The first slalom race I ever did was one of those "citizen" races the Nantahala Racing Club used to put on. You could enter in whatever boat you had and do an easy course on the gates down near Worser Wesser Falls. Here I am racing my old Dancer kayak. Every time I look at this photo I want to say I'm 11 or 12 years old, but the year was in fact 1992, at which time I was 24 and going on 25. Photo by Michael Stout.
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This was a week of ups and downs in terms of how I'm feeling and what sort of physical activity I've managed to do.
I spent Monday dealing with logs, trying to gather some material for my job at the Pink Palace Crafts Fair next weekend. No matter how careful I am, I always manage to tweak some muscles when I do such work, usually in my lower back.
I woke up Tuesday feeling really stiff and sore from Monday's work. But I got myself down to the river and paddled for an hour, and that seemed to loosen me up very nicely. I can say that in my four-plus decades of paddling there have been countless days in which I felt better after paddling than I'd felt before.
Meanwhile, I was trying my best to keep my left arm in the "neutral" position to keep the stress off my rotator cuff, and doing the strengthening exercises that Rob had shown me. By Thursday the area was feeling as good as it had felt in a long time, and that lifted my spirits. I had a good bike ride Thursday morning, and then saw my chiropractor that afternoon. I told her of the improvement in my left rotator cuff area, joking that I was almost afraid to say it out loud.
As it turned out, I was right to be afraid. I spent Friday doing more log-hunting, and while I can't think of any specific thing I did to aggravate any particular muscles, by yesterday morning my left arm was back to feeling as bad as ever. I went down to the river and got in the boat, and as I warmed up in the harbor, the pain nagged me with every stroke. Eventually I got warmed up enough for the discomfort to move into the background, but today the area continues to hurt.
Lately Sunday has been a bike-riding day for me, and that was the plan again today. But I was delayed by the latest of what has been a rash of flat tires in the last month. I got it fixed and did a good ride out to Shelby Farms and back by way of the Greater Memphis Greenline. As I carried the bike back into the garage to the spot where I hang it on the wall, I heard a sudden hissing noise: for some reason all the air was running out of the tire once more. Sigh... at least it waited until I was back home. I was too tired to deal with it right then, but I'll be fixing yet another flat tire before my next ride.
If I need a reminder of how small my problems are, then I guess I should look at the current catastrophic phenomena around the planet. The remnants of a Pacific typhoon walloped the west coast of Alaska, another typhoon is hitting Japan, Puerto Rico is bracing for Hurricane Fiona, a series of earthquakes has rocked Taiwan, and wildfires continue to burn in the western U.S. Oddly enough, it's as calm as can be around here. The sun is out, breezes are light, and we're in for several days of near-100-degrees-Fahrenheit temperatures.
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When my friend Rob came to visit last week, it was the first time I'd seen him in person in six years. Back in 2016 I visited his home in New York's Hudson Valley during my trip to the USCA Nationals in western Massachusetts. One day Rob and I put on the Hudson River at Peekskill and paddled up toward the Bear Mountain Bridge.
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My best friend Rob came to visit for a few days this past week. We visited a couple of local museums, went out to eat, explored the outdoors... the sort of things good friends do.
But Rob's visit has some actual relevance to this blog, too. Rob is a chiropractor based in Pawling, New York, and he had a lot to say about my current skeletal-muscular issues. He had me go through a whole bunch of movements and concluded that my deltoid/biceps woes are the result of inflammation of tendons in my rotator cuff. He said that only once this inflammation is calmed down will any other treatments really work. He urged me to do my best to keep my left arm in the "neutral position" (i.e., as if it's in a sling) as much as possible to minimize stress on the area. He also showed me some exercises that target the rotator cuff area specifically. While he was at it, he showed me a whole slew of core exercises (mostly on the stability ball) that I now want to incorporate into strength work this fall and winter.
