Monday photo feature

This is where I was exactly two years ago: lounging in the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club on the Western Cape of South Africa.  Seated at right are our two coaches for Downwind Camp, Jasper Mocke (red cap) and his brother Dawid.  That's me in the upper left corner, with fellow campers Moses (lower left), Ezra (foreground), and Donald (orange shirt).  I'm guessing we've just gotten back in from paddling out on False Bay.  It's the middle of summer there and the weather is deliciously warm.  Carefree times, indeed.

There's another Downwind Camp going on there this week, and several of my racing friends from the southeastern U.S. are participating.  They include Chris Hipgrave, whom I saw down in Florida several weeks ago, and Alessia Faverio and Cam Thacker, who have attended the Florida training camp in the past but didn't this year because they were saving money for the South Africa trip.  They're now posting about their trip on social media, and I'm feeling all jealous.  Don't you just love the way social media makes you feel?  Oh well... hopefully one day I'll return to Fish Hoek or some similarly awesome place, and people can get all jealous of me.  So there.

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Toiling away in offseason obscurity

The never-ending frigid spell finally ended last Sunday when the temperature rose above freezing to stay.  By Monday it was up around 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  50 degrees never felt so warm.

On Tuesday I got in the boat for the first time in ten days.  I stayed in the harbor and did another round of work on my hip rotation.  I paddled for 60 minutes, and was reminded of how hard it is to focus on one mechanical aspect for that long.  But I really would like to get more comfortable with this change.  Rotating down at my hips should take stress off my arms and shoulders, where, as regular readers know, I've had a lot of discomfort for the last several years.

Before going to the river Tuesday I did a couple of sets of the exercises I've been doing lately--Hindu squats and core exercises on the stability ball.  I was still feeling sore from having started these exercises the previous week, especially in my abs and quads.  It was as stubborn an episode of soreness as I can remember.

I paddled another 60 minutes Friday, and again yesterday.  The theme remained the same as I focused on just one thing, how my body was moving in the boat.  I didn't worry about how fast I was going or what energy system I was working or any of that stuff.

And that's pretty much it for where I am these days.  Not a whole lot of excitement.  My first race of the year will probably be March 23 at Ocean Springs, but my mind isn't really in competitive mode these days.  I just want to paddle the best I can, and be ready to perform well whether it's in a race or in some more recreational undertaking.

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Monday photo feature

I don't have any particularly profound regrets in this life, but I am kind of sorry that I never had an opportunity to get into cross country skiing.  The snow that fell here in the Mid South a week ago was powdery and not too wet, and I'm pretty sure it was ideal for that activity.  Once the streets had been driven on just enough for the snow to get packed down a bit, as in the photo above, we had a whole network of groomed ski trails.

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Shut down, to some extent

It's been a frigid week here in the Mid South.  Since last Sunday the temperature has risen above freezing for just a few hours, and it's spent quite a bit of time in the single digits on the Fahrenheit thermometer.  The snow that fell Sunday and Monday has had little chance to melt, and the melting that has occurred has re-frozen, making the streets even more treacherous than they were earlier in the week.

I've spent most of the week indoors being utterly unproductive.  While I have a project to work on in the woodworking shop, it's at a point where I need to go out and get some more material, and I just don't want to be out driving right now.  I'm trying (and mostly failing) to persuade myself to knock out some tax-filing and other paperwork chores.  Meanwhile, I've been binge-watching some television.  I normally watch very little TV, but my housemates down in Florida got me hooked on the "Ted Lasso" series, and now I'm using the seven-day free trial period offered by Apple Tee Vee Plus to watch all 34 episodes.  Just one of the little ways in which I stick it to The Man.

It's hard not to consider it a lost week in terms of canoe and kayak training.  Even if I were feeling plucky enough to go paddle in this weather, it's been cold enough that there's a fair chance the harbor has been iced over (I haven't been down there to check).  The same is true for bike riding: I'm even less inclined to do that in cold weather than paddle, and the whole landscape is covered in ice anyway.  I have managed to do a decent amount of stretching, including the new hip stretches I started doing last weekend; I've also started doing a couple of core exercises on the stability ball and some Hindu squats, along with some rotation drills in which I'm trying my best to twist my rear end against the floor, just like I need to be doing in my boat.

So I haven't completely wasted the week... I haven't made any cardiovascular gains to speak of, but I've made some effort in the tedious process of technical adjustment.  I admit that it would have been nice to have an erg machine for this work.  I've resisted getting one because most of the time we have liquid water to paddle on here, and even when it's cold I prefer that to the mind-numbing repetition of erg work.  But when intensive focus on mechanics is necessary, it's better to do it in a warm, comfortable environment, and it sure would be nice to have an erg for that.

