Monday photo feature

In March of 2010, I participated in the inaugural Battle On The Bayou canoe and kayak race on Old Fort Bayou at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  In this photo I'm racing alongside Keith Benoist and Melissa Morrison of Natchez, Mississippi, just before passing under the Washington Avenue drawbridge.

This past Friday I got myself signed up for the tenth edition of this race.  And so on March 30, barring an injury or a family emergency, I'll be back down in Ocean Springs for more good times on the Bayou.


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

A balmy break

We've enjoyed a nice weekend for this time of year--sunny skies with Fahrenheit temperatures in the 50s.  I've tried to savor it because colder weather is set to return in the next day or two.

It was already 40 degrees when I got down to the river to paddle yesterday morning.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then paddled up the Mississippi to the lower reaches of the Greenbelt Park before heading back downriver and back to the harbor.  In the harbor I did a few stroke drills on the way back to the dock.

It was well on its way to 50 degrees when I arrived at the river this morning.  The plan was to do a longer paddle, and with balmy temperatures, hardly any wind, and the Mississippi flowing at a robust 26.8 feet on the Memphis gauge, conditions were ideal for paddling around the Loosahatchie Bar.

I'm not a big believer in "overdistance" paddling as a regular training staple, but in the winter and spring I do like to get in a few long paddles to establish a good endurance base for the year.  "Long" for me means two to two and a half hours.  If I paddle much longer than that my stroke form starts to break down, and then I'm just practicing poor mechanics.  Meanwhile, I do have several two-hourish races on the schedule, and a few training paddles in that time frame benefits me mentally as much as anything, reassuring myself that I can push through that tough last half-hour or so.  I always try to focus hard on taking good strokes when I'm tired like that and it's easy to let them get sloppy.

When I reached the mouth of the harbor I found three barge rigs moving up the river.  The nearest one was just above the Harahan Bridge, and fortunately it wasn't running full-throttle.  I was able to widen my lead on it during the paddle upriver and have a comfortable amount of space for the ferry across.

The hardest part of going around the Bar is fighting the current while rounding the upper end.  I always think of this moment as the paddling equivalent of summiting a mountain.  Once I'm heading down the Loosahatchie Chute, I'm always getting tired but at least have the current working with me.

I always like to to this paddle in less than two hours if I can.  Today I hit the 90-minute mark as I approached the lower end of the Bar, and I knew I'd have to paddle strong the rest of the way to break two hours.  And that's what I did.  I was pleasantly surprised at how well my energy held up.  I arrived back at the dock about an hour and 56 minutes after I'd started.

I knew I'd be tired the rest of the day, but I consider this the good kind of tired.



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

Another week of winter behind me

On Sunday afternoon I told one of my non-paddling friends that I'd paddled that morning, and he was awe-struck by the thought of somebody doing that on such a frigid day.  I explained that it really was not a bad day to paddle at all because the sun was out and the wind was light.  I went on to say that if it had been fifteen degrees warmer, but overcast and windy, it would have been miserable out there.

That's exactly the sort of day I had when I went down to paddle on Tuesday.  The temperature was around 44 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was as cloudy as could be, and the wind was screaming out of the southeast.

But in the end I wasn't really that miserable.  I tried to stay in the most protected areas of the harbor, and the hour in the boat went quickly enough.  I did my three 8-stroke sprints in a downwind direction and paddled a good solid tempo after that.  As usual, the worst part was the ten minutes I had to spend on the dock afterward, changing into dry clothes and putting my boat away before I could flee to the comfort of indoors.

For most of Wednesday the rain poured down, just like it did last Saturday.  And just like last Saturday, the system had a mass of cold air behind it.  Could this be a pattern for the next little while?

When I woke up yesterday morning the temperature was in the mid 20s under sunny skies.  I headed for the riverfront expecting a carbon-copy of Sunday's paddle, but when I got down there it was a few degrees warmer.  My rudder was frozen when I got in the boat but it didn't take even a minute for it to free itself from its icy bonds.

I warmed up and did another set of three 8-stroke sprints.  I ventured out onto the Mississippi, but returned to the harbor in short order because of approaching barge traffic.  I was not eager to take a bunch of frigid waves in my lap.

I spent the rest of the 60 minutes doing some minute-long surges, trying to get all the involved muscles firing in unison.

I did rounds of the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and today.  By this time next week I'll have made it through another January.

7

On this day in 2012, My Training Blog by Elmore put up its very first post.  At the time I didn't have any particular goals for the blog's duration.  I'd have been perfectly happy to abandon it after a few months if it turned out to be more of a hassle than I cared for.

Yet here I am still doing it seven years later.  The main idea hasn't changed since that first day: I post the stuff I do, day by day and week by week, for people to read or not read as they are so moved.  But having put up one thousand three hundred twenty-nine posts over 2557 days, perhaps I'm ready to articulate some "greater purpose."


1.  First and foremost, the purpose of this blog is to share ideas.  Never would I suggest that readers abandon their own methods and adopt mine.  I mean... why would they?  It's not like I'm a world-class athlete or even one of the best in my own country.

Just like it says at the top of the page, this blog is simply an example of what one guy does.  And just about everything I do in this sport is something I learned from somebody else at some point.  Either it was shown to me by a coach or a fellow paddler, or I picked it up while watching other athletes.

So read this blog with a desire for self-examination.  If you see something you like here, go ahead and incorporate it into your own training.  And if you know a way to accomplish something that's better than what I'm doing, by all means, tell me.  Let's all grow, and maybe even advance the sport, together.


2.  This blog is written by an athlete, for athletes, about being an athlete.  There's something about the word "athlete" that unnerves some people.  And there's kind of a mostly-implicit debate about who is an athlete and who is not.

In the way sports are covered in our society, I detect a prevailing attitude that the word athlete  cannot apply to the average person.  I feel fairly certain that the typical Memphian does not consider somebody like me an athlete.  I've even been told, once or twice, some variation of "You're not an athlete.  The guys on the Memphis Grizzlies are athletes.  You're just some schmo who likes to play around in a silly boat."

Frankly, I pity such people who have to put somebody down like that to feel validated.  But that's a topic for another time.  For now I'll just say that speakers of such sentiments are wrong.  They don't get it.

Whether you're an athlete isn't something that can be measured by how much you get paid, or how many products you endorse, or how many fans you have.  Being an athlete is a state of mind.  It starts with a simple curiosity about what you can do with your body, what the limits are, how good you can be.  You then organize your daily life in such a way as to satisfy that curiosity.  You make time to get your workouts in.  You pay attention to your general health--a good diet and adequate sleep, stuff like that.  You take your sport seriously and try to do it a little better each day than you did the day before.

If you become the kind of athlete who has lots of fans and even people willing to pay you... hey, that's great.  But the only person who has to care about what you're doing is you.  And I hope you'll find something in this blog that gives you a boost.


3.  This blog is about Memphis.  My hometown.  Where more than 90 percent of my paddling takes place.

A sizable portion of our citizenry believes that anybody who would get in a kayak or canoe and paddle it should be locked up in a padded cell.  Perhaps even more frustrating, however, are the people who think paddling is in fact a neat idea, but are infected with this bizarre belief that it's something you have to go someplace else to do--namely some chic resort in the mountains or on the seashore.

I happen to believe that you can and should paddle regularly no matter where you are.  You'll gain a unique familiarity with the natural world where you live, and you'll develop solid skills that will be there for you anyplace in the world you choose to visit.

And I think my hometown is ideal for paddling.  Do I suggest that my home water is one of the best places to paddle in the world?  Well, no... but then again, maybe I should.  Our local river is the biggest in North America, after all.

