Race tomorrow

I did a 40-minute paddle in Mississippi Sound this morning, during which I did six 12-stroke sprints.  Then I got in the car and made the long drive to Little Rock, the host city for tomorrow's Arkansas River Canoe and Kayak Race.

Because of abnormally high river levels, the race tomorrow will actually take place on the Little Maumelle River, upstream of the usual race course.  Race director Phil Capel says it will be a 5-mile out-and-back course.

In recent years Olympic hopefuls based at the Chesapeake Boathouse training center in Oklahoma City have been coming to this race.  Among them has been Kaitlyn McElroy, one of the best female paddlers in the U.S. (she has spanked me each of the last three years).  McElroy won all three of her events at the U.S. Team Trials about a month ago, making her the woman to watch in this early stage of the new Olympic quadrennium.  Other registrants whose names I recognize are Austin Schwinn and Maggie Hogan, whom there's a fair chance we'll see on our tee vees in 2016.

I'm just sitting here in my motel room hoping I can get a good night's rest and be ready to go in the morning.  I'm feeling a bit tired and sore even though I don't think I overdid it during my vacation trip.  That tandem boat is big and heavy, and I guess muscling it around in that wind was enough to leave me feeling a bit achy.  Whatever the case, I'll just get out there tomorrow and try to paddle as hard as I can.

Windswept

My nephew Joel and I paddled the tandem boat for an hour this afternoon in Mississippi Sound.  A stiff wind from the southeast continues to blow, and we got bounced around plenty.  By the time we returned to the dock, I felt as though I'd paddled a whole lot more than just an hour.  It probably was not the best thing for me to do two days before a big competition, but niece-and-nephew time trumps training concerns.

The surf was up

This afternoon the kids went off with their father for adventures elsewhere on Dauphin Island, and the wind was strong enough that I'm not sure I really would have wanted to take them paddling anyway, so I went out myself for 70 minutes.

The southeast wind was certainly howling, and as I got farther offshore the waves started getting pretty hefty.  But hey, that's what surf skis like mine were designed for.  Once I got used to the conditions I started having a lot of fun.

In the middle of the session I managed to get in eight of my 12-stroke sprints to work the ATP-CP system.  I do have a race this Saturday, after all, though I expect the water to be much flatter than what I was on today.

Vacation

I'm relaxing with my mother, sister, brother-in-law, a niece, and two nephews on Dauphin Island near the mouth of Mobile Bay.  I'm an awfully regimented guy at home, so a little unstructured time for a few days will probably do me some good.

I thought the day might get by without any paddling, but in the late afternoon the kids expressed some interest, so I took each of them out.  A thunderstorm had blown through earlier and the wind was rather fierce--not a great day for novice paddlers.  The worst place was where we put in, where the waves slammed against a little concrete wall lining the bank.  But the kids handled it all reasonably well.

Back to the coast

This morning I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 50 minutes.  I did a shorter, faster lactic tolerance workout: 12 intervals of 45 seconds on, 30 seconds off.

Then I put the boat on the car and headed south.  I took Interstate 55 to Jackson and U.S. 49 and Mississippi 67 down to Ocean Springs.  There I met Nick and Dana, subjects of today's photo feature, for supper.  It was nice to visit with them and hear the latest on their wedding plans.

The last leg of my trip took place on Interstate 10 and a bunch of secondary roads that eventually got me to Dauphin Island on the Alabama Gulf Coast.  I'll be spending the rest of this week with my mother and my sister's family in a rented beach house.  I have the tandem boat with me, for what kind of uncle doesn't take his nieces and nephews paddling?

Monday photo feature

After the Vicksburg race last month, Joe Royer snapped this photo of me with Nick Kinderman and Dana Robertson.  They're getting married this coming weekend at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  I'm happy for the kids.

Boat designs

Yesterday morning I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 60 minutes.

