There's no question I'm in a training lull these days. I'm not doing nothing--I'm still getting in the boat several days a week and trying to get in some bike riding, too. But there have been other things going on that need my attention, and I'm hoping that if I can beat back some of that nuisance stuff, I can get into a more substantial athletic routine with plenty of time to be fit for the next competition.
Last week I paddled on Tuesday and Saturday, and so far this week I've paddled Sunday and Tuesday. The sessions were mostly steady paddling with lots of thought given to moving my torso as a unit with my hips. Some days I've felt sluggish and slow, and other days I've felt sharper. I felt quite good this past Tuesday, and I threw in a couple of lengthy surges just to remind my body what it feels like to push the pace.
Of course, we had that solar eclipse on Monday this week. Here in Memphis the moon was supposed to obstruct 97.7% of the sun, but having been disappointed with a similar percentage here during the 2017 eclipse, I decided to drive a couple of hours west into the path of totality. I knew that I should count on investing the whole day, more or less, given all the warnings about traffic snarls caused by me and everybody else who had the same idea. I got an early start, crossed the Mississippi River on the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and picked up U.S. 64. My destination was the town of Bald Knob, Arkansas. The drive over there was just plain pleasant. The cloudy skies gave way to sunshine, and I enjoyed watching the picturesque Arkansas Delta go by as I drove along at an unhurried pace.
Bald Knob sits where the Delta meets the Ozark Foothills. I've driven through it many times en route to races on the White River at towns like Batesville and Calico Rock. It's a pretty unremarkable place; the main reason it even exists, probably, is the junction of several U.S. highways, a railroad line, and several state highways. There's not really a town square there or a clearly-defined downtown district. The city hall is located in a ramshackle little building right on the main highway through town, which it shares with the police department.
But the moon would be casting its shadow there just as well as on nicer towns, so it suited me just fine. I arrived there around 10 AM, and since the total eclipse would be occurring just before 2 PM, I had plenty of time to explore a little. I parked behind a gas station and took my bike off the car, and spent the next 80 minutes or so checking out the backroads nearby. I was hoping to find a road that would take me all the way to the White River, but every road I tried turned to gravel, and I lacked confidence in the "slick" tires on my bike. So I just zigzagged around on the country roads, and then rode back into Bald Knob and checked out what little there was to see there. Once the ride was finished I had lunch at a picnic table in the only apparent park in the town, and then it was about showtime for the eclipse.
For some 80 minutes, the eclipse didn't seem much different from any other eclipse I've seen. The daylight got gradually dimmer, but it didn't really get dark, even when the moon obstructed all but the tiniest sliver of the sun. But then the moment of totality arrived, and I knew then that my trip was worth it. The landscape went dark except for what I heard one person describe as "a 360-degree sunset." Up in the sky there was a black circle with a fiery ring around it. The moment lasted maybe a couple of minutes where I was. Then a sliver of sun reappeared, and we were back to the kind of eclipse I'd seen a few times in the past.
My main concern now was to get home ahead of the worst traffic. I figured most Memphians had probably traveled to places like Greer's Ferry Reservoir and the Spring River, and since I was at least half an hour closer to Memphis than those places, I believed that if I left right away I'd beat most of them back. Turned out I was right: except for a brief stretch of heavy traffic on Interstate 55 at Marion, I had smooth sailing all the way home. A while later I saw reports on social media of an awful traffic jam in West Memphis. One friend of mine who had been up in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, said it took him two hours to travel the last 25 miles back to Memphis. So I was feeling like I'd pulled off the perfect crime.
Besides Monday's ride, I've also ridden my bike last Thursday and today. The weather the last couple of weeks has been quite rainy or very windy, sometimes both. We got a whole lot of rain over the last several days; it was raining Tuesday morning and I briefly considered skipping paddling, but since it was reasonably warm outside I decided to go ahead with it. A steady light rain fell the whole time I was in the boat, but it didn't really bother me. Wind is more of an annoyance in my opinion. Last Thursday I rode my bike on the Greenline out to the Wolf River and back, and the whole second half of the ride was into a headwind. Even though the ride wasn't but 70 minutes or so, I felt beat to the socks when it was over. And then it got very windy again today, once the rain finally moved out this morning. The last mile of today's ride was done into a fierce headwind.
In summary... there's been plenty going on, even if it hasn't been pure training. I believe that as long as I keep moving, and keep accomplishing at least one decent thing each day, I'll have no problem getting serious again when the time is right.
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