Home sweet home

I'm back home in Memphis now.  My mother and my sister's family are staying at Dauphin Island until tomorrow, but since I have to teach a class tomorrow morning, I came on back to get ready.

This morning I did two sets of the May strength routine.  Then I went downtown and paddled for 60 minutes.  I did six back-paddling-then-forward-paddling power drills in the harbor, and then paddled out on the river to reacquaint myself with the June 14 playing field.

Storms brewing

It's turned stormy here on the Gulf Coast.  Though it wasn't here yet when I paddled yesterday afternoon, the wind was picking up and I had pretty bouncy conditions.  The uncertain stability made me tense my upper back and shoulders at times, and now that area is back to being quite stiff and sore... sigh.

This morning I did two sets of my "modified" May strength routine.  After that I asked the kids if anybody would like to paddle, but had no takers.  Instead we went to the beach and did some swimming.

After lunch some heavy rain arrived.  We sat around until it appeared to have moved out, and then late this afternoon my nephew Joel and I took out the tandem boat.  I was still quite tired from yesterday and this morning, so we paddled pretty easy along the shoreline.  Another storm cell blew in and we went ashore for a while.  I think our total time in the boat was maybe 40 minutes.  In any case, it was a recovery session I needed.

Salt-water fun

There's been no shortage of things to do here in our 'Bama beach paradise.

Yesterday morning I did two sets of the May strength routine.  I brought my rubber bands down here with me, but not my dumbbells or my medicine ball or my stability ball, so I had to improvise a little.  I found a stepladder and did my pushups with one hand on the bottom step; I did the abdominal "V" exercise with a gallon jug of water in lieu of the medicine ball; I did the bicep curls with the rubber band hitched to my car's bumper instead of the dumbbells; and I did the dips at a corner of the kitchen counter, supporting my full body weight instead of having my feet on the stability ball.  Doing alternative versions of these exercises is probably not a bad thing, as it'll hit my muscles from different angles.

Then it was time to paddle with the nieces and nephews.  The kids swapped out in the tandem boat while I followed along in my surf ski.  The Gulf breeze felt good, and it was a nice way to spend a hot, humid morning.

There was no paddling this morning because we had a fishing trip scheduled.  My sister and brother-in-law and two nephews and I took a chartered boat out to a spot in Mississippi Sound and cast our lines for several hours.  I caught three white trout that were big enough to be worth keeping; in all we caught ten keepers, and that'll provide a rather nice supper this evening.  It was my first time fishing in some 32 years, and it was actually more fun than I remembered.  I can see how people get obsessed with it.  My brother-in-law compared it to a gambling addiction: you catch something just often enough to make you want to keep casting your line, believing that the next cast will land The Big One.

Late this afternoon I finally got in my boat and paddled out into the sound.  After a ten-minute warmup, I did ten 40-stroke sprints, starting at three-minute intervals.  After that I made a somewhat impulsive decision and decided to paddle all the way across the sound to the mainland, or at least to the far end of the Dauphin Island Parkway causeway.  It's a lot farther than it looks from the deck of our rented house.  I was pretty tired by the time I was halfway back to the house.  My total paddling time was just over 80 minutes.

Tomorrow is my last full day here, and I think I'll spend it paddling with the nieces and nephews.

Monday photo feature

With the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race less than three weeks away, I'll see if I can't post a few photos of OICK races of yesteryear.  Here are the top three finishers in the 2004 race: from left to right, Herman Chalupsky, first; Greg Barton, second; and Mike Herbert, third.  Mike's dog Turbo enjoys the post-race party.

Beach time

This evening I am on Dauphin Island on the Alabama Gulf Coast.  In what's becoming sort of a family tradition this time of year, my mother and I and my sister's family are spending a few days in a rented house looking out over Mississippi Sound.  There's a dock right out back for launching boats, and we'll be doing some of that: I've brought the tandem kayak down for paddling with the nieces and nephews, and I'll be doing some workouts in the surf ski as well.

