Cool weather, some intense paddling, and a pain in the neck

Yesterday was a textbook brisk fall day.  The sun shone bright all day, but the Fahrenheit temperature started in the mid 40s and hadn't reached 60 yet when I went down to paddle.

I got down to the dock and realized that my summertime in-the-boat attire of swim trunks and a short-sleeve shirt weren't going to be adequate.  But it was all I had, so I grinned and bore it for 60 minutes.  There was a chilly breeze blowing and I was never entirely comfortable out there.

Today dawned quite a bit warmer and cloudy, with occasional light showers.  Once in the boat I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then headed out onto the Mississippi for my workout.  I did twelve two-minute pieces in which I paddled a moderate pace (about 6.5 miles per hour on flatwater) for 60 seconds, a faster pace (7.0-7.5 mph) for 30 seconds, and a sub-maximal pace (over 8.0 mph) for 30 seconds.  I did the pieces back-to-back--in other words, that moderate-paced first 60 seconds counted as my recovery interval.  I did five of them while paddling upriver along the Tennessee bank, four of them coming back downriver, and the last three on the flatwater of the harbor.

The workout went reasonably well and I felt strong throughout.  Unfortunately, I'm not feeling so hot out of the boat.  That soreness and tightness in the right side of my neck continues and it's making me somewhat miserable as I go about my day.  I think I'm going to have to step up the frequency of my visits to the chiropractor and see if we get whatever this is ironed out.

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Looking for a higher gear

On Tuesday I did a round of the strength routine and then joined Joe for a loop of the harbor.  Both Tuesday and Wednesday were gorgeous fall days: sunny skies with a Fahrenheit temperature rising from the mid 50s at sunrise to the mid 70s by the afternoon.

Yesterday morning the sky was clear as the sun rose, but it quickly clouded up and the day had a gloomy feel by the time I was heading for the river in the mid morning.  When I raced on the Ohio River several weeks earlier I seemed to lack a higher gear, and when I got in the boat yesterday I intended to do a workout to address that.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did four bridge-to-bridge sprints.

I've come to dread this workout a little bit because, well, it hurts.  And I also tend to beat myself up if I don't achieve my fastest times in the sprints.  I keep having to remind myself that consistency is what really matters.  And yesterday's sprints were consistent, or at least the first three of them were: 2:04, 2:05, 2:07.  By the fourth one I was starting to fall apart and could manage only 2:11.  It felt like both the third and fourth were done into a stronger headwind, though it's possible that was just my imagination.

I didn't adhere to a strict recovery interval.  In the past I've made it five minutes, and that required me to waste little time getting back to the monorail bridge to start the next sprint.  Yesterday I didn't dawdle, but my recovery interval was probably more like six or seven minutes.

Today it is sunny once more but quite cool: the high temperature isn't expected to be above 63 or 64.  I did another round of the strength routine this morning.

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Monday photo feature

It's been a strange race season, if you can even call it a race season.  For me it began on another continent back in February: the "Sea Dog" race at Fish Hoek Beach in South Africa.

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Doing a little of everything

I'm signed up for what will probably be my last race of 2020.  My friend Susan Jordan of Lucedale, Mississippi, asked if I would join her in a tandem surfski for the Skull Harbor Canoe and Kayak Race at Orange Beach, Alabama, on October 31.  I saw no reason not to, and so it's now on my schedule.

Meanwhile, here in the Memphis area the outer bands of Hurricane Delta moved in Friday, with the heavy precipitation arriving in the early hours of Saturday morning.  I woke up to sloppy, wet, blustery conditions.  The rain had abated by the time I was heading for the river around 9:30 AM, but the Internet radar indicated it would be back.

As I walked down the ramp to the marina, I saw Joe and his wife Carol Lee paddling their tandem boat toward the north end of the harbor.  So when I got my boat in the water I headed north too so I would meet them on their way back south.  After a 10-minute warmup I did a set of three 8-stroke sprints.  I also spent some time picking up litter: the rain had washed a whole bunch of garbage into the harbor, and I focused on aluminum cans because the grocery store near the marina has a collection bin for cans.  Whatever pennies the recycler pays for them goes to the Humane Society.

