The C1 semifinal and final took place today at the Olympic whitewater slalom venue in Lee Valley, north of London. I was mistaken in what I wrote in yesterday's post about semifinal and final scores being combined: they are not. The scores in the one-run semifinal determine who moves through to the final, and then the finalists take one more run with a clean slate.
In the semifinal round today, a field of twelve C1s was trimmed to eight. Not making the cut was the host country's David Florence, the silver medalist in Beijing four years ago and the top-ranked C1 in the world entering the Olympic competition.
That left all eyes on the two who have ruled the class over the last decade and a half. Michal Martikan won the gold medal on the Ocoee in 1996 at age 17; he added a world title the following year, and seemed on his way to being the greatest ever. But at Penrith in 2000, a gate-touch on his first run left the door open for his competitors (in that Olympics the final round consisted of two runs, whose scores were combined), and a truly magnificent second run was not quite enough to overcome the two solid runs of Frenchman Tony Estanguet.
The two met again in Athens in 2004, and this time Martikan appeared to have won the race until a late judge's call penalized him two seconds for grazing an upstream gate near the top of the course. So again Estanguet took gold and Martikan settled for silver.
In the 2008 Beijing Games, Estanguet paddled poorly in the semifinal round and failed to make the eight-boat final. So the final was Martikan's to win or lose, and he won, convincingly.
Today, the two both finished in the middle of the semifinal pack, and so were in the middle of the starting order for the final. Martikan went first, and while his run was very, very solid, easily putting him into the lead, I could sense that it wasn't quite the best he had in him. Two boats later, Estanguet laid down a superb run that was 1.25 seconds better than Martikan's. Then the last paddler on the course, Sideris Tasiadis of Germany, overtook Martikan as well.
And so the first whitewater slalom medals of these Olympic Games go to athletes from France, Germany, and Slovakia, probably the three most powerful nations in the sport. Here in the U.S., we have a couple of sports in which we expect our athletes to be on the podium--swimming, certainly, and the sprint events on the track. Well, for France, Germany, and Slovakia, whitewater slalom is that sport.
The results of the C1 semifinal are here. The results of the C1 final are here.
UPDATE: You can now watch the medal ceremony here. Martikan is handling it with class, but he clearly is not satisfied with the bronze. Tasiadis looks over the moon to have finished in the medals. He was born in Greece and has dual Greek-German citizenship; he could have competed for Greece, but boldly chose the much tougher German system. Looks like it's paid off.
For those who want to try to keep score in the "Who's the greatest, Martikan or Estanguet?" debate, Estanguet now has three Olympic gold medals to Martikan's two. Martikan has five overall Olympic medals to Estanguet's three. In the world championships that take place every non-Olympic year, Martikan has won ten medals, four of them gold, while Estanguet has won six medals, three of them gold. Bear in mind that the world championships is more competitive than the Olympics because each nation may enter three boats per class, compared to (at most) one in the Olympics.
(I'll just add that I think Jon Lugbill of the U.S. still deserves to be in the "best-ever" conversation. Lugbill won no Olympic medals, but whitewater slalom was not on the Olympic programme for most of his career. Furthermore, the world championships were biennial in his era, whereas now they occur in every non-Olympic year. Lugbill won five golds and one silver in world championship competition.)
The men's kayak class has its semifinal and final rounds tomorrow. According to the NBC Olympics website, there will be some on-the-air coverage (probably not live) from 1:30 to 2:00 PM Central Time.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
U.S. slalom team follow-up
I'm pleased to discover that NBC is posting some video footage that even a non-cable-subscriber like me is allowed to watch. Among it is some highlights of the four U.S. slalom boats:
Casey Eichfeld, men's single canoe (C1)
Scott Parsons, men's kayak (K1)
Eric Hurd and Jeff Larimer, men's double canoe
Caroline Queen, women's kayak (K1W)
I really feel bad for Scott Parsons. He was eliminated from the qualification round in much the same way that he was in 2008. In both cases, he was under some pressure to turn in a fast time to make sure he was among the fifteen who would move on, and in both cases, attempting to shave an extra fraction of a second, he cut a move too tight and failed to get all of his head in the gate. At least from the camera angles shown in NBC's footage, it looks like he did get enough of his head in the gate for a correct negotiation, but the explanation I've heard is that his head and his boat were not in the gate at the same time.
Parsons is 33 years old, an age at which you might expect him to hang it up, but he has already announced publicly that he is going to stick with it. He retired after both the '04 and '08 Olympics, only to realize after a few months that he really missed "the life," and he says now that he's not going to make that mistake again.
Eichfeld seemed fairly solid during his runs, a couple of bad time errors contributing the most to his failure to advance. Watching his trouble in Gate 4, I totally felt his pain--I can't even tell you how many times over my slalom career I came into an upstream gate with the intention of snapping a nice, crisp pivot turn, only to stall my edge and sit there flailing around. Well, Eichfeld is only 22 years old and I expect he'll stick around for another quadrennium.
Same with Caroline Queen, who's only 20. All I really know to say about her performance is that she simply could use some more seasoning. A perfect contrast would be 44-year-old Štěpánka Hilgertová of the Czech Republic, whom I mentioned in this post back on June 15. She's competing in her sixth Olympics (which is to say, she's been in every Olympic slalom race in history except that first one at Augsburg in 1972), and in her qualifying heats she looked completely relaxed and in charge of her situation.
Eric Hurd is 26, and tomorrow happens to be Jeff Larimer's 31st birthday. So neither paddler is particularly old. But they've both been racing a long time now--they were both doing it back when I was still racing slalom. I don't know what their plans are, and they may not either right now.
Whatever the case, I think they all would do better in Rio four years from now if they were to make it there. Whether any of them can bring home a medal is a question that just can't be answered right now. But I will say this: the greatest slalom paddlers the U.S. has ever had have all been unorthodox thinkers in some way. Before 1979, the U.S. had never won a medal in the slalom world championships. Then came a group of young racers from the D.C. area, led by Jon Lugbill and Cathy and Davey Hearn, who dominated the C-boat and women's kayak classes for the next decade. They did so by re-inventing the sport itself, developing new boat designs and radical new techniques, and the rest of the world suddenly found itself playing catch-up. Then, from the late 80s through the 90s, Scott Shipley and Rich Weiss ended generations of U.S. frustration in men's kayak by challenging the attitude that they should be copying what Lugbill and the Hearns were doing and experimenting with new technical ideas of their own.
I think this spirit of innovation is a big reason the U.S. has managed a modicum of success in a sport that has far less government support here than in nations like France and Germany. So, in the unlikely event that a U.S. Olympic hopeful for 2016 reads this blog, here's my advice: Look for ways to improve upon the conventional wisdom. I don't know what they are myself--I spent my career just trying to make all the gates on national-level courses--but I hope that anybody smart enough to be interested in whitewater slalom in the first place will be smart enough at least to scratch the surface of new ideas.
Casey Eichfeld, men's single canoe (C1)
Scott Parsons, men's kayak (K1)
Eric Hurd and Jeff Larimer, men's double canoe
Caroline Queen, women's kayak (K1W)
I really feel bad for Scott Parsons. He was eliminated from the qualification round in much the same way that he was in 2008. In both cases, he was under some pressure to turn in a fast time to make sure he was among the fifteen who would move on, and in both cases, attempting to shave an extra fraction of a second, he cut a move too tight and failed to get all of his head in the gate. At least from the camera angles shown in NBC's footage, it looks like he did get enough of his head in the gate for a correct negotiation, but the explanation I've heard is that his head and his boat were not in the gate at the same time.
Parsons is 33 years old, an age at which you might expect him to hang it up, but he has already announced publicly that he is going to stick with it. He retired after both the '04 and '08 Olympics, only to realize after a few months that he really missed "the life," and he says now that he's not going to make that mistake again.
Eichfeld seemed fairly solid during his runs, a couple of bad time errors contributing the most to his failure to advance. Watching his trouble in Gate 4, I totally felt his pain--I can't even tell you how many times over my slalom career I came into an upstream gate with the intention of snapping a nice, crisp pivot turn, only to stall my edge and sit there flailing around. Well, Eichfeld is only 22 years old and I expect he'll stick around for another quadrennium.
Same with Caroline Queen, who's only 20. All I really know to say about her performance is that she simply could use some more seasoning. A perfect contrast would be 44-year-old Štěpánka Hilgertová of the Czech Republic, whom I mentioned in this post back on June 15. She's competing in her sixth Olympics (which is to say, she's been in every Olympic slalom race in history except that first one at Augsburg in 1972), and in her qualifying heats she looked completely relaxed and in charge of her situation.
Eric Hurd is 26, and tomorrow happens to be Jeff Larimer's 31st birthday. So neither paddler is particularly old. But they've both been racing a long time now--they were both doing it back when I was still racing slalom. I don't know what their plans are, and they may not either right now.
Whatever the case, I think they all would do better in Rio four years from now if they were to make it there. Whether any of them can bring home a medal is a question that just can't be answered right now. But I will say this: the greatest slalom paddlers the U.S. has ever had have all been unorthodox thinkers in some way. Before 1979, the U.S. had never won a medal in the slalom world championships. Then came a group of young racers from the D.C. area, led by Jon Lugbill and Cathy and Davey Hearn, who dominated the C-boat and women's kayak classes for the next decade. They did so by re-inventing the sport itself, developing new boat designs and radical new techniques, and the rest of the world suddenly found itself playing catch-up. Then, from the late 80s through the 90s, Scott Shipley and Rich Weiss ended generations of U.S. frustration in men's kayak by challenging the attitude that they should be copying what Lugbill and the Hearns were doing and experimenting with new technical ideas of their own.
I think this spirit of innovation is a big reason the U.S. has managed a modicum of success in a sport that has far less government support here than in nations like France and Germany. So, in the unlikely event that a U.S. Olympic hopeful for 2016 reads this blog, here's my advice: Look for ways to improve upon the conventional wisdom. I don't know what they are myself--I spent my career just trying to make all the gates on national-level courses--but I hope that anybody smart enough to be interested in whitewater slalom in the first place will be smart enough at least to scratch the surface of new ideas.
Monday, July 30, 2012
C2 and K1W heats
Action continued today in Olympic whitewater slalom racing, with the qualifying heats for men's double canoe and women's kayak.
In C2, the top ten boats are moving on to Thursday's semifinal round. Among them are Slovakia's Hochschorner brothers, Peter and Pavol. Already the greatest C2 of all time, this pair is going for its fourth Olympic gold in four tries. The results of the C2 qualification round are here.
The K1W class, in which the top fifteen would advance, was full of excitement, with several of the top ladies having problems in their runs but hanging in there to make the cut. Maialen Chourraut of Spain, who normally attacks the course ferociously with a high stroke rate, looked like she was out for a relaxing river-run today, and still laid down the fastest time. She'll have plenty left in the tank when she enters the starting gate for her semifinal run on Thursday. The results of the K1W qualification round are here.
Sadly, the U.S. is now 0-for-4 in its attempt to move a boat beyond the qualification round. The team of Jeff Larimer and Eric Hurd finished twelfth in C2, while Caroline Queen finished 17th in K1W.
So far, the only actual footage I have seen of all this racing is what was on TV this morning. NBC showed some of the first runs in the qualification round of the K1W class. Kudos to Eric Giddens, who raced slalom back when I did in the 1990s, for his job of color commentary for NBC. I attempted to sign up for the live online feed using my mother's cable subscription, but ran into all kinds of technical difficulties on the Comcast website. After spending over an hour on hold to talk to a couple of less-than-helpful Comcast representatives, I'm about ready to raise the white flag on that front.
Now that the semifinal fields are all set, what happens next? Well, the C1s will be up tomorrow, with twelve paddlers still in the hunt. Each paddler will take a run on the course (which will be different from the course used for qualifying). Those with the eight best scores will move on to the final, in which they will take one more run. Each paddler's final score will be combined with his semifinal score, and those combined scores will determine the overall places.
The K1 class will go through the same process on Wednesday, with the top ten semifinalists moving on to the final.
On Thursday, the top six C2 semifinalists will make the final, as will the top ten K1W semifinalists.
In C2, the top ten boats are moving on to Thursday's semifinal round. Among them are Slovakia's Hochschorner brothers, Peter and Pavol. Already the greatest C2 of all time, this pair is going for its fourth Olympic gold in four tries. The results of the C2 qualification round are here.
The K1W class, in which the top fifteen would advance, was full of excitement, with several of the top ladies having problems in their runs but hanging in there to make the cut. Maialen Chourraut of Spain, who normally attacks the course ferociously with a high stroke rate, looked like she was out for a relaxing river-run today, and still laid down the fastest time. She'll have plenty left in the tank when she enters the starting gate for her semifinal run on Thursday. The results of the K1W qualification round are here.
Sadly, the U.S. is now 0-for-4 in its attempt to move a boat beyond the qualification round. The team of Jeff Larimer and Eric Hurd finished twelfth in C2, while Caroline Queen finished 17th in K1W.
