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.

The week's roundup

This has been as rainy a month of June as I can remember, and it's really cutting loose here on the next-to-last day.  It rained with almost no letup for four to five hours this morning, some of that rain being quite heavy.  It was slacking up some by the time I got downtown to paddle, but it continued to drizzle for the entire 60 minutes.  I can't wait to see in tomorrow's newspaper how many inches have fallen.

The heavy rain started last night, forcing the cancellation of some outdoor events in my part of town.  There had been some rain during the day yesterday, too, but it wasn't too disruptive during my "Intro to Kayaking" class out at Shelby Farms.  I had just one student--two had registered, but one withdrew the night before--so she got to dictate the agenda, and she had no problem getting wet.  She was determined to get over her fear of doing a wet exit, and I think we made some progress in that area.  This class I've been teaching is very basic--I describe it to people as a "primer" for people trying out the sport for the first time--and I try hard to put myself in the students' shoes as they strive to master things that have been automatic for me for decades.  As my student yesterday psyched herself up to flip her boat and swim out of it, I imagined myself taking a class in something new to me, concentrating hard on some skill the instructor could do in his sleep, and figured that's how my student felt.  In the last ten years I've tried contra dancing and basic massage, as well as a number of new woodworking skills, and I should probably extend myself beyond my comfort zone a little more often.

This morning was the first time I'd paddled since Tuesday, when Joe and I did an easy loop of the harbor.  I've been hoping my back might have a chance to heal up with the reduced paddling load of the last couple of weeks, but it's been following the same pattern of flaring up every few days as if there's been no change in training volume.  Frankly, I'm getting a bit discouraged.  For a while I was doing all the things one should do to address an injury--getting massages, soaking in the tub and stretching, that sort of thing--and have seen no real improvement, and lately I've just been slacking off on all that.

Monday photo feature

Just a week after taking the title in the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, Mike Herbert went to Oklahoma City to compete in the national championships and U.S. team trials for marathon kayaking this past Saturday.  Mike was the overall winner, and now sets his sights on the ICF world championships, scheduled for September 26-28 at the same venue.

International marathon racers use boats that are about the same as those used by flatwater sprint racers, only with a lower minimum weight.  Distances vary by age group and gender; I believe Mike's race on Saturday was 30 kilometers.  The course included several portages.

Mike won three medals in the flatwater sprint world championships in the early 1990s.  It would be neat if he could come back more than two decades later and add a marathon world championships medal to that collection.  He is eligible to compete in both the Open and the Masters age groups.

Photo by Phil Capel.

Chilling out for a bit

Since the OICK race on the 14th, I've paddled a couple of times but I'm mostly giving myself a break from the boat for a while.  I'm actually still feeling good and excited about my paddling right now, but I'm hoping maybe a small break will help my back feel better.  I'm also trying to put a bigger dent in the huge pile of work still to be done on my building, and unfortunately, that's been putting some stress on my back.  Hard to win when physical labor is who you are.

I taught the second of my "Intro to Kayaking" classes for Outdoors, Inc., yesterday.  There are four more scheduled over the next couple of months; go here for more information.

More on Jamie McEwan

On his website, Jamie McEwan has provided us with this brief autobiographical sketch.  It's a nice summary of his multifaceted paddling career.

After winning bronze in the '72 Olympics, Jamie backed off from slalom a bit.  The sport was dropped from the Olympic programme for Montreal in '76, and I think Jamie might have attempted to make the flatwater team during this period.  He began to get serious about slalom again in the mid '80s.  Even though the sport had changed fairly dramatically, thanks in large part to the new techniques and boat designs developed by the athletes Jamie had inspired, Jamie found a home in the C2 class with Lecky Haller as a partner.  The pair won the 1988 World Cup title, finished fourth in the 1989 world championships, and made it to the 1992 Olympics, where slalom made its return a full 20 years after Jamie's bronze-medal performance in C1.

Jamie retired from competition after the '92 Games, but re-emerged occasionally to race C2 with his son Devin.  Devin McEwan is a member of the 2014 slalom national team, and will compete in C2 with partner Casey Eichfeld in the world championships at Deep Creek, Maryland, this September.

Jamie was also an expedition paddler of note, making a first descent of North Carolina's Linville Gorge in the early '70s, exploring rivers in Bhutan, Mexico, and British Columbia, and joining his brother on a first descent of Tibet's spectacular Yarlung-Tsangpo river that saw the tragic death of former slalom teammate Doug Gordon.  This latter expedition is chronicled in two books: The Last River by Todd Balf and Courting the Diamond Sow by Wick Walker.

