On Sunday I felt remarkably good for the day after a race, with no soreness to speak of. I gave myself a couple of days off before making it back down to the riverfront yesterday. I had absolutely no agenda for yesterday's paddle other than to get in the boat and put some strokes together. When I got to the mouth of the harbor I saw a barge rig moving upriver, so I decided to avail myself of some surfing. I ended up with a pretty vigorous workout: the rig was already a hundred meters or so upstream of the harbor's mouth, so I had to paddle hard up along the Tennessee bank to gain enough that I could ferry out to where the biggest waves were. That was ten minutes or so of high-aerobic-zone effort. Then, catching each wave required a quick, hard sprint.
I hope to make it down to paddle at least once a week for the next little while, but I'm ready for a break from training and racing. As I mentioned a couple of posts back, there are some things going on in my out-of-the-boat life that demand my attention. And I'm just weary and ready for some rest.
Soon I want to start up a strength routine again. I haven't done any strength work at all since I left on my trip to New England last month, and I expect I've gotten a bit weak in that area.
I also still need to do something about my old V12 surf ski that has the rudder-line problem. I'll try to share some photos and commentary when I get around to that repair project.
In the meantime, now that the 2016 season is complete, how's about some reflection and introspection:
I participated in seven races this year, and I was not the overall winner in a single one of them. This is the first year in about as long as I can remember that I didn't manage to finish first in some event somewhere.
Several races that used to be easy wins for me have become quite competitive. Is this a sign that I'm not as good as I was three or five or ten years ago? Maybe. I'm certainly no more immune to the advancement of age than anybody else. But I also think that the quality of racing is going up here in my part of the country, and I'd rather focus on that because the issue is near and dear to my heart.
The greater Tennessee-Arkansas-Mississippi region is rarely seen as a national leader in health-and-fitness-oriented activities. More often we seem to make news for high rates of obesity and diabetes and heart disease and stuff like that. Our region has also never really been foremost in people's minds when they think of excellence in canoeing and kayaking. In one paddling discipline or another you'll find hotbeds in coastal regions and mountainous regions and a few of the trendier inland cities, but I'm used to getting looks of disbelief when I travel to one of those places and tell people I'm from Memphis, especially if I've just done well in a race.
I don't really care that much what outsiders think of my city and my region; oddly enough, I think we enjoy a certain quality of life as a result of not being a place that everybody else wants to move to. But there's definitely room for improvement to that quality of life, and for my money nothing enhances quality of life better than good opportunities for canoe and kayak paddling, training, and racing.
I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize my friend Joe Royer, who through his company Outdoors, Inc., has driven the outdoor sports scene in Memphis and the Mid South, sometimes singlehandedly. He founded the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race in 1982--long before such events were considered cool. Three and a half decades later that event continues to be as good as any I have ever participated in.
I'm not the same kind of leader that Joe is. I don't have his energy or his business savvy or his gregarious charm. But I can lead in other ways, and in general I try to set a good example in my approach to racing here in the Mid South. In particular, I want to convey the message that the races I go to are indeed athletic events, and that being an athlete is a good thing, a perfectly normal thing for a person of any age and any walk of life... that you don't have to be an aspiring Olympian or a member of a pro sports team to have a training plan and set athletic goals. I'd like to convince people that paddling hard and seeing how fast you can go is actually fun even though it's physically demanding at times.
Little by little, people are starting to show up who make it harder for me to win these races that I once could almost count on winning. There are some young people like Carson and Conrad and Peyton Pellerin, and there are some older guys like Shane Kleynhans and Rick Carter. I don't presume to deserve all the credit for their emergence, but I'd like to believe that at least a small part of their motivation comes from being tired of that Elmore guy winning all the races.
Mind you, I'm still a competitor and I don't exactly like getting beat. I'll be spending this offseason pondering some ideas of what I might do to regain a title or two in 2017. But it's a lot more fun to be part of a pack of people fighting it out up front that to be all alone in the lead. I don't expect the Mid South will ever become the ultimate paddling mecca, but that's okay. I'm just glad to see a few more people recognizing its potential for some exciting canoe and kayak racing.
I appreciate everybody who reads this blog and I hope you've enjoyed the vicarious experience of my race season. After a little time off I guess I'll start the process all over again. Because... why not?
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