When I look out over the Memphis riverfront, I see a paddling mecca that could be.  Every time I put my boat in the water at Harbortown Marina, I embark on a session that might include everything from the flatwater in the harbor to occasional offshore-like conditions out on the Mississippi River.  In the same day I might find myself paddling in an urban setting (downtown Memphis) and semi-remote wilderness (the Loosahatchie Chute, the bottom miles of the Wolf River, the more distant reaches of the Mississippi beyond the city).

And of course, we have a second-to-none race event, the annual Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.

Sometimes I wish open-water paddlers would flock to my city like they do to Hawaii, or Florida, or the Columbia River Gorge.  Sometimes I wish the city itself would embrace the incredible recreational opportunities that our riverfront offers.  And then other times I'm happy to have the place mostly to myself.  Whatever the case, I'm going to keep paddling my boat here--leading by example, as it were--and representing my town the best I can whenever I race.


4.  This blog is about the world.  While I loyally paddle my home water, I'm also fascinated with everyplace else.  That's one of the biggest reasons I like to race: it gets me out of town to visit other parts of the region and the country a few times a year.  The world is full of beautiful places, none more so than the places people paddle.

Every time I travel someplace, I imagine what it would be like if I lived there.  I imagine what my paddling routine would be and how I would have to organize my life to make it possible.  This mental exercise helps me notice a lot of the more innocuous qualities of a place.  It also almost always deepens my appreciation for what I have at home.

And, canoe and kayak racing takes me to some fascinating places I might not otherwise visit--places like the Missouri Ozarks, the Cumberland Plateau region of Kentucky, and the Louisiana Bayou.


5.  This blog is about the mundane.  At the top of the page it says I'm a canoe and kayak racer.  That means I go to races.  Each time I attend a race I try to post an entertaining summary here that captures all the moment-by-moment drama of the event.  But races aren't really the main point of this blog.  Sure, races are fun and exciting, but they comprise no more than eight or ten days out of an entire year.

The rest of the time, it's just me in my boat.  I paddle because I want to do well in the races, but that alone isn't enough to get me out there week in and week out, all year long.  Mostly I paddle because I love to paddle.  In this blog I try to celebrate our sport as something simply to devote ourselves to and enjoy, an everyday enhancement to the richness of our lives.

Jon Lugbill, an American whitewater slalom canoeist who won five world championships, once said: "It's not worth suffering to get to an end.  The means must be enjoyable."  I don't consider the training I do to be a great sacrifice or an ordeal that must be endured.  I like it.  It's a part of my life and a part of who I am.


So, there you go... the essence of this blog, at least as I interpret it.  I can't overstate my gratitude to every single soul who takes the time to read this thing.  Let's see if I can make it another seven years.

Monday photo feature

My friend Chris Hipgrave of Bryson City, North Carolina, has just returned from a sea kayaking expedition in Antarctica.  He's posted some pretty spectacular photos on his blog and his Face Book page and kindly given me permission to share one here.  With this blast of cold weather we've just had here in much of the U.S., I figure we could all use a reminder that there's always someplace colder and icier than where we are.  And it's summer down there in Antarctica.

Which of Chris's photos to share here was a tough decision.  I encourage everybody to go here and have a look at his entire album.

I will sneak in one more, however.  I've written many times about how much I love our critters on the Memphis riverfront--the birds, the turtles, the fish, the beavers, even the snakes.  But I have yet to see any penguins around here.  Says Chris, "Although technically not an albino, this Gentoo penguin has a genetic mutation that makes him stand out from the crowd."

A tale of two January days

A system of rain and thunderstorms moved in Friday night, and the temperature rose above 60 degrees Fahrenheit in the early hours of yesterday morning.  It was still raining pretty hard when I got out of bed, but by the time I got down to the river it seemed to have moved out.  The temperature had dropped into the mid 50s, but it was still warm enough to paddle without pogies.

The wind was blowing from the south, hard enough to make paddling toward the mouth of the harbor feel like a chore.  When it was time to do my 8-stroke sprints I turned around and did them with the wind at my back.  Then I turned back around and paddled out onto the Mississippi.

The river was quite calm in spite of the south wind.  It helped that there was no barge traffic in the area.  I was feeling a bit tired in the boat, maybe from the fast surges I'd done on Thursday or the strength work I'd done on Friday.  I had to make myself paddle with the best form I could.  This got easier once I was back in the harbor with the wind at my back.

I cruised on back to the dock to complete a 60-minute session, and right as I was getting out of the boat I realized I'd been wrong about the rain being over.  A thick drizzle quickly moved in, and a short time later the wind abruptly shifted to the north, and I could feel the temperature dropping fast.  By the time I was back in the car heading home, the in-dash temperature display said it was 46 degrees.  It would keep on dropping the rest of the day toward an overnight low in the 20s.  So it turns out I got my paddle in just minutes ahead of the nastier weather, and that was kind of a nice feeling.

Of course, then there was the matter of paddling today, and there was no avoiding the cold.  The conditions I might face were uncertain: the cold front brought some pretty strong winds with it that raged overnight.  This morning I layered up good, broke out the fleece-lined pogies for the first time this winter, and headed downtown.  When I got there I found that the wind had abated and the sun was fighting a winning battle with the cloud cover.  My car told me it was 28 degrees.

My rudder was frozen.  That was no surprise, considering my boat had been soaking wet from the rain when the colder air moved in yesterday.  When my rudder freezes I have to be patient so as not to break something.  Today I put my boat in the water and started paddling large clockwise circles, because that's the position the rudder was stuck in.  It finally came free after about eight minutes.

I spent the rest of the 80-minute session paddling a steady relaxed pace.  With the sun shining I was pretty comfortable in the boat.  I stayed in the harbor to be on the safe side.  There was some barge traffic out on the river, and having waves splash into my seat bucket and footwell in sub-freezing weather is not a sensation I cherish.

It was still below freezing when I got back to the dock.  The water droplets on my boat quickly froze while I changed into dry clothes.  I toweled the boat off as best I could, put it away, and headed home, proud of myself for not having let some Arctic air stop me.

The week

On Tuesday Joe and I paddled a loop of the harbor.  I did a 60-minute higher-intensity session yesterday.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I paddled on the fast side of medium with several minute-long surges.

The sun has peeked out a little bit this week, but most of the time it's continued to be cloudy with mild temperatures.  An Arctic blast is on its way for the weekend.

A new strength routine is underway.  I did rounds of it Monday, Wednesday, and today.

Monday photo feature

This little run of cold, cloudy, cheerless weather we're having reminds me of a miserable winter day 22 years ago when I entered a slalom race on the Saint Francis River in Missouri.  Most of the races I was doing back then were too far away for my parents to go watch, but they made this trip.  I was sorry my late dad couldn't have more pleasant weather for sitting on a river bank, but he seemed to take it in good humor.  Photo by my mom.

Good old January

By yesterday I was definitely over the worst of my cold.  But it was pouring down rain outside and the temperature wasn't much over 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so I gave myself the day off.

The rain eventually moved out of the area and I was back to business this morning.  Even though it wasn't wickedly cold--it was 41 degrees when I arrived down at the river--it had the feel of a bleak winter day because of the overcast skies and cold northwest wind.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then headed up the Mississippi River.  My plan was to paddle for 80 minutes total, and out on the river I decided to keep paddling upstream until I got to 50 minutes of elapsed time or reached the mouth of the Wolf River, whichever came first.  I usually have no trouble getting up to the Wolf in less than 50 minutes, but today it was slow going because I was paddling into a headwind and at the current river level (31.6 feet on the Memphis gauge) I had to paddle against a lot of strong current.  Eddies were few, and the best ones seemed to be in dense stands of trees and brush that forced me farther out into the main river flow.

