Both Sunday and this morning, I did ten sets of fifteen pushups. I could definitely feel the increased effort it took to do 150, compared with the 100 I had been doing.
After this morning's pushups I went down to the river for 60 minutes in the boat. Another brisk north wind was blowing. I hate wearing pogies, but I'm afraid the pogies season is descending upon us rapidly. The good news is that my heat is now on at home.
I wouldn't say I'm back into full training mode yet, but I've been giving it a lot of thought. One thing I think I will do this coming season is keep my sessions in to 60-to-90-minute range, rather than the 90-to-120 minutes that's been typical of past winter training seasons. I'm still reading Ron Lugbill's blog regularly, and one of his recurring themes is the avoidance of long, slow endurance sessions because all they do is train your body to paddle slow. Granted, Lugbill's focus is on slalom racing, but I think much of his advice carries over to the racing I do as well. He cites research that supports the idea that even for athletes in endurance sports like triathlon, year-round work on speed and motor skills is more effective than many ultra-long endurance sessions.
Today's session was in keeping with these thoughts. After warming up I did four of my twelve-stroke sprints at maximum intensity, and then I paddled fairly close to anaerobic threshold for the next 30 or 40 minutes before cooling down in my return to the marina.
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