Before leaving Memphis this morning I paddled the K1 for 30 minutes in the harbor.  I did six 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals, and felt good but not great about my high-intensity form in this boat.  In my stable surf ski I feel free to rotate fully and put all the power I've got into my strokes; the persistent question in the K1 is whether its stability, less than that of the ski, is nevertheless enough to allow me that same freedom.  As Yogi Berra might say, "Ninety percent of this game is half mental."

Three weeks to go

The Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race is three weeks from today!  My storefront is still boarded up--construction work is still in the planning stage--but there's no reason I can't promote the best annual event in Memphis.

30-second sprints

I paddled the surf ski for 60 minutes today.  I spent the half-hour from 0:20 to 0:50 doing 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals.  I felt like I had good stroke turnover, especially on the flatwater of the harbor.

Practicing K1 skills

I'm happy to say that the shoulder bruise is healing fast.  It's just a tiny bit sore today, and the bump is barely noticeable now.

I started the morning with two sets of the May strength routine.  Then I headed down to the river for a 60-minute paddle.  The water was reasonably calm in spite of a south breeze, so I took out the K1.  I have a workout planned for tomorrow, so I spent today working on skills and doing all kinds of drills.  I paddled from the marina to the mouth of the harbor for a warmup, and then I paddled back to the marina doing some stroke drills, including one-sided paddling (as I've mentioned before, I'm much less stable paddling on my right than paddling on my left) and the "hesitation" drill where I take a stroke on one side and then pause for a second with blades out of the water before taking a stroke on the other side.

On the protected water in the interior of the marina's "U" shape, I did some six-stroke sprints and some backpaddling.  I've gotten quite good at backpaddling in the surf ski, using the rudder to steer even though it's at the leading end of the boat, but right now it's a different story in the K1.  I'll keep at it.  I've been rewarded for my persistence in learning difficult skills many times in the past, and I have to believe that I will be once more.

Overall I felt quite comfortable just paddling forward in the K1, and I think I'm slowly improving paddling at higher intensity.  So it was a satisfying morning.  Even those paddling sessions that don't wear you out can be very valuable.

Occupational hazards (cont'd)

This morning I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 70 minutes.  My back has improved quite a bit but still has a couple of stubborn knots up in there.

This afternoon I went back to my old workshop to continue moving the dwindling list of items still over there.  As I was dismantling a unit of storage shelves, part of it came loose and caught me on the left shoulder, and now there's a big swollen bump there.  I think it's just a bruise, but it really hurts at the moment.  It could put a damper on my paddling and strength work if it doesn't calm down in a day or so.

Monday photo feature

Here I am running Second Ledge on Section III of the Chattooga River near Mountain Rest, South Carolina, in August of 1987.  That's my old Dancer kayak, the first boat I ever owned.  I turned 20 at the end of that month, so this was one of the last things I did as a teenager.  I wouldn't go back to being a teenager if you paid me... if you have nothing to do for a day, ask me and I'll tell you all about that.  Photo by Todd Tyler.

More fast stuff

This morning I paddled for 60 minutes, doing a workout consisting of ten intervals of 1 minute on, 2 minutes off.  I did all of it out on the Mississippi, practicing high-intensity paddling out on that less-stable water.

Bikesploitation!

I don't ride my bike consistently enough that I really consider it part of my training--I think of my bike mostly as a way to get around the neighborhood--but I always have a great time when I take off on a longer tour through this great city.

Here in Memphis yesterday we had one of the more interesting festivals you'll find anywhere.  The Bikesploitation festival is a celebration of all things bicycle: artwork from bike parts, bike polo, BMX demonstrations, live music (I watched one band in which two guys with drums, horns, kazoos, and other instruments mounted on bicycles did really interesting covers of famous songs), and a series of bike-themed short films.  Of course, festival goers were strongly encouraged to ride their bikes to the event (there was a bike valet service on site), and for me that meant a pretty lengthy ride from my home in the middle of town to the festival grounds overlooking the Mississippi River below the Frisco and Harahan bridges.  I rode through several parts of town I'd never really seen before.

