1. Be happy, be motivated, be helpful.
2. Paddle early, paddle late, paddle hard.
3. Impress with what you are good at, work on what you are not good at, and put your best foot forward on competition day.
Eric's daughter Emily and son Dane, in their twenties now, are both among the world's elite whitewater paddlers. His nine-year-old son K.C. will likely be there himself eventually.
Down here at the non-elite level, meanwhile, I continue to keep a little something going to stave off the early-offseason doldrums. This past week I did the new strength routine on Monday and Thursday. And I paddled a loop of the harbor with Joe on Tuesday and out on the Mississippi a little bit yesterday.
I continued the work on my stroke mechanics yesterday, and I'm happy to say that the adjustments Morgan House suggested in that clinic I took are beginning to feel more natural. The main thing I have to keep reminding myself is that I was already doing a lot of things pretty well and I shouldn't throw those things out. Morgan said as much in this message he wrote me:
Your technique is not bad and the fundamentals of your stroke are quite good. All of the things I taught during the clinic should be practiced in each training session. It is important, though, to not try and force each aspect of the stroke to be perfect as the kayak stroke is very fluid. Keep your focus on one thing for an interval of time or distance and then change to another thing for another interval and so on. Eventually it will all start to come together.
In other words, my stroke really doesn't need much more than some tweaking. My shaft needs to be more vertical throughout each stroke, and exiting closer to the boat helps make sure that happens. So I'll continue to work on that but I'll try not to wear out my brain obsessing over it.
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