After the fairly substantial weekend paddling I'd done, I was ready for a recovery paddle when I went down to the riverfront on Tuesday. I paddled easy for 60 minutes. The Mississippi River is still very high here (35.5 feet on the Memphis gauge Tuesday), and I was able to paddle in the slack water of the flooded Greenbelt Park.
I went back downtown yesterday and got out Joe's V10 Sport surf ski with the hope of doing a "play" workout on some towboat wakes. But after warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, I headed out onto the mighty Mississippi and found no barge traffic whatsoever. Maybe the towboat pilots were all observing the national holiday. I paddled all the way down to the big bend in the river below the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge just to make sure there were no northbound rigs approaching; there were none.
So, a "work" workout it would be. I headed back upriver along the Arkansas bank and commenced a set of twelve 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals. This is a workout I've done a lot in recent years; I usually do ten sprints, but yesterday I stretched it out since I've got a downwind race looming that will require a lot of short sprints. Sometimes this workout feels brutal, and sometimes it feels good; yesterday was one of the better days. The fatigue was definitely getting to me in the last three or four sprints, but my form held up well.
I did the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and today. I'd say my muscular health has been mostly good lately, though my current woodworking project has provided some occasional strain: I'm making a table with some very heavy oak slabs that the client provided.
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