Surfing! Riding! And there's a race coming up!

Memphis and the Mid South is known for its sweltering summer heat, and we've had just such days here in the second half of July.  In the last couple of weeks the mercury has climbed up to about 100 degrees on the Fahrenheit thermometer, with heat index values exceeding 110.

But we've also had some pretty nice days during this period.  The weather here seems to go in cycles: it'll be oppressively hot, but then a front will come through, often with thunderstorms, and then for a couple of days we'll have a north breeze that brings in more pleasant air.  At some point the wind will shift back to the south, bringing in humidity from the Gulf of Mexico, and then we'll be back to miserably hot weather for several days.

Early last week we had some of the worst heat and humidity I can remember, at least in the last decade.  Then a line of thunderstorms came through, and by Wednesday the weather was quite pleasant.  It was still pretty warm, with afternoon highs reaching the high 80s and even low 90s, but the wind was blowing from the north and the air was much less humid.  Over the next several days the wind shifted back to the south, bringing that humidity with it, and another hot spell settled in here over the weekend and lasted through Tuesday.  Then yesterday the wind shifted to the north and we had some scattered showers, and by this morning it was again much more bearable.

Back and forth it goes, and that's the story of summer around here.

It was still very hot on Tuesday, and I got in the boat hoping for some wet fun.  For much of this summer I haven't had much luck finding surfing opportunities on the Mississippi; most days there has been no commercial traffic in sight during the times I've paddled out there.  But on Tuesday I reached the mouth of the harbor and found a huge barge rig just below the trio of old bridges, coming upriver.  I moved onto the river and proceeded downstream at a leisurely pace, doing a few warmup sprints along the way, aiming to meet the rig once it was just above the Harahan Bridge.

I made my rendezvous with the commercial vessel and found some of the best surfing conditions I've seen in a long, long time.  The waves were big and beautiful, and they were linkable, too.  I would ride one for close to a minute, and "follow the hole" to keep myself in a trough or move onto a building wave.  I could almost hear Dawid Mocke's voice in my head: Nose in the hole, Elmore!  Okay, now FOLLOW the hole!!  Where's it going???

Once in a while my bow would plunge into the trough and throw up a burst of spray that sure was pleasant under the scorching sun.

I rode the waves for maybe a third of the distance between the Harahan Bridge and the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  That's not bad considering I was moving against the big river's current.  But no matter how well I navigate the waves, those towboats always move upriver faster than I do.  And so the waves eventually petered out as the barge rig put more and more distance on me.  Finally I ferried back over to the Tennessee bank and paddled back up toward the harbor.  The sun continued to beat down and I was baking by the time I was back in the harbor, so I remedied that with some remount practice.  At this time of year it's more about cooling off than practicing a skill, but it pays off nevertheless, especially when I travel someplace like the Miller's Run in South Africa.

I got back to the dock and treated myself to a lovely cool bath under the hose.  Too many of my paddling sessions this summer have felt like slogs, but with some awesome surfing and the attendant adrenaline and endorphin rushes, some remount practice, and a refreshing hose bath, Tuesday's visit to the river was about as perfect as it could have been on a blazing hot July morning, and I left the dock with a smile on my face.

Yesterday afternoon I rode my bike for a little over an hour.  This time last year I had a solid general fitness program going in preparation for the Grand Canyon, with lots of paddling and bike riding as well as stroke drills in the whitewater boat and some strength exercises.  This summer I haven't had the motivation of a big wilderness trip, and I've had numerous distractions that I've talked about in previous posts.  And so I haven't been on the bike as much, or done much of anything else besides bare-minimum surfski sessions on the riverfront downtown.  But in the last week I've gotten in a couple of decent rides and I hope I can keep that going for the rest of the summer.

This morning I got even bolder and signed up for a race!  The Firecracker canoe & kayak race is scheduled for a week from this Saturday on the Mississippi River from Grafton, Illinois, to Alton, Illinois.  I did this race last year, and for the last several weeks I've been debating whether to return: I'm not nearly as fit as I was a year ago, and of course it's always possible that a development in my mother's condition could require my presence here at home.  But this morning I made up my mind to go ahead and enter.  If it turns out I can't go, at least I'll have made a donation to the Mississippi River Water Trail organization that puts the event on.