All this advice is what one would expect from a chiropractor. But Rob is also quite knowledgeable of internal health in general, and while he was here he gave me advice on my diet and the vitamin supplements I should be taking. My cholesterol level has been somewhat high my whole adult life, and after a particularly high test result back in June, my doctor finally put me on a prescription statin drug. My LDL level has come down a lot as a result, but Rob thinks I can achieve the same thing with a natural over-the-counter statin (red yeast rice). He explained that the prescription statin has an oversized impact on other nutrients in my body that is less severe with the natural statin. So I'm looking into possible changes there. I'm scheduled to visit my doctor again in December, so I'll probably wait until then before making the switch.
Since Rob was here on vacation, I took sort of a vacation of my own from most chores (both athletic and non-athletic) this past week. But we found ways to get out and be active. On Tuesday we took my plastic sea kayak down to the river for Rob to paddle, and the two of us paddled out of the harbor, up the Mississippi above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and across the river to a bunch of sandbars, where enjoyed a little beach time. On Wednesday afternoon I was hoping to find a bike for Rob to use so we could go for a bike ride together, but the closest thing we could find was one of those app-activated electric scooters. So we got that running and Rob rode it out east on the Greater Memphis Greenline while I rode my bike; once we were out at Shelby Farms we switched mounts for the trip back.
Rob departed after lunch on Thursday, and I turned my attention to catching up on some of the chores I'd ignored while he was here. The annual crafts fair where I demonstrate bowl carving is just two weeks off, and I need some material for the job, so on Friday afternoon I set out on a scouting trip on my bike, looking for good logs that people had cut in their yards and put out on the curb for the city sanitation service to collect. I rode all over sections of the Evergreen, Vollintine-Evergreen, and Speedway Terrace neighborhoods and made a mental note of any promising material I saw.
Yesterday I did some stretching and started some of the rehab exercises Rob had shown me. Then I went down to the river and paddled for 60 minutes. I felt surprisingly good in the boat and even got some good rides on the wake behind a fuel barge that services the tour boats that pass through Memphis on the Mississippi. All the while I tried to keep my left arm in the neutral position as much as possible; since good paddling form involves keeping the elbows close to the body, I was able to do so without much trouble. On the way home from the river I stopped and picked up several logs I'd spotted during Friday's bike ride.
This morning I did some more bike scouting, focusing on a couple of the neighborhoods south of the Greenline that I usually ride out to Shelby Farms. I didn't see much bowl-carving material today, but I live in a big city with lots and lots of trees, so I feel pretty sure I can find what I need in the next few days as long as I keep at it.
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Last week was much like the weeks that preceded it: I paddled Tuesday and Saturday, did a bike ride Thursday and yesterday, and did lots of rehab exercises the rest of the time. The chiropractor showed me a couple of new exercises to add to the routine, and suggested we do some dry needling the next time I go in. I'm scheduled to do that this coming Thursday.
I've more or less packed it in as far as racing goes this year, though there's at least one event that's tempting: there's a downwind race on Lake Michigan the weekend of October 8-9. That's a long trip for me, and I'm nowhere near race-ready, but I'm not immune to those FOMO urges. I'll most likely stick to my guns and pass it up unless I experience some very quick and significant improvement in the ailments department.
For now, I'm putting my athletic life on the back burner because my friend Rob has come down from New York to visit, and I'm going to show him around town.
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In recent years I've been traveling out to the Columbia River Gorge on the Oregon-Washington state line for the purpose of downwind surfski paddling. But back in 1998 I went out there to enjoy one of that region's other offerings: whitewater. In this photo I'm paddling on a section of the White Salmon River, which originates in the vicinity of Mount Adams in Washington and flows southward, meeting the Columbia River across from the town of Hood River, Oregon. Photo by Wendy Peterson.
Is it possible for me to get back into some whitewater paddling? I can't think why not, but there are some logistical hurdles I'll have to clear. The nearest decent whitewater stream is some four hours from where I live. And I'll have to get myself a new boat: the boat pictured above was my go-to river-running craft for about 20 years, but then it got stolen from behind my building six years ago.
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I can't say that last week offered much of interest to those wanting to read about canoe and kayak training. I did my rehab exercises, but until the weekend I did little else that can be called real training or anything fitness-oriented. Part of the reason is that I was busy with some non-athletic things: both my woodworking business and my rental properties have been commanding much of my attention lately.
