Monday, April 25, 2016

Relishing the season as my next race approaches

This is shaping up to be as lovely a spring as I can remember.  We've had a good bit of wind and a good bit of rain, but the temperature has been in the "comfortable" zone for weeks.  We've just enjoyed some truly spectacular days Friday, Saturday, and yesterday: calm, sunny, and warm.

My next competition, the Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race on the Mississippi River down at Vicksburg, is less than a week away now.  Any training that might benefit me in this event has now been done.  I've spent the last few days trying to do good-quality paddling in shorter-duration sessions.  I want to be rested when I get to Vicksburg, but I also want to keep doing some work for the races that follow.

Basically, my sessions Thursday, Saturday, and yesterday ran about an hour each, and included a few short sprints or power drills followed by some unstructured up-tempo stuff.  For example, yesterday I did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, then paddled up the Mississippi for a mile or so.  There was a barge rig coming downriver, and I fell in behind it and caught a few good rides on its stern wake.  I had to do some hard sprinting in some turbulent water but I was having fun and it didn't last more than ten minutes or so, so it didn't feel like a crushing workout.

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