Regrouping

I'm feeling quite a bit better as this week draws to a close.  I gave myself a break from strength work this week and tried to get good nights of sleep and settle back into good dietary habits.  I paddled a loop of the harbor with Joe on Tuesday but otherwise spent the week dealing with a long list of chores in my non-athletic life.

Maybe I had a virus or something, or maybe I didn't; I definitely think my fatigue was part mental, stemming from all the recent traveling, the mountain of work I've been facing in my professional life, and some rather tight finances with a major road trip coming up in July.

It's prompted me to think carefully about the approximately six weeks between now and my departure for the Pacific Northwest.  I've decided to keep my racing and travel schedule as simple as possible, to avoid exhaustion and to save money and to focus on good quality training and recovery here at home.  I plan to make the two-and-a-half hour trip to Batesville, Arkansas, this weekend for the race on the White River there, but I'm going to skip the race up near Louisville on June 9 that I'd been considering attending.

Yesterday I was feeling ready to give Sunday's aborted workout another try.  I had meetings to attend in the morning, so it was mid-afternoon when I finally got down to the riverfront, and once there I realized I'd forgotten both my wristwatch and my G.P.S. device.  I panicked for a moment, but then it occurred to me that it might not be the worst thing to do a workout without these things.  I was probably still not ready to produce optimum speeds at this point, and I could use this workout to get my heart rate up into the desired zone without the G.P.S. on board to suggest that I had "failed."  Lacking my watch, I decided to do 50 strokes (on one side) per piece, as 50 strokes is in the neighborhood of what I typically do in one minute.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then commenced the workout.  Not wanting to push my luck too much, I opted for eight pieces rather than ten, and I didn't worry about a strict recovery interval, instead starting each new piece when I felt ready.  My guess is that my recoveries were between three and four minutes, on average.

The workout went pretty well, though it was a tough one.  The last three pieces were particularly painful. As I fought through them, I feared that maybe doing such a workout was a mistake considering my questionable health.  Then again, a workout like this is supposed to hurt some, especially when it's above 90 degrees Fahrenheit like it was yesterday afternoon.

I'm reassured by my body's response in the aftermath: last night I was plenty tired and ready for a full night's sleep, but not feeling any worse than usual after a set of long hard sprints.  Today I'm feeling the sort of fatigue that some rest should take care of.  I plan to treat tomorrow's race as a workout and then get a good recovery for the next couple of days, settling into what I hope will be six weeks of good-quality training with plenty of rest.