No race for me this weekend

Well, the shoulder has felt quite a bit worse in the last couple of days, and I've decided it's not a good idea to go up to Missouri and do a 12-mile race this weekend.  It was a hard decision to make because I really, really wanted to check out this event.  There's a whole series of races up in the Missouri River watershed each year and I've never done any of them, and I was looking forward to seeing how I would do against unfamiliar competition.

But after doing my strength routine yesterday I could feel increased pain, and the pain bothered me a lot when I paddled this morning.  I'd planned to paddle for 60 minutes and do my usual pre-race sprints and stuff like that, but in the end I returned to the dock after 40 minutes.

Tomorrow, instead of driving up to the greater Jefferson City area, I'll be sitting in a doctor's office.  I think the first order of business is getting an MRI or some sort of expert opinion on what this injury is--I'm worried that it's something like a torn rotator cuff.  I've had more than my share of aches and pains over the years and I've gotten pretty good at self-therapy for many of them, but this one is not in my body of experience.  So I've made an appointment with a sure-enough doctor.


I haven't yet described the new strength routine that I started up last week, so I guess I'll do that now.  It consists of several core exercises on a stability ball and several arm exercises with dumbbells.  I learned the core exercises from this video featuring Chinese Olympic slalom racer Jing-Jing Li.

Starting yesterday, I incorporated several rubber-band exercises that I was hoping would remedy the tender spot in my right deltoid muscle, but seeing as how they might have worsened the problem, I'll have to see what I find out tomorrow before I do them again.

The routine goes like this:

1.  Rubber-band exercises
2.  Exercise where I kneel on the stability ball (not in the Jing-Jing Li video)
3.  Military press with dumbbells while seated on the stability ball
4.  Stability ball exercise shown at 1:03 of the Jing-Jing Li video
5.  Bicep curls while seated on the stability ball
6.  Stability ball exercise shown at 1:57 of the Jing-Jing Li video
7.  Front and lat raises

I guess I'll call this the "April-May Strength Routine," since I plan to do it into the middle of next month before switching to a new routine.

Video advice for my shoulder

I paddled with Joe in the harbor this morning for about 70 minutes.  My right shoulder seemed to hold up well as I paddled, but it feels less than great this evening... not exactly painful, but just sort of weak.  We'll see how the rest of this week plays out.

Coincidentally, I saw a video today on the topic of the shoulder joint and paddling--check it out here. Thanks to U.S. Team whitewater canoe athlete Casey Eichfeld (a guest star in the video) for posting it on Face Book where I would see it.  Starting with tomorrow's strength workout, I think I will start doing a couple of those rubber-band exercises shown in the video.

Monday photo feature

Nothing says "old school" like an aluminum canoe on the Chattooga River.  Travis Trimble (stern) and Clay Nash teeter over Second Ledge on an August day in 1987 when the level was about 0.9 on the U.S. 76 bridge gauge.  Travis shouldn't be grabbing the gunwales, but then again, who wants a thwart in the pelvis?  Photo by Todd Tyler.

The ailment persists

The weather forecasts for today that I saw called for partly to mostly sunny skies and a temperature around 72 degrees Fahrenheit, but what we got instead was an overcast sky, a temperature about 10 degrees colder than predicted, and a stiff wind blowing from the north.  How dare the meteorologists be mistaken?

I still find myself with this mysterious soreness in my right shoulder.  I've spent the past week taking the "active rest" approach, paddling easy and doing exercises with light weights; the soreness has seemed to flare up a bit after exercise but it hasn't really gotten any worse.  Unfortunately, it hasn't gotten any better, either.

Today I decided to push a little harder in the boat just to see what would happen.  In an 80-minute session, I did three 8-stroke sprints and about 40 minutes of ultra-short race pace training.  As I sit here this evening I'm feeling some increased soreness, but no worse than what I felt after the lighter paddling sessions.

So... I don't know what to think about all this.  I still haven't made a call on whether to attend the race this Saturday, but I sure would like to.  I don't guess I really have to make that decision any sooner than Friday.

Proceeding gingerly (cont'd)

My shoulder hasn't gotten any worse, and I really want to believe it's getting a bit better, but it's hard to say for sure.  I spent an easy 40 minutes in the boat this morning and wasn't in any great pain, but the "twinge" is still there.

Yesterday I did some more core exercises on the stability ball and a few upper body exercises with light weights (to avoid aggravating the shoulder).  I think I've put together a decent routine that I will share here shortly.