And I continue to grapple with motivation and general existential questions of what my paddling future is going to look like. It seems like in the last two years I've been training more and enjoying it less, and it's gotten to where I can't even think about my boat or the river without thinking about how exhausted I sometimes feel out there.
One idea I've had is to get back into some whitewater paddling. But while I may in fact do that, it has motivational challenges of its own, most notably the fact that there's no whitewater where I live and I'll have to make road trips to do it. The biggest appeal of open water/surfski paddling is that I have an ideal place to do it right here at home, and I can paddle for an hour or two and still have the rest of the day to get work done and live my life. Getting myself to a whitewater-rich region requires investing an entire day or an entire weekend or more.
Meanwhile, I continue to have my aches and pains, and while they don't directly affect my paddling, they've been a detriment to my overall quality of life, and I'm getting more and more frustrated with their refusal to go away. I've got the rehab exercises that my chiropractor gave me for my deltoid/biceps pain and that another physical therapist gave me for my neck tightness, but I've been doing them and doing them and doing them, and the discomfort is still there.
On top of all that, my age increased by an integer over the weekend.
Anyway... on Thursday I tried to get out and do some exercise in the form of riding my bike. But about three miles from home I got another flat tire. I had all the necessary tools to change a tire except one, and it was an important one: an air pump. I've given up on the old tubular pumps that mount on a bike's frame because it takes an eternity and a lot of physical effort to achieve even 30 pounds per square inch (my bike's tires need a minimum of 40 or 45 psi). And I was about four miles from the public pump that I'd used for my flat tire a week earlier. So I found a place to lock up the bike, summoned an Uber to take me home, and drove my pickup truck back out to retrieve the bike. Once I was back home from that errand I walked to the bike shop in my block and asked the friendly owner what the latest tire-inflation technology is, and he sold me a little carbon dioxide canister that he said can air up a tire in no time. So I hope I now have all the survival gear I need now that I'm doing some slightly more serious bike riding.
Saturday morning I went down to the river and got in the boat for the first time since paddling with Scott up in Kentucky. I'd sort of been dreading it for the reasons listed above, but once I was warmed up I didn't feel half bad in the boat. I even had the gumption to do some surfing behind a barge rig out on the river, though I missed the best waves because I got turned broadside and took a long time getting back into the right position. In the end I got one decent ride, and then I headed back to the harbor.
Yesterday I got back on the bike, and this time I got a good ride in without any flat tires. I did my usual ride out to Shelby Farms and back. I got rained on during the trip back, and that actually felt pretty good on a hot late-August afternoon.
This week will include a bit of paddling, a bit of riding, and of course more rehab work while I ponder what's ahead for me.
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Here's a quick video I made of this past weekend up at Burkesville, Kentucky. Piecing together a tolerable rendition of "My Old Kentucky Home" on my harmonica was definitely the biggest challenge of this project.
The canoe and kayak race on the Cumberland River at Burkesville, Kentucky, was just one part of a big festival. There was also live music, a 5K run, a display of classic cars, food trucks, vendor booths... and catfish wrestling!
You heard me. Saturday afternoon a bunch of large fish were put in a pool, and festival-goers were encouraged to sign up and jump in the pool and wrestle out as many fish as they could. The person who wrangled the most fish got a cash prize.
Scott Cummins and I demurred from entering the contest. We'd already had all the aquatic exertion we needed for the day. But Scott did pluck one of the more docile lunkers from the water for a photo-op to burnish his country-boy credentials. He was about as convincing as that Doctor Oz shopping for the best deals in the grocery aisle.
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I got a reasonably early start Friday morning and arrived in the town of Burkesville, Kentucky, before 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Scott Cummins was waiting for me there, and we promptly put his tandem surfski on the Cumberland River for a systems check. As we paddled for a half-hour or so, the most obvious issue was our differing stroke rates. Scott's natural rate is quite a bit higher than mine, and he said he would use a paddle with larger blade area in the race to slow it down a little.
