Working hard in a broad spectrum of temperatures

The temperature plummeted on Monday as expected, and Tuesday was pretty nippy as well.  When I went down to the Greenbelt Park Tuesday morning to do my dry-land routine, it was 41 degrees Fahrenheit--not just god-awful frigid, but not very warm either.  I got busy and knocked out my workout of running (on the flat and on an uphill grade) and core exercises.

It was chilly again Wednesday morning when I got back in the boat, but it was warming up toward a high in the mid 50s.  Three barge rigs were moving up the Mississippi River when I reached the mouth of the harbor, and while the air and water were too cold for me to get into the heart of their wakes, I did play around on the smaller waves that were radiating outward toward the Tennessee bank.  I was able to get some brief rides on these little bumps, but my right arm bothered me a bit during the hard sprints.  Back in the harbor I strove for rotation and leg drive to keep the pressure off my arm muscles.

I was in the boat again today with much warmer weather: the temperature would rise into the mid 60s by the afternoon.  After warming up, I did four of my bridge-to-bridge sprints, starting every 8th minute.  My times were 2:17, 2:14, 2:11, and 2:10.  I think the first one was slower because I wasn't entirely warmed up.  It was encouraging to get faster as the workout went on, but I'm hoping to get my cardiovascular system in a better place before I leave town in three weeks.  I know I'm in good shape when I recover quickly from each hard effort in an interval workout--that is, when my heart rate drops and my breathing settles down in short order.  Today I was breathing hard for longer than I would prefer after each sprint.  I'm confident I can get where I want to be in another week or two, however.

It looks like we'll get some rain tomorrow, followed by cooler weather over the weekend.  But as the South Africa draws ever closer, motivation doesn't feel like a problem for me these days.

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Monday photo feature

Here's a shot from 2002 or '03: Joe Royer took this picture of me out on the Mississippi River on a snowy day in Memphis.

Frigid weather has returned to the Mid South for the time being.  But a photo like this one serves as a reminder that it could always be worse.

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Making the most of friendly weather

The weirdly warm weather has continued, with the temperature rising above 70 degrees Fahrenheit for five days in a row.  The party's just about over, however: it's supposed to plunge into the 20s overnight and not reach 40 degrees tomorrow.

I did a little workout in the boat Thursday: eight times (1 minute on, 4 minutes off).  I aimed to paddle between 80 and 85 strokes per minute in the "on" intervals.  It was part of my slow, careful process of adapting my body to the sort of high-turnover efforts I'll need in South Africa a month from now.

That workout, along with Wednesday's hard dry-land routine, had me feeling tired on Friday.  The balmy weather prompted me to do something I don't normally do this time of year: ride my bike.  I rode the Greater Memphis Greenline out to Shelby Farms and back, and because I was really tired I let it be just a "tour" rather than a serious athletic effort.

I was still a little on the tired side yesterday, so I did a fairly easy 50-minute paddle.  This morning I was ready to rev the engines a little more, and with a strong south wind generating some small waves out on the Mississippi, I went out there to see what I could do with them.  The answer was not much, and since I was also underdressed for contact with the chilly water, I didn't stay out there long.  Back in the harbor I zigzagged back and forth many times to practice balance and glide in beam conditions.

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Short pants in December

Right now we're experiencing some very un-December-like weather in the Mid South.  Today the Fahrenheit temperature rose into the mid 70s, and is expected to keep doing so through the weekend.  Something about a high-pressure system drawing warm air up here from the Gulf of Mexico.

When I paddled yesterday, and when I did my dry-land routine today, I did so in shorts.  I got some brisk cold water splashes while paddling, but today I was sweating profusely while running and doing core exercises.  The Gulf air is humid, just like in the summertime.

I paddled for an hour yesterday, maintaining a steady pace with three long surges.  I could feel the soreness in my arm, but it wasn't bad.  As for today, I was feeling sluggish as I went down to the Greenbelt Park, and I wondered if I had a full workout in me.  But once I got going I kept myself moving from one exercise to the next, and before I knew it I was finished.  It actually took me some ten minutes longer to do the workout than it usually does, and I attribute that to the weather: when it's freezing cold outside I waste no time at all because I'm eager to get it done so I can go someplace warm, while today I probably lingered a bit more between exercises in the pleasant weather.  I think I still kept myself moving pretty efficiently, however.

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Monday photo feature

A week ago yesterday, the annual Cape Point Challenge took place on the waters I'll be paddling about a month from now.

The course varies some from year to year, depending on the wind and other conditions, but the map above shows what the racers did this year.  The peninsula is south of the city of Cape Town; locals often refer to it as the "Deep South," not to be confused with our region here in the U.S. that includes states like Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana.  The town of Fish Hoek, where the race finished, is where I'll be based during my participation in the downwind camp hosted by the brothers Dawid and Jasper Mocke.

The Cape Point Challenge is definitely a long-distance endeavor.  The fastest boats finished this year's race just under four hours.  Based on my experience competing against some of the people who completed the race, I'm guessing I would have taken the better part of six hours to finish.  That makes me think this event is probably not for me, but surfski paddlers on the Western Cape of South Africa regard it with utmost reverence.

