South Africa prep is in its late stages

On days when I plan to do my dry-land routine, nudging myself into motion isn't easy because, frankly, those workouts are pretty hard.  They include a lot of running, and running taxes me in ways that paddling never has.  I'm also usually a bit sore for a day or two afterward.  And yet, every time I finish a dry-land workout I feel pretty great.  Some of that is endorphins, I expect, but I think it's also the result of simply completing something that would have been very easy to skip.  

Monday was a scheduled dry-land day, and because the temperature had dropped well below freezing in the early morning hours, that further sandbagged my motivation to get myself down to the Greenbelt Park.  But get down there I did, and by then the temperature had risen to an almost-comfortable 43 degrees Fahrenheit under a lovely clear sky.  Once the workout was underway, my body responded well and I got the work done without any trouble.

Today the temperature was supposed to reach 63 degrees, but it was still in the 40s when I got down to the riverfront this morning.  A strong wind from the south made it seem even chillier.  I got in the boat and paddled into that wind, to the mouth of the harbor, before turning around and commencing my workout.  Once more, I did a set of four bridge-to-bridge sprints, starting every 8th minute.  My times were 2:14, 2:12, 2:11, and 2:10.  Those were a bit slower than I'd clocked doing the same workout last Thursday even though I had a stronger tailwind today.  One might think a stronger tailwind should always produce faster times, but I don't think it's quite that simple.  Today the wind was generating chop on the water, while last Thursday the conditions were smoother, and I think it's easier to make a boat go fast over a smooth surface than over a bumpy one, even if those bumps are moving in the same direction that you are.

In any case, I accomplished my main objective, to give a good consistent effort in all four sprints.  This is the last time I'll do this workout before my departure, and it feels good to have it under my belt.  I plan to do one more dry-land workout before I leave, and it'll feel good to have it in the books as well.  As I've been saying, my overarching goal is simply to be physically prepared for paddling in South Africa, and I believe I am pretty well prepared.  Things aren't ideal, mainly because of the arm soreness, but under the circumstances I think I've put in a solid body of work.  I'm feeling confident, and confidence is the result of good preparation.

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Monday photo feature

My longtime racing friend Scott Cummins, pictured above in a file photo, had big news to share last week.  Scott has purchased the company Venturesport from its founder, Bruce Gipson, and will now be importing surfskis and other racing kayaks from South Africa.

The Venturesport website is here.  As of this writing it appears to need some updating: it still lists Bruce Gipson as the owner.  But I encourage anybody interested in buying a high-performance kayak to stay tuned to it and see what Scott, who is based in Louisville, Kentucky, will have to offer.

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Calm weekend

I've taken it easy this weekend ahead of my final push toward my goal of being fit and ready to go when I arrive in South Africa in a couple of weeks.

On Friday morning I did an easy 50-minute paddle.  It was still quite warm outside for early January, but I could sense a chill in the air from the north.

It rained overnight, and by yesterday morning the Fahrenheit temperature was in the mid 50s and falling.  It was also overcast and breezy.  I had a funeral to attend, and was happy to have that excuse for a day off from training.

I was back out in the chill today, at any rate.  The temperature was in the low 40s and a brisk north breeze had a bite to it.  But at least the sun was shining.  I did a calm 60-minute paddle to close out these several days of light work.  I've got a couple of more harder periods before I start resting up for the trip.

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More friendly weather for outdoor training

It's now just two weeks until I depart for South Africa.  Once again the weather has turned unseasonably warm in Memphis and the Mid South, the Fahrenheit temperature rising into the 60s and even the 70s this week.

On Tuesday I paddled out onto the Mississippi, where I found some waves generated by a barge rig that had passed by downtown not long before.  Even in the mild weather, I was cautious because of the cold water.  I stayed fairly close to the Tennessee bank and threw in some short sprints to see what I could get from the small bumps.

