Paddling easy and hard and everything in between

On Friday morning I did a gym session with a new set of exercises, then headed down to the river.

This weekend has featured weather that's pretty typical of late winter and early spring here: rain. It poured down rain in the early hours of Friday, and when I got to the river there was still a steady drizzle falling and a gusty south wind blowing.  I had a speed workout to do, and it's hard to feel speedy in such conditions.  But the reality of any outdoor sport is that you do the best you can with whatever conditions you have.

However, by the time I finished warming up the rain had moved out.  For the next ten minutes after that the wind swirled around so I couldn't tell what direction it was coming from, and then it died down too.  Just like that, I had ideal conditions for some sprinting.

The workout was two sets of (50-meter sprint/2-minute rest/100m sprint/3-minute rest/150m sprint/5-minute rest/100m sprint/3-minute rest/50m sprint/2-minute rest).  Maks didn't say whether to do flying starts or start from rest, so I made the executive decision to start from rest because I hadn't practiced my starts in a long time.  Maks also didn't specify a stroke rate, so I spent the workout searching for the highest rate at which I could paddle smooth and controlled.  Looking back, I think 100-102 strokes per minute might be what I should shoot for.  Because the ratio of rest to work was high, I was rarely breathing hard; however, my arms were feeling like rubber by the last several sprints in the second set.  The new gym exercises I'd just done were part of the reason, I'm sure.

More rain fell overnight and yesterday morning it was overcast and about 52 degrees Fahrenheit.  Down on the riverfront the harbor was smooth as glass.  I did two sets of 5 x (2 minutes at 56 spm/1 minute at 68 spm/1 minute rest).  This was primarily a technical exercise, not particularly taxing.  The harder workout would come in the afternoon.

Strong thunderstorms were in the forecast for the late afternoon, so I tried to get back to the river sooner rather than later.  Conditions were still calm as I started warming up.  The workout was an imposing one, at least on paper: two sets of four 500-meter pieces at 80-84 spm, starting every sixth minute.  I started each piece from rest.  My times were all in the 2:30-2:40 range, so I had 3:20-3:30 of recovery time; I gave myself an additional two minutes between the sets.

Once I'd gotten over the how-much-is-this-gonna-hurt jitters, the workout turned out to be reasonably enjoyable.  After doing the first couple of 500s around 2:39, I started looking for ways to go faster, which mostly meant putting more power into each stroke while being careful to stay in the specified stroke-rate range.  My last piece was my fastest, at 2:30.

Some thunder and lightning moved in during the break between sets, and I kept an eye on my watch after each lightning flash.  According to the conventional wisdom that thunder travels a mile in five seconds, the lightning was always at least a mile away, though a couple of times it was only just.  I did my last two 500s in a hard drizzle, and by the time I'd finished my cool-down paddle back to the dock it had grown into a downpour.  I was happy to get home and jump in a hot shower.

More thunderstorms were in the forecast for today.  A check of the Internet radar showed that I had time to paddle this morning before they arrived.  I went down to the river and paddled in some intermittent drizzle but nothing too oppressive.  The temperature was around 70 degrees Fahrenheit--warm air ahead of the storm front.  The workout was four sets of (6 minutes at 60 spm/4 minutes at 64 spm/3 minutes at 68 spm/2 minutes at 72 spm).  There was 1 minute recovery between pieces and 2 minutes between sets.  This was a longer endurance session and my biggest challenge was pushing through the muscle fatigue accumulated through the last few days.

And... this long training week has come to an end at last.  I'm beat to the socks and plan to make the most of my day off tomorrow before starting something new on Tuesday.

After flowing below 10 feet on the Memphis gauge for most of the fall and winter, the Mississippi River is on a big rise as a result of all the snow and ice and rain that have fallen in its watershed over the last couple of weeks.  When I paddled Friday morning it was at 11.5 feet, and by this morning it had risen to 15.3.  It's forecast to rise to 30 feet over the next couple of weeks, and I expect that figure to be revised upward once today's storm system moves into the Tennessee and Ohio basins.

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A new gym routine

It's time for something new in the gym (aka my living room).  Here's what I plan to do for the next while:

1.  Ab crunches with a Smart Bell

2.  Combination cleans & military press

3.  Stability ball back extension (demonstrated by Lindsey at 1:15 of this video)

4.  Lunges with dumbbells

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Back with a vengeance

I woke up Monday morning feeling some soreness in my arms.  I guess paddling on Sunday caught my body off guard after eight days out of the boat.

The harbor was showing signs of thawing by Monday, but it was still nowhere near paddleable, so again I went up to the north end of Mud Island to find some liquid water.  I paddled up the Wolf River and found it almost completely ice-free.

Monday is usually a day off for me, but this week Maks gave me a Monday workout to make up for the long break.  He made it a hard one, too--you might even say it was 90-proof!  It was three sets of four 90-second pieces at 90 strokes per minute with 90 seconds recovery.  The middle set was to be done with "little resistance" (I made it a single golf whiffle ball tied to the hull), the first and third sets with no resistance.

