It has stayed humid this week but the air temperature has backed off a bit, with Fahrenheit highs in the 80s rather than the 90s. It's still rather sweaty and uncomfortable because of the humidity, but here in the Memphis area we take whatever tiny relief we can get in the summertime.
On Tuesday I paddled a loop out on the river at medium-intensity. I was feeling good considering the hard paddling I'd done on Sunday.
Yesterday it was time for another workout. The idea of doing another set of sprints on my 450-meter bridge-to-bridge course was feeling a bit stale, so I decided to take a break from that and do some kind of race-pace-with-hard-sprints sort of thing in preparation for the Gorge Downwind race that's coming up next month.
After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, I paddled out onto the Mississippi, where the conditions were about as Columbia-Gorge-like as I can expect to find here in the Mid South. There was a pretty strong southwest wind blowing, and a couple of upstream-moving barge rigs had just passed by downtown Memphis, so the waves and chop were plentiful.
The workout itself was a "20 strokes on, 60 strokes off" series, where the 20-stroke pieces were the sort of hard sprint one must do to get on a wave, and the 60-stroke pieces were the normal race pace I would maintain in a two-hour-ish race like I expect the Gorge Downwinder will be.
I did this workout first moving upriver along the Tennessee bank. Then, when I reached the south end of the Greenbelt Park, I ferried out into the middle of the river and paddled with a following sea. The waves here weren't the best for prolonged surfs, but I could still work on my balance and control in that kind of conditions. I tried to keep my whole body relaxed and trust the reflexes in my legs and hips to counteract whatever jolts the waves threw at me.
After a while I turned back downriver and returned to the harbor. I continued the workout until I was at the monorail bridge. Then, sort of on a whim, I decided to one 450-meter sprint for time. I wasn't too worn out from the workout, and I figured that with mostly a tailwind I could clock a fast time. I felt like I was moving the boat pretty well, but when I reached the landmark at the approximate halfway point I was already past one minute. I tried to keep paddling strong but I finished in 2 minutes flat or 2:01. Oh well... in general I was pleased with my 60 minutes of paddling. Technically it was a "work" workout, but paddling through waves feels like play to me, especially when I'm handling them well and keeping the boat moving like I was yesterday.
I did the strength routine Monday and today. On Wednesday I had a doctor's appointment (annual physical) that took up a good chunk of the day, so I gave myself a break from the strength work that day.
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