Knowing that I might do this race, I've stepped up my efforts in the boat a little in the last couple of weeks--just some long surges and stuff, nothing too sophisticated.  Anyway, at nine days out, today was pretty much the last day to do any kind of substantial workout that my body will be able to internalize by race day.  So I went down to the river this morning with a simple but solid plan: I would paddle for 60 minutes, and from 0:10 to 0:50 I would do some two-minute pieces starting every fifth minute.  Within each piece, I would paddle at my likely Firecracker race pace for 90 seconds, and then push it up to sub-maximum intensity for 30 seconds.

Meanwhile, with Tuesday's fun in mind, I was also in the mood for some more surfing.  So I made a deal with myself: I would start my workout in the harbor, and if there was any well-positioned commercial traffic out on the river when I reached the harbor's mouth, I would suspend the workout and go out and try to surf.  After that, I would resume the workout for whatever portion of my 60 minutes remained.

It takes me around 15 minutes to paddle from the dock to the harbor's mouth, so at the 10-minute mark I started the first workout piece.  At the 15-minute mark I was able to see out onto the river, and there was indeed a barge rig in a good spot out there.  So I did my second piece en route to the towboat's wake, and then spent a few minutes seeing what kind of surfing I could do.  The waves weren't nearly as user-friendly as what I'd seen on Tuesday; they were sort of wandering right and left.  But I got a handful of brief rides.  Then I resumed the workout having missed just one of my pieces.

By the 40-minute mark I was headed back toward the harbor, planning to finish the workout there.  But there was a bigger barge rig coming upriver from beneath the Harahan Bridge, and even though I had planned to paddle for just 60 minutes, I had no pressing commitments back in my non-athletic life, and I reminded myself that this was my last day to get in some good hard paddling before race day.  So I finished the workout near the harbor's mouth, and then, with the barge rig now in a good spot for me to access it, I paddled toward it with high hopes for the kind of surfing I'd enjoyed on Tuesday.

On my approach I could see that the waves were big and beautiful.  But once I was in the middle of them, I realized that they were slightly out of my league.  Like the ground swell that I saw in South Africa six months ago, these waves were a little too big and moving a little too fast for a mere mortal like me to catch them.  I gave it my best effort, but I didn't get a single ride.

By now I was feeling pretty spent, so I headed back to the harbor.  I did a couple of remounts on the way back to the dock, and took out after 80 minutes of paddling.

So... it's been quite a week here in the dog days of summer.  Between now and race day I'll shorten the sessions a little, work on my speed, and hopefully get some rest.

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

Monday photo feature

In my post yesterday I "name-checked" Mr. Bill Endicott, who served as coach of the U.S. whitewater team in the 1970s and 80s and 90s.  Under his leadership, the U.S. team went from barely noticed to a force to be reckoned with on the international stage.

Endicott was part of the crowd that showed up outside DC Superior Court last Thursday in support of Davey Hearn, who is charged with a felony count for allegedly "vandalizing" the Reflecting Pool.  That's him wearing the "Davey's a champ, not a scamp!" sign, which sums up perfectly the post I put up here on Saturday.

Taking the "selfie" alongside Bill & friends is Adam Van Grack, a paddler and former administrator in canoe & kayak racing's governing body, and now a member of the town council of Rockville, Maryland.

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

Regardless of water level, I try to savor the process

It's been an underwhelming high-water season on the Mississippi River.  The river typically reaches its peak flows in May and June each year, and more often than not that means topping the 30-foot mark on the Memphis gauge.  In the last decade we've seen it exceed 40 feet a couple of times.

But this year the river has struggled to rise above 20 feet.  That's the result of meager precipitation across the Midwest from the Rockies to the Appalachians.  In the last few weeks there have been some thunderstorm systems in the watershed, but they have not been large enough, intense enough, or long-lasting enough to bring about a significant rise in the river level.  Storms in the last few days are currently bringing the Memphis gauge reading from 9 feet to 16 feet--a noticeable rise, but not anything to write home about, really.

The "dry" season in the Mississippi basin occurs in the late summer and fall, and unless it's less dry than usual this year, I predict we'll be seeing a record-low river stage by late fall.

The nice thing about the Mississippi is that even at its lowest-ever flows, it's still got plenty of water for paddling.  And I've been doing so regularly, four times a week most weeks.  As I've noted in previous posts, I've been feeling pressed for time because of the demands of checking in with my mother on top of the duties of ordinary life.  A typical session has been less than an hour.  But once in a while I let myself linger on the river for over an hour, especially when there are opportunities for barge wake surfing.

I don't have any races planned, but that's not really so disheartening for me, as I've grown to realize that practice is where the magic happens.  Bill Endicott, the longtime coach of the U.S. whitewater team, has written that the high-achieving people he knows all share one thing: a fascination with the process.  The late Jerry Peters, who coached basketball at the high school I attended and was admired statewide for the consistent success of his teams, used to say that going to the gym for practice each afternoon was by far his favorite part of the job.

