Short pants

Right now we're experiencing some very un-December-like weather in the Mid South.  Today the Fahrenheit temperature rose into the mid 70s, and is expected to keep doing so through the weekend.  Something about a high-pressure system drawing warm air up here from the Gulf of Mexico.

When I paddled yesterday, and when I did my dry-land routine today, I did so in shorts.  I got some brisk cold water splashes while paddling, but today I was sweating profusely while running and doing core exercises.  The Gulf air is humid, just like in the summertime.

I paddled for an hour yesterday, maintaining a steady pace with three long surges.  I could feel the soreness in my arm, but it wasn't bad.  As for today, I was feeling sluggish as I went down to the Greenbelt Park, and I wondered if I had a full workout in me.  But once I got going I kept myself moving from one exercise to the next, and before I knew it I was finished.  It actually took me some ten minutes longer to do the workout than it usually does, and I attribute that to the weather: when it's freezing cold outside I waste no time at all because I'm eager to get it done so I can go someplace warm, while today I probably lingered a bit more between exercises in the pleasant weather.  I think I still kept myself moving pretty efficiently, however.

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Monday photo feature

A week ago yesterday, the annual Cape Point Challenge took place on the waters I'll be paddling about a month from now.

The course varies some from year to year, depending on the wind and other conditions, but the map above shows what the racers did this year.  The peninsula is south of the city of Cape Town; locals often refer to it as the "Deep South," not to be confused with our region here in the U.S. that includes states like Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana.  The town of Fish Hoek, where the race finished, is where I'll be based during my participation in the downwind camp hosted by the brothers Dawid and Jasper Mocke.

The Cape Point Challenge is definitely a long-distance endeavor.  The fastest boats finished this year's race just under four hours.  Based on my experience competing against some of the people who completed the race, I'm guessing I would have taken the better part of six hours to finish.  That makes me think this event is probably not for me, but surfski paddlers on the Western Cape of South Africa regard it with utmost reverence.

When I visited the area nearly four years ago, I had the opportunity to paddle from Platboom Bay to Buffels Bay.  Though it's just a small portion of this year's Cape Point Challenge course, it felt like a good solid day of paddling to me.

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Keeping the effort going

It's been another decent week as I continue working as hard as I can while keeping the stress on my upper right arm to a minimum.

After an hour of steady paddling on Tuesday, I was back in the boat Thursday for a varied-pace workout.  I paddled at a little over 60 strokes per minute for three minutes, then did 90 seconds around 72 spm, and finally 30 seconds at about 84 spm.  I did eight of these five-minute pieces in between a 15-minute warmup and a 5-minute cooldown.  My arm felt pretty good most of the time: 84 strokes per minute is low enough for me to have good control, and as long as I have control I can keep my ailing muscle out of the act of paddling.  It's when I get up over 100 spm that I start to feel the pain in my arm, and I may have to do that from time to time while chasing runs in South Africa.

Thursday was a rainy day, but I got my workout in that morning before the foul weather moved in.  It's always satisfying when I manage to do that.

By Friday morning the rain had moved out and chillier weather had moved in.  I went down to the Greenbelt Park and did my dry-land routine under sunny skies and a temperature around 41 degrees Fahrenheit.

It quickly warmed up to a high in the mid 60s Saturday.  I was back in the boat, paddling a strong tempo for 40 minutes in between a 10-minute warmup and a 10-minute cooldown.

Yesterday was not so balmy, and I had to paddle in a chilly north wind with the temperature below 50 degrees.  I paddled steady and focused on taking good strokes.

My departure for the southern hemisphere is now less than five weeks away.  I hope my body will cooperate with my desire to so some higher intensity work in the weeks to come.

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Monday photo feature

It's been at least 20 years since I last saw Albert Mitchum.  But learning he had passed away last week was a stiff gut-punch nevertheless.

By the time I got into whitewater slalom racing in the mid 1990s, Albert's peak racing years were winding down.  But he had a lot to show for it.  He was a regular contender for a spot on the U.S. national team, and he had seen elite-level international competition in some half-dozen World Cup events.

