Friday, April 8, 2016

Sometimes the strokes just flow

My next race is down at Vicksburg three weeks from tomorrow.  The next ten days or so are an important window for doing some work that my body can internalize by that date.

With my weekends filled with long, hard stuff right now, I was looking for shorter-duration intensity when I got in my boat yesterday.  I paddled for 60 minutes overall.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did a set of eight 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals.  I did all but the last one out on the river, in the same kind of water I'll be racing on at the end of the month.  I tried to stay relaxed and take good strokes with full rotation on that somewhat squirrelly playing field.

After that, as I headed up the harbor back toward the dock, I paddled at or slightly above the pace I hope to maintain in the Vicksburg race for ten minutes or so.

I felt particularly good in the boat yesterday.  Maybe it was because I was good and rested; maybe it was because my diet has been good and my energy was up; hopefully it was also because I'm reaping some fitness benefit from the workouts I've done in the last several weeks.  Whatever the case, it was one of those days when I felt more invigorated after paddling than I'd felt before.  Sometimes that 30-second-sprint workout is really tiring, but yesterday I finished those eight sprints feeling like I could do eight more.

I did the April strength routine Wednesday and plan to do it again today.

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