We've got a teenage athlete here in Memphis who has gained national recognition.  Miles Nesmith, who just graduated from Central High School, has been the nation's top high school triple jumper for the last couple of seasons.  He recently took the TJ title at the Nike Outdoor Nationals and qualified for the U.S team that will attend the under-20 world championships.  He'll embark on his collegiate career at Kansas State this fall.

This weekend Nesmith competed in the Ed Murphey Classic, an elite meet that occurs annually here in Memphis, and the Daily Memphian ran this story about his experience.  (There's a paywall, so I'll paste the text of the story at the bottom of this post.)

The reason I'm sharing this story here is that it's another example of somebody embracing the process.  Here was Nesmith in his first pro meet that he had no chance of winning, basically using it as a practice session by tinkering with his technique.  It was an opportunity to learn something about himself and the performances he might be capable of in the future, and in the end he actually exceeded expectations by finishing fifth overall among much more seasoned jumpers.

I love stories like that, and they provide me with inspiration during periods like this, when it feels like I'm doing the bare minimum in my athletic life while grappling with weightier issues elsewhere.  Even when I have time to paddle just a half hour or 40 minutes, no session is wasted.  I haven't mentioned it lately, but I'm still working hard on leg drive and rotating down in my hips, and these "quickie" paddles give me a chance to focus hard on that, whereas that's harder to do during longer paddles.

That's my profound thought for today.  Here's the text of that Daily Memphian article, written by high school sports reporter John Varlas:

Miles Nesmith has accomplished plenty in the few weeks since graduating from Central High.

A second straight state championship in the triple jump? Check.

An under-20 national title and a spot in the world championships next month? Check and check.

Competing and beating the pros? That’s also a check.

“My first pro meet,” the future Kansas State athlete said after rubbing elbows with some top-flight competition at the Ed Murphey Classic at the University of Memphis. The youngest competitor in the field — and the lowest seed — Nesmith gave a fine accounting for himself.

His second jump of 53 feet, 6.5 inches qualified him for the eight-man final. Nesmith then went 53-5, 52-1 and 53.1 to place fifth overall.”

Compared to last month’s nationals, when his winning jump was 52-5, it was a stronger performance overall. And it’s one that Nesmith said he needed now that he’s essentially “starting over” after accomplishing everything you could accomplish in the high school ranks.

“I was looking forward to it because I knew it was going to be kind of a precursor to what I’m going to see in college,” Nesmith said. “I’ve kind of established myself as the best (among high schoolers) so now it’s like starting all over again.

“Everybody here is better than me. Pro guys. College guys. But I just came out here and competed and got a PR.”

And from the moments that he took off the green Central polo shirt that he warmed up in, Nesmith looked like he belonged. His longest jump came after a several-minute delay while staff members tried to get a finicky laser measuring device to work.

He then rounded out the day by going over 53 two more times— all while using a shorter approach that allowed him to concentrate on some of the finer points perhaps more so than speed as he tunes up for the U20 worlds in Eugene, Oregon.

“It’s basically just bringing less steps, Nesmith said. “I went from 72 feet; usually I’m going from 102. The idea is just going back to the basics, working on the technique of the jump. Then you add more speed with the idea that you’ll jump a little farther.

“I’ve got a lot more in tank.”

And when he wasn’t jumping, Nesmith stationed himself at the end of the runway in an effort to soak up anything he could from his older and more experienced competitors.

After all, they’ve already been where Nesmith is hoping to get to.

“I’m watching these guys who have been to world championships, been to Olympic Games,” he said. “Jordan Scott, he’s No. 3 in the world. I could have been in the tent but I was watching.

“It was surreal and I was just trying to take everything in.”

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

Character under indictment

I mentioned back on June 21 that David Hearn, a world champion and three-time U.S. Olympian in whitewater slalom, had been arrested for touching the peeling liner of the Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC, not far from his home.  A grand jury went on to grant U.S. Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro an indictment of Davey for doing $1000 of damage to the monument.  $1000 is the amount that makes such a crime a felony rather than a misdemeanor.

Davey's arraignment took place in District of Columbia Superior Court this past Thursday.  When he emerged with his legal team, he was greeted by a throng of supporters:

Personally, I am distressed to see a friend of mine forced to defend himself against this charge, which I believe has no merit.  As his lawyer points out, it’s an outrageous misuse of government power.

