I'm so over summer

With my last race of the year coming up in several weeks, the next ten or twelve days is my last chance to get in two or three workouts that will make a difference.  The race is a longish one, so I went downtown today planning to do a 120-minute paddle.  I didn't want it to be a slow-and-steady sort of thing, and I pondered the best way to work in some higher-intensity pieces.

The most fun way would be to surf some barge wakes.  But when I reached the mouth of the harbor, I found no commercial traffic whatsoever out on the Mississippi.  So it was on to Plan B: throw in a strong surge from time to time.  The most fun way I could think of to do that was to pick some object off in the distance and paddle hard to it.

So that's what I did.  I headed downriver toward Presidents Island, doing my first surge for about a minute until I reached the Harahan Bridge.  After a few minutes at a normal cruising pace, I did another surge until I'd passed a barge moored along the Tennessee bank.  I backed off the pace for another few minutes, and then did another surge until I'd passed a channel marker near Engineers Beach.

And on it went, likewise and so forth.  The workout went pretty well for 45 minutes or so.  Then the heat began to take its toll, as the temperature rose above 90 degrees Fahrenheit while I was out there.  When I was paddling downstream I got a bit of relief from a south breeze, but once I was climbing back upriver with the wind at my back, I labored under the full force of a Mid South late-summer day.  There's practically no shade out on the Mississippi, and I lingered under the trio of old bridges for a brief respite from the relentless sunshine.

As I continued upriver along the Arkansas bank from the old bridges up to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, I struggled but didn't die completely.  I continued to throw in occasional surges, albeit shorter and meeker ones.  When I reached the HDB I ferried back and forth in its shade a few times before doing one last good surge back to the harbor.

I probably would have gotten a better workout on a milder day that wouldn't have required my body to expend so much of its energy fending off the heat.  But hopefully when I'm racing in several weeks I'll get a mental boost from knowing I was able to push through the discomfort today.

I'll say this: it left me basically ruined for the rest of the day.  I came home and had lunch, and since then I haven't done much but lie around the house.


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