Yesterday I did my workout on dry land.  These days I'm doing twenty uphill sprints of some thirty or forty meters, and I believe this is the most taxing part of the routine.  My goal here is to increase power in my lower body at a high rate of turnover.

My legs were tired last night and today, but I got in the boat and persuaded by body into another set of four bridge-to-bridge sprints, starting every 8th minute.  My times were faster than in last week's workout, but I attribute a lot of that to a pretty strong tailwind that was blowing from the south.  I clocked 2:06, 2:09, 2:09, and 2:10.  I think that first one was faster because I paddled with quite a high stroke rate, whereas I reined it in a little for the remaining three.  In the last sprint I paddled hard but I think my form was deteriorating somewhat.  In the end, I think I achieved my main objective: to work on my cardiovascular fitness while paddling controlled at higher stroke rates.

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Monday photo feature

While I've moved on to other activities, those days in the Grand Canyon remain fresh in my memory.  It's now been four months since I was there.  Here's a shot of me with my buddy Rob Lieb, looking upstream from Bass Camp (Mile 109), where we stayed from the 1st until the 3rd of September.  I can't quite remember who took the picture, but it might have been Kylie Haberman.

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Reporting in, once again

On Friday morning I was feeling tired from Thursday's workout.  I paddled mostly easy for 50 minutes under overcast skies with an occasional drizzle.

Friday went on to be quite a rainy day.  The rain moved out in the evening and some colder air moved in to replace it.  When I got up yesterday morning it was 39 degrees Fahrenheit--not just terribly cold, but with a lot of dampness in the air and on the ground it was that "penetrating" kind of cold.  I went down to the Greenbelt Park and did my dry-land routine, during which the sun gradually came out.  As usual, I put all the effort I could into each exercise and knocked the session out efficiently.

As I drove down to the riverfront this morning, my car's dashboard temperature display seemed stuck, stubbornly, on 39 degrees once again.  But the wind wasn't bad, and the sun was shining, so the conditions were actually pretty decent for paddling.  After warming up I paddled a strong tempo for 35 minutes, and then completed the hour with a cooldown.

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Working hard in a broad spectrum of temperatures

The temperature plummeted on Monday as expected, and Tuesday was pretty nippy as well.  When I went down to the Greenbelt Park Tuesday morning to do my dry-land routine, it was 41 degrees Fahrenheit--not just god-awful frigid, but not very warm either.  I got busy and knocked out my workout of running (on the flat and on an uphill grade) and core exercises.

It was chilly again Wednesday morning when I got back in the boat, but it was warming up toward a high in the mid 50s.  Three barge rigs were moving up the Mississippi River when I reached the mouth of the harbor, and while the air and water were too cold for me to get into the heart of their wakes, I did play around on the smaller waves that were radiating outward toward the Tennessee bank.  I was able to get some brief rides on these little bumps, but my right arm bothered me a bit during the hard sprints.  Back in the harbor I strove for rotation and leg drive to keep the pressure off my arm muscles.

I was in the boat again today with much warmer weather: the temperature would rise into the mid 60s by the afternoon.  After warming up, I did four of my bridge-to-bridge sprints, starting every 8th minute.  My times were 2:17, 2:14, 2:11, and 2:10.  I think the first one was slower because I wasn't entirely warmed up.  It was encouraging to get faster as the workout went on, but I'm hoping to get my cardiovascular system in a better place before I leave town in three weeks.  I know I'm in good shape when I recover quickly from each hard effort in an interval workout--that is, when my heart rate drops and my breathing settles down in short order.  Today I was breathing hard for longer than I would prefer after each sprint.  I'm confident I can get where I want to be in another week or two, however.

It looks like we'll get some rain tomorrow, followed by cooler weather over the weekend.  But as the South Africa trip draws ever closer, motivation doesn't feel like a problem for me these days.

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Monday photo feature

Here's a shot from 2002 or '03: Joe Royer took this picture of me out on the Mississippi River on a snowy day in Memphis.