The Mighty Cumberland River Run canoe and kayak race is part of a big annual festival in the town, so there was plenty for Scott and me to observe off the water. On Friday evening there was a "battle of the bands" on the main stage, and while the musical fare in these parts was about what I expected (i.e., bad country music), we had fun hanging out and watching all the goings-on. We availed ourselves of the on-site camping, Scott sleeping in his van and I in my tent.
We got up bright and early Saturday morning and drove up to the community of Bakerton, where the race would start. Scott and I were the only tandem surfski entered, so the race was basically a time trial for us. We agreed that breaking an hour for the 12-mile advertised distance was a reasonable goal, though a lofty one: it would require an average pace of about 20 kilometers per hour, and on Friday we'd seemed to be maxing out in the 18s. Still, we would have plenty of help from the current: the dam keepers upriver at Cumberland Reservoir were releasing generous amounts of water in the wake of the heavy rains a couple of weeks prior.
We warmed up, paddled to the starting line, and the race was on. Even with his bigger-bladed paddle Scott was wanting to paddle at quite a high rate, and I kept having to remind him to dial it back a little. I didn't want to be too fussy about it because I didn't want to pull Scott out of the zone he was used to, but then again it wouldn't do him any good if I were to blow up, so I tried to persuade him down to the highest cadence that I could tolerate for an hour or so.
The morning was mostly overcast, and there was some thin fog hanging over the river in places. This section of the Cumberland is quite a beautiful place, with wooded banks and rocky bluffs, and I tried my best to behold the scenery, but most of my attention was on Scott's back as I tried to keep my strokes in sync with his.
Our speed varied from 15 kph to over 18 kph. The current was faster in some places and slower in others, and at times we felt ourselves fighting a headwind. It became clear early on that a sub-one-hour time wasn't in the cards. Not having trained particularly hard for the last month, I felt pretty good and taxed as the race wore on. But the base I'd built up during the course of the year gave me what I needed to paddle decently all the way to the finish. We arrived at the Kentucky Highway 61 bridge one hour, 4 minutes, 48 seconds after we'd started. My G.P.S. device measured the distance at 18.2 kilometers, or about 11.3 miles.
We got a ride back to the start to retrieve our vehicles, and then Scott went back to the finish to load the boat. The race organizers fed us some barbecue chicken for lunch and handed us our awards, and we got in an afternoon nap back at our campsite. The evening's entertainment consisted of the "battle of the bands" winner at 6 o'clock and a headliner at 8:00. The headliner was a Kentucky-based band of some note. If there's anything I have rather snobbish opinions about, it's what constitutes good music. Maybe it's because I'm from Memphis. Anyway, the band had its moments, but overall it was pretty... meh.
Oh well. The live music wasn't my main reason for being there. Yesterday morning Scott and I had some breakfast and then put the boat in the water for one more paddle. We went upstream for four miles and came back. The upstream leg took us about 50 minutes, the return trip about 25 minutes. This time Scott used a paddle with even larger blades, and I think it was what he should have used on Saturday: he was much better able to paddle at a stroke rate that suited me.
We said our goodbyes and departed for our respective homes. My trip home was slowed by a big wreck on Interstate 40 near Dickson, Tennessee, and I didn't arrive until after 6 PM. Fortunately I was able to pick up most of the Saint Louis Cardinals game on several different radio stations. Once home I unpacked the car in between heavy rain showers, threw together a quick supper, and fell asleep in quick order.
What's next for me in terms of paddling? I have no idea. I'll keep tending to my aches and pains and see what develops.
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I did another round of my rehab exercises Tuesday morning. The exercises are intended to strengthen my scapula so that it'll take pressure off the deltoid/biceps area that's been giving me trouble. So far I'm still having pain there, and my chiropractor told me Monday that it can take a while for the scapula to re-engage. So I guess I'll keep doing the exercises and hope they make a difference eventually.
After that on Tuesday I went down to the river and paddled for 60 minutes. Aside from the arm pain I felt reasonably good in the boat, and I hope that'll be the case again when I race with Scott this Saturday.
