Yesterday I spent the day bracing myself for withering conditions out at "Thursday evening sprints." I tried to drink a little extra water throughout the day.
As I negotiated the rush hour traffic out to Cordova the in-dash temperature display in my car read 97 degrees Fahrenheit, and I heard on the radio that the heat index was up around 105. I hoped that the conditions on Walnut Grove Lake would be simply bearable as the sun got lower in the sky.
But then as I got within a mile of the lake I found myself driving into a thunderstorm cell. As the rain came down, I watched gleefully as the temperature dropped to about 80 degrees in the space of several minutes. The rain continued to fall as I parked the car and got my boat off. By the time I was on the water the cell had just about moved out, but it left us with an air temperature that was most pleasant compared to what it's been lately.
Kata and Jason were back again this week, and we also had Jason's dad Sonny and Kata's husband Ralph on the lake with us. After a good warmup we lined up for some 500-meter sprints.
I don't know if it was the cooler air, or the fact that I'd taken Wednesday completely off; but I felt as good in the boat as I've felt in a long time. Whereas previous Thursday sessions had felt like frenzied paddle-for-all-I-was-worth sort of affairs, last night I found I had a couple of gears at my disposal that allowed me to relax and pace myself a bit. My times were quite a bit faster: I broke 2:20 for all four sprints, hitting 2:15 in a couple of them.
It was still plenty humid outside, and the sweat was flowing in abundance. By the time I was back in the car leaving the parking area the temperature was back up to 91 degrees. The break we got from the storm was all too temporary, but it couldn't have happened at a better time.
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