For the last several days we've had what my friend Joe likes to call "chamber of commerce" weather--sunshine, clear skies, low humidity, lots of people out running, riding bikes, just playing in the parks... the sort of scenes every chamber of commerce depicts in its promotional brochures.

The water was calm down at the harbor yesterday, so I got out the K1.  As usual, I had comfortable stretches and unstable stretches.  As I mentioned in Thursday's post, my fastest time in those pieces I did in my surf ski from the monorail bridge to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge was 2:14; out of curiosity, I decided to see what I could do in the K1.  In the much less stable boat, I didn't feel like I had the hammer down like I did in the ski, and every forward stroke felt like partly a brace.  My watch was on my wrist so I couldn't really look at it while I paddled, but as I neared the finish line I guessed that my time would be 2:25 or 2:30.  Then I crossed the line and looked at my watch: 2:15.  Hmm.

I've always had the attitude that "It's not the boat; it's the motor."  I hate it when people say things like "Oh, Billy beat Charley because he was in a faster boat," and I sneer at people who are always buying new boats because they weren't having the race results they wanted in their previous boats.

But boat design certainly is not irrelevant.  There's an obvious speed difference between a surf ski and a sixteen-foot touring boat, and I guess the speed difference between a K1 and a surf ski, while less obvious, is nevertheless genuine.  I do a couple of races each year--including next Saturday's race at Little Rock--that are attended by Olympic hopefuls in K1s.  I've always wondered if their fitness and their power and their technique are really that much better than mine.  I expect that if we all raced in surf skis they would still beat me, for they are younger and their training is more elite-level than mine, but maybe they wouldn't beat me by as much.

Long sprints

Today I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 60 minutes.

I paddled to the mouth of the harbor and upriver to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, where I looped around and returned to the harbor.  Once back in the harbor, I commenced my workout for today: four sprints from the monorail bridge to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  This distance is somewhere around 500 meters--probably a little less, as I was doing these pieces as fast as 2:14 and I don't think I'm much better than a 2:20 guy in a true 500 meters.

In any case, it was some good mental preparation for my race at Little Rock next Saturday, where the last 1500 meters or so of the course, passing under four or five bridges, always seems to last forever.

Some novel cross training

I took a break from training today, but I hardly felt as though I was lying around.  Parts of the downstairs in my building were ankle-deep in water from yesterday's torrential rains, so I spent the day sweeping water out with a push broom.  As I worked, I was reminded of another Olympic sport: curling.

I admit I know little about the sport of curling, but I do know that it includes a couple of guys (or gals) armed with brooms, which they use to manipulate the ice ahead of the sliding stone, thereby influencing the stone's direction.

Who knew that there is a place in the Olympic movement for housework skills?  As I moved swiftly along, trying to steer the water flow toward the front door with my broom, I thought perhaps I should learn more about this obscure sport.  I wonder what sort of athletes excel at curling?  What body type and physique is typical of a curler?

Rainy recovery

This morning I paddled in the harbor for 60 minutes.

I'm sure I've been over this before, but it seems like a good time to mention it again.  When you do a really hard workout like the one I did yesterday, you are in fact inflicting damage on your muscles.  During recovery, your body builds the muscles back stronger than they had been before, and this is where your strength and fitness level improve.  And so the recovery periods are crucial parts of training: without them, you'll just wind up worn out and injured rather than in good shape.

Plenty of rest, full nights of sleep, and good nutrition all play a role in the recovery process.  And then there is active recovery, which is what I was doing on the water this morning.  An easy, relaxed session in the boat gets the blood flowing in your paddling muscles, washing away lactic acid and repairing the damage done by the hard workout.

