Reloading

Because those antibiotics were making me feel so crummy Friday, I took Saturday off from taking them.  I resumed Sunday morning, and by yesterday morning I was back to aching all over and feeling very sluggish.  I spent most of yesterday around the house doing some post-trip chores, putting gear away and stuff like that.  I also began the annual ritual of washing my heaviest winter paddling clothing and putting it away.  Here, my fleece-lines pogies and (in the background) a pair of furry tights dry out after getting washed in the laundry room sink downstairs:

Of course, April hasn't even begun yet, and it's entirely possible we'll be in for some more chilly weather.  But I feel fairly confident I can put away the stuff I wear in sub-freezing temperatures.  The coldest temperature I see in the current ten-day forecast for Memphis is 42 degrees Fahrenheit, and I still have some clothes not yet put away that'll do in that kind of weather.

Today I am still feeling low on energy.  After some lethargic stretching this morning I went down to the river and got in the boat, and felt surprisingly good there.  I did three eight-stroke sprints, and then paddled out on the Mississippi, which was placid and free of barge traffic.  The light was beautiful: it was largely cloudy, but the sun was peeking through in spots.  At one point it rained on me for a couple of minutes, and that was a lovely scene.  After this nice taut paddling session I gave my boat a long-overdue washing, cleaning off the Gulf salt as well as a winter's worth of grime.

I take my last antibiotic pill tonight at suppertime, so I'm hopeful better days are ahead.  My next scheduled race is a week from Saturday down at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and with any luck I'll enjoy some better health as I prepare.

Monday photo feature

Photographer Wayne Meverden has spent many years shooting events on the whitewater course at Wausau, Wisconsin.  He has hundreds and hundreds of old-fashioned slides, and recently he has been scanning them and posting them on Face Book.  There are great shots of many of the U.S.'s best: Cathy and Davey Hearn, Rebecca and Eric Giddens, Lecky Haller, Scott Shipley, Scott Parsons, Brett Heyl, and more.

And there's also a shot of yours truly.  I believe this was taken at the 1998 U.S. Team Trials.

The course at Wausau is in a channel of the Wisconsin River below a hydroelectric dam.  Whitewater features were added to the riverbed, and a spillway gate was installed in the dam at the head of the channel to allow for precise releases for events.

Trip report

Well, it's been an interesting few days.  By the time I was paddling up to the starting line in Ocean Springs yesterday morning it felt somewhat remarkable that I was there.

On Thursday morning I had paddled with Joe in the harbor.  I did eight 12-stroke sprints and I was feeling good, the boat moving well.  But at the same time, the antibiotics I'd been taking were really starting to wear on my body and disrupt my sleep.  At least, I hope it was the antibiotics disrupting my sleep: one problem I have never had is insomnia, and I hope I never do have that problem.  I believe the very best thing you can do for your health, along with a good diet, is get adequate sleep night in and night out.  It's been at least ten years since I have run a fever or been sick in any significant way, and I think good sleep has had a lot to do with that.

But when I got out of bed Friday morning, it seemed that that run of luck might be coming to an end at an untimely moment.  I had slept poorly for the second night in a row, and my body was aching a little as if I might be coming down with something.  I went down to the harbor and did a short paddle with a few more 12-stroke sprints, and this time everything felt more labored.

I loaded up my boat and went ahead with the six-hour drive to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  It was not a pleasant drive.  By the time I rolled into Ocean Springs my head was throbbing and I was questioning the wisdom of even making the trip.  After checking in at the race headquarters I retired to the home of my friend Nick Kinderman, who had invited me to stay with him.  Nick is in fact the founder of the Battle On The Bayou race, and having turned the reins over to another director this past year, he was getting to enjoy the event himself for the first time.

I was hoping a good night's sleep would put me back on track, but instead I spent another night lying awake, and as dawn approached I had all but decided there was no way I would be fit to race.  But once I was up and moving around, I realized I didn't feel quite as horrible as I'd feared, and I decided to give the race a go.

