As I mentioned before, warmer weather was set to move in early this week, and in fact it did: the Fahrenheit temperature was in the mid 60s when I paddled on Tuesday and in the low 70s when I paddled yesterday. But warm weather at this time of year almost never means tranquil summer-like days. When it gets unseasonably warm in the winter and early spring you can expect some unsettled conditions to come along with it, and this week wind was the big weather story.
I heard on the radio Tuesday that the wind was blowing from the south at 30 to 40 miles per hour, with gusts exceeding 50 mph. I couldn't tell you the exact wind speeds when I arrived at the dock that morning, but I do know the wind was as strong as I've ever paddled in on the Memphis riverfront. There might have been some epic surfing conditions out on the river, but since I was by myself and the water is cold, I played it safe and stayed in the harbor.
I was hoping I might find some surfable stuff in the harbor, but the waves weren't quite there. I ended up working on keeping my boat moving in rough sloppy conditions. I spent much of my 50 minutes out there doing laps around the Memphis Yacht Club Marina (the one just south of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge), trying to surf the waves running north on the marina's east side, "eddying out" of the wind on the north (lee) side, paddling back upwind in the protected area on the west side of the marina, and so on.
The windy conditions continued Wednesday and yesterday, but they weren't quite as ferocious. Yesterday I paddled for 60 minutes in the harbor as the wind blew steadily from the south around 20 mph.
It always feels hard when you're paddling into a headwind, but I've always tended to wonder whether the wind was really having an effect on my speed. I'm a pretty skinny guy; could the wind really be slowing me down that much? Well, yesterday I had my G.P.S. device on board, and the answer it gave me was yes. Yes it is. Paddling at a normal cruising pace, I was moving around 6.5 miles per hour with the wind at my back, but when I paddled into the wind that pace dropped down around 4.5 mph.
It's pretty well established in sports like track and field that the wind makes a significant difference in an athlete's performance. 100-meter sprinters move faster and long jumpers travel farther with a tailwind. If the wind is above an allowable limit, an effort is deemed "wind-aided" and is not eligible for world-record consideration.
While a tailwind certainly makes a difference for a paddler, I believe the advantage is less obvious because unlike in a track race, the surface the athlete travels on is affected by the wind in canoe and kayak racing. Waves of any size can slow a paddler down because he is constantly having to climb up and over them. The ICF does't keep world records for flatwater sprint racing like the IAAF does in track and field, but if I were a paddler hoping to post a really fast time in the 500 meters, for instance, I think I would rather have dead-calm conditions than a robust tailwind.
I bring all this up to explain why, as I lined up to time myself in a sprint from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the Auction Avenue (A.W. Willis) bridge, I was not expecting miracles even though I was curious to see how much the strong tailwind might help me. My fastest time ever in this sprint is about 2 minutes, 57 seconds, and I think that was on a calm day when I was a lot closer to peak racing form than I am now.
I got off to a pretty good start and whizzing past the waves made me feel fast, but I knew they were probably slowing me down a little. Then, once I was out from under the HDB, the water started to flatten out, and as I came abreast of The Pyramid I saw that I had a pretty good split going. I dug in and as I passed the two-minute mark I thought I might have a shot at a sub-3 time. But the seconds always slip by quickly when I'm sprinting for a time barrier like that, and I crossed the southern edge of the Auction/Willis bridge at 3:06. It was still my best time in quite a while, I think.
Once my breathing and heart rate had settled down I spent the rest of the hour paddling near anaerobic threshold before cooling down and taking out.
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