Maintaining Heart Rate

[hjs]

Some common sence will work.

If you have to stop, you are going way to fast. If you feel exhausted after ditto.

Looking at your numbers and age, the most obvious is, you are very unfit, if you start working out this will change pretty fast. Working out is not racing. First try to just row, 5k at this point is enough, after a few weeks you should feel better and be able to go faster. From there you could train a bit more specific.
Be patient and simply start to work. It should make you sweat, but not make you feel exhausted.

[jshailes]

I'm curious about this first statement. How often did you row during that first month? It sounds like the OP was going all out and would just gas out after 2k. Not surprising for a new rower. Those short, high intensity rows can be interesting, but they don't replace long steady state rows to help build your aerobic capacity. Much better to complete these 5k rows and gradually build fitness over time.

That's exactly what used to happen - I was into AT after about 2m30s, felt absolutely exhausted and spent half an hour laying on the bed after to recover. Example below. It was awful I did it for about a month, maybe 4 days a week, and then gave up rowing for the next few months. During that time there was a marked improvement, my times came down daily, whether that was fitness or technique I don't know. It really was painful though. I figured there had to be a better way and that's when I started monitoring heart rate.

[jshailes]

Thanks everyone for the advice. Most people seem to be suggesting I'm on the right track, continue working at UT2 (but not be so fixated on ~140 HR) so I can sustain 5k and hopefully the fitness will come.

I was surprised nobody mentioned breathing technique as I was sure concentrating on my breathing helped keep my HR down.

[jackarabit]

jshailes, I get the sense from the latest ED graph that the cat is out of the bag in regard to your inclination to front load workouts. You're leaving the gate like a bat out of hell! Stop that! No hurry to make your appointment with lactate; it will wait. Very counterproductive. Efforts long or short, interval format or continuous--all benefit from negative (progressively faster) splitting. Eschew the fly & die. Heart rate schmart rate, that 2:08 pace belongs on the back end of your 2k piece.

[edinborogh]

It's not a catch 22 at all. If you put in more effort by increasing rate and pace your HR will reflect that. If you truly want to use HR based training, you stay at that HR through thick and thin until you are more fit, which will enable you to do more work. The challenge with HR is that if it's hot, it will be high, if you are dehydrated, it will be high, if you go longer than 30' minutes or so (it depends on fitness) it will creep up. But it sound s like you are just getting going, so I would try to stay with that 140, assuming it is near true to 60% HRR, and let your fitness come to you rather than forcing it.

thats exactly the advice i followed almost a year ago, and it helped me understand how to do my sessions better and longer and see improvement on duration of session and over all distance done. awesome advice.

[bisqeet]

I did (and still do) a lot of HR based training.
most of my steady stuff is at about 60-70% HRR. i could probably get away with 2 hrs with minimum drift (+/-5 bpm) -
advantages are that you can train according to your daily form, disadvantages are that the fitter you get the more your HR zones adapt.
something i didnt always take into account-,
ut2 can be anywhere from 60 - 90% HRR - the only way to know is by lactate testing.
its also quite hard to go slow - something a lot ignore (myself included) - thats why a lot probably opt for watts over HR.
going slow to race fast seems weird. the most important thing is to still row strong.
strong drive -more time on the recovery - a difference of pulling 2:00 at R20 and 2:00 at R26... same power and work, but trainng a weeker stroke is not helping you.

eddy fletcher based a few training plans based on HR that i have followed. The best (IMO) being the marathon plan....

[strider]

Of course the harder you work the higher your heart rate. Your heart rate is an indicator of the oxygen flow to the muscles, combined wiith how deeply you are breathing and expelling air. Big interval, high heart rate and huge air volume.

In a proper long workout, the heart rate stays stable as you have found.
You can maintain any heart rate pacing. But the heart rate will eventually climb on it own, cardiac drift, as a precursor to fatigue.
The time before fatigue is not short, so you can alter the workout and push it out.