A 3-minute kilometer

The hot weather relented a bit on Friday.  This weekend the Fahrenheit highs have been in the 80s, with bits of rain here and there.

I did a gym session Friday.  Yesterday morning I was back in the boat looking to up the intensity a bit.  I usually do measured intervals in the harbor, but this time I decided to try something different and do several 1000-meter pieces out on the Mississippi.  Not knowing the exact speed of the river's current (at yesterday's level of 23.5 feet on the Memphis gauge, I'm guessing it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 kilometers per hour), I wasn't sure how fast I could do a kilometer, but I thought I'd see if I could do it in 3 minutes--that's an average speed of 20 kph.

I didn't quite succeed in the first two pieces: I clocked 3:15-3:20 for both.  At times I would go 20.5 kph or faster, but at other times I was slower.  The current on the Mississippi is anything but uniform; there are boils and swirls and little eddies and stuff that can slow the boat down.  For the third piece I managed to maximize the help I got from the river and finished in 3:00 flat.

I started the 1000s at every 6th minute, so my recovery intervals were between 2.5 and 3 minutes.  The workout was as taxing as a 1000-meter workout on flatwater.  If the river was in fact flowing at 8 kph, then I had to generate 12 kph of my own to move at 20 kph.  12 kph on flatwater would get me through a kilometer in 5 minutes, a benchmark I'm always shooting for.  12 kph out on the river is probably more taxing than 12 kph in the harbor because of the extra balance-and-control challenges.

I was very tired in the boat today.  I did a smooth, steady 80 minutes out on the river, and I hope that'll help me recover for the week ahead.

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