Winter backs off a little

It was 16 degrees Fahrenheit when I got out of bed Friday morning.  The temperature was forecast to go all the way up to 39 by the afternoon, so, weary of fighting with a frozen rudder and having icicles all over my clothes, I waited until the afternoon to paddle.  The high for the day was in fact 42 degrees, and when I arrived down at the riverfront it was amazing how warm it felt after a whole week of almost constant subfreezing temperatures.  It helped a lot that the sun was out and there was very little wind.

I happily swapped out my fleece-lined pogies for the unlined ones and set out on a 60-minute paddle. I did three 8-stroke sprints, during which it wasn't easy to use my "new and (I hope) improved" stroke.  I'll just keep practicing, I guess.  I paddled steady for the rest of the hour.  During the last ten minutes or so, as I headed back toward the dock, some soft ice started forming on my deck.  I'm curious to know how that was happening, seeing as how the air temperature was still well above freezing at that moment.

Yesterday I did another round of the new strength routine.  I'd started it by doing sort of a cursory round Thursday, and yesterday I did it the usual two times through.  As I mentioned before, most of the exercises I'm doing come from this video; I'd last done them about two years ago, and I'm now being reminded of just how much more technically difficult they are than they look in the vid.  The Hannibal pushups, rolling squat burpees, and 180 depth-tuck jumps are particularly tricky, and right now I'm struggling to do just a few reps of each even close to respectably.  Two years ago I did manage to get reasonably proficient, so now I just need to have faith that I will again with continued practice.

Today's weather is pretty emblematic of winter as I have come to know it on this particular parcel of our planet's surface: not bone-jarring cold, but cold nevertheless, and overcast and gloomy as well.  The temperature was in the high 30s when I got down to the riverfront this morning, and it was quite breezy as well.  The wind was from the southeast, and that's not as bad as a north wind, but it was still a wind and it was not exactly warm.

In recent years Sunday has been my day for a long paddle.  To me, "long" is two hours or more.  Since I'm building back toward a full training load for the new race season, I settled for a mere 90 minutes today.  After doing another three 8-stroke sprints I paddled out of the harbor and up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River.  As I came back down the river there were two barge rigs coming up and they created somewhat turbulent conditions.  I de-tuned my stroke and focused on staying upright until I was safely back in the harbor.  The temperature may have been above freezing but I still didn't want to go for a swim.