It's the Memorial Day holiday weekend here in the U.S., when people like to fire up their backyard grills. I was invited to some friends' backyard function yesterday afternoon, so I had to do some shuffling of my training schedule. That was merely one of the difficulties that cropped up this weekend.
Friday morning I did a gym session and then headed down to the river to do seven sets of (4 minutes on/1 minute off) at a "strong" A1 stroke rate. Unfortunately, several minutes after I left the dock my G.P.S. device flashed a message that its battery was low, and then shut down on me. That was odd because I had charged it up just a couple of days earlier, and all spring one recharge per week had been adequate for my seven in-the-boat workouts each week. Anyway, there I was with no way to time myself and no cadence sensor. So I had to improvise. Maks had suggested a "70ish spm" stroke rate, so for each piece I paddled at my best guess of what that rate should be, and did 280 strokes. Then I took what seemed to me like a 1-minute break. I doubt that what I did was accurate to the letter of what Maks had assigned, but I got a workout that was in keeping with the spirit of it.
The episode was a reminder that we depend on these gadgets at our peril. I think I've had my G.P.S. device for close to ten years, and that makes it a Methuselah in the world of modern electronics.
My plan for Friday afternoon was to do the workout scheduled for Saturday morning. My mail arrived while I was at home having lunch, and that added another item to my afternoon agenda: the surfski that I keep down at the dock was due for new rudder lines, and the new lines, which I'd ordered from the Epic Kayaks east Tennessee office, arrived in the mail. Changing the lines in a surfski is never as simple as it ought to be; every time I do it it seems to make me want to shout a few expletives at the top of my lungs. But I wasn't thinking about that as I headed back to the river Friday afternoon. I figured I would spend 20 or 30 minutes changing out the lines and then fussing with them until the pedals were moving the rudder to my liking, and then I would hop in the boat and execute the workout that my coach had designed just for me.
It didn't go well. After toiling in vain to get the new lines to feed through the tubes that run through the boat's bowels, I realized that said tubes were broken. Lacking the tools to address such a problem, I stood there on the dock with a boat that I couldn't really paddle. So I came back home with a feeling of utter defeat.
I'm a regimented sort who bristles whenever there's a job to do and I fail to get it done. But skipping that workout might not have been the worst thing for me at that moment. I was feeling tired to the core, not just from the morning's gym and paddling sessions, but from the last couple of weeks in general, in which I'd faced the hardest training of the year so far. I'd been trying to grin and bear it, knowing that next week will be easier, but I was feeling pretty beat-up. My arm and shoulder muscles were achy, and by yesterday morning it felt like I might have strained something in my right shoulder/pectoral area. Maybe it happened during the gym session, or maybe it happened during the pretty hard paddling I did Friday morning--those lower-stroke-rate "power-paddling" workouts are as tough on my body as anything I do in the boat.
In any case, I knew I had to proceed with caution in yesterday morning's workout. I took one of my other boats down to the riverfront and eased into a 20-minute warmup. It didn't seem that I was stressing the ailing area directly, so I proceeded with three sets of (4 minutes at 80 spm/1 minute rest/3 minutes at 80 spm/1 minute rest/1 minute all-out). Maks described it as a "hard VO2 Max session designed to challenge you when you are the most tired--in the last minute of the set." And I most definitely was tired by that last minute; I struggled to paddle at more than 100 spm. But overall I felt pretty good in the boat; there was never that moment when I wondered whether I would make through the whole workout. Knowing that this was my last hard session of the current training block helped a lot. Meanwhile, my recharged G.P.S. device seemed to be back working just fine, and I was pleased not to have to go get a new one for the time being.
Yesterday afternoon I had a lovely time in my friends' backyard, thank you very much.
This morning my right shoulder/pectoral area still felt a little off, but perhaps slightly improved since yesterday. I take it as a good sign that yesterday's hard workout didn't make it worse. Today's session was a calm 80-minute paddle--just what I needed to smooth my technique back out and let my muscles relax after a couple of tough weeks. This coming week will be an easier one, and I'll be attending a race on Saturday. If the race were right now I'd be in big trouble, but with any luck by Saturday I'll be feeling rested, focused, and ready to do well.
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