Monday photo feature

Maryland native Cathy Hearn started winning medals at the whitewater world championships before I'd ever even heard of the sport.

In 1977, Cathy was part of the bronze-winning team in the ladies' kayak slalom class at the world championships at Spittal, Austria.  Two years later, she claimed gold medals in both individual and team women's kayak slalom, and added another team gold in women's kayak wildwater, at Jonquiere, Quebec.

In 1981, Cathy attended the worlds at Bala, Wales, and medaled again, winning individual silver and team bronze in women's kayak slalom.  By this time I was finally aware of whitewater racing: '81 was the summer I got serious about paddling at camp, and I remember taking a trip to the Nantahala River and seeing slalom gates on the river and slalom and wildwater boats on top of cars.

Cathy came home empty-handed from the worlds in '83 and '85, but in '87 she was part of the bronze-winning women's kayak slalom team.  In '89 the worlds came to the U.S. for the first time, on Maryland's Savage River.  In ladies' kayak slalom, Cathy won bronze in individual competition and silver in team.

In 1992, whitewater slalom returned to the Olympic programme for the first time in 20 years, and Cathy made the U.S. team for Barcelona.  She didn't medal there, but the following year she won another slalom worlds medal as part of the women's kayak team that took bronze at Mezzana, Italy.

In 1994 or so I finally got into slalom racing myself, and Cathy was still around.  She made another Olympic team in 1996, and in 1997 she won another medal at the worlds, claiming the individual bronze in women's kayak slalom at Tres Coroas, Brazil.

I took the photo of Cathy above during a practice day at the U.S. team trials at Wausau, Wisconsin, in 1998, the first year I qualified to race at the trials myself.  She would race three more seasons and earn a chance to race a world championships in the U.S. again, on Tennessee's Ocoee River in 2001.  Sadly, that worlds was canceled in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.  It was an abrupt end for a career that spanned nearly a quarter-century.


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Hard paddling and recovery paddling

Adam Davis joined me yesterday to paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar.  It was one of those days of unsettled weather conditions, the sunshine appearing and disappearing and reappearing, and a wind blowing from the west-southwest that grew quite a bit stronger as the morning went on.  Here's the map of our route that Adam's G.P.S. device generated:

Paddling up the Mississippi, we stayed on the Tennessee side longer than I normally do.  I usually paddle up to a big eddy right about where Mile 4 is marked above, and then ferry across to complete the trip around the Bar's northern end.  But yesterday we continued up the Tennessee bank to the sand and gravel operation just north of DeWitt Spain Airport.  That area is quite exposed to the river's current, and with that mostly-west wind hammering us we had to spend a lot more energy than usual navigating that stretch.  And then the trip across the main channel (5 to 6 on the map above) was right into the teeth of that wind.

With the current helping us, we got a bit of a break coming down the Loosahatchie Chute.  After one last hard push across a turbulent main channel, we were safely back in the harbor.  I was thoroughly zonked for the rest of the day, much more tired than I'd been after Adam and I paddled for three hours nine days earlier.

The wind continued to intensify as the afternoon went on, and I realized I'd probably missed a good downwind opportunity.  Just below downtown the river bends to the right and flows in a westerly direction for a few miles, and I would bet that wind was creating some good swells in that section.  I've got to start paying closer attention to the wind forecast and making downwind opportunities a priority.

It was mostly sunny when I went down to the river this morning, and the wind had abated and shifted to the north.  It was time to do a recovery paddle.  I got in the boat and paddled easy for 60 minutes.

Once in a while somebody asks me if it wouldn't be better to skip paddling and just rest when I'm recovering.  But I've been a believer in active recovery for my entire athletic career, dating back to my teenage years as a runner.  By doing some easy paddling, I'm getting blood flowing precisely in the muscles that need repair.

