Clearwater Beach Sundown Friday Paddle

My wife and my college roommate are both from Clearwater. You can say C-dub is my adopted Florida home town. We try to get over here twice a month if we can. We got out of work early on Friday and made it to the beach by 3:30. Much to our surprise the Gulf was flat. I expected it to be pretty choppy since there is a storm out in the gulf. I also expected it to be cloudy since it was much of the day in O-town. However, we had a perfect sunset and paddle conditions. I am not spoiled by Florida quite yet, and I often pinch myself for the good fortune of having a perfect 72 degree beach afternoon while my family is freezing in Texas and covered in snow in Chicago-land.

My body was exhausted from the week of training and 5 a.m. wake up calls, but I couldn't resist paddling .65 miles south to Pier 60 from our location on north beach near the Palm Pavilion. Erica took some amazing photos as she strolled the beach and I tried not to fall in. Although the Gulf was pretty flat the swell of the Gulf still made it much more difficult compared to my usual lake paddles. We watched the Sun go down and i posed for some unbelievable photos in the sideshow below. We finished the perfect Friday afternoon and evening by meeting the Edwalls (Erica's parents) at Frenchy's Rockaway Grill and enjoyed natures color display as it fleeted to dusk. I rewarded my self with a Caribbean Grouper Sandwich, fruit, and a Shocktop. It doesn't get much better than an afternoon like this.
http://frenchysonline.com/ (Best Grouper Sandwich I have had in FL. I have tried dozens and nothing still tops this. Also, they will ship stone crab anywhere in the country! Season is not that much longer, get on it)

Coopers Bayou Clearwater FL

Coopers Bayou is located at 709 Bayshore Blvd 33759 in the Clearwater/Saftey Harbour area. A storm is moving and looks to push Stand Up Fitness's Manatee Paddle to Sunday so I rushed out to get this morning's workout in before it got too bad.

My intention today is to treat my paddle as a workout. I planned on paddeling intervals of 5 minutes as fast as possible and then doing sets of pushups, mountain climbers, squat thrusts, and trying out some yoga poses.. This is a great place to Paddle for many reasons. 1 It is usually calm due to its bay location. 2 It has mangrove mazes to search through. 3 The water is shallow so besides paddelers, only flats fisherman can get in there. 4 It is a bird lovers paradise with egrets, herons, pelicans, and spoonbills. 5 It's less than 10 minutes away from my in-laws house.

Here's one of the mangrove "bays" I made this my own YOW studio (Yoga On Water)


Nice Face. Warrior 2


Warrior 1. After being out in the chopy gulf yesterday my balance felt awesome. Thats another amazing thing about SUP is that I feel stronger, more balanced, and more fluid every single time i go out.


3 point downward dog. I got some work to do to look like Kim from Paddle Board Orlando. http://paddleboardorlando.com/


I'm not a master of understanding tides, but the water was signifiantly lower than last time I went out here. The water is normally up the mangroove roots and the oysters are not usually visible.


Water bird heavon.


Once again it was an amazing paddle.The shallownwess of the water and the wind threw of my plan to paddle fast. Every few strokes I would hit the bottom. I felt like I was a fisher man polling the flats at times. I was out there for just about an hour. I covered 2 miles of distance in 35 minutes. The rest of the time i practiced my yoga, did 100 pushups with 3 different hand positions, did 150 mountain climbers, and 25 squat thrusts. Glad i got my workout in it's getting nasty out. The manatee paddle as been pushed back to tomorrow afternoon. Hope all is having a great weekend.

Thursday's Training Paddle

As I mentioned in my post from yesterday, i was a little worn out. I have been working hard to get rid of my football season and holiday weight gain. I like to rationalize this weight gain as a bear storing weight to hibernate. Except I am an active bear so I store this weight to train hard from January-June to take advantage of the beautifully Florida Spring weather and get ready for Muddy Buddy. Enough excuses, but it's what us trainers call periodization. I took our newest group exercise class at the gym, Group Centergy, to get me loosened up so i had "the freedom to move." I once again felt like a human being after my client, Kelly, taught an amazing class. Centergy is pretty much choreographed yoga to music with a touch of pilates thrown in. Not quite as hard as yoga, but an awesome workout to work on my "most-ability" anyway.

(Muddy Buddy is a partnered mountain bike/ trail running race my buddy Jake and I dominate every year) (by dominate i mean 2nd place in the beast division 3 years in a row http://muddy-buddy.competitor.com/).

The ideal conditions from yesterday (Wednesday) had prevailed. It was by far the smoothest i had seen lake maitland. Perfect for my first attempt to do a perimeter paddle in which i followed the buoys around the outside of the lake. I had no idea how long it was but I was guessing around 5 miles.


I paddled 2 miles straight at a high tempo! My best distance and speed to this point at 31:23. That's where i was when I saw the Rollins College Crew Team down below. You can barely make them out due to the harsh back lighting. It was humorous to hear their coach yelling out cues over a megaphone as he trailed behind in small motorized boat. It was encouraging though because i tried to keep up with them.


I continued around the perimeter taking a 2 minute break every time I finished a mile. Here's a picture from my 2nd break. An example of the "I wish" houses located around the lake.


Overall I was very pleased with my performance I covered 4.74 miles is 1:15.33. With Breaks at mile 2,3, and 4. Between 15 and 16 min miles. It is my goal to be able to average 15 minute miles without stopping for the 9 mile Gulf Coast Championship May 22nd. I finished up my farthest continuous paddle to date with 50 push ups, some planks, and downward dogs. The fisherman at the dock was staring at me something fierce. As i pulled the board out of the water he said "you deserve a beer after all that." That bass master read my mind. See you next paddle.

Heading to Clearwater for some fun adventures over in the Gulf and Bay. Hopefully the manatee paddle doesn't get rained out.