Facing the chill with a grin

Winter has settled in here in the Mid South.  The Fahrenheit temperature is expected to rise above 50 degrees only one day this week, and that day is supposed to be a rainy day.  The overnight lows aren't just brutal right now, but they're at freezing or a bit below.  It's suitable weather for the final days of December, I suppose.

Yesterday I paddled for 60 minutes on a gray, cheerless day with a temperature in the high thirties.  I paddled out on the river, and even though it wasn't that rough besides some small waves from a barge rig, I felt a bit tentative because I really didn't feel like going for a swim.  I have in fact flipped on cold days a couple of times in the past, and each time I climbed back on my ski and carried on, but it's not an experience I relish, and I don't need to be tempting fate any more than necessary.

Today I did the December strength routine for the last time.  The next time I do strength work it will be a new month and a new routine.

Monday photo feature

One of those races I listed in yesterday's post is the Battle On The Bayou race at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  This race starts in a cove of the Back Bay of Biloxi and proceeds promptly up into Old Fort Bayou.  In this photo, taken at the 2011 edition, I am right at the bayou's mouth, about a half-mile into the race.  Although most of this race does go up Old Fort Bayou, I have never detected much opposing current.  I would characterize this race as a flatwater event.  Photo by Robbie Capel.

Pondering the year ahead

Well, once again it's been a while since I've posted here, but I've been trying to keep at least a remnant or two of training activity going.  I spent most of this past week in North Carolina with my sister's family for the Christmas holiday, and I didn't have a boat with me, but I did do my December strength routine Wednesday and Friday.  Joe and I got a 70-minute session in on Monday, just before I left.  As we move into a new month, I hope to increase my paddling from twice a week to thrice a week.

With a new year starting this coming week, perhaps it's a good time to look over my possible racing schedule for 2015.  Here's a list of events that are on my radar at the moment:

March 28: Battle on the Bayou.  About 9.5 miles on a flat coastal bayou at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

April 11: Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race.  About 22 miles down the Mississippi River from Madison Parish Port, Louisiana, to Vicksburg, Mississippi.

April 18: Top of the Teche.  A race of about 7.7 miles on Bayou Teche from Leonville to Arnaudville, Louisiana.

April 25-26: French Broad Classique.  Two races on the French Broad River near Asheville, North Carolina.  Saturday's race covers 18 miles from Blantrye Access to Westfeldt Park in Henderson County.  Sunday's race covers 16 miles from Westfeldt Park to the Asheville Outdoor Center.

May 2: Osage Paddle Sports Spring 12 Race.  A 12-mile race on the Osage River near Osage City, Missouri.

June 20: Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  My hometown race since 1982.  About 5000 meters down the Mississippi River from the mouth of the Wolf River to Mississippi River Park on the downtown riverfront.

July 19-25: Gorge Paddling Festival.  Columbia River near Hood River, Oregon.  A series of elite-level surf ski competitions including a 21.5-kilometer downwind race and a 40-kilometer relay race.

September 6: The Paddle Grapple.  A 10-kilometer race on Lake Fontana near Bryson City, North Carolina.

September 26: The Gator Bait Race.  A race of about 5.5 miles on Ross Barnett Reservoir near Jackson, Mississippi.


It is very unlikely that I will do every one of these races.  The races at Ocean Springs, Vicksburg, and Memphis have been fixtures on my schedule for years and I will probably make each of them this coming year.  Whether I do some of these other events will depend largely on my physical health, my obligations at home, and my appetite for travel.  The Gorge Paddling Festival is no more than a "sorta-maybe" at this point.  Even if I am in excellent shape I would likely be in the bottom quarter of the field there, so if my fitness is anything shy of excellent I'll probably pass.  It's been quite a few years since I have taken a big trip out West and I would love to take another one, so I'm listing this event here as one possible carrot to lure me out that way.

Anyway... for now I'm just going to take one day at a time and get my paddling and strength work in. With any luck I'll have laid a strong foundation once the end of March rolls around.

Monday photo feature

Jennie Goldberg crosses the finish of the FIBArk downriver race in June of 2005.  The race, which covers some 26 miles of the Arkansas River from Salida to Cotopaxi, Colorado, is the oldest whitewater competition in the U.S.  The first FIBArk race took place in 1949.

The week that was

I attribute my failure to post anything here lately to a busy week.  But that business did include some training activities.

I did two sets per day of the December strength routine on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and today.  On Tuesday and Thursday, I was in the boat.  I paddled for 60 minutes by myself on Tuesday and for 70 minutes with Joe on Thursday.  Joe was dealing with a mild muscle-pull and was apologetic about having to go slow, but it was fine with me.  I usually have no trouble pushing the pace when paddling by myself, and I used the slower pace on Thursday to concentrate on the various aspects of paddling that I've been working on lately.  Conversation with Joe helped keep both sides of my brain engaged.

My upper back area has been sore recently, probably because of some construction chores in my building that included some lifting of unwieldy objects.  I have a massage scheduled for tomorrow.

Monday photo feature

Nath Thompson, the late director of the summer camp I went to as a kid, was not great at any one camp activity, but he was good at a lot of things, and at the very least he tried them all, including paddling.  I used to tease him about a photo proudly displayed in his office in which he was floating through Nantahala Falls in an aluminum canoe, his hands gripping the gunwales for dear life.  There's also an old story of lore in which Nath was in the bow of a canoe approaching Bull Sluice on the Chattooga River, and at the brink of the drop he turns around and sees an empty seat, his stern man swimming for the bank... or maybe Nath was the one swimming for the bank... I can't remember.

Anyhow, that was the Nath I loved, and in the photo above, his son Alfred follows in his footsteps.  Alfred, who would take the camp director's reins from Nath several years later, runs Suddy Hole on Big Laurel Creek in the spring of 1994.  My best recollection is that he stayed in his boat for this entire trip, and a kayak has no gunwales to grab.

Strength

I'm on a twice-a-week paddling program right now, and yesterday afternoon I got in my second session in windy, mostly cloudy, chilling conditions.  But as usual for this time of year, I felt fine in the boat.  Standing on the dock before and after, changing clothes and getting my boat on/off its rack, was the toughest part.

I continued to work on paddling more with my legs and lower abdominals, and I'm reinforcing these muscle groups in my strength routine.  With a new month starting last Monday it was time for a new routine, and the one I've drawn up goes like this:

Hindu squats
Rotation exercises with a medicine ball
Several rubber band drills
Hindu pushups

I make two trips through this routine about three times a week (every other day, more or less).  I generally try to increase the number of reps as the month goes along, though with some exercises I concentrate more on good technique and speed than on volume.  As of this writing I'm at 62 Hindu squats per set and 30 Hindu pushups per set.

Brrrr

Joe and I typically go our separate ways during holiday weeks, but with Thanksgiving behind us we were back on the water together this morning, doing another 70-minute loop in the harbor.  I continued to feel better with my technical adjustments.

Today was a grey, cold day.  The Fahrenheit temperature hovered in the 30s as I walked down to the dock, but with dead-calm conditions I figured I'd warm right up once I got to paddling.  I didn't.  It was that penetrating sort of cold today--foggy and damp--and I felt a bit chilled from my first stroke until my last.  It was not a miserable session, mind you; but I never achieved the toasty feeling I usually get when I'm well dressed on a calm day.

Monday photo feature

In July of 2008, my niece Ada and I paddle a canoe down the White River alongside the City Bluffs near Calico Rock, Arkansas.

