Picture-perfect weather

By Friday afternoon some truly delightful weather had settled into the Mid South: sunshine with a pleasant breeze and low humidity.  The kind of weather that prompts me to turn off the central air conditioning and open the windows at my house.  When I got to the river yesterday morning there were already folks out all over town walking, running, riding bikes, and generally enjoying the outdoors.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then paddled a steady relaxed pace out on the river.  At 27.9 feet on the Memphis gauge, the Mississippi was at a good level for watching the people in Greenbelt Park and for paddling through some wooded bottomland over on the Arkansas side.

Another perfect day was shaping up when I went down to paddle this morning.  I warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and headed up the river.  It had risen to 28.2 feet, about as high as it can get before it starts flooding the Greenbelt Park.  Once again quite a few people were in the park enjoying the gorgeous weather.

Once I reached the park I started the workout I'd planned for the day: twelve 30-second sprints at 3-minute intervals.  I did the first five sprints going upstream before heading back downriver.  Going downstream I did two more sprints, then took a break because a barge rig was coming upriver producing some nice-looking waves.  They really were about as perfect as the ones I surfed back on May 16, but they were moving a bit faster and I had trouble catching them.  Several times I surfed for 5-10 seconds right at a wave's crest before the wave passed under me.  I sprinted hard but in the end managed just one pretty good ride of maybe 20 seconds.

After all that I considered calling my workout complete, but then I thought, nah... one enjoys the fun stuff on top of, not instead of, the prescribed workout.  So I did two more of my 30-second sprints heading downriver toward the mouth of the harbor, and did the last three in the harbor.  I got back to the dock feeling good about the amount of speed I'd packed into my 80 minutes in the boat.

The extended forecast shows some Fahrenheit highs in the 90s starting around the middle of this coming week, so I'd better enjoy the rest of this lovely weather while we've got it.  Summer is just about here.


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