So, when my watch hit 50 minutes I was still several hundred meters shy of the Wolf.  All I could do was turn around and hope to go faster next time.

The rest of the day has remained dark and depressing.  When I paddle in the morning on a day like today it seems like it takes me all afternoon to work the chill out of my body.

A new strength routine

After a week off from strength work because of the crud I caught, it's time to start something new.  Here's what I'll be doing for the next little while.

1.  Delt wings (demonstrated at 1:42 of this video; I do mine while chest-down on a stability ball)

2.  Plank exercise on stability balls.  Looks like this:

3.  Trx pull (demonstrated at 1:27 of this video)

4.  Ball back extension (demonstrated at 1:15 of this video)

5.  Military press with dumbbells

ah-CHOO

The theme of this week has been the bad cold I've had.  Colds for me usually start with a sore throat, and I could feel that coming on as I finished paddling Sunday morning.  The throat pain was at its worst on Monday, bad enough to make me wonder if I had a case of strep throat.  But by Tuesday it had given way to ordinary coughing and sneezing and clogged sinuses.

The weekend's balmy weather continued through Tuesday.  When Joe and I paddled a loop of the harbor Tuesday morning, it was partly sunny and the Fahrenheit temperature was rising into the 60s.

By yesterday morning we were back to more typical January weather.  When I got down to the river it was still in the 30s, and the pogies were back on my paddle.  There was a cold north breeze blowing, but it wasn't too bad, and the sun was out.  I was starting to feel somewhat better but not ready to be a hero in the boat yet.  I paddled a steady, relaxed 60 minutes.

The river level as I paddled yesterday was around 31.8 feet, and it crested later in the day just shy of 32 feet.  Yesterday morning the lowest-lying bits of the Greenbelt Park were under water.

Today I think my health is continuing in the right direction even though my head is still full of gunk.  Strength work has been on hold, and I hope to have a new routine underway by Monday.

Monday photo feature

I'm not sure where this photo originated--a friend of a friend posted it on Face Book this past week.  But it's an interesting look at how the Memphis riverfront has changed over the last few decades.  (The Hernando DeSoto Bridge opened in 1973; I think the photo was taken a few years before construction began.)

In this photo we're looking north (upstream).  That's the main Mississippi River on the left, with the Wolf River flowing in on the right.  The Wolf would later be redirected to enter the Mississippi farther to the north.  The former Wolf riverbed we see in this photo was transformed into our present-day slackwater harbor.

Those sandbars in the Mississippi are now long-gone as a result of the Corps of Engineers' dredging and channelization efforts.  I'm pretty sure the river was quite low when this picture was taken, but today even at low levels the main channel is plenty deep for barge traffic.

This is about the best photo I could find on Google Images of what the same landscape looks like today:

In this photo, the river is at a medium-low level.

Paddling the rising river

The Mississippi River usually drops to very low levels (below zero on the Memphis gauge) in the fall, but for most of this past fall it was 15 feet or higher.  Now it's rising to some mild flood levels: the current forecast says it'll crest at 32.5 feet toward the end of the week.  Almost nobody in the city of Memphis will be affected because the city sits on a high bluff.  The low-lying bottomlands will start to get flooded, and some water may lap into the southern end of the Greenbelt Park, but most Memphians won't notice a thing.  Personally I enjoy the high-water periods because of the increased acreage of liquid real estate that I can paddle on.

A thick fog hung over the river when I arrived down there yesterday morning.  It would eventually give way to sunny skies--a welcome sight after a week that was mostly dreary and rainy.  The afternoon high yesterday would be close to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but in the morning when I paddled it was in the low 40s and quite nippy.  I paddled for 60 minutes, warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor before heading out onto the river and maintaining a good solid pace.

When I arrived at the river to paddle this morning the temperature was 50 degrees and rising, so I left the pogies on the dock.  I paddled for 100 minutes, going out of the harbor and up the Mississippi along the Tennessee bank to the mouth of the Wolf River, and then up the Wolf for ten or twelve minutes before turning around and heading back.  The river level was 29.4 feet, and it looked like the water was just a half-foot shy of starting to spill onto the Greenbelt Park in a few places.

2019 Race Schedule (first draft)

Here's an early look at some of the places I might be going to race this year:


March
30  Battle On The Bayou.  Old Fort Bayou, Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  An 8.5-mile flatwater race.  Register


April
6  Oyster City Challenge.  Apalachicola River, Apalachicola, Florida.  8 miles down a coastal river.  Register

13  Perche Creek Gutbuster.  Perche Creek, Columbia, Missouri.  10 miles on a Class I river.

27  Lake Cumberland Regatta.  Lake Cumberland near Columbia, Kentucky.  A 12- to 15-mile flatwater race.

27-28  Carolina Cup.  Intracoastal Waterway and Atlantic Ocean, Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.  Flatwater and open-water racing.  Register


May
11  Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River, Vicksburg, Mississippi.  A 22-mile race down the largest river in North America.  Register

18  Almost Heaven Paddle Battle.  Summersville Reservoir near Summersville, West Virginia.  A 12-mile flatwater race.  Register


June
8  Taylorsville Lake Paddle Battle.  Taylorsville Reservoir, Taylorsville, Kentucky.  A 10-mile flatwater race.

15  Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River, Memphis, Tennessee.  The 37th edition of this classic.  A 5000-meter dash down the largest river in North America.


July
6  The Lovely Laurel River Lake Paddle Blast.  Laurel River Lake, Corbin, Kentucky.  A 10-mile flatwater race.

18-20  Gorge Downwind Championships.  Columbia River, Hood River, Oregon.


August
3  Ohio River Paddlefest.  Ohio River, Cincinnati, Ohio.  A 9-mile race on this Midwest artery.


September
7?  Lower Atchafalaya Sprint Races.  A series of 3-mile races on flat, gently-flowing water.  A racer may participate in both solo and team-boat classes.


October
5  Big South Fork River Dash.  Big South Fork of the Cumberland River near Whitley City, Kentucky.  A 12-mile mostly-flatwater race.

*          *          *

Finding races to do is easier than it used to be now that we have Internet search engines and social media and stuff like that.  Even so, it still takes some persistence to put together a full schedule.  Some race organizers do a better job than others of announcing their dates and publicizing their events.  You can expect this race schedule to evolve as the year goes along.

The usual disclaimer: this is by no means a comprehensive list of all the canoe and kayak races in 2019.  These are simply the events I know of at this time that I am at least somewhat likely to attend. With a couple of notable exceptions, I have selected the events here because they are within a reasonable drive of my home in Memphis, Tennessee.  I also look for races of the two-hours-or-less variety, since I'm not an ultra-endurance athlete.

In any case, I hope this post is a useful resource for readers as they put together their own race schedules.

Making the most of my time in the boat

After Christmas is when I usually try to move back into a more "serious" training routine.  Exactly what "serious" means depends on the person.  If I were an 18-year-old Olympic hopeful, I'd probably be doing ten or more in-the-boat workouts each week, along with strength work and stuff like that.  But I'm not an 18-year-old Olympic hopeful, and these days I think of "serious" as four times in the boat, plus two or three strength routines, each week.  Most of the time my paddling days are Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, because I'm just a regimented guy that way.

Once in a while I get anxious, thinking maybe I'm not doing enough, especially when I hear somebody talking about how much more he's doing.  But most of the time I feel pretty good about it.  I think I'm doing about as much as my 51-year-old body can withstand, and as much as I can fit into a busy schedule that's full of the typical adult responsibilities.

