On Friday I did a gym session and then went out and paddled on another chilly, breezy morning. But the sun was shining bright and the forecast said warmer weather was on the way, and that did a lot to elevate my mood.
After a long warmup paddle to the north end of the harbor, I commenced the workout: two sets of ten 15-second all-out sprints with 45 seconds recovery--"Close to a lactic workout!" said Maks. I did the first set, rested 5 minutes, and then did the second; indeed I did get "close" to going lactic without quite getting all the way there. My stroke rate in the first set was in the 110-120 strokes-per-minute range--that's about as high as I can go and still have some control. For the second set, I made a conscious decision to lower the rate into 100-110 territory and pull as hard on each stroke as I could. I don't think I sacrificed much speed (it's hard to measure that accurately over such a short sprint), and I was less winded at the end of each sprint.
Yesterday morning it was sunny again, and the wind had shifted to the south, a sign that the day would be warmer. I did a calm 40-minute paddle that I used to work on my stroke. The main problem is that I'm still punching too far forward with my top hand, and I need to keep it closer to my head so that I can catch the water at a smaller angle, making the whole working angle of the stroke bigger. That's how Maks describes it, and I mostly understand what he's telling me, but I could use some kind of diagram to get it fully. The drill Maks has suggested involves touching my ear with my top hand before each stroke, and yesterday morning it felt slightly less awkward that it had before, but it still didn't seem totally natural. Improvement to one's stroke is never accomplished in one day.
A bear of a workout was on tap for yesterday afternoon: four timed 1000-meter pieces. There was a south wind blowing maybe 6 or 7 knots, so as a warmup I paddled to the mouth of the harbor in order to do the 1000s with the wind at my back. The pieces were to be done in the A2 zone, with a goal "to repeat four similar efforts," so I aimed for a rate in the low 80s; I ended up doing them mostly around 82-86 spm.
I started a new 1000 every 10th minute. The session turned out to be nowhere near as painful as the two 2000-meter pieces I did back on March 4. The pieces were hard, sure, but I just knocked them out, and that was that. My times, along with the 500-meter splits, were as follows: 2:33/5:02, 2:30/4:52, 2:24/4:49, 2:25/4:47.
The weather was lovely yesterday afternoon, and there was more of the same this morning. I wrapped up the latest training cycle with a "distance trial" of sorts: a "strong" 60-minute paddle in the A1 zone. Maks made the purpose clear: "How much can you do in 60 minutes? ...last workout of the harder cycle, you can give it your all!" So I went out and did just that. I tried to keep the stroke rate in the 60s, and put as much power as I could into each stroke. About 15 minutes in I had to stop and back paddle because it felt like something was caught on my rudder; and later on I had to stop briefly several times to wipe sweat out of my eyes. Besides those little setbacks I kept the boat moving reasonably well. The last 10 minutes was the toughest, as my power seemed just about depleted. When an hour had elapsed, my G.P.S. device reported this information:
The time is in the upper left corner (1.00 hour) and the distance is at lower left (10.88 kilometers, or about 6.76 miles). I don't know why it says I'm moving at 0.1 mile per hour, since I was sitting on the dock when I took this photo.
In any case, I'm probably more tired from this workout than I was after those four 1000s yesterday. Today's session was a grind. I'm grateful to have a day off coming tomorrow.
For more information on what this blog is about, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment