On Tuesday morning I did my last gym session before my training camp down in Florida. I haven't decided yet what sort of gym I'll do during the camp. If I do anything, it'll probably be minimal since we'll be doing two in-the-boat workouts most days.
After the gym session I headed out into a bleak, overcast, 40-degrees-Fahrenheit outdoors to paddle. My arms were tired from the gym work and it had the feel of a "let's just get this done" session. I stayed in the harbor and paddled a pretty strong aerobic pace for 60 minutes. It wasn't fun because I was achy and tired but I had a nice feeling of accomplishment when it was over. I was buoyed by the idea that my next paddling session would be on a clear spring-fed stream, probably in much nicer weather.
Wednesday was a day for resting and packing, and yesterday I hit the road. It was 38 degrees and pouring down rain when I left Memphis. Sunshine State, here I come!
I made it as far as the town of Marianna in the Florida Panhandle yesterday. According to Google I should have made the trip in 7 hours 45 minutes, but it took me more like nine and a half hours. None of my stops was terribly lengthy, but I guess it all added up to at least an hour. And I'm just not a particularly fast driver. I stopped once to refuel, once to eat my sack lunch in the parking lot of another gas station, once at a clothing outlet store south of Montgomery that I like, and once to get some Chinese takeout and eat it at an outdoor table in Dothan. Anyway, I got a good night's sleep in a motel and was back on the road by 7:45 AM, which might as well have been 8:45 because I crossed from Central Time into Eastern Time a short distance east of Marianna.
I arrived at my destination around 1 o'clock Eastern, and got checked into my Air B and B near Rainbow Springs State Park. Once 4 o'clock rolled around I headed down into Dunnellon and met my training group along the Rainbow River for the afternoon session. The temperature was a lovely 80 degrees or so and I donned the same sort of clothing I wear in the summertime.
On hand today were Chris Hipgrave of Bryson City, North Carolina; Cory Hall and Terry Smith of Chattanooga, Tennessee; and Pennsylvanians Chris Norbury and Steph Schell. Our workout schedule for the camp was drawn up by Chris H., and both Chrises will be providing coaching services.
We started at Blue Run of Dunnellon Park, and to warm up we paddled upstream to a basin that branches off from the main river. Here we did a workout that consisted of six 100-meter sprints and six 200-meter sprints. We alternated between a 100 and a 200, and started each one at three-minute intervals. The 100s were to be done at as high a stroke rate as each paddler was capable of ("to shock the nervous system," Chris H. said), while the 200s were to be done at a lower, more controlled rate.
It was a taxing workout, but I was pleased with how my body responded considering that I'd just spent a day and a half driving and I hadn't done sprints of any kind since October. I recovered pretty quickly from each sprint and felt good once the workout was over.
I'll talk more later about the objectives of this workout and of the training camp as a whole. I can tell already that I'll be analyzing certain training topics to a deeper extent than I ever have before, and that alone should make the camp worth it. I've long believed that the best reason to attend an occasional training camp is to pick up new ideas that you can take back home and apply to your training there.
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