The last blast of Arctic air was last night and this morning... for now, at least.  This coming week the temperature is supposed to rise as high as 60 degrees, albeit with some rain.  I hope to be back in the boat soon.

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Monday photo feature

The first few times I ran Bull Sluice rapid on the Chattooga River, it was in a Blue Hole "OCA" canoe that could be paddled either tandem or solo.  The camp I went to had a rule against campers running the rapid, and so the counselors would paddle all six of the camp's canoes through the formidable whitewater maelstrom.  My first summer as a counselor was in 1985, and that's when I made my first run of the rapid.

This photo was shot by Todd Tyler in 1987.  The river is flowing somewhere around 1.3 or 1.4 feet on the U.S. 76 bridge gauge.  Though I prefer to paddle on the left in a whitewater canoe, here I'm paddling on the right because at the time I thought I would need a brace on that side as I went over the main drop.  As my paddling skills improved in the years since then, I realized that paddling on the left works just fine.

The Chattooga River is born in the mountains near Highlands, North Carolina, and flows in a southeasterly direction.  It leaves North Carolina and forms the border between South Carolina and Georgia.  At its confluence with the Tallulah River, it becomes the Tugaloo River; farther downstream, below Hartwell Reservoir, it becomes the Savannah River for the rest of its journey to the Atlantic Ocean.

Bull Sluice is located just upstream of the U.S. 76 bridge that crosses the Georgia-South Carolina state line.

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Letting the weather be my coach

After checking out of the rental house in Dunellon last Sunday, I drove a couple of hours south to Tampa, where I visited my friend Jonathan who moved there from Memphis last summer.  Jonathan has taken up sailing and we hoped to get out on his boat, but the weather didn't cooperate.  We had a good visit just the same.

I began the trip home Tuesday morning.  As I departed the Tampa Bay area, violent thunderstorms were moving across Alabama and into the Florida panhandle.  By the time I had turned west on Interstate 10, the wind was making driving difficult: I was afraid my boat would blow off the car and take the roof racks and bicycle with it.  So I got off at an exit and waited for the worst of the storm to pass through.  Having checked the radar that morning, I knew the squall line was narrow and wouldn't stick around for long, but I also knew it would be accompanied by heavy rain and stronger winds.  It didn't disappoint.  Once I was back on the road moving west toward Tallahassee, I saw two overturned semi trucks and quite a few billboards whose ads had been torn off.

I spent Tuesday night in central Alabama, and arrived home a little after noon on Wednesday.  I found myself dealing with a ceiling-high stack of chores that had accumulated while I was away.  On Thursday morning I was feeling swamped with work, not to mention tired from my travels, and going out paddling was the last thing I felt like doing.  But the weather outside was lovely, and a look at the forecast revealed that Thursday would be the last pleasant day for quite a while.  So I dragged myself down to the riverfront for a 60-minute paddle in the harbor.

I sprayed some protectant wax in my seat bucket to provide some lubrication for my hip rotation, and off I went.  I tried hard to use my legs to generate the rotation, and I felt about as awkward as I'd felt down in Florida.  I also felt slow.  It was somewhat breezy and hard to get an accurate idea of how fast I should be moving the boat, and I also had a feeling I shouldn't even worry about speed while making a technical adjustment.  But it was hard not to notice that my speed was down a bit.

By the time I finished I was glad I'd paddled just the same.  I think by encouraging my body to relax, I also relaxed my brain a bit and felt less stressed over all the things I have to do.

Heavy rain moved across the area Friday, and strong wind came behind that front bringing colder air with it.  It was definitely a day to stay inside.  I got online and looked at some yoga exercises that are supposed to "open up" one's hips; when I tried them myself I couldn't do them nearly as well as the people demonstrating them in the online videos, but there's no reason I can't incorporate them into my stretching routine and see if I can get more comfortable with them.  With miserably cold weather expected to settle into this area for most of next week, I'm hoping to come up with a gym routine that includes some kind of hip-rotation drills.

The temperature dropped to around 25 degrees Fahrenheit overnight, but by the time I got up yesterday morning the sun was out and the wind had died down.  Even though it was some 20 degrees colder than when I'd paddled on Thursday, I decided it was tolerable enough to get one more paddle in before the much worse weather that's expected to pay us a visit.

All the rain that's fallen here in the last week has also fallen higher up in the watershed, and the Mississippi River is on a big rise.  When I got down there yesterday morning the level was at 3.6 feet on the Memphis gauge--the first above-zero level I've seen since I can't remember when.  And it's coming up fast: it was a foot higher by yesterday afternoon, and the current forecast says it'll be up to almost 16 feet by next weekend.

