I started Friday with a gym session and then headed down to the river.
This is the time of year when Mother Nature teases out spring-like weather a little bit at a time. After gorgeous sunny days Wednesday and Thursday, we were back to the depressing stuff on Friday. It was around 52 degrees Fahrenheit when I got to the river, and that's not really that cold, but overcast skies and a chilly north breeze made it feel a lot worse.
In the boat I had a sprint-endurance workout to do: three sets of six (10 seconds on, 50 seconds off), all-out with flying starts. Maks told me to rest longer between the sets, so I started a new set every tenth minute, giving me 4 minutes and 50 seconds between the last sprint of one set and the first sprint of the next set. I aimed for a stroke rate that was high but controlled, and strove to get all my muscles--arms, legs, torso--firing in unison. Most of the sprints felt reasonably smooth, but with all kinds of tiny imperfections.
I did my sprints in the northern half of the harbor, and the two pelicans were nowhere to be seen. I hope they're in good health and they've simply resumed their northward migration.
Yesterday morning it was cool and breezy again, but the sun was out. Since I began Maks's program the usual pattern has been to have an easy session Saturday morning and a harder one Saturday afternoon, and that was the case once more yesterday. In the morning I paddled a "calm" 40 minutes. I paddled to the mouth of the harbor and then up the Mississippi most of the way to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge before coming back. As always I tried to take good strokes, and I also tried to savor the chance to paddle without a lot of technical stuff to think about.
By yesterday afternoon it had warmed up to around 60 degrees. The wind was still blowing, but after giving it a minute of thought on the dock I decided to ditch my pogies. Once I was in the boat, it was time to get down to business. The workout was two sets of (8 times 1 minute on/1 minute off at 60 strokes per minute and 8 times 1 minute on/2 minutes off at 80 spm). All pieces were to be done with "high power" on each stroke. Maks described it as "a technical albeit hard workout designed to make you feel the stroke power more and more." A few pieces in I was breathing somewhat hard, but it was more a muscle exercise. I held up pretty well but could feel my power fading by the last two 80 spm pieces. It was a long session--the workout took 80 minutes, plus 10 minutes for warm-up and 10 minutes for cool-down. I went home dead-dog tired, and as I fixed supper and wound down for the evening I was feeling huge fatigue in my upper torso.
Mother Nature teased out a little bit more nice weather today with sunshine, a light southerly wind, and a high in the 60s. This morning I did a "calm" 90-minute paddle during which I visited some parts of the Mississippi River I hadn't been to in a while. At 27.9 feet on the Memphis gauge the river is the highest it's been since last summer, and over on the Arkansas side it's possible to paddle in areas that were dry for most of the fall and winter. I crossed the river and paddled up into the lower reaches of the Loosahatchie Chute before heading back.
Maks told me to paddle at 60ish spm, and "just glide and make sure you don't forget about the technical aspects of paddling." Maintaining a stroke rate around 60 has become easy for me in the harbor, but paddling up the Mississippi I had to concentrate more because I tend to want to up the rate when paddling against the current. The same was true as I ferried across the river. In these places those "technical aspects of paddling" were more important than ever to keep the boat gliding and overcome the river's desire to carry me away to the south.
Over on the Arkansas side I was paddling flooded bottomland with less current to fight, but there were areas of squirrelly water where the river flowed over submerged wing dams. Balance was tricky there during the long pauses between strokes, and I had to draw on my whitewater experience to position my boat so that every stroke counted.
I returned to the harbor and paddled the last 15 minutes back to the dock feeling a deep fatigue from another fairly hefty week of training. I'm grateful for a day off tomorrow. Maks promises an easier plan for this coming week.
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