Frigid weather has returned to the Mid South for the time being.  But a photo like this one serves as a reminder that it could always be worse.

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Making the most of friendly weather

The weirdly warm weather has continued, with the temperature rising above 70 degrees Fahrenheit for five days in a row.  The party's just about over, however: it's supposed to plunge into the 20s overnight and not reach 40 degrees tomorrow.

I did a little workout in the boat Thursday: eight times (1 minute on, 4 minutes off).  I aimed to paddle between 80 and 85 strokes per minute in the "on" intervals.  It was part of my slow, careful process of adapting my body to the sort of high-turnover efforts I'll need in South Africa a month from now.

That workout, along with Wednesday's hard dry-land routine, had me feeling tired on Friday.  The balmy weather prompted me to do something I don't normally do this time of year: ride my bike.  I rode the Greater Memphis Greenline out to Shelby Farms and back, and because I was really tired I let it be just a "tour" rather than a serious athletic effort.

I was still a little on the tired side yesterday, so I did a fairly easy 50-minute paddle.  This morning I was ready to rev the engines a little more, and with a strong south wind generating some small waves out on the Mississippi, I went out there to see what I could do with them.  The answer was not much, and since I was also underdressed for contact with the chilly water, I didn't stay out there long.  Back in the harbor I zigzagged back and forth many times to practice balance and glide in beam conditions.

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Short pants in December

Right now we're experiencing some very un-December-like weather in the Mid South.  Today the Fahrenheit temperature rose into the mid 70s, and is expected to keep doing so through the weekend.  Something about a high-pressure system drawing warm air up here from the Gulf of Mexico.

When I paddled yesterday, and when I did my dry-land routine today, I did so in shorts.  I got some brisk cold water splashes while paddling, but today I was sweating profusely while running and doing core exercises.  The Gulf air is humid, just like in the summertime.

I paddled for an hour yesterday, maintaining a steady pace with three long surges.  I could feel the soreness in my arm, but it wasn't bad.  As for today, I was feeling sluggish as I went down to the Greenbelt Park, and I wondered if I had a full workout in me.  But once I got going I kept myself moving from one exercise to the next, and before I knew it I was finished.  It actually took me some ten minutes longer to do the workout than it usually does, and I attribute that to the weather: when it's freezing cold outside I waste no time at all because I'm eager to get it done so I can go someplace warm, while today I probably lingered a bit more between exercises in the pleasant weather.  I think I still kept myself moving pretty efficiently, however.

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Monday photo feature

A week ago yesterday, the annual Cape Point Challenge took place on the waters I'll be paddling about a month from now.

The course varies some from year to year, depending on the wind and other conditions, but the map above shows what the racers did this year.  The peninsula is south of the city of Cape Town; locals often refer to it as the "Deep South," not to be confused with our region here in the U.S. that includes states like Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana.  The town of Fish Hoek, where the race finished, is where I'll be based during my participation in the downwind camp hosted by the brothers Dawid and Jasper Mocke.

The Cape Point Challenge is definitely a long-distance endeavor.  The fastest boats finished this year's race just under four hours.  Based on my experience competing against some of the people who completed the race, I'm guessing I would have taken the better part of six hours to finish.  That makes me think this event is probably not for me, but surfski paddlers on the Western Cape of South Africa regard it with utmost reverence.

When I visited the area nearly four years ago, I had the opportunity to paddle from Platboom Bay to Buffels Bay.  Though it's just a small portion of this year's Cape Point Challenge course, it felt like a good solid day of paddling to me.

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Keeping the effort going

It's been another decent week as I continue working as hard as I can while keeping the stress on my upper right arm to a minimum.

After an hour of steady paddling on Tuesday, I was back in the boat Thursday for a varied-pace workout.  I paddled at a little over 60 strokes per minute for three minutes, then did 90 seconds around 72 spm, and finally 30 seconds at about 84 spm.  I did eight of these five-minute pieces in between a 15-minute warmup and a 5-minute cooldown.  My arm felt pretty good most of the time: 84 strokes per minute is low enough for me to have good control, and as long as I have control I can keep my ailing muscle out of the act of paddling.  It's when I get up over 100 spm that I start to feel the pain in my arm, and I may have to do that from time to time while chasing runs in South Africa.