Though I competed in slalom through most of the 1990s, I didn't get to know Jamie until the mid 2000s.  We exchanged several e-mails over a couple of years, and then I met him in person at the 2007 Nationals at Deep Creek.  He saw my passion for the sport and treated me like no less of a peer than his fellow national team members, and I really appreciated that.

I'm seeing many kind words posted on Face Book today as the word of Jamie's passing spreads.  Perhaps the most concise and comprehensive of the ones I've read was posted by Eric Giddens, a 1996 Olympian in men's slalom kayak: "Of the few legends I have met, you may have been the most human. You will always be missed, but never forgotten."

Monday photo feature

Before the race this past Saturday, it had been twelve long years since I last cracked the top three in the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  Here I am after the awards ceremony for the 2002 race, just "one of the guys" alongside gold medalist Greg Barton and silver medalist Mike Herbert.  Photo by my mom.

Debriefing and decompressing

Here are a few random notes on the day after the big race.

• Sometimes I forget, but I try to remember to look at my watch when I reach the Hernando DeSoto Bridge during the OICK race.  Yesterday my split at the HDB was about 10:30.

• There's an exceptionally likable gal named Marie Mason working for Outdoors, Inc., who has taken on the O.I. blog with the intention of making it more current and more lively than it had been.  A few weeks ago she decided that a profile of yours truly would be a good addition to the blog, and I consider that quite an honor.  We met for lunch and she asked me a series of questions, and this past week she went live with this post.  "Professional" is a rather elastic term for the title, but then again, I did get 75 bucks for my third-place finish yesterday.

• I had house guests this weekend, as Dana and Nick Kinderman came up for the race.  Dana and Nick are the directors of the annual Battle On The Bayou race down at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and I have had the great good fortune to get to know them in the five years that I have participated in that event.  Besides racing yesterday morning, we visited my neighborhood microbrewery Friday night, ate some barbecue yesterday afternoon, and saw Roseanne Cash perform at the Levitt Shell last night.

• 188 boats finished the race yesterday.  That's a score-less-one better than last year's 169 boats, but still down a bit from the 200-220 boat-counts of the previous decade or more.  I can't really tell you why registration is down a bit, but I would guess it has to do with more people being away on vacation in June (up until 2010, the race took place the first weekend in May), or people having other plans for Father's Day weekend, or maybe people not being used to the new date yet.  The race was no less exciting this year than it's ever been, but I hope it'll rise back above the two-hundred-boat level in the years to come.  I want my hometown race to be the biggest and best.

• The Memphis gauge reading during the race yesterday was 18.5 feet.

• This afternoon I learned that Jamie McEwan has passed away.  Jamie was arguably the person responsible for the glorious performances of U.S. athletes in the sport from the late 70s through the early 90s.  He won the bronze medal in the C1 class at the 1972 Olympic Games at Augsburg, West Germany--the first major medal ever for a U.S. athlete--and legend has it that Cathy and Davey Hearn heard the news on the radio during a family trip in Montana, and decided then and there that they wanted to pursue paddling greatness themselves.  Over the next 20 years the Hearns and D.C.-area clubmates like Ron and Jon Lugbill, Bob Robison, Kent Ford, Mike and Steve Garvis, Fritz and Lecky Haller, Dana Chladek, and Jed Prentice stood atop the slalom-racing world.  Jamie was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, and though he downplayed it publicly, it apparently was too much for him in the end.

I woke up this morning feeling pretty good for the day after a race, but I knew some active recovery would be wise just the same.  I went to the river and paddled easy for 30 minutes, breaking a nice sweat and getting the blood flowing in all my paddling muscles.  When I got back to the dock I did a round of stretches throughout my body.  Then I cleaned up my boat, which had gotten dirty from being moved around at the start and finish areas of yesterday's race.

The big race!

The 33rd Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race is in the books.  The complete results are posted here.

I'm happy to say that my back, while not pain-free, was feeling better yesterday morning than it had in the middle of the week.  I'm sure adrenaline helped with that.  My start was so-so, and in the early going I was in seventh place behind Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas; Pete Greene of Beaufort, South Carolina; Rick Carter of Eutawville, South Carolina; Phil Capel of North Little Rock, Arkansas; Michael Batsie of Washington, Missouri; and Waylon Willis of Charleston, South Carolina.

