On Tuesday morning I did a gym session and then headed for the river to paddle. My arms were achey and tired as I warmed up in the boat, partly because of the gym session and partly because of some work I'd done in my woodworking shop Monday afternoon: I'd done some aggressive planing on some tough oak boards.
After the warmup and a set of three 8-stroke sprints, I commenced a workout of eight 200-meter pieces starting every 4th minute. I kept the stroke rate around 80 strokes per minute--very controlled for 200 meters. I aimed for my goal pace of 12 kilometers per hour (that would be one minute for 200 meters), but with a tailwind my speed was more like 12.5-13.0 kph, and so my time for each piece was a little under a minute.
I stayed busy yesterday with out-of-the-boat things. This morning I went out for an unstructured 60-minute paddle. There was a strong wind blowing from the south, and when I reached the mouth of the harbor I saw some small but workable downwind conditions out on the Mississippi. I played around just off the tip of Mud Island for a little while, and couldn't really relax because the water was still quite cold and I wasn't really dressed for a swim. It didn't help that I was paddling my least-stable surfski with a short rudder. I much prefer mid-summer for my downwinding. But at least I got some paddling in. I used the trip back to the dock to relax and take good strokes.
We've had Fahrenheit highs in the low 80s this week, but it looks like later today a line of storms will move through that might have some strong winds with it. Then it's supposed to get quite a bit cooler. The current forecast shows high temperatures in the 60s all next week.
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