I paddled for another 60 minutes yesterday, doing more hip-rotation work.  Waxing my seat bucket definitely makes it a bit easier than it felt down in Florida.  There were moments when I felt myself getting more comfortable with it, but much of the time it still felt awkward.

I'm glad I got it in, at least, because I doubt much paddling will take place for the next week.  As I write this on Sunday afternoon, it's snowing and 14 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 degrees Celsius) in Memphis.  According to the current forecast, Thursday is the only day this week that will have a high temperature above freezing, and that'll be 36 degrees with rain and freezing rain.  I've paddled in worse conditions, but at this point in my life I kind of feel like I've paid my dues in that department.

Mostly, I'll be looking to do some indoor exercise.  Like I said, I hope to draw up a gym routine that includes some hip rotation.  Today I just did some full-body stretching, including those "hip-opening" yoga movements.

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Monday photo feature

I suppose we could call this an updated version of the photo I posted last Monday.  It was shot by Vadim Lishchuk of Newtown, Pennsylvania, who joined us for some of our workouts last week.  This was a chilly Wednesday morning on the foggy Rainbow River.  Paddling the K2 on the left are Royal McDonnell of Lake Placid, New York, and Steph Schell of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.  That's me in the middle, and to my right is Chris Hipgrave of Bryson City, North Carolina.

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Camp winds down with a time trial

Yesterday morning we said goodbye to Steph and Chris N., who were anxious to get back to Pennsylvania as much ahead of the winter storm that's headed toward the eastern seaboard as they possibly could.

The rest of us took the morning off from paddling while a system of heavy wind and rain moved through the area.  By lunchtime the rain had moved out, and later in the afternoon Chris H., Royal, and I met a few other paddlers at the Blue Run access on the Rainbow River for our time trial, in which we would paddle up the Rainbow from the Route 484 bridge to the KP Hole public access.  Normally we would go downriver for a time trial, but the forecast indicated stiff headwinds for downstream paddlers yesterday.

Meanwhile, there was a Strava record for our 484-to-KP course: 29 minutes, 22 seconds by Robert Norman of the Tampa Bay area.  I don't do Strava myself, but Chris H. and Royal do, and they were keen on taking a shot at that record.

But that was their worry.  I was just hoping for a respectable effort after a taxing, sometimes demoralizing week of training.  After some warmup time I decided to get on with it.  I lined up at the downstream edge of the bridge, started my watch, and took off.

I knew the distance up to KP Hole was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 kilometers, and as I paddled upriver I saw that I was moving the boat around 10 kilometers per hour--sometimes above, sometimes below depending on how well I chose my lines to avoid the strongest downstream current.  Every now and then I would hit a patch of shallow water and my speed would plummet below 7 kph, but other times I would pick a good line and cruise along close to 11 kph.

I wouldn't say I was feeling "good," exactly; I was quite stiff and sore from the workouts we had done on Friday.  But I was comfortable with the intensity level and never doubted that I could sustain it all the way to the finish.  I aimed for 80 strokes per minute.  Eventually the KP Hole facility came into view and I bore down for a strong finish.  I paddled up to the upstream edge of the KP Hole property and stopped my watch at 33 minutes, 50 seconds.  My G.P.S. device measured my distance paddled at 5.66 kilometers.

Chris and Royal and I paddled together back down to the Blue Run access.  There Royal uploaded his effort to Strava, and we learned that he was the new record holder for this course.  His official time was 28:17.  Chris also finished under the old Strava record with a time of 29:01.  I, meanwhile, was satisfied with my result, so the mood was upbeat as we loaded our boats in the parking lot.

This morning I went back to the river for a recovery paddle.  I headed downstream toward the Withlacoochee River, which I'd never really checked out before.  I paddled down past where the U.S. 41 bridge crosses it, then back up to where the Withlacoochee State Trail crosses it.  It's definitely different from the Rainbow: the Rainbow is crystal clear, while the water is tannin-stained on the Withlacoochee; the Withlacoochee also has quite a few algae blooms on it.  But I thought the Withlacoochee was pretty enough, especially once I got away from the built-up banks right near the U.S. 41 bridge.

I tried to focus on my rotation, though I was tired and sore from yesterday and my thoughts were wandering about.  But it was a pleasant sunny morning, and I saw an otter right as I was getting back to the Blue Run access ramp, so all told it was a successful paddle.

Well, that concludes the Rainbow River camp for this year.  I have to check out of the rental house soon.

