Sunday, May 25, 2014

Beach time

This evening I am on Dauphin Island on the Alabama Gulf Coast.  In what's becoming sort of a family tradition this time of year, my mother and I and my sister's family are spending a few days in a rented house looking out over Mississippi Sound.  There's a dock right out back for launching boats, and we'll be doing some of that: I've brought the tandem kayak down for paddling with the nieces and nephews, and I'll be doing some workouts in the surf ski as well.

Before leaving Memphis this morning I paddled the K1 for 30 minutes in the harbor.  I did six 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals, and felt good but not great about my high-intensity form in this boat.  In my stable surf ski I feel free to rotate fully and put all the power I've got into my strokes; the persistent question in the K1 is whether its stability, less than that of the ski, is nevertheless enough to allow me that same freedom.  As Yogi Berra might say, "Ninety percent of this game is half mental."

No comments:

Post a Comment