Not smooth yet, but not as rough either

For my second paddling session for the past week, I had a choice between Friday, which was forecast to be sunny but chilly, and yesterday, expected to be warmer but cloudy.  I opted for warmer but cloudy, and as a bonus I also got windy.  The misery factor for a windy day isn't too bad as long as it's warmer than 55 degrees Fahrenheit or so, but windy almost always means wet.  Enough waves found their way into my cockpit that I was sitting in a big puddle of water by the end of my sixty minutes in the boat.

Oh well... I was dressed appropriately, and "skin is waterproof," as the counselors at summer camp used to tell me.  I continued my efforts from Wednesday's session to use my legs and lower torso as much as possible.  It felt somewhat laborious, but not like it had on Wednesday, and that's something I've always found interesting and fun about doing something with your body: trying something you're not used to can feel awkward or even painful at first, but if you stick with it it doesn't take that long for it to become second-nature.  Meanwhile, I'm still observing other fundamentals of paddling, such as keeping the boat running smoothly and quietly, and I think if I can put this all together the result will be greater power in my strokes.

Technical intensity

I went downtown to paddle in the mid-afternoon today.  It had been a grey, chilly, cheerless day, and as I put on my paddling clothes at home some rain began to fall.  But as I drove downtown blue sky moved in from the northwest, and I ended up paddling in bright sunshine.  I found myself somewhat overdressed because I had expected bleak conditions.  I paddled hatless because I had only brought a fleece cap.

I paddled for 60 minutes and spent the whole time concentrating on rotating in my lower torso.  In the past I'd always thought I was rotating pretty well, but I think at least in this past season I was using my arms and shoulders a bit too much, putting stress on my latissimus and trapezius muscles.

Isolating one small part of my technique and focusing hard on it makes for a mentally exhausting session, even when I keep the intensity low like I did today.  At one point I did some one-sided paddling drills to break up the monotony as much as anything else.  I found myself picking up a theme I had just started before my long break began: using the foot strap to involve my legs more.  I tried to accompany each forward stroke with a hard pump of my leg on that side, which in turn pushed my hip back and lengthened my rotation.

Monday photo feature

The Mississippi is fairly low these days--below 5 feet on the Memphis gauge.  So I thought I'd follow Memory Lane back to May of 2011, when the river was approaching a crest of 47.3 feet.  The only evidence of the existence of southern Mud Island was the lights and placards and walkway cordons of Mud Island Park.

One's frame of mind as a new season approaches

This morning Joe and I did another 70-minute circuit in the harbor.  Though cool--mid 40s Fahrenheit--it was an ideal day to paddle.  The sun was out and the wind was at a minimum.

I felt quite good in the boat today.  There was a bit of soreness in my upper back, but not much, and paddling didn't seem to aggravate it.  Of course, the long layoff means my fitness is down a bit, and by the end of the session I was feeling some fatigue.

It's not uncommon for me to take some time off in the fall.  Some years I take just a short time off, and other years, like this one, I stay out of the boat for six weeks or more.  It all depends on how busy I am with other things, and how I'm feeling.  Every year during this down-time, I get anxious about the lost fitness, and sometimes I even entertain some doubts about whether I have it in me to come back for another season of training and racing.  But so far, I've done it every year.  It always starts with some easy sessions like Tuesday's and today's.  Before I know it, I've settled into a consistent routine, and after a couple of months I'm ready to start doing some more serious workouts.

And that's the big secret (and it's not really a secret): take things a day at a time and just enjoy the process.  I follow the St. Louis Cardinals during baseball season, and players quite often talk about how it's important to focus on one game at a time, and not succumb to thoughts like "we're five games back; we have to go out and win eleven of our next twelve!"  This theme was also emphasized by Bill Endicott during his tenure as coach of the U.S. whitewater slalom team: he often noted that a trait he saw in successful people in all fields was "fascination with the process."

So, I need not be anxious about all the work it's going to take to get myself back in shape.  I should just relax and enjoy myself each time I go down to paddle, and it'll add up to some good training soon enough.

Paddle care

As I said in yesterday's post, I didn't spend my time out of the boat just lying around.  I did all kinds of things both related and unrelated to paddling.  One of the paddling-related things I did was refurbish some of my wooden paddles:

At the very least, they were due for a new coat of spar varnish.  A couple of them needed some fiberglass repair.  The second one from the left needed a new T-grip because I had broken the old one off on the Gauley in September.

Equipment overhaul is an easy thing to keep putting off, so it feels good to have these paddles all slicked up and ready to go.

Okay, I'm back

Well, it's been a while, and I wouldn't be surprised if every single one of my readers has given up on me by now.

After some six weeks out of the boat, I began to grind back into motion this morning, meeting my friend Joe downtown for a 70-minute paddle in the harbor.  We kept the intensity low, and I concentrated hard on rotating fully in my strokes.  I had wondered whether I would even know what to do in the boat after such a long layoff, but as they say, "It's like riding a bike."

I wasn't exactly out of motion during my break from paddling.  I've been working a lot on strength, doing a bunch of core exercises on the stability ball in October and working out with my Smart Bell this month.  I've also been doing a lot of rehab exercises and getting regular massages for my back pain; though the pain is not gone, I'm seeing some improvement.  Finally, I've been busy in my professional life, doing a couple of public demonstrations and getting some construction work done on my storefront.

Joe and I plan to paddle together again on Thursday.  I think for the next little while I'll be paddling two or three times a week, and my goal for this period is to establish a physical and technical routine that won't worsen my back pain.  Last season I did a lot more short, fast pieces than I'd ever done before, and I think because my stroke form is not as good at high intensity than at normal intensity, I put a lot of stress on muscles that weren't used to it.  I don't want to stop working on speed this coming season, but I want to be a bit smarter about it and try to figure out what my body can take.

Monday photo feature

In late September the world championships for canoe and kayak marathon racing took place at Oklahoma City.  Mike Herbert (middle, red jersey) was the U.S. representative in men's kayak.  This photo was taken by Vadim Lischuk, whose son, Jesse, competed in kayak at the junior level.

Marathon racing, as the name suggests, is a long-distance discipline; the racers pictured here completed a 30-kilometer course.  Typically, the course is done in laps of a circuit, with a portage in between laps.

Monday photo feature

Denis Lessard navigates the lower Mississippi during a 2006 expedition that traced the route of French Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet.  Lessard and his daughter Myriam started at the mouth of the Fox River in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and paddled up the Fox, down the Wisconsin River, and down the Mississippi River.  Photo by Myriam Lessard.

Back to basics

Since getting home late Monday afternoon, I've been catching up on some work and re-dedicating myself to healing the source of my nagging discomfort.  I'm making time for rehab exercises just about every day, and I'm also back to doing core exercises on the stability ball several times a week.  I went to the massage therapist Wednesday, at which time the pain along my spine up near my neck was particularly acute, and he worked hard on muscles all around that area that he said are related to this discomfort.  I can't say I have much more than a general understanding of the things he's telling me, but it seems I've got a lot of muscle fibers that are stuck together and, as he puts it, he wants to "rip 'em apart."

Anyway... I'm hoping to spend the next month doing everything I can to get my body right again.  Meanwhile, the Pink Palace Crafts Fair is next weekend, and work is finally about to begin on the storefront of my building, so I'll have plenty of professional activities to keep me busy.  I'll likely be out of the boat for most of this time, but I hope to make some gains in general fitness.

Monday photo feature

About the only picture that got taken of me on the Gauley this past weekend was this shot by Ruthie Norton, who had just arrived on the scene as her husband Curtis and I were running Pillow Rock Rapid.  Here we are down at the bottom of said rapid, I on the left and Curtis on the right.  At this moment I am soaking wet as a result of flipping next to Volkswagen Rock.

