The long and the short of it

Yesterday started with sub-freezing temperatures, but the sun was shining bright, and it's remarkable how much more motivated that makes me feel.  I was in the mood to do a longer paddle, and with the Mississippi River flowing at just under 35 feet on the Memphis gauge, I had plenty of liquid canvas to paint with my boat.

It had warmed up to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit by the time I got to the river.  I got in the boat, warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, paddled up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, continued up the Wolf to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge, and then re-traced that route back to the dock.

I did a couple of impromptu long surges along the way.  While paddling up the Mississippi I surged from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the mouth of the Wolf, and on the Wolf I surged from the Second Street bridge up to the Danny Thomas bridge and then back to the Second Street bridge.  By the end of that latter surge I was getting pretty tired.  It had been quite a few months since I'd done a hard two-hour paddle--the last one was probably late last summer.  Yesterday I was reminded how these longer grinds wear me down.  I felt like a slug for the rest of the day.

I wanted to paddle hard again today, but this time it would be something short and sweet.  I warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and then did twelve 30-second sprints at 3-minute intervals.  I was lethargic at first but it didn't take my body long to warm up to the task.  The sprints felt good and strong and by the end of my 60 minutes in the boat I felt better than I'd felt going in.

My two weekend paddles provide an interesting contrast.  A few years ago I read a post on Ron Lugbill's blog in which he cited research that suggests that workouts like the one I did today are actually better for improving aerobic fitness than long slogs like yesterday's.  In recent years I've been making my paddling sessions shorter--typically an hour rather than the 90 or 100 minutes that had previously been my staple--with more speed work.  I can't say I've noticed any decline in my overall endurance.  Certainly, shorter sessions work better for an ordinary person with a lot of other things to do, as well as for an older person who doesn't need the kind of volume he did when he was younger.  I do still incorporate a few longer-distance paddles each year, just to hedge my bets, I suppose.  But if I can get some effective training from less time in the boat, I'm happy to do so.  And as we've seen this weekend, I sure feel a lot better after the shorter workouts.


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