I've spent the week trying to get some rest ahead of the Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race at Vicksburg this Saturday. The distraction of my stolen boat hasn't helped. Today I got a follow-up call from a police detective who told me it would be "very helpful" if I could provide the boat's serial number. I feel like I've got that number written down somewhere, but I've looked all over and so far I haven't been able to find it. I've moved at least four times in the nineteen years I've owned that boat, so there's no telling where that slip of paper might be.
One thing for certain is that I will know that boat immediately if I spot it somewhere. It has some custom minicell outfitting glued inside it, it's got a sticker on it that not every Dagger Atom has... I even know the scratches on the boat, for crying out loud. But of course, in the eyes of our legal system none of that carries the same weight as a serial number.
Oh well. I'm feeling about ready to race on Saturday. I did some 12-stroke sprints in the harbor both Tuesday and yesterday, and I'll do a few more tomorrow morning before I throw the boat on the car and head south. The weather forecast looks sketchy right now--an 80% chance of thunderstorms on Saturday--but I plan to go on down there and hope for the best. There's nothing I can do about the weather, and I prefer to keep my mind on the things I can control: practice, training, and rest.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
I've lost an old friend
I've just achieved a milestone in my paddling career that was long overdue, I guess. Before Monday I'd never had a boat stolen. But when I came home around seven o'clock Monday evening, there was a bare spot where my trusty whitewater boat, an old Dagger Atom C1, had been leaning against the firewood pile in the little parking area behind my building.
I've always been fairly nonchalant about securing my boats. Typically I'm more concerned with protecting them from the sun and similar elements than guarding against theft. Here in the Memphis area the market for stolen goods runs through the pawn shops, and I've never been able to keep a straight face while imagining a thief carrying a high-performance canoe or kayak into a pawn shop and asking for money. Making the idea seem even more absurd is that I'm the only active whitewater C1 paddler in Memphis, and I'm pretty sure that Atom was the only boat of its kind in the Mid South.
Unfortunately, I've always neglected one piece of reality: not all thieves are that smart. Some thieves will grab anything that looks like it might be worth something even if they know nothing about it. And the likely result--the worst outcome where I am concerned--is that the thief will try to get somebody to pay him for the item, fail, and end up chucking it in a ditch.
So who knows if I'll ever get it back. I'm watching Craig's List but have seen no sign of it there so far. I've called a few pawn shops to see if anybody has come in with my boat, but most of the shopkeepers I've talked to say they don't pay for kayaks and canoes, and with many dozens of pawn shops in the greater Memphis area, finding the one with my boat in it would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
These days I don't paddle whitewater anywhere near as often as I used to, but I do go once a year or so. And even though that boat was old and not particularly special, I liked it. When Dagger first came out with the Atom I think it was hoping the whitewater rodeo C1 competitors would take it and run with it. But they were fickle and turned up their noses at it, and the boat was quickly forgotten at the elite level. But I have found it to be a good, solid river-running craft and have stuck with it even though it looks like an antique today.
The following photos depict just a few of the many great memories that boat and I created together.
I've always been fairly nonchalant about securing my boats. Typically I'm more concerned with protecting them from the sun and similar elements than guarding against theft. Here in the Memphis area the market for stolen goods runs through the pawn shops, and I've never been able to keep a straight face while imagining a thief carrying a high-performance canoe or kayak into a pawn shop and asking for money. Making the idea seem even more absurd is that I'm the only active whitewater C1 paddler in Memphis, and I'm pretty sure that Atom was the only boat of its kind in the Mid South.
Unfortunately, I've always neglected one piece of reality: not all thieves are that smart. Some thieves will grab anything that looks like it might be worth something even if they know nothing about it. And the likely result--the worst outcome where I am concerned--is that the thief will try to get somebody to pay him for the item, fail, and end up chucking it in a ditch.
So who knows if I'll ever get it back. I'm watching Craig's List but have seen no sign of it there so far. I've called a few pawn shops to see if anybody has come in with my boat, but most of the shopkeepers I've talked to say they don't pay for kayaks and canoes, and with many dozens of pawn shops in the greater Memphis area, finding the one with my boat in it would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
These days I don't paddle whitewater anywhere near as often as I used to, but I do go once a year or so. And even though that boat was old and not particularly special, I liked it. When Dagger first came out with the Atom I think it was hoping the whitewater rodeo C1 competitors would take it and run with it. But they were fickle and turned up their noses at it, and the boat was quickly forgotten at the elite level. But I have found it to be a good, solid river-running craft and have stuck with it even though it looks like an antique today.
