I saw my nephew get his degree on Thursday, and my mother and I began the journey home on Friday. And what a horrible journey it turned out to be. We were booked to fly on Delta Airlines from Roanoke to Memphis by way of Atlanta, with a scheduled arrival time in Memphis of around 9 PM.
As it turned out, we didn't land in Memphis until around 8 o'clock yesterday morning.
Our flight from Roanoke to Atlanta was delayed more than seven hours--something to do with a flight crew that had used up the number of duty hours allowed by the FAA. Landing in Atlanta after midnight, we'd missed the last flight to Memphis and were forced to sleep on the floor of the airport even though the Delta agent in Roanoke had assured us the airline would put us up in a hotel. The agent we dealt with in Atlanta was, to put it mildly, rude. I doubt I got more than a half-hour of sleep the whole night.
As air-travel horror stories go, our ordeal was probably fairly average. But the Delta Airlines personnel could not have handled the situation more poorly, and I will be avoiding Delta at all costs for the foreseeable future.
Once home I slept for several hours, had a small lunch, and headed down to the river to paddle. It took some willpower to drag myself down there, but once I was in the boat I felt surprisingly good. I paddled for 50 minutes, going fairly easy aside from three 8-stroke sprints.
I got a much-needed full night of sleep last night, and went back to the river today intending to get refocused on my preparation for the OICK race. After warming up and doing another three 8-strokers, I did a set of eight hard sprints at 75 seconds on, 30 seconds off. The short recovery interval makes this a lactic tolerance workout, and by about the sixth piece I was really feeling the pain. In the late stages of the workout I tried my best to keep taking good strokes even though I was slowing down a bit.
I'm still feeling some soreness in both biceps, as well as the deltoid area of my right arm and shoulder. But it doesn't seem quite as bad out of the boat, as I go about my non-athletic business each day. I've got a couple more hard workouts scheduled between now and race day, and I need to be extra-conscientious about letting myself recover fully from each one.
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