Savoring summer, even as it wears me down

Yesterday I did manage to make up the round of the strength routine I'd missed on Friday.

Yesterday was clearly destined to be another hot one, but it was a beautiful morning.  Summers here in the Mid South are known for some god-awful heat and humidity, and when I'm spending the better part of each day in wet sweaty clothes it's easy to get preoccupied with how unpleasant it is.  But there's a lot to like about summer, too.  When I got down to the riverfront yesterday there was a pleasant south breeze and I felt delightfully unstressed as I got in the boat for an 80-minute excursion.  I guess I was in what you'd call a grateful mood... I mean, I'm injury-free, and the burdens of my non-athletic life haven't been too much to bear lately, and I've got what should be an exciting cross-country trip coming up in less than two weeks.  The river level has even been coming up, opening up more liquid real estate for me to check out.  I paddled out of the harbor and up the Mississippi to the Greenbelt Park, then ferried across to the lower end of the Loosahatchie Bar and paddled up the chute back there for a few hundred meters before heading back.

This morning it was time for another workout.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, I paddled onto the river and did a session at the race pace I hope to maintain at the Gorge Downwind race several weeks from now.  Every four minutes I threw in a hard 20-stroke sprint to simulate the sprints I'll have to do to catch waves during the race.  I did this session long enough to get twelve sprints in, and I was plenty taxed by the time it was over.  It was nearing noon and the heat was bearing down, and I did some remount practice back in the harbor to cool off.

Though I felt fine back on the dock, by the time I'd gotten home and finished lunch I was feeling very tired and sluggish.  Doing that workout out in that heat had taken a bigger toll than I'd realized.