Nudging the volume up a bit

I did another run around my block Friday morning.  My body might be getting a bit more used to it.  I don't have any particular running goals other than just a desire to be able to run again, so there's no reason to push it.

The run does make a good warmup for a gym session, and I knocked out a mostly good one after running on Friday.  However, I did irritate my left biceps while doing bent-over rows.  The muscle had been feeling pretty good for quite a while.

Yesterday I went down to the river and paddled for 70 minutes.  After a 10-minute warmup I did some backpaddling-then-forward-paddling drills, and then paddled a strong tempo for the next 50 minutes.  I aimed for a stroke rate of 70 strokes per minute; that's in the neighborhood of what I hope to maintain during the Blackburn Challenge in just over two months.  The left biceps muscle gave me some nuisance pain as I went along.

It was time for a longer paddle today, and I went out this morning intending to go for 120 minutes.  The plan was to paddle at 70 spm from the time I left the harbor to the time I re-entered it.  I paddled down the Mississippi not quite as far as the Harahan Bridge and then did a long upstream paddle along the Arkansas bank.  I felt good for most of the first hour, but by the end of it I knew the second hour would be tough.  I paddled all the way up to the north end of the Loosahatchie Bar before turning back downstream.  I tried my best to take good effective strokes as I paddled into a rather stiff south wind.

Blackberry winter is over and the forecast for the coming week is showing highs up near 90 degrees Fahrenheit.  I wouldn't say the heat was oppressive this morning as I paddled the last two kilometers up the harbor back to the dock, but it might have been high enough to contribute to my fatigue.  It'll probably take me 30 minutes to an hour longer than I paddled today to finish the Blackburn, so I need to put some thought into my in-race hydration and nourishment in addition to the usual endurance training.

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