After so many low-stroke-rate workouts, 90 spm was a shock to the system.  It was downright brutal with the resistance on my boat; one thing I've noticed about paddling with resistance is that it's hard not to paddle with a low stroke rate.  I sort of wondered whether my one whiffle ball was more than what Maks considers "little resistance," especially in combination with the snowmelt-swollen Wolf River current I was paddling against.  I did the last three pieces coming back down the Wolf, and they were noticeably less stressful than the previous nine had been.

Tuesday morning I was expecting to do another session at the alternate training site, but when I got downtown I was pleasantly surprised to find the harbor nearly ice-free.  While it was fun to paddle in a different place for a couple of days, the novelty was wearing off fast, due largely to the hassle of moving my boat on and off the car and not having the familiar environs of the dock as my staging area.  I'm quite aware that I'm spoiled--many paddlers do all their workouts transporting the boat to and from the water, after all.  But I was very happy to return to my cushy home base just the same.  And of course I am paying for the privilege.

Tuesday's workout was less intense than Monday's in terms of stroke rate, but I thought it was ultimately just as tiring.  I did four sets of (5 minutes at 64 spm/2 minutes at 76 spm/3 minutes at 64 spm/2 minutes at 76 spm).  It was quite an endurance session to do on top of Monday's hard workout.

Yesterday's workout was six sets of (4 minutes at 72 spm with resistance on the boat/3 minutes rest/2 minutes at 56 spm without resistance, but at maximum power/3 minutes rest).  Maks said to "feel the power on the blade with resistance, and try feeling the same power without it while on a lower stroke rate."  I did indeed notice the power in both cases.  The workout turned out to be not as taxing as the previous couple, though fatigue was setting in by the fifth set.  I could feel my power leaving me in the final 56-spm piece, just like Superman feels when he opens a package of Kryptonite that Lex Luthor has sent him in the mail.

The weather for the first half of the week was a very nice change from the ten straight days of sub-freezing temperatures we'd had.  The skies were mostly sunny and the temperature rose into the mid 60s on the Fahrenheit thermometer.  A front came though last night and today was not so lovely--mostly cloudy with a north wind and a high in the 50s.  But it's still a lot nicer than what we had last week.

Today's session was a "strong" 60 minutes in what Maks calls the "A1" stroke-rate range (less than 75 spm, more or less).  Maks added a note that this was "to clear your head and make those lungs work a bit ;)."  Of course, Maks well knew that my lungs had been working plenty... hence the little "winky face."  Anyway, it felt good just to go out and paddle without any intervals or any technical stuff to think about beyond general stroke form.  I believe that my stroke rate for my normal cruising pace has gone down a bit: back in December I measured it at about 72 spm, but today it rarely exceeded 68 spm, and today's paddle was a bit harder than a casual cruise.

Whew... this is a long week.  And the weekend promises more exhaustion, with five sessions (gym session included) in three days.

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Monday photo feature

The snow accumulation we had this past week was the second-largest the city of Memphis has had in my lifetime.  But I've seen quite a few "lesser" snows.  Joe Royer shot this photo of me on a snowy day in 2003.

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Saying goodbye to the bitter cold

That Wednesday evening snowstorm added a fairly substantial amount of snow to the already above-average accumulation we had here in Memphis.  Here's a pair of photos of my back stairs before Wednesday's snow and after:

This street in my neighborhood could be a street someplace like Buffalo or the Twin Cities:

As weary of all this as I was, I still had to go out and get some exercise.  I also had to go check on a rental property I own where there had been problems with the central heat and some frozen pipes.  The rental property is on the far side of Overton Park just west of my house, so Thursday morning I hit the Old Forest Trail through the park.  I have to say that it was absolutely beautiful.  I tried to put aside all my worries about missed paddling and frozen pipes and malfunctioning heating systems, and just savor this experience that I have so rarely had as a resident of a southern-ish latitude.

Yesterday the temperature rose above the freezing point for the first time in ten days, reaching 40 degrees Fahrenheit by the late afternoon.  It was still only 25 degrees in the morning, so I stayed in and did a gym session.  I also exchanged several e-mails with Maks, who sent me a training plan for the coming week, and that helped get me excited about being back in the boat.  I have yet to speak to Maks in person, but in his e-mail correspondence he's always very upbeat and encouraging, and I appreciate that.  I expect it's a real boost for his Slovenian athletes, too.