If you need an example of a more accomplished racer than I whose time in the boat is limited, check out this profile of Erik Borgnes of Stevens Point, Wisconsin--he paddles just three times a week for much of the year.  I think Erik is maybe a year or two older than I am.

Actually, I think even younger athletes could accomplish a lot with just a few paddling sessions a week. Keep in mind that it's not the workouts themselves that make you stronger and fitter and faster. It's during the recovery from those workouts that your body rebuilds and fortifies itself to perform at a higher level.  The more workouts you do each week, the greater the likelihood that you will "overtrain"--that is, not allow yourself adequate recovery.

Whatever the case, for me, for most of my "serious" training year, four times in the boat a week it is.  I try to get the best recovery I can when I'm out of the boat so my body can internalize the work I've done.  And when I'm in the boat, I try to be all there, mentally as well as physically.  In recent posts I've mentioned a specific "thing" (usually a stroke component) I worked on each time I paddled; the reason for that is to keep myself mentally engaged in the task at hand as opposed to letting my mind wander who knows where and lapsing into sloppy paddling.  Actually, in most paddling sessions I work on a lot of "things," not just one, but the point is the same: because my paddling time is limited, each time I'm in the boat I'm on sacred ground (or sacred water, I guess I should say), and I want to get as much out of it as I possibly can.

On Tuesday it was overcast but the temperature was mild (mid 50s Fahrenheit).  I paddled for 60 minutes, warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor before heading out onto the main river.  I didn't really have a "thing" in this session other than just taking good strokes and maintaining a strong pace.

Yesterday seemed a lot more like a classic winter day for this part of the country: overcast and 42 degrees with a biting north wind blowing.  But as usual, once I was in the boat paddling it wasn't too bad.  I warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and then paddled up the Mississippi about a third of the way up the Greenbelt Park before returning to the harbor and the dock.  My "thing" for the day was getting all my muscles firing in unison--that is, as soon as the blade was planted, I tried to take each stroke with one good focused movement of my body, with every muscle engaged in the business of propelling the boat forward.  This gets harder as the water gets more turbulent, because in rough water the average person will have to devote some muscle power to staying upright.  The Mississippi wasn't very rough yesterday but it's always swirly and provides good routine balance practice.

I did the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and today.  After a good four weeks I think it's time to put away the Smart Bell and start up something new next week.

Monday photo feature

One of my very first slalom races was one of the old "Citizen Race" events they used to have on the Nantahala River in western North Carolina.  I think this photo is from 1992, at which time I was in my mid-20s, a very advanced age to be entering such a sport.  But every time I look at this photo I see myself as a little kid.  Photo by Michael Stout.

Sometimes, winter is not as bad as you think

Before yesterday we'd had a decent run of mild weather, with Fahrenheit temperatures rising into the 50s and even the 60s.  I'd gone several weeks without wearing pogies.  But yesterday morning the pogies were back on.  When I got down to the river the mercury was straining to touch 40 degrees and there was a bitter north breeze blowing.  It felt more like winter again.  But there was a literal "bright" side: the sky was mostly sunny.  Once I was in the boat paddling I got comfortable, and it turned out to be not a bad day to paddle at all.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor; I think the sprints felt a little bit more fluid than they had been.  Then I paddled out onto the Mississippi and spent the rest of the 60 minutes focusing on involving my legs and feet in each stroke.

This morning it was overcast and things seemed sort of a gloomy as I headed downtown to paddle.  Then again, it was a few degrees warmer than yesterday, and there was practically no wind.  The harbor was as smooth as glass.  I warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and again the sprints felt not great but not terrible either.  I paddled out onto the Mississippi, which was also mostly smooth with a minimal amount of motorized traffic.  Conditions were really pretty ideal.  I paddled a good strong pace up and down the river before returning to the harbor and the dock to complete an 80-minute session.

"Neither rain nor sleet nor snow..."

I spent Wednesday driving home and was in the mood to paddle Thursday morning even though there was a bit of inclement weather about.  A check of the Internet radar showed a big mass of rain closing in on the city of Memphis, and with a couple of errands to run on my way downtown, I knew it would be falling on me by the time I was in the boat.  Fortunately the temperature was mild--around 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

I paddled for 60 minutes in a hard drizzle.  A stiff south wind drove the raindrops right into my face as I paddled from the marina to the mouth of the harbor.  But I didn't let it bother me.  When I was a kid at summer camp, anytime a camper complained about having to do something in the rain, the standard glib reply was "Skin is waterproof."

I paddled a brisk pace until the last ten minutes or so, when I eased up and coasted back to the dock.  The rainfall got quite a bit heavier as I was driving home, so at least in that respect my timing was good.

I followed through on the plan I mentioned in my last post, and did the strength routine while visiting family on Monday and Wednesday.  I did it again back here at home today.

Seizing the mild-weather paddling opportunities

This week we had two lovely warmish sunny days, and I paddled on both of them.  On Tuesday Joe and I did a loop of the harbor, and today I paddled for 80 minutes out on the Mississippi.  In between those two days the weather was wet and/or cold and blustery.

I started today's paddle by warming up and doing another rusty-feeling set of three 8-stroke sprints.  Then I paddled out onto the Mississippi, where an upstream-bound barge rig was creating some good-sized swells.  I went out and tried to surf without much success.  Part of the reason is that I tend to be conservative with such activities in the wintertime, but even if my attitude had been a hundred percent "Sydney or the Bush," I still might not have gotten any decent rides because the waves' troughs were a little too broad.  But at least I got in a few decent sprints.  Soon the waves started petering out, so my bit of surf practice didn't last more than maybe five minutes.  We take what we can get here in the Mid South.

I ferried over to the Arkansas side and paddled upriver toward the Loosahatchie Chute before coming back down and returning to the harbor.  During this period the "thing" I decided to work on was pulling hard through each stroke while keeping the stroke rate pretty low.  It was almost like a "hesitation" drill as I had to make myself go slow during each recovery between strokes.  It made for some good balance practice out on the river.

I'll be out of the boat for most of next week due to holiday travel.  I did the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week, and since my Smart Bell is nice and portable I'll be sticking to that aspect of training next week.

Monday photo feature

We've all seen those heartbreaking photos of birds, turtles, and other critters caught up in plastic six-pack rings that have found their way into our world's waterways.  Yesterday while paddling out on the Mississippi I saw this one in a stand of willows over near the Arkansas side.  So I paddled into the willows and grabbed it.  I took it home, used a pair of scissors to cut apart all the rings, and put it in the trash where it belongs.  Goodie goodie for me!!!!

Muscle memory

This morning was reasonably nice by wintertime standards.  The sky was partly sunny, and with the gentlest of breezes blowing from the south, the water in the harbor was dead calm.  At 50 degrees Fahrenheit it was right on the cusp of being cold enough for pogies, and I opted to go without.  Pogies are a wonderful invention (thanks to whitewater racing pioneers Bill Nutt and Bonnie Losick for the roles they played in their conception and development), but any day I don't have to wear them is a good day in my book.

I started by warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor.  The sprints are still feeling rusty, as my body just doesn't seem to have much turnover right now.  Then I paddled out onto the Mississippi, ferried over to the Arkansas side, and paddled up above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge before coming back downriver and returning to the harbor.

The thing I decided to focus on today was getting my blades fully immersed at the beginning of each stroke.  For some reason I've long had a tendency not to get my right blade all the way in the water; you can see me doing that at times in this video, most of whose footage was shot around 2011-12.  I think I've done a better job of it in more recent years, but I probably ought to charge up the Go Pro camera and shoot some new footage soon so I can see how I'm doing.