The gun went off and we all charged off the starting line in the Back Bay of Biloxi next to the Gulf Hills Hotel, headed for the point where we would turn up into Old Fort Bayou.  In this first few hundred meters I rode the side wake of female champion-to-be Kata Dismukes, a comely Hungarian who now lives, with her American husband and their children, right here in the Memphis area.  We'll gladly claim her as our own for as long as she wants to stay here.

After the turn I moved up alongside Rick Carter of Eutawville, South Carolina, and Jeb Berry of Gulfport, Mississippi.  By the time we'd cleared the Washington Avenue bridge some 1600 meters into the race, the three of us had emerged as the lead pack, and we'd stay a pack almost until the end.  Perhaps foolishly, I led for most of that time; considering my less-than-perfect health it might have been wise to hang back a bit more.  Instead I was hoping to drop my two competitors, and they just wouldn't drop.

I've done this race six times now, and each time I've really begun to feel the fatigue with about three miles to go.  At that point I knew I probably wasn't going to drop anybody, and the race would come down to who had the most left at the end.

With about a mile to go Rick threw in a monster surge and took the lead, and I really had to work hard to stay on his stern wake.  I sat there thinking, "He can't keep on like this forever... can he?"  He finally let up a little, and I hoped that would be the last big move he had left in him.  But when we rounded the bend and faced the Interstate 10 bridge, about a half mile from the finish, Rick surged again and opened a several-boatlength lead on me.  At that point I knew he had me, for even if he slowed down significantly, and/or even if I'd had more energy left to respond, the gap plus Rick's boatlength would have been a formidable distance to make up in the couple of hundred meters I had left.

Meanwhile, Jeb was right on my stern, and I shifted my attention to holding him off.  He made a truly heroic attempt to slip by me at the finish, but I held onto second place by about one second.

The complete results are posted here.

Afterward, Rick seemed genuinely shocked that he had managed to beat me.  "What happened to you????" he kept saying.  I take that as quite a compliment, but I also think the man might be overestimating just how unbeatable I am; I've never been an Olympic hopeful, I've never qualified for a team of any kind... I'm just a middle-aged guy like him, doing the best he can at something he enjoys.

I should also note that while Rick is a very self-deprecating guy, always cracking jokes at his own expense, I think he's a better paddler and athlete than he gives himself credit for.  I watched him paddle during the race, and though his stroke might not be a polished thing of beauty like a classically-groomed Olympic hopeful would have, it's effective enough: he rotates his body, he uses his legs... he does quite a few of the little things that can make a boat go fast.  Rick told me after the race that he's gotten a lot of help from well-known paddlers and coaches like Morgan House and Chris Hipgrave, and in my mind that brings up an important point: he's actually willing to listen to knowledgeable people.  One thing I've noticed about many people who take up our sport later in life--particularly men who have had great success in their careers or other activities--is that they often don't want to take advice from anybody else, no matter how much they stand to benefit.  Rick's not like that.  So I'm happy for him to have claimed the "overall winner" distinction yesterday, and I hope he'll get a confidence boost from that.

I finally got a good night's sleep last night, and have felt significantly better all day today.  After thanking Nick for his hospitality, I went out for an hour-long recovery paddle in Biloxi Bay along the Ocean Springs beachfront.  Actually, the conditions weren't ideal for a recovery paddle: the wind was picking up, and I found myself dealing with an endless train of fair-sized waves.  Once I accepted that paddling lightly wasn't going to get me anywhere, I threw caution to the wind and at least had a little fun before the long trip home.