After the thawing that took place yesterday, and with the temperature expected to rise into the 50s today, it was time to get back in the boat at last.  I had a feeling the harbor would still be frozen up, so I loaded up one of the surfskis in my garage with the intention of putting directly onto the Mississippi River up at the north end of Mud Island.  It turned out that was the right call, because the harbor looked like this:

Those rocks that I'd thrown onto the ice on Wednesday, whose picture I included in my last post?  They hadn't melted through the ice yet:

On up to the north end of Mud Island I went, to the parking lot that serves as the staging area for the annual Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  The lot was still completely covered in snow:

As I drove down the entrance ramp to the lot, I wondered whether I would be able to get back up it.  But that was a worry for later, because I was ready to paddle!  I carried my boat down the ramp, got situated, and paddled up to the mouth of the Wolf River.  I continued up the Wolf to get in a good 10-minute warmup.  There were some ice floes on the Wolf and by the time I was 1000 meters up they were beginning to choke off the open water, so I turned around and commenced my workout, doing most of it out on the Mississippi.  I did eight 5-minute pieces with 1 minute recovery; the first two and last two pieces were to be done at 60 strokes per minute, while the middle four were to be done at 64 spm.  There was a pretty good south wind blowing and the river was choppy, but I was pleased with my ability to maintain the stroke rate in spite of that distraction.  As always, I tried to make every stroke a solid one, and worked on the technical aspects that Maks and I have discussed.  Pretty soon I need to get somebody to shoot some new video of me so we can evaluate my stroke again.

Once the workout was done I cooled down for ten minutes plus, and returned to the boat ramp.  The sun was shining bright, and what might normally have been an annoying breeze felt pretty good after the long stretch of sub-freezing days we'd had.  I savored the weather as I changed into dry clothes in the back of my truck.

I started the engine and prepared to face the moment of truth about getting back up that ramp.  But lo!  Look who showed up!!!!

Anybody need my company in Vegas?

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An extra-large Arctic blast

It's now been a week since the temperature was last above the freezing point here at Memphis.  For the last several days the daytime Fahrenheit temperature was in the teens, and it dropped to 1 degree Fahrenheit yesterday morning.  Today the high was around 23 or 24 degrees, and I never thought I'd regard such temperatures as a relief of a sort.

During this frigid stretch we have had an ice storm and two snow storms.  The second snow storm is falling as I write this.  All told, we'll probably end up with a little over a foot of snow.  For this part of the country, that's a lot.

Before the heaviest snow started today, I decided that the streets were clear enough to risk a trip out to replenish a few grocery items.  There's a grocery store next to the marina where I keep my boat, so I decided to go there and see what kind of shape the riverfront was in.

Not surprisingly, the harbor is frozen up.  Here's how it looked this morning:

My boat is the white surfski above two green rec boats at the left side of the photo.

I discovered that the ice is quite thick--probably thick enough to walk on, though I didn't try it myself.  I picked up a couple of decent-size rocks and threw them out on the ice.  I lobbed them up so they would come down with some force.  The ice didn't give at all.  I might as well have been throwing them on a concrete slab.

Meanwhile, the Mississippi River is flowing along just fine.  As far as I could tell, it's still quite liquid; I didn't see any ice floes out there.

As far as training goes, I'm obviously limited.  I'm still doing some "vigorous" hiking out in the snow, and I've also done a couple of extra gym sessions.  How soon I'll be able to paddle again remains to be seen.  According to the current forecast, the temperature will finally rise back above freezing this Saturday, and get up into the mid to high 50s by the middle of next week.  It might take several days for the harbor to thaw, but maybe I can take one of the boats from my garage and put directly on the Mississippi in the interim.

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Monday photo feature

I mentioned in my last post that I'm engaging in some vigorous hiking while the weather has made paddling all but impossible.  It's a chance to reacquaint myself with the city park just west of my house, and that's not such a bad thing.  The park contains a small tract of old-growth forest, and I walked through there this morning as the snow fell heavily.

I haven't been down to the riverfront since Friday, but I don't see how there couldn't be some ice forming in the harbor.  It's been below 20 degrees Fahrenheit for several days now, and the current forecast says it'll drop to zero overnight tonight.  With the temperature predicted to stay below freezing until Saturday, I doubt I'll be paddling anytime soon.  It's frustrating, but I have to remind myself that training interruptions like this are temporary and will be forgotten a couple of weeks later.  For now, I need to appreciate the lovely scenes like the one above.

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I might be out of the boat for a while

According to the current forecast, the temperature will stay below freezing until next Friday.  The harshest stretch appears to be from now through Tuesday: there's been light but steady snowfall all day today, and more significant snow is supposed to move in tonight and tomorrow.  The temperature is supposed to drop to 3 degrees Fahrenheit in the early hours of Tuesday morning.  We're not expected to rise back above freezing until Saturday.  It has become obvious that my ability to paddle will be severely limited for a while.  This winter storm is big enough that the national news outlets are talking about it, so I suppose that makes me feel a little better about putting the training on hold.

It was a balmy 28 degrees when I went down to the river Friday morning.  Thinking I could avoid the hassle of a frozen rudder, I took one of the surfskis that live in my garage down there with me.  But I discovered a major flaw in that idea: the steep ramp down to the marina was coated in ice.  It was tricky business just walking down it with my bag and paddle; trying to carry a boat down it would likely result in a broken boat, with a broken bone or two to boot.  I decided to try my luck with the boat I keep down on the dock.  It greeted me thusly:

I managed to get the ropes untied without too much trouble.  The boat was frozen to its pads on the rack, and I gingerly wrenched it free, with only thin bits of minicell coming off with the boat.  As expected, the rudder was frozen.  I positioned it as close to center as I could so that I'd at least have a skeg.