The following photos depict just a few of the many great memories that boat and I created together.
Top drop of Four Falls, North Fork of the South Platte River near Bailey, Colorado, 1998. Photo by a guy named Gage who paddled with me that day.
Whiling away a summer day on the Ocoee River near Ducktown, Tennessee, late 1990s. Photo by Sonny Salomon.
Popping an ender at Slice and Dice on the Ocoee River, 1999. Photo by Sonny Salomon.
Surfing the top wave on the Caney Fork River in Rock Island State Park near McMinnville, Tennessee, late 1990s. Photo by Sonny Salomon.
Losing some altitude on the White Salmon River near Trout Lake, Washington, 1998. Photo by Wendy Peterson.
Getting what I can on a small wave on White's Creek on Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau, 2001. Photo by Julie Keller.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
More Olympic trials
While I'm focused on racing at Vicksburg this weekend, flatwater sprint athletes in this country will converge on Lake Lanier at Gainesville, Georgia, to try out for spots on the U.S. Olympic Team. There's a preview article posted on the Surf Ski News website. Have a look at it here.
Monday, April 25, 2016
Monday photo feature
The rapids are a thrill, of course, but part of the fun of any mountain stream is wandering through those "house-sized" boulders. That's me in 1994 on the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River near Oneida, Tennessee. I think that's Tony Hickey over my right shoulder. Photo by Sonny Salomon.
Relishing the season as my next race approaches
This is shaping up to be as lovely a spring as I can remember. We've had a good bit of wind and a good bit of rain, but the temperature has been in the "comfortable" zone for weeks. We've just enjoyed some truly spectacular days Friday, Saturday, and yesterday: calm, sunny, and warm.
My next competition, the Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race on the Mississippi River down at Vicksburg, is less than a week away now. Any training that might benefit me in this event has now been done. I've spent the last few days trying to do good-quality paddling in shorter-duration sessions. I want to be rested when I get to Vicksburg, but I also want to keep doing some work for the races that follow.
Basically, my sessions Thursday, Saturday, and yesterday ran about an hour each, and included a few short sprints or power drills followed by some unstructured up-tempo stuff. For example, yesterday I did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, then paddled up the Mississippi for a mile or so. There was a barge rig coming downriver, and I fell in behind it and caught a few good rides on its stern wake. I had to do some hard sprinting in some turbulent water but I was having fun and it didn't last more than ten minutes or so, so it didn't feel like a crushing workout.
My next competition, the Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race on the Mississippi River down at Vicksburg, is less than a week away now. Any training that might benefit me in this event has now been done. I've spent the last few days trying to do good-quality paddling in shorter-duration sessions. I want to be rested when I get to Vicksburg, but I also want to keep doing some work for the races that follow.
Basically, my sessions Thursday, Saturday, and yesterday ran about an hour each, and included a few short sprints or power drills followed by some unstructured up-tempo stuff. For example, yesterday I did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, then paddled up the Mississippi for a mile or so. There was a barge rig coming downriver, and I fell in behind it and caught a few good rides on its stern wake. I had to do some hard sprinting in some turbulent water but I was having fun and it didn't last more than ten minutes or so, so it didn't feel like a crushing workout.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Another pretty good workout
This morning I got in my boat, warmed up for ten minutes, and did three 8-stroke sprints. They felt somewhat smoother today than yesterday.
Then I left the harbor and paddled up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River. At today's river level (15.7 feet on the Memphis gauge) there was little or no current in the bottom mile or so of the Wolf, and that's where I embarked on today's workout: eight two-minute pieces with two minutes recovery in between. I did the first three of them on the flatwater of the Wolf, with a target pace of 7 miles per hour, just like in Saturday's workout.
By the fourth piece I was heading out onto the Mississippi, and once I was in the main flow I shot for a pace of 12 mph. Conditions were calm today and it wasn't too hard to stay between 11.5 and 12 mph. The Mississippi is a squirrelly river, though, and there were moments when my speed dipped below 10 mph.
I did pieces 5, 6, and 7 out on the river. The eighth and final one took place in that sluggish eddy water as I moved from the river back into the harbor. All told, today's session was pretty similar to what I did on Saturday, and yet I didn't feel nearly as exhausted when I got back to the dock today. Was I better rested today? Better nourished? Better hydrated?
I paddled in some rain this morning. There were intermittent showers through lunchtime, and then they moved out. The weatherman says we're in for a lot more rain overnight and tomorrow.