Proceeding gingerly

For the third day in a row, I'm feeling a painful twinge in the area of my right deltoid muscle.  I'm hoping it's nothing more than some irritation from last week's increased volume--I went from paddling four times a week for most of the year so far to paddling ten times in eleven days, with a fairly high-intensity race effort this past Saturday--and not something more serious like a rotator cuff injury or something like that.  I'm not panicking yet, but I am, well... concerned.  The next race I hope to do is a week from this Saturday: the Osage Paddlesports Spring 12 Race up near Jefferson City, Missouri.  We'll just have to see if I'm ready to go by then.

Oh well.  Today I took my boat back down to the marina and paddled easy for 30 minutes, trying to do the work with my legs and hips and lower torso, and minimize the stress on my arms and shoulders.  It felt good to be back on my home water.  The weather was breezy but otherwise lovely.  I saw a dozen or so turtles piled up on a tiny log, and that made me happy; turtles in general have a way of making me happy.

One thing that's fallen through the cracks this month, with my foot infection and bad reaction to the drugs and all the travel and the racing, is a strength routine.  Yesterday I began easing myself into a new one, doing a few core exercises on the stability ball.  I also did a few arm exercises with very light weights, being careful not to aggravate my shoulder pain.  I'll post the new routine here once I finish working it up; I'll probably do it into the middle of next month, then make up a new one to carry me up to the big Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race on the 20th of June.

Monday photo feature

As I said yesterday, it's good to be home.  My nine-day trip ended nicely--with some coffee and tasty breakfast food at Jimmy Guidry's Hub City Diner.  Photo by Anne Sonnier.

"Be it ever so humble..."

Jimmy Guidry, a paddler whom I've seen at numerous races in the Gulf Coast region, owns Hub City Diner in Lafayette, and this morning he treated Anne and me to breakfast.  I enjoyed talking with him and eating some great food.

After that I said goodbye to Anne and began the trip home.  But before I got too immersed in the journey I wanted to get in a recovery paddle, and there was a good place right off Interstate 10 a few miles east of Lafayette.  Henderson Lake is part of the Atchafalaya Basin, and accessible from a public boat ramp next to an I-10 rest area.

Soreness was surprisingly mild after yesterday's race, but I'm having some pain today in my right deltoid muscle, as if I've strained it a little.  Time will tell, I guess.  I put myself through a low-intensity 60-minute session and enjoyed the first bright and sunny day I've seen since the race at Vicksburg eight days ago.  Henderson Lake is basically a huge forested wetland with a network of open-water channels running through it, and I paddled through several of these channels, being careful not to get lost.  I enjoyed gazing at the many cypress trees with Spanish moss hanging from them.  The coppery-brown tannin-stained water was as smooth as glass.

After paddling I continued the trip home, an affair of some seven hours.  I had earlier considered doing my recovery paddle on one of the reservoirs in north Mississippi--Grenada or Enid or Sardis--but I'm glad I got it done in the early part of the trip instead, because by the time I was on Interstate 55 north of Jackson all I could think about was how bad I wanted to be home.  Now I am home, and there is no place like it.

Photos from Bayou Teche

Anne Sonnier took all kinds of lovely photos during the Top of the Teche race today.  Here are just a few:

I pose with my boat in front of the Leonville water tower prior to the start.

The Pellerin triplets--Carson, Conrad, and Peyton--limber up before paddling a C-3 in the race.

The placid water makes two of me as I approach the finish line.

Adam Economu and Landon Arabie of Bogalusa, Louisiana, took first in the USCA C-2 class.

I show off my award with race director Ray Pellerin.

Racing on the Bayou

Yesterday I got to do a bit of salt-water paddling: Anne drove me down to where the marshes give way to the Gulf at a place called Cypremort Point in Vermillion Bay.  A check of the forecast indicated a likelihood of stormy weather, but the sky brightened as we drove south, and the sun came out later on in our paddling session.  I spent some time giving Anne some stroke instruction that I'd promised, and then we paddled along the shoreline for a bit.  I did five 12-stroke sprints while we were out there, giving my speed a little polish ahead of the next day's race.

And today was Race Day.  We went up to the town of Leonville, and I put my boat on Bayou Teche alongside seventeen other boats for a 7.7-mile race to Arnaudville.  I'd resolved to treat the event as a time trial and I took the pace out hard, pulling away from the pack early.  The bayou was swollen from this week's rains, and I dodged many floating logs, sticks, and twigs as I went along.  I was feeling some fatigue a half-hour or so in, but I managed to hold myself together and take pretty good strokes all the way to a winning time of 57 minutes, 46 seconds.

The weather was overcast, but the temperature was pleasantly warm and there was just enough breeze to cool us off.  The race started right on time and proceeded without a hitch, thanks to race director Ray Pellerin and his crew of volunteers.

The complete results are posted here.

Got me some ink

This past Sunday I was front-page news (albeit below the fold) in The Vicksburg Post.  You can sort of read the article here.