Whitewater slalom coach Ron Lugbill once wrote that the danger of recovery in the boat is that an athlete might get carried away and end up paddling harder than he should, and that's a valid concern.  If a barge rig passes by with some nice looking waves, I have to restrain myself from going out and surfing, for instance.  If I need something to occupy my mind, I'll focus on technical stuff.  Today I tuned in to the feeling of solid blade pressure as each stroke moved through the water.  By the end of the hour I'd kept the intensity low and felt better than I'd felt before paddling.


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Enjoying the nice and not-so-nice days

One thing the global pandemic hasn't stopped is the blossoming of spring.  Lately we've been having several lovely sunny days a week, and I'm trying to make a point of enjoying them.  My house has a rather nice deck out back of which I've never fully availed myself: those who have known me well for years will tell you that I'm sort of a busy buzzin' bee who has trouble sitting still.  But in the last several weeks I've made time toward the end of each beautiful day to sit out there and just savor the moment.

Tuesday was one such gorgeous day.  That morning I did a round of the strength routine and then headed downtown to paddle a loop of the harbor with Joe.

By Wednesday afternoon a system of rain had moved in--we're still getting plenty of rain this spring, too--and yesterday morning I paddled in a lingering drizzle.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints I headed out on to the Mississippi, where a growing south breeze was generating the slightest hint of some downwind conditions.  I've mentioned in the past that getting help from the tiny bumps is an area where I need to improve, so I spent a half-hour or so yesterday paddling upriver and working on that.  For much of the time the conditions just weren't defined enough for me to do much good, but maybe once or twice I got a little ride... hey, you do what you can with the conditions you've got.  If nothing else, I got some good exercise out there on our big beautiful river.

This morning I did another round of the strength routine.  Right now it's partly sunny and I think it will be a nice day.  It looks like more rain is on its way for the weekend.


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Just curious

Here's a sign that I have too much time on my hands as these days of hunkering down turn into weeks and months.

As the creator and curator of this blog, I have access to statistics regarding its readership.  I get no clue as to any reader's identity, but I am informed of the number of people viewing the blog and the nations in which they reside.

I am based in the United States, and the overwhelming majority of my acquaintances and friends are U.S. residents, so it's no surprise that most of this blog's "hits" originate here in the U.S.  But quite a few views originate elsewhere.

Shortly after my return from South Africa in February, the Miller's Taxi page on Face Book shared a link to this blog, and for the next day or so I got a lot of hits from South Africa.  I thought that was really cool.  Since then that readership has dropped back down to almost zero.  I sure do hope you South Africans will come back and see me sometime.

Once in a while I get a sudden burst of dozens of hits from Russia, and I tend to dismiss those as some variety of hackbots.  I know, I'm profiling and generalizing, but the fact is that I don't know a single person, paddler or otherwise, in that nation.

Most intriguing to me are the fairly-frequent views I'm getting in nations like Portugal, South Korea, Canada, and Great Britain.  Paddlesports enjoy some popularity in all those places, and I do have either friends or friends-of-friends in those places, so I'm pretty sure those are actual human beings having a look at the blog.

SO... if you're in Portugal or South Korea or Great Britain or even Russia, and you feel so inclined, how about letting me know who you are?  Have we met before?  What led you to this blog?  What's your interest in paddling?  You can either post a comment here, or send me an e-mail at thebigeholmes [at] hotmail [dot] com.

Like I said, I'm bored and don't have enough to do, and I totally understand if you'd rather remain anonymous.  But I really do enjoy knowing who's reading all this stuff I write.  Once in a while when I'm at a race somewhere, somebody I barely know will come up to me and say "I love your blog!"  That never fails to make my day.  I rarely attend races with the citizens of distant lands, but it's a thrill to know that at least a tiny number of people there are reading these words.


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Monday photo feature

The Blue Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race was supposed to be this past weekend.  It's a 22-mile race down the Mississippi River from Madison Parish Port, Louisiana, to the Vicksburg riverfront.

This photo is from that race in 2014 or thereabouts.  I'm fending off a fierce challenge from Rick Carter of Eutawville, South Carolina.  Photo by Paul Ingram.