Of course, stroke mechanics is something I'm always working on, to one degree or another, every time I paddle.  But today was one of those days when I moved one particular component onto the front burner in my mind, if that makes any sense.  And so I paddled along and tried to plant the blade with precision each time--"speared the fish," as it were--without thrusting my body forward and causing the boat to bob.

I got back to the dock 70 minutes after I'd started.  I can check off another day of practice as a new season looms off in the future.

Milder weather and a variety of activity

The miserable weekend weather finally began to give way to some sunshine Monday, and Tuesday was a gorgeous day with clear skies and an afternoon high around 52 degrees Fahrenheit.  It was a brisk 41 degrees when I arrived at the river to paddle Tuesday morning but it had warmed up to a comfortable 48 degrees by the time I was finished.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor.  It was the first time I had sprinted in any way in a couple of months, and while the energy was there, the form was rusty.  I paddled up the Mississippi to the south end of the Greenbelt Park and then returned to the harbor, where I spent the last 25 minutes of my one-hour session doing a bunch of stroke drills: hesitation drills, one-sided drills, and the "one-two-three-four-FIVE!!!!" drill that Morgan House showed me when I took his clinic last year.  It had been a long time since I'd isolated the various components of my stroke for study, and I'm always struck by how tiring it is to focus that hard on something while I'm paddling.

I'd done a round of my new strength routine on Monday, and I did another round on Wednesday.  I woke up yesterday feeling stiff and sore in my arms and shoulders.  I don't know what might have caused it other than the strength work, but I thought it was odd that the soreness took that long to appear.  Usually it starts up within a day of my doing something new.

Joe hadn't been available for our usual Tuesday paddle, so he joined me yesterday for a loop of the harbor.  The relaxed, "conversational" pace we paddled was helpful as my body worked out the soreness.

I did another round of the strength routine today to close out a decent "business" week here in the early offseason.

Monday photo feature

I'm at a loss for words just after finishing a race on the Pascagoula River on the Mississippi Gulf Coast last year.

A new strength routine

Now that I'm finally feeling better it's time to start thinking about some offseason conditioning again.

I've been doing a "Smart Bell" workout for some 20 years now.  I learned it from a friend named Emerson Wickwire who coached wrestling at the school where I taught back in the late 1990s.  A friend of his, a really good wrestler named Paul Widerman, invented the Smart Bell so he could do a whole variety of dynamic strength exercises.

At long last, I've made a video of the routine I do with the Smart Bell.  I'll be the first to admit it's not the best quality production--I made it all by myself with a camera on a tripod in my house--but hopefully everybody can see what's going on.




(Just in case anybody's curious: I had the radio on while I was making this.  What you're hearing is the "Down In The Alley" program, hosted by Eddie Hankins each Friday morning on WEVL FM 89.9.  It makes about as good a soundtrack as anything I could have come up with.)

Where does one get a Smart Bell these days?  I'm not sure.  They're listed on this Amazon page as "currently unavailable."  As you can see there, their look has changed from the first-generation Smart Bell I'm using in the video.  If you want one then I encourage you to poke around the Internet and see what you can find.  There might be some on Ebay.

Improved health and unimproved weather

Well, I had my CT scan Thursday, and the little bit of information I've been able to extract from my doctor's office indicates it wasn't entirely conclusive.  I have an appointment there next Tuesday, so I should know more no later than then.

In the meantime, I've been feeling significantly better.  Monday was the last full day I dealt with that abdominal discomfort.  I wasn't feeling totally better Tuesday morning, but I went ahead and paddled with Joe in the harbor anyway.  By Tuesday evening I knew I was feeling better, and I've felt more or less back to normal ever since.  And believe me, I'm pleased about that.  But I'm still a little puzzled about this mysterious two-week malady.  I really don't get sick that often, and when I do it almost never lasts more than several days.

I'm now trying to get myself back in motion.  The weather has not been helpful.  I don't think it's been warmer than 45 degrees Fahrenheit in the last week or so.  This weekend has been particularly lousy, as the same storm system that has brought snow and ice to much of the Southeast has given us relentless rain for close to 24 hours.  The temperature has not escaped the mid 30s.

Mind you, winters here in the Mid South are nowhere near as harsh as in places like the upper Great Plains or New England or the Great Lakes region, but in a way I wish that if it must be cold at all, it would just go all the way: I have a friend who lives in New Hampshire who posted on Face Book that he cross-country skied ten miles yesterday, and that's the kind of offseason cross-training I could really sink my teeth into.  Instead, the water stays liquid here just about all winter, and I feel obligated to go out and paddle with a stiff upper lip.  I pleaded the "recovering from illness" excuse to stay in this weekend, but soon enough I need to get back in gear.

Of course, winters are funny here, and just because we've had some nasty blasts early, there's no guarantee it'll stay that way until spring.  Last January I paddled a couple of times when the temperature was in the teens, but after that frigid period the rest of the winter turned out to be quite mild.  The best I can do with this winter training thing is what I always do: take it a day at a time.  With any luck it'll add up to a decent amount of work by the time Earth swings around to its vernal equinox.

Body woes

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything on this canoe and kayak training blog.  The main reason for that is that lately very little canoe and kayak training has taken place around here.

Back on the evening of Tuesday, November 20, I started feeling some discomfort in my abdominal area.  The feeling was still there the next morning, and when I tried to do a round of the strength routine I found I had very little energy.  I concluded that I must have some kind of mild stomach bug and my body was fighting it off.

For the next several days I felt not horrible, exactly, but very low in energy.  I didn't do much more than lie around the house during this time.  Then I started to feel better, and thought I was on the mend--pretty typical when you've got a virus, right?  But the moment I began to resume some normal-life activities, the discomfort returned.  I decided it was time to go see the doctor.  I went in last Tuesday morning and they referred me for an ultrasound procedure and also took blood for some lab tests.

By Thursday the tests had come back negative, and my doctor told me the next step was to have a CT scan to see if there was some kind of mass in my insides.

A mass?  As in, a tumor?  Seriously?

I have to get pre-certification from my insurance company before I can have a CT scan, so I'm having to wait until Thursday to get it done.  (Note: if I had just gone to the emergency room they could have done the scan with no pre-certification requirement.  And there I thought I was doing the right thing by going to my primary-care doctor instead of the emergency room.)  I sincerely hope that my thoughts of tumors and cancer are just me blowing things out of proportion.  But in the meantime I'm still not feeling well and I don't know what else to think.  By tomorrow evening it'll be two weeks that this has been going on.

It's hard even to describe how this feels.  Much of the time it's a perpetual feeling of having to use the bathroom (sometimes Number One, sometimes Number Two) even though my digestion and bodily functions have been working just fine throughout this period.

Saturday was a beautiful day and I decided to try paddling--if nothing else, the cabin fever was driving me mad.  I paddled for an hour and felt just fine in the boat.  I didn't do anything bold; I stayed in the harbor because a south wind was making things rough out on the Mississippi, and even though I was feeling good enough to paddle at a healthy clip, I didn't throw in any all-out sprints.  Once I was back on the dock I was happy to have gotten out and done something with my body at last.

By Saturday evening, as if on cue, I was back to that mild lousy feeling.  It continued all through yesterday and I'm still not feeling so hot this morning.

It's still early in the offseason, so if I have to go through a forced layoff, I guess this is about as good a time as any.  But not knowing how much longer this is going to go on is frustrating.  Right now there's nothing I can do but see what the CT scan reveals this Thursday.