Wet and cold

I didn't do any sort of training Thursday and yesterday--neither paddling nor strength work.  What I did instead, with the help of a truly awesome friend who drove over from Georgia, was move an enormous amount of stuff out of my old workshop on my ex-spouse's property.  The end is in sight for this chore that I have been chipping away at for the last year.  The date by which I have promised to be out of there for good is coming up in a couple of weeks, so I will soon be bringing that unfortunate chapter of my life to a close at last.

The first of seven introductory kayaking classes I will be teaching was scheduled for this morning.  Alas, a relentless cold rain greeted the students and me out at Patriot Lake.  After a brief discussion we agreed that we should call it off.  This class involves a good bit of sitting on the grass and talking, and is generally supposed to be a fun, relaxing experience for everybody, and I just don't think that would have been the case with everybody drenched and shivering.  I hope all the students will return on one of the later dates.  Any readers of this blog interested in joining the fun can find more information here.

I came back home and decided that a couple of sets of the May strength routine was the best use of this morning.  I intend to be back in the boat tomorrow, rain or shine.

Training at over-intensity

A long stretch of warm, muggy days came to an end last night, and this morning it was raining and in the mid 50s Fahrenheit.  I pulled out some cool-weather paddling gear I thought I'd put away for good, and headed for the river.

I paddled for 70 minutes, about half of that in a steady rain.  It was beautiful, but I can see how racers in places like Seattle get tired of it in a hurry.

I did the following workout: pieces of 3', 2', 2', 6', 2', 2', 6', 2', 2', and 3' with two minutes recovery in between.  I did the six two-minute pieces at pretty high intensity; I did the longer pieces at about what my average pace will be in the OICK race next month, and they almost felt like recovery periods.  And that's one of the main points of this workout: really hammering for short periods so that normal race pace doesn't seem like a big deal.

K1 lessons

This morning I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 70 minutes.  The harbor was calm today, so I paddled the K1.  Generally, as long as I paddle a relaxed, steady pace, I feel comfortable and confident in the boat.  Whenever I try to sprint, backpaddle, or do any kind of drills, I feel awkward and unstable.  And doing these things reminds me how un-ambidextrous I am.  As a whitewater canoeist I always paddled on the left; on the right I had power but lacked the coordination to do all the finer details of whitewater strokes.  I was also much better bracing and rolling on my left side.  The same seems to be true in kayak: my balance and coordination are much better on the left, and anytime I begin to feel tippy I instinctively brace on my left.  It's not yet clear whether I'll ever be able to race competently in this K1, but at least I'm learning some things about myself.

I'm finally getting a massage this evening.  My back continues to feel quite a bit better except for a couple of knots, and I'm hoping the masseuse can hasten their eradication.

Monday photo feature

Today's young rodeo-star-wannabes may sneer at it, but there's nothing more fun than some front-surfing on a big, smooth wave.  I had myself a great day on "Big Sur," a wave that forms during high-water periods on the Colorado River near Grand Junction, back in the summer of 1997.  Photo by Tim Williams.

Occupational hazards

This morning I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 60 minutes.  In the boat I mostly paddled steady, with a few balance drills in beam waves and a few pieces of backpaddling.

I've still got that knot in my upper back, almost in my left shoulder, near the base of my neck.  I've also got some pain in my left arm in the biceps/triceps area, and I think it's more likely the result of my construction work than of canoe and kayak training.  My cordless drill is this big heavy thing, and I've been doing a lot of drilling tasks lately, some of which have involved extending my arm to full length to reach spots high on walls, on the ceiling, or in other hard-to-reach areas.  It's a good-quality tool that does everything I need it to do, but maybe I should look into something lighter for jobs like this.