A nice week ahead of the season opener

Yesterday I enjoyed an absolutely lovely morning with lots of sunshine.  Before heading to the river I stood on my back deck and did some stretching, wearing nothing but a tee shirt and a pair of shorts.  My kind of weather.  Unfortunately it's supposed to get chilly again later this week, even down in Ocean Springs.  Ocean Springs is six hours south of here, as close to the Equator as I can get without detouring around the Gulf of Mexico, and I go down there each year expecting it to be a sub-tropical paradise; but it's been known to disappoint me.  The forecast for Saturday calls for a temperature of about 50 degrees Fahrenheit at race time, and that's actually just fine for racing, but hanging out after the race is less fun if you don't get to bask in warm sunshine.  Oh well... at least we seem to have broken free from the rigor-mortis grip of winter one more time.

The infection on my foot has shrunk down to a sore spot right where it all began, between the two littlest toes.  I was hoping it would be just about gone completely by now, but I'm on a ten-day course of antibiotics and I'm trying to remain patient.  The drugs seem to have upset my stomach a bit; the downside of antibiotics is that they mess up the body's good bacteria too, such as the ones involved in digestion.

In any case, it was a nice day to paddle, and I did so with Joe for 70 minutes in the harbor.  Today I plan to do my last couple of sets of the March strength routine before Saturday's race.  Tomorrow and Friday will be spent doing a few sprints and some easy paddling and making sure all my race-day gear is in order.

Monday photo feature

As Joe Royer and I paddled up the Mississippi toward the mouth of the Wolf River on Saturday, we encountered Joe's wife Carol Lee running in the Greenbelt Park, and she snapped a few photos of us with her Smart Phone, including this one.  That's Joe on the left and me on the right.  Carol Lee suffered a shoulder injury in a fall during a cross country race a couple of months ago, and must find her exercise out of the boat until she heals.

The river level in this photo is 31.0 feet on the Memphis gauge.

Slowly mending

By yesterday morning my foot was showing a bit of improvement.  I realized as I descended the ramp down to the marina that I was almost able to walk without a limp.  It was still quite swollen, but at least the swelling hadn't increased.  I have a follow-up visit with a doctor today.

I paddled for 70 minutes in a steady drizzle.  After being quite low for most of the winter, the Mississippi has risen up over 30 feet on the Memphis gauge (official "flood stage" is 34 feet).  At such levels it's fun to paddle along the Greenbelt Park north of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, because you can actually see from your boat what's going on there.  Not much was going on yesterday because of the wet conditions, but it was nice nevertheless to look at the park's green grass and trees rather than a riprap-lined riverbank.

The drizzle had increased into a sure-enough downpour by the time I returned to the dock.  It felt good to go back home and listen to the rain on my roof.

I am not proud. Bring on the pity party

By yesterday morning my right foot seemed to be getting worse, if such a thing was possible.  Never very good at allowing my life to come to a screeching halt, I went downstairs and did a few light shop chores, and when I came back up and took my shoes and socks off, I found that the swelling had spread into the entire foot:

My doctor's appointment wasn't until 12:30, and while waiting for that I did the pushup and situp exercises from the March strength routine; all the other exercises are done standing up, and my foot was in too much pain.

Finally the blessed half-past-noon moment arrived, and I limped into the dermatologist's office fully expecting to be prescribed an antibiotic and sent on my merry way.  Instead, the nurse practitioner looked at it and said, "That looks bad.  We're not equipped to treat that here.  You'd better go to the emergency room."

Sigh... I could have done that on Thursday.

So on I went to the ER at Methodist-LeBonheur Hospital, and that little errand would eat up the rest of my day.  In short, I sat in the waiting room until after five o'clock, my foot throbbing as badly as ever.  Finally they moved me into a back room with a bed to lie on, and after another round of waiting, signing forms, waiting, talking to another nurse practitioner, waiting, eating a hamburger my wonderful mother brought me, waiting, watching an NCAA Division I basketball tournament first-round game, and waiting, the nurse hooked me up to an antibiotic IV drip.  At last, something was happening that would (I hope) make this infection go away.

The nurse practitioner wondered aloud whether she should admit me to the hospital for the entire weekend, but, thank the holy heavens above, she decided not to do that after conferring with a doctor.   She prescribed two antibiotics and a painkiller and let me go.  After one more session of waiting at the drug store, I was home-sweet-home at last.

