I would love to post the flatwater team roster here...

...just like I did for the slalom team back on the first of this month.  But I do not yet have that information.

One thing I find very frustrating is how hard it is to get results and related information anytime there is a selection trials or big international competition in the Olympic disciplines of whitewater slalom and flatwater sprint.  The website for the sport's governing body in this country, USA Canoe/Kayak, is pretty worthless unless you want to wait however many days it takes them to get the results posted.  Usually a better source of information is the website maintained by the host venue or organization, but the quality of such a source varies widely.

The U.S. Team Trials for flatwater sprint took place in Oklahoma City this past weekend.  On the USACK website today there is a "preview" of the trials posted, but no results.  I did some poking around and found this page with results for all the many heats and boat classes and age groups, but it does not answer what I consider the most obvious question at the end of a selection trials:  Who, exactly, made the team?  What athletes will be representing the United States in the world cup and world championships this summer?

Perhaps I shouldn't be so critical.  After all, USACK and these other organizations are understaffed and underfunded and often rely on overworked volunteers, and getting a website updated requires somebody to sit down and do yet more work.  But a big reason that our sport continues to languish in obscurity is that it is often impossible to find out what is going on.  And I know I am not the only fan who is interested.

Monday photo feature

Back around 1999, when I was still racing slalom, a Polish man named Rafal Smolen was hired to coach at the Nantahala Racing Club in western North Carolina.  Though I can't really remember, he apparently had a small child.  That child, Michal, is now a young adult and a member of the U.S. National Team.  This past weekend, he won the under-23 world championship in Penrith, New South Wales, Australia.  If I'm not mistaken, he's the first U.S. athlete to win a world championship of any kind in men's kayak since Scott Shipley took the junior world title in the late 1980s.

Let's all get wet

Heavy thunderstorms were in the forecast for later today, so I went on down to the river fairly early.  Even so, I paddled for 60 minutes in a mild but steady rain.  I enjoyed it.  Our culture seems to think rain should be avoided at all costs ("That guy doesn't have the sense to come in out of the rain!"), but I think people who don't spend a little time in the rain at least once in a while are depriving themselves of some rich experiences.

There was some lightning in the area, so I stayed in the harbor where I would be less exposed.  Though the water was pretty calm, I paddled the surf ski because I didn't know what might blow in during the hour.  I did six of my back-strokes-then-forward-strokes power drill, and then did some longer backpaddling pieces.  I'm starting to get pretty good at going backwards in the surf ski.  There was one time when I let the rudder make a sudden turn and I almost flipped, but other than that I felt I was in good control of the rudder.

Messing about constructively

It was lovely and warm and calm this morning, so I took out the K1 and just played around in the harbor for 60 minutes.

One rule I try to follow in any sport I'm involved in is to identify aspects of the sport I'm not very good at, and work hard on those things.  I'm not so good at paddling that K1 at a high intensity level, so I worked on that today, doing a bunch of 6-stroke sprints and timing myself from one set of pilings to the other beneath the Auction Avenue bridge (about 31 seconds, two or three slower than my best time in the surf ski).  I could feel my upper back tense up whenever I took off on a sprint, so I tried hard to rotate at my waist and push the boat forward with my feet.

Last week I mentioned that I wanted to incorporate some more backpaddling with the hope of alleviating my back pain, so I did some of that today, too.  Keeping my balance in that boat is hard enough without also not seeing where I'm going, but I'll keep at it.

Ambling along with discomfort

I've paddled with Joe both Tuesday and today this week, 70 minutes each time.  Tuesday I paddled the K1, but in windier conditions today I opted for the surf ski.

I've had to turn the volume down a bit on my exercises.  My upper back right along my spinal cord is sore and inflamed, probably from me being a little overzealous with a couple of those exercises my friend who's an exercise physiologist showed me.  So it goes.

Monday photo feature

One of my favorite sights when I go race at Vicksburg each April is this nifty little shed made from an old boxcar up at Madison Parish Port.  Right now I've got all I can handle with the old building I'm renovating, but maybe a future chapter of my life will include converting old railroad cars into living and/or working space.

Strength, balance, control

Today was another beautiful, warm, calm day, so I paddled the K1 again, for 60 minutes.  Having less than full confidence in my stability in this boat manifests itself in a couple of ways: first, I can feel in my forearms, biceps, and shoulders that I'm using my arms more even though I'm trying hard not to; and second, there's more "kerplunk" when I insert the blade in the water, a hint that I'm probably leaning on my strokes for stability too much.