It was a rainy morning here in Memphis, with a line of heavy thunderstorms moving in around nine o'clock.  The heaviest showers had moved out by the time I got down to the riverfront, but I still found myself paddling in some steady rain.  I don't really consider rain a deterrent from paddling, especially from May through October, but my mind was ill at ease because the building I recently bought has no roof on it at the moment.  Contractors are currently at work replacing the fire-damaged roof with a new one, but as of yesterday afternoon they had gotten no further than the installation of new rafters.  So I expect that when I go by there later today the ground floor will be soaking wet from water that seeped down from the second floor.  It's probably nothing we can't clean up and fix up, but it's left me with a worried mind just the same.

Aside from the rain, the harbor was calm this morning.  So I went another round in the K1.  Getting comfortable in that boat is much like renovating a burned-out building or healing the hurt of a divorce: it is a process.

Lactic tolerance

Today I did two sets of the March strength routine and paddled for 60 minutes.

In the boat I did eight intervals of 75 seconds on, 45 seconds off.  A workout like this is what some people call a lactic tolerance workout, because the body produces lactic acid during the high-intensity pieces and it doesn't have time to dissipate during the short rest intervals.

For me, the main objective of a lactic tolerance workout is to maintain precise form and technique even when the muscles are in utter agony.  I felt myself starting to flail a bit by the fourth interval in today's workout, so I adjusted by lowering the stroke rate a little while still pulling as hard as I could on the paddle.

I try to get in two or three such workouts once I'm within a month or so of a big race.  I always forget what a killer they are.  Doing this one right on top of my strength routine didn't make it any easier; it took me a long time to recover once it was done.  I started it at 0:17 and finished at 0:33, so I still had 27 minutes of paddling to complete the hour I had planned for today, and I spent that long cool-down period just paddling steady and letting my blood flow wash the lactic acid from my muscles.

Monday photo feature

Here's one from 2006: I'm crossing the finish line after racing 13.2 miles in Blackwater Sound and Florida Bay off Key Largo. The event was the Bogey and Bacall, named for the lead actors in the film Key Largo.

A new low

This morning I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 60 minutes.

Conditions were calm down at the river, so I got out the K1.  This time I lowered the seat a little: it was already on the second-lowest setting, and moving it to the lowest setting made a difference of no more than a centimeter, but I could immediately detect an improvement in stability.  The boat is still very tippy, mind you, but not as bad as it was.

It hadn't even occurred to me to adjust the seat height until I happened to read this blog post by Greg Barton right after the 2008 Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, in which he paddled his Legacy K1.

Sluggish

A busy morning pushed my training activities after lunch today.  My energy tends to flag in the mid afternoon, and it definitely was doing so today, but I fought through it.

I started with two sets of the May strength routine.  Then I went to the river and paddled for 60 minutes, doing eight intervals of 2 minutes on, 90 seconds off.  I managed to shake off the lethargy and feel strong in the boat.

Lower intensity but strong effort

Today I went to the river and paddled for 60 minutes.  Even though it was a recovery session after yesterday's workout, I still took good deliberate strokes and tried to get good solid blade pressure on each stroke.  I do not want to train myself to go slow.

Strength and endurance and high water

This morning I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 80 minutes.

On the river I did eight intervals of three minutes on, three minutes off.  Two minutes of each "on" interval were at anaerobic threshold, and the third minute was at sub-maximal intensity--basically the same workout I did back on April 29.  My arms were pretty tired from the strength work, but I maintained good form throughout the workout.

I did this workout while paddling down below the I-55 and old railroad bridges and back up the Arkansas side.  At today's Memphis gauge level of 33.8 feet, the farmland on the Arkansas side was underwater, but it looked a little too shallow for paddling.

Monday photo feature

The Mississippi River has crested at 34.0 feet on the Memphis gauge.  It's apparently going to hang out at that level for several days.

34 feet is the official flood stage here at Memphis, and it does seem pretty high after the low-water year we had last year, but almost exactly two years ago the river was some 14 feet higher.  Any residents on Mud Island who are concerned about the current river level should be reminded of the big 2011 flood, when the river was still a good four or five vertical feet shy of the houses in this photo.

