Last fall, as I was wrapping up a somewhat tiring and frustrating race season, I pondered how I would spend the coming winter, and I determined that I should diversify my training a bit and try to maximize the "fun" aspect of my paddling sessions. Among other things, that meant not making myself follow through with a scheduled in-the-boat workout if the weather was miserable.
But then I decided to return to South Africa at the end of January, and therefore committed myself to a certain degree of training seriousness in the couple of months leading up to that.
Now I'm just two weeks and a day from my departure date, and I'm realizing how few training days I have left. While I benefitted from balmy weather in December, that party is apparently now over, and I'm watching the forecast closely as I try to put the finishing touches on the speed and power that I'll need for a week of intense downwind paddling.
I hadn't planned to paddle on Monday, when the high was predicted to be in the mid 30s Fahrenheit. But even though that was indeed the case, by the afternoon the sun was shining and there was very little wind, so I decided to seize that opportunity to paddle on a not-so-miserable day. After warming up and doing a set of three 8-stroke sprints, I did a workout that Dawid Mocke showed me during my trip to South Africa two years ago. I did 10 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 20 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 30 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 40 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, and so on, until I'd worked up to 100 strokes hard. This workout is quite a bear, that 10-stroke recovery seeming like no recovery at all once those "on" pieces get up over 50 strokes. But it was over soon enough, and I cooled down back to the dock with endorphins flowing and a feeling of accomplishment.
I was expecting similarly nice weather Tuesday morning even though the day dawned with overcast skies: the hourly forecast said that by 10 AM the sun would be breaking through with a 34-degree temperature, and by 11 AM it would be sunny and 36 degrees. Unfortunately, the hourly forecast was wrong. When I got down to the dock a little before 10 o'clock, it was still solidly overcast and only 32 degrees with a frigid breeze blowing. But I was there, dressed to paddle, so I got in the boat and buckled down. I kept things on the easy side, paddling just 40 minutes and recovering a bit from Monday's hard session, but I did raise the tempo during the middle 20 minutes.
Looking at the forecast again, I saw that Wednesday would be a pretty nice day--sunny with a high in the 50s--before another round of wintry precipitation moved in with colder temperatures on Thursday and Friday. So I was back in the boat yesterday for another intense session. I did three sets of (20-second sprint/60 seconds recovery/20-second sprint/50 seconds recovery/20-second sprint/40 seconds recovery/20-second sprint/30 seconds recovery/20-second sprint/20 seconds recovery/20-second sprint/10 seconds recovery/20-second sprint). I took five minutes between sets. I struggled through the last couple of sprints in each set, but overall I held up well and felt good when it was over.
This morning we've seen freezing rain and sleet, and the temperature is 32 degrees and falling as the day goes on. I'm happily giving myself a day off to recover from this week's work, and I'll be watching the forecast again as I plan my activities for the week ahead.
For more information on what this blog is about, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment