The temperature plummeted on Monday as expected, and Tuesday was pretty nippy as well. When I went down to the Greenbelt Park Tuesday morning to do my dry-land routine, it was 41 degrees Fahrenheit--not just god-awful frigid, but not very warm either. I got busy and knocked out my workout of running (on the flat and on an uphill grade) and core exercises.
It was chilly again Wednesday morning when I got back in the boat, but it was warming up toward a high in the mid 50s. Three barge rigs were moving up the Mississippi River when I reached the mouth of the harbor, and while the air and water were too cold for me to get into the heart of their wakes, I did play around on the smaller waves that were radiating outward toward the Tennessee bank. I was able to get some brief rides on these little bumps, but my right arm bothered me a bit during the hard sprints. Back in the harbor I strove for rotation and leg drive to keep the pressure off my arm muscles.
I was in the boat again today with much warmer weather: the temperature would rise into the mid 60s by the afternoon. After warming up, I did four of my bridge-to-bridge sprints, starting every 8th minute. My times were 2:17, 2:14, 2:11, and 2:10. I think the first one was slower because I wasn't entirely warmed up. It was encouraging to get faster as the workout went on, but I'm hoping to get my cardiovascular system in a better place before I leave town in three weeks. I know I'm in good shape when I recover quickly from each hard effort in an interval workout--that is, when my heart rate drops and my breathing settles down in short order. Today I was breathing hard for longer than I would prefer after each sprint. I'm confident I can get where I want to be in another week or two, however.
It looks like we'll get some rain tomorrow, followed by cooler weather over the weekend. But as the South Africa draws ever closer, motivation doesn't feel like a problem for me these days.
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