The marathon worlds

This was a remarkable month for canoe and kayak racing in the United States.  The U.S. played host to not one, but two world championships.  Of course, I attended the whitewater slalom worlds up at Deep Creek, Maryland, last weekend.  This weekend, the canoe and kayak marathon worlds took place at Oklahoma City.

Earlier in the year I had entertained thoughts of driving a big loop around the country and watching both events, but in the end I just didn't have the time or energy to do that.  It was tough to decide to skip the marathon worlds, because my friend Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, was entered in both the masters' and the open age groups.  He ended up in fifth place in Masters 50-54 and 20th in the open category.

The Oklahoma City newspaper did a nice write-up of Mike here.

The time for thinking is over. The time for doing has begun.

I'm some kind of tired after three straight days on the upper Gauley River in West Virginia.  I'm spending tonight at a motel in Grayson, Kentucky, my wet gear hung up to dry all over the place.

My friends Curtis and Ruthie, an Atlanta couple I met at the Gauley two years ago, joined me for the weekend.  I'd say I paddled reasonably well even though I felt rusty and wasn't very aggressive with any difficult moves or lines.  My back held up okay, though I could definitely feel that knot that I've had for so long.  I can't wait for my massage therapist to get his hands back on it this week.

My best day paddling was today: Ruthie decided to stay on the bank, and Curtis and I did a speedy run down the river so we could all get an early start toward home.  I think this is the best way to run a difficult river that you've run many times before: you know the lines through the rapids, and you just keep on moving without giving yourself a chance to think too much about it and get nervous.  Insignificant, Pillow Rock Rapid, Lost Paddle, Iron Ring, Sweet's Falls... we breezed through them all, and it reminded me of slalom racing, in which once you've started a run there's no longer any time to think about the moves; you just do them.

Another thought about the worlds

I'm still thinking about the slalom worlds last weekend.  Wow... I can't get over how good those paddlers are.

For most of the history of the world championships, a racer was allowed to participate in only one class.  Then, after the 2008 Olympics, I think, the ICF began to allow each athlete to race in two classes, if he wanted to.  One of the obvious results is that some C1 racers began to race in the C2 class as well.  One high-profile example was David Florence of Great Britain: already a top C1 racer (Olympic silver medal in 2008), Florence entered the 2012 Games in both C1 and C2 and came away with the silver medal in the latter class.

More recently, K1 paddlers have begun to take up the single blade.  When many-time worlds medalist kayak racer Fabien Lefevre moved from France to the United States and began competing for the U.S. team in 2013, he did so in both K1 and C1.  During the 2013 and 2014 seasons, it appeared that K1 would remain his stronger suit, but at the Deep Creek worlds this past weekend, he pulled off a stunning victory in canoe.

Meanwhile, on the women's side, Australian Jessica Fox, both of whose parents were world-champion kayakers, took up both K1 and C1 as women's C1 was added to the world championships programme in 2009.  She was soon among the world's best in both classes, and at Deep Creek she became world champion in both.

One of the interesting things about having all these kayakers coming over to C1 is that they have no problem switching sides with the paddle in C1.  In their elite-level kayaking experience they have become ambidextrous, and in C1 they can paddle on the right for moves that favor righties and on the left for moves that favor lefties (or, as Ron Lugbill suggests in this blog post about Lefevre's winning runs at Deep Creek, they can burn one set of muscles on the first half of a course and then run the second half with fresh muscles).

As I watched all this side-switching going on last weekend, it seemed to me that what was old was new again.  By the time I started whitewater canoeing at summer camp in the early 1980s, switching sides was considered unnecessary and was even frowned upon.  At that time river-running was still heavily influenced by slalom racing, and the U.S. C1 paddlers who had just begun their decade of world dominance had developed very powerful strokes across the bow that were just as effective, they claimed, as their "on-side" strokes.  Not wanting to be seen as a rube, I worked to develop good cross-strokes of my own.  My tandem canoe partner that first summer was a bossy sort who insisted he was a righty and I must paddle on the left, so over the next few years I paddled on that side and as a result, to this day I have much less coordination on my right side than on my left.  Back then I didn't care, though, because I eventually had good, solid offside strokes and in my fantasies the kayakers on the river "oohed" and "aahed" whenever I pulled off an impressive offside move.

But now, all of a sudden, some of the best C1 paddlers in the world are switching, and nobody dares call them rubes.  Switching is not only acceptable, but maybe even cool.  And it's making me wonder what other relics we might bring back.

Back in the "salad days" of whitewater racing in the 1960s and 70s, it was not uncommon for racers to compete in both slalom and wildwater from the recreational level to the world class level.  The world championships for both were held together at the same site until about 1993.  But with slalom's return to the Olympics in 1992, specialization became the rule.  Soon virtually no slalom racers were doing wildwater anymore, and in the mid-90s the wildwater worlds went to an even-numbered-year schedule and was completely separated from the slalom worlds.

Every time I watch the winter Olympics on TV, I am struck by the format of alpine skiing: there is the downhill event, the slalom event, the giant slalom event, and the "Super G" event, whatever that is, and each racer typically does them all.  I think it would be very cool if the summer games had a similar format for canoe and kayak racing--slalom, downriver, some kind of giant slalom, with each paddler doing them all.  The specialization urge has already been relaxed somewhat now that each racer is allowed to race in two classes; why not take that next step?

Alas, the summer games is already cluttered with too many sports, and canoe and kayak racing does not seem to resonate with a big enough TV audience.  In fact, I fear that slalom may not survive on the Olympic programme for the long haul.  But hey... every reality starts with a dream.  Maybe if (when?) slalom is dropped from the Olympics we can re-invent whitewater racing at the world championship level with this multi-event format.

Good old vacation time

I spent the last several days hanging around the town of Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania.  It's an interesting little town whose economy in based largely on tourism--specifically, rafting and bicycling.  The rafting takes place on the Youghiogheny River, of course, while cyclists pass through town on the Great Allegheny Passage, an old railroad bed converted to a bike trail that goes from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC.

During this stretch, I spent the morning outside a raft company that doesn't seem to mind me mooching their wi-fi signal.  The rafting season was winding down, so the mood was pretty laid back.  I sat at a picnic table and checked e-mail and Face Book and stuff like that, and I also did my stretching and rehab exercises, and wrote some postcards to friends and family.  The ideal vacation activities, in other words.

After lunch I was in the boat.  On Monday I did "The Loop": the Yough makes a big goose-neck bend right at Ohiopyle, and a paddler can run this couple of miles of river and then use a trail across the inside of the bend to hike a half-mile or so back to where his vehicle is parked.

On Tuesday and yesterday I paddled the Yough from Ohiopyle to a place called Bruner Run about seven and a half miles downriver.  I ran shuttle with my bike by way of the Great Allegheny Passage. Driving down to Bruner Run I took a road with many steep hills that would have been a real epic to travel on my bike; but the old railroad bed of The Passage follows the river and never exceeds 1.5% in grade, so it was a delightful way to run shuttle.

My upper back felt quite sore while paddling the first two days, but yesterday it wasn't as bad.  I can still feel that knot, and I hope two or three more massage sessions will work that out when I get back home.  In the meantime I will continue to stretch and do my exercises and avail myself of whatever youthful flexibility that provides.

I spent last night at the Sunset Inn in Friendsville, Maryland.  It was nice to sleep in a bed after four night of camping at Ohiopyle State Park.  This morning I plan to drive up and see if the upper Youghiogheny has a water release today.  I have a feeling it will not--I think normally it runs on Friday and Monday--but it can't hurt to check.  My friends coming up from Atlanta for the weekend have decided not to come farther north than the Gauley, so if I'm going to run the upper Yough it will have to be today, if that's possible.