Albert decided to hang up his paddle after the 1996 U.S. Olympic Team trials, but he found he couldn't walk away entirely.  By 1998 he was entering some club races again, and he trained himself back up to compete in the 2000 Olympic trials.

I had known who Albert was earlier in the decade, but it wasn't until this latter period that I really got to know him.  He was very generous with his knowledge of slalom technique, and as a self-coached athlete I appreciated that very much.  He also was quite willing to discuss his skills in home construction; I was only just beginning to dabble in woodworking, and I was eager to learn whatever I could about any kind of building.  So we found plenty of conversation to bond over.

The 2000 trials was Albert's last "serious" slalom race, but for the next few years he continued to show up at events within a reasonable drive of his home in southeast Tennessee.  I usually saw him at the Alabama Cup races on the Locust Fork and Mulberry Fork rivers, and it was there that I had one of my proudest moments as a slalom racer when I managed to beat him in '02 or '03.  Sure, his peak years were long past by then, and he probably wasn't really even training, but hey... the guy had raced in World Cups, and that was something I could only dream of.  He of course accepted the result graciously, because that's the kind of person he was.

Soon enough, we both moved on to other things and our paths no longer crossed.  But I always remembered him as one of the kindest, most genuine people I knew while involved in slalom racing.  Unfortunately, I had entirely lost track of him until last week, when I saw in a social media post that he'd died.  Apparently he'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease some four years ago, and declined rapidly toward the end.  He was 65 years old.

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Pushing through the latest Arctic blast

Yesterday I did an hour of mostly-steady paddling in the harbor.  My right arm continued to feel not so bad in the wake of the workout I'd done on Thursday.  Go figure.

As predicted, the temperature plummeted overnight last night, and as I drove downtown this morning the temperature display in my car said it was 23 degrees Fahrenheit.  The sun was shining, and that made it seem better, but there was also a stiff north wind blowing, and that made it seem worse.  I went to the same part of the Greenbelt Park, maybe two-thirds of the way from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the mouth of the Wolf River, and did my dry-land routine with nearly thirty degrees less warmth than I'd had on Friday.  That gave me plenty of motivation to keep moving from one exercise to the next.

I've been saying frequently that I pay close attention to stroke mechanics when I'm in the boat, but the same is true when I do cross-training activities like I did today.  I try to keep my body relaxed and practice good form in both the running and the core exercises.  In The Barton Mold by Bill Endicott, Greg Barton has this to say about his observance of good technique in strength training:

I feel that if you start cheating, really jerking around a lot, there are two things that happen.  One is you're starting to pull into play muscles other than the ones you are targeting.  Secondly, what happens when you get into the boat?  Are you going to start jerking around there, too?  Start pulling all over the place?  I think some of that carries over.  If you use strict technique in the weight room, you're thinking in that mode and it's a little easier to transfer that into the boat.  I think people who bang out as much as they can in the weight room tend to paddle that way, too.

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I've got a pretty good routine going

It's been mostly an encouraging week so far.  I've been doing a mixture of paddling and dry-land workouts and my body has responded pretty well.  It hasn't hurt that the weather has finally improved in recent days.

I paddled Monday and yesterday.  Yesterday I pushed the intensity with twelve 30-second sprints starting every third minute.  I could feel the pain in my upper right arm during each sprint, but it weathered the stress, and for the rest of the day it actually felt about as good as it had in months.  I'll continue to tread carefully and try not to give it more stress than it can withstand.

On the days I paddle, I've also been doing sets of Hindu squats.  I started with 60 squats per set a few weeks ago, and since then I've been adding two per set each time.  I'm currently in the high 80s and plan to make it to 100 before changing to some other leg exercise.

On Tuesday and yesterday I did my dry-land routine in the Greenbelt Park alongside the Mississippi River.  I start with a run of maybe 1200 meters, followed by a few core exercises interspersed with sprints up the steep slope from the park's main tier to the lot where I park my car.  Then I do about an 800-meter run, repeat the core exercises and uphill sprints, and finish with the 1200-ish-meter run.  The whole session takes me around 40 minutes, and I try to move quickly from one exercise to the next and keep my heart rate up.  I almost always feel good when it's over.

