The "Polar Vortex" is receding

According to my car's temperature display, it was just reaching the freezing point as I arrived down at the marina this morning.  The harbor and river were surprisingly free of ice: I think the strong winds we had during the extreme cold of the last two days might have prevented the water from freezing over.  My boat's rudder was frozen, but it didn't take me long to get it free.

The first thing I did at the marina was hook up my rubber band to a post and do the little routine I've worked up for this month.  I'm not sure I can really describe this workout; I don't really know what any of these exercises are called.  But this video is worth watching for any athlete, and in it Daniele Molmenti (the reigning Olympic champion in whitewater slalom K1) does a few of the exercises I'm now doing.  Basically, there aren't many body movements, especially involving your limbs, that you can't rig up a rubber band to provide resistance for.  I think exercises like these are great for injury prevention, and this month I'm working several sets of opposing muscle groups.  It probably wouldn't be bad for me to incorporate a little of this type of work throughout the year.

After working with the rubber band, I paddled my boat for 60 minutes.  After a 15-minute warmup, I did eight pieces where I followed a few backstrokes with six hard forward strokes.  This is a good power-building exercise, but it's not fun to do in cold weather because I always splash water into my cockpit.  I then paddled a pretty quick tempo out on the river before returning to the harbor and cooling down back to the dock.  The air temperature was well on its way to 40 degrees Fahrenheit by then.

"Orca" was gone from the Mud Island Marina dock, so I guess Kev Brady is on his way downriver.  But I saw another canoe with a pair of guys who had put in on the New River in North Carolina and were paddling to the Gulf of Mexico by way of the New, Kanawha, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers.  They told me this was Day 90 of their journey.  I wish I had asked them if they had paddled the New River Gorge in their tandem cruising canoe.