On Friday morning I did a gym session with a new set of exercises, then headed down to the river.
This weekend has featured weather that's pretty typical of late winter and early spring here: rain. It poured down rain in the early hours of Friday, and when I got to the river there was still a steady drizzle falling and a gusty south wind blowing. I had a speed workout to do, and it's hard to feel speedy in such conditions. But the reality of any outdoor sport is that you do the best you can with whatever conditions you have.
However, by the time I finished warming up the rain had moved out. For the next ten minutes after that the wind swirled around so I couldn't tell what direction it was coming from, and then it died down too. Just like that, I had ideal conditions for some sprinting.
The workout was two sets of (50-meter sprint/2-minute rest/100m sprint/3-minute rest/150m sprint/5-minute rest/100m sprint/3-minute rest/50m sprint/2-minute rest). Maks didn't say whether to do flying starts or start from rest, so I made the executive decision to start from rest because I hadn't practiced my starts in a long time. Maks also didn't specify a stroke rate, so I spent the workout searching for the highest rate at which I could paddle smooth and controlled. Looking back, I think 100-102 strokes per minute might be what I should shoot for. Because the ratio of rest to work was high, I was rarely breathing hard; however, my arms were feeling like rubber by the last several sprints in the second set. The new gym exercises I'd just done were part of the reason, I'm sure.
More rain fell overnight and yesterday morning it was overcast and about 52 degrees Fahrenheit. Down on the riverfront the harbor was smooth as glass. I did two sets of 5 x (2 minutes at 56 spm/1 minute at 68 spm/1 minute rest). This was primarily a technical exercise, not particularly taxing. The harder workout would come in the afternoon.
Strong thunderstorms were in the forecast for the late afternoon, so I tried to get back to the river sooner rather than later. Conditions were still calm as I started warming up. The workout was an imposing one, at least on paper: two sets of four 500-meter pieces at 80-84 spm, starting every sixth minute. I started each piece from rest. My times were all in the 2:30-2:40 range, so I had 3:20-3:30 of recovery time; I gave myself an additional two minutes between the sets.
Once I'd gotten over the how-much-is-this-gonna-hurt jitters, the workout turned out to be reasonably enjoyable. After doing the first couple of 500s around 2:39, I started looking for ways to go faster, which mostly meant putting more power into each stroke while being careful to stay in the specified stroke-rate range. My last piece was my fastest, at 2:30.
Some thunder and lightning moved in during the break between sets, and I kept an eye on my watch after each lightning flash. According to the conventional wisdom that thunder travels a mile in five seconds, the lightning was always at least a mile away, though a couple of times it was only just. I did my last two 500s in a hard drizzle, and by the time I'd finished my cool-down paddle back to the dock it had grown into a downpour. I was happy to get home and jump in a hot shower.
More thunderstorms were in the forecast for today. A check of the Internet radar showed that I had time to paddle this morning before they arrived. I went down to the river and paddled in some intermittent drizzle but nothing too oppressive. The temperature was around 70 degrees Fahrenheit--warm air ahead of the storm front. The workout was four sets of (6 minutes at 60 spm/4 minutes at 64 spm/3 minutes at 68 spm/2 minutes at 72 spm). There was 1 minute recovery between pieces and 2 minutes between sets. This was a longer endurance session and my biggest challenge was pushing through the muscle fatigue accumulated through the last few days.
And... this long training week has come to an end at last. I'm beat to the socks and plan to make the most of my day off tomorrow before starting something new on Tuesday.
After flowing below 10 feet on the Memphis gauge for most of the fall and winter, the Mississippi River is on a big rise as a result of all the snow and ice and rain that have fallen in its watershed over the last couple of weeks. When I paddled Friday morning it was at 11.5 feet, and by this morning it had risen to 15.3. It's forecast to rise to 30 feet over the next couple of weeks, and I expect that figure to be revised upward once today's storm system moves into the Tennessee and Ohio basins.
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