My resolve gets an early test

Winter has decided to come early to the Mid South.  When I got down to the river to paddle on Tuesday it was 36 degrees Fahrenheit, overcast, and windy.  As I mentioned in my new stretching video, it was definitely a day to do my stretching before leaving home.  I broke out the heavy winter gear for the first time: wetsuit pants, pogies, fleece shirt, long-sleeve shell.  Once I was actually in the boat paddling I didn't feel too bad: going against the north wind wasn't fun but it wasn't anything I haven't endured many times before.  I stayed in the harbor and paddled on the quick side of medium for 60 minutes.  The worst moments were standing on the dock before and after paddling.

Every year around this time I ask myself if I have it in me to put myself through another round of winter training.  It would appear that the answer is... yeah.  At least once more, I guess I do.

Winters here in the Mid South are never really that bad.  In a typical winter we might have two or three blasts of Arctic air, plunging temperatures down into the 20s or teens for several days at a time, but we have a lot of stretches in the 40s and 50s as well.  Portions of the harbor might occasionally freeze over, sometimes bad enough to make me skip a day of paddling, but that's just once every three or four years, maybe.  Some snow and ice isn't uncommon, but it doesn't happen every year.

But I'm pretty sure this is the earliest round of winter weather in my lifetime, especially one that includes snow.  Yes, yesterday afternoon enough frozen precipitation moved into the area to force the cancellation of evening activities and close some rural school systems today.  Weird.

I'm in the mood to hunker down for a long cold winter, but actually this is quite temporary: the current weather forecast says it'll be sunny and in the 60s this weekend, and the highs will be above 50 for the next nine days.  It wouldn't surprise me that much if the rest of this winter isn't as cold as it is now.

I did the strength routine Monday and yesterday and plan to do it again tomorrow.

Update: Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame

The Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame has announced its latest induction class.  The group of nine includes two football players, two football coaches, one football administrator, two basketball players, one tennis player, and one bull rider.  Eight of the inductees are male, and one female.

I'm sad to say that our canoe and kayak racing friend Mike Herbert did not make the cut.  Neither did any of the other people I voted for on my ballot.

Nevertheless, I thank everybody who took the trouble to buy an ASHOF membership and vote on Mike's behalf.  Just getting Mike's name on the ballot took close to a decade of effort, and I hope there will be opportunities to try again in the future.

Monday photo feature

It's been a long time since I've been on a good old-fashioned paddling tour.  But that's what I've just done in this photograph.  Back in 2009 I joined a group of folks to run a 22-mile section of the Mississippi River from Ashport to Randolph.  Here I'm helping Heather Havens and Alicia Huettel carry their big old kevlar canoe up the hill to the parking area at Randolph, located on the Tennessee side some 40 miles upstream of downtown Memphis.

Stretching my body and my tech skills

Joe and I did our customary paddle on Tuesday, and I did rounds of the strength routine on Monday, Wednesday, and today.  Right now the strength work isn't ending there: those oak planks I'm dealing with in the workshop are still pretty heavy even though I've got them milled down close to their final dimensions.

The weather was gorgeous when Joe and I paddled Tuesday: sunny and calm with a temperature in the mid 60s Fahrenheit.  That now seems a lifetime ago.  We've had periods of rain the last couple of days, and for the next week we're looking at highs in the 40s and 30s.  Meanwhile, the Mississippi River continues to be unseasonably high as a result of heavy rain in the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Ohio watersheds.  It's supposed to crest around 25 feet on the Memphis gauge in the middle of next week.

I try my best to make my training activities as understandable as possible, whether you've been reading this blog for years or you're looking at it for the first time.  For instance, I've been building up a reservoir of pages I can refer the reader back to, like the one about the harbor, or my 8-stroke sprints, or my bridge-to-bridge sprint, or strength routines like the one I linked to above.

I can't really blame you if you haven't noticed, but lately I've been trying to make My Training Blog by Elmore a sure-enough multimedia experience.  In the last several months I've been developing a modicum of video-production skill.  I do mean a modicum: I don't expect anybody to be impressed by what I can do.  But as a guy who's still stuck in the 20th century when it comes to technological know-how, I'm impressed with myself, and that's good enough for me.

Here's my latest creation: a video about my pre-exercise stretch routine.  Just like this blog in general, I offer it not as the last word on the subject, but simply as an example of what one guy does.  I hope at least a few people might gain some useful ideas and even a bit of inspiration from it.

Monday photo feature

Joe pulled out his iPhone and snapped this picture as he and I paddled a loop of the harbor a couple of Tuesdays ago.  These Tuesday sessions are all the paddling I've been doing lately, and the rest of my life has expanded to fill the extra time.

Oaken muscle

All my paddling in the last several weeks has taken place on Tuesdays.  My friend Joe joins me most Tuesdays to paddle a loop of the harbor, but this past Tuesday he was busy setting up for the annual Outdoors, Inc., Cyclocross Race ("OICX" for short), so I paddled alone.  It was the warmest day of the week with a pretty good south breeze blowing, so I ventured out onto the Mississippi for a short while.  There was a barge rig coming downriver and I attempted to surf behind it, but there were practically no surfable waves.  A south wind tends to knock the waves flat behind downstream-moving rigs.

I mentioned a while back that my arm muscles are getting plenty of work from my current project in the woodworking shop.  The project itself is simple enough--a small cabinet--but processing the material has been a bear.  The client brought me several 9'-long-by-20"-wide-by-3"-thick planks that he'd had milled from a willow oak tree that stood on his property.  The stock includes a high content of early-growth wood:

The wide portion of each growth ring is the early-growth wood, and such material is dense, hard, and heavy.  Moving each plank from the client's truck into my workshop was quite a chore for the two of us woking together.  Once I'd cut up the lumber into rough-sized parts for the cabinet, I had some hefty hunks of wood to run over the jointer and through the planer:

The rough-sawn lumber was not very true, so it took quite a few passes over the jointer to establish a flat face on each piece.  And the client wanted me to get the thickness of each piece down to two inches, so that required quite a few more passes through the planer.

If you can picture me picking up each piece, running it through a machine, then repeating that process many times, then you can imagine that I'm getting quite a workout.  Each time I do a round of jointing and planing, my arms end up throbbing for the rest of the day.  The fine-milling of lumber is best done over a period of days rather than all in one day, so I've done a few of these workouts over the last couple of weeks.

But of course, exertion in the woodworking shop is not official canoe and kayak training.  I said in a previous post that I'd resume "official" strength work come November.  It's now November, so it's time to keep my word.  I began doing this strength routine this morning.  The road to 2019 racing begins here.

A new strength routine

It's time to get some offseason conditioning in motion.  I plan to do the following strength exercises for the next little while:

1.  Pushups

2.  Hindu squats (demonstrated in this video)

3.  Bicep curls

4.  Hanging planks (demonstrated by yours truly in this video)

5.  Cleans

Monday photo feature

Last week I filled out my ballot for the latest induction class at the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

There were 43 names on the list.  37 of the nominees were male, and six were female.  The sports or categories represented broke down like this: football 17; basketball 9; coaching 4 (all four were football coaches); baseball 2; golf 2; track and field 2; tennis 1; officiating 1; broadcasting 1; football administration 1; multiple sports 1; canoe and kayak racing 1.

It should go without saying that my top vote went to the lone paddler on the list, Mr. Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas.  Deciding who would get my remaining four votes took some thought.  In the end I voted for a pair of runners, a distance runner (Leah Thorvilson) and a sprinter (Veronica Campbell Brown). I voted for a basketball player with strong Memphis connections: Keith Lee grew up across the river in West Memphis, Arkansas; starred at Memphis State University in the 1980s; and lives in Memphis today.  My final vote went to baseball player Johnny Ray, because baseball is the one big pro sport I like.

