A good week shaping up

Life goes on here in the steamy Mid South in the month of July.  I'm not enjoying the heat but I'm generally enjoying the pace of life during this lull in my race season.  I'm feeling pretty good about the paddling and related activities that are going on these days, and I'm also doing some good shop work and enjoying the happenings here in my little inner-city neighborhood.

On Tuesday I paddled with Joe in the harbor for about 80 minutes.  I paddled my old boat, which still lives down at the dock.  I'm thinking I'll keep it down there at least for the rest of the summer and use it for my riverfront paddling.

Right now the new boat is stored in my garage, where I can easily grab it for paddling elsewhere.  That's what I did yesterday when I took it out to Walnut Grove Lake for "Thursday evening sprints."  Only three people showed up--Kata Dismukes, Jason Salomon, and me--but we were an evenly-matched group and in the four 500-meter sprints we did I don't think there was ever more than three seconds or so between first place and third place.  Kata led the first one from the start, and my late surge wasn't enough to get by her at the finish; she and I finished the second one in a dead heat--the sun was in my eyes and I couldn't see whether she actually beat me or not; and then I took the third and fourth sprints.  Jason was right there in the hunt on all four: in a couple of the sprints his bow was right there by my side from start to finish.

500 meters is of course a standard competition distance in flatwater sprint racing, and it is an intense, lactic affair that demands that you keep paddling as hard as you can while gasping for breath.  I hope these Thursday night meetings will fortify my mental toughness a bit.  I came away from last night feeling particularly good about the last sprint, in which Kata led for about the first half and I really had to dig deep to move into the lead.

I didn't pay close attention to my times, but I think they were all between 2:20 and 2:30.  I took my G.P.S. device in the boat with me out of curiosity to see what sort of speeds I was achieving: most of the time I was moving between 8 and 8.5 miles per hour.

Back here at home I've done my strength routine on Monday and Wednesday this week, and I plan to do it again later this morning.