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Shorter and faster

Yesterday morning was chilly but the sun was coming out.  I went down to the river with the intention of doing something shorter and quicker than what I've mostly been doing lately.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints.  It was my first time in weeks doing these sprints, and they did feel a bit rusty, but not as bad as I was expecting.

I left the harbor and headed downriver toward the Harahan Bridge.  I had a workout in mind that I thought might combine some higher-intensity paddling with some boat control.  Starting in an eddy on the Arkansas bank upstream of the bridge, I paddled out into the river and looped around the nearest piling.  Then I ferried back to the Arkansas bank and paddled back up to the eddy where I'd started.  Sounds simple enough, but this lap took me around four and a half minutes and included navigating the boiling water below the bridge piling, doing a long ferry back to shore, and doing sort of an attainment move to complete it.  I ended up calling it a "giant slalom" because it was something I might have done while training for slalom on smaller rivers scaled up by a pretty big factor.  I did four laps with three minutes recovery in between.  I treated it more as a "play" workout than as a serious on-the-clock sort of thing, but I was suitably tired by the time it was over.

Yesterday blossomed into a gorgeous sunny day, but by this morning some more rain had moved in.  I went downtown this morning and paddled for 60 minutes in a fine mist that occasionally swelled into actual rainfall.  I did another set of 8-strokers and then just paddled a comfortable pace the rest of the time.

I'm cautiously optimistic that the pain in my right arm and shoulder is healing.  It had hurt badly for a solid week and I was starting to get concerned, but now it's feeling quite a bit better.  It's not completely gone yet but I like the direction it's headed.


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Savoring the Mid South riverscapes

On Tuesday I did a round of the strength routine and then headed downtown to paddle a loop of the harbor with Joe.  A mass of chilly air had moved into the area, driven by a frigid north wind.  Thinking that such weather was behind us, I'd washed my pogies and put them away over the weekend.  I was wishing I had them on Tuesday, especially as we paddled into the teeth of that wind.

On Wednesday I got a message from Adam Davis.  Adam is on vacation this week; his original plan was fill the week with some travel, bookended by races in Florida last weekend and Vicksburg this coming weekend.  The pandemic upended his plans, and in his message he suggested a long paddle upriver from Memphis for yesterday.  I mentioned last weekend that I've been feeling a bit run down by these long paddles, but I didn't want to disappoint Adam as he made the best of his plight.  So I was in the boat bright and early yesterday morning.

The outing turned out to be immensely enjoyable.  I felt surprisingly energetic as we left the harbor and pursued a spirited pace up the Mississippi.  A gorgeous sunny day took shape as we passed all the familiar landmarks along the Tennessee bank: the Greenbelt Park, the mouth of the Wolf River, the Maynard C. Stiles sewage treatment plant, DeWitt Spain Airport, the sand and gravel operation, the mouth of the Loosahatchie River.  We continued northward toward the lower reaches of the Hickman Bar, finally threading the slot between two of the little islets there.

From there we ferried across to the Arkansas side and found the entrance to the little channel on the west side of the Redman Point Bar.  It had been some 15 years since I'd last visited this channel, which is no more than maybe a hundred meters wide, and I'd forgotten just what a beautiful place it is.  Under blue skies we cruised the edge of the lush bottomland forest as the sun-dappled waters threw sparks of light all over the landscape.  Eventually the channel gave way to the much larger Loosahatchie Chute, and my thoughts wandered back toward home as fatigue began to set in. I tried to keep my strokes relaxed and efficient as the downtown skyline came back into view and our tour entered its last half-hour.

We made it back to the harbor, I bade Adam goodbye at the cobblestones, and I returned to my own dock nearly three hours after I'd started.  Such long sessions are not something I like to do often.  But seeing as how there's really nothing to train for anytime soon, why not get out and explore?  Ultimately it's what paddling is about.  I've enjoyed reconnecting with some of the natural wonders that lie slightly farther afield from downtown Memphis.  Meanwhile, my body still needs something shorter and quicker, so maybe I'll get around to that this weekend.

