As of yesterday I had just two weeks to go before my first race of the season, and in recent years that has meant one thing: a time trial in the harbor. For anybody who doesn't know about this annual ritual of mine, I pontificate upon it at length in this post from two years ago.
I talk a lot in this blog about how much I value my paddling routine, how it never feels like a sacrifice to me, how going down to the river is almost always something I look forward to. But this time trial is an exception. It's one of the few training sessions I truly dread. When I think of it, the main thing that comes to mind is pain. A big reason is the mental stress of racing against the clock. I've got my G.P.S. device on board and I'm trying to keep the boat moving at or above a minimum speed, and I'm constantly checking the time as I pass landmarks along the course. Nothing can make 100 meters seem like a mile the way a ticking clock can.
My standing goal is to break 50 minutes for this lap of the harbor. I clocked around 50:30 five or six years ago, but since then I've found it difficult to come within two minutes of the 50-minute barrier. That's another reason I dread this workout: that feeling that I've "failed" if I don't achieve my time goal. The fact that so far I've "failed" every time doesn't seem to lessen my fear of failure in the latest one.
To dip under 50 I'll probably have to have perfect weather, and not too many days in March are like that. Yesterday morning there was a pretty stiff breeze blowing from the north--not gale-force, but enough to knock a few tenths of a mile per hour off my pace as I paddle against it.
As I paddled from the dock toward the north end of the harbor, I sought solace in the fact that with the Mississippi River registering 38.3 feet on the Memphis gauge, the harbor is wide-open right now, and not as sinuous as it is at low water levels. But that would make little difference in the hurt I was about to inflict on my body. As I maneuvered into the starting gate between two submerged trees, I resolved to shoot for a solid sub-50 pace for the southbound half of the course (i.e., faster than 25 minutes) and then just "see how it goes" the rest of the way.
Off I went, and with the wind at my back it wasn't hard to maintain the 7.2 mph that I'd need to average to break 50 minutes for the not-quite-six-mile course. But I pushed harder, hoping I could make the slog back north into the wind with as much cushion as possible. I kept the speed at or above 7.3 mph, hitting 7.6 at times. And it wasn't long before my body was feeling it. I never cease to be surprised by how much harder you have to paddle to increase the speed by a mere tenth of a mile per hour.
I had several little setbacks along the way: a couple of times I had to stop and wipe my eyes with my hat because they were stinging with sweat, and then just south of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge I got a stick caught on my rudder, and I had to stop and do a few backstrokes to get it off. But I pressed on, ever closer to the turnaround point, and as I made the turn around the imaginary buoy at last, my watch read 24 minutes, 4 seconds. Not bad.
But now I was in the proverbial pain locker as I began to retrace my path against that wind. The speed reading on my G.P.S. device plummeted. Now I put on my tactician's hat and pondered how to play it. I decided to give myself a breather by paddling back to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge at a minimum speed of 6.0 mph, and then see what I could do after that.
Paddling at this pace was certainly easier than what I'd done in the first half, but against the wind it was enough work that I really just didn't have a higher gear to shift into once I reached the HDB. And so I continued on at around a 6.5-mph clip, knowing that once again the 50-minute barrier would weather my assault. I plodded along, just wanting the whole grueling, lonely ordeal to be over. And at last it was, when I crossed the start/finish line 52:23 after I'd started.
I paddled slowly back toward the marina with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was pleased with my split at the halfway point. On the other, I was disheartened by how much it had taken out of me, even with the wind at my back. And I remained puzzled with my difficulty in breaking 50 minutes for 5.9ish miles. In the last several summers I've done a full 6-miler on Fontana Reservoir in western North Carolina, and broken 50 minutes each time.
But of course, that race is in August, when I'm in something much closer to peak racing form. I'm never very sharp in March. One of the reasons I do this workout in the first place is so I can go to my first "real" race two weeks later with a race-like effort under my belt.
Since even my best racing years in this decade started with a painful, slower-than-50-minute effort in this time trial, there's really no reason to obsess over it.
So... let's move on.
I spent the rest of yesterday dead tired, achy, and sore. Today has been sunny, a bit warmer than yesterday, and a bit less windy. I went back to the river this morning for an easy paddle, and I think it was just what the doctor ordered. Once I was warmed up I felt surprisingly good in the boat. I tried to take good strokes and let the fresh blood wash through my paddling-related muscles and facilitate recovery.
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