Slalom worlds debrief

Well, what all can I say about my weekend at the slalom world championships?  All kinds of things come to mind.

The worlds were actually a four-day event.  Qualification rounds took place on Thursday and Friday.  Arriving on Saturday morning, I got to watch the semifinal and final rounds and team races for each of the five classes (men's and women's single canoe, men's and women's kayak, and men's double canoe).  I'm actually glad I wasn't there all four days, because being a spectator at a slalom race is surprisingly exhausting.  Saturday was very sunny and I got a bit of sunburn, and on Sunday it was quite breezy with a couple of heavy showers, and that was a drain on my energy.  And of course I spent much of each day on my feet, wandering up and down the course.

The sport has changed fairly dramatically since I was racing.  It might not be obvious to the person whose exposure to the sport is confined to watching the Olympics on TV every four years, but to anybody who has participated, the differences are glaring.  One of the biggest is the length of the boats: four meters had always been the minimum for C1s and K1s until 2005, when the International Canoe Federation reduced it to three and a half meters.  It's a good thing the boats are shorter, because the courses have become much tighter.  In a typical race run today, there are few moments when the paddler is not pivoting his boat or working his edges.  And world class races are held almost exclusively on artificial whitewater courses rather than natural rivers.  This gives the race organizers maximum control over water flow; it makes it possible to hold elite-caliber events in Olympic cities that have no whitewater rivers nearby; and it's more televisable.  Personally I prefer a natural river, but it seems I don't often get my way in these modern times.

The individual world champions for 2014 are as follows: men's single canoe: Fabien Lefevre, United States; men's double canoe: Luka Bozic and Saso Taljat, Slovenia; ladies' kayak: Jessica Fox, Australia; men's kayak: Boris Neveu, France; ladies' single canoe: Jessica Fox, Australia.  But impressing me more than anybody else was the Czech Republic's Štěpánka Hilgertová.  Why?  Because she is 47 years old, just like me.  I've mentioned in recent posts how my back ailments are making feel more mortal than ever, and it was inspiring to see Hilgertová sailing into the finals alongside women less than half her age.  I believe Hilgertová's first world championships was the 1989 edition on Maryland's Savage River; since then she has won two world championships and two Olympic gold medals.  This weekend, she finished about two and a half seconds out of the medals in fourth place.

Quite a few former U.S. team members showed up to see the worlds take place in their country for only the second time.  The ones I saw included Davey Hearn, Bill Hearn, Jennifer Hearn, John Sweet, Jon Lugbill, Ron Lugbill, Bill Endicott, Scott Shipley, Adam Clawson, Rebecca Giddens, Eric Giddens, Lecky Haller, Boo Turner, Jason Beakes, Scott Strausbaugh, Dana Chladek, Brett Heyl, Aleta McCleskey, Joe Jacobi, Kent Ford, Matt Taylor, Kara Weld, Sam Davis, and Norm Bellingham (he was actually on the national team in flatwater, but he started out in slalom).  There were probably a few others I either didn't see or am just forgetting.  And then there were quite a few former racers like me, who weren't good enough to make the national team but still love being around the sport.

Whew... time to decompress.  I am spending much of this week in the town of Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, some 30 miles north of Deep Creek.  I am camping in Ohiopyle State Park, and I plan to do some paddling on the Class III lower Youghiogheny River, making sure I still have a modicum of whitewater skill before I join a couple of friends to take on the Class IV-V upper Youghiogheny and upper Gauley Rivers this weekend.

Right this minute I am sitting outside a raft company building, using their wi-fi signal to catch up on this blog and respond to some e-mails and do a few other Internet-related things.  Later today I hope to do a round of my rehab exercises, which I've neglected since leaving home.  I may or may not try to get on the river today--it's turned chilly today and I'll have to see how my back is feeling.  The rest of the week is supposed to be warmer.

Monday photo feature

Here are a couple of photos for this fine Monday.

I spent Saturday and Sunday watching the world championships of whitewater slalom up in Deep Creek, Maryland.  Quite a few people I raced with in the 1990s and early 2000s were in attendance.  At left above is C1 world champion and Olympian Davey Hearn, one of the true pioneers and all-around nice guys in this sport.  With him are his alarmingly-tall son, Jesse, and his brother Bill, who did some very respectable racing of his own back in the 1980s.

And here, Davey's wife Jennifer poses with the earliest star of whitewater racing in the U.S., John Sweet.  Mr. Sweet was a many-time national champion in both slalom and wildwater racing.  He was also in on first-descents of quite a few rivers in the Mid-Atlantic region, including the Gauley.  Sweet's Falls on the upper Gauley is named after him.  Many former racers showed up in their old national team gear, and none of it was more awesome than the 70s-era apparel that Mr. Sweet has on in this photo.

I'm going to the worlds (as a spectator)!

Yesterday I went ahead and bought tickets to the Saturday and Sunday sessions of the whitewater slalom world championships up at Deep Creek, Maryland.  So I guess I'm really going now.  I'd been waffling because of a variety of issues (my back, some impending construction work on my building, a few little woodworking projects), but life is short... right?  I'll get to see semifinal and final action over these two days.  After that I plan to stay in the area for another week and do some paddling on the Youghiogheny and Gauley Rivers.

As I've mentioned before, this is the second time the slalom worlds have been held in the U.S. in the event's 65-year history.  The first time was 1989, just a few miles from Deep Creek on Maryland's Savage River.  That was one great weekend for the U.S. team.  The team put an exclamation point on its decade-long dominance of the C1 class, taking first, second, and fourth in the individual competition and winning the team competition.  Jon Lugbill won the individual title for a record fifth time, with Davey Hearn taking the silver for the fifth time (each time, he was second to Lugbill).  And the U.S. athletes acquitted themselves well in the other three classes: Dana Chladek and Cathy Hearn won silver and bronze, respectively, in ladies' kayak; Jamie McEwan and Lecky Haller teamed up for a fourth-place finish in C2; and Rich Weiss should have won the silver in men's kayak (a controversial five-second gate-touch penalty, later refuted by video evidence, knocked him down to fifth).  Weiss was later awarded the International Olympic Committee's Jack Kelly "Fair Play" award for not making a big deal out of this injustice.

Davey Hearn's wife Jennifer has posted some pretty awesome photos of those 1989 world championships on her Face Book page.  I don't know how to link to them here, but it's worth going to Face Book and having a look (she's "Hearn Jennifer" on Face Book; whether you can view the photos may depend on her privacy settings).

Meanwhile, I'm still doing my rehab exercises and got in a round of the September strength routine yesterday.  I was supposed to get a massage this morning, but the therapist had to cancel again for reasons related to his dad's health.  I plan to leave town tomorrow after lunch, so it remains to be seen whether I'll get a massage before then.

Monday photo feature

Here's another whitewater slalom photo in honor of the world championships starting this Wednesday at Deep Creek, Maryland.  The slalom worlds have been going on since 1949, but this is only the second time that they have been held in the United States.

In this photo, which I took at a World Cup series event on the Ocoee River in 2000, Cathy Hearn of the U.S. glides into an upstream gate.  One of the finest athletes the U.S. has ever had in any sport, in my opinion, Cathy grew up in an era when it wasn't particularly fashionable for women to be good at sports.  Going into the 1977 world championships at Spittal, Austria, a U.S. athlete had never medaled, but Cathy and two teammates struck bronze in the women's kayak team event.  Then, at the 1979 worlds at Jonquiere, Quebec, Cathy took triple gold, winning the slalom individual, slalom team, and downriver team events.  She went on to win numerous medals over the next two decades: in slalom individual competition, she took silver in 1981, bronze in 1989, and bronze in 1997; in slalom team competition, she won bronze in 1981, bronze in 1987, silver in 1989, and silver in 1993.  She also was on the U.S. Olympic team in 1992 and 1996; she almost certainly would have been an Olympian in '80, '84, and '88 as well, except that slalom was not restored to the Olympic programme until 1992.

