The miserable weekend weather finally began to give way to some sunshine Monday, and Tuesday was a gorgeous day with clear skies and an afternoon high around 52 degrees Fahrenheit. It was a brisk 41 degrees when I arrived at the river to paddle Tuesday morning but it had warmed up to a comfortable 48 degrees by the time I was finished. I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor. It was the first time I had sprinted in any way in a couple of months, and while the energy was there, the form was rusty. I paddled up the Mississippi to the south end of the Greenbelt Park and then returned to the harbor, where I spent the last 25 minutes of my one-hour session doing a bunch of stroke drills: hesitation drills, one-sided drills, and the "one-two-three-four-FIVE!!!!" drill that Morgan House showed me when I took his clinic last year. It had been a long time since I'd isolated the various components of my stroke for study, and I'm always struck by how tiring it is to focus that hard on something while I'm paddling.
I'd done a round of my new strength routine on Monday, and I did another round on Wednesday. I woke up yesterday feeling stiff and sore in my arms and shoulders. I don't know what might have caused it other than the strength work, but I thought it was odd that the soreness took that long to appear. Usually it starts up within a day of my doing something new.
Joe hadn't been available for our usual Tuesday paddle, so he joined me yesterday for a loop of the harbor. The relaxed, "conversational" pace we paddled was helpful as my body worked out the soreness.
I did another round of the strength routine today to close out a decent "business" week here in the early offseason.
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