Tonight the kayak team met to do interval training. We were doing 5 sets of 0.5 mile interval with 10 minutes recovery between. The 10 minutes gives you plenty of time to paddle upstream to the start of the 0.5 mile section, drink some sports drink, and let your heart rate recover a bit. The GPS is awesome for this, since it will automatically stop the timer when you hit 0.5 miles, and then count down the 10 minute recovery.
One of my goals tonight was to keep my interval times consistent, and having constant feedback on distance travelled and time helped a lot. My times were 3:57, 3:58, 3:57, 3:58 and 3:56. It doesn’t get much more consistent than that. Sure, my times were about 40 seconds slower than the other guys on the team, but being heavier puts me at a huge disadvantage, especially in shallow water. And besides, I’m not really “A team” material, I just like hanging around with them.
It wasn’t until afterwards that it struck me that between the half mile paddle up, the half mile interval down, and the warm up and warm down, I paddled 6 fairly fast miles. Last year, even at the end of the season, a fast 6 mile work out was pretty long. So I’m making progress. My two goals for this season were to beat 20 minutes in the Baycreek 2 time time trail, and to finish the 9 miler at the Long Lake Long Boat Regatta. I’m not sure about that 20 minute goal – I have a feeling I’ll be striving for that one all year. But at this point I’m feeling like I could probably enter one of the early season 7-10 mile races and have a hope of a not too shabby finish. Maybe I should look at the “Round the Mountain” or “Tupper Lake 9 miler”?