Pushing ahead in the flatwater boat

I'm scheduled to teach kayak classes for Outdoors, Inc., for the next five Saturdays, with August 17 being for kids ages 10 to 15.  For more information, look here.

After yesterday's busy morning, I "relaxed" with a 60-minute session in the K1 this afternoon.  I'm still not quite comfortable enough in that boat for it to be very relaxing.  But keeping the boat upright is becoming less and less of a problem for me, and that's allowing me to concentrate on good strokes with full rotation.  I'm still throwing some braces in from time to time, but I'm having stretches where I'm moving the boat well.

Toward the end of the session I timed myself from the Mud Island monorail bridge to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  In other boats I have done this piece as fast as 2:03 or so, but I'm pretty sure I've never broken two minutes.  But today my time was 2:02.  That's encouraging because I feel I can go at least a few seconds faster once I get a bit more stable and can paddle at full power.

Class is in session

This morning I pulled a trailer of boats out to Patriot Lake and greeted six students for a beginner course in kayaking.  All came in with a great attitude and seemed to enjoy themselves during the three-hour session.

I think every advanced paddler should do some teaching from time to time, for there are many aspects of the sport we take for granted that seem quite mysterious to beginners.  Things as simple as holding the paddle, operating the rudder, and even dumping water out of a swamped boat--I got questions on all these topics today that made me pause and think for a minute before I could answer.

Teaching class is also a chance to be reminded of just how cool this sport is that I'm involved in.  It's tempting to be a little blasé about spending a hot summer morning out on Patriot Lake, but some students acted as though it was a thoroughly exhilarating experience.

And it was.

Pinball

This was one of those days where I was bouncing around like a pinball all day.  During the course of the day I did some work at my workshop, went by my building to check the construction progress, came home for lunch and a nap (I highly recommend naps, by the way; legendary distance-runner-turned-coach Alberto Salazar urges the athletes he coaches to take naps, saying it's as important as going for a second run in a day), went up to my rental house to collect some rent, packed up some of my things to move to the building soon, and disconnected the washer and dryer at my mother's house in preparation for moving them to my building.

I had planned to paddle today all along, and I managed to do so in the late afternoon even though it would have been easy to justify skipping it.  As Brent Reitz notes in his forward stroke video, if you get your paddle in you know you've done at least one good thing for the day, no matter what else happens.

I paddled the K1 in the harbor for 60 minutes.  I'm not entirely at ease in that boat, but I feel as though I'm making progress.  Those one-sided-paddling stroke drills I've been doing are going much better now than they were when I started them.  I think that's a big part of the value of doing stroke drills: you start with some specific movement, usually one that feels awkward at first, and as you become more proficient at the movement you get the satisfaction of a little noticeable improvement, and you come away feeling like something other than a failure.

Honest labor

My home Internet connection went out last night and didn't return until this afternoon, so it's time to catch up on what I did yesterday.  And what I did was this: an afternoon 60-minute paddle in the harbor in the K1.  I felt reasonably good in the boat; not perfect, but not bad.  I had lengthy stretches where I felt great, until I started thinking about it too much and got all wobbly.  I did some more of those stroke drills I've been doing and I continue to feel better and better with those.

Today I did a different sort of workout: I gripped lots of bricks while I sat outside my building chopping old mortar off them so that they can be re-used.  My wrists and forearms feel as though they've been through a weight workout.  I sure could feel my hurting elbow throughout the process.

Monday photo feature

Geoff Calhoun competes in the 2007 Great Falls Race on the Potomac River upstream of Washington, DC.  Formed where the Potomac flows over the fall line from the Piedmont to the Coastal Plain, Great Falls is a perfect example of the incredible beauty that continues to lure paddlers in spite of the potential for tragic consequences like those met by Shannon Christy last Thursday.  Photo by Rick McNamara; lifted from the American Whitewater website.

Death in the paddling community

This morning I paddled my surf ski out on the Mississippi for 90 minutes.  There was quite a bit of upstream-bound barge traffic, and I went out and tried to surf.  I didn't catch many waves, partly because the rigs were moving quite fast and partly because a fairly strong north wind was pushing the waves down.