But I otherwise felt reasonably good in the boat today.  I spent the half-hour from 0:15 to 0:45 doing some tempo pieces of five minutes or so each.  I tried to keep the stroke rate moderate while putting a lot of power into each stroke.

My strength training has lagged a bit as I've been to two races and dealt with this upper back stiffness, but I'm trying to get a new routine started up.  I'm still doing those exercises from that You Tube video that my friend Muril told me about, and I've added in several other exercises that target that area that an exercise physiologist friend showed me.  I did a round of all these before I went to the river this morning, and I plan to continue these plus a couple of things for other parts of the body for the next few weeks.

K1 weather

It's hard to beat the weather we had today: sunny, light breeze, and warm (about 80 degrees Fahrenheit).

I've had my K1 stored indoors all winter.  It was sitting in a spot where I'm about to start doing some work, so I decided to take it back down to the marina for the summer.  Getting back in this boat after paddling my more-stable surf ski all winter was sort of a shock, but not too bad a one.  Actually, I felt like I picked up right where I left off last fall: in 40 minutes of paddling I had stretches where I felt great and stretches where I felt all wobbly.  My approach was to go over in my mind the things I've been doing in the ski that I feel really good about, and try to do those things in the K1.  The biggest struggle was paddling at high intensity: I just don't quite have the confidence in my balance to put the hammer down.

A little time for everything

After spending a few weeks bogged down in myriad other projects, I've finally found time to resume work on my new workshop on the ground floor of my building.  I'm building all kinds of storage shelves and other infrastructure to get all my tools and stuff organized.

Once I get such a project started, I tend to sink my teeth in and get enthusiastic about it.  That's a good thing, but it makes it a little harder to get myself down to the river to paddle a few times each week.  This morning I was very tempted to skip paddling and get back to work downstairs.  But I made it to the river for a 60-minute session, and once I was in my boat I was glad to be devoting a little time to something I enjoy and that is important to me on a purely personal level.  I'll be back working on the workshop soon enough.

I'm almost afraid to say it because of all the relapses I've had, but my back has been feeling better in the couple of days since my massage--not cured, but better.  In the boat I gave myself a good long warmup before doing a set of my backstrokes-then-forward-strokes power-building drill: I did six of them at two-minute intervals.  Then I did some longer backpaddling pieces: I wouldn't be surprised if a bit of muscle imbalance is partly responsible for my back discomfort, so it seems worth a try to incorporate a little more backpaddling into the routine for a while.

Now, at lunchtime, it seems to be clouding up a bit, but it was a lovely morning to paddle.  The Fahrenheit temperature was in the mid 60s with bright sunshine and only a mild breeze.

I'm ready to start feeling right again

Today was a lovely day if you just stood inside looking out the window.  This morning I went downtown expecting pleasant paddling conditions: bright sunshine and high 40s Fahrenheit.  But then I was out on the dock, exposed to a pretty fierce north wind.  Joe and I paddled for 80 minutes, and then I went home feeling just as worn out from the chill as I feel on a typical January day.

I'm still tired and sore and stiff in the back.  I may just have to go easy for a few days and gather myself before I start up a serious block of training for the OICK Race on June 14.  I got another massage this afternoon and my back feels better right now, but it remains to be seen how it will feel after it tightens up overnight.  I've been dealing with this issue for about a month now and I'm wondering when this discomfort is going to run its course.

Monday photo feature

Off we go on a picturesque spring Saturday morning.  The Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race started at Madison Parish Port on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi River, and finished 22 miles downstream at the Vicksburg riverfront a mile or so up the Yazoo River.  Saturday's race was the tenth installment of this event, put on each year by a hard-working crew of Vicksburgers.  Photo by Paul Ingram.

Post-race decompression

At race time yesterday, the Mississippi River was at 33.75 feet on the Vicksburg gauge.  This is a fairly high level, but not exceptionally high.  Speaking in very general terms, you can expect higher water to produce faster times in a race on the Mississippi.  But as we saw yesterday, there are other variables in play, most notably the wind and the air temperature.  We had a beam wind for much of the race yesterday, and that always requires some extra energy and concentration.  And though the temperature was not oppressively high (high 70s Fahrenheit), it was quite warm to be racing in.  For me, the worst part was paddling up the Yazoo River toward the finish with the wind at my back: without a breeze to dry the sweat on my face, my eyes started stinging badly enough that I had to stop paddling and splash my face a couple of times to avoid paddling with my eyes closed.

In short, conditions were not as ideal for lightning-fast times as many of us had been hoping.