So I had a footwell full of cans by the time I saw Joe and Carol Lee coming back down.  I turned and fell in alongside them.  We paddled down to the mouth of the harbor and headed up the Mississippi River along the Tennessee bank.  A barge rig was coming downriver and we decided to continue upstream until the vessel had passed us, and then head back downstream.

I headed for the towboat's wake and found some interesting conditions: not exactly easy to ride, but rideable nevertheless.  The waves were changing rapidly and I had to be on my toes to prolong each ride as much as possible.  My footwell full of cans gave me some extra motivation to keep the boat upright.

I kept thinking about what Dawid Mocke had told me in South Africa last February: "Put your nose in the hole (the trough), and then try to keep it in the hole as the hole moves around."  I had some success doing that in this particular set of barge waves.

I reunited with Joe and Carol Lee at the mouth of the harbor, and we headed back toward the dock.  The rain was picking up, and the gusty north wind was blowing it at an angle of maybe 50 degrees with the horizontal.

All told, I paddled for just shy of two hours, during which I visited with a couple of friends, gathered a footwell-load of aluminum cans, did a few hard sprints, and got some practice with balance, control, and mobility in the waves.  If that's not a successful morning of paddling, I'd like to know what is.

The rain really began to pour as I put my boat away and changed into dry clothes.  By the time I got up to my car in the parking lot, my clothes weren't dry anymore.  I drove home and changed clothes again.

The rain had mostly moved out by the end of the day yesterday.  This morning there was just a fine drizzle falling, and that was gone by the time I was in my boat.  I warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and then commenced a pace workout: four 2000-meter pieces with 500 meters recovery in between.  My target pace was 7.0 miles per hour for each piece.  There was enough wind blowing to make that difficult at times, but I maintained it without much trouble for most of the workout.  My remaining workouts between now and October 31 will likely be shorter and faster.

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The pep in my step is slowly returning

On Tuesday I did a round of my new strength routine and then headed downtown to paddle a loop of the harbor with Joe.

I'd visited my chiropractor on Monday and she did some work on my neck area, where I'd been experiencing discomfort all weekend.  But the pain has continued--it's not as intense as before, but it still nags at me.

Nevertheless, by yesterday I was feeling energetic enough for some greater intensity in the boat, and what ensued was the most enjoyable and satisfying paddling session I've had in a while.

I warmed up and did a set of three 8-stroke sprints, and then paddled out of the harbor hoping to find some wavy fun on the Mississippi.  What I found was an upstream-moving barge rig that was passing beneath the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  I surged hard upriver for maybe 1000 meters along the Tennessee bank to gain as much ground on it as I could.  Once I was a short distance above the bridge I ferried out to catch as much of the towboat's wake as possible.  I was a couple of hundred meters behind the barge by the time I got out there, and the waves were beginning to diminish, but I managed to get a few brief rides.  As the commercial vessel moved more and more distant, I hung out to see what might develop.  Barge wakes do some funny things: they'll die down to nothing but then rally with a set of well-defined waves; or they'll wander back and forth across the river so that one moment they're on your left, and the next they're on your right.  I've learned to hang tight and see what "comes to me," and a couple of times something good did come.

Meanwhile, there was another barge rig coming downriver.  So I waited and then fell in behind it.  The water was boily and confused, partly because the pilot was sweeping out an arc as he maneuvered beneath the HDB, and my challenge was to react to the rapidly-changing conditions beneath my boat.

As I played around with that I looked downriver and saw yet another rig coming upstream.  So I rode the conditions behind the down-bound vessel just below the HDB and then paddled over to see what I get from this newcomer.  Here I found the morning's best conditions by far.  I was able to link runs together several times and watch my speed increase with each successful attempt.  And so once again I made the best of things even though I don't have a Miller's Run or a Columbia Gorge in my backyard.

I returned to the harbor and paddled back to the dock with a pleasant fatigue seasoned with endorphins and a bit of adrenaline.  Moments like that are a huge part of why I paddle.