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All bent out of shape over my mechanics

Yesterday morning's session was four 19-minute pieces with a one-minute break in between.  The prescribed stroke rate was 60 strokes per minute for the first, 66 spm for the second, 72 spm for the third, and 60 spm for the fourth.

It was my first time in the boat since my discussion with Chris N. about my "false rotation."  Basically, the problem is that I've been doing all my rotation in my upper torso rather than down in the hips where the connection with your leg power takes place.  Per Chris's instruction, I moved my footboard forward (away from me) one notch so I could get my legs a bit straighter on each leg drive.  I also talked to Royal, who had his own "false rotation" issue a year ago and spent the ensuing months working on it, and he told me he looks for the sensation of twisting his rear end against the seat.  The most helpful tip he gave me was to try to move my backside across the back of the seat bucket instead of straight into it.

So that was what I spent yesterday morning working on more than anything else.  And it felt terrible, as if I were completely re-learning how to paddle.  I definitely sacrificed some speed: when paddling downstream it was all I could do to maintain 12 kilometers per hour.  But I resolved to put all such worries out of my mind for the moment and focus exclusively on that twisting motion.  This will definitely take some time: Royal told me it was a couple of months before he really felt like he was getting the hang of it.

The afternoon workout yesterday was a pyramid of sprints with long recoveries, to make our bodies produce lactic acid and then flush it out before the next sprint.  The sprints were 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 30 seconds, 20 seconds, 15 seconds, and 10 seconds; the recovery times were 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes, 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 3 minutes.

Chris N. told me not to worry about my new rotation challenge during the sprints, but I worked on it during the warmup and the cool-down.  And it felt just as terrible as it had in the morning, if not worse.  By the end of the session I was tired and frustrated, and the idea of spending the rest of this winter toiling through mechanical issues all alone in the harbor back home is just not getting my juices flowing right now.

This morning we did two sets of (4 minutes on, 1 minute off) at 60-64 spm.  We did the first set with light resistance on the boat and the second set without.  This actually was a good workout for working on hip rotation because of the resistance that killed glide and thus increased blade pressure, but I didn't feel any better that I did yesterday.  Part of the problem was that I'd left my shoes back at the house and had to paddle barefoot, which I hate doing in a surfski.  Chris N. suggested I do some yoga to open up my hips more; I'll look into that when I get home.

We wrapped up today with some varied-pace training, sort of like what happens when you're trading wake rides with other competitors in a race.  It was two sets of five times (3 min. at 60 spm and 2 min. at 75 spm).  I continued to struggle with rotation but got through the workout decently enough.  All that's left is a time trial tomorrow and another workout Sunday morning, and then I'll have some time to regroup and try to figure out how to recapture my paddling self-esteem.

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Florida training camp continues

Monday was a rest day, and we "rested" by riding our bikes down the Withlacoochee State Trail for 21 miles to the town of Inverness, and then riding back.  42 miles is nearly twice as long as the longest ride I regularly do at home, but we kept the pace reasonable and it was actually a nice relaxing "active" recovery.  Also, in Inverness we took the time to enjoy a leisurely lunch at a good diner.

The weather hasn't exactly been what one expects down in sunny Florida.  The daily Fahrenheit highs have been just in the 60s, often with a chilly breeze.  The overnight lows have been down around 40, and it's typically still in the 40s during our morning paddling sessions.  I think the El Niño weather pattern is largely to blame.  But I'm pretty sure it's still nicer than what any of us would be dealing with back home right now.  Back in Memphis the highs are mostly in the 40s this week, with some overnight lows in the 20s; I expect it's about the same in western North Carolina, where Chris Hipgrave and his wife Trish live.  Chris Norbury and Steph Schell hail from Pennsylvania, where the forecast is calling for heavy snow later this week, and Royal McDonnell is from Lake Placid, New York... the Adirondacks, for crying out loud.  I think we're doing just fine down here in Florida.

Yesterday morning we went out and did a "calm" 75-minute paddle.  It was a wake-up session in advance of a much tougher afternoon workout: three 8-minute pieces at 80-88 strokes per minute, or, as Chris H. explained, race pace for a 10-kilometer race.  We had 8 minutes recovery time in between.  My stroke rate for a 10K race is not much more than 80, so that's where I tried to keep it during the three pieces.  The workout was definitely hard, but nowhere near the worst I'd ever hurt.

