Strength, power, and endurance

I've mentioned my general feeling of lethargy since my return from Florida.  A new gym routine is one thing I've had to drag myself into kicking and screaming.  Friday morning I made my most serious effort yet to get something going, doing a couple of core exercises along with bench press with dumbbells on the stability ball and dumbbell rows chest-down on the stability ball.  One can always expect to get sore after new gym work, and by late Friday I was feeling it in my upper back and lats and triceps.

It was chilly Friday, but bright and sunny.  It dropped slightly below freezing overnight, but by the time I got to the river yesterday morning it had warmed up to around 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  I did a workout similar to one I did in Florida back on the 6th of this month: 8 x (2 minutes on, 1 min. off) at 60 strokes per minute with moderate resistance (one golf whiffle ball) on the boat followed by 6 x (2 min. on, 1 min. off) at 70 spm with no resistance.  I took an 8-minute break between those two sets, during which I paddled back to the dock and removed the resistance.  Once again, the objective was to concentrate as much power as possible in the catch and the early phase of each stroke.

It stayed sunny for much of yesterday before gradually clouding over.  We got some rain overnight, and this morning it was overcast and 43 degrees.  I went back to the river intending to paddle for 80 minutes.  I left the harbor and paddled up the Mississippi to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, then went back to the harbor where I figured paddling up to the north end and back down to the dock would just about fill up my allotted time.  But as I approached the area where the Memphis Queen Line boats are parked I saw another surfski paddler coming the other way.  It turned out to be Adam Davis, and he was planning to paddle down the Mississippi to the old bridges, up along the Arkansas bank to the HDB, and then back to the harbor.  I asked if I could join him and he said yes, and what might have been a rather dull, cheerless solitary paddle for me turned out to be very enjoyable.  I hadn't seen Adam in a long time and it was nice to have some company on the water as well as some motivation to paddle at a decent pace.  I figured paddling together would be safer for both of us as well: in the wintertime I tend to stick close to the harbor to lessen the likelihood of a swim in the frigid water.

Today's paddle ended up being more like 100 minutes for me.  I do hope to work in a few more longer paddles in the coming weeks: my first race in Ocean Springs is just over two months away, and it will be good to have some distance under my belt.

My arm muscles continue to have their ups and downs.  My friend Rob, the chiropractor up in New York, recommended a couple of stretch exercises to add to the ones I'd been doing.  I've also started taking a modest dose of ibuprofen, something I really don't want to do for any long period of time, but I've decided is worth a try to see if it makes any difference.

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