one hour sessions for the past 3 weeks+ is that if the session is set to a particular DISTANCE instead of a time, there's a temptation to push too hard, just for the sake of getting it over with.  Which can lead to over-training.  Which is bad. 

So a set time seems best in light of the above reasoning.

Today's session started out on a wave of absent-mindedness when I turned on the tv, became distracted and just started rowing.  After 47.7 seconds, I realized that the session had not been set up yet and RowPro was in what both RowPro software and the Concept 2 hardware coincidentally refer to as "just row" mode.

The first 47.7 seconds of rowing while mentally distracted.

So I stopped "just row(ing)" and set up an hour session with a painted heart-rate target zone.  The painted target zone was mostly disregarded, because I continued the rest of the hour mostly distracted by what was being broadcast on television. 

But the original intention of doing an hour of easy rowing, somewhere between the levels of mild perspiration and sweating was accomplished.  It was mostly in Heart Rate zone 1.

Finish screen for today's somewhat distracted rowing.

RowPro functioned correctly today and displayed all 20 splits instead of combining 14 of them into one split like it did yesterday.

See you on the river, sometime, perhaps.

Why Row for One Hour?

The reason I've chosen one hour as the daily session recently is because I've discovered that one hour of aerobic activity daily seems to be optimal for getting a good night's sleep.  More than an hour is okay but less than an hour tends to correlate with poorer sleep. 

There was a glitch in RowPro's recording of today's data which resulted in it combining all of the last 14 splits into one split, the seventh.  Also - it erroneously shows ending heart rate for the session as zero.

Unplanned Mostly Easy

Today's hour was unplanned.  I just started rowing and paid no attention to aiming for a pace or heart rate.  Rowed with one hand for a bit while checking tv channels and then turned off tv.  Toward the end, had the urge to do a couple minutes of anaerobic effort, just enough force me to breathe fast for a bit, then slowed to a warm-down pace until the end.

The anaerobic bit was about 2 minutes of split #18.