Friday, October 16, 2020

Looking for a higher gear

On Tuesday I did a round of the strength routine and then joined Joe for a loop of the harbor.  Both Tuesday and Wednesday were gorgeous fall days: sunny skies with a Fahrenheit temperature rising from the mid 50s at sunrise to the mid 70s by the afternoon.

Yesterday morning the sky was clear as the sun rose, but it quickly clouded up and the day had a gloomy feel by the time I was heading for the river in the mid morning.  When I raced on the Ohio River several weeks earlier I seemed to lack a higher gear, and when I got in the boat yesterday I intended to do a workout to address that.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did four bridge-to-bridge sprints.

I've come to dread this workout a little bit because, well, it hurts.  And I also tend to beat myself up if I don't achieve my fastest times in the sprints.  I keep having to remind myself that consistency is what really matters.  And yesterday's sprints were consistent, or at least the first three of them were: 2:04, 2:05, 2:07.  By the fourth one I was starting to fall apart and could manage only 2:11.  It felt like both the third and fourth were done into a stronger headwind, though it's possible that was just my imagination.

I didn't adhere to a strict recovery interval.  In the past I've made it five minutes, and that required me to waste little time getting back to the monorail bridge to start the next sprint.  Yesterday I didn't dawdle, but my recovery interval was probably more like six or seven minutes.

Today it is sunny once more but quite cool: the high temperature isn't expected to be above 63 or 64.  I did another round of the strength routine this morning.


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

No comments:

Post a Comment