Off I went toward the south end of the harbor, and the boat tracked a straight line quite well.  When I turned around and paddled into the north wind, I had a bit more trouble.  At times I had to do sweeps on one side to keep the boat steered the way I wanted.

I began the workout that Maks had assigned for Saturday morning: three sets of two 5-minute pieces with 1 minute recovery.  I did the first set at 56 strokes per minute, the second at 60 spm, and the third at 64 spm. The first set was lower-quality than it should have been because of the frozen rudder, but the rudder came free right at the end of the second 5-minute piece, so I was able to do the rest of the workout with no such hindrances.  I actually felt pretty good in the boat, especially after I'd reached the harbor's north end and was headed back south with a tailwind.  The only unpleasant things left to do were back at the dock--changing out of my wet clothes and getting the boat put away before my hands were completely numb.

After this session I sent an e-mail to Maks letting him know of the situation here.  Yesterday morning I received a reply in which he told me to skip paddling for a couple of days and do some light aerobic activity instead.  Yesterday I took a vigorous hike of a maybe 4 or 5 thousand meters around my part of town, including the big city park that I hadn't visited in months even though it sits a short distance west of my house.

Today I did a gym session and otherwise tried to be ready for hunkering down once the blizzard arrives.  I hope to get in some snowy hikes over the next several days.

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Old Man Winter lowers the boom

I was up bright and early Tuesday morning.  On most days I start the morning with some non-athletic work and then get to the river between 9 and 10 o'clock, but on Tuesday a contractor was scheduled to meet me at my house between 10 o'clock and noon, so I went downtown early and was in the boat just before eight.  It was overcast and 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  I was slightly underdressed because in my haste to leave the house I'd forgotten to bring a shell to pull on over my one shirt, so I had all the more reason to get the prescribed workout done without any dilly-dallying around.

The workout was three sets of (4 minutes at 56 strokes per minute, 2 minutes at 76 spm, 3 minutes at 64 spm, and 1 minute at 80 spm).  The recovery was 1 minute after each piece and 2 minutes between sets.  While not unlike other workouts I've done in the last several weeks, this one was shorter because this entire week is intended to be lighter than the first few that Maks drew up.  Per Maks's instructions, I worked to apply power and generate glide during the lower-stroke-rate pieces, and carry that power into the higher-stroke-rate ones while staying smooth.

Yesterday I paddled on another dreary day with the temperature in the high 30s.  The workout was three sets of four 3-minute pieces at 66 spm.  The recovery was 1 minute between pieces and 2 minutes between sets.  I did the second set with resistance on the boat, and the first and third with out resistance.  It was another of the many workouts I'm doing these days intended to build stroke power.

Up to this point, we'd mostly been having a mild winter in Memphis and the Mid South.  There had been plenty of gloomy cold days, sure, but we hadn't yet had a day with a sub-freezing high temperature or any significant frozen precipitation.  That changed in the early hours of this morning.  Freezing rain fell and by dawn the city was covered in a layer of ice.  It was not the worst ice storm we've ever had; there were power outages and trees down here and there, but nothing like what happened here in February of 1994.  I opted to stay close to home, just the same.  Streets were rife with hazards this morning and the bridge over to Mud Island, where my boat is stored, was closed.  Instead of paddling today I did the gym session that I normally do on Friday.

Getting in the boat will likely be a challenge for the next few days.  Unfortunately I don't have a kayak erg, and I don't know of anybody in my area who has one.  According to the current forecast, the daily high temperatures look like this: 31 degrees tomorrow, 27 Saturday, 17 Sunday, 15 Monday, and 24 Tuesday.  The ropes that secure my boat to its rack down at the dock are surely frozen solid right now, so my best move is probably to use one of my other surfskis that live in my garage here at home.  And then there's the stress of simply trying to paddle in sub-freezing weather.  Getting in just two of my four not-yet-done paddling sessions for this week might be an impressive feat.

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Monday photo feature

At this time last year I was enjoying the South African summer, and the cold weather we're having in the Mid South right now is evoking wistful memories of that trip.

I was on the Cape Peninsula south of Cape Town.  The mid-summer weather there wasn't blazing hot--I'd say the daily Fahrenheit highs were in the low to mid 80s while I was there.  But it was quite humid, and I guess that's no great surprise in a coastal region like that.

One afternoon I took a hike up to Elsie's Peak on the southern edge of the town of Fish Hoek.  Pictured above is my sweat-soaked tee shirt just after I'd returned from that trek.

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All kinds of work in all kinds of weather

I talked with Maks about my failure to hurt as badly as he wanted me to in Thursday's workout.  He said we would have adjust the base stroke rate upward in workouts like that to get me into the anaerobic zone.  So... I asked for stiffer punishment, and it sounds like Maks is happy to deliver.  But I guess that's okay--I like to paddle hard.  Even more than that, I like to find ways to make my boat go faster.

In other news, I got an e-mail from federal court informing me that "All federal trial jury activity has been suspended until further notice by order of the Court."  There was no further explanation--maybe COVID-19 is the reason, maybe it's something else--but the upshot is that they will not be needing my services as a juror this month.  So that adventure came to an end before it had even started.