So far, the only actual footage I have seen of all this racing is what was on TV this morning. NBC showed some of the first runs in the qualification round of the K1W class. Kudos to Eric Giddens, who raced slalom back when I did in the 1990s, for his job of color commentary for NBC. I attempted to sign up for the live online feed using my mother's cable subscription, but ran into all kinds of technical difficulties on the Comcast website. After spending over an hour on hold to talk to a couple of less-than-helpful Comcast representatives, I'm about ready to raise the white flag on that front.
Now that the semifinal fields are all set, what happens next? Well, the C1s will be up tomorrow, with twelve paddlers still in the hunt. Each paddler will take a run on the course (which will be different from the course used for qualifying). Those with the eight best scores will move on to the final, in which they will take one more run. Each paddler's final score will be combined with his semifinal score, and those combined scores will determine the overall places.
The K1 class will go through the same process on Wednesday, with the top ten semifinalists moving on to the final.
On Thursday, the top six C2 semifinalists will make the final, as will the top ten K1W semifinalists.
Monday Photo Feature
Let's be clear: I am very impressed with the sacrifices Olympic athletes make to reach the top of their sports. But I have a hard time not being offended when a corporation like Bank of America, which has the resources to feed, clothe, house, and provide medical care for the entire U.S. national team, would rather romanticize the poverty of the athletes it is supposed to be sponsoring, as if a marginally comfortable standard of living would render their accomplishments less meaningful.
On a happier note, the women's kayaks and men's double canoes are on the water as I write this, competing in the qualifying round of the Olympics whitewater slalom competition at Lee Valley White Water Centre. If you have a cable or satellite subscription that includes MSNBC and CNBC, you can watch the live stream right now, here. Later this morning (10:00-10:30 Central Time), there's something scheduled to appear on over-the-air NBC; my guess is it'll be a summary of what happened in the qualifying heats for all four classes.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
K1 and C1 heats
The qualifying heats for men's single canoe and men's kayak took place today at Lee Valley White Water Centre in Hertfordshire. The top twelve canoeists advance to the semifinal round on Tuesday, while the top fifteen kayakers move on to their semis on Wednesday.
Michal Martikan of Slovakia, winner of Olympic gold medals in 1996 and 2008 and Olympic silver medals in 2000 and 2004, appears ready to solidify his status as the greatest slalom canoeist ever as he laid down the best score among C1s with his second run. The C1 class results are here.
In K1, Hannes Aigner of Germany blazed down the course more than three and a half seconds faster than his nearest competitor, Samuel Hernanz of Spain. The results for K1 are here.
Failing to advance to the semifinal round were the two U.S. entries, Casey Eichfeld in C1 and Scott Parsons in K1. A two-second touch on his first run kept Eichfeld out of the semis, knocking him from tenth place back to 14th. Parsons finished 16th overall, just one position shy of advancement, to bring his third Olympics to a disappointing end. He also failed to move past the qualifying round in Beijing four years ago after finishing a respectable sixth in 2004.
Tomorrow, the men's double canoe class and the women's kayak class have their qualifying rounds.
Michal Martikan of Slovakia, winner of Olympic gold medals in 1996 and 2008 and Olympic silver medals in 2000 and 2004, appears ready to solidify his status as the greatest slalom canoeist ever as he laid down the best score among C1s with his second run. The C1 class results are here.
In K1, Hannes Aigner of Germany blazed down the course more than three and a half seconds faster than his nearest competitor, Samuel Hernanz of Spain. The results for K1 are here.
Failing to advance to the semifinal round were the two U.S. entries, Casey Eichfeld in C1 and Scott Parsons in K1. A two-second touch on his first run kept Eichfeld out of the semis, knocking him from tenth place back to 14th. Parsons finished 16th overall, just one position shy of advancement, to bring his third Olympics to a disappointing end. He also failed to move past the qualifying round in Beijing four years ago after finishing a respectable sixth in 2004.
Tomorrow, the men's double canoe class and the women's kayak class have their qualifying rounds.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Canoes and kayaks on your tee vee
Where television is concerned, Martha and I live in the stone age. Basically, we have no broadcast service of any kind. We have never subscribed to a cable or satellite service. And when the big "digital switch" occurred several years ago, we got one of those simple converter boxes for our analog set, but it died after a few months, and we never bothered to get another one.
Most of the time, our life moves merrily along without television. We have nothing against television; we would simply rather spend our time and money on other things. And I have to say I am frustrated with how complicated TV viewing has become. Anytime I'm at my mother's house and am trying to make sense of the relationship among her TV set, her cable box, her VCR/DVD player, and the universal remote, I wonder why anybody puts up with it. When I was growing up, changing the channel was a simple matter of turning a knob on the front of the set.
The only way Martha and I do watch TV is by streaming Netflix and similar Internet-based material. And seeing as how NBC is offering live streaming for every Olympic event on its website, I figured we had what we need to watch whatever we might want to see these next two weeks.
Sadly, no.
Today I went to nbcolympics.com to make sure I knew how to navigate the site ahead of tomorrow's C1 and K1 slalom heats, and found that a cable or satellite subscription is required for access to the stream.
Rats.
Well, for those of you who do have 21st-century TV access, the U.S. National Whitewater Center's website has easy instructions for viewing the live stream here.
Meanwhile, if you prefer to watch what's on actual TV rather than catch the live stream, the NBC Olympic website guides you through that endeavor here.
Here in Memphis, to my surprise, all the slalom coverage will be on good old WMC-TV Channel 5, our local over-the-airwaves NBC affiliate, and it will be shown during hours when I'm usually awake. But I'll have to go over to my mom's to watch it (Martha and I never replaced our digital converter box-- remember?).
Meanwhile, I should explain a couple more things about the upcoming whitewater competition for people who are not familiar with whitewater slalom. The trickiest thing will be recognizing the canoes, because a whitewater slalom canoe does not look like what most people think of as a canoe. The racers will be using closed-deck canoes that look a lot like kayaks. The easiest way to tell the difference between a kayak and a canoe is to look at the paddle: a kayaker uses a double-bladed paddle, while a canoeist uses a paddle with just one blade. The other major difference is that a kayaker sits in the boat with his legs extended in front of him, whereas a canoeist kneels.
The boats in an international slalom race must meet length, width, and weight specifications. K1s and C1s must be at least 3.5 meters long, and C2s must be at least 4.1 meters long. The minimum width (at the widest point) of a slalom kayak is 0.6 meter; of a single canoe, 0.65 meter; and of a double canoe, 0.75 meter. A slalom kayak must weigh at least 9 kilograms, a C1 at least 10 kilograms, and a C2 at least 15 kilograms.
Before the competition, all boats will be measured to make sure they meet these requirements. If a boat is too short or too narrow, the racer will have to augment its length or width with some sort hard-curing putty like that Bondo stuff you can get in auto parts stores. If the boat is too light, the racer will have to cement something to the boat to bring it up to weight (usually the object is affixed inside the boat beneath the seat to minimize its effect on how the boat performs).
Anyway, tune in however you can. Tomorrow's racing begins at 1:30 PM local time, which I believe is 7:30 AM here in the Central Time Zone.
Most of the time, our life moves merrily along without television. We have nothing against television; we would simply rather spend our time and money on other things. And I have to say I am frustrated with how complicated TV viewing has become. Anytime I'm at my mother's house and am trying to make sense of the relationship among her TV set, her cable box, her VCR/DVD player, and the universal remote, I wonder why anybody puts up with it. When I was growing up, changing the channel was a simple matter of turning a knob on the front of the set.
The only way Martha and I do watch TV is by streaming Netflix and similar Internet-based material. And seeing as how NBC is offering live streaming for every Olympic event on its website, I figured we had what we need to watch whatever we might want to see these next two weeks.
Sadly, no.
Today I went to nbcolympics.com to make sure I knew how to navigate the site ahead of tomorrow's C1 and K1 slalom heats, and found that a cable or satellite subscription is required for access to the stream.
Rats.
Well, for those of you who do have 21st-century TV access, the U.S. National Whitewater Center's website has easy instructions for viewing the live stream here.
Meanwhile, if you prefer to watch what's on actual TV rather than catch the live stream, the NBC Olympic website guides you through that endeavor here.
Here in Memphis, to my surprise, all the slalom coverage will be on good old WMC-TV Channel 5, our local over-the-airwaves NBC affiliate, and it will be shown during hours when I'm usually awake. But I'll have to go over to my mom's to watch it (Martha and I never replaced our digital converter box-- remember?).
Meanwhile, I should explain a couple more things about the upcoming whitewater competition for people who are not familiar with whitewater slalom. The trickiest thing will be recognizing the canoes, because a whitewater slalom canoe does not look like what most people think of as a canoe. The racers will be using closed-deck canoes that look a lot like kayaks. The easiest way to tell the difference between a kayak and a canoe is to look at the paddle: a kayaker uses a double-bladed paddle, while a canoeist uses a paddle with just one blade. The other major difference is that a kayaker sits in the boat with his legs extended in front of him, whereas a canoeist kneels.
The boats in an international slalom race must meet length, width, and weight specifications. K1s and C1s must be at least 3.5 meters long, and C2s must be at least 4.1 meters long. The minimum width (at the widest point) of a slalom kayak is 0.6 meter; of a single canoe, 0.65 meter; and of a double canoe, 0.75 meter. A slalom kayak must weigh at least 9 kilograms, a C1 at least 10 kilograms, and a C2 at least 15 kilograms.
Before the competition, all boats will be measured to make sure they meet these requirements. If a boat is too short or too narrow, the racer will have to augment its length or width with some sort hard-curing putty like that Bondo stuff you can get in auto parts stores. If the boat is too light, the racer will have to cement something to the boat to bring it up to weight (usually the object is affixed inside the boat beneath the seat to minimize its effect on how the boat performs).
Anyway, tune in however you can. Tomorrow's racing begins at 1:30 PM local time, which I believe is 7:30 AM here in the Central Time Zone.
Time for some Olympic slalom
Canoe and kayak competition for the 2012 Olympic Games begins tomorrow with whitewater slalom racing at Lee Valley White Water Centre in Hertfordshire. This will be the seventh time that slalom has been an Olympic medal sport. The first Olympic slalom took place on the Eiskanal ("Ice Canal") in Augsburg, Germany, as a part of the 1972 Munich Games. Then slalom disappeared from the Olympic programme, apparently because the organizers of the 1976 Montreal Games didn't want to fool with it. But it came back for the 1992 Games at Barcelona, on an artificial course at La Seu d'Urgell. It has been part of every Olympics since.
Slalomists race one boat at a time through a course of 18-25 gates that hang over a section of whitewater river. A traditional gate consists of two pieces of PVC pipe four to five feet apart, and the paddler's head and part of his boat must pass between these poles for a correct negotiation of the gate. Since the 2008 Olympics, the ICF has made a change to this tradition by incorporating single-pole gates into courses; racers must simply pass such poles to the right or to the left, as specified before the competition.
Some of the gates (those with green and white poles) must be run in a "downstream" direction, while for others (whose poles are red and white) the paddler must drop below the gate and paddle upstream through (or past) it. Once a racer has run the course, his score is the number of seconds that elapsed between his start and his finish, plus penalties--one gets a two-second penalty for touching a pole as he negotiates a gate, and a 50-second penalty for missing the gate entirely. At the world-class level, a single two-second penalty is often enough to bump a racer out of the medals.
A typical slalom course run at the world-class level takes about 100 seconds--roughly the same length of time it takes a world-class 800-meter runner to cover his distance. So the cardiovascular fitness of a slalom racer is not much different from that of a middle-distance runner. But slalom is a much more technical sport than running, and the racers must devote a large chunk of their training time to practicing strokes and techniques in the gates. Because technique is so important in slalom, most athletes do their physical work concurrently with their technical work. Slalom also presents other challenges that would simply boggle a runner's mind. The gate positions are a secret until the eve of the race, and no two competitions feature exactly the same course. No practice runs are allowed. So the racers must practice a broad variety of gate combinations in the hope of simulating the moves they must perform on race day. They also spend a lot of time just thinking about moves--a practice known as mental rehearsal, or visualization. Each slalom Olympian has had a chance to train on the water at Lee Valley, and has gone over the canal in his mind thousands of times, committing every wave, hole, and eddy to a mental video tape. When the gate positions are revealed for the Games, each athlete will imagine his view from the boat of each gate as he paddles through it.
Tomorrow, it will be the qualifying heats for men's single canoe (C1) and men's kayak (K1). Each paddler will get two runs on the course, and the better of his two scores will determine his position in the standings. Sixteen athletes are entered in the C1 class, and the top twelve performers in the qualifying heats will advance to the semifinal round on Tuesday. In K1, the field of 21 will be pared down to fifteen, and those fifteen will race in the semis on Wednesday.
The women's kayak (K1W) and men's single canoe (C2) classes will have their qualifying heats on Monday. Twenty-one K1Ws will be reduced to fifteen, while twelve C2s will be trimmed to ten. Both classes will have their semifinals on Thursday.
