It felt odd not to be in Vicksburg yesterday morning. The annual Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race took place there, and because of a Friday evening work commitment this was the first one I've missed since 2009. Congratulations to overall winners Phil Capel of Sherwood, Arkansas (men) and Karen Kesselring of Hot Springs Village, Arkansas (women). The complete results are here.
Races took place elsewhere yesterday as well. It felt as though I were the only person sitting at home not racing. All the more reason to get out on my home water and work it as if there were no tomorrow.
The next several races I'm likely to attend are somewhat long, so I went down to the river yesterday planning to do some pace work. After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I started the first of a few one-mile pieces. My goal time was 8 minutes, 30 seconds--about a 7.06 miles-per-hour pace. But a pretty stiff south wind was blowing and as I paddled toward the mouth of the harbor into that wind, I knew I wouldn't be going that fast in this first piece. I struggled to keep my speed above 6.5 mph and finished the mile in 8:57.
I left the harbor and started paddling up the Mississippi. I let myself recover from the first piece until I reached the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and then tried to keep my speed above 5 mph from the bridge up to the mouth of the Wolf River. It wasn't that hard at the current river level (21.5 feet on the Memphis gauge) because I had lots of good eddies along the Tennessee bank, not to mention that wind at my back. For much of my trip upriver I was above 6 mph and I even hit 7 mph once or twice.
When the Mississippi is flowing at a fairly high level it backs up into the Wolf for at least several miles, so yesterday I could count on flatwater with no current on the Wolf. When I reached the power lines that mark the start of the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, I started my second one-mile piece. Now the wind was still mostly at my back, so I had no trouble maintaining a speed just over 7 mph. My time was right on target at 8:27.
Once the piece was over I continued up the Wolf at an easy pace for four minutes, then turned around and started my third mile. Now I was paddling into a headwind at times, but the Wolf's forested banks shielded me from the worst of it. When the wind pushed against me I tried to relax and keep my speed as close to 7 mph as I could so I wouldn't lose too much time. In the end I was just about on the dot again with a time of 8:28.
After a couple of hundred meters of easy paddling I was back at the power lines just above the Wolf's mouth. Doing a G.P.S.-regulated piece down the Mississippi wouldn't work because of the help I'd be getting from the big river's current, so I did something a little different: I timed myself from the power lines down to the H.D. Bridge. This stretch is the first two miles or so of the OICK race course. During the race each year I try to look at my split when I reach the bridge, and I think my fastest ever was around 10:40 or so. With the south wind blowing and fatigue setting in from the previous pieces, I wasn't counting on anything that fast yesterday; I figured anything under 12 minutes wouldn't be bad. Trying to paddle at the same intensity of my mile pieces, I reached the bridge in 11:32.
I was now seriously tired, but I had one piece left to go: another one-miler back in the harbor. For this one I would have the wind entirely at my back, so I knew that as long as I took good strokes and kept the pace right at 7.1 mph I would make my time goal. And I did, clocking 8:20. In retrospect, I think 8:30 was a good target pace for the workout: in a pace workout you want a target pace that's slightly out of your comfort zone, but not too far out because you have to be able to maintain it from the start of the workout to the finish.
When I finished the last piece I had just a half-mile or so back to the dock, and I paddled easy to cool down. The Rhodes College crew was out on the water in three four-man shells, and it was nice to see people besides myself pursuing excellence in human-powered craft in our lovely harbor.
If it hadn't been for the pesky wind, we'd have had what my friend Joe likes to call "chamber of commerce weather" yesterday--sunny and beautiful, in other words. This morning it was sunny and beautiful once again, but the wind was blowing even harder. I tried to stay relaxed and not let the wind alter my behavior as I set out for a hard-earned recovery paddle. From the marina I paddled north (downwind) first and spoke to some of the turtles who were back out sunning themselves. Then I turned around and paddled south into the wind, reminding myself that I was in no hurry to get anywhere and that paddling harder was unnecessary. I finished the 60-minute session with a wind-aided return to the dock.
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