When I visited the area nearly four years ago, I had the opportunity to paddle from Platboom Bay to Buffels Bay.  Though it's just a small portion of this year's Cape Point Challenge course, it felt like a good solid day of paddling to me.

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Keeping the effort going

It's been another decent week as I continue working as hard as I can while keeping the stress on my upper right arm to a minimum.

After an hour of steady paddling on Tuesday, I was back in the boat Thursday for a varied-pace workout.  I paddled at a little over 60 strokes per minute for three minutes, then did 90 seconds around 72 spm, and finally 30 seconds at about 84 spm.  I did eight of these five-minute pieces in between a 15-minute warmup and a 5-minute cooldown.  My arm felt pretty good most of the time: 84 strokes per minute is low enough for me to have good control, and as long as I have control I can keep my ailing muscle out of the act of paddling.  It's when I get up over 100 spm that I start to feel the pain in my arm, and I may have to do that from time to time while chasing runs in South Africa.

Thursday was a rainy day, but I got my workout in that morning before the foul weather moved in.  It's always satisfying when I manage to do that.

By Friday morning the rain had moved out and chillier weather had moved in.  I went down to the Greenbelt Park and did my dry-land routine under sunny skies and a temperature around 41 degrees Fahrenheit.

It quickly warmed up to a high in the mid 60s Saturday.  I was back in the boat, paddling a strong tempo for 40 minutes in between a 10-minute warmup and a 10-minute cooldown.

Yesterday was not so balmy, and I had to paddle in a chilly north wind with the temperature below 50 degrees.  I paddled steady and focused on taking good strokes.

My departure for the southern hemisphere is now less than five weeks away.  I hope my body will cooperate with my desire to so some higher intensity work in the weeks to come.

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Monday photo feature

It's been at least 20 years since I last saw Albert Mitchum.  But learning he had passed away last week was a stiff gut-punch nevertheless.

By the time I got into whitewater slalom racing in the mid 1990s, Albert's peak racing years were winding down.  But he had a lot to show for it.  He was a regular contender for a spot on the U.S. national team, and he had seen elite-level international competition in some half-dozen World Cup events.

Albert decided to hang up his paddle after the 1996 U.S. Olympic Team trials, but he found he couldn't walk away entirely.  By 1998 he was entering some club races again, and he trained himself back up to compete in the 2000 Olympic trials.

I had known who Albert was earlier in the decade, but it wasn't until this latter period that I really got to know him.  He was very generous with his knowledge of slalom technique, and as a self-coached athlete I appreciated that very much.  He also was quite willing to discuss his skills in home construction; I was only just beginning to dabble in woodworking, and I was eager to learn whatever I could about any kind of building.  So we found plenty of conversation to bond over.

The 2000 trials was Albert's last "serious" slalom race, but for the next few years he continued to show up at events within a reasonable drive of his home in southeast Tennessee.  I usually saw him at the Alabama Cup races on the Locust Fork and Mulberry Fork rivers, and it was there that I had one of my proudest moments as a slalom racer when I managed to beat him in '02 or '03.  Sure, his peak years were long past by then, and he probably wasn't really even training, but hey... the guy had raced in World Cups, and that was something I could only dream of.  He of course accepted the result graciously, because that's the kind of person he was.

Soon enough, we both moved on to other things and our paths no longer crossed.  But I always remembered him as one of the kindest, most genuine people I knew while involved in slalom racing.  Unfortunately, I had entirely lost track of him until last week, when I saw in a social media post that he'd died.  Apparently he'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease some four years ago, and declined rapidly toward the end.  He was 65 years old.

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Pushing through the latest Arctic blast

Yesterday I did an hour of mostly-steady paddling in the harbor.  My right arm continued to feel not so bad in the wake of the workout I'd done on Thursday.  Go figure.

As predicted, the temperature plummeted overnight last night, and as I drove downtown this morning the temperature display in my car said it was 23 degrees Fahrenheit.  The sun was shining, and that made it seem better, but there was also a stiff north wind blowing, and that made it seem worse.  I went to the same part of the Greenbelt Park, maybe two-thirds of the way from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the mouth of the Wolf River, and did my dry-land routine with nearly thirty degrees less warmth than I'd had on Friday.  That gave me plenty of motivation to keep moving from one exercise to the next.

I've been saying frequently that I pay close attention to stroke mechanics when I'm in the boat, but the same is true when I do cross-training activities like I did today.  I try to keep my body relaxed and practice good form in both the running and the core exercises.  In The Barton Mold by Bill Endicott, Greg Barton has this to say about his observance of good technique in strength training:

I feel that if you start cheating, really jerking around a lot, there are two things that happen.  One is you're starting to pull into play muscles other than the ones you are targeting.  Secondly, what happens when you get into the boat?  Are you going to start jerking around there, too?  Start pulling all over the place?  I think some of that carries over.  If you use strict technique in the weight room, you're thinking in that mode and it's a little easier to transfer that into the boat.  I think people who bang out as much as they can in the weight room tend to paddle that way, too.

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