Playin' Cajun

I'm back indoors, staying under the roof of my friend Anne in Lafayette, Louisiana, after several days camping out yonder.

I'd say that moist is a good word to describe southern Louisiana.  I camped in quite a bit of rain, and when it wasn't raining it was anything but dry.  It's fairly damp and humid up in the Memphis area where I live, but I believe it's a whole order of magnitude more so here in bayou country.

Here's a summary of training sessions for the last few days:

Sunday, April 12: 60-minute paddle, Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers on the Vicksburg riverfront.  I was quite tired and sore from Saturday's race, so I kept the intensity low and enjoyed this lovely section of the Big River.

Monday, April 13: 80-minute paddle, Mississippi River at Natchez.  I was still sore in my midsection but managed a stronger distance session with a few good surges.  It was raining steadily when I put in but the rain had stopped by the time I was finished.

Tuesday, April 14: 70-minute paddle, Indian Creek Reservoir near Woodworth, Louisiana.  I wanted to get in at least one good workout this week, and this seemed like the best day.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did a "pyramid" workout: pieces of one minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes, 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, one minute with two minutes recovery in between.  I was feeling it pretty good by the five-minute piece and concentrated on keeping solid stroke form through the second half of the workout.  That last two-minute piece was mentally the hardest, I think.

Wednesday, April 15: 80-minute paddle, Big Alabama Bayou in the Atchafalaya Basin near Krotz Springs, Louisiana.  I'm not big on having a "bucket list"--I'd much rather create a life that's satisfying in its every-day routine than always be thinking "I've gotta do this" and "I've gotta do that" for my life to have meaning.  But paddling in the Atchafalaya Basin was something I felt I needed to be able to say I've done, and now I can.  These days bayous like Big Alabama are cut off from the main channel of the Atchafalaya by the levee system, but paddling there was very interesting and it certainly had a remote wilderness feel.  I saw one alligator from a distance, hanging out on a log before sliding into the water upon my approach.  Racing kayaks are rather tippy craft, and mine never feels more so than when there are gators about.

Big Alabama Bayou.

That brings us up to today, and Anne plans to show me some of the tourist sights.  I also owe her a bit of paddling instruction for her hospitality, and we'll get to that in the next couple of days before it's time to race on Saturday.

Sunday photos feature

I've got that usual post-race-day feeling, with plenty of soreness down in my midsection.  I plan to do some easy paddling today to get some blood moving through those muscles and facilitate recovery.

Photographer Paul Ingram took many lovely photos of the Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race yesterday.  As of this writing he has shared only some of them on Face Book, but since I'm about to go out camping in the wilds of Mississippi and Louisiana and might not be online for a couple of days, I'll share a few here in lieu of this week's Monday Photo Feature.

Kata Dismukes does a systems check prior to a performance that would make her the ladies' champion.  That would be the Hungarian flag on her cockpit.

No race can start without the all-important racers' meeting.  That's me in the background with a navy-blue shirt and white hat on, holding my paddle upright.

There just aren't many places more beautiful than the Mississippi River bathed in morning sunlight.  The conditions would not remain this placid for long.

And... this would be me, trying to get all cylinders firing.

Race report from beautiful Vickburg, Mississippi

Today I competed in the Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race for the seventh time, I believe.  The race begins on the Mississippi River at Madison Parish Port, Louisiana, and finishes at the Vicksburg riverfront some 22 miles downriver.

Though the river appeared placid at the start, the wind picked up and the river became choppy in the early miles.  They were nuisance conditions at worst, but still required increased concentration to keep the boat on course.  Phil Capel of Sherwood, Arkansas, took the early lead as the C-4 paddled by Andre Pellerin and his triplet sons gave chase over on river left.  Farther to the right side, I was part of a conservative wake-trading pack along with Kata Dismukes and Rick Carter.  We labored along in the left-to-right beam wind, gradually moving into the lead ourselves, until we reached the big bend to the right; here, the river smoothed out considerably and the wind was at our backs.  I managed to open a small gap on my competitors and threw in several surges in an attempt to lengthen it.  As I approached the second big bend in the course, back to the left and toward the city of Vicksburg, I was beginning to feel some fatigue, but I guessed that the others were too after that long struggle with the elements.

I found myself paddling into a headwind on the approach to Vicksburg, but it was mostly a noisy mental distraction in my ears.  Glances over my shoulder continued to indicate that I was alone in first place, and I tried to paddle as efficiently as I could to maintain the lead and conserve energy for the final stretch, a couple of miles up the Yazoo River to the finish line.

As I entered the Yazoo I was at about an hour and 52 minutes, and I knew then that I would not be breaking two hours (my PR in this event is an hour and 56 minutes and change).  I attribute the slower time to both the bumpy conditions and the conservative early pace of our pack.  Though quite tired I still seemed to have good strokes left in me, and as this long slog through flatwater wore on I became more and more confident that I would accomplish the item at the top of my to-do list--win the race.  I crossed the line with a winning time of two hours, 7 minutes, 14 seconds.

