The struggle continues

I had a good paddle with Joe on Tuesday, and on Wednesday evening I delivered my talk on being a lifetime paddlesports athlete.  I'm grateful to all the people who showed up.

Yesterday I went back downtown with the intention of doing four bridge-to-bridge sprints.  After last Saturday's painful slog through this workout I wasn't expecting any miracles in the time department, but I was hoping I could at least be more consistent and not just get slower and slower like I did Saturday.

After a good long warmup and three 8-stroke sprints, I drifted into starting position beneath the monorail bridge.  Once the first sprint was underway it was clear that I still didn't have much turnover; I guess my achy arms are part of the reason for that.  I tried to explode through each stroke as hard as I could while keeping the stroke rate fairly low.  Once more my split was slow at the edge of the marina roof--around 64 seconds.  I did my best to keep it together and ended up with a time of 2:04.

The second sprint was similar; my time was 2:05.  By the third sprint I was really feeling some agony as I struggled to a time of 2:09.

I'd been giving myself 5 minutes for recovery, during which I paddled back to the start at the monorail bridge.  After three sprints I could tell my form was falling apart and didn't see the point of beating a dead horse any longer.  So I gave myself an extra minute of recovery before the last sprint, and then did just half the distance (i.e., to the edge of the marina roof).  I dug in and hoped maybe I could break a minute, but about 63-64 seconds was the best I could manage.

I'm trying my best not to get all alarmed by my difficulties in these workouts; after all, my upcoming races will proceed at a much lower level of intensity.  But it sure would be nice to go into the races with maximum confidence, and I'm just not feeling that at the moment.

I plan to do a couple of steady paddles over the weekend and then some sort of not-quite-as-grueling workout Monday morning.  On Monday afternoon I fly to Virginia for my nephew's college graduation; I won't be back until Friday, and I'm hoping a few days out of the boat will give my body a chance to heal up and reap some benefits from the hard paddling.


For more information on what this blog is about, click here.