Still rehabbing

In the last several days I've done a couple of rounds of the September strength routine and paddled my whitewater boat in the harbor.  A front came through Friday and the weather has cooled off... finally.

I went back to the massage therapist Friday, and he did some deep work on that stubborn knot in my left shoulder.  He said my "trap" muscles are very strong and highly developed (from a lifetime of paddling, I reckon), and he had to spend much of the session working on them to get them to relax enough that he could get at the knot underneath.

We talked more about the exercises I've been doing.  The muscles that open up my shoulders have become very tight, he said, and the exercises are designed to loosen them up and "rip those fibers apart."  I love the imagery.

The pain of inflation

This morning I did the September strength routine.  When I last did it I noticed that the exercise ball was a little soft, so I aired it up before working out today.  A couple of the exercises were quite a bit more difficult as a result.

I was supposed to get another massage this morning--the first in a couple of weeks because the therapist was on vacation last week--but the therapist had to cancel because of a family emergency this morning.  I certainly hope all is well with him, and I hope we can reschedule soon because I can still feel a hint of that knot up in my left shoulder area.

Monday photo feature

With the world championships for whitewater slalom less than two weeks away, I reckon I'd better post a photo or two of this fascinating paddlesport discipline.  Most of my slalom racing took place in the 1990s, and one of the world's top racers of that era was the man pictured here, Scott Shipley of the United States.  Shipley won three world cup series titles and was a three-time silver medalist at the world championships.  The scene in this photo, taken by yours truly, is actually a long way from the international limelight.  It's a relatively rinky-dink event on the White Salmon River at the tiny hamlet of Husum, Washington, in the summer of 1998.  Shipley held off a challenge from another elite racer, Eric Jackson, to win that day.

Shipley's boat here is four meters long, the minimum length back then.  After the 2004 Olympics, the International Canoe Federation shortened the minimum length to three and a half meters.

My home gym

Today I did another round of the September strength routine, which, as I've mentioned before, includes my rehab exercises and some core work on the exercise ball.

I've never belonged to a gym or a fitness club.  Back when I was in school, and later when I was a school teacher, I could use whatever weight room facilities there were on campus.  But these days, my house is my gym.  Allow me to guide you on a tour of my equipment.

My exercise ball.

 My gymnast's rings.

My smartbell.

My rubber bands.

Assorted dumbbells and other weights.

My ten-pound medicine ball.  I used to have a five-pounder too, but I seem to have mislaid it.

And finally, the kittycats who keep me company while I work out.  Irrelevant, you say?  Well, pardon me, but this is my blog, and I can post pictures of my kittycats on it if I want to.

Work and play

I have continued my rehab exercises, my exercise ball drills, and my whitewater boat paddling this week.

In the boat I've been trying to put as little stress on my arms as possible, and do most of the work with my legs, hips, and torso muscles.  For example, when practicing sweep strokes, I plant the blade in the water and try not to move it from that spot.  This means that I don't jerk it with my arms, but use my core muscles to move the boat around the "pivot point" of the blade's location in the water.

My traditional low-brace C1 roll seems pretty reliable, paddling on the left (my dominant side) or paddling on the right.  I'm still struggling with the cross-brace roll, however.  About a week ago I managed two or three successful ones, but I haven't been able to do one since.

Staying in motion

I have been doing my rehab exercises pretty religiously, and I do think they're helping.  The pain is not gone--it lingers along my spine up near the base of my neck--but that knot that's persisted since March seems to have gone down, and I hope several more sessions of deep massage will work it out. The therapist is on vacation this week, so my next massage is scheduled for next week.

Yesterday afternoon I did some more drills in my whitewater boat down at the harbor.  I'm keeping these sessions short--30 minutes--and doing the drills as precisely as I can.  For the first 20 minutes I do stroke drills, mostly ones like compound reverse strokes and sweeping draw strokes that require me to open up my shoulders.

Then for 10 minutes I practice rolls.  I think many experienced paddlers tend to take their rolls for granted and forget that they need practice like any other skill.  Over the last few years, during which I've paddled whitewater only very occasionally, my roll has been adequate but certainly not crisp.  In these sessions I've been trying to make nice, clean hipsnaps and not put any pressure on my paddle brace until the boat is upright.  I've been rolling on both sides even though my dominant side is my left and that's what I use in any serious whitewater.  I've also tried to do offside rolls on a cross-brace, but have succeeded at a low rate there.  Twenty years ago I was quite good at such rolls, but I'm noticeably less flexible these days.

This morning I started up a new strength routine.  Besides my rehab exercises, I'm trying to do a lot of core work this fall, and this month I'm doing some exercise ball drills.  There's a good video of some exercise ball drills here, featuring Chinese whitewater slalom Olympian Jing-Jing Li.

Monday photo feature

Here I am doing some surfing on the Caney Fork River in Tennessee's Rock Island State Park back in 1998.  That boat is still my main whitewater river-running craft, and lately I've been taking it down to the harbor to do some drills and rolls and other things that I hope will sharpen me up for some whitewater boating later this month.  I also hope this activity will help correct some of the muscle imbalances that have caused my back pain; if nothing else, it's a fun, non-stressful way to spend some of these hot late-summer days.  Photo by Sonny Salomon.

Sorry about the radio silence

Since my last post I have redoubled my efforts to restore my skeleto-muscular health.  The tipping point came a couple of Saturdays ago when I did a round of my August strength routine.  I don't know what happened as I went through the exercises that morning, but I spent the rest of the weekend with a horrible throbbing ache in my left shoulder and lat area that radiated down my left arm.  The addition of that to the existing soreness along my upper spine that had persisted since March sent me into a pretty bad emotional funk.  I had spent my 30s and most of my 40s feeling strong and spry, as though there was nothing I could do in my 20s that I couldn't still do; but now, all of a sudden, I felt like a falling-apart old man.  I am a vain person--let's be honest about that--and there I was feeling not just physical discomfort, but very negatively about myself as well.  I had to do something more than just the groping attempts at self-help that had failed to bring about any relief.

A while back I had posted something on Face Book about my back discomfort, and my friend Andy mentioned that several people he knew had had good experiences at a place called Back In Motion.  So I called and made an appointment, and as of this writing I have been through two sessions.  Back In Motion is actually just one guy, a Mr. Jon Harvey.  He's a massage therapist with some chiropractic experience in his background, and he specializes in treating sports injuries and other specific ailments.  When I told him what was going on, he sounded very confident that he could put me on the road to recovery.

To make a long story short, my shoulders are sort of hunched forward, putting undue stress on the muscles of my upper back.  I think I can understand how this happened.  This past season I did more workouts involving short, fast sprints at a high stroke rate than I'd ever done before.  Ideal form calls for the paddler to sit erect with square shoulders, but I can believe that I erred toward slumping forward and downward--"bearing down," as it were.

So in our sessions Jon is manipulating numerous spots on both my front and my back, seeking to get my shoulders to relax and open back up.  He spent that first session targeting trigger points and explaining the bearing they had on my pain.  He then prescribed me some exercises to do in between sessions that address the imbalance between the muscles that pull my shoulders forward and those that keep them open.

Now, ten days after our first session, I'm not free of pain yet, but I'm optimistic that I'm on the right track.  I can feel the stuff I'm doing having an effect on my distressed area.  For my strength routine, I'm still doing the core exercises hanging from the gymnast's rings and the vertical lunges, but I've backed off the other exercises for now, replacing them with my new rehab exercises.