Going lactic

The Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race is five weeks from today.  So I'm starting to incorporate some workouts that work the lactic acid energy system.  For those who don't know, this is the energy system that takes over when physical exertion becomes intense and prolonged enough that the aerobic system, which creates energy from oxygen beached in, can no longer keep up.  Lactic acid is what causes the burning sensation in the muscles at times like this.

My body doesn't call on the LA system very often, because most of the middle- and long-distance races I do stay at a low enough intensity level for the aerobic system to handle.  But in the 5-kilometer OICK race, once I enter the harbor and start hammering that last half-mile to the finish line, I start to go lactic.  And so, I start to focus on developing this energy system a month or six weeks out from race day.

Yesterday I set out for a 60 minute session in the surf ski.  After a 10-minute warmup, I did three 12-stroke sprints at maximum intensity, and then settled into the workout, which was eight repeats of "two minutes on, two minutes off."  The last three pieces were tough but my form held up well.

On Thursday I paddled for 60 minutes and felt as good in the boat as I'd felt in quite a while.  Before going to the river yesterday I did two sets of the May strength routine.

My back has felt a good bit better the last two or three days.  The discomfort has been reduced to a knot I can feel along the left side of my spine.  I've got to get myself back under the hands of the masseuse--this feels like something she can work right out.

Nice writeup about the Mississippi River at Memphis

Joe Royer took Holly Whitfield out in the tandem kayak a while back, and she has now posted a nice writeup of the experience on her I Love Memphis blog.

The beat goes on

This morning I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled with Joe in the harbor for 70 minutes.  The paddling was uncomfortable today because of my back pain.  I've been busy on recent evenings, but I need to schedule another massage as soon as I can find some free time.

Monday photo feature

That Montessori school race I did on Saturday has been going on for some ten years now.  For a couple of years I raced tandem with my nephew Joel; here we are with our awards in 2006 or '07 or thereabouts.  In 2008, Joel's dad got a job in North Carolina and the family moved away, and just like that, my race-partner pool dried up.  Photo by Sally Thomas.

Recovery, cont'd

This morning I did two sets of the May strength routine.  Then this afternoon I paddled the surf ski for 60 minutes on a lovely but quite breezy day.  I'm still very sore, and this upper back discomfort seems more and more like a constant companion each day.  I paddled a pretty easy recovery pace.

Montessori racing

I'm finally settling into a strength routine that I hope to keep up from now until the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  An exercise physiologist friend showed me these exercises; if any readers in the Memphis area are feeling a need for the services of a personal trainer, let me know and I will put you in touch with this person.

The routine, which I'll call the "May strength routine" from now on, goes like this:

1.  Pushups with one hand on a medicine ball
2.  Compound squat/row exercise with a rubber band
3.  Bicep curls with dumbbells
4.  "V" drill: simultaneous lifting of the legs and the arms/torso while holding a medicine ball
5.  Triceps exercise with rubber band
6.  Torso twists with a medicine ball
7.  Dips, gripping the side of a table with feet on an exercise ball

I did my first serious session of these exercises yesterday, and today I'm a little sore.  This soreness and my persistent upper back soreness is all sort of melded together into a general sore, achy feeling.

But it didn't stop me from doing a bit of racing this morning.  There is a montessori school right next to the marina where I keep my boat downtown, and each spring this school has a little outdoor festival that includes some canoe and kayak races in the harbor.  It's largely a family affair, with lots of parent/child tandems and stuff like that, so I never take it too seriously.  I entered it today in a plastic touring boat, and found myself facing some good competition from a couple of people with surf skis.

First I paddled the K1 for 40 minutes.  I did eight 6-stroke sprints, at the top of each minute, and then paddled a brisk tempo for ten minutes before returning to the dock and swapping out the K1 for today's "race" boat, a Squall that belongs to a friend of mine.

