My prediction of how long the Gen. Jackson would continue to sit in Memphis was wrong. The vessel resumed her voyage upriver early Tuesday morning. So you see, I am wrong once in a blue moon.
I did the strength routine on Monday and Wednesday this week, and now I'm grateful for a brief break from that with a race coming up tomorrow.
Joe and I did our usual loop of the harbor on Tuesday, and yesterday I got in a 50-minute session in the harbor with another set of six 12-stroke sprints. The Mississippi remains quite high: the Memphis gauge reading was 38.1 feet when I paddled yesterday morning. The river is usually very nice when it's dropping slowly from a crest. It cleans itself out a bit as the debris it had picked up is either flushed downstream or redeposited on the banks.
Today I drove through a lot of rain down to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, site of the Battle On The Bayou canoe and kayak race tomorrow. I arrived in the late afternoon and did a 40-minute paddle in and around the mouth of Old Fort Bayou. I did four 12-stroke sprints and otherwise tried to work out the stiffness from the drive.
I'm spending the night at the home of my friend Nick Kinderman, who happens to be the founder of this weekend's event. He served as race director from 2010 until 2015 before handing that duty off. Tomorrow he'll be just a racer like me.
Right now I'm sleepy and ready for bed, and not in much of a mood to think about what kind of shape I'm in or how I might do tomorrow. But I'm glad to be getting another race season started. As U.S. whitewater slalom Olympian Casey Eichfeld likes to say, "Let's race!!!!"
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