For you pill-popping enthusiasts who might be wondering, the painkiller I got is hydrocodon-acetaminophen (brand name Lortab), a drug I've been prescribed on several occasions now.  Not only does it not seem to give me any sort of high, but also it does little to relieve my pain in my experience.  Nevertheless, my foot did feel slightly better when I got up this morning; I expect there's a psychological element at work, as I'm hopeful that the antibiotics (sulfamethoxazole and clindamycin HCl) are now at work killing the bacteria that have invaded my foot.

Though getting myself down to the dock is a chore, I discovered on Thursday that I can still paddle in reasonable comfort, so I went on down for my usual Saturday session.  Joe got there about the same time, so we paddled up to the mouth of the Wolf River together, and then another mile or so up the Wolf to the Second Street bridge.  I picked the pace up a bit from the mouth of the Wolf to the monorail bridge back in the harbor.

A good, strong paddling session was just what I needed on a day when I'm feeling a bit like an invalid on dry land.

Ow. It hurts.

On Tuesday Joe and I paddled very easy.  I was still quite achy and sore from the time trial on Sunday and also from some logging work I did on Monday.  On Monday and yesterday I did the March strength routine.

By today my muscles were feeling recovered, but now I have a new problem: some kind of infection on my right foot.  It started a few days ago as what I though was just typical athlete's foot or toe-rot or something like that, right in between the two littlest toes.  But last night around suppertime the area starting hurting much worse, and when I took my shoe and sock off to look at it I saw that the pinkie toe was very swollen.

After sleeping in pain last night, I called my dermatologist's office this morning to see if they could work me in, but tomorrow around lunchtime is the earliest appointment they could give me.  So I'm grinning and bearing it until then.

I went down to the river and paddled for 60 minutes, doing three 8-stroke sprints and some ultra-short race pace training.  The foot didn't feel too bad in the boat: I'd been worried because this season I've been following some advice Mike Herbert gave me last summer and relying more on the footboard strap for leverage in boat-propulsion, but it turned out the strap doesn't contact the part of my foot where the infection is.  So at least I got a satisfying workout in today, no matter how much of a bummer today might otherwise be.

Monday photo feature

My first race is still almost two weeks away, but other racers in this region have at least one race under their belts.  The annual Jungle Boater race took place on the eighth of this month on the Mulberry River in Arkansas.  Bill Cains of Altus, Arkansas, was the victor of the solo canoe class, clocking one hour, 3 minutes, 30 seconds over a distance of about 7 miles on Class II-III whitewater.  Photo courtesy of Turner Bend Outfitters.

Time trial

I'm feeling somewhat better today, though there's still a bit of discomfort on my right side, along with some stiffness in my upper spine.

In what might be turning into an annual thing, I timed myself over a lap of the harbor today.  (You can read my summary of last year's effort here.)

Conditions this morning were pretty good: mostly-sunny skies (finally!), about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, a moderate breeze blowing from the north-northeast, and a water level of 26.3 feet on the Memphis gauge.

Wolf River Harbor (so named because it was the bed of the Wolf River before a slackwater harbor at downtown Memphis was created by diverting the Wolf directly to the Mississippi up above) is about three miles long.  The marina where I keep my boat is approximately halfway between the north end and the south end.  I warmed up by paddling up to the north end, where I would start and finish.  I did four 8-stroke sprints before assuming my position in the starting gate between a pair of submerged trees.

I went out hard for about 200 meters before settling into a pace I hoped I could sustain; it was pretty intense despite the lower stroke rate.  I passed the marina, breaking its southern plane at about the 13:30 mark.  I was starting to feel some fatigue by the time I passed under the monorail bridge, several hundred meters before the turnaround point.