Thursday was a rainy day, but I got my workout in that morning before the foul weather moved in.  It's always satisfying when I manage to do that.

By Friday morning the rain had moved out and chillier weather had moved in.  I went down to the Greenbelt Park and did my dry-land routine under sunny skies and a temperature around 41 degrees Fahrenheit.

It quickly warmed up to a high in the mid 60s Saturday.  I was back in the boat, paddling a strong tempo for 40 minutes in between a 10-minute warmup and a 10-minute cooldown.

Yesterday was not so balmy, and I had to paddle in a chilly north wind with the temperature below 50 degrees.  I paddled steady and focused on taking good strokes.

My departure for the southern hemisphere is now less than five weeks away.  I hope my body will cooperate with my desire to so some higher intensity work in the weeks to come.

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Monday photo feature

It's been at least 20 years since I last saw Albert Mitchum.  But learning he had passed away last week was a stiff gut-punch nevertheless.

By the time I got into whitewater slalom racing in the mid 1990s, Albert's peak racing years were winding down.  But he had a lot to show for it.  He was a regular contender for a spot on the U.S. national team, and he had seen elite-level international competition in some half-dozen World Cup events.

Albert decided to hang up his paddle after the 1996 U.S. Olympic Team trials, but he found he couldn't walk away entirely.  By 1998 he was entering some club races again, and he trained himself back up to compete in the 2000 Olympic trials.

I had known who Albert was earlier in the decade, but it wasn't until this latter period that I really got to know him.  He was very generous with his knowledge of slalom technique, and as a self-coached athlete I appreciated that very much.  He also was quite willing to discuss his skills in home construction; I was only just beginning to dabble in woodworking, and I was eager to learn whatever I could about any kind of building.  So we found plenty of conversation to bond over.

The 2000 trials was Albert's last "serious" slalom race, but for the next few years he continued to show up at events within a reasonable drive of his home in southeast Tennessee.  I usually saw him at the Alabama Cup races on the Locust Fork and Mulberry Fork rivers, and it was there that I had one of my proudest moments as a slalom racer when I managed to beat him in '02 or '03.  Sure, his peak years were long past by then, and he probably wasn't really even training, but hey... the guy had raced in World Cups, and that was something I could only dream of.  He of course accepted the result graciously, because that's the kind of person he was.

Soon enough, we both moved on to other things and our paths no longer crossed.  But I always remembered him as one of the kindest, most genuine people I knew while involved in slalom racing.  Unfortunately, I had entirely lost track of him until last week, when I saw in a social media post that he'd died.  Apparently he'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease some four years ago, and declined rapidly toward the end.  He was 65 years old.

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Pushing through the latest Arctic blast

Yesterday I did an hour of mostly-steady paddling in the harbor.  My right arm continued to feel not so bad in the wake of the workout I'd done on Thursday.  Go figure.

As predicted, the temperature plummeted overnight last night, and as I drove downtown this morning the temperature display in my car said it was 23 degrees Fahrenheit.  The sun was shining, and that made it seem better, but there was also a stiff north wind blowing, and that made it seem worse.  I went to the same part of the Greenbelt Park, maybe two-thirds of the way from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the mouth of the Wolf River, and did my dry-land routine with nearly thirty degrees less warmth than I'd had on Friday.  That gave me plenty of motivation to keep moving from one exercise to the next.