Today I did another round of the strength routine.  It seems likely that at least some of my weekend paddling will take place in the rain, as the remnants of Hurricane Delta are headed this way as I type.

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A new strength routine

1.  Pushups

2.  Plank crunches (demonstrated at 4:03 of this video)

3.  Rubber band exercises: flies and reverse flies

4.  Hindu squats (demonstrated in this video)

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Monday photo feature

Back in 2008 I made a trip to Ocracoke Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. 

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Pushing through the doldrums

I've continued to lack much get-up-and-go this weekend.  I guess I'm just tired, or maybe I have an extremely mild cold or something.  (I have not had any of the common COVID-19 symptoms--dry cough, numb tastebuds, anything like that.)  My neck discomfort has improved slightly, perhaps, but it's still unpleasant.

Oh well... slow periods like this do happen.  I'm responding to it with unstructured 60-minute sessions on the river.  No 8-stroke sprints or drills or anything; I'm just going out there and doing whatever I feel like.

I would have liked to do some wake surfing this week, but the river was free of commercial traffic every time I went out.  Finally today there was a barge rig moving upstream as I paddled out of the harbor.  It had an odd set of waves trailing behind it: the first few off the towboat's stern had such low amplitude the they weren't really surfable at all.  Then I found some nice ones a bit farther back, and got a couple of fun rides.  After that the waves died quickly as the rig moved farther and farther upriver.  It was nice to get a little bit of something, and by the time I was back on the dock I felt more upbeat and energetic than before.

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Stuck in the mud

I've spent this week feeling really lethargic and out of sorts.  A notable symptom is sort of a foggy, scatterbrained feeling.  Normally I wake up a little before 6 AM, but a couple of times this week I've slept almost a half-hour later.  I'm usually tired at the end of a race weekend, but I can't believe my trip up to the Ohio River did such a number on me that I'm still recovering five days later.  Maybe my body is fighting off some kind of bug... hopefully not the one that's hogged the headlines for the last ten months.

On Monday I did very little besides finish unpacking my stuff from the trip and put it away.  I had to miss my usual Tuesday paddle with Joe to drive my mother to the doctor for some followup to her surgery.  She seems to be doing quite well, for you thoughtful folks who are wondering about that.

Mom's appointment wasn't until late morning, so I took the opportunity to start easing into a new strength routine.  I haven't drawn up a complete routine yet, but I did a couple of sets of pushups and Hindu squats.

Not having done any leg work for quite a while, I felt the impact of those Hindu squats the rest of the day Tuesday, and by Wednesday morning my thighs were wicked sore.  I got in the boat for the first time since Sunday and did a fairly easy paddle out on the Mississippi, which has dropped below zero on the Memphis gauge as it typically does in the late summer and fall.

The thigh soreness continued through yesterday.  This morning there was still some soreness, but it had eased enough for me to do another round of work.  I did the same things I did Tuesday plus some rubber band exercises.  I'll share my routine here once I get it fleshed out.

After the strength work I got back in the boat and paddled steady for 60 minutes.  My torpid feelings persist today, but I will say that both Wednesday and today I felt better after paddling than before.

In the latter half of the week a new malady asserted itself: a bad crick in the right side of my neck.  I have a routine appointment with my chiropractor scheduled for next Thursday, but if this neck pain isn't gone by Monday morning I might have to call and see if I can get that moved up.

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Monday photo feature

At the Ohio River Invitational at Westport, Kentucky, on Saturday, I may not have finished in the medals, but everybody got to walk away with some goodies.  Elaine Harold shot this photo after I took my turn picking through the loot.

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Oh, hiyah! I raced on the Ohio!!!!

I departed around 9 AM Central Time Friday and by late afternoon had reached my home for the next two nights in Charlestown State Park on the Indiana side of the Ohio River.  Before making camp I went to the river access for a short paddle.  I did four 12-stroke sprints and otherwise unwound from the six-plus-hour drive.