Out of whack

I paddled the K1 in the harbor for 60 minutes yesterday.  I guess I had a few comfortable stretches again, but mostly what I remember is felling like every other stroke was a brace.  I guess there will be days like that, where I seem to have taken a step backward.

My body is not the same on left and right.  I guess that should be no surprise for a non-ambidextrous person like me, but I think it's more than just right-handed versus left-handed.  For a long time now I have felt a vague tightness or soreness in the oblique abdominal muscles on my right side that isn't there on my left side.  It hasn't really affected my paddling in the surf ski and other more stable boats, but in the K1 it's impossible to ignore.  I often find myself sitting on braces on my left side and shying away from full rotation on my right.  The times I've flipped in the K1, it's been to the right.

I'm not sure what's going on in my body.  Maybe I have a muscle imbalance, or a mild injury, or a chiropractic misalignment.  Like I said, it hasn't bothered me much in my other boats, so I've sort of been ignoring it, but I wonder if it will continue to be an issue in the K1.

Mild flooding

Today I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 70 minutes.  On the water I did a "pyramid" workout: pieces of 1', 2', 3', 4', 5', 4', 3', 2', 1' with 2 minutes recovery.  With 24 minutes total "on" time to 14 minutes "off" time, it was a pretty taxing workout.  But I felt pretty good as far as paddling hard while maintaining good technique.

The river is supposedly cresting today.  The Memphis gauge reading this afternoon is about 33.8 feet.  That's high enough to put the lower tier of the Greenbelt Park underwater.  I always enjoy paddling among the trees there.

I have an ouchie

I had a little accident in the workshop yesterday afternoon--cut my left thumb pretty badly:

The offending tool, a biscuit joiner, gouged right through the thumbnail.  It's not a tool I often associate with accidents, but I was sort of in a hurry and being careless, and that's how accidents usually happen in a woodworking shop.  I'm just glad it isn't any worse.

I arguably should have gone and had the thing stitched up, but for now I've decided to see how it heals on its own.  After the initial gush, it hasn't bled too badly, so I'm hoping it'll be okay.  Of course, avoiding infection is a concern, and I'm doing my best to keep it clean.  I was worried that it might hinder paddling, but it didn't really bother me at all in the boat this morning.

I paddled my K1 for 70 minutes.  I think the issue of getting comfortable in the K1 is almost entirely psychological for me.  I continue to have stretches where I'm able to relax and let the boat do its thing, only to suddenly start thinking too much and tense up.  But it seems like with each session the good stretches get a little longer.  I'm actually looking forward to a summer of paddling the K1 and just having fun with it.

I'll conclude this post with a not-so-gory photo:

One of the simple pleasures of this time of year is having the purple martens in our marina's birdhouses for a couple of weeks.

Trying to get serious about May

I've been a little slow getting it going, but I've worked up a strength routine for the month of May:

1.  Dips
2.  The core exercise that Daniele Molmenti demonstrates at 3:45 of this video
3.  Pullups
4.  Another core exercise: hanging from the pullup bar and raising my legs straight out in front of me
5.  Power cleans with a cinder block

This is a pretty short workout; I can get two sets of it done in under 20 minutes.  I try to put the highest-quality effort into it as I can: I concentrate on good form and technique and try to explode through the three dynamic exercises.

And as I mentioned in last Saturday's post, that's how I want my in-the-boat workouts to be this month, too: short but high-quality.  After two sets of the strength routine this morning, I went to the river and paddled for 60 minutes, doing eight intervals of two minutes on, 90 seconds off.  It's the same workout I've done a couple of times previously this season, but with a shorter rest interval.  It didn't really feel any more taxing than the previous workouts.

Monday photo feature

I've taken a little training break to make the twenty-hour round trip to Lincolnton, North Carolina, where my nephew, Joel, was awarded the rank of Eagle Scout over the weekend.  Becoming an Eagle Scout is a daunting challenge, and a low percentage of Boy Scouts realize the achievement.

