Yesterday I went down to the riverfront with the intention of doing a "work" workout. The smarter readers among you might infer that I consider "play" workouts more fun than "work" workouts, and they would be correct. But I feel a need to get in a few "work" workouts just to stay honest... something to do with my Calvinist work ethic.
Anyway, I warmed up by paddling down to the mouth of the harbor, and that's where I had not one, but two, klutzy moments. I was doing the first of three 8-stroke sprints across the squirrelly water where the harbor meets the Mississippi, and I was even congratulating myself on how well I was keeping the boat moving, when ker-PLUNK! I flipped to my right.
I did the quickest, snappiest remount I could, hoping to save face in front of whatever pedestrians in Tom Lee Park had witnessed my gaffe. I opened the drain valve in the footwell so the water would drain out, and paddled the two-minute recovery interval before the next sprint. As the start time approached I reached down to close the drain valve, and the left blade of my paddle "caught a crab" in the water, and over I went to my left side. Wow. I hope this means I'm done flipping for the rest of the year.
With that silliness out of the way, I headed back north in the harbor and commenced my workout. I did a set of 12 three-minute pieces. For the first two minutes of each piece I kept the speed above 6.0 miles per hour on my G.P.S. device; then I took it up to around 7.5 mph for the next 40 seconds, and over 8.0 mph for the last 20 seconds. The toughest mental moments of the workout, especially in the second half, occurred at the end of each sprint, when my body really wanted to stop but I had to keep paddling hard enough to keep the speed over 6 mph.
The last several pieces were tough but overall I held up well. I hope a workout like this will pay off in my downwind race next month, where I can expect to be doing solid aerobic paddling with a lot of intermittent hard sprinting.
I was up bright and early this morning. I'd agreed to meet another local racer, Adam Davis, on the riverfront at 8:30 AM. Most mornings I go paddle between 9:30 and 10:30, and it takes an extra bit of gumption to get myself down there much earlier than that. But I never regret it when I do, and it was nice to beat the heat of the day today.
We did a loop around the Loosahatchie Bar. I may or may not have ever posted a map of this route in the past, but here's the one Adam's G.P.S. device generated today:
The Mississippi was flowing at 35.3 feet on the Memphis gauge this morning. At this level most of the Greenbelt Park is flooded, so we were able to avoid paddling against the stronger current as we passed through points 2 and 3. There was a barge rig headed upriver, and even though its waves were starting to peter out by the time we were ferrying across the main channel after point 4, we both managed to get a couple of brief rides. As usual, the hardest stretch was the slog against the brunt of the river's force though point 5. I was feeling some fatigue as we came back downriver, but we kept up a good, solid pace.
Between yesterday's workout and today's strong distance paddle with a few sprints thrown in, I'd say this has been a weekend I can feel good about.
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