But I soon found a good rhythm and moved up into third place.  There was one guy sitting on my stern wake as we proceeded down below the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and I wasn't sure who it was until I backed off the speed a little to get a look at him in my peripheral vision: it was Rick Carter (who, for some reason, had registered under the alias of "Bronko Nagurski").  As we headed into Wolf River Harbor I gathered myself for a hard push to the finish line over that last half-mile or so.

Mike Herbert, a three-time Olympian and a Pan-Am Games champion and a three-time world championships medalist, won going away in sixteen minutes, two seconds.  Pete Greene was in solid control of second place, finishing in 17:14.  Rick (Bronko) never seemed far behind me, but I apparently opened up a gap on him and finished third in 17:46 to his 17:54.

A tandem surf ski was next: Ron Ladzinski and Mira Doneva of Olathe, Kansas, crossed the line in eighteen minutes flat.  Waylon Willis finished sixth in 18:39, followed by a couple of racers in fast touring kayaks: Roy Roberts of Searcy, Arkansas (18:46) and Phil Capel (18:58).  Just behind Phil was Kata Dismukes, a native Hungarian now living in the Memphis area, who became the first woman ever to break 19 minutes in this race with her 18:59 clocking.  Another notable performance was turned in by Don Walls and Dale Burris, who hail from the neighboring Arkansas towns of Dover and Russellville: paddling their pro-boat C2, they clocked 19:24 as the first canoe across the finish line.

Just like that, this race that I always work hard to prepare for each year was over.  It was time to relax and have some fun on what was becoming a gorgeous day.  One of Memphis's best bands, the Bluff City Backsliders, provided the musical entertainment up the bank in Mississippi River Park, and I hung out and talked to the many fine friends, both racers and spectators, that I saw.  My eternal gratitude goes out to race director Joe Royer and the many staff members of Outdoors, Inc., who worked long hours to make sure this event was a great experience for all participants.

I'll be (mostly) ready

Race day is rapidly approaching.  I'm looking forward to the festive aspects of it: a couple of fine friends from the Gulf Coast are entered and they're staying with me, and I'll greet many other racer friends at the site Saturday morning, and live music by the Bluff City Backsliders will provide the post-race backdrop.

But of course, I need to focus on the race itself, too.  Unfortunately, my back is not being very cooperative.  In spite of increased rest and active recovery sessions this week, the soreness has flared up along my spinal cord between the shoulder blades.  Maybe some more extended out-of-the-boat time is what I need, and I'll get some of that after the race, but for now it looks like I'll be racing with some pain, just like I've done at Ocean Springs and Vicksburg this season.

This week I've been going down and paddling easy, but doing some short, hard sprints with long rest in between.  I feel about as comfortable paddling at high intensity as I ever have.  I hope that translates into a good first 150 meters or so Saturday morning.

At speed and at rest

I spent several days out of the boat, hoping some rest might be good for my back.  At this point the soreness is back down to one stubborn knot just below and to the left of my neck.  I did a couple of soaking-and-stretching recovery sessions and plan to do several more as the week goes along.

This morning Joe and I paddled for 70 minutes in the harbor.  We did eight 12-stroke sprints with full recovery during that time.  I felt like I was moving the boat reasonably well.

Monday photo feature

Here's a photo of the 2005 Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race that I think I must have swiped from the website of The Commercial Appeal, our daily newspaper.  In some years, the paper has given the race very nice coverage.  In other years, including last year, the paper has barely acknowledged the race.

So be it.  There's no doubt that as a paddler I am biased, but I honestly think the OICK race is the single best annual event in Memphis.  We have this incredible natural wonder right at the doorstep of our city, and for most of each year it is underappreciated and underutilized for recreation and fitness.  But one one day each year, several hundred men, women, and children get intimately acquainted with the river in their human-powered craft, and then celebrate the experience with food, music, and fun in Mississippi River Park.  Then, when the festivities have concluded, they clean up whatever mess they have made and turn the place back over to the everyday public in better condition than it had been before.  I know of no other event in town that can boast such bullet points.

Trash slalom

Today was not really a training day, but it was race preparation of a sort.  There's a professor at the University of Memphis who organizes litter pickups in McKellar Lake and Wolf River Harbor on the riverfront, and there was a harbor cleanup scheduled for this morning in advance of the OICK race next Saturday.  I wanted to make sure the paddling community was represented among the volunteers, so I went down there and participated in a plastic touring boat.

Mostly what I did was retrieve floating trash that was beyond the reach of the land-based volunteers, and throw it on the bank so they could put it in their trash bags.  I think a whitewater boat would have been better for the job, as I often needed a sharper turning radius when zigzagging among the pieces of flotsam or when weaving through the willows near the bank.