I've been saying frequently that I pay close attention to stroke mechanics when I'm in the boat, but the same is true when I do cross-training activities like I did today.  I try to keep my body relaxed and practice good form in both the running and the core exercises.  In The Barton Mold by Bill Endicott, Greg Barton has this to say about his observance of good technique in strength training:

I feel that if you start cheating, really jerking around a lot, there are two things that happen.  One is you're starting to pull into play muscles other than the ones you are targeting.  Secondly, what happens when you get into the boat?  Are you going to start jerking around there, too?  Start pulling all over the place?  I think some of that carries over.  If you use strict technique in the weight room, you're thinking in that mode and it's a little easier to transfer that into the boat.  I think people who bang out as much as they can in the weight room tend to paddle that way, too.

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I've got a pretty good routine going

It's been mostly an encouraging week so far.  I've been doing a mixture of paddling and dry-land workouts and my body has responded pretty well.  It hasn't hurt that the weather has finally improved in recent days.

I paddled Monday and yesterday.  Yesterday I pushed the intensity with twelve 30-second sprints starting every third minute.  I could feel the pain in my upper right arm during each sprint, but it weathered the stress, and for the rest of the day it actually felt about as good as it had in months.  I'll continue to tread carefully and try not to give it more stress than it can withstand.

On the days I paddle, I've also been doing sets of Hindu squats.  I started with 60 squats per set a few weeks ago, and since then I've been adding two per set each time.  I'm currently in the high 80s and plan to make it to 100 before changing to some other leg exercise.

On Tuesday and yesterday I did my dry-land routine in the Greenbelt Park alongside the Mississippi River.  I start with a run of maybe 1200 meters, followed by a few core exercises interspersed with sprints up the steep slope from the park's main tier to the lot where I park my car.  Then I do about an 800-meter run, repeat the core exercises and uphill sprints, and finish with the 1200-ish-meter run.  The whole session takes me around 40 minutes, and I try to move quickly from one exercise to the next and keep my heart rate up.  I almost always feel good when it's over.

I think we've got one more warm-ish day, and then cold weather returns.  The forecast is saying that the high on Sunday will be 26 degrees Fahrenheit.  The sort of weather that separates the champions from the rest, supposedly.

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Monday photo feature

Here's a shot from January of 2022.  It's a screen-grab of footage from Dawid Mocke's Go Pro camera out on the famous Miller's Run offshore from Simon's Town, Cape Town, South Africa.  That would be me there, trying to catch a swell with the Roman Rock lighthouse in the background.

This photo sums up my motivation to keep moving in these not-so-pleasant days of late fall here in the Mid South United States.  In a little over six weeks I'll be back in the setting of this image, and I hope my body will be ready to perform to my satisfaction.

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Persistence

Well, it's been just about a month since my last post here.

Lately the weather has been a challenge: this past week has given us mostly cloudy skies, Fahrenheit temperatures mostly in the 30s, and bitter north winds.

What's more, my right biceps area has continued to bother me.  The bright side is that I do seem able to paddle with it: in recent days I've gingerly pushed the intensity, and it has responded well.  But it rears its head in my out-of-the-boat life at random times, when I move my arm just the wrong way.  A couple of times I've gotten a sharp stab of pain while putting a shirt on, for example.

Maybe I should be seeking some medical attention for this ailment, but besides my general dislike of dealing with modern-day corporate doctors' offices, I'm skeptical that I can do so quickly enough to initiate an effective physical therapy regimen before I leave for South Africa in about six weeks.  Maybe I'll change my mind in another day or two, but for now I'm following the example of that baseball player who plays through a nagging ailment for the last couple of months of the season before getting it fixed more permanently in the offseason.

In any case, I've been working out both in and out of the boat, albeit at a very modest volume.  To view the situation in the most positive light possible, I've been reflecting on my best assets as an athlete:

1.  I've always been good at showing up, even when my heart is not a hundred percent into the idea of training and it would be very easy to skip a session.  When a day arrives and I have a session planned, and the weather is sort of lousy like it's been this past week, I almost always make myself go get in the boat (or do whatever else I've got planned) anyway, and "put something on the board," as it were.  More often than not, once my workout is underway, I embrace the task and put in a good honest effort.