Central among the requirements is a substantial community project.  Joel's was to conduct interviews with the surviving World War II veterans in Lincoln County.  The recorded interviews and their transcripts are now archived in the county library.  Four of these veterans made it to Joel's Court of Honor this weekend, and considering that nearly all WWII vets are in their nineties, that's not bad.

Joel is maturing into quite the man.  It doesn't seem so long ago that he was this little kid soaking up the awards ceremony after racing with me in Wolf River Harbor in 2007:

2013 has not been a very good year for me up to now.  But my life will never be a lost cause as long as I have Joel and his equally-awesome brother and sisters.  Here they all are when Joel was several years older--2010 or '11, I think:

That's Ben and Rachel in the front, getting hugged by Ada, with Joel standing.  Thank you for humoring me during this sentimental indulgence.  I promise to be back on topic within the next two days.

Contemplating the month of May

I spent all yesterday driving, and now I sit in the charming North Carolina Piedmont town of Lincolnton.  My mission: to see my nephew become and Eagle Scout tomorrow.  My mother and I plan to visit for several days and then come home Tuesday.

I'm out of the boat for this period, so I guess it's a good time to consider my training plan from  now until my two big races next month.  On June 1 there's a race at Little Rock of some 9 kilometers in distance, and two weeks after that we have the big Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race here at Memphis, a 5-kilometer dash down the Mississippi.  Both events will feature very good competition.

So I've got some work to do to get ready, but that's not all.  Just this past Monday I completed my purchase of a two-story building in which I plan to relocate my workshop downstairs and my domicile upstairs.  It sounds great, and it is great, but like everything else in my life, it's not that simple.  In January a fire ravaged a large percentage of the upstairs, and so the place is not exactly move-in ready.  I'll be paying contractors to do as much of the work as I can afford, and since that sum is all too finite, I'll be doing a lot of the work myself.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to function in my vocation as if all were normal.  Right now I'm midway through a bookcase/cabinet project for a valued client, and I want to keep that moving along as steadily as possible.

So I'm one busy guy these days, and I need to get the most I can from what training time I have.  In past years at this point in the season, I've often done my higher-intensity workouts in the middle of paddling sessions that were rather long overall: for instance, I might paddle steady for 45 minutes, then do a set of intervals that takes a half-hour or so, and then paddle steady for another 45 minutes for two hours or so in the boat.  This season I think I'm going to do all the workouts I usually do, but not paddle for so long before and after.

And this might not be a bad plan.  As Ron Lugbill has pointed out in several recent posts on his blog, modern-day research is challenging the conventional wisdom that high-volume low-intensity training is necessary, even for long-distance endurance sports.  So to some extent I'll be testing that out for myself this coming month... although I should point out that I have put in a fair amount of volume earlier this season.

Cats and dogs

It was an afternoon paddling session for me again today, and there was no "soft spring shower" this time.  I had steady rain for my first stroke, steady rain for my last stroke, and steady rain for every stroke in between.

But hey... it is a water sport, right?  Once I got going, the rain warn't no thing.  I did eight intervals of two minutes on, two minutes off.  I felt stronger throughout the workout than in similar workouts I've done this season.  Total paddling time for today: 60 minutes.

K1 paddling today

I didn't make it down to the river until this afternoon.  I've got a huge bunch of things going on that I'll talk about more when I have more time.

It was raining when I got down there, but otherwise calm (i.e., it was a "soft spring shower").  So I pulled out the K1 for the first time in several months.  The rain stopped some twenty minutes in.

I paddled for an hour, and kept the boat upright, though I felt awfully unstable much of the time.  Even so, I had stretches where I was able to relax and rotate fully and let the boat do its thing.  I do think confidence and competence will come with time in that boat, and it sounds like a good use of a hot Memphis summer.