Artificial courses have been the rule for Olympic slaloms. The only Olympic slalom ever held on a natural river was the one in 1996, held about two hours outside Atlanta on Tennessee's Ocoee River, a dam-controlled river whose bed had undergone extensive alteration for the event. As nice as it is to race slalom on a natural river, the typical Olympic city does not have one nearby that meets all specifications for a world-class competition. So the engineers go to work. The Eiskanal at Augsburg was an existing channel that diverted water from a river to a nearby industrial district, and construction crews installed the obstacles to create waves, eddies, and holes. The other Olympic venues--La Seu d'Urgell, Penrith (outside Sydney), Athens, and Beijing--are concrete courses built from scratch that use powerful pumps to recirculate water from the bottom back to the top. The Athens venue, located on the property of the old airport at Helleniko, was unique in that it used saltwater pumped from the Saronic Gulf.
A significant issue for any Olympic city is what happens to all those venues once the Games are over, and I'm happy to say that the courses at Augsburg, La Seu, and Penrith are still regular stops on the international slalom circuit. The course on the Ocoee River, sadly, sits dewatered and unused except for a handful of days each summer when water is released for commercial rafting. I'm not sure about the status of the Athens and Beijing venues at this time. As whitewater slalom has a long tradition in Great Britain, I am hopeful that the Lee Valley Whitewater Centre will continue to be used for training, racing, and recreation for many years to come. A description of the venue is available here.
I'd been agonizing over whether I should attempt to make any medal predictions, or even mention athletes to watch, as I would very likely end up looking stupid. Fortunately, Jamie McEwan has gallantly assumed that risk in this article for Canoe and Kayak magazine. Jamie won the bronze medal in C1 at that first Olympic slalom on the Eiskanal in '72, and is anything but stupid when it comes to talking about the sport.
Slalomists race one boat at a time through a course of 18-25 gates that hang over a section of whitewater river. A traditional gate consists of two pieces of PVC pipe four to five feet apart, and the paddler's head and part of his boat must pass between these poles for a correct negotiation of the gate. Since the 2008 Olympics, the ICF has made a change to this tradition by incorporating single-pole gates into courses; racers must simply pass such poles to the right or to the left, as specified before the competition.
Some of the gates (those with green and white poles) must be run in a "downstream" direction, while for others (whose poles are red and white) the paddler must drop below the gate and paddle upstream through (or past) it. Once a racer has run the course, his score is the number of seconds that elapsed between his start and his finish, plus penalties--one gets a two-second penalty for touching a pole as he negotiates a gate, and a 50-second penalty for missing the gate entirely. At the world-class level, a single two-second penalty is often enough to bump a racer out of the medals.
A typical slalom course run at the world-class level takes about 100 seconds--roughly the same length of time it takes a world-class 800-meter runner to cover his distance. So the cardiovascular fitness of a slalom racer is not much different from that of a middle-distance runner. But slalom is a much more technical sport than running, and the racers must devote a large chunk of their training time to practicing strokes and techniques in the gates. Because technique is so important in slalom, most athletes do their physical work concurrently with their technical work. Slalom also presents other challenges that would simply boggle a runner's mind. The gate positions are a secret until the eve of the race, and no two competitions feature exactly the same course. No practice runs are allowed. So the racers must practice a broad variety of gate combinations in the hope of simulating the moves they must perform on race day. They also spend a lot of time just thinking about moves--a practice known as mental rehearsal, or visualization. Each slalom Olympian has had a chance to train on the water at Lee Valley, and has gone over the canal in his mind thousands of times, committing every wave, hole, and eddy to a mental video tape. When the gate positions are revealed for the Games, each athlete will imagine his view from the boat of each gate as he paddles through it.
Tomorrow, it will be the qualifying heats for men's single canoe (C1) and men's kayak (K1). Each paddler will get two runs on the course, and the better of his two scores will determine his position in the standings. Sixteen athletes are entered in the C1 class, and the top twelve performers in the qualifying heats will advance to the semifinal round on Tuesday. In K1, the field of 21 will be pared down to fifteen, and those fifteen will race in the semis on Wednesday.
The women's kayak (K1W) and men's single canoe (C2) classes will have their qualifying heats on Monday. Twenty-one K1Ws will be reduced to fifteen, while twelve C2s will be trimmed to ten. Both classes will have their semifinals on Thursday.
Artificial courses have been the rule for Olympic slaloms. The only Olympic slalom ever held on a natural river was the one in 1996, held about two hours outside Atlanta on Tennessee's Ocoee River, a dam-controlled river whose bed had undergone extensive alteration for the event. As nice as it is to race slalom on a natural river, the typical Olympic city does not have one nearby that meets all specifications for a world-class competition. So the engineers go to work. The Eiskanal at Augsburg was an existing channel that diverted water from a river to a nearby industrial district, and construction crews installed the obstacles to create waves, eddies, and holes. The other Olympic venues--La Seu d'Urgell, Penrith (outside Sydney), Athens, and Beijing--are concrete courses built from scratch that use powerful pumps to recirculate water from the bottom back to the top. The Athens venue, located on the property of the old airport at Helleniko, was unique in that it used saltwater pumped from the Saronic Gulf.
A significant issue for any Olympic city is what happens to all those venues once the Games are over, and I'm happy to say that the courses at Augsburg, La Seu, and Penrith are still regular stops on the international slalom circuit. The course on the Ocoee River, sadly, sits dewatered and unused except for a handful of days each summer when water is released for commercial rafting. I'm not sure about the status of the Athens and Beijing venues at this time. As whitewater slalom has a long tradition in Great Britain, I am hopeful that the Lee Valley Whitewater Centre will continue to be used for training, racing, and recreation for many years to come. A description of the venue is available here.
I'd been agonizing over whether I should attempt to make any medal predictions, or even mention athletes to watch, as I would very likely end up looking stupid. Fortunately, Jamie McEwan has gallantly assumed that risk in this article for Canoe and Kayak magazine. Jamie won the bronze medal in C1 at that first Olympic slalom on the Eiskanal in '72, and is anything but stupid when it comes to talking about the sport.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Itasca to the Gulf
Martha and Meghan and I got together to paddle this morning. Meghan couldn't paddle long because of an 11 o'clock meeting, but Martha and I paddled all the way up to the mouth of the Wolf River and back.
When we reached the Wolf we saw four people paddling down the Mississippi. We went over to say hi, and learned that they had put their two canoes on Lake Itasca (the headwaters of the Mississippi) eight weeks ago and were on their way to the Gulf of Mexico. I would guess a dozen or so people make this epic trip each year (it's the canoeing equivalent of hiking the Appalachian Trail), and it's always fun to run into a "through-paddler" while I'm out on the river.
When we reached the Wolf we saw four people paddling down the Mississippi. We went over to say hi, and learned that they had put their two canoes on Lake Itasca (the headwaters of the Mississippi) eight weeks ago and were on their way to the Gulf of Mexico. I would guess a dozen or so people make this epic trip each year (it's the canoeing equivalent of hiking the Appalachian Trail), and it's always fun to run into a "through-paddler" while I'm out on the river.
Why I don't like the Olympics
I hate the Olympics.
Seriously. I can't stand them.
Anybody who's been reading this blog knows that I've been posting frequently in anticipation of the Games that open this Friday. Why do I waste time writing about something I hate?
It's complicated.
It ought to be very simple. Children in this country take up sports they enjoy, as do children in other countries all over the world. In each sport in each country, stars emerge. A kid proves he's the best in his neighborhood, then his county, then his state, then his region of the country, then the entire country... and then what? The Olympics, of course, where he goes up against the kids who have risen to the top of the sport in their countries. The winner is, in the truest sense, the Champion of the World. (And yes, I am talking about female athletes too; I use the pronouns "he" and "his" because it is less awkward than saying "he or she" and "his or her" every time.)
But in the real world, things are never that simple.
So much is unfair in the modern Olympics that I don't even know where to begin. The financial machinery might be the most obvious place. With the world's biggest corporations pouring their sponsorship into the Games and its telecast, somebody is getting rich, but it sure isn't the athletes. In a near-zero-sponsorship sport like canoe and kayak racing, the boat and gear, the travel, the lodging, the tutors who help the kid catch up on missed schoolwork... all that stuff is paid for by the parents in most cases. And so it's no coincidence that almost all the participants in small sports like that come from affluent backgrounds. But the higher-profile sports like gymnastics and track and field don't fare that much better. Even some two- or three-time Olympians in these sports are scraping to get by on a piecemeal patchwork of small-time sponsorships, part-time jobs, "reallocated" student loans, and, last but not least, family support. The only exceptions are people who have become household names like Michael Phelps and... Michael Phelps.
The only way I can think of to change the distribution of wealth in favor of the athletes is for the athletes to refuse to participate under any other circumstances. But that will never happen. I mean, how do you ask an athlete on the verge of his one best shot at the Games to go on strike? The corporate overlords who profit from the Olympics are sitting on a golden egg of athlete exploitation that the college football barons in this country can only dream of.
Then there is the issue of inequality among the different sports. Some sports get hours and hours of television coverage; others get none. And to a certain extent that's understandable: if market research has revealed that fifty million viewers enjoy watching women's gymnastics while only fifty thousand care to watch something like canoe and kayak racing, common sense says there should be more of the former on TV than the latter.
More complex is the issue of what sports get to be in the Olympics, and how those sports are treated once they are in.
In 1992, when whitewater slalom returned to the Olympics after a 20-year absence, each nation was allowed to enter three boats in each of the four Olympic classes (men's single canoe, men's double canoe, women's kayak, and men's kayak). In the twenty years since, that number has shrunk to one boat per class, if the nation has even qualified one. Flatwater sprint has felt a similar squeeze: in 1992, there were 17 U.S. paddlers on the lake in Castelldefels outside Barcelona. This summer on Dorney Lake outside London, there will be two. Two! One male 200-meter kayaker and one female 500-meter and 200-meter kayaker. No canoeists. No tandem boats or fours.
Granted, the U.S. is not very strong in canoe and kayak racing. But in nations that are strong, such as Slovakia, Germany, and France in slalom, and Hungary, Germany, and the Czech Republic in flatwater, athletes who would likely be in the medal hunt are sitting at home because their nations were allowed only one boat per class.
The International Olympic Committee, wishing to control the overall size of the Olympic Games, has capped the number of canoe and kayak athletes at 328. That includes slalom and sprint athletes, whom the IOC treats as participants in one sport even though the two disciplines are as different as swimming is from diving. Some of those spots are reserved for parts of the world that have little or no tradition of canoe and kayak racing, like Africa and South America, because the International Canoe Federation wants to promote paddlesports in those places (a noble purpose, though it does shut out deserving athletes in stronger canoe/kayak nations). And in the coming years, as the IOC strives for more gender equality by bringing in women's canoe classes (also a good thing), existing classes likely will be eliminated. My guess is that the addition of women's single canoe in slalom will be accompanied by the loss of a K4 class in flatwater.
Having been in charge of a few events myself (on a much smaller scale, of course), I can understand the IOC's desire to keep the Olympics a manageable size. But not all sports are being subjected to the same degree of constraint. In track and field (of which I am a big fan, having been a high school and college runner myself), nations have been allowed to enter up to three athletes per event (provided they meet the Olympic qualifying standard) throughout my lifetime, and that remains unchanged. Sure, even under this format some medal-capable athletes may fall short, but I feel better telling an athlete "Tough luck... you didn't make it" when there are three spots available than when there is only one.
In any case, the sport of canoe and kayak racing has not thrived during its inclusion on the Olympic programme. Participation in whitewater slalom has plummeted. When I started racing C1 slalom in the mid 1990s, there were about forty entrants at nationals in the C1 class alone. That number was up near a hundred in the 80s and 70s, when slalom was not even in the Olympics. But in the last decade, the number in has typically been fewer than fifteen.
I doubt the Olympics is solely to blame for this decline; whitewater paddling has seen many changes to its culture that have shifted the focus away from slalom as an ideal way to develop skills. These days I sense that most recreational boaters see slalom as the domain of "elite athletes only" or some pejorative term like "racer-heads" or "fitness-nazis."
But when I was racing, I could see some internal fissures forming in the slalom community that I think were helped along by the sport's Olympic status. By the late 90s, USA Canoe/Kayak, feeling the pressure to contribute their share to the U.S. medal count, was working to identify and separate those it deemed Olympic material from the Joe-Six-Pack types like me. They did so mostly in subtle ways that were hard to pin down, though at one point a USACK official, in an e-mail blast regarding the number of people entered in the team trials, complained that some of us "didn't belong there." Ouch. I mostly just went about my training and didn't let it bother me, but I wonder how many people who might have liked to try the sport were discouraged by such attitudes.
Meanwhile, we put up with sports that, at least in my opinion, should not be in the Olympics.
If I were the chief poobah with absolute power to decide if a sport gets to be in the Olympics, I would most definitely work to control the size of the Games. I would start with this line of questioning: "Is an Olympic gold medal the true pinnacle of achievement in this sport? Is a trip to the Olympics the ultimate experience for an athlete in this sport?" And if the answer is anything shy of an emphatic "YES!", that sport would not make the cut.
You know where I'm going with this, don't you?
That's right: Bye-bye, men's basketball.
