Settling into some cold labor

Winter has made itself at home in the Mid South.  The extended forecast shows daytime Fahrenheit highs mostly in the 40s and overnight lows in the 20s and 30s.

I try not to dwell too much in this blog on my dislike of winter, because I know there are other parts of the world whose winters are much harsher than where I live.  But then again, if somebody from North Dakota, let's say, wants to get on my case over it ("Quit your whining!  40 degrees is WARM!!!!"), all I have to do is ask why North Dakotans take their winter vacations in Florida or the Bahamas or Cancún when they could simply come to Memphis and bask in our 40-degree bliss.  That'll shut that person right up.  Maybe.

In any case, the next six or eight weeks promise to be the least glamorous part of the training year.  At this time last year I had my trip to South Africa to look forward to, but this year there's not much I can do but put my head down and grind out lots of base miles, technique work, and resistance training, mostly in the harbor where there's protection from the wind a lower risk of an icy swim.

Yesterday it warmed up from around 39 degrees to 43 degrees during the 60 minutes I was in the boat.  The sky stayed mostly cloudy.  After a 10-minute warmup, I did the same workout we did on the afternoon of January 3 down in Florida, with the little golf-practice whiffle balls on my boat for resistance.  It was two sets of three 3-minute pieces with 4 minutes recovery.  I felt fine for the whole workout, and tried to take solid, explosive strokes throughout each piece.

I could tell first thing this morning that today would be nicer, for the simple reason that the sun was out.  And it wasn't quite as windy this morning as it's been since I returned from Florida.  I went to the river and did an ordinary paddle--no worrying over the stroke rate or anything like that.  I was in the boat for 70 minutes and did a brisk aerobic paddle.

I'm still discussing a training programme with Maks Frančeškin, and I'll report more on that here soon.

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