Sharpening An Axe

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. Abraham Lincoln.

Yesterday’s paddle was south into a 10 to 15 knot headwind. Doug calls me a sandbagger and says I always underestimate the difficulty of climbs and the strength of winds. I could be a habitual self-deprecator, but mostly I think - realistically enough - I’m 60 years old, female (remember that’s not sexism just realism), and have never been particularly physically gifted. It would take a lot to convince me that the Grade 20 climb I just sent was really Grade 24, or the wind was actually 30 knots and not a much more moderate 20 knots.

But, I came back and checked the wind observations yesterday and the wind I had pegged at 7 knots, at most 10 knots was actually in the 10 to 15 knot range. As expected, there was a bumpy sea. Three days of strong northerlies followed by a big southerly blow will do that. That’s good training for ocean paddling, paddling on the ocean in “conditions.” I threw in a few kilometres at tempo, my second tempo session for the week. The first was a running tempo workout.

Tempo is that pace that feels good, which is why lots of people overdo tempo, end up with a poor aerobic base and level out on a long and intractable capacity plateau, which is only relieved by going backwards and training at or below aerobic pace.

Steve Bechtel has written some simple but comprehensive articles on energy systems training, which, although targeted at rock climbers, provide at least a starting knowledge base for folks that don’t really understand that base training – be it basic strength training (there is a reason Pavel Tsatsouline calls his business Strong First), or basic aerobic capacity must come first.

This week’s statistics: seven days of mobility training, five core training sessions, three days strength training, one day on the climbing wall, 31 kilometres paddling (my ten day rotation is not finished yet), 40 kilometres on foot with 852 metres of elevation gain and 12 kilometres on the bike. Less volume than last week but more intensity with two tempo sessions and one session of all out sprint paddle intervals (zone five) one every kilometre for 14 kilometres.