By Tuesday afternoon I was having some pretty bad pain in my right arm. The new strength routine includes dips, and I think they aggravated the ongoing problem I've been having up in the biceps/shoulder area. That area, along with my right wrist, has bothered me the rest of the week, continuing a now-yearlong trend of trouble. I think it's about time to seek advice from the chiropractor I occasionally go to... I need to find out if she's even seeing anybody in her office right now.
If there's any good news, I guess it's that the affected muscles don't seem to be directly involved in paddling. I've been able to paddle pretty comfortably through all this.
I mentioned in this week's photo feature that there's going to be a "virtual" event in place of the usual Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race. People can time themselves on their own 5000-meter courses and submit their times here on the Internet. It's strictly a "just for fun" sort of thing, it's free to enter, and anybody in the world may participate. Registration is here.
I plan to do this "virtual" race myself sometime in the next ten days. I hope I can get at least a couple of locals to join me so it won't be the sort of solitary time trial that's usually an exercise in pain. I believe the best way to make it fair to participants around the globe is to do it on an out-and-back flatwater course, so I've drawn this one up in the harbor:
The course starts and finishes at the magenta line in the bottom left corner of this image. The line is defined by a pair of utility poles on the cobblestones. 2500 meters to the north is the turnaround point, marked in the top right corner of the image above. The actual object is a concrete tower that was used for loading barges at the old LaFarge plant. If you want to get a better look at it, go to Google Maps and type in the coordinates 35°10'00.5"N 90°02'55.3"W.
I think overall I'm in really good shape; I've been paddling hard and enthusiastically and frequently all spring. But I don't know if I'm in the best racing shape, with that keen edge to my speed and power. In the last couple of weeks I've done several workouts in preparation for this "virtual" race. I went to the river yesterday intending to do some long sprints. I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, then paddled out of the harbor and up the Mississippi to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge. I did my first sprint from the bridge back to the mouth of the harbor. I didn't time myself, and it's hard to target a particular pace out in the big river's current, but I went for an intensity level comparable to a 500-meter sprint.
Back in the harbor I did sprints over three sections of the course mapped above. The first went from the start line to the southernmost bridge; I clocked 1 minute, 43 seconds over this distance of about 370 meters (that's an average speed of 3.59 meters per second). After paddling easy for a few minutes, I sprinted from the southernmost bridge to the middle bridge; this distance is about 450 meters, and my time was 2:02 (3.69 m/s). I then paddled easy up to the northeast corner of Harbortown Marina (the two greenish rectangles in the photo above), and timed myself from there to the turnaround point. That's about 770 meters, and my time was 3:43 (3.45 m/s).
The first ten minutes or so of yesterday's paddle was done in a heavy downpour. Then the rain moved out and by the end of the hour there were patches of blue sky here and there. The perfect weather of last weekend already feels like a distant memory, with the humidity now back to oppressive levels and the temperature pushing 90 on the Fahrenheit thermometer.
I did another round of the strength routine this morning, but skipped the dips out of concern for my ailing right arm. I think dips are a great body-weight exercise and this feeling that I can't or shouldn't do them is frustrating.
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