I actually thought this morning's workout was harder, or at least more of a grind.  We did four sets of (6 min. at 56 spm, 4 min. at 60 spm, 3 min. at 64 spm, and 2 min. at 68 spm).  The first two sets were upriver, and Chris H., Steph/Royal (paddling tandem), and special guest Vadim Lishchuk opened a big lead on me during that period.  We got back together on the trip back downriver, and I tried very hard to stay with them in the second pair of sets.  I didn't entirely succeed, but I did a better job than on the upstream leg.  I put all the power into each stroke that I possibly could, and my muscles were feeling it by the end of the workout.

Before the workout I'd issued a blanket request for feedback on my stroke form, and Chris N., who's done his share of coaching over the years, took me up on it.  He told me that I was "false rotating"--while my leg drive was good, all it was doing was pushing my pelvic region into the back of the seat bucket rather than generating genuine rotation of the hips.  I was disheartened to hear this because it's exactly what I was paying a lot of attention to during my paddling sessions at home all fall, and I thought I was doing a decent job.  But at home I don't have other pairs of eyes on me, and in a technical sport like ours what you think you're doing in your boat and what you're actually doing are not always the same thing.  Chris gave me a couple of suggestions for my next time in the boat, and I guess I'll just keep trying to get it right for the rest of our camp and beyond.

We had the afternoon off to do whatever we felt like.  I went out for an easy 40-minute bike ride.

Back at the house we're renting, the party simply never stops.  There's no telling what sort of trouble the people I'm staying with might get into when left to their own devices:

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Monday photo feature

I'm attending winter training camp in Florida for the third time.  I came here last year, and two years before that.  The picture above is from my first camp: that's me in the blue shirt; to my left is Chris Hipgrave of Bryson City, North Carolina.  To my right are Alessia Faverio of Asheville, North Carolina, and Terry Smith of Chattanooga, Tennessee.  We're about to start a workout on the lovely Rainbow River near the town of Dunellon.

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Winter camp!

After a couple of weeks out of the boat due to holiday travel and various preoccupations, I'm shocking my body back into a more serious training mode at a camp in sunny Florida.

I left home Friday morning and arrived yesterday afternoon at the Rainbow River, a lovely spring-fed stream that flows through the town of Dunellon just above its confluence with the Withlacoochee River.  A few friends--Steph Schell, Royal McDonnell, Chris Norbury, Chris Hipgrave--had been here several days already and were doing a time trial from KP Hole to the Route 484 bridge.  Not ready for that kind of stress, I put in at the bridge and paddled upstream until I saw these athletes coming down, and I followed them back to the finish.

Yesterday was more substantial.  In the morning was a long (100-120 min.) session at a "conversational" pace, which is to say that it was supposed to be a good solid training paddle, but not at such high intensity that you couldn't chat with your companions.  I spent most of it alongside Chris H. and Royal, and I had to work pretty hard to keep pace with them.  I tried to take good strokes and keep the stroke rate in a reasonable range, and not exceed that "conversational" pace.  We paddled from the Route 484 bridge up to Rainbow Springs and back; in the last mile back to the bridge my form was sort of falling apart and I fell off the pace, so I concluded my paddle at an even 100 minutes.

Yesterday afternoon we did a power-building workout: six times (2 min. on/1 min. off at 50 strokes per minute and 3 min. on/1 min. off at 60 spm).  Both cadences are quite low, but 60 spm felt really fast after doing 50 spm.

After the two-week break from paddling my arms had felt as good as they'd felt in a long time.  But now they're sore again, especially my forearms.  I've got a couple of blisters on my left middle finger, too.  Tomorrow is a scheduled day off, and I'm as grateful for it as anybody even though I just got here.  There are some tough days coming up this week and I hope a day will be enough for me to regroup.

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Monday photo feature

As I was leaving the riverfront yesterday I saw this barge rig carrying a load of wind turbine blades up the Mississippi.  It was the first time I'd seen this particular cargo out there.

I think most of the barges I see on the river are carrying agricultural products--grains, primarily.  That's the biggest economic impact of extreme low-water periods like the one we're having this fall: it's more difficult for farmers to get their harvests to market.

Products of the sand and gravel industry--piles of rock, Portland cement, stuff like that--are a common sight on barges.  I also see a lot of coal being shipped by barge, though maybe not as much as I once did now that TVA's Allen Fossil Plant downstream of downtown Memphis has been converted to natural gas.  Sometimes I see barges that appear to contain some variety of fuel in liquid or gas form.

But that's about it for what I routinely see being shipped out on the river.  So it was interesting to see something new yesterday.

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Staying in motion, if only just barely

I suppose my life wouldn't be complete without some aches and pains, and not to worry: I've got some.  That discomfort in my right collarbone that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago is still present; it just so happened that I had my annual physical scheduled for this past Wednesday, so I mentioned it to my doctor and she ordered an X-ray.  Fortunately the bone came out looking just fine.  The doctor said it could be just a bruise, or even a weird virus that she's heard is going around that causes such pains.  Or maybe it's just the latest manifestation of my impinged nerves.