I think we've got one more warm-ish day, and then cold weather returns.  The forecast is saying that the high on Sunday will be 26 degrees Fahrenheit.  The sort of weather that separates the champions from the rest, supposedly.

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Monday photo feature

Here's a shot from January of 2022.  It's a screen-grab of footage from Dawid Mocke's Go Pro camera out on the famous Miller's Run offshore from Simon's Town, Cape Town, South Africa.  That would be me there, trying to catch a swell with the Roman Rock lighthouse in the background.

This photo sums up my motivation to keep moving in these not-so-pleasant days of late fall here in the Mid South United States.  In a little over six weeks I'll be back in the setting of this image, and I hope my body will be ready to perform to my satisfaction.

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Persistence

Well, it's been just about a month since my last post here.

Lately the weather has been a challenge: this past week has given us mostly cloudy skies, Fahrenheit temperatures mostly in the 30s, and bitter north winds.

What's more, my right biceps area has continued to bother me.  The bright side is that I do seem able to paddle with it: in recent days I've gingerly pushed the intensity, and it has responded well.  But it rears its head in my out-of-the-boat life at random times, when I move my arm just the wrong way.  A couple of times I've gotten a sharp stab of pain while putting a shirt on, for example.

Maybe I should be seeking some medical attention for this ailment, but besides my general dislike of dealing with modern-day corporate doctors' offices, I'm skeptical that I can do so quickly enough to initiate an effective physical therapy regimen before I leave for South Africa in about six weeks.  Maybe I'll change my mind in another day or two, but for now I'm following the example of that baseball player who plays through a nagging ailment for the last couple of months of the season before getting it fixed more permanently in the offseason.

In any case, I've been working out both in and out of the boat, albeit at a very modest volume.  To view the situation in the most positive light possible, I've been reflecting on my best assets as an athlete:

1.  I've always been good at showing up, even when my heart is not a hundred percent into the idea of training and it would be very easy to skip a session.  When a day arrives and I have a session planned, and the weather is sort of lousy like it's been this past week, I almost always make myself go get in the boat (or do whatever else I've got planned) anyway, and "put something on the board," as it were.  More often than not, once my workout is underway, I embrace the task and put in a good honest effort.

2.  I'm consistent with everything I do.  Nothing I do is a one-off.  Sometimes I might rearrange my schedule of workouts based on the weather forecast, but I never, say, do an indoor jump-rope session because it's raining outside and then never do any jump-roping again.  When I choose a particular exercise, I make it a regular part of my routine for an extended period so that my body can adapt to it fully.  My body needs to know that each exercise is part of "its job" for as long as that exercise is part of my routine.

3.  My sessions are always good quality.  I make them count.  Like I said above, my training volume has been fairly low lately, partly because of my muscular woes and partly because I've had a lot going on in my non-athletic life.  In November most of my paddling sessions were just 40 minutes, and my gym work and other dry-land workouts haven't been particularly daunting.  But every time I do something, I do it well.  In the boat I don't just drift around; I pay close attention to my stroke mechanics and my cadence and my intensity.  The same goes for all the other work: I give a good honest effort with a lot of attention to technique.

4.  I set goals for myself.  In the last several years I haven't been racing as seriously, and so my goals have been perhaps not so clearly defined; but they're there nevertheless.  For much of this past year, my goal was simply to achieve a good solid fitness level for my trip through the Grand Canyon.  I'm now seeking the same for my trip to South Africa, albeit with a few more intense workouts thrown in.  As I move inexorably into old age, my focus will be more and more on general fitness with the hope that I can keep feeling good and performing mundane tasks.

So... there you go.  I wish I could tell you I'm putting myself through rigorous workouts and feeling "in the zone" and all that, but at the moment that's not really the case.  I'm doing the best I can, however, and I hope that sticking with it will lead me to some good things down the road.

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