That injury in my right arm/shoulder area has continued hurting this week.  But since paddling yesterday the pain hasn't been as bad, and I think paddling might actually have some therapeutic value in this case.  That's my non-medical, "gut-feeling" opinion, anyway.  I was otherwise very tired for the rest of the day yesterday, but it was that nice satisfying kind of tired.

I got in another round of the strength routine this morning, and now I'm hoping for a nice weekend in the boat.


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Monday photo feature

It looks like Adam Davis has me beat to the finish line!  Actually, we were paddling by the sand and gravel operation just north of DeWitt Spain Airport on Saturday, and buoys were strewn about in several places, for what purpose I do not know.

It will probably be a long time before we're approaching the finish line of a real race again.  But it's always fun to pretend.


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Pains and aches

On Tuesday I did a round of the strength routine and then joined Joe to paddle a loop of the harbor.

I've been feeling pretty beat-up all week, and the main reason lies in my non-athletic life.  I spent the first half of the week doing another big surge of work in that landscaping project I've been mentioning over the last month or so.  Any project that involves pouring concrete and laying bricks is going to require a lot of digging.  There's a reason digging is among the principal archetypes for backbreaking manual labor.

A month ago I mentioned some lack of feeling in my left leg, and since then I've had some similar problems in my hands and wrists, and I now think that's all the result of swinging the pick axe and shoveling up all that rooty, gravelly soil.  I talked to my friend Rob, a chiropractor up in New York, and he said it was the likely cause.  He also pointed out that the lack of feeling is a nerve issue, not a circulation issue as I'd suspected.

By Wednesday evening I was dealing with a new ailment: a sharp, stabbing pain in my right arm where the biceps muscle meets the deltoid.  I think I know what caused it: swinging a hammer.  I'd spent the day laying bricks on a section of driveway, using a brick hammer to keep them packed as tightly as possible.  Particularly toward the end of the job it was taking a series of hard blows to get each brick in place.

It was hurting bad Thursday morning and I took the day off from paddling.  It was perhaps slightly better Friday, but not by much.  I did manage to do another round of the strength routine; I wasn't sure I'd be able to handle the bicep curls, but they went surprisingly okay.  It's hard to pinpoint exactly where the pain is, but apparently it's not in the main spot that the curls hit.  I went slow and tried to use correct technique throughout each set.

Yesterday morning I got back in the boat.  Every time I paddle I start with a set of back strokes away from the dock, and my injured spot hurt as I did so yesterday, but it felt okay once I was paddling forward.  The discomfort was definitely there, but whichever muscle is hurt apparently is not directly involved in paddling.

I paddled to the south end of the harbor and met up with Adam Davis, who put in at the cobblestones.  We embarked on a fairly long trip: we paddled up the Mississippi River along the Tennessee bank until we reached the mouth of the Loosahatchie River, then ferried across to the lower end of the Redman Bar, then headed back toward town by way of the Loosahatchie Chute.  Here's the map of our route that Adam's G.P.S. device generated:

For me it was about a fourteen-mile circuit that took almost 140 minutes.  I felt tired and a bit sluggish in the boat, and the long session left me quite worn out for the rest of the day.  I took a nap after lunch and then spent the late afternoon laying the last section of bricks, using the hammer as little as possible.  I'm happy to say that the landscaping project is complete except for a few finishing touches.

The main reason I bore down to get that job done is that I knew today was going to be a soggy one.  Heavy thunderstorms moved in overnight and it poured rain all morning and into the afternoon.  I try not to let rain stop me from paddling, but there was quite a bit of lightning today as well, so I stayed in and gazed forlornly out the windows for much of the day.  We finally got a break in the rain around 3 o'clock, so I did a bit of stretching and headed downtown.  I was still feeling tired and sluggish and I paddled for just 40 minutes.  Since this whole pandemic wiped out my race schedule I've mostly been doing long, slow paddles, and I think that might be one of the reasons for my feelings of sluggishness.  I need to make a point of working in at least one short, fast session each week.

