Joe and I observed the last day of winter by paddling a loop of the harbor on Tuesday. This may not have been the harshest winter we've ever had, but it sure felt long. It snowed back in the first half of November, something I don't think had ever happened before in my lifetime. At any rate, I'm glad to have winter in my rearview.
Yesterday was about the latest I could do a workout that would have a bearing on my performance down in Ocean Springs a week from tomorrow, so I went down to the river with that intention. I meant to take my G.P.S. device with me but I went off and left it at home. I was upset at first but then I felt liberated, because I could do the workout out on the Mississippi River where a G.P.S. device isn't as useful anyway.
I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor before paddling out onto the big river to commence my workout. I did six 5-minute pieces with three minutes recovery in between. During each piece I paddled "medium-hard" for two minutes, "hard" for two minutes, and "sub-maximal" for the last minute.
The original plan had been to use my G.P.S. device to regulate these degrees of intensity while paddling on the flatwater of the harbor. Here's what I did instead in the absence of that technology: for the first two minutes I took good strong strokes while keeping the stroke rate fairly low; for the next two minutes I continued to paddle at a low stroke rate but pulled as hard as I could on each stroke; and for the last minute I allowed the stroke rate to increase while still pulling as hard as I could. The intensity in that last minute was similar to what it is in one of my bridge-to-bridge sprints--pretty much all-out, in other words.
The workout felt really good and I came away a lot more upbeat than I did from that time trial last Saturday. I hope such feelings will carry me from now until my race next Saturday.
The Mississippi River is still quite high--it was at 38.1 feet on the Memphis gauge when I paddled yesterday. I expect it'll be staying high for a while yet, as there's a whole lot of floodwater up on the Missouri and Platte Rivers that has to come our way.
I did the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and today.
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