How good a chance Mike has of being inducted remains to be seen.  Last year's induction class consisted of nine people, and I'm assuming this year's class will be similar in size.  My heart sank a little when I got my ballot in the mail and saw that his name was but a tiny speck in a sea of 43.  All I can do is cast my vote and hope enough other people feel the same way.

The week, and the season, in review

No paddling took place last weekend, as I was fulfilling my annual commitment to demonstrate wooden bowl carving at the Pink Palace Crafts Fair here in Memphis.  All in all it wasn't a bad weekend, even though I was using muscles I hadn't used in quite a while since I've spent this year toiling at my rental property a lot more than working in my shop.  I also had to be careful moving heavy logs around, given my recent back woes.  The biggest bummer was the weather: for the first couple of hours on Friday we had true "chamber of commerce" conditions of sunshine and blue skies, but then it abruptly clouded over and the rest of the weekend was chilly and rainy.

We got more rain on Monday, and then a cold front moved in with a steep drop in temperatures.  When I finally made it back to the river Tuesday morning for my weekly loop of the harbor with Joe, it was gray and drizzly and the temperature barely exceeded 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  For the first time I wore long pants and long sleeves in the boat.  I stubbornly refused to break out the pogies so soon.  Standing on the dock was chilly indeed, but once I was in the boat paddling I felt just fine, even when paddling into the north wind.  I reminded myself that by February I'll be savoring this kind of weather.

I plan to paddle just once or twice a week for the next little while, to give myself a mental break and catch up on some things I've been neglecting lately.  I've been slacking off on the strength work, and I'll probably give myself until the start of next month before I get that going again.  Actually, my latest project in the shop involves milling some massive oak planks the client provided, so it's not like my muscles are lying around unused.

Yes, for me the offseason has begun, and I guess this is where I'm supposed to offer some kind of profound observation in summary of the season that's just concluded.  Certainly the big event that distinguished this season from previous ones was the long trip out to the Pacific Northwest in July for the Gorge Downwind race.  In terms of how I finished it was by far my worst race of the year: according to the posted results (which were initially, and may still be, full of errors), I was 332nd out of 489 racers.  But there are many other metrics for evaluation.  Fitness was not the problem: I felt fresh as a daisy within a half-hour after the finish.  Where I found myself struggling was with the technical aspects, many of which I was experiencing for the first time even though I've been paddling all kinds of water for more than three and a half decades.  I'm now pondering ways to be better prepared for next year's race even though true downwind conditions are hard to come by where I live.  It feels like when I was training for whitewater slalom in a part of the country with no whitewater.

Elsewhere in my season, I was reminded that I'm a shorter-distance athlete.  When I was dealing with two-hour-plus distances, I had some trouble.  I bonked in both the 19-mile Kentucky River race in May and the 14-mile Big South Fork race two weeks ago (in the latter race there was less than a mile to go when I bonked, but I was limping across the finish line just the same).  I was the overall winner in another two-hour race, on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg in April, but the competition there was less formidable and I had the luxury of pacing myself on my own terms.

I think my single best performance of the year was at the six-mile race on Fontana Reservoir over in western North Carolina.  Sadly, my hometown event, a delightful sub-20-minute dash down the Mississippi River at Memphis, had to be canceled this year.  And the races I'd planned to attend in September, all of which were in the less-than-one-hour category, were called off as well.  So I had few opportunities to race over distances to which I'm best suited.  Not coincidentally, the season was lacking in moments where I crossed the finish line feeling like I could pump my fist and say "Yes!  I nailed it!!"

But that's no reason to write the season off as a disappointment.  On the contrary, I achieved a high level of fitness and ventured pretty far outside my comfort zone.  I participated in three events for the first time and encountered athletes I'd never raced before.  And as always, even during moments when my non-athletic life seemed barely under control, my boat was waiting for me down at the dock, my regular paddling routine insuring that there was at least one thing going on that I could feel good about.

So there you go.  The season might not have been something nice and neat and tied up with a bow, but it sure wasn't boring.  I'm grateful for all the readers who took the journey with me.  All I can do now is see about doing it all over again in 2019.

Monday photo feature

Louisville paddlers Elaine Harold and Scott Cummins compete in the 14-mile Big South Fork River Dash this past Saturday.  Although Scott described their boat as a short, fat pig, they still managed to school the rest of us and take the overall win.  Photo by Greg Davis.

My race weekend, Part 2: post-race

On Saturday I finished third overall and second in my boat class at the Big South Fork River Dash.  While not the most triumphant possible way to end a season, I'll take it.  All told, I'm satisfied with how I competed.

I was sore and exhausted the rest of the day.  My right lower back still has not emerged from its depressing stiffness.  I knew I wouldn't have the energy to head back home Saturday, so I registered for another night of camping at Alum Ford.  Most of the other racers had cleared out and the place was quiet.  It was dark around 7 o'clock and I was in bed by 8:30.  I proceeded to sleep great, free of the sinus trouble of the night before.  By the time I crawled out of my tent Sunday morning I was still wicked sore but at least I was rested and feeling awake and alert.

I was eager to head home, but I decided that as long as I was in an area with lots of lovely natural attractions I should at least do a bit of sight-seeing.  I broke camp and headed for Cumberland Falls.

Cumberland Falls is widely thought to be the highest waterfall in North America east of the Mississippi River and south of Niagara Falls.  Paddling over the falls is illegal, but it has been done.  Dane Jackson and Nick Troutman ran the falls in March of 2016, and got fined for their trouble:



I didn't want to get fined, and I also didn't want to destroy my composite surf ski, so I was happy to behold the falls from the overlooks on the river-right bank.  I read some of the informational placards posted there, and my favorite fact was this: the Cumberland River was named in 1758 by an explorer named Thomas Walker.  He named it the Cumberland River because "the crooked nature of the river reminded him of the Duke of Cumberland."

I always like to do a recovery paddle the day after a race, and the stretch of river upstream of the falls appeared to be deep and flat and entirely suitable for this purpose.  I put in and paddled upriver toward the stone bridge that carries Kentucky Route 90 over the river.  Once I was above this bridge I realized that I had not scouted the area as well as I should have: the river there flowed over a series of rocky ledges and shoals, making it impassable for my surf ski.  So I had only a half-mile piece of river to paddle on.  In the end it was no big deal, since I was paddling easy for just a half-hour.  I ended up ferrying back and forth across the river, letting the blood flow through my race-ravaged muscles.

My race weekend, Part 1: pre-race and race

I left home around 9 o'clock Friday morning.  Driving to any destination in eastern Kentucky always seems to take longer than I expect it to: I was hoping to make it the greater Stearns-Whitley City area in between five and six hours, but it was nearing 6 o'clock when I finally rolled into Alum Ford Campground on the bank of the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River.  It didn't actually take me nine hours of driving--I lost an hour when I crossed into Eastern Time, and I also stopped for supper before heading into the woods to camp.  I estimate the driving time at around seven hours.

Anyway, without much daylight left, I didn't have time to do a short paddle as I typically do the day before a race.  I got busy pitching my tent, and in the process I realized that even though it was cooler on the Plateau than in Memphis, it was every bit as muggy.  By the time camp was set up I was wet and sticky and exhausted.  Alum Ford is a primitive camp with no running water, so I would be carrying on this existence for the weekend.

Just after dark my old racing friend Scott Cummins of Louisville, Kentucky, rolled in.  I invited him to share my campsite and he put up his hammock.  After a couple of beers and lots of conversation, we hit the hay.

