This training session is dedicated to STG2 (SEAL) Matthew G Alexson who lost his life in Afghanistan in 2005. I hate interval training plan a simple.Today’s training session was all about intervals and Rocky and Peanut ( if you are new to the blog see my post about pain management) were in a full-scale battle. Intervals are just not fun at all and doing them alone is especially challenging. When I was training with GitUrDun I at least had someone to compete with and that competition made the interval a little interesting. Not now, it is counting strokes, watching the heart rate monitor, dealing with the pain, and getting through the distance. I got through the 5 miles of intervals which ended up being 20 intervals of 150 strokes and then a rest interval of 30 strokes. My average speed was 5.1 MPH. Probably would have been a little higher but I had a pretty good wind in my face  through half of the session. At times I come across people on the water who are really curious about what I am doing. Especially the guys on big boats who come across me out in the open water. On the long distance paddles I try to take the time to talk to them both because I appreciate their interest and it also helps breakup the paddle. Today’s encounter was kind of interesting. I am paddling down the channel, wide open, in the middle of an interval, with my head down and cranking out the strokes, when lo and behold I have a young man start paddling a canoe across the channel and across my bow. The other odd thing is he is not making a real big effort to get across. I ended up kicking the rudder over, swerving the boat to his stern, missing him, yet still hammer out the strokes, and so winded that I sound like a hurricane. As I go by he ask ” Hey man how are you doing?  ”  REALLY !  Rocky turned his attention away from Peanut and was ready to jump on the poor young man. Sometimes I just don’t get it. We have the whole bay, I am in the middle of the channel, in the middle of a workout and this happens. Oh well I had two more intervals to crane out so he didn’t get a lot of chat time. In fact it was ZERO chat time. Intervals are painful for me but at least they were over after the workout. I think about the pain that STG2 (SEAL) Alexson’s family experienced when he didn’t come home and the fact that the pain didn’t end after an hour. A donation to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation will help provide a college education to the children of fallen special operations warriors such as STG2 (SEAL) Alexson.   http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/billwhale/ufc2012