The campground was the kind that caters primarily to RVs and similar "industrial tourists."  I heard loud music and plenty of noisy kids running around as I pitched my tent and made a quick supper, and as I settled down for the night I wondered how well people there abided by the quiet hours.  Eventually I dozed off, and when I woke up at one point in the early morning hours all was peaceful.

I got up around 5:30 and made some breakfast in the dark.  The greater Louisville area sits near the western edge of the Eastern Time zone, and it was nearly 7 o'clock before some daylight finally began to appear in the eastern sky.  A fog was descending on the landscape, prolonging the darkness.

The race site was only eight or ten miles upriver at Westport, Kentucky, but it took me nearly an hour to get there because I had to drive downriver via a network of roads to cross the Lewis & Clark Bridge and then navigate another network of roads back upriver on the Kentucky side to reach the tiny hamlet.  Once there it was simple enough to find the racers congregated in Schamback Park.

Fist bumps and waves replaced the usual handshakes and hugs, and everybody wore a mask, but otherwise it was the usual pre-race buzz.  Athletes checked in and taped their numbers to their boats.  Race directors Elaine Harold and Lee Droppelman greeted visitors and disseminated information while keeping an eye on the food preparation for after the race.  Little by little the nearly two dozen racers made their way down the boat ramp and onto the water.

The course for the Ohio River Invitational was two laps of a loop that measured a hair over 4.5 miles (about 7300 meters).  We would start alongside Schamback Park, proceed downriver to Eighteen Mile Island, round the lower end of the island in counterclockwise direction, and paddle back upriver to a buoy where we'd started.

We lined up, listened as Lee counted down the seconds from the deck of his motorboat, and got to work as he shouted "Go!"  Though I feel like I've done more than my share of short sprints this summer, that didn't translate into blazing speed off the line.  In the blink of an eye I was chasing five or six other racers and frantically trying to put my boat in a desirable position.

Fast-improving Chattanoogan Roy Roberts rocketed into the lead.  Scott Cummins of Louisville did the best job of keeping Roy within reach in the first few hundred meters.  West Virginian Gregg Peters and Michael Alexeev of Columbus, Ohio, charged hard to stay in contact with the two leaders while I dug deep to stay with them.  By the end of three minutes we had formed a fragile single-file string: Roy, then Scott, then Gregg, then Michael, then me.  We were flying along at 8.5 miles per hour, and as I strained to stay on Michael's stern wake, my challenge wasn't so much the physical toll as simply keeping my boat moving fast enough to hold that position.  I would slip off the wake and sprint hard to get back on; but after several rounds of that, I decided there had to be a better use of my energy, and I let the lead pack go.

Just like that, I was where nobody likes to be: all alone.  The lead pack quickly increased its lead on me, while my nearest pursuers appeared to be 20 or 30 seconds back.  As I chugged along I realized my only choice was to maintain the fastest pace I could and hope that the guys up ahead would eventually slow a bit so I could reel them in.

That possibility wasn't farfetched, really.  Roy and Scott had separated themselves from Gregg and Michael, but by the 3000-meter mark Roy had dropped Scott and Scott was fading back toward Gregg and Michael.  Maybe my old friend Scott would be ripe for the plucking, I thought.

But the early quick pace had done a number on me, too.  As we rounded the lower end of Eighteen Mile Island for the first time, the shallow water there felt like a cinder block tethered to my boat.  As we headed up the narrow channel between the island and the Kentucky bank, I struggled to move at 6.8 mph.  Lee had told us before the race that the river had virtually no current, that we were basically paddling on a lake.  Was this slow pace really all I had left in me for the rest of the way?

As we lumbered up the chute, I calculated that the Scott/Gregg/Michael trio was about 55 seconds ahead of me.  The only way I was going to catch any of those guys was if he died completely, or flipped, or broke his rudder.  The chances of this vampire getting his blood meal seemed slim.

It was maybe 1500 meters from the top of the island back to where we'd started, and I tried to push my doubts aside and keep going.  Once in a while my favorite baseball team falls behind by a gaudy number of runs, and the radio announcers always say "At this point, the guys just need to keep playing.  Keep taking good at-bats, and stick to the fundamentals they practice every day... they've got an uphill climb, but comebacks do happen!"