At that point I had no idea where my closest competition was, but I quickly found out as I turned around and looked back: Rick Carter, the same guy who got the better of me at Ocean Springs two weeks ago, was not far behind at all.  The South Carolinian crossed the line less than a minute after I had.

Kata Dismukes, a native Hungarian now living in the Memphis suburb of Cordova, was the fastest lady, finishing a very impressive third place overall.  The Pellerin crew, hailing from Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, was next, and Phil Capel rounded out the top five.

Other Memphians who made the trip down here to race were Terrance Strohkirch, who finished sixteenth overall, and Adam Davis, 39th.

The complete results are now posted here.

I plan to spend the next few days paddling and exploring a bit between the lower Mississippi and the bayou country of Louisiana, en route to a race next Saturday on Bayou Teche.  I will try to post updates here as I can.

Race prep

Yesterday I did eight 12-stroke sprints during a 70-minute paddle in the harbor, and today I did four 12-stroke sprints during a 30-minute session.  I'm now in the posh Best Western Motel in Vicksburg, trying to get a good night's rest for tomorrow's race.  The weather forecast looks good--always a concern on the mighty Mississippi.

Monday photo feature

It's surf skis single file!  Mary Neil Quave took this picture of me, Jeb Berry, and Rick Carter midway through the Battle On The Bayou race at Ocean Springs a week ago Saturday.  The course was about nine and a half miles on Old Fort Bayou.

Lots of Big River time

The weather has chilled down for the weekend.  Fahrenheit temperatures were in the 50s when I paddled both yesterday and today.  Exactly the reason that I washed and put away some of my winter gear the other day, but not all of it.

Yesterday I paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar, the big island in the river upstream of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  Starting and finishing at Harbortown Marina in the harbor, I think the distance is around twelve miles or twenty kilometers.  And it's pretty tough: you have to fight some strong current as you paddle up the Tennessee side between the mouth of the Wolf River and the mouth of the Loosahatchie River, and then there's a long ferry across the Mississippi to enter the north end of the chute on the west side of the bar.  There was enough water yesterday--20.4 feet on the Memphis gauge--that shallow water wasn't a problem up at the bar's upper end (the big flood of 2011 deposited a lot of sand up there).  My elapsed time yesterday was 130 minutes, the last half-hour of which I was plenty worn out.

I woke up this morning feeling as back-to-normal as I've felt yet since I finished the antibiotics last week.  My sleep is more or less back to normal, and my digestion is slowly becoming regular again.  After a couple of tough days in the boat I was ready for a lighter session today.  I paddled for 60 minutes at not an easy pace, but a comfortable one.  I spent a lot of time out on the Mississippi since that's where I'll be racing down at Vicksburg next Saturday.

Mending continues

I managed a decent night of sleep last night and didn't wake up ill for a third straight morning.  There's still sort of a heavy feeling in my stomach.  It's just going to take a while for my body's "good" bacteria to re-establish themselves and make me feel right again.  In the meantime, I'm walking that razor's edge between doing some good training and giving myself the rest I need.

Today I paddled for 80 minutes in the harbor, and did what we would have called some "pace work" back in my high school running days.  I did eight pieces of three minutes on, three minutes off, targeting the pace I hope to maintain in my next race, a 22-miler on the Mississippi down at Vicksburg next Saturday.  My stroke felt good, my muscles felt ready to go, and my energy level held up long enough.

Blech

Having felt good in the boat Tuesday and taken the final antibiotic pill that evening, I was upbeat.  I eagerly anticipated my return to full strength, and I planned to spend the second half of this week getting in a couple of good substantial workouts before resting up for my next race a week from Saturday.

Unfortunately, wishing doesn't always make it so.  I've woken up early the last couple of mornings experiencing waves of nausea.  This morning in particular, I was in some pretty acute agony: in addition to the nausea there was this queer pain up in my upper chest and throat area, making me wonder if I had some kind of respiratory ailment.  I alternated between hanging out in the bathroom waiting to throw up and lying in bed trying desperately to fall back asleep. After a lot of dry-heaving I finally managed to vomit up some liquid matter.  By this time it was about 6:30 and I figured I might as well try to ingest something.  I had some water and a banana and a cup of coffee, and then I decided to go to bed.  Happily, I fell back asleep until about nine o'clock.

And now I sit here in the late morning, feeling much better than I did back around six o'clock but doubtful that I have much paddling or other exercise in me today.  I may just have to accept that it will take a while longer for my body to return to normal after taking those harsh drugs for ten days.