My brief visit to the beach is over, and I'm back home getting ready for tomorrow's race. Last time I checked there were over 200 boats signed up, with some very solid athletes entered in the race boat class.
The main objective for my time on the coast was rest, and I got that. Most of the paddling I did was some relaxed touring of Mississippi Sound in the vicinity of our rented house. Well, it actually wasn't entirely relaxed: on Monday there was some stormy weather in the region, and when I went out on the water with my niece and nephew that afternoon there was a pretty stiff wind from the southeast. My nephew flipped twice while trying to turn in the waves, and we discovered that a glue joint holding two pieces of my bilge pump had failed. My nephew was able to make the pump work by holding the pieces together with one hand while working the plunger with the other, but it was a slow process getting the water out of his boat. As I sat there holding his boat steady while he pumped, I worried as the wind blew us farther out into the sound toward higher seas where bailing would be more difficult. But my almost-15-year-old nephew did an admirable job of keeping his cool and patiently restoring his craft to a paddlable state.
The weather had calmed down completely by Wednesday morning and my niece and I paddled a mile and a half or so out into the sound. Along the way we encountered a pod of dolphins and at one point saw several of the mammals coming up for air less than fifty feet away.
The closest thing to a "training" paddle I did took place on Tuesday morning. I paddled for 60 minutes and did a set of eight 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals. The objective was to practice starts and to give my ATP-CP energy system some work.
I came on home Wednesday afternoon, and yesterday and today I did a few more 12-stroke sprints on my home water of the harbor.
It looks like the river level will be about 14 feet on the Memphis gauge tomorrow. That's not a bad level, all things considered. If I could order up any level I wanted for Race Day, I'd go with something around 20 feet: that's high enough to cover up the muddiest parts of the banks at the start and finish, but not high enough to lop a radical amount of distance off the course at the southern tip of Mud Island. Tomorrow I would expect a little bit of mud while putting in and taking out, but nothing too terrible.
Well, all that's left is to get some rest tonight, show up at the race site tomorrow, and do the best I can.
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