Friday, January 16, 2009

Rowing, rowing, rowing...

Did my cross-training row last night, and for the first time used my Garmin strictly as a heart rate monitor:

5 min easy (ave HR 105),
10 min med-hard (ave HR 131),
5 min easy (ave HR 123),
10 min med-hard (ave HR 142)
5 min easy (ave HR 123). Total

Total distance: 7.98 km.

It's the first time I've ever measured my heart rate during rowing, so the numbers are interesting. I have read that the maximum heart rate varies from exercise to exercise, but this is the first time I've seen it on myself. There is no way that I was rowing at maximum exertion, however just from perceived exertion, the 10-minute sprints (at ~ 25 SPM) felt as hard as a 5:30 min/km run to me, which would have put my running HR somewhere in the high 160's.

(I watched George Bush's final address during the first half of this exercise. Mayhaps I was feeling spriritually lighter?)

Oh, and for what it's worth, the Garmin said that I traveled 24 m during the 35 minute workout.

Cool.

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

Supposedly your max in rowing will be about 10-20 bpm lower than running because less large muscles are used, but people who get zone testing say that things are actually quite a bit more complicated than that (with the effort difference you notice).

kevvyd said...

Now that I'm rowing in earnest, I think I'll read up a bit on it to get a better sense of what I'm doing. A buddy of mine is a real-life rower and has a library. I fully expect things to be complicated - they always are.