Today I did two sets of the April strength routine and paddled for 90 minutes. In the boat I did what I call a "spike" workout: pieces of 3', 2', 2', 6', 2', 2', 6', 2', 2', 3' with 2 minutes recovery in between. I'm hoping that with this steady diet of short, hard pieces under my belt, I won't be too fazed by my 22-mile race pace next Saturday. In this workout, the six-minute pieces actually felt like a break from the shorter, more intense pieces.
I guess we're in the typical weather pattern for this time of year: several days of warm, muggy weather followed by a line of heavy thunderstorms with cooler temperatures behind it. We'd had a couple of days in the 80s, but then the thunderstorms came through last night, and today it's cool (forecast high: about 57 degrees Fahrenheit) and breezy. The wind was coming directly from the west out on the river this morning; that's not very common, and it creates water conditions that I'm not all that used to. Balance and control were tricky as I did my workout.
Meanwhile, the river is on a big rise. It had been down around eleven feet on the Memphis gauge for a couple of weeks, but it's now over twenty feet as a result of the storm systems that have moved across the Midwest in the last ten days or so. I'm happy about it because this water is moving on down toward Vicksburg, where it will combine with water from the Saint Francis, White, and Arkansas drainages to give us a good, fast race course next Saturday. Let's hope the wind cooperates.
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