It was a lovely week down on the Gulf Coast. I got some training in, of course, but the best part was the chance to relax and escape that most pernicious first-world problem known as the daily to-do list.
Most of the paddling I do down there is in Mississippi Sound because that's what's out the back door of our rental house. But on Thursday I decided to do something different. I put my boat on the car and drove to the east end of Dauphin Island, and embarked on a crossing of the mouth of Mobile Bay over to Fort Morgan.
The wind was blowing from the southeast, so I was paddling mostly into the wind on the way over to Fort Morgan and would have mostly a following sea on the way back. I tried to pace myself on the outbound leg so I would have some energy for downwind practice coming back. The waves coming at me looked as though they would give me some good rides later.
After a short break on the beach at Fort Morgan, I began the return trip. I did manage a few rides on the waves, but none lasted longer than a few seconds, and I had to sprint as hard as I possibly could for each one. Not wanting to exhaust myself more than a mile offshore, I had to be very choosy about what waves to go after. I got bolder once I was back within a quarter-mile of Dauphin Island, but again, I was expending a lot of energy for very limited rewards.
It was a sobering lesson in the kind of conditioning required for downwind races like the one I plan to attend in the Pacific Northwest in two months. A racer spends basically the entire race doing one hard sprint after another, and if he doesn't have consistent success catching rides he will blow up (bonk). I have a feeling a more elite-level ocean racer would have gotten much more out of those waves than I did Thursday... I remember when I was racing slalom back in the 1990s, I always got the feeling that the top racers were seeing things I was simply not able to see, and I suspect the same is true in downwind surf ski racing.
I felt tired all day Friday. I managed to get in a round of the strength routine in the morning, but I nearly let the day go by without paddling until my nephew Ben agreed to go out with me for a little while just before suppertime.
I spent yesterday driving home. The drive didn't seem nearly as bad as the trip down six days earlier, but in the last hour, as I penetrated the grim southeastern outskirts of Memphis, I was feeling tired and light-headed and very ready to be out of the car. When I finally got home I made some supper, read my book for a while, and turned in early. I thought a good night's sleep would cure my ills, but I woke up this morning continuing to feel weak and low on energy, and my head was throbbing.
I went down to the river planning to do ten one-minute sprints with two minutes recovery in between; I had my G.P.S. device and planned to shoot for 8.4 miles per hour during the sprints, as I had calculated that to be the average speed to cover my 450-meter course in the harbor in two minutes. But as soon as I was in the boat I felt awful. I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, hoping that would make me feel better, but once I commenced my workout I struggled mightily to maintain 8.4 mph. I gave it up after five sprints.
I wonder if I've come down with some sort of bug. I don't really feel sick, but something has drained my energy. My diet in the last week hasn't been the greatest: heavy on seafood, light on vegetables. Whatever the case, this is frustrating because one is supposed to return from vacation feeling rested. I may have to take it easy for a while and hope my body rights itself, and that's a hard decision to make when there are competitions in my future that will require a higher level of fitness than I've currently got.
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