At the same time, I am heartened to see the robust turnout of people in support of Davey.  It's a reminder of a pretty basic truth: if you go through life being nice to people, treating them with respect, then people will show up for you when times are tough.  In the video I see dozens of people doing what they could and wishing they could do more.

Davey’s congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives, Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), released this statement:

Davey Hearn would never desecrate a federal building or landmark by writing his name on it or affixing his name illegally to it or engaging in any other kind of political graffiti, vandalism or delinquency. He would never intentionally damage government property. Whether we are talking about the White House, the Reflecting Pool or the Kennedy Center, Davey would never try to alter, bulldoze or redesign federal property or buildings without explicit Congressional authorization and direction. Davey is an honorable and law-abiding citizen who has won real giant prizes, including eight world championships. He did so without any corrupt practices and only through his magnificent hard work and surpassing dedication to the team. He would never try to undercut or sabotage anyone, much less our entire community.

"I hope—and will do everything I can to guarantee—that Davey gets true due process and a fair trial on these absurdly trumped-up charges. It is only a matter of time before an impartial judge and jury recognize that this case has been built on a Kafkaesque arrest and Orwellian charges.

I know some people will read that and say “Pssh.  Just another politician exploiting this incident to make some political hay.”  And yes, it is a political statement, with its thinly-veiled digs at our nation’s 47th president.

But the thing is, I’ve known Davey myself for several decades.  At first I was just a fan as I began to dabble in racing after a decade or so of recreational whitewater paddling.  Eventually, as my involvement in racing increased, I got to know Davey and become his friend, and I learned that all the things I'd admired about him as a wide-eyed fanboy were in fact honest-to-God true.  If you took the Scholastic Aptitude Test in high school, then maybe you encountered this analogy:

ostensible : real :: reputation : character

Throughout his career as a celebrated athlete in the paddling world, Davey's reputation and his character were one and the same.  His sportsmanlike way of conducting himself at big races, both in the boat and on the bank, was the same way he conducted himself at practice on the Potomac/C&O Feeder Canal in the dead of winter.  What you saw was what he was.  Always.

And everything Rep. Raskin says about Davey in his statement is consistent with everything I've observed first-hand.  Davey is an honorable and law-abiding citizen.  He does believe in hard work and dedication to the team.  I have never seen him try to undercut or sabotage anyone.  Just consider Davey's career-long rivalry with fellow U.S. team member Jon Lugbill, to whom Davey settled for second place at five (five!) world championships.  I have to believe that that gnawed at Davey sometimes, but in public statements he always strove to see the good in his results and always spoke well of his rival.  And, he knew that his own success was ultimately tied to a healthy training relationship with Lugbill.

I mention above that I believe the criminal charge against Davey is false.  This belief does have some basis in fact, most notably that there had been news reports of the Reflecting Pool's liner peeling loose at least few days before Davey's arrest on the 19th of June.  But my knowledge of Davey's character is the main reason I believe he is innocent.  I'm not at all surprised that Davey would be curious about a delaminating liner, because such things are literally his field: as a racer he designed and built his own boats by laminating composite materials, and he later owned a business that sold composite materials to boatbuilders and other craftsmen.  Meanwhile, anybody privy to Davey's social media posts knows that he's not a fan of the current administration in Washington, but it's just not his style to act out destructively.  It's not the Davey I know.  These words would probably not get anywhere in a court of law, nor should they.  But they are sufficient for my own peace of mind, and I will be very surprised if the prosecution produces even a scrap of evidence that proves me wrong.

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

Monday photo feature

I'm not doing any racing or any real training these days, but a number of my friends are, so here's a photo I lifted from the Face Book page of my friend Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas.  He participated in the Freedom Race in Missouri on Saturday, and this is what he wrote about it:

Great day to be racing. The Freedom race is a 63 mile trip down the beautiful Missouri River. We had almost ideal conditions with only a slight but persistent headwind with only one barge to deal with. Got the solo surfski win and was 3rd overall behind 7-man Joe’s boat and one good double surfski. Christel shuttled me with Nebo waiting at the finish line!

"Joe's boat" was a 7-person craft led by race director Joe Mann.  The "one good double surfski" was paddled by my friend Scott Cummins, with whom I paddled and camped in Kentucky a couple of weeks ago, and a guy named Jeff Behrns.  Christel?  That would be Mike's wife, while Nebo is another very important member of his family, his dog.  That's Nebo helping Mike celebrate in the picture.

