On Friday I did my usual short run and did a gym session.
The weather has been somewhat unseasonably cool, with Fahrenheit highs in the low to mid 80s. The wind has shifted to the south, and that's bringing in more humidity. The haze in the air has lessened some, but is still around. I now understand that it is indeed caused by the Canadian wildfires. We've also had some scattered showers in the area, but in recent weeks it has been dry in the watersheds upstream of here, and the Mississippi River is quite low as a result. By Friday the river had dipped below zero on the Memphis gauge, and that's notable because May and June are typically the high-water season around here, with gauge readings of 30 feet or higher. I hope we're not in for another record-low period like we had last fall, but that's what will happen if the dry conditions persist in the Missouri and Ohio and upper Mississippi drainages.
Yesterday I paddled for 70 minutes. During the 50-minute period from 0:10 to 1:00, I maintained a stroke rate of 70 strokes per minute, and that made it a taxing long tempo session. I think the fatigue was more mental than anything--it's hard to push the pace when you're all by yourself. It's sort of the in-the-boat version of training on an erg, the way you're constantly looking down at the digital readout making sure you're on the stroke rate.
That's why I was happy to leave the G.P.S. device turned off today, and paddle without worrying about stroke rate or speed or any of that stuff. I was tired and lethargic in the boat, and it amounted to a long recovery session, though I did pay attention to good stroke mechanics and rotation. I paddled up the river along the Tennessee bank about as far as the DeWitt Spain Airport, and then came back. It took me not quite two hours.
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