I'm sure that many, if not all, members of the U.S. men's basketball team are genuinely proud to be on the Olympic team. Certainly, when cameras and microphones are pointed their way, most of them have the diplomatic common sense to say, "Oh yes, it's an honor to represent my country." But you will never convince me that Lebron James is as enthusiastic about playing in the Olympics as he is about winning the NBA title, which he did just last month. To me, it seems the Olympics is more something that an NBA player might do during his summer vacation if you beg him nicely enough and maybe bribe him a little. In any case, while I have great respect for the sport of basketball--as I do for almost every sport--I don't think it needs to be in the Olympics.
Of course, the main reason it is in the Olympics is the TV ratings it supposedly generates. I remember well my utter disgust as I watched the opening ceremony for the 2000 Games in Sydney, hoping to catch a half-second glimpse of one of my slalom-racing friends during the Parade of Nations, only to listen to the announcers for NBC (which at the time held the broadcast rights for the NBA) exclaim, fawningly, "Oh, look! There's Alonzo Mourning! And look! There's Vince Carter!" Give me a break.
Well, I haven't exhausted my laundry list of gripes with the modern-day Olympic Games, but maybe it's time to give it a rest. After all, most of the time I try to avoid negativity on this blog. So... what nice things can I say about the Olympics? Given all the complaints I have lain out above, why do I even bother with them?
The simplest answer is, the athletes. None of the problems cited above is their fault. From the most famous basketball player to the most obscure taekwondo artist, all are simply going about their business of working to be the best they can be in their sports. They have successfully jumped through whatever absurd hoops have been placed before them, and deserve their moment in the spotlight. For sports like slalom and sprint canoeing, whose access to the Games is restricted, the Olympics is not as legitimate a championships as the Worlds, but it is at least a chance for many of the best athletes to perform for an audience that otherwise would not even know the sport exists.
So from this point on, I will encourage my readers to enjoy the Games, and I promise no more negativity (unless somebody from the IOC or the USOC or the ICF or USACK does or says something really stupid, in which case I reserve the right to respond with commensurate snarkiness).
Go to this link for information on what will be broadcast when in your TV market. The whitewater slalom competition runs from July 29 to August 2, and the flatwater sprint regatta is August 6-11.
I'll probably pass on tonight's opening ceremony, but I'll certainly be watching whatever canoe and kayak coverage is available, along with some track and field and maybe a few other things. I'll share whatever the paddlers do here.
So... here's to those two weeks every four years when the rest of the world gets to see what you and I know every day--that there's simply nothing better than paddling a boat.
Seriously. I can't stand them.
Anybody who's been reading this blog knows that I've been posting frequently in anticipation of the Games that open this Friday. Why do I waste time writing about something I hate?
It's complicated.
It ought to be very simple. Children in this country take up sports they enjoy, as do children in other countries all over the world. In each sport in each country, stars emerge. A kid proves he's the best in his neighborhood, then his county, then his state, then his region of the country, then the entire country... and then what? The Olympics, of course, where he goes up against the kids who have risen to the top of the sport in their countries. The winner is, in the truest sense, the Champion of the World. (And yes, I am talking about female athletes too; I use the pronouns "he" and "his" because it is less awkward than saying "he or she" and "his or her" every time.)
But in the real world, things are never that simple.
So much is unfair in the modern Olympics that I don't even know where to begin. The financial machinery might be the most obvious place. With the world's biggest corporations pouring their sponsorship into the Games and its telecast, somebody is getting rich, but it sure isn't the athletes. In a near-zero-sponsorship sport like canoe and kayak racing, the boat and gear, the travel, the lodging, the tutors who help the kid catch up on missed schoolwork... all that stuff is paid for by the parents in most cases. And so it's no coincidence that almost all the participants in small sports like that come from affluent backgrounds. But the higher-profile sports like gymnastics and track and field don't fare that much better. Even some two- or three-time Olympians in these sports are scraping to get by on a piecemeal patchwork of small-time sponsorships, part-time jobs, "reallocated" student loans, and, last but not least, family support. The only exceptions are people who have become household names like Michael Phelps and... Michael Phelps.
The only way I can think of to change the distribution of wealth in favor of the athletes is for the athletes to refuse to participate under any other circumstances. But that will never happen. I mean, how do you ask an athlete on the verge of his one best shot at the Games to go on strike? The corporate overlords who profit from the Olympics are sitting on a golden egg of athlete exploitation that the college football barons in this country can only dream of.
Then there is the issue of inequality among the different sports. Some sports get hours and hours of television coverage; others get none. And to a certain extent that's understandable: if market research has revealed that fifty million viewers enjoy watching women's gymnastics while only fifty thousand care to watch something like canoe and kayak racing, common sense says there should be more of the former on TV than the latter.
More complex is the issue of what sports get to be in the Olympics, and how those sports are treated once they are in.
In 1992, when whitewater slalom returned to the Olympics after a 20-year absence, each nation was allowed to enter three boats in each of the four Olympic classes (men's single canoe, men's double canoe, women's kayak, and men's kayak). In the twenty years since, that number has shrunk to one boat per class, if the nation has even qualified one. Flatwater sprint has felt a similar squeeze: in 1992, there were 17 U.S. paddlers on the lake in Castelldefels outside Barcelona. This summer on Dorney Lake outside London, there will be two. Two! One male 200-meter kayaker and one female 500-meter and 200-meter kayaker. No canoeists. No tandem boats or fours.
Granted, the U.S. is not very strong in canoe and kayak racing. But in nations that are strong, such as Slovakia, Germany, and France in slalom, and Hungary, Germany, and the Czech Republic in flatwater, athletes who would likely be in the medal hunt are sitting at home because their nations were allowed only one boat per class.
The International Olympic Committee, wishing to control the overall size of the Olympic Games, has capped the number of canoe and kayak athletes at 328. That includes slalom and sprint athletes, whom the IOC treats as participants in one sport even though the two disciplines are as different as swimming is from diving. Some of those spots are reserved for parts of the world that have little or no tradition of canoe and kayak racing, like Africa and South America, because the International Canoe Federation wants to promote paddlesports in those places (a noble purpose, though it does shut out deserving athletes in stronger canoe/kayak nations). And in the coming years, as the IOC strives for more gender equality by bringing in women's canoe classes (also a good thing), existing classes likely will be eliminated. My guess is that the addition of women's single canoe in slalom will be accompanied by the loss of a K4 class in flatwater.
Having been in charge of a few events myself (on a much smaller scale, of course), I can understand the IOC's desire to keep the Olympics a manageable size. But not all sports are being subjected to the same degree of constraint. In track and field (of which I am a big fan, having been a high school and college runner myself), nations have been allowed to enter up to three athletes per event (provided they meet the Olympic qualifying standard) throughout my lifetime, and that remains unchanged. Sure, even under this format some medal-capable athletes may fall short, but I feel better telling an athlete "Tough luck... you didn't make it" when there are three spots available than when there is only one.
In any case, the sport of canoe and kayak racing has not thrived during its inclusion on the Olympic programme. Participation in whitewater slalom has plummeted. When I started racing C1 slalom in the mid 1990s, there were about forty entrants at nationals in the C1 class alone. That number was up near a hundred in the 80s and 70s, when slalom was not even in the Olympics. But in the last decade, the number in has typically been fewer than fifteen.
I doubt the Olympics is solely to blame for this decline; whitewater paddling has seen many changes to its culture that have shifted the focus away from slalom as an ideal way to develop skills. These days I sense that most recreational boaters see slalom as the domain of "elite athletes only" or some pejorative term like "racer-heads" or "fitness-nazis."
But when I was racing, I could see some internal fissures forming in the slalom community that I think were helped along by the sport's Olympic status. By the late 90s, USA Canoe/Kayak, feeling the pressure to contribute their share to the U.S. medal count, was working to identify and separate those it deemed Olympic material from the Joe-Six-Pack types like me. They did so mostly in subtle ways that were hard to pin down, though at one point a USACK official, in an e-mail blast regarding the number of people entered in the team trials, complained that some of us "didn't belong there." Ouch. I mostly just went about my training and didn't let it bother me, but I wonder how many people who might have liked to try the sport were discouraged by such attitudes.
Meanwhile, we put up with sports that, at least in my opinion, should not be in the Olympics.
If I were the chief poobah with absolute power to decide if a sport gets to be in the Olympics, I would most definitely work to control the size of the Games. I would start with this line of questioning: "Is an Olympic gold medal the true pinnacle of achievement in this sport? Is a trip to the Olympics the ultimate experience for an athlete in this sport?" And if the answer is anything shy of an emphatic "YES!", that sport would not make the cut.
You know where I'm going with this, don't you?
That's right: Bye-bye, men's basketball.
I'm sure that many, if not all, members of the U.S. men's basketball team are genuinely proud to be on the Olympic team. Certainly, when cameras and microphones are pointed their way, most of them have the diplomatic common sense to say, "Oh yes, it's an honor to represent my country." But you will never convince me that Lebron James is as enthusiastic about playing in the Olympics as he is about winning the NBA title, which he did just last month. To me, it seems the Olympics is more something that an NBA player might do during his summer vacation if you beg him nicely enough and maybe bribe him a little. In any case, while I have great respect for the sport of basketball--as I do for almost every sport--I don't think it needs to be in the Olympics.
Of course, the main reason it is in the Olympics is the TV ratings it supposedly generates. I remember well my utter disgust as I watched the opening ceremony for the 2000 Games in Sydney, hoping to catch a half-second glimpse of one of my slalom-racing friends during the Parade of Nations, only to listen to the announcers for NBC (which at the time held the broadcast rights for the NBA) exclaim, fawningly, "Oh, look! There's Alonzo Mourning! And look! There's Vince Carter!" Give me a break.
Well, I haven't exhausted my laundry list of gripes with the modern-day Olympic Games, but maybe it's time to give it a rest. After all, most of the time I try to avoid negativity on this blog. So... what nice things can I say about the Olympics? Given all the complaints I have lain out above, why do I even bother with them?
The simplest answer is, the athletes. None of the problems cited above is their fault. From the most famous basketball player to the most obscure taekwondo artist, all are simply going about their business of working to be the best they can be in their sports. They have successfully jumped through whatever absurd hoops have been placed before them, and deserve their moment in the spotlight. For sports like slalom and sprint canoeing, whose access to the Games is restricted, the Olympics is not as legitimate a championships as the Worlds, but it is at least a chance for many of the best athletes to perform for an audience that otherwise would not even know the sport exists.
So from this point on, I will encourage my readers to enjoy the Games, and I promise no more negativity (unless somebody from the IOC or the USOC or the ICF or USACK does or says something really stupid, in which case I reserve the right to respond with commensurate snarkiness).
Go to this link for information on what will be broadcast when in your TV market. The whitewater slalom competition runs from July 29 to August 2, and the flatwater sprint regatta is August 6-11.
I'll probably pass on tonight's opening ceremony, but I'll certainly be watching whatever canoe and kayak coverage is available, along with some track and field and maybe a few other things. I'll share whatever the paddlers do here.
So... here's to those two weeks every four years when the rest of the world gets to see what you and I know every day--that there's simply nothing better than paddling a boat.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Paddle where you live
My nephew Joel, 14, is in town visiting, and late yesterday afternoon he joined me in the tandem boat. We paddled to the mouth of the harbor and out onto the river, ferried over to the Arkansas side, paddled up to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and returned to the harbor and back to the dock. It was definitely a workout for me. It was Joel's first time on the actual river; our previous sessions were limited to the harbor. Joel was an unbelievably cute little boy and I miss that, but I also enjoy being able to do more grown-up things with him now that he's bigger (he's bigger than I am now, in fact).
I have another thought about my visit to St. Louis. While paddling at Chain of Rocks Sunday morning, I talked with Michael Dee and Rory King about what it's like to be a whitewater paddler living in a whitewater-poor part of the country. Michael remarked that when he travels to the mountains to paddle challenging whitewater, people are surprised to see a guy from Missouri who actually knows what he's doing. I told him I had had similar experiences.
I think it is very important to paddle whatever water is available in the place you live. Here in Memphis a favorite pasttime for many of our local whitewater boaters is to complain about the lack of any whitewater in this area. I, too, wouldn't mind having more whitewater close by, but it seems to me that many paddlers fail to recognize the value of paddling on the water we do have here. Your can improve your skills dramatically simply by spending a little time in your boat each day before or after work, on a lake or the Wolf River or the Mississippi River. You can develop strong, efficient strokes paddling on flatwater or slow-moving water, free of the distraction of waves and holes and drops. And then, when you do make the trip to the Plateau or the Appalachians or the Rockies, the skills you've mastered will enable you to style the rapids.
The people racing slalom in the Olympics next week know this. Elite racers probably spend seventy percent or more of their training time on water that's Class II or easier. Training on Class III-IV water every day would tear up their bodies, and the precise technique they develop on the easier water carries over to the bigger stuff. When I was racing slalom in the 1990s, I did a lot of drills on flatwater and had a little moving-water gate course set up on the Wolf, and while I'm sure I didn't get as good as I would have someplace where there were more racers, more whitewater, and some coaching, I did at least get to where I could enter events like the nationals and the national team selection trials and perform competently.