We focused on the cobblestones and Mississippi River Park and the surrounding areas, where racers will gather after the finish.  In the hundreds of paddling sessions I've put in on the Memphis riverfront, I've seen it at its very best, at its very worst, and at every state in between.  I think it's important to see all these states; but the purpose of next weekend is to celebrate our wonderful river and share it with our out-of-town guests, and we want it to look its best.

One last session of sprint training

Storms are in the area, but this morning it was calm and even sunny for a while as I made my way to the river.

I did a variation on Monday's workout.  It was really the same workout except I did "10 seconds on, 20 seconds off" instead of "15 seconds on, 15 seconds off."  It gave the workout a different feel in interesting ways.  Overall, it was not as taxing; but since the boat had an extra five seconds to slow down between sprints, I had to overcome that much more inertia on the next sprint, and wasn't able to establish a rhythm like I could in the 15-second sprints on Monday.

Anyway, this was my last "real" workout until the OICK race next Saturday.  From now on I'll be doing short sprints with lots of recovery, and generally trying to get as much rest as I can.

I've been tenderized

My massage therapist had to postpone our session to this evening, so I'm now relaxing after a much-needed kneading.  The pain isn't gone--I didn't really expect it to be--but I think she worked a lot of it out.

This morning I paddled with Joe for 70 minutes.  I paddled the K1 even though it was a good bit windier from the south than it had been in recent days.  The only stability trouble I had was making the turn back north when we reached the south end of the harbor.  Generally I think I'm getting more and more comfortable in the K1 when paddling an easy, relaxed pace like we did today.  Trying to sprint continues to be a different matter, but I'll keep at it.

Recovery

Even after yesterday's hard workout, I felt more energetic today than I'd been feeling.  I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled with Joe for 70 minutes.  Conditions were calm enough for the K1 today.  We paddled a relaxed pace and I felt pretty stable most of the time.

I'm ready for a day off tomorrow.  My back is still hurting, and I'm looking forward to a visit from the massage therapist tomorrow evening.

Sprint workout

Back on the 7th of May, Greg Barton, who was preparing for the big Molokai ocean race in Hawaii, posted this on his Face Book page:

...worked on sprints - 6 sets of 5 x 15 seconds with 15 sec rest. Hopefully this will help catching runs when I get to Hawaii. I used to do this session quite often when I was training for sprint racing, but not much in the last decade or more.

Then, in the comments section, he added this:

I used to do several sets of 15 x 15 early in my career, but found the intensity dropped significantly. I get much better results with 3-6 sets of 5 x 15. Limiting the number keeps the intensity much higher. Sometimes less is more!

I thought this workout seemed beautifully simple and decided to incorporate it into my training for the OICK race.  I went to the river today unsure of how many sets I would do; I've been feeling tired the last few days, probably from traveling and working on my building, and my back is still ailing.  I figured I would decide once I had gotten started and knew how I was feeling in the boat.  I ended up doing four sets.

In each set, the first sprint felt good--almost effortless.  By the third sprint, the lactic acid was settling in and I was really feeling it.  I got through the last several sprints in each set by lowering the stroke rate a bit and focusing on keeping my shoulders relaxed and rotating fully and pushing the boat forward with my feet.  Greg didn't mention how much recovery to take between sets; I took five minutes so I would be good and ready to go hard again each time.

After four sets I was tired but felt good about what I'd done.  I was especially pleased with how smooth and fluid that first sprint of each set felt.  I've focused on speed more this season than ever before, and it's nice to know that's paying off.

Monday photo feature

2001 was the 20th year for the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, and a spirited competition it was.  Mike Herbert pulled away from Greg Barton for the win; by the time this photo was taken, they were "in the clubhouse," as it were.  The picture shows the next wave of racers approaching the finish line in the harbor.  That's me in the foreground, en route to my third-place finish.  Over my right shoulder is Peter Braul of Kincardine, Ontario, who took fourth.  The thirteen years that have passed since this race have dimmed my memory of who the other paddlers are, but I believe they include Wim Nouwen and Joe Royer of Memphis and Maks Zupan of Paisley, Ontario.  Photo by Emerson Wickwire.

A fine first class

Yesterday morning I welcomed five students to class out at Patriot Lake--part of the Outdoors, Inc., "Intro to Kayaking" series.  Though the Mid South had had intermittent heavy rain all week and more was in the forecast for yesterday, we got lucky and had a perfectly lovely morning for paddling.

Today I did two sets of the May strength routine.  I hope to be back in the boat tomorrow, honing my speed for the OICK race in 13 days.