I made sure to paddle today before the next big temperature plunge gets here tomorrow. It was in the mid 50s Fahrenheit this morning, and the wind, though steady from the south, wasn't bad.
I did some sprints today at about four-minute intervals. Each time I would pick an object in the distance and sprint toward it. I wanted to keep the sprints in the 30-to-40-second range, so it was a good exercise in judging distances out on the water.
There's an interesting blog post here by a guy named Austin Kieffer. Austin was a whitewater slalom racer of some note in the last decade, and has now embraced a second career as a surf ski racer. While true surf ski racing involves a lot more big-wave surfing (hence the name) than most of the racing I do, and therefore has a whole tactical element that I don't get to experience much, Austin does make some interesting physiological points in this post as well. Elite surf ski races are generally quite long--the winning times in the shorter ones are maybe two and a half hours--but as Austin notes, they involve a lot of long, hard sprints. The entrant who opts for the slow, steady pace will be left in the dust.
Anyway, more stuff for me to ponder. So far in this young season I've been sort of making it up as I go, but in the next month or so I'll need to lay out a more precise training plan.
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