Some impromptu race prep

I've made sort of a spur-of-the-moment decision to attend a race this weekend.  The Firecracker Race is a 24-kilometer (15-mile) trek down the Mississippi River from Grafton, Illinois, to Alton, Illinois.  It's something like a five-hour drive from where I live.  I plan to leave Friday, spend the night in Saint Louis, and come home after the race on Saturday.

I don't consider myself particularly trained up, but my fitness seems good.  I've been recovering quickly whenever I do hard sprints, such as when surfing barge wakes, and that's always a good sign.  The course is on the upper Mississippi--upstream of where the Ohio River comes in--so I'm unsure how much help I'll get from the current, but I'm pretty sure I can do it in less than two hours.  I don't know what other racers might show up--the registration site doesn't have a list of registrants.  I just want to go up there and see what I can do after months of mostly unstructured paddling.  My guess is I won't be setting any kind of torrid pace, but I hope I can compete well with whoever is there.

After a bike ride on Monday, Tuesday morning I paddled the surfski for 30 minutes and the whitewater boat for 30 minutes.  With a race coming up this Saturday, I did six short (12-stroke) sprints in the surfski to give my ATP-CP energy system a bit of work.  In the whitewater boat I did the usual round of stroke drills and Eskimo rolls, preparing myself for whatever the Colorado River might throw at me later this month.

The highlight of Tuesday's paddling session was seeing a gar jump straight up out of the water right in front of me.  The gar are always very active at this time of year, but they don't often catch air above the surface--that's more the M.O. of those invasive Asian carp.  I got a good look at this gar's long, needlelike nose.  Gar are truly unique-looking creatures.

This morning I was back on the riverfront for a short session in the surfski.  I did another six 12-stroke sprints in the hope of feeling sharp and ready to go on Saturday.

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