My fastest time ever in the Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race was 1 hour, 56 minutes, 34 seconds in 2011.  That day the river level was 36.4 feet on the Vicksburg gauge, and the wind was blowing from the west-northwest, mostly a tailwind on that particular section of the Mississippi.  The first half of the course was actually quite turbulent, but the river smoothed out once we rounded the bend into the long approach to the city of Vicksburg, and that was very helpful as I tried to conserve energy and paddle as efficiently as possible.

The following year saw me complete the course in my slowest time ever: 2:20:49.  The river was low--19.2 feet--and there was a pesky headwind the whole way down.  I think the main reason times are slower at low water is that the course is longer: sandbars that you can paddle over at higher levels are exposed on the insides of bends.

All this is part of what makes canoe and kayak racing so interesting: nature's dynamism makes the keeping of time records a less worthwhile pursuit than in, say, my old sport of track and field, where distances are carefully measured and the surfaces are flat.

This morning I took my boat back to the marina and did an easy recovery paddle of 30 minutes.  My upper back is all sore again, and all I wanted to do today was get some blood flowing in those muscles and flush out some of those nasty, achy toxins.  I'm also drinking a few glasses of water during the course of the day to increase the volume and lower the viscosity of said blood.

The Vicksburg race

I'm home from my whirlwind trip to Vicksburg, and I'm plenty tired and sore.  I finished first overall in the race, and I'm pleased about that, but the race seemed harder than usual this year.  Maybe my memory isn't that good--I'm sure the race is always pretty tough--but it seems like in past years I was able to race aggressively three or four miles longer than I did today.  I was feeling quite taxed just an hour in and had to move into energy-conservation mode.  The conditions played a role: there was a persistent wind that on most of the course blew from right to left, and the water was pretty bumpy the whole way.  And I guess I spent more energy early than I usually do: in past years I've spent the first half-hour or so riding competitors' wakes before eventually pulling away, whereas today I took the lead right away and tried to separate myself as soon as I could.  Such aggressive tactics served me well at Ocean Springs two weeks ago, but maybe weren't the best idea in a race like today's, where I was competing with the elements as much as with other paddlers.

One of my goals for this race is always to break two hours, but I fell short on that one: 2:01:37.  My elapsed time was an hour and 48 minutes as I entered the mouth of the Yazoo River for the final approach to the finish, and I figured I had a sub-two-hour time in the bag, but that last bit of the race always takes longer than I think it will.  By 1:59 I was still at least 200 meters out, and I had almost nothing left in the tank, and that's when I knew a sub-2 time was a lost cause.

But in general, I have no regrets.  I competed as hard as I could and came away with some ideas of what I should work on before my next big race in a couple of months.  I saw lots of nice people and had a great time at this fine event whose organizers work hard year after year.

Yesterday I paddled for 30 minutes in the harbor before loading the boat for the trip.  I did eight 6-stroke sprints at one-minute intervals, concentrating hard on pushing the boat forward with my legs.

I left Memphis after lunch and arrived in Vicksburg in the late afternoon.  After dropping my boat off at the start and getting my race packet at the event HQ, I retired to my motel room and did some tub-soaking and stretching.  I tried to stream the Cardinals game while I did so, but the motel's wifi signal was pretty unreliable, and I wasn't able to relax like I wanted to as I tried repeatedly to reset the stream.  I did sleep pretty well, and felt ready to go at the start this morning.

Two people came up today and told me they enjoy reading this blog, so as promised, I recognize them here.  Thanks to Jimmy Guidry of Lafayette, Louisiana, and Stan Stark of Gulfport, Mississippi, for being loyal readers.

Going racing this Saturday

Well, I'm signed up for Vicksburg.  The Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race will take place this Saturday.  It starts about 22 miles up the Mississippi from Vicksburg, and finishes along the Vicksburg Front a mile or so up the Yazoo River.  I believe this will be my sixth time to participate in this race.

The upper back stiffness continues to be a concern.  My friend Muril sent me a link to a You Tube video of some exercises that target this area, so I'm trying them out.  Though there's no great improvement yet, I figure anything that engages this part of the body and gets some blood flowing through those muscles can't be bad.

Yesterday I paddled fairly easy with Joe for 70 minutes in the harbor.  Today I spent 60 minutes in the harbor and out on the river, doing six 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals and paddling at varying intensities out on the river, trying to sharpen my feel for the water out there ahead of Saturday's race.

Monday photo feature

Fred Hatler of Memphis rests on a brace just after crossing the finish line of the Battle On The Bayou race at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, this past March 29.  Yummy barbecue awaits on the bank to Fred's right, courtesy of The Shed Barbecue and Blues Joint.  Photo by Jan Dastugue.

