Winter slogs

Around here we've yo-yoed back into cold weather.  Lately I've been maintaining two piles of paddling clothes at home--one for milder weather and one for colder.  This weekend it's the "colder" pile, the one with pogies and a ski cap and heavy neoprene pants and all that, that has gone down to the river with me.

Yesterday morning was sort of sunny, but not really.  There were patches of blue sky here and there but mostly there was a thin cloud cover that let through that pale sunlight that I've come to associate with the dead of winter.  The temperature was 30 degrees Fahrenheit when I arrived at the riverfront.  The north wind was blowing just hard enough to make my 60-minute paddle seem like an ordeal.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor.  Then I paddled onto the Mississippi and found some waves created by a barge rig that was working its way upriver.  Normally I don't pursue surfing opportunities on such a cold day, but these waves were so smooth and benign-looking that I couldn't resist.  As it turned out, the waves weren't quite surfable, at least not by me.  I threw down several spirited sprints but each time was holding something back: it was not a good day to go swimming and I was up against the ceiling of my confidence.

After that little diversion I returned to the harbor and was happy to get my hour in the books and go back to someplace warm.

This morning was grey and cheerless, but warmer--a little over 40 degrees when I got downtown.  Once I was in the boat paddling I felt quite a bit more comfortable than I had yesterday.  Once again it was time to go a bit longer, but today it would be just 100 minutes as opposed to the two-hour paddles I'd done the last couple of Sundays.  I planned to paddle up to the mouth of the Wolf River and do a little workout on the bottom mile of that tributary stream.

A funny thing happened on my way to the Wolf: I broke 45 minutes getting up there.  I mostly just paddled a normal cruising pace, but when I hit the 42-minute mark I saw how close I was, and only then did I start paddling harder.  I made it up to the point where I consider myself "into" the mouth of the Wolf with just seconds to spare--about 44:55 or so.  How's about that.

After a couple of minutes to catch my breath, I started my workout on the flat, almost currentless water of the Wolf.  I did three 5-minute pieces with three minutes recovery in between.  I had my G.P.S. device on board, and my target pace for each piece was 7.3 miles per hour.  During many of my workouts I feel confident and strong, but that was not the case today.  Today I felt awful.  Every stroke felt like a struggle, and I fought off an occasional wave of nausea.  I was able to maintain 7.3 mph for stretches, but there were times when I slipped below 7.0.

I finished the last piece right as I was coming out of the Wolf back onto the Mississippi.  I ramped the intensity way down and just tried to take good precise strokes all the way down the river, back into the harbor, and back up to the dock.  Hopefully today's agony isn't how most of my workouts will go this season.


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