It's my understanding that one more line of storms, possibly severe, will move through later tonight.  After that it's supposed to be cooler here for several days, with Fahrenheit highs in the 50s.

Getting my arms all warmed up by paddling has helped my injured area feel better yesterday and today.  Once my muscles cool down and tighten back up, the area starts hurting again.  I hope this is something I can paddle through until it runs its course.


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Monday photo feature

Check out this stunning photograph that Joe Royer sent me in a text message.  He took it as he and his wife Carol Lee were at the marina getting ready to paddle Friday evening.  Joe is as fine an amateur photographer as anybody I know.

Though in general I love the ducks that hang out down there, I can't say I love everything about them.  On Saturday morning when I got down to the dock to paddle myself, there was ample evidence that the ducks had been there.  Oh well, I guess that's a small price to pay for the overall ambience we enjoy on our riverfront.

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More flood paddling

As the weekend arrived, the Mississippi River was reaching its crest at 37.2 feet on the Memphis gauge.  The official "flood stage" here is 34 feet, at which bottomland areas begin to flood significantly.  When Adam Davis paddled Friday morning, his G.P.S. device generated a rather interesting map of his route:

No, Adam's boat is not equipped with hovercraft technology.  The areas that appear as dry land in this image are currently underwater.

I was in a mood to paddle something similar to Adam's route yesterday morning.  I didn't want to paddle more than 70 minutes or so, so I stayed south of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge (Interstate 40) and just did a loop across that big swath of bottomland there.  My biceps and triceps were sore from the new strength routine I'd started up Friday, but once I got warmed up I paddled pretty comfortably.

Adam and I got together to paddle today, and we ended up doing something pretty similar to what Adam did on Friday: we started out going downriver below the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge (Interstate 55), then worked our way back up north of the HDB and into Dacus Lake before returning to the harbor.

Today was a lovely sunny day.  Such has been hard to come by so far this spring, but as I noted a few days ago, nice days are becoming ever so slightly more frequent.


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Keeping up the routine, and swimming against a current of pessimism

I got back in the boat yesterday morning after several days off, and it felt good to paddle.  The morning was partly sunny, and as the day went on it became completely sunny with a high in the low 70s Fahrenheit.  We're still having a lot of clouds and rain here--the extended forecast shows chances of rain pretty much every day--but I think the sunny-to-cloudy ratio is slowly ticking upward.

Today I started up a new strength routine.  I'd been doing the old one for some five weeks, so it was time for a change.  I've said for a long time that strength work is my least favorite part of training, but I've always done it because I think it does benefit my racing, and I also believe that it's good for later-life wellness to maintain some muscle tone.  With no races to do anytime soon I've been doing strength work two times a week rather than the customary three.

Will there be any races to do at all this year?  That's a very good question.  There's just one event left on my schedule between now and the end of summer: the Gorge Downwind Championships on the Columbia River in July.  Carter Johnson, the director of that event, has stated publicly that there are no plans at this time to cancel or postpone the event.  "Four months is a while; we are staying positive," he says.

He's right--mid-July is a while off, and there's no reason to make any drastic decisions right now.  Unfortunately, I have a feeling it might not be a long enough while off.  A lot of things will have to fall neatly into place for the event to occur as scheduled.  With the airlines having grounded significant portions of their fleets and furloughed legions of employees, those who rely on air travel to get there, especially the international athletes, could face a major challenge.  Meanwhile, the event has grown to what it is through the cooperation and camaraderie of large groups of people, and that very concept has now fallen decidedly out of favor.  Even if the situation has turned around by mid-July, will people really feel comfortable piling into the shuttle vans together, or gathering together in the beer garden?

If the event does in fact go forward, I have a feeling the field of participants will be quite a bit smaller.  The air travel concerns cited above are one reason, but an even more compelling reason is the simple fact that a lot of people's lives have been turned upside down over the last several weeks.  Many athletes might lack the financial resources they'd counted on to make the trip.  Others might be working overtime to make up for the lost work time we've seen this spring.  And some might be preoccupied mourning loved ones who succumbed to COVID-19.

