A system of rain and thunderstorms moved in Friday night, and the temperature rose above 60 degrees Fahrenheit in the early hours of yesterday morning. It was still raining pretty hard when I got out of bed, but by the time I got down to the river it seemed to have moved out. The temperature had dropped into the mid 50s, but it was still warm enough to paddle without pogies.
The wind was blowing from the south, hard enough to make paddling toward the mouth of the harbor feel like a chore. When it was time to do my 8-stroke sprints I turned around and did them with the wind at my back. Then I turned back around and paddled out onto the Mississippi.
The river was quite calm in spite of the south wind. It helped that there was no barge traffic in the area. I was feeling a bit tired in the boat, maybe from the fast surges I'd done on Thursday or the strength work I'd done on Friday. I had to make myself paddle with the best form I could. This got easier once I was back in the harbor with the wind at my back.
I cruised on back to the dock to complete a 60-minute session, and right as I was getting out of the boat I realized I'd been wrong about the rain being over. A thick drizzle quickly moved in, and a short time later the wind abruptly shifted to the north, and I could feel the temperature dropping fast. By the time I was back in the car heading home, the in-dash temperature display said it was 46 degrees. It would keep on dropping the rest of the day toward an overnight low in the 20s. So it turns out I got my paddle in just minutes ahead of the nastier weather, and that was kind of a nice feeling.
Of course, then there was the matter of paddling today, and there was no avoiding the cold. The conditions I might face were uncertain: the cold front brought some pretty strong winds with it that raged overnight. This morning I layered up good, broke out the fleece-lined pogies for the first time this winter, and headed downtown. When I got there I found that the wind had abated and the sun was fighting a winning battle with the cloud cover. My car told me it was 28 degrees.
My rudder was frozen. That was no surprise, considering my boat had been soaking wet from the rain when the colder air moved in yesterday. When my rudder freezes I have to be patient so as not to break something. Today I put my boat in the water and started paddling large clockwise circles, because that's the position the rudder was stuck in. It finally came free after about eight minutes.
I spent the rest of the 80-minute session paddling a steady relaxed pace. With the sun shining I was pretty comfortable in the boat. I stayed in the harbor to be on the safe side. There was some barge traffic out on the river, and having waves splash into my seat bucket and footwell in sub-freezing weather is not a sensation I cherish.
It was still below freezing when I got back to the dock. The water droplets on my boat quickly froze while I changed into dry clothes. I toweled the boat off as best I could, put it away, and headed home, proud of myself for not having let some Arctic air stop me.
No comments:
Post a Comment