Eagerly looking ahead

I've bought my plane ticket to Portland, Oregon.  The Gorge Downwind Championships are about an hour east of there at the town of Hood River.  The actual race will be July 18, 19, or 20, depending on which day has the best wind forecast.  I'm scheduled to fly out there on the 13th.  That's just three weeks from tomorrow, so the trip is beginning to feel like a real thing.

I'm feeling more or less back to normal in the health department.  I'm still coughing some, but not having coughing fits like I was a few days ago.  I'm also happy to report that the muscle achiness I was dealing with in my arms and shoulders a month or more ago seems to have run its course.

So, I'm feeling optimistic that I can get myself rounded into good form for the world-class event on the Columbia River.  I hope to put myself on a good diet of both "work" workouts (intervals, hard sprints, and so on) and "play" workouts (surfing towboat wakes and impromptu playing around out on the Mississippi) during the next three weeks.

My non-athletic life (also known as my job) has been rather crazy this week, but I was able to stick to my paddling schedule.  I paddled a loop of the harbor with Joe on Tuesday.  I went back to the riverfront yesterday planning to do a good "work" workout.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did a set of eight 1-minute pieces with three minutes recovery in between.  My target pace for each sprint was 8.4 miles per hour; that's about the speed required to break two minutes for one of my 450-meter bridge-to-bridge sprints.  So yesterday's workout was sort of a variation on the bridge-to-bridge workouts I've done earlier this season: each sprint was only about half the duration, but I did eight of them rather than four, with a shorter recovery interval.

All told, I'd say the workout went pretty well.  The sprints were definitely taxing, and my speed was falling to 8.2 or even 8.1 in the last several.  But I didn't completely fall apart like I did in those earlier workouts.  My form held up well, and I still had some "fight" in me at the end.  And I recovered quickly during the cool-down paddle.  By the time I was back on the dock I wasn't feeling like I'd ruined myself for the rest of the day.

I did rounds of the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and today.  I'm thinking I'll start up a new routine next week.


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