It was 13 degrees Fahrenheit outside when I got up Thursday morning, but the high was predicted to be in the high 30s--our first time above freezing since Monday. So it wasn't a hard decision to wait until the afternoon to paddle.
My car's temperature display said it was 36 degrees when I arrived at the riverfront just after 3 o'clock. 36 degrees feels awfully warm after you've been through at least a 48-hour period when it got no warmer than about 23 degrees. But when I got down to the dock it appeared that I might not be able to paddle: the harbor was frozen over with a decently-thick sheet of ice all around the marina. Further investigation revealed an open channel out in the middle of the harbor, however, so I got in the boat and managed to bust through the ice to some paddleable water.
Heading north, I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints. I continued along until I was about 400 meters shy of the harbor's northern tip, next to the old Cargill plant. Ice prevented me from going any farther, so I turned around and headed south.
I felt tired in the boat at this hour of the day, and I tried to relax and take good strokes. As I navigated the narrow channel of open water, the ice floes on either side of me made ethereal sounds as my wakes passed beneath them. Eventually, just south of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, I had to turn around again because of impassable ice.
As I finished my 60-minute session back at the marina, the sun was setting and I was eager to get into dry clothes. It was apparently back below freezing at river level because the water on my boat had frozen. Back in my car the temperature registered at 34 degrees.
Friday's high was around 40 degrees, and yesterday the temperature got all the way up to 60. By the end of the day yesterday the snow and ice had been reduced to isolated patches in the shady areas.
I went back to the river yesterday morning and was surprised to find quite a bit of ice lingering in the harbor. I put in from my usual dock, thinking the ice there would surely be thin enough to bust through, but it turned out to be quite thick, and I had to get out of my boat and try putting in from a different dock just so I could get out to the open water. A harbor-wide sheet of ice between the marina and the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge barricaded my access to the southern half of the harbor, so I did my entire 60-minute paddle in the northern half, which was almost entirely ice-free.
Today's high is supposed to be 63 degrees--surely that will finish off the remaining snow and ice on the ground. Because of some non-paddling-related commitments today I won't make it back to the river until tomorrow, and maybe I'll find the water completely open by then. According to The Weather Channel's website the temperature will be mostly in the 40s or warmer for the next ten days--that's much more the sort of winter I was expecting when I signed up to live in this part of the country.
For today, I did a round of the strength routine just like I'd done on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this past week. I'm still struggling with those rolling squat burpees, and I can't understand how I've gone from being able to do them reasonably well two years ago to barely being able to do them now. The rest of the routine is going okay. My back soreness from the previous week has mended and that's helping me feel better about it all.
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