I started Friday with a gym session, and then headed downtown.  A front had moved through the Mid South behind those showers on Thursday, and after an overnight freeze it was 39 degrees Fahrenheit when I got to the river Friday morning.  But the sun was out and there was very little wind, making it a more pleasant day overall for paddling than Thursday had been.  The harbor was as smooth as glass, and that was ideal for a workout that put a premium on glide.

I put a few barbell plates amounting to approximately 5 kilograms in the boat, and commenced paddling.  After a warmup, I did eight 6-minute pieces at 60 strokes per minute with 2 minutes recovery.  Low-stroke-rate workouts like this are designed to build strength and power, I was feeling it plenty as I proceeded through it on top of my gym session.  I tried to get as much glide as I could from each stroke; the extra weight in the boat seems to enhance the glide.

Yesterday morning I did an easy 40-minute paddle under an overcast sky with a temperature in the mid 40s.  The Saturday morning paddle is usually a warmup for the afternoon session, and I try to use it for work on my stroke.  This time I kept my rate around 64-68 spm.

By yesterday afternoon it had warmed up into the mid 50s.  While the sky had some patches of blue, it was still mostly cloudy.  It was time for some sprinting.  The workout was eight sets, and each set was as follows: 200 meters at 80 spm with resistance on the boat; 2 minutes recovery; a 6-second flying-start sprint without the resistance; 2 minutes recovery.  I felt sort of sloppy in the first two sets but smoothed out after that.  Maks said I should apply maximum power to each stroke in the 200s while being mindful of good technique, and that the 6-second sprints were a way to "wake up" the body and nervous system as this challenging week nears its end.

The temperature took a dive overnight.  When I got to the river this morning it was 33 degrees, and a north wind made it feel about ten degrees colder.  Sunday is when I usually do longer endurance sessions, and that was the case again today.  I did four sets of (6 minutes at 60 spm/1 minute recovery/4 minutes at 64 spm/1 minute recovery/3 minutes at 68 spm/2 minutes recovery/2 minutes at 72 spm/2 minutes recovery). I tried to put consistent power into each stroke regardless of the rate.  I feel like I'm getting more and more used to the subtle differences among cadences.  I was starting to feel some fatigue in the last set but overall I held up pretty well.

By the time I got back to the car it had warmed up all the way to 34 degrees.  The forecast for the coming week looks sort of grim, with sub-freezing daily highs toward the end of the week.  February is often our worst winter month, and it looks like that'll be the case again this year.

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Working hard and feeling (mostly) good

It stayed windy and cold all the way through Tuesday.  When I got to the river Tuesday morning it was 36 degrees Fahrenheit with a biting north breeze.  I paddled toward the north end of the harbor where I would have the most wind protection.

The workout was three 5-minute pieces at 60 strokes per minute (1 minute recovery), three 3-minute pieces at 72 spm (2 minutes recovery), and three 2-minute pieces at 86 spm (3 minutes recovery).  Maks urged me to "stay calm and smooth when going to higher stroke rates."  The 2-minute pieces were tough: they felt a lot like a set of my bridge-to-bridge sprints.  While I felt like I could do the lower-stroke-rate pieces indefinitely, I was glad to have that last 2-minute piece behind me.

Tuesday's session was my first with my new Vaaka Cadence Sensor.  It was nice not to have to occupy part of my brain with counting strokes.  Even so, I tried to memorize each cadence and rely on the sensor's readout as little as possible.

Yesterday we finally had a bright sunny day with not so much wind.  The temperature was on its way to a high in the 50s, though it was still in the 30s when I arrived at the river in the morning.  I warmed up and did a set of five 10-minute pieces with 2 minutes recovery.  The prescribed stroke rate varied subtly among the pieces: 60 spm, then 64, then 68, then 64, then 60.  The workout was uncomplicated enough that I decided to do some of it out on the Mississippi and add some squirrelly water into the mix.

This morning the wind had returned.  It was from the south this time, so from the dock I headed for the south end of the harbor so I could do most of the workout coming back north with the wind at my back.  After a 10-minute warmup, I began.  The workout was three sets of (4 minutes at 76 spm/1 minute rest/3 minutes at 76 spm/1 minute rest/1 minute at 80 spm).  I did the first 4-minute piece against the wind, then did the rest with a tailwind.  Each new set started 16 minutes after the previous one had started.

Maks promised this would be "A properly hard workout... Anaerobic session, exhaustion will set in."  Was he right?  Well... it certainly wasn't easy, and I was plenty tired by the end, but it never felt anaerobic to me.  I pulled on each stroke with as much power as I could, but the stroke rates were quite a bit lower than what usually makes me go lactic.  Maybe I wasn't doing it right, but I don't know how I could have made it harder... I'll just have to see what Maks has to say about it.  It's the wee hours of Friday morning in Slovenia as I write this, so it'll be tomorrow next time we chat by e-mail.

