Monday photo feature

The deer population seems to be thriving in the wooded bottoms of the Wolf River over on the east side of Memphis.  I've been seeing lots of them while riding my bike through that area on the Greater Memphis Greenline and the Wolf River Greenway this year.  This past Friday I shot this photo of this guy snacking on leaves on the river-left bank of the Wolf.  I was looking down at him from up on the trestle by which the Greenline crosses the river.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Persistent pain

I'm becoming increasingly concerned about the pain in my right biceps muscle.  I was hoping I'd just strained it a little and it would improve over time, but in the last couple of weeks it seems to have gotten worse, not better.  It's been bothering me in every aspect of my non-athletic life; several times a day I make some seemingly harmless movement that causes pain to shoot through the ailing area.  And while I don't think it's directly involved in my paddle strokes, it does bother me while I paddle, and it's making me scale back my time in the boat for now.

Meanwhile, there's still my shingles rash, which is fading away ever so slowly... eeeeeever sooooooo sloooooowly.  These viral maladies do funny things sometimes, and this one seems to want to hang around.  There's still some itching, but I don't think it's nearly as bad as it was a week ago.

We enjoyed some pleasant weather here for most of the last week, and I took advantage of that with a couple of bike rides plus some paddling on Monday, Thursday, and yesterday.  Because of the arm injury I'm keeping my paddling sessions around 40 minutes or so and just working on stroke mechanics in the harbor.

Today we're getting a little Arctic blast: we'll be lucky if the temperature reaches 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  It's supposed to drop into the 20s overnight and be only around 40 degrees tomorrow.  So I might just get some rest for a couple of days, aside from some light gym work.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

Kaylin Owens of Cosby, Tennessee, cruises down the Colorado River during our last full day in the Grand Canyon.  This would have been September 10, or Day 15 of our journey.

The last few days of the trip were probably the hottest, and we dealt with a pesky headwind as well.  I remember my body feeling stressed and drained, and all I wanted was to get out of there and back to civilization in all its air-conditioned glory.

But the chilly weather of this past weekend has made me look back on those days with rosier-tinted vision.  When I look at photos like this one now, it's easy to forget the discomforts of multiple days in the wilderness and imagine an idyllic world of whitewater frolic in a sun-drenched canyon paradise.  It's funny how that works.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

I'm not ready to let go of summer

Some chilly weather has arrived, and I've struggled to make the adjustment.  We had a pretty hot summer here in the Mid South, and then I experienced some hot days out there in the Grand Canyon.  After that I came home to find some unseasonably warm temperatures in late September and most of October.  So, this weather we're having now, even though it's not really that cold, has felt like a shock.  It was windy and rainy in the middle of this past week, and that didn't make things any easier.

The good news is that winter isn't here yet; for much of this coming week, the forecast is showing Fahrenheit highs in the high 60s and low 70s.  But this weekend it's awfully chilly for this time of year: today's high is expected to be in the low 50s.

So, I've been rather grateful to have some non-athletic obligations keeping me indoors for much of this weekend.  All I've managed for this past week is some paddling on Monday and Thursday and a bike ride Friday afternoon.  With better weather expected in the coming days, I'll see if I can't ramp up a new fitness routine and get myself on a solid path toward the South Africa trip in late January.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

The ICF world championships of ocean racing took place weekend before last at the city of Durban on South Africa's Indian Ocean coast.  Here, Dawid Mocke drags his boat out of the surf for the final sprint to the finish line up on the beach.  Dawid finished ninth overall and first in the men's 45-49 age group.

In a mere three months I'll be in Dawid's hometown of Fish Hoek, over on the Atlantic side of South Africa.  There I'll be coached in downwind paddling techniques by Dawid and his younger brother Jasper, who finished 12th overall and second in the 40-44 age group at Durban.  Hopefully I'll also see Dawid's son Sam, who claimed the junior (under 18) title while finishing 30th overall.

If being around guys like that can't motivate me to do some training in the next three months, then nothing can.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Colder and darker

Much of October has been unseasonably warm here, but there's little question chillier days are upon us.  Today it's raining and the temperature is expected to exceed 60 degrees Fahrenheit just barely.  And the forecast is showing daytime highs in the 60s and 50s for the foreseeable future.

In the boat the last couple of weeks I've been availing myself of wake surfing opportunities as the air and water temperatures have remained agreeable, but those days may be over for the year.  I did a bit of surfing Tuesday, but by yesterday I was taking a pass on a barge rig that was approaching from below the old bridges downriver from downtown.  On the non-surfing days I've been focusing hard on stroke mechanics, even doing some one-sided paddling drills to try to make the connection between leg drive and torso rotation.  Sessions like that are tedious, but I hope they'll pay off somewhere down the road.

Meanwhile, I'm transitioning into a wintertime fitness program that I hope will have me feeling ready for some downwind action in South Africa.  I did two bike rides this past week, and soon I plan to put together a dry-land routine similar to what I did last winter, with some running and some medicine ball drills and some body-weight leg and core exercises.

In the physical health department, my shingles rash is less red and angry-looking than it used to be, but it's still causing me discomfort.  Lately it's been very itchy, and resisting the urge to scratch is not easy.  Meanwhile, I'm still feeling some pain in the inside of my right biceps muscle.  I mentioned a while back that I think I strained it during the Pink Palace Crafts Fair, probably while swinging an axe, but it's possible that I could trace the injury back into the Grand Canyon, where I might have tweaked it doing a hard open-blade draw stroke in my C1, and the crafts fair activity simply aggravated it.

In any case, in the coming weeks I might have to scale back the paddling a little to see if the muscle will heal, while doing more general-fitness stuff on dry land.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

In what now seems like an annual phenomenon, a large portion of my dock is on the ground.  I took this photo while I was down there yesterday morning, when the Mississippi River was flowing at -8.7 feet on the Memphis gauge.

The bright side is that the water is still more than three feet higher than the record low of -12.06 feet that we saw two years ago.  The storm system that came through here Saturday evening stretched well to the north, higher up in the watershed, and while the current forecast isn't showing any rise as a result of that, that rain should at least keep the level somewhat constant for a while, hopefully until some wetter weather moves in.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.