I woke up sore Friday morning, definitely from the logging work I'd done Thursday afternoon, and probably also from the unfamiliar movements I'd done in my new whitewater boat Thursday morning. But as the morning went on I loosened up a bit, and before lunch I did a run and a gym session that felt good.
I did some more logging work Friday afternoon, and as a result I was very sore again yesterday morning. My lower back was killing me. When I got down to the river I spent a long time stretching on the dock and did a long, relaxed warmup in the boat, and that helped a lot. I paddled for 70 minutes, and for the 40 minutes from 0:15 to 0:55 I aimed for a stroke rate of 70 strokes per minute and tried to put good power into each stroke. I'm wondering whether 75 spm might be on the high side for my more-than-two-hour race coming up in July, but I figure adjusting downward will be easier than adjusting upward. In any case, it was a pretty good session and my back felt a lot better afterward than it had felt before.
This morning I paddled for 120 minutes. I didn't go for a particular stroke rate or intensity level, but I did try to take good precise strokes the whole time. In the first half hour I surfed some waves behind an upstream-moving barge rig; the rig was going pretty fast and the waves were hard to catch, but I did get a couple of decent rides. So there were a few hard sprints included in my otherwise steady paddle. I was definitely feeling some fatigue in the second hour and was tired the rest of the day.
The weather has been quite nice the last few days: partly to mostly sunny and not too warm or humid. I'm trying to savor it as we move ever closer to another Mid South summer.
As I mentioned in my last post, I got my M.R.I. done on Tuesday. I have an appointment with the doctor this coming Tuesday to find out what it tells us.
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