My left elbow continues to hurt badly, and I'm sort of at a loss for what to do about it.  I suppose I should see a doctor, but I really, really hate going to the doctor thanks to the insurance industry and the way they make seeking even the most routine medical care an ordeal in this country.  I think I'll start with some icing.

Tragedy has struck the paddling world this week.  The annual Great Falls Race on the Potomac River, one of the first "extreme races" in the country, was scheduled for this weekend, and Shannon Christy had traveled from her home in South Carolina to participate.  On Thursday she was killed while making a practice run (some details of what happened are available here and here).

I made Shannon's acquaintance last September, when she and I were in the same group running the upper Gauley River in West Virginia; I mention her in passing in this post from that trip.  But the main reason it came as a shock yesterday morning when I learned of her fatal accident was a Face Book post she had made the day before.  Clearly excited about racing this weekend, Shannon posted a photo of her registration form.  On the form there was a section for a racer to give bullet-point personal information for the P.A. announcer to say during his or her run.  Shannon responded with humor: "I believe there's a direct correlation between smooth legs and smooth lines."  She added, "I just really like smiling, it's my favorite."

I tend to be kind of a worry-wart when I look far into my future, and there's no better example than my current state of affairs.  Right now I'm living in temporary quarters, and every bit of my attention is focused on that future time when I'll have my new building fixed up and be settled once more.  I'm spending tremendous sums of money and I find myself fretting over the question of whether I can preserve enough of my nest egg so that I can afford the food, shelter, and health care I'll need into my twilight years.  Moments when I can just relax and savor the present have been hard to come by.

Shannon, of course, did not know that Thursday would be her last day on Earth.  But it appears, at least from that Face Book post, that she was living as though it were her last, so to speak.  She was consumed by all the joy that our sport offers: the satisfaction of being skilled in her boat, the magnificence of the Potomac River environs, the friendship and camaraderie among the participants, the relaxed, light-hearted atmosphere that usually carries the day even on a stretch of whitewater as difficult as Great Falls.

I need to follow Shannon's example.  Even though this has not been an easy year for me so far, my life is generally pretty wonderful.  Shannon knew that, and I expect that has a lot to do with why she was so well-liked.  Today's Great Falls Race was canceled and replaced with a memorial service for Shannon, and this photo, posted on a Face Book page called Exploring Elements and re-posted by my Face Book friend Bill Hearn, shows all the paddlers who turned out to pay respects:

Staying the course

I mentioned last week that my K1's rudder wasn't working so well.  Today I remembered to take the relevant tools down to the dock and make some adjustments.  Basically, there was just too much slack in the cables.  Fixing that made a world of difference in the boat's performance.  Previously, if I wanted to turn right, I had to move my right foot just so I could push the tiller all the way to the right side of the footboard with my left foot.  Today the rudder was much more responsive, and I no longer had that distraction from the task of balancing and paddling strong.  I felt much more confident for my entire 60 minutes of paddling.

Last week, paddling with that sluggish rudder and negotiating turbulent water stirred up by Fourth of July revelers, I covered the distance between the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and the Auction Avenue bridge in a dismally slow 3:42 or so.  Today, with calmer conditions and my rudder working much better, I decided to try it again.  This time I intentionally did not paddle all-out, focusing instead on taking solid strokes with full rotation, and relaxing my body as much as I could.  I crossed the finish with a time of 3:15.

I also did numerous stroke drills--paddling on one side, and leaning the boat on its right and left edges while paddling--and felt as good as I've felt yet.  I would stop short of calling this a breakthrough session, as I've followed up a good session with a horrible one several times now.  But I feel as though I've made a little progress and that's satisfying.

Monday photo feature

My friend Meghan and I have a little picnic across the river from downtown Memphis about five years ago.  The water was very high, and the landowner, who keeps a picnic table down by the river so he and his friends can go down there and watch July Fourth fireworks and stuff like that, had moved the table to the highest piece of land (we call it the "atoll"), where it was dry but accessible only by boat.