The course was a two-mile loop.  Entrants could choose among racing one mile (half a lap), two miles (one lap), and three miles (one and a half laps).  I opted for the three-miler.  All three events started together, and when the gun went off a lead pack quickly emerged with me, Jason Salomon and his daughter Ahava in a tandem ski, and Fred Hatler in a solo ski.  I managed to stay on the skis' wakes until the first buoy turn, and after that they opened up a lead on me.  After the second turn, the Salomons, who were racing only two miles, poured it on and were in a comfortable lead by the time they finished at the two-mile mark.  Fred and I continued on for another mile, Fred maintaining a lead of 20 seconds or so on me.  I might have closed a little in the last half-mile, but never really threatened Fred for the win.

Paddling that plastic boat was a chore.  Last year I did some resistance drills where I towed a five-gallon bucket behind my surf ski, and that's about what it felt like I was doing in the race today.  I'm wicked sore this evening.  But I had a good time anyway.  I do so much paddling alone that it's always a treat to do an event with other people whether I win or not.

Hanging in there with the back soreness and the tough K1 learning curve

The stiffness and soreness in my upper back persists.  I'm at a loss for what to do other than what I'm already doing: using active recovery methods but trying not to put extreme stress on it.  I'm putting together a new strength routine with the help of an exercise physiologist friend, but I'm really easing into it.

This week I paddled with Joe for 70 minutes on Tuesday and by myself for 60 minutes today.  Today I paddled the K1 and did a "pyramid" workout: pieces of 1', 2', 3', 4', 5', 4', 3', 2', and 1' with two minutes recovery.  Because of my continuing balance struggles in the K1 and the resulting inability to paddle really hard, this workout amounted to more of a tempo session.  I think good form at a slightly lower intensity level is better than bad form at high intensity, so I concentrated on that.  Overall I think it was not a bad workout, but it was mentally frustrating not being able to paddle like I can in the surf ski.

As I left the marina I saw a mother duck with about a dozen newborn ducklings--the first hatchlings I've spotted this spring.  Sadly, a sizable percentage of these ducklings will succumb to predators before they reach adulthood, but it always melts my heart watching them at this age, swimming along after their mother.

"Fascination for the process"

Back in 2007, Bill Endicott gave this talk to a group of athletes and sports officials in China.  I recommend that every reader of this blog go and read it.

Bill Endicott coached the U.S. whitewater slalom team from the late 70s through the early 90s.  Athletes he coached won 57 world, world cup, and Olympic medals, 27 of them gold, and that makes Endicott look like an awfully good coach.  And as a matter of fact, he was.  But he claims that the most important thing he ever did was encourage his athletes to get to the point where they no longer needed him--to be their own coaches, in other words.

In every great athlete I have ever paid attention to, I have seen a remarkable independence.  Paddlers like the Lugbills and the Hearns, whom Endicott coached, designed their own training regimes to a large extent, relying on Endicott more for guidance and support than as a not-to-be-questioned authority figure.  In his book Every Crushing Stroke, Scott Shipley says that throughout his career he was largely coachless, occasionally making use of coaches and training camps primarily to learn new ideas that he would then incorporate into his own plan.  In the flatwater/open-water racing world, Greg Barton was deeply involved in boat and paddle design, and the top surf ski racers are known for coaching themselves and each other rather than relying on the traditional coach.  And the independent trait is found in other sports, too: Adam Wainwright is the ace pitcher for my favorite baseball team, the St. Louis Cardinals, and even though he led the National League in wins and finished second in the Cy Young voting last season, he spent this past winter obsessed with making himself better in several areas.

I have always been my own coach mostly out of necessity: even though we have this great event each year, my hometown has never been a hotbed of canoe and kayak racing expertise.  Though staying in my isolated outpost has probably slowed my progress over the years--I certainly could have benefitted from a coach or at least another paddler to correct technical problems as soon as they cropped up--I get a lot of satisfaction from figuring things out for myself.  And that's what a hobby is for, right?  You find something you love and learn as much about it as you possibly can.