Then I left the harbor and paddled up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River. At today's river level (15.7 feet on the Memphis gauge) there was little or no current in the bottom mile or so of the Wolf, and that's where I embarked on today's workout: eight two-minute pieces with two minutes recovery in between. I did the first three of them on the flatwater of the Wolf, with a target pace of 7 miles per hour, just like in Saturday's workout.
By the fourth piece I was heading out onto the Mississippi, and once I was in the main flow I shot for a pace of 12 mph. Conditions were calm today and it wasn't too hard to stay between 11.5 and 12 mph. The Mississippi is a squirrelly river, though, and there were moments when my speed dipped below 10 mph.
I did pieces 5, 6, and 7 out on the river. The eighth and final one took place in that sluggish eddy water as I moved from the river back into the harbor. All told, today's session was pretty similar to what I did on Saturday, and yet I didn't feel nearly as exhausted when I got back to the dock today. Was I better rested today? Better nourished? Better hydrated?
I paddled in some rain this morning. There were intermittent showers through lunchtime, and then they moved out. The weatherman says we're in for a lot more rain overnight and tomorrow.
Monday, April 18, 2016
Sprinting
I paddled for 60 minutes this morning, warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints first. Regular readers know that I do these sprints often at the start of a workout. Paddling fast is a skill that takes practice just like any other skill, and by doing a small number of short sprints regularly I can get in some practice without wearing myself out.
Sometimes all my muscle groups fire in unison and my whole body seems to "flow" as I do these sprints; other times, like this morning, everything feels off a bit and the sprints seem labored. But either way, I think the sprints set a good tone for whatever I'm doing for the rest of my time in the boat. They get me thinking about the roles of all my body parts as I paddle.
Sometimes all my muscle groups fire in unison and my whole body seems to "flow" as I do these sprints; other times, like this morning, everything feels off a bit and the sprints seem labored. But either way, I think the sprints set a good tone for whatever I'm doing for the rest of my time in the boat. They get me thinking about the roles of all my body parts as I paddle.
Monday photo feature
Charles Thompson blasts through the foam of Stairsteps rapid on Big Laurel Creek near Hot Springs, North Carolina. I shot this photo on a chilly day in March of 1994.
Saturday, April 16, 2016
More pace work on the big river
I put my boat in the water amid mild temperatures but a pesky southeast wind. As I paddled southward toward the mouth of the harbor my bow kept getting blown to the right. But it didn't stop me from doing three of my backpaddling-then-forward-paddling "power" drills.
Once out of the harbor I paddled up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, and began the main part of today's workout, a "pyramid": pieces of 1', 2', 3', 4', 5', 4', 3', 2', 1' with two minutes recovery in between. I did the first half of this workout on the flatwater in the bottom mile or so of the Wolf, where I tried to maintain about 7 miles per hour on my GPS during each piece. This part of the Wolf was pretty well protected from the wind and I didn't have much trouble keeping the pace steady.
I was almost exactly halfway through the five-minute piece when I paddled out of the Wolf and onto the Mississippi. Out here I'd hoped to maintain a pace near 12 mph, but the wind kept me closer to 11 mph. By this time it was almost a direct beam wind, and I tried to relax and resist the urge to lean into the wind for stability. Under the circumstances I was pleased with how well I managed to keep the boat moving.
I did that last one-minute piece back in the harbor, where again my target pace was 7 mph.
Incidental data: the river level was 15.0 feet on the Memphis gauge, and I was in the boat for 100 minutes total.
Once out of the harbor I paddled up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, and began the main part of today's workout, a "pyramid": pieces of 1', 2', 3', 4', 5', 4', 3', 2', 1' with two minutes recovery in between. I did the first half of this workout on the flatwater in the bottom mile or so of the Wolf, where I tried to maintain about 7 miles per hour on my GPS during each piece. This part of the Wolf was pretty well protected from the wind and I didn't have much trouble keeping the pace steady.
I was almost exactly halfway through the five-minute piece when I paddled out of the Wolf and onto the Mississippi. Out here I'd hoped to maintain a pace near 12 mph, but the wind kept me closer to 11 mph. By this time it was almost a direct beam wind, and I tried to relax and resist the urge to lean into the wind for stability. Under the circumstances I was pleased with how well I managed to keep the boat moving.
I did that last one-minute piece back in the harbor, where again my target pace was 7 mph.
Incidental data: the river level was 15.0 feet on the Memphis gauge, and I was in the boat for 100 minutes total.
