Hochiem to Cuero

Great day on the river. I saw a bald eagle up close. Pretty cool. The carb loading helped a bunch. I didn't fade at all. What I mean by carb loading. I went off my diet on Friday and ate some pizza for lunch, and had pasta, bread, fruit and whatever I could stuff my face with. I was miserable I was so full. But it worked. When you paddle at around 4 mph you expend about 400 calories an hour. But your body can only absorb 250 calories an hour. So you get behind pretty quick. The idea is to load up a couple days before to help sustain your energy level. We paddled almost 8 hours, or 3200 calories burned. I made sure I was drinking a type of Gatorade every hour and eating something every 2 hours.

The weather perfect, and we the music going to keep us on pace. I had Garth playing and Greg and I were singing and we were in sync. Our time today, 7 hrs 54 minutes. Average speed 4.9 mph. Everytime we have paddled we have gotten faster. From 4.2 to 4.9 mph. The prelim race is next week. I think we are ready. 4.9 mph is good, real good. I think our strategy is going to be to stay around 4.9 or 5 plus mph and just wear our opposition down. I'm pumped about that possibly.

I'm not so tired or as sore as I have been in the past. I think the conditioning and running during the plus paddling these distances is starting to pay off. We'll see. The adventure continues and I'm standing inside the fire.