A drop in participation raises another concern: the issue of accommodations.  If I end up going, but the people I'm supposed to be sharing a rental house with don't make the trip, then I'll have to either bear a greater expense for the house or find some other lodging for myself.

Believe me, I hope this event happens--it's something I look forward to all year.  I apologize for the glass-half-empty outlook here, but I'm seeing some obstacles that simply can't be ignored.  The race organizers plan to meet on June 1 to re-evaluate the circumstances and make firmer decisions about what to do.  That's two months from now, and I can only hope that by then we've turned a major corner in this global pandemic.


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A new strength routine

Most of these exercises are ones I've shared here before, and I provide a video link when such a thing is available.  Exercise #2 is one I stumbled upon while browsing Face Book: there's video of surfski athlete Michelle Eray doing it on the "Paddle California" page, so if you're a Face Book user I encourage you to check that out.

Also on Face Book, well-known South African athlete and coach Hayley Nixon has posted a series of "lockdown" exercises on her page, and I think I might do some borrowing from that in the future.  You Face Book users should check that out as well.

In the meantime, here's what I've dreamt up for now:

1.  Kickback (demonstrated by Lindsey at 4:03 of this video)

2.  Knee to Elbow exercise (demonstrated by Michelle Eray in a video on the "Paddle California" Face Book page)

3.  Bicep curls

4.  Lunges

5.  Butterfly crunches (demonstrated by Michele Ramazza at 3:20 of his video on this page)


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"Why even?"

The Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, scheduled for June 13, has been called off.  Race director Joe Royer gave me the news Monday afternoon.  Apparently the organization that contracts with the city to manage the riverfront parks was putting pressure on him to pull the plug, and he decided there was no compelling reason to resist.

I figured that this cancelation was probably inevitable, so it shouldn't have come as any great shock.  But it delivered another blow to my motivation, just like a couple of weeks ago when the first round of race cancelations occurred.  Somehow I managed to do a round of the strength routine yesterday morning, but with Joe having some work commitments and unable to meet me down at the river, I skipped paddling.  The weather was rainy and miserable anyway.  I ended up spending the rest of yesterday just puttering around the house, doing small chores here and there but mostly just moping.

And then, at the end of the day, I learned that somebody I knew had died of the COVID-19 virus.  Last Wednesday he'd posted this message on his Face Book page: "I checked into Methodist Central and getting tested for whatever I got."  That was his last direct communication with the greater public.  Over the ensuing days several friends posted that he'd tested positive for the coronavirus and was on a ventilator.  Then last night his sister announced that he'd passed away, adding, "I hate you, COVID-19.  You stole my brother from me."

I didn't know the man super-well, but he was a constant presence in my community.  He was 68--not exactly young--but he was active and energetic.  Now, just like that, he's no more.  I was already aware on some level that in the scheme of things all these races getting called off was nothing more than a first-world problem, and that overall I'm one of the more fortunate people in this global health crisis.  But something like this had to happen for me to appreciate the true deadliness of this virus.

Up until now I think I've done a decent job of keeping up a daily routine.  Fortunately I do have work and activities that were well established long before this pandemic descended upon us.  Of course I'm used to getting in the boat several days a week.  I own a rental property that presents ongoing chores--I can't say I relish working over there, primarily because it's not really "my turf" even though I do own the place, but the fact that the tenants there depend on me to do those chores is adequate motivation.  The woodworking business has been quiet and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future, but I have a whole list of home-improvement projects to keep me busy during such lulls--that landscaping job out back that I mentioned a few posts ago is one example.

But as one friend of mine put it, "it seems like just a little more 'why even?' wants to creep in each day."  Maybe I should just allow myself a couple of do-nothing days... I'm pretty sure I'm not the kind of person who's likely to lapse into a complete non-functioning state.  Then again, something like this is an entirely new experience in my lifetime.


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