I started Monday morning with a gym session. It was the same one I'd been doing at home except for the bent-over rows because I hadn't brought any dumbbells with me. Probably just as well for me not to do too much arm stuff after Sunday afternoon's hard workout in the boat.
After that I got on my bike and rode for about an hour. The Air B&B I'm staying in is located sort of in the countryside between Dunnellon and Ocala, and I had a network of quiet country roads to ride on. I saw a few signs advertising "Lots for Sale," so in another 50 years this area might be a dreadful suburban wasteland, but right now it's mostly piney woods and was a pleasant setting for my ride. It was a gorgeous day, too: it had rained during most of my drive down here, and Sunday had been somewhat overcast, but Monday morning was sunny with a crystal-clear blue sky.
Yesterday morning we were back in our boats doing a steady 75-minute paddle. Though the workout specified a low stroke rate (I tried to keep mine at or below 70 strokes per minute), the effort was supposed to be quite a bit more substantial than the easy session we'd done Sunday morning. By the end of it my arms were feeling as achy as they've felt so far this week.
That made the outlook all the more painful for yesterday's afternoon session. We did three 9-minute pieces at 10-kilometer race pace, or 80+ spm. We started every 16th minute (in other words, the recovery interval was 7 minutes). I tried to keep my rate right at 80 and just survive. Actually, I held up okay through the first two; it wasn't until the last several minutes of the last piece that I felt myself falling apart.
Whatever the case, I was dead-dog tired, and with more tough sessions on the schedule, I headed for bed early last night and hoped I could somehow keep myself going. One would think I'd have fallen fast asleep without delay, but, well, one would be wrong: I tossed and turned and couldn't nod off for at least two hours.
I managed to get reasonably rested, however, and I returned to the river for another hard, steady, low-stroke-rate paddle. This one was only 60 minutes, but it was unpleasant enough. To me, these sessions are much harder than ones like yesterday afternoon's: at least faster interval-type workouts get some endorphins going, whereas all these slow grinding workouts do is wear me down. And of course, that's the point: you have to beat yourself down so the body can build itself back up during recovery. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.
This afternoon's session was mercifully easier. Intense, but not particularly taxing. We did twelve short sprints starting every third minute. The odd-numbered sprints were 20 seconds starting from rest, and the even-numbered sprints were 10 seconds with a moving start. Not having sprinted or practiced any starts in many months, I felt incredibly rusty, but the workout felt good compared to all the other stuff we've been doing lately.
A torrential rain began to fall right at the tail end of our workout--part of the same system that apparently visited violent storms upon the South from Louisiana through Georgia. But the biggest drama occurred back at the parking lot, where I'd locked my keys in my car. Chris Hipgrave kindly made a run to the auto parts store and got one of those "slim jim" things that are supposed to trip the lock, but neither he nor Chris Norbury nor Cam Thacker could get it to do the trick. Meanwhile, Cam and Alessia Faverio and Royal McDonnell and I were unsuccessful trying to wedge the door open enough to stick something in and push the "unlock" button. In the end we called a locksmith, who (for a fee, naturally) accomplished in 30 seconds what we six paddlers could not over the better part of an hour. He didn't do any actual locksmithing; he simply had better equipment than we did for wedging open the door and hitting that button.
Now the handle on the driver's-side door no longer works--somebody managed to mess that up while working the slim jim--and that's going to be a real hassle to live with for the rest of this trip. But it's better than being still locked out of my car.
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