I have another thought about my visit to St. Louis. While paddling at Chain of Rocks Sunday morning, I talked with Michael Dee and Rory King about what it's like to be a whitewater paddler living in a whitewater-poor part of the country. Michael remarked that when he travels to the mountains to paddle challenging whitewater, people are surprised to see a guy from Missouri who actually knows what he's doing. I told him I had had similar experiences.
I think it is very important to paddle whatever water is available in the place you live. Here in Memphis a favorite pasttime for many of our local whitewater boaters is to complain about the lack of any whitewater in this area. I, too, wouldn't mind having more whitewater close by, but it seems to me that many paddlers fail to recognize the value of paddling on the water we do have here. Your can improve your skills dramatically simply by spending a little time in your boat each day before or after work, on a lake or the Wolf River or the Mississippi River. You can develop strong, efficient strokes paddling on flatwater or slow-moving water, free of the distraction of waves and holes and drops. And then, when you do make the trip to the Plateau or the Appalachians or the Rockies, the skills you've mastered will enable you to style the rapids.
The people racing slalom in the Olympics next week know this. Elite racers probably spend seventy percent or more of their training time on water that's Class II or easier. Training on Class III-IV water every day would tear up their bodies, and the precise technique they develop on the easier water carries over to the bigger stuff. When I was racing slalom in the 1990s, I did a lot of drills on flatwater and had a little moving-water gate course set up on the Wolf, and while I'm sure I didn't get as good as I would have someplace where there were more racers, more whitewater, and some coaching, I did at least get to where I could enter events like the nationals and the national team selection trials and perform competently.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Chain of Rocks
This past weekend Martha and I made a trip up to St. Louis to visit some friends and watch our favorite baseball team, the St. Louis Cardinals, play a couple of games. Just so happens that there's a short whitewater section on the Mississippi River a few miles above downtown St. Louis. The "Chain of Rocks," as it's known, develops its best whitewater features at low water, and that's certainly where the Mississippi has been for the last couple of months. So I pulled my whitewater boat out of the weeds in the backyard and threw it up on the car.
The river is so low right now that it's almost too low even for playing at Chain of Rocks. The playspots are ideal from about 4 feet to 7 feet on the St. Louis gauge, and when I went out there Sunday morning the level was 2.1 feet. There were still several decent playspots, but they were all shallow and bony. But on a sizzling mid-July day, even shallow and bony whitewater is hard to beat.
Here are a few photos from Sunday morning. They were taken with cell phones and similar devices, so the resolution is not very good. But you can see what's going on.
The preferred putin is on the Illinois side. There is access on the Missouri side, but there's a history of vehicle break-ins there. Most of the good playspots are on the Missouri side, so the paddler who puts in on the Illinois side must do the long ferry across. I spend lots of time on the Mississippi at Memphis, so the ferry doesn't really faze me, but it is dreaded by whitewater-only paddlers. This photo, taken by John Niebling from the old Chain of Rocks bridge, shows me (the little speck toward bottom right) making the ferry. The white water below me is formed as the river flows over the Chain of Rocks dam. The interesting-looking tower is an old water intake structure.
I was met on the river by a group of local paddlers including Bilbo Eades and Michael Dee, who play here in the hole formed by the Blockhouse wing dam. The old Chain of Rocks bridge is just upriver; the bridge above it is Interstate 270.
Michael Dee plays around in Rookie hole. Photo by Bilbo Eades.
Here I am trying to do a flat spin in Cobblestone hole. At 2.1 feet on the St. Louis gauge, Cobblestone is by far the best whitewater feature at Chain of Rocks. Sadly, it's sort of a one-shot deal because eddy service is virtually nonexistent. Once you get blown out of it the choices are to carry up the Missouri bank (which is steep with loose rocks), to wade up the shallow area river-left of the hole (at 2.1 feet it's mostly ankle-deep, but the foot-entrapment danger might be greater at higher levels), or to give it up and entertain yourself someplace else. Photo by Bilbo Eades.
The rest of our trip was very enjoyable. I become more fond of St. Louis every time I go there. I think St. Louis and Memphis have much in common culturally and demographically, but St. Louis seems to have a little bit more of certain things that I love about Memphis. Take architecture: St. Louis has hundreds and hundreds of grand brick homes from around the turn of the 20th century. Many of them are in desperate need of restoration, but the number of them is impressive nevertheless. Here in Memphis many such structures have been torn down or, as Martha pointed out, were never built because the building boom in St. Louis might have coincided with Memphis's loss of its charter in the wake of the yellow fever epidemic.
A good example is the supremely nifty place that Martha found for us to stay: a bed and breakfast called Casa Magnolia, located on Magnolia Avenue along the northern edge of Tower Grove Park. It's a 1906-vintage home that the owners have restored beautifully.
I tend to think of bed-and-breakfast places being out in the country or in small towns, but I love the idea of having one in the heart of a big city like Casa Magnolia is. Somebody here in Midtown Memphis ought to run something like that (and, in fact, somebody does, though it's not quite as grand as this).
Anyway, I'm not about to pick up and move away from Memphis--Memphis is my home, after all, and it's got some assets that St. Louis will never have--but I sure do enjoy visiting St. Louis. I had a great time paddling my boat and watching the Cardinals take two victories from those adorably hapless Chicago Cubs. Martha, meanwhile, got in some good contra dancing and painted the landscapes of the awesome Tower Grove Park. And to top it all off, we indulged in some frozen custard at Ted Drewes, and that makes the trip worth it all by itself.
The river is so low right now that it's almost too low even for playing at Chain of Rocks. The playspots are ideal from about 4 feet to 7 feet on the St. Louis gauge, and when I went out there Sunday morning the level was 2.1 feet. There were still several decent playspots, but they were all shallow and bony. But on a sizzling mid-July day, even shallow and bony whitewater is hard to beat.
Here are a few photos from Sunday morning. They were taken with cell phones and similar devices, so the resolution is not very good. But you can see what's going on.
I was met on the river by a group of local paddlers including Bilbo Eades and Michael Dee, who play here in the hole formed by the Blockhouse wing dam. The old Chain of Rocks bridge is just upriver; the bridge above it is Interstate 270.
Michael Dee plays around in Rookie hole. Photo by Bilbo Eades.
The rest of our trip was very enjoyable. I become more fond of St. Louis every time I go there. I think St. Louis and Memphis have much in common culturally and demographically, but St. Louis seems to have a little bit more of certain things that I love about Memphis. Take architecture: St. Louis has hundreds and hundreds of grand brick homes from around the turn of the 20th century. Many of them are in desperate need of restoration, but the number of them is impressive nevertheless. Here in Memphis many such structures have been torn down or, as Martha pointed out, were never built because the building boom in St. Louis might have coincided with Memphis's loss of its charter in the wake of the yellow fever epidemic.
A good example is the supremely nifty place that Martha found for us to stay: a bed and breakfast called Casa Magnolia, located on Magnolia Avenue along the northern edge of Tower Grove Park. It's a 1906-vintage home that the owners have restored beautifully.
I tend to think of bed-and-breakfast places being out in the country or in small towns, but I love the idea of having one in the heart of a big city like Casa Magnolia is. Somebody here in Midtown Memphis ought to run something like that (and, in fact, somebody does, though it's not quite as grand as this).
Anyway, I'm not about to pick up and move away from Memphis--Memphis is my home, after all, and it's got some assets that St. Louis will never have--but I sure do enjoy visiting St. Louis. I had a great time paddling my boat and watching the Cardinals take two victories from those adorably hapless Chicago Cubs. Martha, meanwhile, got in some good contra dancing and painted the landscapes of the awesome Tower Grove Park. And to top it all off, we indulged in some frozen custard at Ted Drewes, and that makes the trip worth it all by itself.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Monday Photo Feature
Sixteen years ago I attended an Olympic slalom myself. The competition for the 1996 Atlanta Games took place on the Ocoee River near Ducktown, Tennessee.
In the photo above, U.S. kayaker Rich Weiss approaches the upstream gate at the top of Humungous rapid. An excellent first run propelled Weiss into first place, igniting thunderous applause rarely heard at a canoe and kayak race in this country. As the day went on five other racers moved ahead of Weiss, but his very respectable sixth-place finish made him the bright spot for the U.S. on the second day of racing, in which the K1 and C2 classes competed.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Essences of summer
With the posting light on this blog right now, it seems like a good time to dip once again into the archives of those columns I wrote for the Outdoors, Inc., website about a decade ago. And with another heat wave establishing itself here in the Mid South, the choice is an easy one.
In the process of going down to the river, paddling for two hours or more, and returning to my non-air-conditioned workshop, I developed a set of survival skills for this hostile climate. What follows is a list of challenges beyond the simple paddling of one's boat that one can expect in the summertime, and the methods I have adopted to cope with them.
Surviving Memphis's summer heat means water, water, and more water. Managing this water--storing it in or on the boat, and especially keeping it cold--can be a hassle. At home, I get out my Camelback, a Nalgene water bottle, and a bicycle water bottle, pack them all with ice cubes, and top them off with cold water. Then I get on my bike (the air conditioner in my van has never worked that well, and besides, the bike affords me a little extra fitness training) and make the 25-minute ride down to the Mississippi River. I leave the Nalgene bottle in a shady place on the dock. The Camelback and bicycle bottle go with me in the boat, and how I store them depends on the boat I'm paddling. A sea kayak is the best craft for taking water (and even some food, if you like) because it has hatches and deck line. But I don't own a sea kayak. If I paddle my surf ski, which is a sit-on-top boat, I mount the bicycle bottle with a small bungee cord on the console between the foot braces, and I stuff the Camelback between my knees, where it balances well enough but is not all that comfortable. Maybe one day I'll install a shock cord on the deck behind the seat and mount the Camelback there. If I paddle my old marathon race boat, which is a more traditional kayak design (i.e., I sit inside it), I can put the Camelback behind the seat and chuck the bicycle bottle wherever I want.
The ice cubes in the bicycle bottle have melted long before I got down to the river, so I drink that water first. The Camelback is better insulated, so its water stays cool throughout a paddling session. The Nalgene bottle, on the other hand, is always a problem. It seems that no matter where I put it on the dock, it's like bath water by the end of a two-hour-plus workout. If I'm lucky, I've remembered to stick a dollar in my bike bag so I can buy a cold gatorade drink at the nearby grocery.
Our dock is attached to the side of a marina, and is made of treated wood planks. The marina deck surface is a matrix of concrete panels. Both these surfaces are exposed to direct sunlight, and become broiling hot on a mid-summer day. I have to plan my trips between the boat rack and the locker where I keep my paddle, making sure I do all the walking I have to do before taking off my shoes. Unless I'm wearing diaper-thick pants, which of course I'm not in the summertime, I have to find a shady spot on the dock to sit while I apply sunscreen or take off my shoes, lest I end up with toasted buns.
Sunscreen is a necessity, even on a cloudy day. And it is a real mess when applied to sweat-glistened skin. I try to have a towel nearby so that when I'm finished greasing up, I can wipe my hands before I get lotion on my paddle and other things that shouldn't get greasy.
The most intense sunlight I've ever experienced is in the American Southwest, but here in the Mid South the sun gets its point across. I find myself pausing when I pass beneath bridges, just to get an extra 20 seconds of relief from the blazing sun.
A typical paddling session for me involves leaving the dock and going south about a mile and a half to the mouth of the harbor, paddling onto the river and heading north (upstream) for several miles, turning around and coming back south (downstream) to the mouth of the harbor, and paddling north in the harbor until I'm back at the dock. And so in every session, I split time between paddling into the wind and paddling away from it. A headwind is my bitter enemy in the wintertime, but in summer it is a dear friend. It provides a surprising amount of relief from the stifling heat and humidity, and it keeps my face dry. Without it, sweat begins to trickle down my forehead, fogging up my sunglasses and, when mixed with a little sunscreen, delivering an excruciating sting to my eyes.
State law requires that every boater, regardless of craft, wear a Personal Flotation Device or have one in the boat, and at one time or another I've been checked by a representative of every law enforcement agency on the river--Tennessee Wildlife Resources, Arkansas Game and Fish, the U.S. Coast Guard. So I do my best to abide by this law. Wearing a PFD is not so comfortable on a hot steamy day, and my friends in sea kayaks usually stick theirs under their deck lines and go shirtless. If I'm paddling my marathon boat, I can stow the life jacket inside, but on my surf ski I just have to wear it--another good reason to put some shock cord on my stern deck someday.
Of course, one solution to the heat problem is to paddle early in the morning or in the evening. I'm kind of a wuss when it comes to getting out of bed early, but the times I have gotten myself down to the river at 7:00 AM or earlier, I haven't regretted it. With the sun low, there's a lot more shade to be found, and the water is soothingly placid. And of course, when you're finished, you've got the whole day ahead to take care of other things. Paddling in the evening is great, except that the mosquitoes around the dock are really out for blood at that time of day. It's all I can do to get my boat put away and run back up to the parking lot before I've been eaten alive.