I made the turn around an imaginary buoy that sits on the line you get by extending the center-line of Beale Street down into the harbor (I had earlier picked out a landmark on the Beale Street Landing dock so I would know exactly where to make the turn).  My split there was about 25:30.  Heading back north I faced a headwind, but it wasn't too bad; I was actually grateful to have a breeze to dry the sweat from my face.

By the time I was back on the north side of the marina I could really feel myself starting to struggle with the pace.  I lowered my stroke intensity a bit and tried to take the best stroke I could, using all the muscle groups like I've been practicing.  With about a hundred meters to go I picked it up and crossed the finish line 52 minutes, 30 seconds after I'd started.

The time was two minutes slower than last year's, and I'm a little disappointed at that, but there's no reason to dwell on it.  There are a lot of variables at play whenever you time yourself on a body of water of any size.  And even if my speed is in fact off a bit right now, it's not necessarily the harbinger of poor race performances, because a time trial, in which you just go as hard as you can in pursuit of your best possible time, is different from a race against competition, where there's bound to be some wake-riding and some tactical devices afoot.

The good thing about doing something like this as the race season approaches is it gives me a chance to rehearse my race-day routine: I try to eat, stretch, warm up, and prepare my equipment the way I would the morning of a race.  If I've forgotten any details in the months since my last race, I catch it now instead of at my first race.

Somebody please come fix me

It hasn't been a big week for blog posts, I know, but if it's any consolation, I haven't done anything particularly new or exciting this week.  I did the March strength routine on Monday and Wednesday and Friday and paddled my boat on Sunday and Tuesday and Thursday and today, doing a few sprints and a few drills and lots of steady paddling.

The weather has been warmer at last--Fahrenheit temperatures in the 60s most days.  It's also been cloudy and rainy.  As much as I yearn for a beautiful warm sunny day, I do think the river is lovely on days like we've had this week.  This morning was particularly beautiful, the river shrouded in a thick fog.

Unfortunately I'm not feeling tip-top today.  I woke up this morning feeling as if I'd slept in an awkward position: the whole right side of my back, though not really in pain, felt all out of whack.  Before I left the house this morning I did several stretches and yoga positions I hoped might pop things back into alignment, but to no avail.  In the boat I went fairly easy, mixing in some backpaddling to see if that would help.  Though I felt some better afterward, I've continued to feel maladjusted the rest of the day.  This happens from time to time and typically I just have to let it run its course.

Monday photo feature

Back in May of 2011, the Beale Street Music Festival just barely managed to get itself wrapped up before the floodwaters arrived.  Had that green barrier not been in my way, I think I would have loaded up my boat with every contraband item on the list and paddled right by that sign.

Thaw

The weekend has brought milder temperatures and the snow and ice is slowly melting away.  Yesterday was the sort of day that's been rare this winter, with warmer temperatures and sunny skies both.

Yesterday I stayed in the harbor and paddled for 60 minutes, doing three 8-stroke sprints and 40 minutes of ultra-short race pace training.  Today I paddled longer--120 minutes--and paddled from the marina up to the mouth of the Wolf, and then another couple of miles up the Wolf to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge, before coming back down.  My fuel tank was definitely running low in the last half-hour or so.

Most of the coming week will feature Fahrenheit highs in the 50s, but some rain along with it.  Like I said, warmer and sunny days have been hard to come by.

Snowed in. Let me tell you about my Smart Bell.

Well, I've been making it down to the river on all kinds of gruesome days, but today I believe the weather has me beat.  The day-long rain began to turn to sleet and freezing rain around six o'clock last night, and that turned over to snow in the early hours of this morning.  The result is a thick (for Memphis) blanket of ice and snow on all the city streets, and from the radio traffic report this morning it sounds like there's nothing but trouble for the small number of people out there trying to navigate them.  I do believe I will stay in.

