Maintaining morale and improving endurance

Since I put up my "tentative" race schedule the other day, our friends down in Vicksburg have announced the date for their event: April 8.  I have updated my schedule accordingly.

Also, I have been sticking to my plan of doing my strength routine on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  I'm getting a little bit better at those feet lifts, but I still have to be careful not to cheat by thrusting my legs to create momentum.

And, of course, I've been paddling.  Joe and I did our usual thing on Tuesday, and I put in another 60 minutes yesterday.

Yesterday was a perfect example of a time when I felt grumpy and unmotivated going down to the river but felt great once I was in the boat paddling.  We've returned to typical January temperatures here--low to mid 40s Fahrenheit--and when I got to the dock yesterday there was a northwest breeze blowing just hard enough to make things unpleasant as I got my boat off the rack and did a few stretches.  I was tempted to scrap the whole plan and go someplace warm to deal with the dozen other things that were gnawing at me yesterday, but instead I got in the boat and started to paddle.  After a ten-minute warmup I did three 8-stroke sprints and then commenced my main workout, a set of ten 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals.  My strokes felt good and all the muscles in my body were working in fluid harmony to move the boat, and before I knew it I'd done something I could feel good about for the rest of the day.

I started incorporating this 30-second-sprint workout into my training two or three years ago after reading this post on Ron Lugbill's blog.  Lugbill cites research that suggests that sprint sessions are better than longer steady-state sessions for developing endurance--not just for short-duration events like whitewater slalom (in which Lugbill is a coach and a former U.S. Team athlete), but also for longer events like the racing I'm now doing.

I haven't scrapped long paddles completely--right now I'm doing a long paddle each weekend--but the idea of sprinting to improve endurance fits nicely with my desire to make the best use of my limited time on the water.