Kicking Ass With A Few Europeans

Today's rowing was all done online.  I got a late start and that turned out to be just 5 minutes before Annette W of Denmark had a 20 minute session scheduled.  She called it "20 minutes to 12 million meters" because after she rowed about 2,500 meters into the session she would pass the milestone of 12 million lifetime meters she had rowed on a C2. So I signed in with a couple minutes to spare and joined the party to congratulate her on reaching that distance.

Finish screen for Annette's 20 minutes to 12 million.

I rowed the entire 20 minutes in heart rate zones 1 and 2 but got quite a bit more workout than in those zones in previous days, because the zones were re-calculated to take into account the upward revised lactate threshold heart rate as determined yesterday with the 30 minute time trial.  How accurate that is, I don't know, but I think it is pretty accurate and it feels more "right" than the heart rate zones had before.  In the photo below you can see the old, lower zones on the top and the newer, higher zones on the bottom piece of paper.

The zones used today were zones 1 and 2 on the new table shown in the bottom of the photo.

The session report for the 20 minute online session is below.  Heart rate never climbed up out of zone 2 because I made sure it didn't.  Wanted to rest a bit after yesterday's 30 minute time trial/race.

The new heart zones 1 and 2 are more invigorating than the previous ones but not uncomfortable or painful.

After the 20 minute session, Annette had set up a series of ten 100 meter sprints with one minute of rest separating each one, so I joined in those for a total of another 1,000 meters of fun. Rather than print each one out, here is a summary listing all ten of them, in the area below highlighted in blue. Before the last 100 meter sprint began, Annette exhorted everyone to "kick ass," so I managed to actually go a little faster in the 10th than in any of the previous but still ... I think everyone except Annette and one other finished ahead of me and there were 7 or 8 Europeans plus one lone American (me) in each sprint.

After that, Annette wanted to do a cool down but Arwed Egger, the fastest in every session, wanted to row a 30 minute piece.  I still needed at least 5K to reach the current daily quota of at least 10K, so I joined Arwed in the 30 minute session. For the 30 minutes, I intended to aim for new heart zone 1 but it looks like slightly more than half of the time was in zone 2. There's no screen shot of it - I forgot to make one - but here is the report:

30 minutes online with a bunch of Europeans.

The other rowers were all located in Europe.  Specifically, Denmark, England and Germany. For the final piece we did a 2K warm down.  For the warm down I aimed at the lower edge of new heart zone one and was successful. It resulted in me being in absolute last place in the warm down because everyone else aimed to do the 2K warm down in 9 minutes. Here's the report for the warm-down:

2K warm down in zone 1.

Now, I'm basking in an afterglow like the woman in the cartoon below is enjoying.

Crash and Dash

Today I decided to do a 30 minute time trial for multiple reasons.  The main one was to try a method for calculating Lactate Threshold Heart Rate, which I'd read about in an article written by Matt Fitzgerald.  The method is to do 30 minutes at race pace and then take the average heart rate for the last 10 minutes.  The result is supposed to be Lactate Threshold Heart Rate and theoretically it should be the same heart rate as calculated using the Pear app and doing the Pear Sports' 20 minute heart rate calibration workout.

To quote Matt Fitzgerald's article exactly, "To spare athletes from these negatives, some coaches have come up with field tests to determine lactate threshold heart rate. One such field test is a 30-minute time trial. You warm up and then run as far as you can in 30 minutes. Your average heart rate in the last 10 minutes is your estimated LT heart rate. A comparison of this procedure to the lab-based LT test found that it was quite accurate. "  The article can be found at this link on the website competitor.com

The bottom line is that results for the two methods - subjective 20 minute heart calibration and a 30 minute time trial- were not the same for me.  They weren't even approximately the same.  Therefore either I did the 20 minute heart rate calibration far too easy, or ... one or the other of the methods is not accurate.

Doing the Pear 20 minute heart rate calibration most recently, the result was 163 bpm, which was the highest Lactate Threshold Heart Rate it had yet calculated for me.

But doing a 30 minute time trial, the average heart rate for the last 10 minutes was 177.9.  And I could have pushed myself harder because I had quite a bit of energy left by the time I sprinted during the last 60 seconds.  In fact... the heart rate for this 30 minutes was probably a bit lower than it should have been because I had to stop for a half minute or so to reconnect my iPhone to Airplay music after it lost its connection due to an alarm reminder going off.  If you look at the session report graph you can see a very noticeable dip in Watts and Heart Rate around the 12th or 13th minute, where I had to stop rowing so as to get the music going again.

So... which one is more correct? As Hamlet might say, "... that is the question."

This post is titled Crash and Dash because early in the first attempt at a 30 minute time trial, RowPro crashed and everything came to a halt.