Meanwhile, my left hip flexor has been bothering me as well.  I started noticing it during one of my runs the week before last, and after I ran last Wednesday it seemed to feel worse.  My original plan was to run again on Friday, but I decided to skip it and see if the extra rest made any difference.  As of this writing it's still hurting about the same.  It sure seems that whoever controls the universe simply doesn't want me to run.

So I'm feeling pretty beat up these days.  I guess the bright side is that right now I'm still just maintaining some general fitness and don't have anything on the horizon that I need to be in top competitive shape for.  And at least I can still paddle without any severe discomfort.  That's what I did yesterday and today.  Yesterday it was overcast with a chilly breeze, and I felt sort of sluggish in the boat.  I basically just got in my hour... punched the clock, as it were.  I felt better today, and I expect having some sunshine had something to do with that, though it was still breezy and chilly.

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If you want it, attain it!

"Attainment" is a paddling term for moving one's boat upriver, against the current.  On a slow-moving Class I river, attaining is as simple as paddling upstream faster than the current is carrying you downstream.  As the degree of whitewater complexity rises, you might have to seek help from features in the river to get your boat upstream: hopping from one eddy to another, for instance, or surfing a wave that slants upstream.

I come from a whitewater background, and I've always enjoyed looking for clever ways to move upstream in a rapid.  Attainment is also a great exercise for developing fitness, technical efficiency, balance and control, and a deeper understanding of whitewater features and how they can help you get your boat from one spot in the river to another.

As I moved more into boats designed for flatwater and open-water paddling, I found that my attaining skills often came in handy when paddling those boats out on the Mississippi River.  Again, it's typically a matter of paddling upstream faster than the current is flowing downstream, but sometimes little things like stroke timing and angle of approach matter, too.

One old slalom racing friend of mine recently created a group on Face Book dedicated to attainment, and he invited group members to share their thoughts and their videos on the topic.  I knew right then I had to make a short film about attainment out on my home river.  You can now view it below.  I threw in a few cinematic tropes just for fun, but I hope the viewer ultimately will appreciate the important role attainment plays in the life of a paddler.

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A few thoughts about running

As some readers might know, I was a runner when I was younger.  I ran track and cross country for my high school and college teams.  I was a decent runner, if not a great one.  In high school my times were around 2:02 for 800 meters, 4:34 for 1600 meters, 10:12 for 3200 meters--good enough to win a few races in my area, but nowhere near good enough to attract the attention of college coaches.  I went to college with academics in mind but decided I might as well participate in the crummy no-scholarships running program the school had.  There I managed to raise my performance a level or two--still far from stardom but good enough to hold my head high as a respectable collegiate runner.  I broke 27 minutes a couple of times on 8-kilometer cross country courses, and my greatest achievement was probably clocking 8:52 in an indoor 3000-meter race in Louisville's Broadbent Arena.  Not long after that, I went down with a severe iliotibial band injury and was never able to return to that kind of form.

I graduated from college in 1990, and in the ensuing years I ran sporadically as my involvement in canoe and kayak racing increased.  I did an occasional road race, and while working as a high school teacher I assisted with the school's cross country program and ran with the kids a good bit.  I stayed in pretty good shape, albeit nowhere close to the peak form of my college career.

But by the early 2000s my efforts to run sort of petered out.  I was spending a lot of time training in the boat, and seeing as how I enjoyed paddling more than running, I just didn't see much reason to keep doing the latter ("Runners don't paddle, so why should paddlers run?").

I'd hardly run a step for some 20 years when, at about this time last year, I decided to buy a new pair of running shoes and give it another try.  Why did I decide to do that?  Nostalgia, mostly.  I'd been watching some You Tube footage of Olympic and world championships races of the last decade, and decided that I sort of missed being able to go out and run a mile or more and have it feel good and smooth.  I also wanted another cross-training activity in the mix as my tolerance for cold-weather paddling diminishes.

For my first time out a year ago, I figured 20 minutes was a reasonable length of time to run.  Anybody can run for 20 minutes... right?  But it was no more than a couple of minutes in that I realized just how out of running shape I was.  All the cardiovascular infrastructure that I'd built up from high school into early adulthood was gone.  I tried to settle in for 20 tough minutes, but I ended up stopping well short of that because of pain in my Achilles tendons.

I attempted two or three more runs last December, with similar results.  Finally, after injuring one of those Achilles a bit more severely, I decided to give it up until the arrival of warmer weather.