We humans can go back to our air-conditioned homes when we're done paddling, but the critters must deal with the heat around the clock. On the Mississippi River and in Memphis Harbor, the turtles seem to relish it. Every day I see a half-dozen or more lined up atop every floating log. When they see me coming, they file off into the water--ploop, ploop, ploop! I've always thought that was kind of cute. Meanwhile, the ducks, who I see swimming vigorously throughout the winter, don't care so much for the heat, and I only see them in the shade of bridges and trees on hot summer days. The fish might be the most active of all species, and I'm not quite sure of the reason; could be there's less oxygen in the water in summer, or maybe they're going after insects just above the surface. In any case, fish can be seen "airing it out" all summer, and that's pretty exciting when one sails across your bow.
I've now spent the last two summers almost entirely here in Memphis, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a real grind. I'm looking forward to cooler weather a few weeks from now. But in a way, there's something oddly invigorating about working and playing outdoors in the moist heat day after day. Somehow, the little things in life seem sweeter. Water tastes better. Each end-of-the-day routine--showering, lounging on the sofa, going to bed and nodding off to sleep--feels a little bit nicer if you've been sweating all day.
Unless there's a big competition coming up, summer is a good time for the paddler to slow down a little. Work on your stroke form and posture, maybe experiment with different paddle lengths and feather angles. But be sure, also, to take some time to explore and just enjoy the river and the wildlife. And don't worry: a lovely Mid South autumn is on the way.
In the process of going down to the river, paddling for two hours or more, and returning to my non-air-conditioned workshop, I developed a set of survival skills for this hostile climate. What follows is a list of challenges beyond the simple paddling of one's boat that one can expect in the summertime, and the methods I have adopted to cope with them.
Surviving Memphis's summer heat means water, water, and more water. Managing this water--storing it in or on the boat, and especially keeping it cold--can be a hassle. At home, I get out my Camelback, a Nalgene water bottle, and a bicycle water bottle, pack them all with ice cubes, and top them off with cold water. Then I get on my bike (the air conditioner in my van has never worked that well, and besides, the bike affords me a little extra fitness training) and make the 25-minute ride down to the Mississippi River. I leave the Nalgene bottle in a shady place on the dock. The Camelback and bicycle bottle go with me in the boat, and how I store them depends on the boat I'm paddling. A sea kayak is the best craft for taking water (and even some food, if you like) because it has hatches and deck line. But I don't own a sea kayak. If I paddle my surf ski, which is a sit-on-top boat, I mount the bicycle bottle with a small bungee cord on the console between the foot braces, and I stuff the Camelback between my knees, where it balances well enough but is not all that comfortable. Maybe one day I'll install a shock cord on the deck behind the seat and mount the Camelback there. If I paddle my old marathon race boat, which is a more traditional kayak design (i.e., I sit inside it), I can put the Camelback behind the seat and chuck the bicycle bottle wherever I want.
The ice cubes in the bicycle bottle have melted long before I got down to the river, so I drink that water first. The Camelback is better insulated, so its water stays cool throughout a paddling session. The Nalgene bottle, on the other hand, is always a problem. It seems that no matter where I put it on the dock, it's like bath water by the end of a two-hour-plus workout. If I'm lucky, I've remembered to stick a dollar in my bike bag so I can buy a cold gatorade drink at the nearby grocery.
Our dock is attached to the side of a marina, and is made of treated wood planks. The marina deck surface is a matrix of concrete panels. Both these surfaces are exposed to direct sunlight, and become broiling hot on a mid-summer day. I have to plan my trips between the boat rack and the locker where I keep my paddle, making sure I do all the walking I have to do before taking off my shoes. Unless I'm wearing diaper-thick pants, which of course I'm not in the summertime, I have to find a shady spot on the dock to sit while I apply sunscreen or take off my shoes, lest I end up with toasted buns.
Sunscreen is a necessity, even on a cloudy day. And it is a real mess when applied to sweat-glistened skin. I try to have a towel nearby so that when I'm finished greasing up, I can wipe my hands before I get lotion on my paddle and other things that shouldn't get greasy.
The most intense sunlight I've ever experienced is in the American Southwest, but here in the Mid South the sun gets its point across. I find myself pausing when I pass beneath bridges, just to get an extra 20 seconds of relief from the blazing sun.
A typical paddling session for me involves leaving the dock and going south about a mile and a half to the mouth of the harbor, paddling onto the river and heading north (upstream) for several miles, turning around and coming back south (downstream) to the mouth of the harbor, and paddling north in the harbor until I'm back at the dock. And so in every session, I split time between paddling into the wind and paddling away from it. A headwind is my bitter enemy in the wintertime, but in summer it is a dear friend. It provides a surprising amount of relief from the stifling heat and humidity, and it keeps my face dry. Without it, sweat begins to trickle down my forehead, fogging up my sunglasses and, when mixed with a little sunscreen, delivering an excruciating sting to my eyes.
State law requires that every boater, regardless of craft, wear a Personal Flotation Device or have one in the boat, and at one time or another I've been checked by a representative of every law enforcement agency on the river--Tennessee Wildlife Resources, Arkansas Game and Fish, the U.S. Coast Guard. So I do my best to abide by this law. Wearing a PFD is not so comfortable on a hot steamy day, and my friends in sea kayaks usually stick theirs under their deck lines and go shirtless. If I'm paddling my marathon boat, I can stow the life jacket inside, but on my surf ski I just have to wear it--another good reason to put some shock cord on my stern deck someday.
Of course, one solution to the heat problem is to paddle early in the morning or in the evening. I'm kind of a wuss when it comes to getting out of bed early, but the times I have gotten myself down to the river at 7:00 AM or earlier, I haven't regretted it. With the sun low, there's a lot more shade to be found, and the water is soothingly placid. And of course, when you're finished, you've got the whole day ahead to take care of other things. Paddling in the evening is great, except that the mosquitoes around the dock are really out for blood at that time of day. It's all I can do to get my boat put away and run back up to the parking lot before I've been eaten alive.
We humans can go back to our air-conditioned homes when we're done paddling, but the critters must deal with the heat around the clock. On the Mississippi River and in Memphis Harbor, the turtles seem to relish it. Every day I see a half-dozen or more lined up atop every floating log. When they see me coming, they file off into the water--ploop, ploop, ploop! I've always thought that was kind of cute. Meanwhile, the ducks, who I see swimming vigorously throughout the winter, don't care so much for the heat, and I only see them in the shade of bridges and trees on hot summer days. The fish might be the most active of all species, and I'm not quite sure of the reason; could be there's less oxygen in the water in summer, or maybe they're going after insects just above the surface. In any case, fish can be seen "airing it out" all summer, and that's pretty exciting when one sails across your bow.
I've now spent the last two summers almost entirely here in Memphis, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a real grind. I'm looking forward to cooler weather a few weeks from now. But in a way, there's something oddly invigorating about working and playing outdoors in the moist heat day after day. Somehow, the little things in life seem sweeter. Water tastes better. Each end-of-the-day routine--showering, lounging on the sofa, going to bed and nodding off to sleep--feels a little bit nicer if you've been sweating all day.
Unless there's a big competition coming up, summer is a good time for the paddler to slow down a little. Work on your stroke form and posture, maybe experiment with different paddle lengths and feather angles. But be sure, also, to take some time to explore and just enjoy the river and the wildlife. And don't worry: a lovely Mid South autumn is on the way.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Summertime, and the livin' is easy
The summer doldrums are here: the big races (for me) are over, and I'm just trying to stay active. I'm paddling several times a week, and doing other things (notably bike riding) that fall into the "general fitness" category.
On Monday I rode my bike to the river and did a steady hour-long paddle. I'm still working on that slight alteration to my stroke that I mentioned several weeks ago, and it's starting to feel more natural. Off-season times like this are ideal for changes to technique.
On Tuesday, I rode my bike the length of the Greenline again. I did so under the pretense of running an errand: our county's collection site for household hazardous waste (paint, burned-out lightbulbs, solvents, and so on) is open on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and it's located in Shelby Farms at the far end of the Greenline, so I gathered up all the household hazardous waste we've accumulated (fortunately, it all fit into the milk crate on the back of my bike), and took it out there.
Yesterday I did another hour-long paddle. The Mississippi River is getting seriously low: it's now more than seven feet below zero on the Memphis gauge. The all-time record low is -10.7 feet in the summer of 1988.
Today my wife Martha came down to the river with me, and we met our friend Meghan down there. We're entering another bad heat wave, but there was a nice breeze blowing on the river that made it bearable.
This is only my second post of the week. As the training has trailed off, so has my enthusiasm for writing about it. I do plan to keep the blog going through the Olympic Games, primarily as a service to my readers who might not be inclined to pay attention to the canoe and kayak competitions on their own. After that... that might be it for My Training Blog By Elmore. But we'll see.
On Monday I rode my bike to the river and did a steady hour-long paddle. I'm still working on that slight alteration to my stroke that I mentioned several weeks ago, and it's starting to feel more natural. Off-season times like this are ideal for changes to technique.
On Tuesday, I rode my bike the length of the Greenline again. I did so under the pretense of running an errand: our county's collection site for household hazardous waste (paint, burned-out lightbulbs, solvents, and so on) is open on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and it's located in Shelby Farms at the far end of the Greenline, so I gathered up all the household hazardous waste we've accumulated (fortunately, it all fit into the milk crate on the back of my bike), and took it out there.
Yesterday I did another hour-long paddle. The Mississippi River is getting seriously low: it's now more than seven feet below zero on the Memphis gauge. The all-time record low is -10.7 feet in the summer of 1988.
Today my wife Martha came down to the river with me, and we met our friend Meghan down there. We're entering another bad heat wave, but there was a nice breeze blowing on the river that made it bearable.
This is only my second post of the week. As the training has trailed off, so has my enthusiasm for writing about it. I do plan to keep the blog going through the Olympic Games, primarily as a service to my readers who might not be inclined to pay attention to the canoe and kayak competitions on their own. After that... that might be it for My Training Blog By Elmore. But we'll see.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Monday Photo Feature
Here we are eight years later, and another Olympics is about to begin in London. Whitewater slalom racers will compete from July 29 to August 2 at the Lee Valley White Water Centre in Hertfordshire, and flatwater sprint racers will compete from August 6 to August 11 at Eton Dorney, Buckinghamshire.
I have many photos of whitewater slalom racing in my collection, but practically none of flatwater sprint racing. That's because I have never raced in a flatwater sprint regatta, even though the paddling I'm doing nowadays is much more like flatwater sprint than whitewater slalom. So I apologize to readers of this blog who would like to see more flatwater photos. There's a nifty new video here that captures many of the aspects of flatwater racing. I'm in awe of the stroke rates of some of the kayakers. I'm simply not capable of moving my arms that fast.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Trashy art
Today I rode my bike to the river and paddled for 70 minutes. Got some surfing behind a southbound tow that must have been behind schedule because the pilot was running his engines all-out. Towboats going downriver usually let the current do most of the work and use their engines for steering.
More on the topic of plastics in our waterways: here's a website for an organization that sponsors a traveling exhibit of artwork made from waste plastic recovered from beaches and other marine areas. The exhibit's purpose is to raise awareness of the plastic litter problem and to encourage people to reduce their consumption of products that contain plastics.
More on the topic of plastics in our waterways: here's a website for an organization that sponsors a traveling exhibit of artwork made from waste plastic recovered from beaches and other marine areas. The exhibit's purpose is to raise awareness of the plastic litter problem and to encourage people to reduce their consumption of products that contain plastics.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Litter
Today I went downtown and paddled for 40 minutes. I drove, because I had errands to run en route.
We finally got a good, heavy thunderstorm here in Memphis yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, though we needed it badly, heavy rain is not conducive to an appealing harbor.
When I arrived at the dock today I found a harbor teeming with floatable trash. A heavy rain washes plastic bottles, aluminum cans, styrofoam containers, plastic grocery bags, and more from the streets into the storm drains, and flushes them into Wolf River Harbor. The city recently constructed a rack at the mouth of Bayou Gayoso, just across the harbor from my marina, to capture litter from that creek, and it's doing its job: today it was full of trash. But the reality is that there are many other creeks and ditches that deliver litter into the harbor.
I think the only way we'll ever truly solve this problem is getting people to stop littering. That's a daunting task. Legend, if not historical fact, has it that Memphis was once a litter-free city; in the middle of the last century, Mayor Edward H. "Boss" Crump maintained a zero-tolerance policy regarding littering and other nuisance behaviors. I'm a little skeptical about such an approach working today. Memphis is now a much larger and more diverse city than it was in the 1950s and before. And, more significantly, today's litter contains materials that did not exist at the height of Boss Crump's reign. I'm talking about plastic.
All litter is unsightly, but plastics have the added problem of never breaking down. Ever. At least, not in sixty or seventy years, which is about how long plastics have been in existence. A piece of plastic such as a soda bottle will break down into tiny microscopic pieces, but those pieces do not chemically decompose.
This article addresses the issue of microscopic plastic particles that now permeate the oceans. Scientists are unsure whether toxins from the plastics are moving up the food chain, but it seems likely. Plastics have been around for such a short time that the long-term consequences for humans and other species might not be known for a long time.
Some plastics are supposedly recyclable--the curbside recycling program here in Memphis accepts No. 1 plastics (most soda bottles) and No. 2 plastics (most gallon milk jugs)--but what takes place is not actually recycling but something called "downcycling." In other words, a soda bottle cannot be melted down and recast into another soda bottle; it can only be "downcycled" into a lower-grade plastic.