Yesterday was a rainy day here in the Mid South. I did my rehab exercises again, but otherwise spent the day addressing non-athletic chores.
This morning I rode my bike, taking the Greenline out east and looping around Patriot Lake. Along the way my front tire went flat. Of course it happened when I was as far from home as I was going to get. I didn't have a spare tube with me, but I did have some patches and the tools to change a tire, so I made my way to the public air pump where the Greenline meets the trail down to the lake. I inflated the tire to see if I could find the leak, but the leak was so small that I couldn't find it. I got the tire up over 50 p.s.i. and decided to see how far I could get back toward home. The tire seemed great for a while, but by the time I was crossing Waring Street I could tell that it was deflating again. I kept on going, but by the time I reached Highland Street the bike wasn't really rideable anymore. I considered calling an Uber, but my parsimonious nature won out and I walked the remaining two-plus miles home. Fortunately it was a lovely, not-so-hot morning, and in general I'm grateful that I can simply walk.
I plan to pack for my trip this afternoon and get going tomorrow morning. As of this writing Scott and I have no competition in the tandem surfski class, but I'm looking forward to getting up there and putting in a strong effort on the river and catching up with Scott a bit.
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It's the 2001 edition of the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race on the Mississippi River at Memphis! That's me paddling my old "Apple Turnover" kayak that was designed to meet official wildwater boat specs while being lighter and tippier for racing on Class I water. It was probably not designed for something like the Mississippi River, but somehow I made it work for several years before I finally acquired my first surfski. Photo by Emerson Wickwire.
Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, won the race that year, followed by Greg Barton of Seattle, Washington. I was locked in a stiff competition for third place with the two guys over my right shoulder here: Peter Braul of Kincardine, Ontario, and Scott Cummins of Indianapolis, Indiana.
Here we are 21 years later, and though I've lost track of Peter, I still talk to Scott often. Scott has moved back to his hometown of Louisville, and this Saturday he and I will be teaming up in a double surfski at the Mighty Cumberland River Run at Burkesville, Kentucky. There's still time to register for any tandem teams out there with the nerve to come and try to beat us.
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We finally got a break from the humidity on Friday, as a north-northeast wind brought some drier air. When I stepped out on my back deck first thing yesterday morning, I thought I was back in the semiarid West. It was delightful with a clear sky and a pleasant northeast breeze.
It went on to be fairly hot yesterday--I think the high was around 90 degrees Fahrenheit--but the absence of suffocating humidity lifted my spirits. And my spirits need all the lifting they can get these days, because my nagging ailments seem never-ending. I've talked plenty lately about my left deltoid/biceps area, but my right shoulder/neck area, which has felt better but not entirely back to normal for most of this year, has been flaring up again in the last couple of days.
After doing my new rehab exercises at home yesterday, I paddled for 60 minutes down on the riverfront. Once again I incorporated a lot of backpaddling to address muscle imbalances that might be contributing to my woes. I did a loop out on the river and once I was warmed up my pains faded into the background a bit, but my concern over them has been outweighing my enjoyment of paddling lately, and after my race in Kentucky next weekend I think I may have to take a longer break and see if I can overcome them in some more permanent way.
This morning I did another round of rehab exercises, and then rode my bike out to Shelby Farms and around Patriot Lake and back. I never thought I would say this, but in recent weeks I've been enjoying my bike rides a lot more than paddling my boat. I've mentioned how tired and listless I've felt in the last couple of years, but I still have a desire to get out and be active, and bike riding seems to satisfy that. The ennui seems specific to paddling. My arm and shoulder woes are part of the reason, but I think my pursuit of excellence in downwind paddling in the last several years has something to do with it, too. As fun as downwinding is, it's also the most physically exhausting paddling discipline I've ever tried, and I think I've had my eye on a degree of perfection that's just not attainable for somebody of my age and abilities. I think part of the problem is that I don't understand downwind conditions as fully as I do other kinds of water I've paddled on, and as a result I'm working much harder than I should be out there.
Whatever the case, I need to change something, and I think taking a break to address my ailments will be a good start.