Another pleasant summer Sunday on the water

This afternoon I paddled the K1 in the harbor for 60 minutes.  Except for a little one-sided paddling at the end, I gave myself a break from the drills and tried to get in a good rhythm and help my muscles recover from yesterday.

My left elbow is killing me these days.  I think I strained it while stripping paint off old doors several weeks ago.  I'm right-handed, so it doesn't interfere with most daily activities, and it doesn't really bother me while I'm paddling, either, but the pain is always there, and sometimes while I'm in bed at night it just throbs.

I think it's your basic "tennis elbow."  I had the same thing in my right elbow several years ago, and it eventually went away after a few months, so maybe that's what I have to hope for now.  My experience with over-the-counter anti-inflammatories like Advil is that they don't do me much good, and I really don't like popping that stuff anyway.

A trip around the Bar

This morning I went out for a longer paddle--a trip around the Loosahatchie Bar.  The Loosahatchie Bar is the big island you see looking upriver as you take Interstate 40 over the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.

I paddle around the Bar several times a year.  It affords views of the many faces of the Mississippi River at Memphis.  You get the big-city feel as you paddle out the harbor by the cobblestones, with the tall buildings of downtown up on the bluff; you see various city-dwellers availing themselves of the Greenbelt Park for walking, running, fishing, relaxing, and more; you experience a little heavy industry as you paddle by the Maynard C. Stiles wastewater treatment plant and the sand and gravel operation up above it; and you feel like you're in sure-enough wilderness as you paddle down the Loosahatchie Chute on the Arkansas side of the Bar, with nothing in sight but water and forest.

I think I average two and a quarter hours or so when I paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar, starting and finishing at Harbortown Marina.  Once or twice I have broken two hours, but I don't expect to do so these days because an enormous sand deposit has formed at the north end of the Bar in recent years, adding a fair bit of paddling distance to the course.  Today I made the journey in 130 minutes.  That included hopping out of the boat for brief swims in the Loosahatchie Chute.

I'm a little surprised at how soft I've gotten after just ten days or so out of the boat: by the time I was halfway through today, a couple of sizable blisters had formed on my left hand.

I paddled my surf ski today.  As I've said earlier, I want to spend as much of my paddling time this summer as possible in the K1, but with the water still fairly high for this time of year (it was about 19.3 feet on the Memphis gauge this morning), I decided to get out and see some of the beautiful sights that aren't accessible by boat during the low-water months of late summer and fall.  Also, it's probably not the worst thing to break up the K1 paddling with some time in a boat I'm more comfortable with, lest I end up wobbling around in all my other boats like I've been doing in the K1.

Back to K1 drills

We're having a pleasantly mild week for this time of year in Memphis, as a breeze from the north has kept temperatures below 90 degrees Fahrenheit.  It's not cool, but just how I think summer should be, with just the right level of humidity keeping things green against a backdrop of insect serenade in our wooded city.

This afternoon I went down to the harbor and paddled the K1 for 60 minutes.  There were numerous motorized pleasure craft out on the water--not a surprise on this national holiday, but it did make the harbor quite choppy.  I tried to relax and not get my undies in a bunch over it--I'll have to get comfortable in turbulent water sooner or later, after all.

I did some more one-sided stroking drills.  I tried to do ten in a row on one side without letting the opposite blade touch the water; if I had to do a stroke or a brace with the opposite blade, I started over.  My coach is a real taskmaster.

I also did a drill where I paddled on both sides, but leaned the boat one way or another as I did so, trying to get a feel for the boat's point of secondary stability.

As I headed back to the marina, I decided, on a whim, to time myself from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the Auction Avenue bridge (six or seven hundred meters, maybe).  I used to do this time trial fairly often, with a best time of 2:57 or so, and I was curious to see what I could do in the K1.  But it quickly became apparent that there would be no PR today: every other stroke seemed to be part brace, and I couldn't keep the boat on a straight line to save my life (I think some adjustment to the rudder might be in order).  As I flailed through the plane of the Auction bridge, I looked at my watch: about 3:42.  Ugh.