On the water, I'm taking a break from straight-ahead kayaking and doing some drills in my whitewater C1.  I'm thinking about running the Gauley River in West Virginia at the end of this coming month, possibly after doing some "warmup" paddling on the lower Youghiogheny while I'm up in that area to watch the slalom world championships on the 18th through the 21st, so I figure it's wise to get back in that boat and make sure I still know how to paddle it.  Also, a whitewater boat with a non-wing paddle allows me to do some stroke drills that open up the shoulders: compound reverse strokes, for instance.

Monday photo feature

Sonny Salomon surfs the glassy-smooth wave on the Caney Fork River in Rock Island State Park near McMinnville, Tennessee.  Photo by Elmore Holmes.

A posthumous honor for Jamie McEwan

Canoe and Kayak magazine has given its 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award to Jamie McEwan.  Lecky Haller, Jamie's C2 partner from the late 1980s through the 1992 Olympics, accepted the award for his late friend.  The story is here.

A break from the K1

This morning I did my new strength routine (I guess I'll start calling it the August strength routine now) and then went down to the river.  I decided to paddle the surf ski for the first time in a long time, and see how the technical stuff I'd been working on in the K1 carried over.  I paddled for 60 minutes, and it was nice not feeling like my next stroke could flip me over.  I also enjoyed the weather: we had a string of very humid days this past week, but a front came through late yesterday and today a north breeze had blown away the moisture.

My surf ski came equipped with a foot strap, but I'd never really relied on it.  Today I tightened it up and tried to make better use of it on each stroke.  The more extreme contortion of my body it allows has been tiring, but then anytime I make a change to my stroke technique I go through a such an adjustment period.  I'm hopeful that I'm onto something good.

I did a set of six backstrokes-then-forward-strokes drills, and then timed myself in the harbor from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the monorail bridge, for which my PR is a second or two under two minutes.  I did it today in about 2:02.

Monday photo feature

A barge rig moseys downriver at sunset.  I took this photo from the Densford Bar, about 18 miles up the Mississippi River from downtown Memphis, in about 2006.

Classroom management, pain management, and time management

I taught another class out at Shelby Farms yesterday.  This time I had about eight students, many of them in the ten- to twelve-year-old range, who brought whitewater boats with them.  So I took a whitewater boat of my own out there and worked on a different set of skills from what I've been doing in these classes.  It was a bit of a challenge, inasmuch as I've got the routine down for a touring-boat class but don't really have a practiced list of activities for people in whitewater boats.  But I'm happy to say that everybody seemed to have a good time and got a reasonably good educational experience for a Saturday morning.

This morning I went another round with my new strength routine.  That prehab/rehab exercise I'm doing often elicits a pop in my vertebrae right where I've been experiencing pain for so long, and I'm taking that as an encouraging sign.

This afternoon I paddled the K1 in the harbor downtown.  Just like on Thursday, it was only a 40-minute session.  The other day I saw my friend June, a loyal reader of this blog, and she remarked that an hour in the boat seemed long to her.  I'd sort of been thinking the opposite--before this year, a typical session for me was 90 minutes or more--but her comment got me to thinking, and now I've decided to keep sessions shorter for a while for a couple of reasons.  For one thing, it puts that much less stress on my back.  For another, that K1 demands such a high degree of concentration and body control that I think an hour might be a little too long: even in the early part of a session, I allow some bad strokes to creep in among the good ones, and I'm hoping that spending some time doing shorter sessions with a higher percentage of good strokes will pay off after a while.  Sometimes less is more. Thanks, June.

Summer rolls on

Since my return from out West I've been working my way into a new strength routine.  As I mentioned a few posts back, I've sort of used the "5P" workout described here on Ron Lugbill's blog as a starting point.  I'm not quite doing a full 5P, but I've worked in four of the Ps.  The routine starts with a set of pushups (of which I do a variety of types), followed by a couple of types of leg-lifts while hanging from a set of gymnast's rings.  Then I do this prehab exercise, which for me is really a rehab exercise because it targets the area of soreness in my back.  Then I go back to the rings and do a set of pullups.  I finish the routine with two plyometric exercises: squat jumps and chest-drop pushups.  I try to do two sets of this routine three days a week.

This afternoon I went downtown and paddled the K1 for 40 minutes.  I kept the intensity moderate and tried to rotate fully on each stroke.  It's something I've struggled to do in the K1, but the addition of the foot strap has been a boost to my confidence.

The harbor has been lovely most of the days I've been down there this summer, but a mid-afternoon thunderstorm today washed in a big bunch of floating litter.  The city of Baltimore has found a remedy to this problem in its harbor; can't we?

Monday photo feature

That's me in the green tank top, 24 years and about 30 pounds ago.

At the time I was head of canoeing at Camp Carolina for Boys in Brevard, North Carolina.  The camp is still in operation, and right now somebody else is standing on that dock, orchestrating paddlesport activity on the camp lake.  Photo by Mike Davis.

K1 introspection

Yesterday I paddled the K1 for 60 minutes, my conversation with my chiropractor friend on my mind.  Rob had advised me to avoid doing things with my head bowed (such as reading a book) for long periods, and I tried to determine whether I'd been keeping my head up while paddling.  After yesterday's session I'm still not sure, and I might have to get somebody to shoot some video of me.

The new foot strap continues to provide much improvement in my balance.  But it also makes steering harder, as it's not as easy to move the tiller right and left with my feet tight under the strap.  I might have to adjust the tiller with respect to the footboard.

Back to school

I'm back teaching classes for Outdoors, Inc., out at Shelby Farms.  Information on these sessions is available here.  I had one last week, I had one today, and I'll have one next Saturday.  After a week off, I'll be teaching a class in deep water self-rescue techniques on August 23.

Back when I was a high school math teacher, one of my greatest challenges was knowing when not to say anything--to let the students figure things out on their own, without my help.  I'm aware of the same thing now in these kayaking classes.  Once I've shown the students a new skill, I try to give them a lot of time on the water just to paddle around and play with what I've shown them, and hopefully come to understand why what I've shown them improves their performance in the boat.  I move around from student to student and offer a bit of coaching, but often I think the less I say, the better.

My back is sore and uncomfortable once more.  Last night I had a lengthy phone conversation with my friend Rob, a chiropractor up in New York state. He urged me to pay attention to my posture and avoid certain head positions, and gave me an exercise to do, after which I should apply ice.

Monday photo feature

My niece Rachel minds the paddles while my nephew Ben and I prepare to go canoeing on the Snake River.  Rachel didn't paddle that day, but went rafting with us on the Yellowstone River a few days later.  Photo by Sally Thomas.

Back to the K1

After my light stretching and strength exercise this morning, I went downtown and paddled the K1 for 60 minutes.  In my post two weeks ago I mentioned that I should do some untimed sprints in which I focused strictly on good form and technique, and I did a few of those today.  The foot strap was helpful again today... thank you, Mike Herbert.

I also did a few stroke drills I hadn't done in a while: some backpaddling and some one-sided paddling.

I'm afraid I've lost some fitness in the last few weeks of reduced activity.  I felt really tired by the end of the hour of paddling.

Settling back in

We spent the first half of this past week in the town of Gardiner, Montana, at the north entrance to Yellowstone.  On Tuesday I went rafting on the Yellowstone River with my sister and my niece and nephew.  We put in just downstream of the park boundary (river boating is illegal inside the park) and floated some eight miles.  The kids had a great time, mostly by getting splashed by big waves and taking part in our guide's plot to pull the guide of another raft into the water.  But I took every opportunity I could to share with them a few of the finer points of paddling... somebody's got to make sure those kids get raised right.