It was overcast while I paddled, but not freezing cold--today's high was in the mid 50s.  Rain was in the forecast, but it didn't start falling until I was in the car heading home, and that's always a nice feeling.

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Monday photo feature

Boo Turner of Seattle, Washington, finishes the 2005 FIBArk Downriver Race on the Arkansas River at Cotopaxi, Colorado.  FIBArk ("First In Boating on the Arkansas") is the longest-running whitewater race in the United States.  The starting line is 26 miles upriver in Salida.

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Finishing off January

I started Friday morning with a gym session, then headed down to the river under a sunny sky and a Fahrenheit temperature in the high 30s.  The workout was two sets of eight 10-second sprints with 50 seconds recovery.  Maks described it as a "sprint endurance" workout in which the power and stroke rate should be consistent throughout.  He told me to take flying starts, and "don't go overboard" with the stroke rate because "power is dominant during sprinting."  So I aimed for 90 strokes per minute (15 strokes per 10-second sprint).  At first I was tending more toward 96 to 100 spm, but by the second set I had settled in and was hitting 90 every time.  I put all the power I possibly could into each stroke while keeping the boat running smoothly.  The workout went by in the blink of an eye, it seemed--it was over just a half-hour after I'd left the dock.  I spent the rest of my hour in the boat working on my stroke, trying to make the improvements I talked about in my last post.  It was during this period that I started to feel the muscle fatigue from the workout.

I got some good news Friday evening: the United States Court for the Western District of Tennessee will not need my services as a juror any sooner than February 15.  So I have two more weeks in which my schedule depends on nobody but me.

Yesterday morning I paddled for 50 minutes, during which I did eight 4-minute pieces with one minute recovery.  Maks said these pieces should be "calm, technical" efforts in the "A1" stroke-rate range (60-75 spm).  So I tried to stay relaxed while focusing on the forward stroke components I'm trying to improve and taking solid strokes that generated smooth glide.  Whenever I checked my stroke rate it was in the mid 60s, but I didn't think too hard about what my rate was as long as it was in "A1" territory.

The weather forecasters had predicted yesterday would be a rainy day, but in the morning I didn't see anything more than a light sprinkle.  The real precipitation arrived a little after 2 o'clock, and I did most of my afternoon session in a light but steady rain.  I did three sets of six 1-minute pieces at 80 spm, with 1 minute recovery.  The first and third sets were done with resistance on the boat, the second without.  Maks urged me to apply the same amount of power throughout the workout, regardless of the presence or absence of resistance.  He said I should feel like I'm flying in the second set, and he was right.  The hardest part of the workout was the third set, with the resistance back on.

I was thoroughly worn out after yesterday's work, and still felt some weariness this morning.  It took a little extra gumption to get moving, and the weather wasn't helping: though the rain had moved out and the temperature wasn't that cold (50 degrees), a swirling northwest wind was making a blustery mess of things and out on the water it had the feel of a more oppressive winter day.

Today's workout was a 75-minute distance paddle for which the only instruction was "be efficient."  Since starting this new training regime I've been staying mostly in the harbor because many of the workouts are so technical that I don't need the distraction of the swirly currents out on the Mississippi.  Today I was hoping to do this relaxed endurance session on the river, but after five minutes fully exposed to the howling wind out there I retreated to the more sheltered environs.  I tried to focus on my stroke, keeping my top hand near my head and searching for the water pressure against my blade.

As soon as my 75 minutes expired I was out of the boat and making a beeline for my dry clothes on the dock.  Chilled to the core, I felt grateful to be off until Tuesday.  Maks tells me the coming week will be "the hardest one yet" but promises an easier week after that.

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Searching for good strokes at various rates

I began my second week of Maks Frančeškin-directed training with three sets of (6 minutes at 60 strokes per minute/1 minute rest/4 minutes at 64 spm/1 minute rest/3 minutes at 68 spm/1 minute rest/2 minutes at 72 spm/3 minutes rest).  Once again I wasn't particularly winded, but by the last set I was really feeling it in my arms, shoulders, and legs.  When I reported this information to Maks, he replied, "I am happy to hear that the workout had the 'empty' arms effect on you.  Those kinds of workouts really result in big power gains."  Sounds good to me!

Before doing the workout I got Joe to shoot some video of me from the dock so that Maks could take another look at my stroke.  Maks said I was doing a better job of keeping my top hand closer to my head but was still not anchoring the blade thoroughly before commencing each stroke.  I'd noticed that myself while watching the video, and it irked me because I'd long thought I was doing a decent job of planting the blade.  I asked Maks if there was any particular feedback I should look for that would tell me how well I'm doing it.  He didn't quite have the magic pill I was hoping for, but he reminded me that "Honestly, the best/easiest way to know when you are anchoring is to feel the pressure. The better you are anchored/catching, the harder it will feel on your arms."  And so, the search continues for forward-stroke perfection.  Oh well... every paddler's stroke, just like every human being, will always be a work in progress.

