Friday was a day for stressing some muscles. It started with a gym session, after which I went to the river for a hard resistance workout. I did six 150-meter pieces in the A3 (more than 90 strokes per minute) zone. Maks said do them with "big resistance," so I slid all three of my golf whiffle balls under the boat. The session was hard. Not lactic-acid hard--each piece took me between 45 and 50 seconds, and starting every sixth minute, I had plenty of time for my body to recover for the next piece--but hard on the muscles. Maks urged me to look for a stroke rate that struck the right balance among intensity, speed, and power; I did the first several up near 100 spm, while for the second three I tried to ease the rate down below 95.
Yesterday morning I put some extra weight in my boat and commenced paddling. I did four sets of (3 minutes on/1 minute off) at 48-50 spm, and four sets of (3 minutes on/1 minute off) at 60 spm. 48-50 spm is quite a low stroke rate, and the biggest nuisance is that there's plenty of time between strokes for water to drip off my blade and onto my feet. I had a nice puddle going after a half-hour or so. It was cool--around 60 degrees Fahrenheit--but fortunately not freezing cold. The upside of the low stroke rate is that it gave me a chance to work on my stroke mechanics: I had time to make sure I was immersing my blade while my top hand was near my ear. Meanwhile, 60 spm is not a very high stroke rate either, but it felt high after paddling at 48-50.
That was just a warmup for a more stark juxtaposition of stroke rates yesterday afternoon. The workout was four sets of (4 minutes at 60 spm/2 minutes at 80 spm/3 minutes at 64 spm/1 minute at 84 spm/2 minutes rest).
I started the first set in the harbor and continued it as I headed out onto the Mississippi. There was a barge rig heading upriver and creating some nice-looking waves. When I finished the first set, I hit "pause" on my workout and ferried out to see what kind of surfing I could do. The towboat was a fair distance upstream of me and I couldn't get to the best waves, but with a lot of hard sprints I managed a handful of brief rides on the smaller bumps. I finally tore myself away and returned my attention to the 75 percent of my workout that remained. I started the second set out on the river but quickly returned to the harbor where I would have no more distractions. It wasn't until the third set that my body had settled down from the surfing and my head was back into the task at hand.
As the weather and the water both get warmer, those towboat wakes will be more and more tempting. Oh well... at least today it didn't stop me from completing the assigned workout. By the time I was back at the dock I had that pleasantly tired feeling after laying down a pile of hard work on the Memphis riverfront. Supper tasted good last night, and the night's sleep was even better.
I was definitely tired this morning as I settled into the usual Sunday longer paddle. I did four sets of (6 minutes at 56 spm/4 minutes at 60 spm/3 minutes at 64 spm/2 minutes at 68 spm). Maks encouraged me to use this session "to 'fix' all the little glitches that have happened to the stroke during an intensive week." Once again I focused on keeping my top hand near my head at the catch. The lower the stroke rate, the easier this was to do. Another thing I spent some time with was trying to move my body fluidly throughout each stroke, and that was harder to do at the lower stroke rates because of the long pause between strokes.
Once again, Friday through Sunday was the part of the week that wore me down. A gym session and four in-the-boat workouts (and some wake surfing, too!) is a lot to cram into three days, at least for this 53-year-old non-world-class talent. I'll be savoring tomorrow's day off.
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