Fundamentals.  I've worked on them for years, and now they were all I could count on to take care of me.  I tried to relax my body, take solid strokes, use the power of my legs and lower abdominals.  As I rounded the buoy and headed back downstream for the second lap, I got a mental boost as my speed shot up to around 7.5 mph.  Apparently there was some current of at least a half-mile-per-hour or so, and my slow progress in the chute wasn't entirely my fault.

Lee had been tooling around the course in his boat, and as I made my way downriver toward Eighteen Mile Island he came up alongside me trailing an inviting wake.  I hopped on and rode it while first mate Cindy Massa stood on deck and shot video, and I couldn't help smiling as my speed leapt up near 9 mph.  But of course, it wouldn't be fair for me to let them pull me all the way up to where I could rejoin Scott and Gregg and Michael, so I gave up my surf after maybe ten seconds.  Lee then zipped over to Scott and Gregg and Michael and offered them a ride; Scott got the best ride and opened a several-boatlength gap on the other two.  But then he voluntarily backed off the speed so that the pack could re-form.

If only we could count on such selfless sportsmanship in the upcoming presidential election.

I reached the bottom of Eighteen Mile Island with my spirit uplifted by the aid of both the current and Lee's motor.  But once I was plodding up the chute I again calculated about a 55-second gap between me and the pack up ahead.  By this time I didn't seem to have any close pursuers, so it looked like a fifth-place finish was my destiny unless one of the top-four guys had the mother of all collapses.

Roy Roberts had taken his training up a notch this year, and that was evident from the start of the race to the finish.  Once he'd dropped Scott he cruised along unchallenged to take first place in one hour, 12 minutes, 31 seconds.  The chase pack finally began to string out a bit as the three athletes made their final charge toward the finish line.  Scott claimed second overall nearly two minutes behind Roy.  Gregg was third five seconds back, with Michael fourth ten seconds later.

I made up my mind to surge as hard as I could over the final kilometer to the finish, but I was unable to nudge my speed much above 6.9 or so.  I crossed the line more than a minute after Michael and more than four minutes ahead of the sixth-place finisher, Gregg's son Corbin Peters.  At 15 years old, Corbin has a future that promises faster and faster times while quinquagenarians like me get slower and slower.

Elaine Harold of Louisville was the lone female surfski racer in the field, and she acquitted herself nicely five seconds behind Corbin.  Here are the complete results:

I've spent all summer looking for towboat wakes to play around on.  So even though I was beat to the socks when the race was over, my reaction was automatic when I saw a barge rig moving up the river.  I paddled out to it and found a very nice set of waves trailing behind.  Once I got myself situated I was gliding along between 7 and 8 mph, and it wasn't long before at least a half-dozen other boats were paddling out to join me.  There was a pattern to the waves not unlike a downwind run and we had a blast moving back and forth linking rides together.

I for one could have spent the next several hours out there, but doing so would have carried me miles away from the barbecue luncheon, generously prepared by members of Elaine's family, that awaited back at the park.  The others realized the same thing, so before long we were all paddling back to get in the chow line.

After some great food and the usual rituals of awards, raffle prizes, and swag handouts, we all headed our separate ways.  I returned to my campsite in Charlestown State Park for an afternoon nap.  There's nothing like the exhaustion of a canoe and kayak race to help you doze off in a noisy RV compound.

I ventured into the nearby town of Charlestown, Indiana, for supper.  The choices were few, and I opted for the local pizza joint.  Due to COVID-19 restrictions the place offered carry-out only, so I took my 10-inch pie across the street to a picnic table in the city park.  The pizza wasn't great, but it was good, especially at the end of a physically-demanding day.

I was in my sleeping bag by 9 PM.  Scott and I had agreed to get together the next morning for a Sunday paddle, so once we were both awake yesterday morning we reached a text-message agreement to meet at the Harrods Creek boathouse upriver from downtown Louisville.