The first couple of days of this week featured pleasantly mild weather, but that changed yesterday morning.  When I got to the river it was 39 degrees Fahrenheit--not deathly cold, really, but not much fun to go paddling in under an overcast sky with a 10-mile-per-hour north wind blowing and a mixture of rain and sleet falling.  Letting a forced smile be my umbrella, I performed the day's workout: four sets of (5 minutes at 62 spm, 3 minutes at 66 spm, 2 minutes at 70 spm).  Maks didn't specify a recovery interval, so I backed off on the intensity a bit and did the four sets straight through.  I strove to take solid strokes and make the boat glide, for that had been Maks's main instruction for this workout: "glide, glide, glide."

This morning it was colder--36 degrees when I got to the river.  But it wasn't raining, and the clouds were giving way to some sunshine.  It was time for a "resistance" session, so I took my little whiffle-ball-equipped bungee cord down to the dock with me and put it on the boat.  The workout was three sets of three 3-minute pieces with 4 minutes recovery.  The pieces were to be done at 76-78 spm.  Maks said to take a longer rest between sets, so I made that 5 minutes.  The resistance on the boat forced me to apply greater power to each stroke, and that taxed my muscles; meanwhile, the somewhat higher stroke rate got me breathing harder, too.  Per Maks's instructions, I tried to keep my technique the same as it would have been without resistance.

Halfway through my second week under Maks's tutelage, there's plenty of hard work going on.  The good news is that I believe my body is starting to get used to the lower stroke rates and the subtle differences among them, and it's nice to see my patience paying off that way.  The fact is, I've actually been doing this sort of training almost a month now, as the workouts we did at camp down in Florida were heavily Maks-influenced if not written by Maks himself.

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Monday photo feature

My new coach, Maks Frančeškin, lives in the Slovenian capital city of Ljubljana, but he spends a lot of time northwest of there in the Alpine valley of Planica running various training camps.  The area is best known for its Olympic nordic center and its famous ski-flying hill, but I assume there must be a river in there somewhere and that's where Maks's athletes train.  ***UPDATE January 27: Maks tells me they're not paddling there, but engaging in intense cross-training: "12-14 workouts of xc skiing, gym and swimming each week."

Maks sent me the photo above to show me how cold it is in his current location.  It makes me feel fortunate to be paddling in temperatures around 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  That sure is pretty country, however... could there be a trip to Slovenia in my future?

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A busy first week in my new programme

When I got up yesterday morning it was freezing, quite literally--the temperature was about 30 degrees Fahrenheit.  But there was no time to worry over the weather, because I had two in-the-boat sessions on the schedule.

The morning session was essentially a warmup for the afternoon one: 40 minutes paddling at what Maks calls the "A1 zone"--60-75 strokes per minute.  I've ordered a Vaaka Cadence Sensor, but until it arrives I'm trying to get better counting strokes and familiarize myself with the various rates.  Yesterday morning I paddled for 10 minutes at 60 spm (easy to do because it's one stroke per second), 10 minutes at 68-70 spm, 10 minutes at 64-66 spm, and 10 minutes at 72-75 spm.  I also continued working on the stroke modifications that Maks recommended.  I stayed in the northern half of the harbor where the wooded banks offered a bit more protection from the biting north wind.

By the afternoon it had warmed up into the low 50s, and the wind had abated.  The prescribed workout was eight pairs of 250-meter pieces with two minutes recovery, the first piece of each pair being done at 84 spm and the second one at 40 spm.

I was expecting it to be an exhausting affair--it's easy to jump to that conclusion when I see sixteen 250s on paper--but once it was underway, I found I was rarely breathing hard.  Instead, it was the concentration required as I tried to get the stroke rate right and take good strokes that made the workout tiring.  I was putting maximum power into each stroke during the 40 spm pieces, and that stressed my muscles pretty thoroughly.

I don't paddle in the afternoon very often, but as I left the river yesterday I was reminded of one of the benefits, especially in the wintertime: the late-afternoon sky reflecting off a calm Mississippi River is beautiful.

On tap this morning was six sets of (5 minutes at 60 spm/1 minute rest/3 minutes at 64 spm/1 minute rest/2 minutes at 68 spm/2 minutes rest).  I did this while paddling up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River and back.  Intermittent showers made me good and wet and chilled by the time I was finished.  The biggest challenge of the workout was the subtle degrees of change from one stroke rate to the next--each time it was a matter of adding just one stroke per fifteen seconds.  Because of that I tried to stay dead-on to each rate, and so I felt like I was expending a lot more brain energy than muscle energy.

Tomorrow is a day off... finally.  It remains to be seen how sustainable this number of sessions per week is going to be for the long term, given all the other "adulting" stuff I have to do.  But for now I want to jump in with both feet and see what happens.  As I mentioned in my previous post, all this "new" stuff has me on the verge of sensory overload, and I'm trying to be patient while my body and brain internalize it all.  I'm definitely putting some faith in Maks to know what he's doing, but it's not a blind faith: down in Florida I saw first-hand how much Chris Hipgrave has improved, and then there's the fact that in the last decade or so the Slovenian team, with which Maks is affiliated, has been right up among the top paddlesports national teams in the world.

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Mmmmm. Cake.