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The residents of my city are, frankly, like the residents of most of the United States in that they are heavily reliant on private automobiles to get around. Public transportation here is pretty much just our city bus system, and it leaves much to be desired. Meanwhile, though our network of bicycle trails has grown quite a bit in the last 20 years, it still has a long way to go to serve the needs of those whose bikes are their primary means of transportation.
That's why I feel a sense of accomplishment any time my car stays parked all day. Sunday and Monday were two such days. And I didn't just sit in the house all day: on Sunday I did the bike ride I talked about in my last post, and on Monday I ran some errands on my bike in both the morning and the afternoon.
One of those errands was to my chiropractor's office to get more treatment for the soreness in my left deltoid and biceps area. She showed me a couple of exercises I can do at home with my rubber band that work the scapula, saying that it should take pressure off my upper arm area. She speculated that my scapula has gotten weak because it doesn't get worked by all the paddling I do. I told her that in recent years I've incorporated a little bit of backpaddling into each paddling session to work the opposing muscles, and she said that's a good idea.
All that set the tone for my Tuesday morning plans. I started at home with some full-body stretching and the exercises that my chiropractor had shown me. Then I cranked my car's engine for the first time in several days, and went down to the riverfront to get in the boat. I had a busy day ahead and had time for only 30 minutes of paddling, and I spent it doing a lot of backpaddling, with some balance drills and stroke drills thrown in.
Of course, it will take my muscles some time to respond to any rehab exercises I do, and for the rest of Tuesday my left arm hurt pretty bad and I felt a bit demoralized.
The weird weather pattern continues around here. After almost no rain in the month of July, the atmosphere seems to be oozing moisture here in August. The Internet radar shows rain cells sort of roaming aimlessly across the region. There was some heavy rain in my neighborhood last night, with some more showers this morning. In between showers it's been relentlessly humid.
This morning I did another round of my rehab exercises and then got on the bike. There had just been a heavy shower and it was still drizzling pretty hard, and I felt grumpy about having to ride on yet another rainy, humid day. But once I was out there in motion it didn't feel so bad. (Don't forget: skin is waterproof!) And our local rivers and creeks were flowing full of water. I got out my cellular telephone and shot a bit of video:
The first creek we see here is Cypress Creek (0:00 to 0:28), which drains the section of Memphis known as Hayden Place. Riding eastward on the Greater Memphis Greenline, the next creek is Harrison Creek in "near-east" Memphis (0:28 to 0:56). These two creeks are tributaries of the third waterway shown here, the Wolf River (0:56 to 1:25), which flows beneath the Greenline near Shelby Farms and winds around the north side of Memphis before emptying into the Mississippi River.
I did indeed get soaked during the rest of my ride, especially in Shelby Farms, whose trail network doesn't drain as well as the Greenline, which sits on an old railroad bed. But the sight of these swollen streams made a yucky day seem a lot better. Rushing water is something I'll never get tired of being around, whether I'm in a boat or on the bank.
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It's August of 2018 on Fontana Reservoir near Almond, North Carolina. That's Pete Greene of Beaufort, South Carolina, in the foreground, closing out his defeat of me (left) and Sven Jonsson of Bryson City, North Carolina.
As you can see in the bottom left corner, the photographer is one Sarah Ruhlen. I didn't really know her at all, but I came to recognize her name from the many photographs she took at events around the region that surrounds the Nantahala River.
Though she was only 24 years old, Ms. Ruhlen passed away this past week. I don't know the details, but I do know she'd been diagnosed with dysautonomia, or dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system.
I think we had at least a small number of mutual friends, and for their loss, I am sorry.
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I could tell first thing yesterday morning that it would be a steamy day. The rain had moved out but the humidity was still plenty high, and the temperature was quickly rising under a sunny sky. When I went down to the river and paddled for 60 minutes, a fairly strong south breeze was the only thing that made it bearable. I felt tired and sluggish in the boat, and the soreness in my left deltoid/biceps area was bad. It might be time for me to return to the chiropractor's office: she seemed confident we could address this problem when I saw her back before my trip, but we might not have gotten enough sessions in.
