On Friday morning I paddled in the harbor for 60 minutes. After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did ten 30-second sprints at three minute intervals. I've mentioned before that I've been doing this workout occasionally for the last several years. When I first started doing it I remember finding it very tiring; I remember just sort of hanging on through the last couple of sprints. But both times I've done the workout so far this year I've felt great throughout, and satisfied and energized afterward. I'm curious to know if there's any particular explanation for that. Am I fitter than usual this season? Stronger? Is my technique better? Am I sleeping better at night? Is my diet better? Am I at a more ideal body weight?
Body weight is the only one of those variables whose comparison to previous years I know. I've been a bit heavier lately, tipping the scale between 160 and 165 pounds after being in the mid 150s for a long time. Like so many people, I've been conditioned to believe that more weight is a bad thing. But maybe maybe my body needs those few extra pounds for optimum performance... I dunno.
Today is another one of those warm, sunny, non-February-like days, and I got out for my "long" paddle this morning. At 10.7 feet on the Memphis gauge, the river was too low for paddling around the Loosahatchie Bar, and another one of my long loops, paddling up the Wolf River to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge and back, would be awfully shallow as well. So I decided to paddle down the Mississippi for 45 minutes and then come back up along the Arkansas bank, a route that I figured would take me about two hours total.
In those first 45 minutes I got about six and a half miles downriver. The river makes a big S-turn just below downtown Memphis, and I got through the first bend and down to where the bend back the other way was beginning. Then I turned around and began the long climb back upriver. My speed going downriver had been around 10 miles per hour, and for quite a while after the turnaround it was between 4 and 5 mph. When I reached the big eddies in the inside of the bend just below the Harahan and Frisco and Memphis-Arkansas bridges, I got up over 6 mph.
Once back upstream of those bridges I knew I was right on pace to get back to the dock in two hours. I was quite tired but I was still able to paddle pretty hard, and I tried to stay relaxed and take the best strokes I could. When I re-entered the harbor I threw in a long surge to the monorail bridge, moving as fast as 6.8 mph on the harbor's flatwater. Considering how tired I was I thought that was pretty good.
I got back to the dock and stopped the timer on my G.P.S. device right at two hours. I had covered 13.4 miles, so my average speed was 6.7 mph. Even though I had started and finished at the same place, and therefore had no net gain or loss of elevation, I should note that that was not entirely an "honest" 6.7 mph, for on both the downstream and upstream legs I had taken the path of least resistance: going downstream I had paddled out in the main channel, whereas coming back up I had used the relatively slack water and occasional eddies near the bank. Oh well... it was a solid workout and it felt good to have the "long" one in the books for another week.
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