My strength routine for this month is taking shape.  At my last teaching job in the 1990s I became good friends with the school's wrestling coach, and he introduced me to a thing called a Smart Bell, invented by a friend of his, U.S. National Team wrestler Paul Widerman.  A Smart Bell is a steel object that sort of looks like a steering wheel; it is precisely balanced to facilitate numerous strength-in-motion exercises.  My Smart Bell, more than 15 years old, weighs 15 pounds; it appears that modern-day Smart Bells are lighter.  That suits my general attitude toward weight training, that the amount of weight is less important than precise technique.

I've got a set of Smart Bell exercises that my wrestling-coach friend showed me years ago.  I've looked all over You Tube for video footage of these exercises, but haven't had much luck; perhaps one day I'll post videos of myself doing them.  In the meantime, I'll point you to this video in which a guy does some of my exercises in one approximate form or another.  (Actually, he does some other exercises I'd never seen before that I should consider incorporating into my routine.)

My routine goes like this:

1.  Standing torso-twists (similar to what the guy is doing at 1:37 of the video)

2.  Orbital circle (not on the video)

3.  The Russian (what the guy is doing at 0:28)

4.  Pushups, placing the Smart Bell on the floor and gripping it

5.  Situps, holding the Smart Bell behind my head

6.  Squats (what the guy is doing at 1:10)

7.  Circle (what the guy is doing at 0:44)

8.  Lunges (the guy does lunges at 1:23, but I do them with the Smart Bell behind my head, and I actually walk across the room)


So there it is, my March strength routine.  I hope readers will find this information useful.  I'll let you know when the spring thaw allows me out of the house.

Sometimes winter is nice

I paddled with Joe today for the first time in several weeks, and we enjoyed an utterly beautiful morning out in the harbor.  It was the warmest it's been in what seems like forever--Fahrenheit temperature in the mid 50s--and a lovely fog hung over the water.  I'm still dreaming of sunshine and 80 degrees, but I'd be foolish not to appreciate the beauty that the current season offers.

I mentioned on Saturday that the weather is moving into a warmer trend, except for "a brief cold snap at the end of this week."  It's looking like a doozy, with lots of frozen precipitation.  The nastiness starts tomorrow, but at least it is indeed expected to brief, as opposed to the solid two weeks of frigidity we just had.

Yesterday I started up a strength routine for the month of March.  It's a Smart Bell workout, and I'll elaborate soon.

Monday photo feature

The top five finishers in the 2001 Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race were (from left) Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, first place; Greg Barton of Seattle, Washington, second place; yours truly, third place; Peter Braul of Kincardine, Ontario, fourth place; and Scott Cummins of Indianapolis, Indiana, fifth place.  Photo by Emerson Wickwire.

Looking for my speed

There was no ice in the harbor yesterday morning even though the temperature had been near or below freezing for the previous 36 hours or so.  I can't say I understand the process entirely, as the air temperature alone does not determine whether the harbor will be iced over.  I expect atmospheric pressure plays a role, and windy conditions probably retard the formation of ice.

All I know is that I was able to paddle unimpeded yesterday.  I did three 8-stroke sprints and then paddled steady with several surges of 45 seconds or so.

Today it is warmer but rainy.  As I ate breakfast this morning it was really coming down, but by the time I got down to the river it has abated to a fine drizzle.  I will say that rainy days are some of the most beautiful out on the Mississippi.  Today a lovely mist hung over the tranquil river.

In the first half of today's 80-minute session I warmed up, did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did a couple of little time trials on courses I've done many times before.  I sprinted from one set of bridge pilings to the other beneath the A.W. Willis Bridge in about 30 seconds (my PR is about 28 seconds). And I paddled from the monorail bridge to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge in about 2 minutes, 14 seconds (my PR is about 1:59).  I paddled hard and hoped to be faster today, but the results I got were the results I got.

I spent the rest of the session paddling steady, trying to maintain good stroke form all the way through even though I was tired from the time trials.

In the coming week I'll be working up a new strength routine.  And milder weather seems to be on the way.  Except for a brief cold snap at the end of this week, the forecast is showing highs above 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  40 feels remarkably warm after the miserable couple of weeks we just had.