Friday morning I did my last gym session before next weekend's race. As I've said here many times, gym work is my least favorite part of training, so it's nice to have a break from that this coming week.
This has been a chilly weekend, with Fahrenheit highs not much above 40 degrees. I think tonight we're supposed to drop into the 20s, and I hope that will be the last time for this season. Warmer days are supposed to arrive midweek. My race Saturday is at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where I presume the temperature will be even a few degrees warmer.
It was only just barely above freezing when I got up yesterday morning, but by the time I got down to the river it had warmed up into the 40s. The sun was out, and the breeze that was blowing wasn't too bad. I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did my last tough workout before race day: three sets of 20-second sprints with a decreasing rest interval. To wit: 20-second sprint/60-second rest/20-second sprint/50-second rest/20-second sprint/40-second rest/20-second sprint/30-second rest/20-second sprint/20-second rest/20-second sprint/10-second rest/20-second sprint. I did the first set with light resistance (one golf whiffle ball) on the boat, and the second and third sets with no resistance. I took a 5-minute break between sets. I was struggling to maintain good form by the last sprint of each set, but in general I felt strong.
This morning it was frigid and stayed that way. When I got to the river the temperature display in my car said it was a degree below freezing. There was a north wind blowing that wasn't particularly fierce but managed to penetrate my bones just the same. The sun was out again, but my marina has a roof on it and my dock is on the west side, meaning that in the morning it's completely in the shade. That's nice in the summertime but not on days like today. The worst part of paddling in cold weather is not the paddling itself but the chores on the dock before and after.
Once in the boat I paddled calmly for 50 minutes. I kept the intensity fairly low but I tried to focus on good precise strokes. When I returned to the dock it was apparently still below freezing: the water on my boat started to freeze as I hurried to get into dry clothes and store the boat back on its rack. It's stayed cold the rest of the day, with a high temperature of maybe 39 or 40. Let's get some warmer weather in here already! According to the forecast, that's supposed to happen around Wednesday.
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