This morning I did another bike ride. I did my usual loop around Patriot Lake, getting out there and back on the Greater Memphis Greenline. The Greenline is nice this time of year because it's shady. It actually was a pretty morning with lots of sunshine, but it was also warm and humid. This past week the temperature has been up and down and the rain has come and gone, but high humidity has been the constant.
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The Fahrenheit temperature rose back into the 90s in the first half of this week. I paddled for 60 minutes on Tuesday morning and then enjoyed a cool hose bath on the dock. I also had some summertime fruit waiting there: peaches and nectarines that I'd bought at my local farmers' market. Pausing to savor things like that is a big part of how I survive, and even occasionally enjoy, the hot summers here.
Later this week some more rainy weather moved into the region, and that brought lower temperatures but not lower humidity. Conditions were downright sodden as I headed out for a bike ride this morning. The humidity in the air and the spray from the many puddles I rode through combined to soak me to the core. I timed myself for just one 5K today, and managed 10:26--not bad for a day like today. A highlight of the ride was seeing two deer on the Greenline in the woods near the Wolf River.
In other news, Scott Cummins and I have signed up to race a tandem surfski in the Mighty Cumberland River Run at Burkesville, Kentucky. As of this writing we're the only tandem boat entered in the 12-mile race, so right now the trophy has our name all over it. I know the prospect of racing a pair of studs like Scott and me strikes fear in the hearts of racers worldwide, but if there are any people reading this who'd like to partner up and paddle to the starting line alongside us, I hope they'll sign up.
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Here's a screen shot from a short video that my friend Joe Royer shot from his patio yesterday and then texted to me. There are three paddlers heading down the Mississippi River toward the Harahan Bridge, and I later found out that they were locals Adam Davis, Ralph Dismukes, and Kata Dismukes.
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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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I'm definitely in a regrouping phase now. I did a 34-kilometer bike ride Sunday morning, a mostly-easy 70-minute paddle Tuesday, and a 33-km bike ride today. That's the nature of my physical activity these days.
It's tempting to think that this has been a "light" year, seeing as how I haven't attended but three races. But the reality is that I've spent the last eight months working very hard. It started last December, when I got going in earnest to prepare for my trip to South Africa at the end of January. When I returned from that trip on February 1, I turned my attention to the race at Ocean Springs in late March and laid down a solid body of work. I backed off a bit during the month of April, but then spent May and June building the fitness, power, and speed I would need for the race in the Columbia Gorge.
It hasn't been easy. I've struggled with feelings of low energy, and my weight continues to be down a bit. Tests I've had done at the doctor's office have revealed no problems, and I wonder if I'm not just getting old and past my prime... tough to accept for any athlete who's spent his life looking at times and speeds and so on.
I recently heard an interviewer say to Jasper Mocke, "Complete this sentence: 'I am a paddler because...'" Jasper replied, "'...I need to be.'" I think that's as good a reason as any for why I'm a paddler, too. And maybe this sounds weird, but I've spent my life thinking things "need" to be a certain way. When I started running track and cross country in high school it had been a few years since any distance runners from my school had advanced to the state meet, and I felt that I "needed" to correct that. Later on, once I'd moved back to my hometown and gotten more serious about canoe and kayak racing, I saw that my city was not exactly a hotbed for racers, and I felt a "need" to remedy that, too.
And so that's what I've been trying to do for the last several decades. I wouldn't say I've had brilliant success--I'm not a world-class talent and I've never been a contender to make national teams or anything like that. But I've had a modicum of success in regional races over the years and I've made sure there's at least one person down on the Memphis riverfront paddling a boat with all the effort, technical precision, and wisdom he has in him.
Now I'm wondering if I still have the desire to go out and do hard workouts and make myself hurt for diminishing results. Certainly I should have known all along that I won't be able to go out and clock certain times forever, but that doesn't make it any easier to accept that maybe the aging process is slowing me down to a noticeable degree. The reality is that the world will keep going about its daily business regardless of whether Elmore Holmes can average 5 minutes per kilometer, and somehow I need to find a way to get over myself and keep enjoying those aspects of the sport that remain accessible.
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