There are in fact numerous uses for downcycled plastics. For instance, whitewater boat manufacturer Jackson Kayak uses plastic downcycled from old boats to make accessory parts such as seats and bulkheads. But this practice merely slows down the accumulation of plastic waste. It does not eliminate it.
For my part, I try to reduce my use of plastics wherever I can.
Soda bottles is a very easy area to do so. My best advice is not to drink soda in the first place: I (mostly) quit drinking soda a few years ago, and I don't miss it at all. If you do buy soda, look to see if it's available in cans rather than plastic bottles. Some of the higher-end sodas, like Snapple and IBC Root Beer and Jones Soda, come in glass bottles.
And whatever you do, please do not buy bottled water. More often than not its quality is no better than that of the water from your tap. Here in Memphis, where we have excellent tap water, bottled water is inferior. When you pay for a bottle of water, what you're paying for is the cost of the bottling and transportation of the product. And once you've drunk it you've got that bottle to get rid of.
Other ways to reduce your plastic use is to go shopping with cloth bags so you won't bring home a bunch of plastic bags; if you routinely get a cup of coffee in a coffee shop or convenience store, take your own mug rather than use one of the styrofoam cups the store provides (styrofoam is a type of plastic, in case you didn't know); and, well... buy things that last. Get a durable ice chest, not one of those styrofoam ones that are good for two uses at best. Get something better than those 15-dollar plastic chairs for your deck. Get good quality toys for your kids instead of that plastic junk from Walmart and Toys 'R' Us that's broken by the end of one day. I've seen these things and more floating in the harbor and the river.
Sorry if I'm getting a little preachy. I seem to get this way whenever there's a heavy rain in the downtown Memphis watershed.
We finally got a good, heavy thunderstorm here in Memphis yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, though we needed it badly, heavy rain is not conducive to an appealing harbor.
When I arrived at the dock today I found a harbor teeming with floatable trash. A heavy rain washes plastic bottles, aluminum cans, styrofoam containers, plastic grocery bags, and more from the streets into the storm drains, and flushes them into Wolf River Harbor. The city recently constructed a rack at the mouth of Bayou Gayoso, just across the harbor from my marina, to capture litter from that creek, and it's doing its job: today it was full of trash. But the reality is that there are many other creeks and ditches that deliver litter into the harbor.
I think the only way we'll ever truly solve this problem is getting people to stop littering. That's a daunting task. Legend, if not historical fact, has it that Memphis was once a litter-free city; in the middle of the last century, Mayor Edward H. "Boss" Crump maintained a zero-tolerance policy regarding littering and other nuisance behaviors. I'm a little skeptical about such an approach working today. Memphis is now a much larger and more diverse city than it was in the 1950s and before. And, more significantly, today's litter contains materials that did not exist at the height of Boss Crump's reign. I'm talking about plastic.
All litter is unsightly, but plastics have the added problem of never breaking down. Ever. At least, not in sixty or seventy years, which is about how long plastics have been in existence. A piece of plastic such as a soda bottle will break down into tiny microscopic pieces, but those pieces do not chemically decompose.
This article addresses the issue of microscopic plastic particles that now permeate the oceans. Scientists are unsure whether toxins from the plastics are moving up the food chain, but it seems likely. Plastics have been around for such a short time that the long-term consequences for humans and other species might not be known for a long time.
Some plastics are supposedly recyclable--the curbside recycling program here in Memphis accepts No. 1 plastics (most soda bottles) and No. 2 plastics (most gallon milk jugs)--but what takes place is not actually recycling but something called "downcycling." In other words, a soda bottle cannot be melted down and recast into another soda bottle; it can only be "downcycled" into a lower-grade plastic.
There are in fact numerous uses for downcycled plastics. For instance, whitewater boat manufacturer Jackson Kayak uses plastic downcycled from old boats to make accessory parts such as seats and bulkheads. But this practice merely slows down the accumulation of plastic waste. It does not eliminate it.
For my part, I try to reduce my use of plastics wherever I can.
Soda bottles is a very easy area to do so. My best advice is not to drink soda in the first place: I (mostly) quit drinking soda a few years ago, and I don't miss it at all. If you do buy soda, look to see if it's available in cans rather than plastic bottles. Some of the higher-end sodas, like Snapple and IBC Root Beer and Jones Soda, come in glass bottles.
And whatever you do, please do not buy bottled water. More often than not its quality is no better than that of the water from your tap. Here in Memphis, where we have excellent tap water, bottled water is inferior. When you pay for a bottle of water, what you're paying for is the cost of the bottling and transportation of the product. And once you've drunk it you've got that bottle to get rid of.
Other ways to reduce your plastic use is to go shopping with cloth bags so you won't bring home a bunch of plastic bags; if you routinely get a cup of coffee in a coffee shop or convenience store, take your own mug rather than use one of the styrofoam cups the store provides (styrofoam is a type of plastic, in case you didn't know); and, well... buy things that last. Get a durable ice chest, not one of those styrofoam ones that are good for two uses at best. Get something better than those 15-dollar plastic chairs for your deck. Get good quality toys for your kids instead of that plastic junk from Walmart and Toys 'R' Us that's broken by the end of one day. I've seen these things and more floating in the harbor and the river.
Sorry if I'm getting a little preachy. I seem to get this way whenever there's a heavy rain in the downtown Memphis watershed.
One more OICKR video
Outdoors, Inc., has posted one more race video on its You Tube channel. It captures the overall race experience very nicely.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Cooler
Finally, we have a break in the heat. The high temperatures have been in the 80s for the last several days, and we've gotten a bit of rain, though not nearly as much as we need.
Yesterday I rode my bike down to the river and paddled for 60 minutes. A towboat was coming upriver as I reached the mouth of the harbor, so I paddled down below it and got a few nice rides on its wake.
Here's another video from the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race on June 16. It's actually an expanded version of the Greg Barton interview video I linked to back on June 20. This one has some pre-race footage, as well as some shots from a Go Pro camera mounted on the stern deck of Barton's boat.
Yesterday I rode my bike down to the river and paddled for 60 minutes. A towboat was coming upriver as I reached the mouth of the harbor, so I paddled down below it and got a few nice rides on its wake.
Here's another video from the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race on June 16. It's actually an expanded version of the Greg Barton interview video I linked to back on June 20. This one has some pre-race footage, as well as some shots from a Go Pro camera mounted on the stern deck of Barton's boat.
Monday, July 9, 2012
Monday Photo Feature
Babcock has since hung up his slalom racing paddle, but Larimer (in the yellow helmet above) has stayed in the sport, competing in both C1 and C2. Last month, Larimer and C2 partner Eric Hurd made the 2012 U.S. Olympic Team and will start their preliminary heat in London on the 30th of this month. Among the U.S. C2s they beat out for the Olympic spot was a reunited team of Hepp and McCleskey.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Red-lining it on the Greenline
I've put some miles on my bicycle these last two days and gotten real cozy with this heat wave we're having.
Here in Memphis we have a new bike-pedestrian path that's been open a little over a year. It's on the bed of an abandoned CSX Railroad line that runs from the eastern edge of Midtown out to Shelby Farms, a large park on the city's eastern outskirts. Before yesterday I had never gotten around to riding the Greenline, as it's known, but WKNO, our local public radio affiliate whose studio is out near Shelby Farms, was hosting a "food truck rodeo" yesterday, and I figured that was all the excuse I needed to get out on the Greenline. After all, who doesn't love a food truck rodeo?
There are supposed to be plans in the works to make the Greenline more accessible to all Midtown residents, but that day hasn't arrived yet, so I had to snake my way through the not-so-bike-friendly area between my house and the Greenline's western terminus. After that it was smooth sailing all the way out east. The Greenline is an asphalt trail that at least for now is smooth as silk. It crosses several city streets, and each crossing has a button-activated signal you can use to stop the traffic if it's too heavy for a comfortable crossing. Between these crossings the Greenline is pleasantly secluded, passing through wooded areas and heavy brush with an occasional glimpse of a backyard. Then, after you pass beneath the eastern leg of Interstate 240, you approach the Wolf River, and this is where I think the Greenline is most scenic. Here a long bridge carries the path over swampy bottomland and the Wolf itself.
I hummed a happy tune as I enjoyed this trek through the heart of our fine city. Once I crossed the Wolf, the trail entered the open landscape of Shelby Farms, and as the sun beat down relentlessly, the reality of how hot it was began to sink in.
Then I reached the Greenline's end, and realized I wasn't entirely sure how to find the WKNO studio. I had driven there before, but from my bicycle the area looked quite different. I had stupidly forgotten to look up the studio's street address. I spent the next hour wandering around, trying one street until I was sure it wasn't the right one, then back-tracking and trying another. The heat was taking its toll: my water bottle, which I had packed with ice back at the house, was now the temperature of bath water. And I was worried that the food truck rodeo would be over by the time I finally found it, depriving me of much-needed fuel for the trip back home.
But finally, I found the place. There before me was spread an array of beautiful food trucks. I enjoyed a fish taco from the Tamale Trolley, followed by a bison taco from the truck of a restaurant called Fuel. After that I went over to Yo Lo Frozen Yogurt in anticipation of a cold creamy dessert... but they didn't have any yogurt! They were only selling lunch food. I was bitterly disappointed and had to settle for a shaved-ice sort of thing from a nearby truck.
With my energy stores recharged, I headed back to the Greenline. I had a nice-enough ride back but it was getting too god-awful hot. I soldiered on until I was back in my air-conditioned home, where I ran some tepid water into the bathtub and soaked for a while before taking a nice nap. Later on I looked up the weather online and found that the day's high had been 102 with a heat index value of 108.
For today's exercise, I rode my bike down to the river, a very short hop compared to yesterday's marathon. Then I paddled for an hour. This morning started slightly cooler than the previous few mornings, but by the time I was back in the harbor paddling toward the dock the day was starting to sizzle. The ride home felt longer than the ride down there.
What was I saying the other day about immersing oneself in the heat? Well, I've immersed.
Here in Memphis we have a new bike-pedestrian path that's been open a little over a year. It's on the bed of an abandoned CSX Railroad line that runs from the eastern edge of Midtown out to Shelby Farms, a large park on the city's eastern outskirts. Before yesterday I had never gotten around to riding the Greenline, as it's known, but WKNO, our local public radio affiliate whose studio is out near Shelby Farms, was hosting a "food truck rodeo" yesterday, and I figured that was all the excuse I needed to get out on the Greenline. After all, who doesn't love a food truck rodeo?
There are supposed to be plans in the works to make the Greenline more accessible to all Midtown residents, but that day hasn't arrived yet, so I had to snake my way through the not-so-bike-friendly area between my house and the Greenline's western terminus. After that it was smooth sailing all the way out east. The Greenline is an asphalt trail that at least for now is smooth as silk. It crosses several city streets, and each crossing has a button-activated signal you can use to stop the traffic if it's too heavy for a comfortable crossing. Between these crossings the Greenline is pleasantly secluded, passing through wooded areas and heavy brush with an occasional glimpse of a backyard. Then, after you pass beneath the eastern leg of Interstate 240, you approach the Wolf River, and this is where I think the Greenline is most scenic. Here a long bridge carries the path over swampy bottomland and the Wolf itself.
I hummed a happy tune as I enjoyed this trek through the heart of our fine city. Once I crossed the Wolf, the trail entered the open landscape of Shelby Farms, and as the sun beat down relentlessly, the reality of how hot it was began to sink in.
Then I reached the Greenline's end, and realized I wasn't entirely sure how to find the WKNO studio. I had driven there before, but from my bicycle the area looked quite different. I had stupidly forgotten to look up the studio's street address. I spent the next hour wandering around, trying one street until I was sure it wasn't the right one, then back-tracking and trying another. The heat was taking its toll: my water bottle, which I had packed with ice back at the house, was now the temperature of bath water. And I was worried that the food truck rodeo would be over by the time I finally found it, depriving me of much-needed fuel for the trip back home.
But finally, I found the place. There before me was spread an array of beautiful food trucks. I enjoyed a fish taco from the Tamale Trolley, followed by a bison taco from the truck of a restaurant called Fuel. After that I went over to Yo Lo Frozen Yogurt in anticipation of a cold creamy dessert... but they didn't have any yogurt! They were only selling lunch food. I was bitterly disappointed and had to settle for a shaved-ice sort of thing from a nearby truck.
With my energy stores recharged, I headed back to the Greenline. I had a nice-enough ride back but it was getting too god-awful hot. I soldiered on until I was back in my air-conditioned home, where I ran some tepid water into the bathtub and soaked for a while before taking a nice nap. Later on I looked up the weather online and found that the day's high had been 102 with a heat index value of 108.
For today's exercise, I rode my bike down to the river, a very short hop compared to yesterday's marathon. Then I paddled for an hour. This morning started slightly cooler than the previous few mornings, but by the time I was back in the harbor paddling toward the dock the day was starting to sizzle. The ride home felt longer than the ride down there.