We flew home Thursday, and as lovely as the American West is, I'm glad to be back in my place, following my own schedule, getting back on my own diet, abiding by my own rules.

I would really like to get back into a strength routine, and this morning I took a baby-step in that direction.  There's a post on Ron Lugbill's blog that lays out a "5P" workout (the 5 Ps are plyometrics, pushups, pullups, planks, and prehab).  This morning I did a couple of sets of fifteen pushups, just to ease my muscles into it, and several of the prehab exercises (in my case they were actually rehab, since they targeted my ailing back).  We're moving into the dog days of summer and I'm busy with all kinds of other things, but I hope I can build up a decent strength routine over the next couple of weeks.

Monday photo feature

It's important for the paddler to wear his PFD with a nice snug fit so it doesn't ride up over his head when he's in the water.  I help my nephew Ben get properly outfitted prior to our outing on the Snake River this past Thursday.  Photo by Sally Thomas.

I love wood, but not in the rivers I paddle

My family and I have moved north from the Jackson Hole area to Yellowstone National Park.  Our motel in West Yellowstone has a hot tub, and it's motivated me to get back into a little rehab work on my back.  My back has continued to cause me discomfort during this trip, and I'm starting to think about seeking more serious medical help for it when I get back home.  For now I'm soaking and doing some stretching exercises that target that area.

So far I haven't paddled any since Thursday, but we've seen lots of rivers and lakes and the thought is never far from my mind.  On Friday we ate lunch next to Cottonwood Creek in Grand Teton National Park, and the creek brought back memories of things that spooked me when I paddled a lot of Rocky Mountain whitewater in the 1990s.  The creek had a healthy flow (the snowpack in the Rockies was pretty big this year), and even though the whitewater was no bigger than Class II, it was moving fast, there were practically no eddies, and downstream of our picnic spot I could see piles of logs here and there in the creek bed.

In the eastern U.S., mountain rivers tend to have pools between the drops, so that a paddler scouting from his boat can pause and look downriver for hazards without being swept into them.  Furthermore, eastern rivers are fed mainly by rain and can be paddled at any time of year when there's been enough precipitation.  If there's been a concentration of rain in, say, the Cumberland Plateau region, paddlers from all over the Southeast will converge there, and word will quickly get out if a river is blocked by a tree or a logjam.

Rivers and creeks in the much younger Rocky Mountain chain tend to be much more continuous, cutting fast courses into the slopes with few eddies or pools.  And in a typical year, the peak snowmelt season lasts for only three or four weeks from late May through early July.  A group of paddlers that ventures to one of the more obscure, remote creeks might be the only party to run that creek that year, and they will have no information on what wood might have become lodged in the creek bed.

For several summers in the 90s I traveled to the Rockies and ran with a group of aggressive boaters who sought out some of these hidden gems.  I saw some of the most beautiful places I've ever seen and honed my whitewater skills to a fine polish.  But I also remember a few days where I was frightened for the entire duration of a run and gave thanks to the heavens when I arrived at the takeout unharmed.

Now, with my ten-year-old niece and twelve-year-old nephew in tow, I'll be sticking to the easy stuff in whatever paddling I do.  And here in Yellowstone National Park, boating on moving water is illegal anyway (some backstory on that here).  But it's interesting to gaze at the Rocky Mountain whitewater, reliving past experiences and perhaps pondering future ones.

The Snake

I'm a couple of days into my vacation out West, and mostly I've been tired.  I don't know if it was the jet plane or the change in my diet or just the general shove out of my normal routine, but I haven't felt all that energetic so far.

But I'm here, so I've got to do what I can.  Today I had a lovely canoe trip down a section of the Snake River with my 12-year-old nephew Ben.  We put in just below the Jackson Lake dam and took out at Pacific Creek.  The section was not at all difficult, but had enough moving water for me to teach Ben a little about ferries and eddy turns and peel outs.  Before today I don't think I had ever taken Ben on anything but the flatwater of Wolf River Harbor at home.

We had a great view of Mount Moran for much of the trip.  We also saw a bald eagle, an otter, several white pelicans, lots of ducks, and lots of fish.

We're spending one more night in Jackson, and then tomorrow we'll head north through Grand Teton National Park and arrive in West Yellowstone by the end of the day.  Like I said before, if an opportunity to paddle presents itself I'll jump on it, but otherwise I'll flow along with whatever the family is doing.  I hope I can get some more pep in my step soon.

Monday photo feature

I'm headed to Yellowstone tomorrow.  I expect I'll mostly be doing tourist stuff with the family.  We're flying, so I won't be taking any boats or gear, but I suppose it's possible I could rent such things if a golden opportunity presents itself.

I've never been inside Yellowstone National Park before, but I've been in the vicinity a time or two.  I've made a couple of interesting trips to the neighboring state of Idaho, and in this 1996 self-portrait I show off my housekeeping skills along the East Fork of the South Fork of the Salmon River.  It's really not all that close to Yellowstone, but it's probably the closest photo I've got.

Offseason tinkering

I've been mostly out of the boat this week, trying to tie up all kinds of loose ends before I leave this Tuesday on a trip to Yellowstone National Park with my sister's family and my mother.  The layoff has probably not been such a bad thing, as it's allowed me to let last Sunday's frustration wear off a bit.  My back is feeling better as well, though there's still that sore spot in the upper left quadrant that I just can't shake.  I'm afraid it's just waiting to flare up again as soon as I put some stress on it.

I paddled with Joe last Tuesday for 70 minutes.  It was quite windy, so I paddled the surf ski.  Today it was calm, and I got in a 40-minute session in the K1.  Heeding Mike Herbert's advice, I put a foot strap in my K1 today--actually just a nylon-webbing belt that I've had for years and never wear.  And I could definitely see how this feature will make a positive difference.  That old Mike knows a thing or two.

I spent much of the 40 minutes experimenting with the added control the strap gives me over my boat.  Then I did a couple of timed pieces: from the monorail bridge to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge (for which my PR is about 1:59) and from one set of pilings to the other beneath the A.W. Willis (formerly the Auction Avenue) Bridge (for which my PR is about 0:29).  I tried to concern myself less with my times than with good form in the boat.  Though I did not feel especially fluid or relaxed, my times ended up being decent: 2:03 and 0:30.

I think a good plan for the rest of this summer is to do a lot of untimed short, fast pieces, trying to achieve a higher comfort level at high intensity.

Post-trip: feeling like a mental case

On Saturday I paddled the K1 in the harbor for 30 minutes before loading up and heading for southern Missouri.  I traveled by way of Hardy, Arkansas, where my family took trips when I was a child.  I loved those vacations more than anything.  I took my time Saturday as I revisited the route that once got me so excited: the flat-as-a-board Arkansas Delta giving way to the eastern foothills of the Ozarks; the Santa Fe Railroad tracks running alongside the highway; familiar town names like Hoxie, Walnut Ridge, Pocahontas, Ravenden, and Imboden; the lovely clear Spring River, where I got in a canoe for the first time.

I was past Hardy before I realized that I had a pretty bad "trucker burn" going.  The weather was nice so I had my window open, and I had on a tank top, and heading north and west I was exposed to the afternoon sun.  So I got burned on my entire left arm from the shoulder down, on my left thigh, and on the left side of my face and neck.

I arrived at Sunburst Ranch campground on the North Fork of the White River in the late afternoon, and was reminded of why camping on Fourth of July weekend is not as pleasant as it should be.  There are people in our society who treat this holiday as a license to be as loud and obnoxious as they wish, and if you dare call them out on it then of course you must hate America.  Thankfully, the jerks at Sunburst Ranch were relatively tame this time around--their incredibly loud fireworks ceased around ten o'clock.