We were both tired and sore, but we knew a good 90- or 100-minute session would help us on the road to recovery.  We paddled up the Ohio, looped around Twelve Mile Island, and came back to where we'd started.  There was a steady wind blowing and we almost had some downwind conditions to play in...  almost.  But that was nothing to fret about.  I had fun paddling along and catching up with my friend whom I hadn't seen face-to-face in over a year.  On the way back toward Louisville several big pleasure craft cruised by us and we had some fun trying to surf their wakes as they moved against the wind-driven swells.  We didn't get any sweet rides but it was a good way to practice some skills in confused water.

We got back to the boathouse, changed into dry clothes, and drove farther into Louisville to have coffee at a shop owned and operated by members of the local paddleboard element.  After some conversation and relaxation there, it was 2 PM Eastern Time and I had to head home.  I got in the car and headed south on Interstate 65, happy to have seen some friendly faces and raced semi-respectably in this oddest of years.

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Time for some long-overdue racing

The remnants of Tropical Storm Beta passed through the Mid South this week, bringing weather that felt like a mild stretch of our winter.  Tuesday was cool and overcast with occasional sprinkles, and yesterday it rained all day while the temperature stayed below 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

On Tuesday I did a round of the strength routine and then joined Joe for a loop of the harbor.  I was hoping some cheerier weather might return today, but this morning I paddled in a stubborn drizzle and the sky remained cloudy all day.  I did a set of six 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals during a session of 40 minutes overall.

Aside from a quick trip to Little Rock in June, I haven't left the Memphis area since February.  That will change tomorrow when I head for a weekend race on the Ohio River a few miles upstream of Louisville.  The race is Saturday morning, and I'll be camping in a state park across the river in Indiana.

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Monday photo feature

This morning the Mississippi River is at 3.9 feet on the Memphis gauge.  At this low level there are acres and acres of sandbars exposed, providing ideal conditions for camping and lounging.  That's what I'm doing in this photo, taken near sunset a dozen or so years ago on the Densford Bar near Shelby Forest State Park.

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Things seem good as cooler weather arrives

Yesterday was the first truly fall-like day we've had this season.  It was almost chilly outside when I got up in the morning, and it remained brisk and a bit breezy for the rest of the day.  In the boat I did three 8-stroke sprints and otherwise paddled steady and relaxed for 60 minutes.

The weather was much the same today.  This morning I did a round of the strength routine before heading to the river.  In the boat I paddled out of the harbor and up the Mississippi to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and then returned to the harbor, where I did a set of eight 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals.

The news is good in the aftermath of my mother's surgery.  The doctor said the procedure went extremely well and that he doesn't believe any cancer is present.

This positive outlook for my mom's health makes me more confident that I can travel to a race or two this fall.  The first is coming up next weekend; I'll provide more information soon.

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Doing what I can while family concerns take priority

On Tuesday I did a round of the strength routine and then paddled a loop of the harbor with Joe.  Temperatures this week are still quite warm--mid to high 80s Fahrenheit--but not unpleasantly hot.  It's looking like this weekend will be much more fall-like.

I wasn't expecting to paddle today.  My mother had surgery this morning to remove a tumor from her colon, and my plan was to spend the day at the hospital with her.  But we found out just yesterday that COVID-19 restrictions allow a patient to have only one companion in the waiting room, and since my sister had come into town for the surgery, we agreed to let her be that person.  So I was able to paddle today after all, although needless to say my mind wasn't entirely on the river.

After another round of strength work, I went downtown and got in the boat with the intention of doing a workout.  I've been favoring "play" workouts in this unorthodox year, but with two or three possible races of 8-12 miles coming up this fall, I could use to do some pace work, and it takes more of a "work" workout to accomplish that.  I made a deal with myself: if there was some barge traffic out on the river, I'd go out and try to surf; if not, I'd do three one-mile pieces in the harbor.

I did three 8-stroke sprints on the way to the harbor's mouth, and when I got there I found the river deserted.  So, one-mile pieces it would be.