At the end of April I gave it another try, and this time I radically lowered my expectations of the distance I could handle.  I did just a short lap around the block here in my neighborhood--a distance of maybe 800 meters or so.  For the next couple of months I used this around-the-block run as my warmup for gym sessions.  The main thing I remember about those runs is that they never seemed to get any easier; each one felt like just as much of a chore as the first one had felt.

In July I took my trip up to New England, and once I was back home in early August I didn't feel like doing much of anything beyond some unstructured weekend paddling.  By November I was starting to feel like a slug and decided it was time to get back in motion.  If you've been reading this blog lately, then you know that my current routine includes some paddling, some bike riding, several exercises with a medicine ball, and some running.

Twice a week, I've been going over to the park just west of my home and running the perimeter of a big grassy field (we call it the "Greensward").  A lap around the Greensward is probably somewhere around 1000 meters, and over time I've been nudging that distance up by cutting fewer and fewer corners.  Each time out I've run a lap, done a couple of sets of medicine ball exercises, done a couple of sets of runs up the front stairs of a nearby building, and finished with a run of maybe 500 meters.  While I haven't been setting any speed records, it finally seems like running is getting a bit easier for me--a tiny bit, at least.  For a while I was having doubts about whether I would finish each run, even with less than 50 meters to go; but in the last week or so I've noticed that I'm feeling less that way.

I have no lofty plans to resurrect my running career; as I noted above, I enjoy paddling more than running and I think I will continue to satisfy my competitive urges that way.  But maybe... just maybe... I can get back to thinking of running as "something that I do."

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Monday photo feature

Can you see them?  CAN YOU???  They're right there in front of that pile of rocks on the far bank: a pair of big canoes taking some customers on a tour of the Mississippi River at Memphis on a blustery, overcast morning a couple of weeks ago.

I was in the Greenbelt Park at the time, doing my running and medicine ball routine.  When I noticed the canoes out there I zoomed in as close as my cellular telephonic device's camera would allow, and snapped the picture.

The canoes operate under the auspices of Mississippi River Expeditions, and I expect Mr. Matthew Burdine was out there leading the tour.

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Not moving freely, but moving just the same

As I said a few weeks ago, for now I'm just living with the discomfort brought on by the vertebrae that are impinging the nerves running through my shoulders into my arms.  The pain seems to wander around.  For the last month or so it's been mostly in both forearms, and at times I've lain in bed at night and felt them throbbing.  Now, just in the last couple of days, I've been feeling a rather sharp pain in the area of my right collarbone; it's almost as if I've fractured the bone somehow, though I can't think of anything that's happened that would have caused such a thing.

Since my last post I've continued with my variety of training activities.  I'm riding my bike a couple of times a week and doing my little running/medicine ball routine twice a week.  I've saved paddling for the weekends, usually paddling for 60 minutes each time out.  I'm just doing whatever I feel like as opposed to any specific workouts.  If I'm feeling good I'll throw in some long surges.

This weekend I paddled on Friday, and it was yesterday that I woke up feeling that pain in my collarbone area along with a lot of stiffness and soreness.  I went out and did a pretty leisurely bike ride: the annual Memphis marathon was in progress, and I spent as much time coasting or standing along the course and watching the runners as pedaling in any sort of deliberate way.

When I returned to the river this morning I was worried that the collarbone pain would bother me in the boat, but it turned out not to be so bad.  It was all the more reason to paddle with my leg and lower abdominal muscles as much as possible.

Enquiring minds want to know: what has the Mississippi River been doing lately?  Well, it continues to be various degrees of low.  Last weekend, when the river was flowing around seven and a half feet below zero on the Memphis gauge, I was unable to paddle southward from my dock, as I usually do:

But there was just barely enough water for me to paddle out to the north.  I had to thread my way through those water and electrical lines beneath the ramp:

During the last week the river crested at about -4.5 feet.  By this morning it had dropped back down to -6.3 feet, but I still had a sliver of water allowing me to depart to the south:

My river is never the same thing two days in a row, and I'd say that's a good thing.

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Monday photo feature

Roy Roberts, a racing friend of mine from Chattanooga, Tennessee, has been canoeing the entire Mississippi River with his friend Rich.  They've been doing it in segments over the last couple of years as their work schedules allow.  On the last day of October they embarked on their latest segment, and I shot this picture of them as they paddled out of the harbor here at Memphis.

The latest I've heard is that they're nearing New Orleans, and they plan to end the segment shortly because of work commitments and impending bad weather.  They'll return later to paddle the last stretch of river to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Best practice

"Good performers practice until they get it right.  Great performers practice until they can't get it wrong."

