Friday morning I was feeling some soreness from the previous day's gym routine, but it wasn't too bad. I went down to the river and paddled a calm 50 minutes. The smoky haze from the wildfires out West was the thickest I'd seen since getting home a week earlier.
Yesterday morning was sunnier but there was still quite a bit of haze hanging in the air. I still had some soreness but I could tell it was running its course. I got in the boat and did a speed session: three sets of four 10-second sprints at 2-minute intervals. Maks told me to use flying starts and try to reach as high a stroke rate as I could, noting that I might not actually be as fast as I would be with a more controlled stroke rate, but that the point of the workout was "to activate fast muscle tissues and move fast." I moved as fast as I could and was getting up to around 130 strokes per minute, according to my cadence sensor. In between sets I gave myself ten minutes of relaxed paddling.
This morning I went down to the riverfront and did six sets of (2 minutes at 50 spm/1 min. at 80 spm/1 min. at 50 spm/1 min. at 80 spm/2 min. rest). The objective, as with most of these "contrast" workouts, was to find a good grip on the water at the lower stroke rate and then replicating it at the higher stroke rate.
A front came through overnight and this morning we finally had some relief from the sweltering heat that had gripped the Mid South since I got home from my trip. It looks like the cooler temperatures will last for most of the coming week.
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