Degrees of hard

The results for Saturday's race are now posted here.

This morning I did two sets of the April strength routine and paddled for 70 minutes.  In the boat I did eight intervals of three minutes on, three minutes off, paddling at anaerobic threshold for the first two minutes of each "on" interval and at sub-maximal intensity for the third minute.  One thing I've learned over many years of racing at there are many degrees of "hard" paddling: there's "easy" hard and "all-out" hard and everything in between.  One thing I try to do in my training is get my body to recognize those "easier" degrees of hard as an opportunity for recovery.  During the course of any race there are periods where I'm pushing the pace, doing something close to "all-out" hard, but there are also periods where I'm hanging back, maybe sitting on another paddler's wake for a while, and if I'm in good shape it feels like I'm taking a breather.

Having just done a long race on Saturday, I normally might have waited another day before doing a workout.  But tomorrow I'll be spending the day visiting with some family up in Jackson, Tennessee, and later this week my mother and I are driving to North Carolina to see my nephew get his Eagle Scout award, so I want to get a couple of quality sessions in before these forced layoffs.