The northeastern United States is enjoying a very pleasant weather pattern right now. It moved into the area of Maine I was staying in Sunday morning after heavy rain the night before. The weather had previously been sort of humid and not as nice as one might expect Maine to be in the summertime.
Yesterday morning I found a public boat launch near the mouth of the Piscataqua River at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and soon enough I was in the boat paddling along on a lovely sunny day.
With a race coming up this Saturday, there's not any training I can do at this point that will make any difference. I do in fact have solid base fitness after all those weeks of training for the Blackburn Challenge, but having spent the last couple of weeks paddling only sporadically, what I lack is the higher-intensity gear I might need in a six-mile race.
So I'm trying to get out and polish up my speed a bit, and I did some of that in the first half-hour of my 70-minute paddle. After warming up I did eight 12-stroke maximum-intensity sprints at two-minute intervals. By the last one I could feel a bit of fatigue creeping in, so I knew that was the time to stop. I then just paddled around, wandering out onto the Atlantic just a little, where the water was rough in places from large boats moving in and out of the harbor. I'm pretty sure I crossed the state line at least once, so I got a bit more Maine paddling in with this primarily New Hampshire paddling session.
After paddling yesterday I continued the journey back in the direction of my home. I stopped in the Hudson Valley region to visit my buddy Rob for a couple of more days, and that's where I am now.
Rob lives across the road from a nice-looking lake, but it's surrounded by private property and the only public access easement is a narrow, steep, rocky embankment that I wasn't sure I wanted to carry my surfski down. So this morning I went to another lake that Rob recommended, White Pond, located some 15 minutes away. This body of water is one of the many reservoirs that dot the suburbs and exurbs north of New York City: some are part of the big city's water supply network, others provide water to smaller towns, and some might just be for recreation. In any case, White Pond was a nice place to enjoy another beautiful morning, and it didn't hurt that there was no access fee. I paddled for 60 minutes and did another six of those 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals.
Tomorrow morning I'll get back on the road and continue working my way west and south. I expect there will be some hotter temperatures to greet me sooner or later.
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