That was somewhat frustrating but I thought, it was "just as well," because I really wanted some coffee and also... I'd forgotten to specify that RowPro divide the 30 minute report into 30 splits instead of the default 20.  By specifying 30 splits, then there would be exact heart rate readings for each of the last 10 minutes, since each split would be exactly one minute.

So I made a cup of black coffee and also had a scoop of protein powder mixed with cold water.  The latter was simply to act as a buffer and protect my stomach from the acid of the coffee, which always bothers me if on an empty stomach but is no problem if the stomach has at least a little foodstuff of some sort in it.

The break was about 30 minutes of drinking protein drink and sipping coffee, then I started another 30 minute session, making it as plain as possible.  (The first 30 minute session which had crashed had been set up with a heart rate zone, pace boat and specifying a "RACE" start.  None of those things were necessary for a solo time trial and I thought perhaps one of those might have had something to do with the RowPro software crash).

Finish screen for successful 30 min time trial

Report for 30 min time trial

Chart for 30 minute time trial. Notice the dip in watts & heart rate where I stopped rowing in order to restart the music.

 My placement in Concept 2 World Rankings for distance rowed in 30 minutes this season improved slightly.

These are the "World-Ranked" workouts I've done so far this season.  In the 8th line down you can see that my previous best this season was 7,084 meters in 30 minutes.

In this view you can see that my 30 minute ranking improved slightly for my weight class and age group.  But I still don't place very high, comparing against all those younger guys.

This rankings list for 30 minutes shows only 69 year olds.  I place better against only guys my own age. This listing includes ONLY 69 year old heavyweight guys.

A view of the finish screen for the 10 minute warm down after the 30 minute "race".

The next screen shot is only for anyone interested in seeing what a RowPro crashed screen looks like. 

RowPro crashed.  Crashes happen once in a while but not too often.

Unhitched By A Glitch

Today's session had smooth sailing with heart data but after the first few thousand meters there was a glitch that caused the PM3 (the Concept 2 rowing machine's monitor) to lose its connection to RowPro.  So the 10 K had to be interrupted. Below this paragraph is a view of the "finish" screen of the first part of today's session.

Though the connection light is green on the bottom of RowPro, there was something wrong with the connection because I had been rowing but RowPro thought I was not rowing.

RowPro is telling me to "just start rowing again" even though I never stopped.

And next is the session report for the rowing up to the point where the glitch happened.

The data for heart rate is missing from the 8th split but the watts data seems correct.

The entire session was supposed to be an uninterrupted 10K done in heart zone 1.  Heart zone one was just barely touched in the first part, but the second part of today's approximate 10 K was well within heart zone 1.

The last part of today's rowing was comfortably within heart zone 1.

Final session report for final balance of today's rowing.

Ten K Man Needs Heart Data

Today's 10 K session was interrupted because of erratic data from the heart strap.  It was  a distraction, so I removed it.  Then tried it again after a few thousand meters, then removed it again. Tried it a third time with same distracting results and... actually, I never removed it... I "dismantled" it by each time unsnapping the heart rate sensor from the strap. 

It was annoying, to say the least, to row without a heart rate display. But the results in calories and watts today were virtually the same as yesterday, so today turned out to be probably LESS than heart rate zone 1 effort .... another rest day.

Don't know if  REST DAY was needed, but its what I've had for two days now.

Today's heart rate graphless finish screen.

Today's session report.  Disregard the heart rate graph.

Under The Radar Rest Mode

Because today is a traditional rest day, I decided to row in resting mode by aiming to keep heart rate "under the radar" of the lowest aerobic heart rate zone. I wasn't obsessive about it, but succeeded more than half of the time.

Today's RowPro finish screen

Today's RowPro session report.

The Afterglow Is The Reward

Today's 10K consisted of 1,233 strokes on the digital river of RowPro.  The effort level was low and the pace was slow but nonetheless it resulted in a pleasant afterglow.

She knows about the workout afterglow, too.

Today's RowPro finish screen.

The calories burned was the equivalent of the calories in 8 or nine shots of tequila.

Nine Shots Of Tequila

When I recently looked at the list of scheduled online rowing sessions, there was a series of ten 800 meter sprints scheduled.  The title of the series included the words, "tequila training" and the description specified that anyone who participated had to drink one shot of tequila after completing each sprint in the online series. 

I didn't join those sprints but did look at the results.  The organizer who came up with the idea did not finish any of them, so perhaps he drank tequila.  But those who participated and finished had about the same times in each 800 meter sprint, so I doubt that they actually drank any tequila.  They were wise.

Today's session was once again rowed offline due to a lack of scheduled sessions at the time of my unscheduled rowing.  I checked online to see if there were any live bodies at the moment who were looking for company with whom to row, but as is frequently the case there chanced to be nobody there available at the moment.

Today's rowing session burned the caloric equivalent of about 9 shots of tequila.  I would rather burn the calories than drink any tequila and so that's all I did, was to burn calories rowing.

Today's finish screen

Session report