Mike covered the 63 miles (approx. 102 kilometers) in six hours, 10 minutes.  He got some help from the river's flow, but not as much in a previous year when he clocked five hours, 39 minutes.  Even that latter time is longer than I care to be sitting in a boat competing, but like I said, these days I'm not racing and Mike is, so Mike has the right to do whatever he wants.

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

A not-so-sunny outlook as summer settles in

This time a week ago I was nursing some strained oblique muscles.  I'm happy to report that that particular ailment seems to be a thing of the past.

Unfortunately, I'm still living with pain and tightness in the right side of my neck.  I haven't mentioned it in a while, so here's a quick history: I arrived home from my trip to South Africa on the 5th of February.  On February 9, I received the second of two shingles vaccine shots, and by the following day I was feeling awful.  For some 24 hours I suffered from severe chills that made me clench into a fetal position as I lay in bed.

By the day after that, I was feeling better.  But the one thing that lingered was the discomfort in my neck, and that condition has lingered, and lingered, and lingered some more.  I sought treatment from my chiropractor, who performed adjustments and some dry needling, but after a few weeks of that I was doing no better.  My chiropractor suggested I get a neck brace to stretch the area, and I did, but after trying that for a couple of weeks I was seeing no change.

I'm pretty sure this is the result of the impinged nerves in my upper spinal cord that an MRI revealed in 2023.  Back then I got a couple of nerve-block injections that had no lasting effect; the next step would have been a surgical procedure that I think would have entailed fusing a couple of vertebrae, but that would have resulted in a loss of range of motion in my neck, and at that time, at least, that seemed worse than what I was already dealing with.

So, these days I'm just living with the discomfort, and I'm really at a loss as to what else I can do.  I keep hoping it'll all run its course and loosen up on its own, but as of now it's showing no signs of doing that.  Will it be with me for the rest of my life?  Hell if I know.  Meanwhile, I'm spending so much time worrying over my 90-year-old mother's condition that navigating the medical care system for my own woes is simply more than I can bear to consider right now.

The neck discomfort is definitely with me in the boat, but it doesn't directly interfere with paddling, so I'm trying my best to find some solace on the water.  There are no big races coming up, so I'm not really training for anything.  It's not like this time last year, when I had a robust fitness program going to get myself lean and mean for a trip through the Grand Canyon.  No, these days my paddling sessions are just mental health breaks, something that allows me to look back on each day and think, "At least one decent thing happened today."

On Saturday I went down to the river and paddled for 50 minutes.  Yesterday I paddled for 40 minutes.  I got something in.  It feels like the best I can do these days.

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

Poking along in early summer

I paddled Tuesday morning after a day of heavy rain on Monday.  The water was muddy in the harbor, and once I got out to the Mississippi I found lots of woody debris, including whole trees, floating down the river.  I suspect most of it had been flushed out of the Wolf and Loosahatchie Rivers, as it was all close to the Tennessee bank.

The pain was all gone from my right oblique abdominal area, and as if on cue, there were a couple of upstream-moving barge rigs down below the trio of bridges at the south end of downtown.  I decided I was ready to surf.  The rigs were moving in close succession, so I moved down and fell in behind the second one.  The waves in its train were tall with small, deep troughs, and I confess to being a little spooked by them, but a bit farther back the waves began to smooth out and I was able to get a few good rides.  Once the fun had run its course, I ferried over to the Tennessee bank for the paddle back up to the harbor, and I found myself threading through a gauntlet of sticks, logs, branches, and tree trunks.  I currently have a big surf rudder on my ski, and several times I got debris stuck on it and once I even had to get out of the boat to clear it off.  It all probably added close to ten minutes to my trek back to the dock.

I planned to do a bike ride Wednesday, but my rear tire was flat.  On further inspection, I discovered that the tire's wire lattice was starting to poke out.  In other words, I need a new tire, probably two, since I bought the two tires at the same time several years ago.  So I called off Wednesday's ride, and now I need to make time for some maintenance work.

[Edit: it turns out that what I thought was the wire lattice poking out was actually a small nail that had stuck into the tire.  As soon as my neighbor the Victory Bicycle Studio opens today, I'll go get their expert opinion on the condition of my tires.]

I went back to the river yesterday and, feeling tired in the boat, I was perfectly happy to find no barge traffic out on the river.  I paddled for a relaxed 40 minutes.  After several pleasant days, hotter weather was starting to move in by yesterday.  The forecast is showing Fahrenheit temperatures in the high 90s next week.

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

Monday photo feature

My friend Joe Royer shot this lovely photo of Muscovy ducks on my dock at dusk six years ago.

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