What was I saying the other day about immersing oneself in the heat? Well, I've immersed.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
From the archives: an interview with Calvin Hassel
| Since I'm taking something of a training break right now, I've been thinking about what else I might post here that would be useful and interesting to canoe and kayak racers. For several years, from 2002 to '05, I wrote a series of columns about paddling to be posted monthly on the Outdoors, Inc., website. I think one of the better ones I did was an interview in the summer of '05 with Calvin Hassel, a many-time national champion in marathon canoe racing. Here's a re-post. Marathon canoe races are long-distance events (typically 6-20 miles, though a few races are much longer) that take place on flat rivers and lakes. A marathon race boat looks pretty similar to what most people think of as a canoe, though it's a little funky-looking to meet length and width requirements without giving up too much speed. Unlike whitewater and flatwater sprint canoeists, the competitors sit in their boats rather than kneel, and switch sides with their paddles throughout a race. In the U.S. the governing body for this type of canoe racing is the United States Canoe Association (USCA). The USCA style of marathon canoeing is unique to North America. Although the International Canoe Federation (ICF) conducts an annual marathon world championships, it is not quite the same as the USCA version. Competitors in the ICF event use boats similar to those of flatwater sprint rather than the style of boats recognized by the USCA. |
Race director Rocky Caldwell, who for years has raced in the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race at Memphis, told our Memphis racing group several years ago that we were welcome to race our kayaks in his event. Always eager to support canoe and kayak racing in this part of the country, I made my first trip to Tecumseh in 2004.
A guy from Nebraska named Calvin Hassel was there, and according to the canoeists I knew, he was a big deal. They told me he'd won a bunch of national titles and even a world title or two in marathon canoeing. They deemed him the prohibitive favorite to win the C-1 class, the first on the schedule for the weekend.
I was one of two kayakers in attendance, the other being my friend and fellow Memphian Joe Royer. We lined up with the solo canoeists for an eight-mile out-and-back circuit on Norfork Lake. The gun went off, and Joe and I sprinted to the front of the pack. I looked to my right, and saw that Hassel was sitting on my wake. Mike Herbert, an Arkansan who had competed in kayak at our Memphis race a few times, also had joined our lead pack in his marathon canoe. While I admired the way these guys got out with the kayaks in the early going, I wasn't that concerned.
Don't get me wrong--Hassel was obviously a strong, fit athlete whose lanky frame propelled his craft with a smooth efficiency that was breathtaking to behold. And Herbert was no less than a three-time Olympian and three-time world championships medalist in flatwater kayaking who had finished a heartbeat out of the medals in 1988.
But come on... let's be realistic. These guys were in canoes. Their paddles each had one blade. I, meanwhile, consider myself a pretty strong, fit guy in my own right, and I was paddling a 20-foot-long, 18-inch-wide surf ski with a rudder, and using a two-bladed wing paddle. If these guys wanted to use my wake to get a jump on the other C-1s, fine, but I was confident that they would fall off the pace by and by.
As we chugged along through the July swelter, not only did Hassel not fall off the pace, but after a while he took the lead and started pushing the pace. I began to feel a hairline crack or two in my confidence, but I told myself to relax and get a good ride on his wake while he did the work for a while. Herbert, too, was hanging right there with us. I suspect Joe was having the same thoughts I was.
As we neared the turnaround point, Hassel hugged the inside of a curve and used the shallow water there to try to bump us off his wake. This guy's not just strong, he's a good tactician too, I thought. As he made the buoy-turn at the Udall marina, he threw in a surge to try to break away, and I had to sprint as hard as I could to stay on his stern. We were now over the hump, and though Joe had fallen back a bit, Herbert was right behind me. "Just stay on his wake... just stay on his wake," I told myself.
I stayed on Hassel's wake, and then... I wasn't on his wake anymore. I can't recall exactly where it happened, but at some point not long after the buoy-turn Hassel threw in another surge and dropped me.
By this time, I was feeling pretty taxed by all the effort I'd put in to keep up, and we still had nearly four miles to go. I dropped back onto Herbert's wake to get a little rest, still not giving up hope that Hassel would fade and I could mount one final charge.
But it was no use. Hassel wasn't slowing down, and I was worn down for good. Mike and I chatted a bit to pass the time as Hassel built his lead in front of us, but with a mile to go I could no longer keep up with Mike either, and he left me behind. My body and brain cried "¡No Más!" as I limped across the finish line, soundly whipped by a pair of athletes who had, in essence, beaten me with one hand tied behind their backs.
As the Fourth approached this year, I looked forward to returning to Tecumseh to get another shot at Calvin. I know it sounds lame for a kayaker to get all fired up to race a canoeist--sort of like a high school senior picking a fight with a sixth-grader--but Hassel is no ordinary canoeist. I, meanwhile, had been racing well all spring, and had just returned from a couple of weeks of training at altitude in the Rocky Mountains, and felt ready to go fast with the king of marathon.
But I wanted more than that. This year, I also wanted to talk to Calvin and pick his brain a little. Thinking that many other paddlers might have the same desire, I decided to draw up a list of questions for him to answer that I could post in my column.
I got to Tecumseh ready for a great race and a great interview... and Calvin wasn't there. He had a conflict and had to miss the race for the first time in about a decade. So I came home empty-handed.
I tried to think of other topics for this month's column, but my infatuation with Calvin's marathon mastery continued to "Hassel" me (sorry--had to get that one in somewhere). Finally, I decided to write Calvin an e-mail asking if he would answer my questions online.
I was a little nervous about doing so. I hadn't really talked to Calvin at that 2004 race other than to say "Hey man, good race," and didn't know if he was the kind of guy who would be receptive to such a thing.
I was also aware that e-mail is generally not the best way to conduct an interview. The interviewer is deaf and blind to all kinds of facial expressions and emphasis on words and stuff like that, and he can't immediately ask follow-up questions or get his subject to elaborate on certain points.
Fortunately, Calvin put me at ease on both those concerns. He replied to my initial query by saying "Sure, send me the questions." I sent them, and then waited a week or ten days without hearing a thing. Just when I'd begun to worry that Calvin had gotten busy with other things and forgotten about my questionnaire, he sent me his responses, and I couldn't believe the care he had put into them. His words give a glimpse into the mind of a thoughtful, focused athlete for whom achieving his best possible physical performance is an integral part of a fulfilling life. I wrote him back once, just to clarify a couple of points he'd made, but otherwise his responses were ready for publication in this column.
I doubt I can adequately thank Calvin for his time and effort, but I suspect he'll be happy if the readers of this column learn all they can from his insights.
And now, the interview.
EH: Can you tell me your date of birth, height, and weight?
CH: 1/19/64; 6’3”; and 180 pounds.
EH: Where do you live now?
CH: Grand Island, Nebraska.
EH: What is your occupation?
CH: Service technician.
EH: Do you have a spouse? Children? If so, how many? Do they paddle?
CH: My wife Robyn used to train with me and race occasionally until we had kids. We have a son Levi who is 10 and a daughter Shannon who is 6. The kids have done a few sprint races with me but they don’t want to go out and paddle very often.
EH: What C-1 design do you use?
CH: I use a Crozier-built J203.
EH: What does "J203" stand for?
CH: The "J" means it is a canoe designed by Gene Jensen. 203 is the model--the 200 series are 18'6" boats designed for bigger paddlers, and the 203 is the newest boat in that series. They also make a 190 series that is for medium-sized paddlers and a 180 series for small paddlers.
EH: Have you added any special outfitting to your boat?
CH: No.
EH: What brand and length of paddle do you use? Have you made any special modifications to it, or do you just use it "off the rack"?
CH: I race with Zaveral paddles. In C-1 I use a 53” standard “off the rack” paddle.
EH: How many national titles have you won in the various classes (C-1, C-2, C-2 Mixed, etc)?
CH: I have won 38 national marathon titles: 13 in C-1, 13 in C-2 Mixed, 11 in C-2 Men’s, and one in Juniors.
EH: Any other major titles or significant victories?
CH: I have over 500 wins in my career but I think my wins at Nationals have been the most important. I have won some “world championships,” but to me those titles don’t mean a lot in marathon paddling since most of the world does not paddle sit-down canoes. At Nationals from 1991 to 2001 I had a streak of 11 consecutive wins in C-1 and in C-2 Mixed, along with 9 "triple wins" (C-1 Men's, C-2 Men’s, and C-2 Mixed).
EH: Did you win your "world championships" at the ICF marathon worlds, or at something else?
CH: There are two "world championship" races that I have competed in. The first was called the WOMPO World Championships. WOMPO was a world paddling organization that was formed with the USA, Canada, and Australia. They used to hold events in the U.S. every three years. The other race was a C-1 race held in New York that was called the Professional World C-1 Championships. Both of the races were set up to use USCA specs, and the "world championship" part was a bit of a stretch considering only a handful of countries paddle this type of boat.
I was a member of the U.S. team that won a silver medal in the 1000-meter event at the 1995 IDBF Dragon Boat World Championships in Yueyang, China. To me, that meant a little more considering that over 20 different countries competed at that race.
EH: When, how, and where did you start paddling? Was paddling strictly a "for-fun" endeavor at first, or did you get into competition right away?
CH: I have always lived in Nebraska. My family was involved in canoe racing when I was growing up. I did my first marathon race at age 10. Most of my early racing was for fun. I raced the youth class with my cousin and later began paddling the men’s classes with my father. As I got older I slowly got more serious about racing and training. I was in my early 20s before I started training hard, and past my mid 20s before I was training at the level I do now.
EH: Where do you do most of your training now--a lake? a river? Is the water deep or shallow? Is it an open body of water exposed to wind, or is it more protected? If it's a river, is it wide or narrow? Straight or meandering?
CH: I do most of my training on the Platte River. The Platte is a very shallow sand-bottomed river with moderate current. It is narrow and protected from the wind where I paddle on it. I think it is a challenging river to train on. Normally the channel is 1-3 feet deep which forces you to do a lot of paddling off the bottom in the shallows. Even the deeper sections are hard because you can still feel the bottom. The Platte normally dries up during the summer so I end up paddling on some small area lakes later in the season.
EH: On average, how many times a week do you paddle? What are the challenges of arranging it around your work schedule?
CH: Currently I paddle five times a week and put about 10-12 hours per week on the water from February to September. I have had to cut my training back about 20% from what I used to do in the 90s. With a full-time job and two kids I cannot find enough time to train and rest the way I used to. I have to try to efficiently manage my spare time and fit in everything as best I can.
EH: What special types of workouts do you do for things like speed and lactic threshhold?
CH: In the spring I develop a speed base with fartlek training and then during the summer months I try to do two interval workouts per week.
EH: Do you lift weights? If so, how often? What type of lifting do you do (low weight/many reps vs. high weight/few reps; free weights vs. machines vs. body-weight exercises)?
CH: I lift weights in the winter, normally from November to March. I lift three times per week with medium to high reps of low weights. I do a combination of free weights and machines. This is mainly for conditioning and to restore some strength I may have lost by paddling long hours in the summer.
EH: What special steps, physical and mental, do you take before a nationals or other major competition?
CH: I try to come into the race as rested and focused as I can.
EH: Browsing the results of the 2004 Nationals in Michigan, I see you got beat in C-1 by a guy named Andy Triebold. Is he a long-time rival, or a more recent appearance on the racing scene? Any thoughts on the challenge he presents?
CH: I have been racing Andy for the last 10 years. He has really improved recently. In the last few years he moved to Michigan and has been training very hard with a group of top paddlers in that area. In 2003 Andy was very tough in C-1 but I had a slight edge in speed. Last year I could not match his top-end speed anymore. He seems even faster this season. Andy is still in his 20s and getting better all the time. He will be the favorite in C-1 at Nationals and I will have my work cut out for me trying to stay with him.
EH: Can you name any books or videos or other materials that you've found particularly helpful or inspiring?
CH: Most of what I have learned about paddling has come from other top racers. By talking to them and paddling with and against them I have picked up a lot. I do spend a lot of time watching “home videos” of races. I think technique is one of the most important aspects of being fast in a boat and watching videos of yourself and other racers can really help improve the way you paddle.
EH: In your competitive travels, are there places you've been that you consider particularly interesting?
CH: I really like a lot of the marathon races that I do. Some are very interesting events and others are held on neat rivers. One race that stands out is Shawinigan. Shawinigan is an approximately 15-hour, 3-day staged C-2 race in Quebec. In the USA there are not many spectators at most marathon races, but Shawinigan has over 100,000 people watching the race and is a very challenging event. Also, races that are different seem to stand out. I have done some outrigger racing in Hawaii and Tahiti along with some Dragon boat racing in Asia and Europe. It is interesting to compete in different types of races using basically the marathon paddling stroke.
EH: Can you think of any really interesting or memorable experiences?
CH: I guess most of my memorable experiences are important races that I have had through the years. Racing Greg Barton in C-1 at Nationals in '93 and '94 comes to mind. Those were two of my toughest C-1 wins. I also had some memorable races against Serge Corbin at Canadian Nationals and Canton in C-1.
EH: And finally, the tough one... WHY do you do this???
CH: Growing up I spent a lot of time paddling with my father. He enjoyed canoeing more than anyone I have ever met. I guess his interest in the sport has influenced me a lot. I like the competition but I also enjoy just being out on the water.
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