Oh well, I guess I'll keep at it, and try to enjoy the punishment.

Update on the kayak classes this summer: Kids' day August 17

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I will be teaching some kayak classes for Outdoors, Inc., this summer out at Patriot Lake.  The schedule and registration information are posted here.

It's now been announced that August 17 will be "kids' day."  The class that day is open to students age ten to seventeen.  So if you, your siblings, or your friends have kids who would like to learn a little kayaking technique, sign them up!

Monday photo feature

The U.S. C2 team of Horace Holden (bow) and Wayne Dickert approaches the rapid known as Humungous at the 1996 Olympic slalom race on the Ocoee River near Ducktown, Tennessee.  I was paddling this piece of water myself a week ago Saturday, though probably not well enough to make a good showing in the Olympics.

Get some instruction from yours truly

If you're interested in getting started in kayaking, please consider taking a class this summer offered by Outdoors, Inc., here in Memphis.  The instructor?  Me!  Details and schedule are here.

Back on the grid

Well, here I am back among the living.  Actually, I've done plenty of living all along, but haven't been able to broadcast until now.

Last Saturday (June 22) I joined my friends Curtis and Ruthie from Atlanta for a run of both the upper and middle sections of the Ocoee River near Ducktown, Tennessee.  I was already sore and achy from all the paint stripping I had done that week, and I felt anything but sharp in my whitewater boat, which I was paddling for the first time since last November.  I sort of shied away from the more challenging moves and just tried to get used to using muscle groups that had fallen into disuse.  I was hurting from head to toe by the end of this long day, but there's no such thing as a regrettable day on the river.

That evening I drove over to Long Creek, South Carolina, where I camped.  The next morning I met my buddy Travis at the U.S. 76 bridge over the Chattooga River.  Travis had been out of his boat for a long time too, so we decided to run the section of river between Fall Creek and Woodall Shoals--not the most difficult whitewater the Chattooga has to offer, but at a gauge reading of 1.7 feet, some good action nevertheless, especially the intimidating Bull Sluice rapid.

The first thing I noticed as we put in was how much more peaceful the Chattooga is than the Ocoee.  While the Ocoee has been dammed into submission by the TVA, has a road following most of its length, and is clogged with tourists who pay to see the river from rafts, the Chattooga is free-flowing, has no development along its banks, and, save for a few auto-accessible points where locals congregate to swim and fish, offers plenty of solitude.

Once I had a chance to loosen up on the easy whitewater in the early part of the run, I felt quite a bit better in my boat, and a nice clean run of Bull Sluice did much to lift my spirits.  It was also fun to spend a few hours with Travis, talking about nothing in particular like we always do.

When the paddling was done it was time to move on to the main agenda item for this trip: a six-day class in cooperage at Country Workshops in the mountains north of Asheville.  It was the same course I had taken last summer, and you can read this post for an explanation of why I think it's relevant material for a canoe and kayak racing blog.

Fortunately I did manage to come away with a passable bucket, but at this stage of my woodworking (and paddling) career I pick classes based not on what sort of object I'll take home but on the potential to advance my skills.  This one was taught again by Carl Swensson, sort of a mountaintop guru of woodworking technique, and he pointed out that the top performers in any field are lifelong learners who even late in life seek the advice of teachers or coaches.  I'm not sure I'm a top performer in any field, but I'll continue to emulate them.

I'm spending today visiting my sister's family in Lincolnton, North Carolina.  Tomorrow I'll head home at last, eager to see what's gotten done at my building and to rescue my poor kittycat from his long days alone in my little apartment.

Signing off for a while

Well, I'm headed out of town for about ten days, during most of which I'll be off the grid entirely.  I apologize in advance for the lack of posts.  Once I'm back online I'll set about the task of winning back all the readers who have gotten out of the habit of checking in here.

Haste makes waste

I think I've mentioned before that I'm currently living in the apartment over my mother's garage.  My mother has moved to a retirement community, so it's just me here (the house is on the market but has not yet sold).

