Cooling my enthusiasm

I was slow to get some new strength work going last week.  I got back to doing some work on my rental property that I'd had to put aside for a while, and I didn't do anything Monday or Wednesday.  On Friday I finally did a cursory round of the new routine, just to get my body used to doing something new.

The weather forecasters had predicted unseasonably cold weather for yesterday, and Mother Nature delivered.  When I got up it was overcast and cold, with a howling north wind.  I donned clothing I thought I'd worn for the last time this season and headed down to the river.  When I arrived the temperature display in my car said it was 34 degrees Fahrenheit.  The pogies came out of my bag and went back on my paddle... yarrgh.

I mentioned in my previous post that nothing should seem too bad after the weather I paddled in at the beginning of the year, but in a way today might have been worse: I've been saying for years that I'd rather paddle when it's 24 degrees and sunny and calm than when it's 34 degrees and overcast and windy.

But seeing as how there was not a thing I could do about the weather, I just got in my boat and started paddling.  And from then on I felt fine.  The hardest part of cold-weather paddling is not the paddling itself but the time spent on the dock readying the boat beforehand and putting it away afterward.

I warmed up by paddling to the north end of the harbor so I'd have a nice long stretch with the wind at my back.  After doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did a workout consisting of eight two-minutes-on-two-minutes-off pieces.

It didn't warm up much while I was on the water.  As I drove home my car said it was 36 degrees.  The forecast high was in the mid 40s but I don't think it actually got out of the 30s yesterday.

When I got up this morning the temperature was right at freezing, but the sun was shining through a patchwork of clouds and the wind was lighter.  With one of my longer races of the year coming up in two weeks I wanted to get in a good long paddle today.  With the Mississippi River flowing at 27.5 feet on the Memphis gauge, there was plenty of water for a good unimpeded trip around the Loosahatchie Bar.  By the time I got down to the river the temperature was up to 43 degrees and I got in my boat envisioning a lovely wilderness tour on a cool but sunny day.

But you know how that saying goes: "Man plans, God laughs," or something like that.

I paddled south from the marina, doing three 8-stroke sprints along the way.  When I got to the mouth of the harbor I found heavy barge traffic out on the river: one rig had just passed by and was moving upriver under the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and I could see two more coming up from the President's Island area.  This would have been less of an issue in the middle of summer, but on a chilly day like today I didn't want to push my luck by ferrying across the river in a bunch of rough water.

As I was making this decision to stay on the Tennessee side, I realized I was stuck.  The southern tip of Mud Island sort of plateaus as it slopes down into the water at the harbor's mouth, and at today's water level this plateau was no more than a couple of inches beneath the surface.  My rudder had sunk deep into the mud and I spent a couple of minutes jerking the boat forward with my body to get it into deeper water.  Once I was finally there I realized that my rudder's post had gotten bent so that the rudder would not swivel freely.

Exasperated, I muscled my boat across the harbor to the cobblestones, the nearest place where I could easily get out of the boat and fix the rudder.  Of course, getting out of the boat someplace other than a dock means getting my feet wet, and with the waves created by that first barge rig crashing against the cobblestones, I got drenched up to my knees.  I managed to get my pogies wet, too.  And thickening clouds were beginning to cover up the sun.  I was able to bend my rudder post back so that it functioned properly again, but by this time I was angry at everything--at the heavy commercial traffic on the river, at my failure to read the water in an area I've paddled through zillions of times, at the presence of February-like weather a week into April... everything.

I headed up the river, and it took me most of the way up to the mouth of the Wolf River to calm down and get my mind back on the task at hand.  I paddled about a mile up the Wolf before turning around and coming back.  When I got back to the Mississippi the last barge rig was passing by, and I paddled somewhat gingerly downriver in the ensuing turbulent water.  The cold weather combined with my blown concentration had me in complete self-preservation mode.

Finally I was safely back in the harbor and I returned to the dock to finish up a 120-minute session.  In the end I did get a good long paddle in, but it was nowhere near as enjoyable as I'd hoped for.