It was not a good night of sleep for me.  Something was bothering my sinuses in the worst way and I was unable to breathe through my nose.  I'm guessing I got three or four hours of sleep at the most.  It was still dark at 6:45 Saturday morning--Alum Ford is only a couple of dozen miles inside the western border of the Eastern Time zone--but I went ahead and got up and walked around, hoping that would clear my head.  It sort of did.

Scott rolled out of his hammock a while later and we made some coffee and breakfast.  The race would be starting right next to the campground, so we didn't have to go far to attend race director Gerry James's pre-race meeting and then put our boats in the water.

Scott and I have had a number of memorable head-to-head matches, but this weekend we were not in the same boat class, as Scott had decided to race tandem with fellow Louisvillian Elaine Harold.  Even though they were paddling a Nelo boat designed more for instruction and surf-play than for speed ("this boat's a pig," said Scott), I knew this pair of fine athletes would be in the mix for the overall win.  Once our 14-mile race was underway we were joined in the lead pack by a couple of guys who were in my boat class: Lee Droppelman of Louisville and Ryan Landis of Corwin, Ohio.

The course was laid out like so: from the start we were to paddle downstream for five miles, and then round a buoy and paddle back up to Alum Ford.  We would continue on upriver for another two miles to another buoy, then come back down and finish at Alum Ford.

By the end of the first mile Ryan was looking strong in the lead and I settled onto his stern wake with the intention of staying there for a good long while.  Lee was hanging in there off to our right.  Elaine and Scott had fallen out of view but I figured they were someplace nearby.  A bend to the left, a bend to the right, a bend to the left once more, we wound our way down the river.  I say "down the river," but in fact there was no current at all that I could detect.  I think we were in the upper reaches of Lake Cumberland even though on a map our race course appears to be quite a distance from that reservoir.

At last our first buoy came into view.  I moved up onto Ryan's right-side wake and then took the lead so that I could be in control during the clockwise turn.  Lee was right on our sterns.  I kept my boat pointed straight downriver until we were abreast of the buoy and then I turned my rudder hard.  Just like that, I had a boatlength lead.  I rounded the buoy and threw in a surge: I wasn't ready to try to break away yet, but I wanted to make the other guys work a little to get back on my wake.

After this little episode it seemed as though the pace slowed down a bit from our early clip.  Ryan rejoined me in the lead, and I could hear Scott chit-chatting about something behind us.  As we pressed on, I could see Elaine and Scott's red boat moving up into my peripheral vision, and it sounded like they were bringing some roaring whitewater with them.  As they pulled even with us, I saw where the racket was coming from: their bow was pushing a wad of leaves.  There were quite a few leaves strewn over the surface of the water, and once in a while Ryan and Lee and I would get one caught on the bow and have to shake it off.  But the tandem boat seemed designed to grab as many leaves as possible.  "I'll be serving a salad at the finish," quipped our ever-witty friend Scott.

I'd noticed that Lee had mysteriously vanished from the lead group, and Scott went on to explain why.  Moments earlier Lee and Elaine/Scott had paused to clean leaves off each other's boats, and Scott had inadvertently knocked the rudder guard off Lee's boat.  So now Lee's rudder had no protection from the leaves, and the rest of the race was likely to be slow and miserable for him.

Those of us who remained continued to press on up the river.  Whether it was the quick pace in the early miles, or my poor night of sleep, or my flagging commitment to training in the last few weeks, or improper nutrition, or the simple fact that I'm not really a long-distance athlete, I'm not sure; but I was really starting to feel the pain after eight or nine miles.  As the start-finish buoys at Alum Ford came into view Elaine and Scott surged into the lead.  So far they had been disappearing and reappearing in the lead pack, but now it looked like they planned to keep the lead for good.  I started thinking less about the overall win and more about fighting for a win in my class.

We passed Alum Ford and entered the final four miles.  I was feeling light-headed and I fought hard to keep my body engaged even though my brain was slipping away.  At this point I knew my only chance of beating Ryan was if he was hurting at least as badly as I was.  I tried a little sprint to see if he would fall off my right-side wake, but he responded right away, so I backed off.  We continued on for another mile, and even though Ryan was moving his boat steadily he was not pushing the pace.  Feeling I had to make him at least think I still had the competitive juice, I picked it up again, and this time... he fell off!  He had nothing left!  This was my big break!  I was going to win this thing!

With the very last ounces of fight I had in me, I began to surge, hoping to put the race away right then and there.  If I could steadily pull away from here to the last buoy, then surely I would be able to hold him off over the last two miles even if I blew up completely.  He was out of my peripheral vision now and I pressed the advantage as hard as I could.

I was running on fumes as the final buoy came into view.  From the buoy it would be a long two miles back to the finish, but I knew that as long as I kept my boat moving it would require a huge amount of energy from Ryan to catch me.  After all, I've been in that position plenty of times myself, a minute or more behind somebody and struggling in vain to reel him in.

There was just one problem: Ryan wasn't a minute or more behind me.  As Elaine and Scott rounded the buoy Scott called out: "He's three boatlengths back, Elmore!"  Three boatlengths?  That's all??  I paddled into the buoy turn myself and looked over my right shoulder.  Ryan was right there.  Right.  There.  I hadn't put anywhere near the gap on him that I'd thought.

At this moment, I realized that I was a dead man.

I had nothing left.  I was teetering on the edge of the bonk-abyss.  I went ahead and let Ryan pull back even with me so at least I'd have some assistance from his wake.  But even then I could barely match his speed.  With less than a mile to go Ryan left me behind and I fell over into bonk-despair.

Elaine and Scott cruised to the finish to claim the overall win in one hour, 57 minutes, 22 seconds.  Ryan closed strong to win the single-kayak class a mere five seconds behind them.  I was ashen and fighting off waves of nausea, but I still managed to bring my race to a close forty seconds behind Ryan.  Lee fought off his technical difficulties to finish just 12 seconds over the two-hour mark.

Hollie Hall of South Point, Ohio, was the top solo female finisher, clocking two hours, 10 minutes, 4 seconds.  The complete results are posted here.

I apologize for this post rambling on so long.  Right now I'm just trying to get it done.  Maybe later I'll come back and do some editing and tighten it up a little.  Meanwhile, stay tuned for a second post about the rest of my weekend.

Oww

I have spent the week dealing with an ailing back.  On Sunday I had some things that needed washing under an outside spigot and ended up performing that chore in a bent-over position.  As a result, I woke up Monday morning in agony.  Just what I need the week of a race.

On Tuesday my back bothered me a lot as I paddled a loop of the harbor with Joe.  I tried to stay relaxed and let the area loosen up as much as it was willing to do.

The condition has gradually improved during the week but I was sort of hoping I'd be over it by now.  By this morning there was still an acute soreness in my right lower back.  I went back down to the riverfront and embarked on a 50-minute paddle, and was pleased to find that the discomfort in the boat wasn't nearly as bad as it had been Tuesday.  After a ten-minute warmup I did six 12-stroke sprints, and my body handled that intensity well.  I felt better after paddling than I'd felt before.  For the rest of the day there has still been a bit of soreness, but I'm getting the feeling that it'll be gone in another day or so.

Muggy heat has returned to this region.  I'm hoping it might be a little bit more fall-like up on the Cumberland Plateau.

Monday photo feature

It's the spring of 1994, and that's me paddling my old Gyramax C1 down the lovely bluish waters of the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River near Oneida, Tennessee.  Photo by Sonny Salomon.  I think that's Tony Hickey sitting in the river-left eddy there.

This weekend I'll be returning to the Big South Fork, albeit some distance downstream near Stearns, Kentucky.  The occasion will be the Big South Fork River Dash, a 14-mile race down what I expect to be a much flatter section of the river.  I'm hoping for some nice early-fall weather.