2.  I'm consistent with everything I do.  Nothing I do is a one-off.  Sometimes I might rearrange my schedule of workouts based on the weather forecast, but I never, say, do an indoor jump-rope session because it's raining outside and then never do any jump-roping again.  When I choose a particular exercise, I make it a regular part of my routine for an extended period so that my body can adapt to it fully.  My body needs to know that each exercise is part of "its job" for as long as that exercise is part of my routine.

3.  My sessions are always good quality.  I make them count.  Like I said above, my training volume has been fairly low lately, partly because of my muscular woes and partly because I've had a lot going on in my non-athletic life.  In November most of my paddling sessions were just 40 minutes, and my gym work and other dry-land workouts haven't been particularly daunting.  But every time I do something, I do it well.  In the boat I don't just drift around; I pay close attention to my stroke mechanics and my cadence and my intensity.  The same goes for all the other work: I give a good honest effort with a lot of attention to technique.

4.  I set goals for myself.  In the last several years I haven't been racing as seriously, and so my goals have been perhaps not so clearly defined; but they're there nevertheless.  For much of this past year, my goal was simply to achieve a good solid fitness level for my trip through the Grand Canyon.  I'm now seeking the same for my trip to South Africa, albeit with a few more intense workouts thrown in.  As I move inexorably into old age, my focus will be more and more on general fitness with the hope that I can keep feeling good and performing mundane tasks.

So... there you go.  I wish I could tell you I'm putting myself through rigorous workouts and feeling "in the zone" and all that, but at the moment that's not really the case.  I'm doing the best I can, however, and I hope that sticking with it will lead me to some good things down the road.

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Monday photo feature

The deer population seems to be thriving in the wooded bottoms of the Wolf River over on the east side of Memphis.  I've been seeing lots of them while riding my bike through that area on the Greater Memphis Greenline and the Wolf River Greenway this year.  This past Friday I shot this photo of this guy snacking on leaves on the river-left bank of the Wolf.  I was looking down at him from up on the trestle by which the Greenline crosses the river.

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Persistent pain

I'm becoming increasingly concerned about the pain in my right biceps muscle.  I was hoping I'd just strained it a little and it would improve over time, but in the last couple of weeks it seems to have gotten worse, not better.  It's been bothering me in every aspect of my non-athletic life; several times a day I make some seemingly harmless movement that causes pain to shoot through the ailing area.  And while I don't think it's directly involved in my paddle strokes, it does bother me while I paddle, and it's making me scale back my time in the boat for now.

Meanwhile, there's still my shingles rash, which is fading away ever so slowly... eeeeeever sooooooo sloooooowly.  These viral maladies do funny things sometimes, and this one seems to want to hang around.  There's still some itching, but I don't think it's nearly as bad as it was a week ago.

We enjoyed some pleasant weather here for most of the last week, and I took advantage of that with a couple of bike rides plus some paddling on Monday, Thursday, and yesterday.  Because of the arm injury I'm keeping my paddling sessions around 40 minutes or so and just working on stroke mechanics in the harbor.

Today we're getting a little Arctic blast: we'll be lucky if the temperature reaches 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  It's supposed to drop into the 20s overnight and be only around 40 degrees tomorrow.  So I might just get some rest for a couple of days, aside from some light gym work.

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Monday photo feature

Kaylin Owens of Cosby, Tennessee, cruises down the Colorado River during our last full day in the Grand Canyon.  This would have been September 10, or Day 15 of our journey.

The last few days of the trip were probably the hottest, and we dealt with a pesky headwind as well.  I remember my body feeling stressed and drained, and all I wanted was to get out of there and back to civilization in all its air-conditioned glory.

But the chilly weather of this past weekend has made me look back on those days with rosier-tinted vision.  When I look at photos like this one now, it's easy to forget the discomforts of multiple days in the wilderness and imagine an idyllic world of whitewater frolic in a sun-drenched canyon paradise.  It's funny how that works.

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