The locks on the doors here are such that it's pretty easy to lock oneself out.  I've mostly been careful about that, but this morning I went outside and shut the door behind me without unlocking it.  I spent the better part of the next hour knocking on neighbor's doors, trying to borrow somebody's phone so I could call my mother and have her come let me back in the house.  Few of my neighbors seemed to be home, but I finally got my hands on a phone, and my mother very kindly came right over.

Though I really didn't lose that much time, I felt in a rush the rest of the morning, and in my haste I went down to the river without my paddling clothes.  I discovered my mistake on the dock, and ended up paddling in my underwear for 40 minutes.

I paddled the K1, a boat that requires maximum concentration from me right now.  Feeling flustered and distracted, I might have been better off just skipping paddling, but eventually I got my mind on the business at hand.

One thing I did today was paddle on one side for ten or twelve strokes at a time.  I have done this in the surf ski many times and had no trouble, but I found it very difficult in the K1, especially when paddling on my right side.  Each time I took a stroke, I badly wanted to counter it with a stroke on the other side. I was frustrated with how awkward I was feeling, but I'm hoping that this and similar drills will bring about some improvement in my balance.

Monday photo feature

Joe Royer, the founder and director of the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, usually participates in the race himself.  But a freak accident on his bike a couple of weeks ago left him with an injured shoulder that required surgery to repair, so he watched Saturday's race from a seat on a motorized boat. Never one to spend time unproductively, Joe took a number of photographs, including the one above.  The canoes, who started two minutes after the kayaks, are beginning to overtake some of their twin-bladed brethren.

A K1 summer

This morning I paddled my K1 in the harbor for 60 minutes.  It was both a recovery session after yesterday's race and a transition into my summer paddling routine.  I'll be spending most of my time this summer just working on my building and getting my workshop and all my stuff and myself relocated, but I hope to get out in the K1 at least two or three times a week.  I'm hoping that on these long hot summer days, when a swim is no big deal, I can gain confidence in this incredibly tippy boat.

Another OICKR is in the books

Several hundred paddlers descended on the Memphis riverfront today for the 32nd Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  The race course is approximately 5000 meters in length; racers start in the mouth of the Wolf River, paddle out onto the Mississippi and down the river to the mouth of Wolf River Harbor, and up into the harbor a half-mile or so to the finish.

I expected the times to be fast today: the river was at a pretty high level at 26.3 feet on the Memphis gauge, winds were light and variable, and the water was calm. But once we had finished and the results were tabulated, they were quite a bit faster even than I had guessed.  Mike Herbert, the three-time Olympian and three-time world championships medalist, bettered Greg Barton's course record by one second with his time of 15 minutes, 38 seconds.  A short while later Pete Greene, Eric Mims, and I finished second, third, and fourth, respectively, each of us breaking 17 minutes for the first time in his many appearances in this race.  Fast times continued to be the rule moving down the list through all the various boat classes.

Greg Barton set his course record back in 2002.  That year, the river was almost as high (25.6 feet), conditions were calm, and the river was smooth.  Racers in all boat classes posted fast times.  The only difference between that year and this one that I can think of is that in 2002, race director Joe Royer placed a buoy some twenty feet off the southern tip of Mud Island to keep paddlers out of the shallow water there, whereas this year there was no buoy, making the course slightly shorter but subjecting racers to the shallow-water hazard.

My time in 2002 was 17:32, and until today that stood as my PR.  Today I clocked 16:51.  Am I really that much better than I was eleven years ago?  Were the conditions just faster in subtle ways?  Are the little changes to my stroke that Shaun Caven suggested two weeks ago already making that big a difference?  But then, I was about the same relative to Pete and Eric that I usually am.  I could drive myself crazy trying to analyze these results, and it's probably a fool's game because there's absolutely no guarantee that today's course was anywhere near the same length as the 2002 course.

Oh well.  I had a great time and a hard-fought competition.  I love this time each year when canoe and kayak racing takes over the Memphis riverfront for a morning.



UPDATE: The results are now posted here.  If you scroll down a bit you'll see the results in "finish time sequence," or the overall order of finish regardless of boat class.