The director of the handbell group I play in shared this saying recently.  In his context the "performers" are musicians, but I think the saying applies to just about everything that requires skill, and paddling is certainly one such thing.

Why do professional athletes and Olympic hopefuls put in the unbelievable number of hours of training that they do?  Sure, each athlete wants to be the fittest and the strongest and the toughest, but ultimately it all comes down to being able to step out on the big stage in front of television cameras and huge crowds and just do what he or she does every day.  A pro basketball player doesn't know how not to dribble and pass and shoot.  A major league baseball pitcher doesn't know how not to throw a major-league-caliber pitch.  And an elite-level canoe and kayak racer doesn't know how not to get the boat up to speed quickly and efficiently and take good strokes and make good moves.

Bill Endicott, the U.S. whitewater team coach from the 1970s into the 1990s, pushed his athletes to do not just a healthy volume of training, but as much of that training as possible in their race boats to achieve the maximum possible sensation of what they would be doing in competition.  Other activities like running and lifting weights were all well and good, he said, but they should be done in addition to, never instead of, one's in-the-boat training.  So I would say Endicott was a believer in the above saying.

*          *          *

If you've been following this blog lately, then you know that I've been taking a long training break, paddling on weekends but doing very little else.  The reasons include exhaustion from my summer trip to New England, ongoing muscle and nerve woes, a pile of work to do at my rental property, renewed enthusiasm for projects in my woodworking shop, and philosophical questions about my whole athletic identity as I push ever closer to the end of my sixth decade on this Earth.

This is not really anything new.  I've taken a training break almost every year around this time, albeit not as long as this one.  And every year I've found it in me to get moving again by and by.  Even though I believe the rest is something my body and brain need, eventually I start feeling like a slug and miss the positive energy that physical activity gives me.  So, having wrapped up several other items of business, I picked this past week to get a new routine going.

What does this new routine entail?  Mostly out-of-the-boat stuff, in spite of Bill Endicott's advice.  Keep in mind that Endicott was working primarily with athletes in their physical prime who were hoping to compete in the world championships and Olympic Games.  At this point I am not that kind of athlete, if I ever even was.  No, considering my age and my spinal/orthopedic challenges, I think general fitness is what I need to focus on at this time.  This past week that included some bike riding--60 to 70 minutes of medium-intensity riding on Monday and Wednesday.  On Tuesday and Thursday I went over to the park near my home and did some running (just a few minutes on grass, plus a few intervals up stairs) and some medicine ball work (a couple of abdominal exercises and some power tosses).  By the end of the week I was tired and a bit sore, but elated to be doing something again.  Getting started is always the hardest part: it isn't until the second or third session that you have a really good feel for the activities you're doing, how long it will take, how hard it will be, and so on.  We had some unseasonably warm weather early last week, and that made getting started feel a little easier.  Now that I've got a routine locked in it'll be easier to get out and get it done even on days when the weather isn't so inviting.

Of course, paddling will always figure at least a little bit into what I'm doing, and I'm still getting in the boat on the weekends.  Last weekend I had a work-related event Saturday and couldn't paddle, but I made it to the river Sunday.  The Mississippi had come up to -5.60 feet on the Memphis gauge--still a very low level, but about six and a half feet higher than the record low set last month.  For the first time since August, my dock was usable:

But I'm not expecting super-high water anytime soon.  The Corps of Engineers said this week that it expects the low river stages to last well into the winter.  Apparently one of the effects of the El Niño pattern we're currently having is dry conditions in the Midwest, and that's where most of the water comes from that flows by Memphis.

At least there's enough water for paddling a boat.  I was back out there yesterday, doing another typical 60-minute paddle.  I kept the intensity moderate and thought a lot about stroke mechanics, particularly keeping my core muscles involved.  I aimed for a low-ish stroke rate, but did so by feel rather than count strokes or use a cadence sensor.

And that's just how it is right now, and how it's likely to be for the foreseeable future: lots of medium-intensity base work, technical practice, and general fitness.  Right now I can't say what my goals are for the coming year: I have a couple of ideas floating around in my head, but it'll be several months before I have a better idea of what the year 2024 has in store.  As long as I build up some good base fitness, it won't be too hard to get myself in a higher level of shape once the picture becomes more clear.

I paddled again this afternoon, when I was tired from a long day.  I thought for sure I was going to feel awful in the boat, but once I got moving I felt remarkably good.  Once again I tried to take good strokes with all muscle groups firing in unison.  As is so often the case, paddling turned out to be the best thing I did all day.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.