Staying in motion

It seems like my back feels ever so slightly better each day.  I'm trying to keep up an active routine, but not do anything that puts undue strain on it.  Basically, I would describe this ailment as a nuisance: it's not bad enough to put me out of commission, but it makes everything a bit less comfortable.

This morning I paddled for 60 minutes, maybe twenty of those minutes out on the river.  I did about six sprints of 30 seconds or so, sprinkled throughout the hour.

Down in the dumps

The euphoria of last weekend has given way to sort of a letdown for much of this week.  I've been uncertain of how to proceed with training for reasons related to my stiff upper back and to the paucity of races on the calendar.

Though Tuesday night's massage was helpful, my back tightened up again overnight and was quite uncomfortable Wednesday and Thursday.  It's felt a bit better yesterday and today, and I'm just hoping that trend will continue.  I feel like I should start up a new strength routine for the month of April, but I'm worried about aggravating my back pain.  With another race coming up next Saturday, down at Vicksburg, I'm thinking maybe I'll wait until after to hit the weights again.

But that brings up another problem: I'm not a hundred percent sure I can even make it to Vicksburg next weekend.  I have sort of a work issue--not exactly an obligation, but one of those things that make me ask myself whether I'm devoting too much time to my hobby and not enough to my livelihood.  In any case, if I don't race at Vicksburg, then my next race might not be until two months later, when the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race takes place here at Memphis.  We've lost a race-calendar fixture in the Arkansas River Canoe and Kayak Race at Little Rock; the director decided not to put it on this year, and I can't say that I blame him one bit, seeing as how putting a race on is an incredible amount of work, and too often the reward is a bunch of busybodies critiquing this or that aspect of the job you did.  That leaves us with just three races in the spring season that are anywhere near this part of the country, and I worry that these three may go away sooner rather than later.

So, it's all been enough to put me in a funk.  I usually have a solid plan for training, but at the moment I'm just drifting aimlessly.  I guess I'll probably keep things relatively light until Vicksburg (assuming I even go), giving my back a chance to improve, and then start a long training phase for the weeks leading up to the OICKR.

On Wednesday I did a bit of a workout in my 60-minute paddling session, doing six three-minute pieces in which I paddled at anaerobic threshold for two minutes and at sub-max intensity for one minute.  The recovery interval was three minutes.  On Thursday I met Joe and we paddled easy for 70 minutes.  After taking yesterday off, I paddled for 60 minutes this morning, doing six power drills where I backpaddle a few strokes and then take six hard forward strokes.  I did these at two-minute intervals.

That's better

I just got my massage this evening, and I think it helped a lot.  There's still a bit of soreness in my upper back area, but it's nothing like it was before the therapist arrived.  She found a big knot at the base of my neck and worked it hard.  I, in turn, did my best to relax and be limp in her hands--not the easiest thing for me, seeing as how I'm sort of a tightly-wound guy by nature.

Now I'm drinking some water to wash out the toxins, and relishing feeling better.  Getting a massage seems like sort of a luxury in our society, but I bet there would be more peace in this world if everybody got regular massages.

This morning Joe and I paddled easy in the harbor for 70 minutes.  Like I said, my back was not doing so well at that time, and I though I tried to relax in the boat and get that area to loosen up, it didn't seem to want to do so.

U.S. National Team for whitewater slalom

Ocean Springs wasn't the only place people were racing in canoes and kayaks this past weekend.  The U.S. Team Trials for whitewater slalom took place in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Over three days of racing, the following athletes earned the chance to compete in the 2014 world championships:

Men's Single Canoe (C1):

Fabien Lefevre (Bethesda, MD)

Casey Eichfeld (Charlotte, NC)

Zach Lokken (Durango, CO)

Men's Kayak (K1):

Fabien Lefevre (Bethesda, MD)

Michal Smolen (Gastonia, NC)

Richard Powell (Charlotte, NC)

Women's Kayak (K1W):

Dana Mann (Bethesda, MD)

Ashley Nee (Bethesda, MD)

Anna-Maria Ifarraguerri (McLean, VA)

Women's Canoe (C1W):

Colleen Hickey (Okawville, IL)

Micki Reeves (Denver, CO)

Traci Hines (Charlotte, NC)

Men's Double Canoe (C2):

Casey Eichfeld (Charlotte, NC) / Devin McEwan (Salisbury, CT)

Eric Hurd (Charlotte, NC) / Jeff Larimer (Charlotte, NC)

Scott McCleskey (Sylva, NC) / Benn Fraker (Atlanta, GA)

For the first time in 25 years, the world championships will take place on U.S. soil.  They are scheduled for September 17-21 at Deep Creek, Maryland.