I was hoping to maintain around 7.5 miles per hour for each piece, but there was a pretty good northwest wind blowing that forced me to adjust my expectations.  I did the first piece going north from the mouth of the harbor, and with the headwind I could only manage around 6.9 mph.  My elapsed time was 8:31.  After a five-minute recovery I did the second piece, still headed north.  By this time I was in the upper half of the harbor and I thought I might have more shelter from the wind because the banks are more forested there.  But this time I struggled to keep it above 6.7.  And I ground to a complete stop at one point because of some ropes tethering something beneath the surface to the bank.  I saw the first one just in time to avoid being decapitated.

I finished that second piece with a time of 9:07.  I recovered for another five minutes, and then turned back south to do the last piece with the wind at my back.  The difference was stark as I averaged 7.6ish in speed.  Of course, there's a downside to having the wind at my back: I get sweat in my eyes and they sting badly.  I had to stop once and wipe my eyes with my hat, losing a couple of strokes.  I finished with a time of 7:56.

I can't say that the workout was much fun, but hopefully it'll pay off if I make it to a race or two.  Whether I do depends on my mom's health in the coming weeks.  I spoke to her this afternoon and it sounds like her surgery went well.  She'll be in the hospital over the weekend, and I hope we'll know soon what further treatment she'll need.

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Monday photo feature

At the 2004 edition of the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, held annually on the Mississippi River at Memphis, four of the competitors were Herman Chalupsky of Durban, South Africa; Greg Barton of Seattle, Washington; Oscar Chalupsky of Durban, South Africa; and Scott Cummins of Louisville, Kentucky.

The next OICK race is scheduled for June 19, 2021.

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Facing the elements out on the Mississippi

I felt sluggish and unmotivated as I headed down to the river yesterday.  The weather, overcast and muggy, wasn't helping.

I stretched slowly on the dock, eased myself into the boat, and headed south toward the mouth of the harbor.  I could see it raining down on the South Bluffs, and eventually the rain moved up to where I was.  That was okay with me: if it's going to be humid anyway, why not push it up to a hundred percent?

After a set of 8-stroke sprints, I headed out onto the Mississippi, and through the rain I could make out a barge rig moving upstream beneath the Harahan Bridge.  I headed for it with the hope that some surfing could get my juices flowing.  But the waves were a weird shape and proved very difficult to catch.  I never did get a full blown ride where I could stop paddling, but several times when I kept sprinting hard I got some aid from the waves, even hitting 6 miles per hour a couple of times (going against the current on the Mississippi River, that's pretty fast).

Eventually the waves died down and I headed back to the harbor.  By now I was feeling much more energetic in the boat.  It's remarkable how good a remedy some hard sprints can be for lethargic feelings.  You could say they jump-started my engine, or primed my pump, or whatever other silly metaphor you prefer.

Some heavy showers had moved through while I was out on the river, and as I paddled back toward the dock water was gushing from the storm drain outfalls along the bank.  I could see many plastic soda bottles and other floatable trash tumbling into the harbor.  Anything we leave on the ground will find its way to the river eventually.

Shortly after I'd reached the dock, the heavens really opened up.  The rain on the marina's steel roof made a deafening roar.  By this time I'd changed into my dry clothes, and I now stood there waiting for a break in the rain so I could run up to the car without getting drenched.  I cooled my heels for close to a half hour before it let up enough for me to make a run for it, and I still got pretty wet.

By this morning the precipitation had moved out, but the sky remained overcast.  I did a round of the strength routine at the house, then went to the riverfront and warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and then paddled out onto the river to see what was going on.  There was no barge traffic in sight, and I decided to do an up-tempo paddle for an hour or so.  I ferried over to the Arkansas side and paddled up into the Loosahatchie Chute, whose surface is more sand than water at this morning's level of 1.5 feet on the Memphis gauge.