Yesterday morning the racers began to arrive for the first event, a race to Dawt Mill some seven or eight miles down the North Fork.  Most of them were paddling aluminum canoes: fabled tandems like Don Walls/Dale Burris and Jim Short/Doug Pennington, along with younger crews like Nathan White/Josh Sayger.  My competition in the kayak class was three-time Olympian Mike Herbert, who, to be honest, inhabits a different competitive universe from mine.  But somehow I managed to have a faster start than he did, possibly with the help of some faster water.  I led him by a nose for some ten seconds before he took the lead and began to pull away.

I always forget how pretty this stretch of the North Fork is.  I can't remember when I had last been on water that was clear enough to reveal the river bottom.  I also forget that it has a generous offering of Class II rapids; if there were any more whitewater here I would opt for a sure-enough wildwater boat rather than my lighter, tippier Apple Turnover.

I managed to overtake all of the canoes, who had started about five minutes before Mike and me, so I was the second boat across the line.  Burris/Walls took the aluminum win, and Short/Pennington won a furious sprint to the finish to claim second place over White/Sayger.

We had about an hour break before the event that had really gotten me up here in the first place: a race of about six miles on Norfork Reservoir in which I would compete in my K1 for the first time.  Mike was entered in the K1 he'll be racing in the world marathon championships this September, and Don Walls was nice enough to enter in his surf ski so I wouldn't be all alone out there once Mike had left me in the dust.

The gun went off, and Mike sprinted into the lead as expected.  As I've mentioned numerous times before, I lack the confidence in my stability to sprint all-out in the K1, so I found myself in third place behind Don.  Once the pace settled down I managed to pull even with Don, though I suspect he might have waited up for me so we could trade wake rides--he's a nice guy that way.  But I was actually feeling pretty good and was able to relax my body and rotate fully.

Then a motorboat came zooming past us on our right, and that was the beginning of the end for me.  As the wakes began to undulate beneath me, my concentration was badly disrupted and I reverted to stiff, tentative strokes with a lot of braces.  Don quickly opened several boat lengths on me and even as the water calmed back down, I felt flustered and unable to relax.  I wasted a bunch of energy trying to get myself refocused, and by the time we reached the turnaround point, the combined effects of this mental fatigue and my fatigue from the morning race began to take their toll.  I made several attempts to cut into Don's lead, but Don, a fit, strong athlete in his own right, wasn't going to let me have it.  With a mile to go I was about ready to raise the white flag.

As I approached the finish under the U.S. 160 bridge, Mike, who's as nice a guy as you'll ever meet, paddled alongside me and urged me to finish strong.  I was truly exhausted but I didn't want to let Mike down, and I paddled as hard as I could.  Afterward, Mike advised me on things I already knew: I needed to sit more erect and relax and allow my body to open up fully for maximum stroke power.  He noticed that my K1 lacks a foot strap and said it would make a big difference if I installed one.  In the boats I have paddled that have foot straps, I have not found the strap to be something I rely on, but I am going to defer to Mike's expertise and install one in my K1 as soon as I get a chance.

Today I am feeling as sore as ever and a bit demoralized after this race in which I was unable to perform like the paddler I know I can be.  I've always sort of scoffed at guys who are constantly changing boats with the belief that a different boat will make them better, but I am beginning to question whether this particular K1, designed for world-class races of 1000 meters or less, is really the right one for me.  I've always had sort of a brash attitude toward such things--"I may not be as fast as the top guys, but by golly, I can paddle any boat they can!"--but something a little bit more stable and fit to cruise over a longer distance might be what I need.  But I'm not ready to go out and get a new boat just now, so I'll keep playing around with this one and learning whatever I can about it and about myself.

Monday photo feature

Mike Herbert (left) and I sprint off the starting line for yesterday's downriver race on the North Fork of the White River.  The race started at Sunburst Ranch and finished at Dawt Mill, upriver from the town of Tecumseh, Missouri.  I offer this photo as proof that at least for a few seconds, I led Mike Herbert in a race.  Photo by Nathan White's girlfriend.

Road trip

I've had two or three tough days in the pain department this week.  I woke up Wednesday with incredible discomfort in my neck and left shoulder, and I suspect that Tuesday's K1 paddling in unstable conditions had a lot to do with it.  I think it was also the result of my being stressed out over some of life's minutiae.

By yesterday the area was finally starting to feel better.  Right now I've got that little bit of soreness or knottiness in my left shoulder that I just can't seem to get rid of.  I had a fairly uneventful Independence Day, and now I'm getting ready to drive up to the southern Missouri hamlet of Tecumseh for some racing tomorrow.  There's actually some racing going on up there today in the USCA C1 and C2 classes, but the events I plan to do are tomorrow: in the morning I will race my old "Apple Turnover" rudderless kayak on the North Fork of the White River from Sunburst Ranch to Dawt Mill, and in the afternoon I'll go downriver to Norfork Reservoir and race my K1.  The distance of the latter event is about seven and a half miles; I can't remember the mileage of the river race, but it's something less than ten miles.

It'll be my first time paddling the K1 in a competitive situation, and I'm going in with no particular expectations.  I just hope to have some fun with it, and I'm also looking forward to getting away from the worries of home for a short while and seeing some friends I don't see all that often.

Keeping at it in the K1

The hot, humid Memphis summer that we all know and love is beginning to assert itself.  One of the things I liked about that rainy weather pattern we had throughout June was how beautiful the sky was, the combination of storm clouds and sunlight doing all kinds of neat things.  Today we've got the sort of sky that I associate with the dog days of summer: hazy, washed out, not really cloudy but not a clear blue sky either.

Joe and I usually paddle together on Tuesdays, but he got caught up at work today and I paddled by myself for 60 minutes.  Down at the river it was much windier than I was expecting on a hot day like today, so it was time for some stability practice in the K1.  A drill I've been doing for years in the surf ski is to paddle in beam waves while trying to maintain as close to good flatwater form as possible.  In the K1 today I felt totally awkward doing this.

I think I'll be doing some racing this weekend: the North Fork Canoe Race and Show-Me State Championships are taking place up at Tecumseh, Missouri.  Most of the races take place on Norfork Lake, and I think that'll be a good place to try out the K1 in a competitive situation for the first time.  It's a very low-key event that racers in that region use as a tune-up for the USCA nationals; the format mimics that of the USCAs.  If I swim, I swim... it's usually plenty hot up there, so I'll relish the chance to cool off.

Monday photo feature

Lovely Ruth Sayger of Russellville, Arkansas, is a good sport upon hearing that the 2010 Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race has been canceled due to severe weather.  That was one wild morning here in Memphis, as very heavy rain was followed by the tornado warning sirens that prompted the cancellation.  Just making it to the start at the north end of Mud Island was an adventure: I had to detour around flash floods at the Watkins Street underpass and several other spots along North Parkway.  Racers coming over the Hernando DeSoto Bridge from Arkansas were delayed by flooding at the Danny Thomas Boulevard exit on Interstate 40.

Yesterday morning reminded me of that day in 2010.  Once again I encountered flooding on North Parkway on my way down to the river.  In the harbor, the litter collection structure at the mouth of Bayou Gayoso had been severely damaged by the bayou's raging currents.

This morning's newspaper reports that nearly seven inches of rain fell between 6 PM Saturday and 6 PM yesterday.  That's not a record, but it's close.  I'm no expert on how three inches of rain compares to six inches of rain or anything like that, but I do know that we often have very heavy showers that amount to less than an inch.  So yesterday we had a lot of rain.