This weekend has brought cooler temperatures to the Mid South, with Fahrenheit highs in the 80s. But it's been somewhat rainy and very humid, so it's not as delightful outside as you might think. The rain is part of the same system that has caused catastrophic flooding in eastern Kentucky, but we've been spared such misery here, as the heaviest precipitation has gone north or south of Memphis.
The floodwaters of Kentucky and other parts of the Midwest will eventually find their way to the Memphis riverfront. Several days ago the Mississippi River was flowing below a foot on the Memphis gauge, but it's now rising toward a predicted crest of 9.6 feet.
The level was almost 3 feet when I went down there to paddle yesterday. These days my sessions are totally unstructured: I plan to paddle for 60 or 70 minutes and just see what's going on. When I reached the mouth of the harbor yesterday there was a small barge rig heading upriver, and I went out to see what kind of surfing could be had. It turned out the waves were small and hard to stay on for any length of time, and I found myself doing lots of hard sprints without much reward. After a while I returned to the harbor, where I did a couple of long surges before easing back to the dock.
This morning I was back on the bike, riding almost 37 kilometers. My route was about the same one I rode this past Thursday and Sunday: eastward on the Greater Memphis Greenline to Shelby Farms, and then a loop around Patriot Lake before returning to Midtown on the Greenline. Today I took a couple of different trails in Shelby farms, and that accounts for the longer distance.
My G.P.S. device is set to alert me every time I complete 5 kilometers. I never set it that way on purpose; it might just be a default setting. Anyway, it's gotten me familiar with my 5K times on the bike this year. It typically takes me a little under 14 minutes to cover 5 km, and that seems pretty good to me until I remember that there are a few dozen runners in this world covering it as much as a minute faster than that.
This past Thursday I thought I'd see just how fast I could ride a 5K, just for fun or to satisfy my curiosity or whatever. I gave it three tries, the fastest one being about 11 minutes, 3 seconds. I continued the experiment today, and this time I did it on a section of the Greenline with no street crossings. Heading out toward Shelby Farms I was slowed several times by people walking their dogs, but I managed to clock 10:26. After riding an easier pace around the lake, I returned to that uninterrupted stretch of Greenline and rode another hard 5K, lowering my time to 10:14.
I'm sure these times are unimpressive to more accomplished bike riders. A 10:14 5K works out to an average speed of less than 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) per hour. But let me remind you that I was riding my 25-year-old low-tech mountain bike, dressed in gym shorts and a cotton tee shirt. And I have no particular training goals as a bike rider; I was out there just seeing what I could do. And that's what sports is all about, isn't it? From world-class athletes down to the least-talented masses, each of us is just seeing what he or she can do.
I got rained on during the return leg of today's ride. It really started pouring right as I got home. It was nothing to worry about: whenever a kid at the summer camp I attended started whining about having to do something in the rain, the standard retort from the counselors was "Skin is waterproof."
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