On this day nine years ago, My Training Blog by Elmore put up its very first post.  Thanks to everybody who has encouraged me to keep the blog going this long.

I provide some deeper pontification on the occasion in this post from two years ago.

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A new gym routine

1.  Pushups

2.  4-way abdominals

3.  Hindu squats

4.  Pelvic raises

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Contracting out

Well, I have joined the ranks of athletes who have Internet coaches.  For a monthly fee, Slovenian coach Maks Frančeškin will be writing workouts for me as well as offering technical guidance.

It's quite a change for a guy who, except for attending an occasional training camp, has been self-coached throughout his canoe and kayak racing career.  And it's also forcing some changes to my routine: in recent years I've been a four-days-a-week paddler most of the time, but the training plan Maks has prepared calls for six days a week, with two sessions on one of those days.  I may eventually have to discuss with Maks what I'm capable of fitting in alongside my non-athletic obligations, but at least for now I want to dive in and immerse myself.  Maybe this new challenge will help the winter weeks pass by more quickly and put me in position for a really good race season.

Actually, I might have to back off a bit after next week: I've been summoned to jury duty in federal court for the month of February.  All I know right now is that I must be "on call" for the entire month, so how my life will be interrupted remains to be seen.  I hope I'll at least have a chance to adapt to some of the technical changes this new training regime is imposing.

As I mentioned before, another of Maks's "virtual" athletes is Chris Hipgrave, who led the training camp down in Florida I recently attended.  And so this new training adventure is a continuation of the things we were doing down there.  But Maks also wants to spend the early stages of our athlete-coach relationship getting a lot of feedback from me and basically getting to know me.

One of the first things he asked me to do was send him video of myself paddling at a couple of different stroke rates.  I've learned over the years that no matter how good I think my stroke is, I should always expect some criticism whenever an expert coach takes a look at it.  Sure enough, while Maks thought my rotation at the hips and pelvis was good and that I was doing a good job of using my upper hand to control the working angle of the blade, he pointed out that I was starting my stroke before the blade was fully submerged, and also that I was moving my top hand too far forward, away from my head, resulting in a smaller anchoring angle, a shorter stroke, and less rotation and power from the legs.

It took me a while to understand exactly what Maks was saying--I've always learned best when a coach is right next to me and walking me through every step.  But Maks sent me videos of several of his top athletes in Slovenia, and after studying them for a while I began to see that I was sort punching forward with my top hand while Maks's athletes kept their top hands near their heads.

I've been working on that in the boat for the last several days.  Even a small change to your stroke makes paddling seem much harder for a while.  Getting your body to do something unfamiliar adds another layer of stress.  Another added stressor is paddling at the various stroke rates that Maks's workouts call for.  Until I get myself one of those Vaaka Cadence Sensors, I'm using the age-old method of counting my strokes for 15 seconds and multiplying that by four.  So my brain is having to process a lot more information than usual when I paddle.

On Wednesday I did eight 5-minute pieces with one minute recovery at 64-66 strokes per minute.  I did this workout with extra weight (about 5 kilograms of barbell plates) in the space fore of my footboard.  Maks explained that the extra weight was to make me feel more pressure on my blade and improve my glide (What's the proper physics term for that?  Momentum, maybe?).  I could definitely feel both things going on.

Yesterday I did three cycles of 4 minutes at 76 spm, 2 minutes at 72 spm, and 1 minute at 84 spm.  There was one minute recovery in between pieces, and the cycles started at 14-minute intervals.  Maks instructed, "Try keeping the same power through the whole workout.  Last minute is meant to be a hard one!  Find the smoothness and relaxed feeling through the longer reps."

Under this new training regime there's just one gym session per week, and at least for now, Friday is gym day.  I'm keeping it simple and trying to focus on core exercises, leg exercises, and "pre-hab" exercises that target the muscles that oppose those used in paddling.  My new routine is here.

After doing my gym this morning, I headed to the river and did today's workout: two sets of (5 x 3' on/1' off at 45 spm and 5 x 1' on/1' off at 80 spm).  All told I think the workout went okay, but 45 spm is a very low stroke rate and it wasn't until the second set that I started to get the rhythm down.  The point of the workout, as described by Maks, was to "find the grip and water pressure on the blade at the lower stroke rate, then try transferring this same power and technique to the higher rate."  I think I did that pretty well.

I'll just add this remark about these low-stroke-rate sessions: in a surfski my legs and feet are exposed to the elements, and that longer pause between strokes means longer moments of water dripping off the blades onto my legs and feet.  Not fun in the wintertime!  It wasn't ridiculously cold today, but a chilly north wind was blowing pretty hard, and I couldn't wait to get back to the dock and into dry clothes.

One last note: Maks counts strokes on both sides in strokes-per-minute figures--in other words, a stroke on the left and a stroke on the right count as two strokes.  This is different from how I've always done it.  When I mention my 8-stroke sprints, for instance, I mean eight cycles of left strokes and right strokes. Maks would consider them "16-stroke sprints."  So this is yet one more thing I'm having to get used to.

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