I paddled up the channel of water near the west side of the Chute, thinking at some point I'd find a route through the sandbars to the east side and get back over to the main river.  But it had been a long time since I'd been up here at such a low water level, and apparently the sandbar configuration had changed or my memory was faulty, or both.  Finding no water on which to work my way eastward, I finally got out of the boat and started hiking across the sand.  What I found was that while there is still a deeper channel on the east side of the Chute, there was not enough water today for it to be paddleable.  So I had to trudge southward toward the lower end of the Loosahatchie Bar, and there I finally found deep water connected to the main channel.

By now there was a barge rig coming down the river, so I paddled onto its wake to see what I could get.  The towboat was following an arcing path through the eastern span of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and because of that the waves had a lot of lateral movement to them and it was hard to keep track of the sweet spots.  But I did manage to get several decent rides, and I tried hard to keep my "nose in the hole," as Dawid Mocke likes to say, and sustain each one as long as I could.

When I reached the mouth of the harbor I said goodbye to the waves and headed back toward the dock.  My unplanned portage across the sandbars had added at least a half hour to my intended time in the boat, but I had nothing pressing scheduled for the rest of the day and was glad to add a bit of surfing to the strong-paced paddling I'd already done.  I drove home feeling pleasantly tired and pleased with the pretty good weekend of paddling I'd put together.

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Some rest, some strength work, some intensity in the boat

Just in case anybody's curious about the goings-on at Casa de Elmore... I've just wrapped up another big round of masonry work and am taking it easy for a couple of days to admire the results.  I spent most of this morning doing some serious housecleaning because of all the dust that project produced.  Previously the mortar between the bricks was crumbling and raining sand all over everything, and I hope this work I've done has fixed that problem.  Even in the Before Times I was sort of a homebody, and now in Pandemic Times I'm spending more time at home than ever, so I think it's worth a few rounds of hard work to make my home as pleasing as it can be.

On Tuesday I did a relaxed loop of the harbor with Joe.  That felt good after the fairly strenuous paddling I'd done on Monday.

Yesterday I did a round of the new strength routine and then headed back to the river.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I went out on the Mississippi and did a workout that I first did under Dawid Mocke's watch back in February as we paddled from Muizenberg Beach to Fish Hoek Beach in South Africa.  I did ten strokes on, ten strokes off, twenty strokes on, ten strokes off, thirty strokes on, ten strokes off, forty strokes on, ten strokes off... and so on, all the way to a hundred strokes on.  Once I'm up over fifty strokes on, I'm really feeling this workout--ten strokes off seems like a very meager rest interval at this point.

After completing this workout, I paddled easy back to the harbor and up to the monorail bridge.  Then I timed myself in a bridge-to-bridge sprint.  I didn't have a particularly crisp start, and by the time I reached the halfway mark I could tell I wasn't on pace for a fast time.  I was tired from my workout on the river, and it felt like every time I bore down I was actually slowing down a little.  My thighs were throbbing big-time in the last hundred meters.  I broke the southern plane of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge with a time of 2 minutes, 7 seconds.  Not terrible, but not really that good either.

The Fahrenheit highs have been in the 90s most of the week, but this might be our last hot stretch: the extended forecast is showing highs in the 80s with some rain this weekend, and then highs in the lower 80s and even the 70s for the next couple of weeks.  And of course, the official end of summer is less than two weeks away.

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A new strength routine

I'm finally back at it in the strength department.  Here's a routine I plan to do for the next little while: 

1.  Power plank-ups (demonstrated at 1:16 of this video)

2.  Pullups

3.  The "achy-arm" exercises my chiropractor showed me

4.  Pullups

5.  Super crunches (demonstrated at 3:09 of this video)

6.  Pullups

7.  Leg swing (demonstrated at 4:28 of this video)

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Monday photo feature

My buddy Rob, a native of New York State, was living in Colorado when I made a trip out there in the summer of 1999.  A good amateur photographer, Rob shot a bunch of slides of me paddling in various locales.  He sent me prints of several of them back then, but I never saw most of them until just this past month, when Rob scanned the slides and sent me a disc with the digital images.

In the photo above I'm paddling on the Cache la Poudre River near the community of Mishawaka in the northern part of the state.

*Edited to add: I think Rob may have scanned this slide backwards, because I'm a lefty paddler in a C1.

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