Monday, April 11, 2016
It's an Olympic year
The Games of the 31st Olympiad will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, later this year. Canoe and kayak racing will be included.
Mind you, not all canoe and kayak racing will be included. There will be no surf ski or outrigger racing; no wildwater; no flatwater marathon; no extreme creek racing. Just one discipline for whitewater (slalom) and one for flatwater (sprint).
But anytime I'm tempted to get my undies in a bunch over that, I just remind myself that the same is true for most other sports. For instance, the bicycle disciplines of mountain biking, road racing, and velodrome events are all in the Olympics, but not cyclocross. Wrestlers, weightlifters, and martial artists can probably all give you their lists of disciplines within their sports that are not on the Olympic programme. And many believe that's not the worst thing: 1992 whitewater slalom Olympian Eric Jackson makes some interesting points about that in this interview.
But the Olympics are a big deal, if nothing else because they're on TV all over the world and give the broader public a brief glimpse at sports like ours that carry on in total obscurity most of the time. Here in the U.S., the process of selecting the athletes that will paddle in Rio has moved into high gear. Over the weekend there was a slalom competition in Charlotte at which two people were named to the U.S. Team.
Michal Smolen of Gastonia, North Carolina, claimed the U.S. Olympic Team spot in men's kayak (K1). Michal is a native of Poland but has lived most of his life in the U.S.: his dad, Rafal Smolen, moved here to begin a career in coaching the sport in the late 1990s. Michal has been a member of the U.S. national team for the last few years and just recently got his U.S. citizenship in order to make himself eligible for Olympic competition.
Casey Eichfeld of Mount Holly, North Carolina, punched his ticket to Rio in the men's single canoe (C1) class. Casey grew up in Pennsylvania and was just starting to show up at races in the 1990s as my own slalom career was winding down, and I remember watching the nine- or ten-year-old kid and thinking that if he stuck with it he might be very good. That, of course, was a big "if"--many fabulously talented kids have come and gone in this sport without going "the distance" to international prominence. But lo and behold, Casey has stuck with it, and it seems that especially in these last few years he's really stepped up his game and made himself one of the top racers in the world in slalom C1.
Yet to be determined are the U.S. Olympians in the women's kayak class (K1W) and the men's double canoe class (C2). The selection process will continue on May 7-8 with a competition on the new course at Oklahoma City.
I believe two questions are obvious at this point: Why have Olympic Team berths been decided in two classes, but not all four? and, Why are there no canoe classes for women?
I'll field the second question first: I can't say I know the origin of this issue. Maybe there were very few women racing slalom in canoes when the world championships debuted in 1949; maybe the cigar smoking good ol' boys in the International Canoe Federation considered women too "dainty" for the manly business of canoeing... I don't really know. But that's how things were for the first six decades of the ICF world championships, and plenty of people were unhappy about it and lobbied for change. I think it finally took an ultimatum for greater gender equity from the International Olympic Committee to get the ICF to do something about it. A women's single canoe class (C1W) was added to the world championships in about 2010 with the intention of adding it to the Olympics a quadrennium or two later. Plans are now set for C1W to make its Olympic debut in the 2020 Games at Tokyo. Women's canoe classes also will debut in flatwater sprint racing, where they also had been absent.
There's no doubt that gender equity is important and necessary. But I'm saddened by the cost of adding C1W to the Olympics. The IOC is very stingy when it comes to the overall number of "fringe sport" athletes like paddlers that it will allow to participate in the Games, and to make room for C1W the ICF has had to remove C2, arguably the most interesting and beautiful class, from Olympic competition.
As for that first question above: athletes vie for selection to the U.S. Olympic Team by earning points in several events in the year prior to the Games. One such event was the 2015 world championships at the Lee Valley White Water Centre outside London, and Michal Smolen and Casey Eichfeld were the only two U.S. athletes to earn points there. Their performances were in fact quite magnificent: Smolen claimed the bronze medal in K1, while Eichfeld appeared on the verge of winning the C1 class until a tiny but devastating time error knocked him back to fourth place.
In any case, if Smolen finished third or better in Charlotte this past weekend, he would amass a point total that no other athlete would be able to surpass, and therefore clinch a spot on the Olympic Team. He won. Eichfeld came to Charlotte needing to finish second or better; he also won. No paddler in the other two classes has yet accumulated such an insurmountable lead in points, and so their competition will continue in Oklahoma City next month.
If you're still reading this post, then you know that Olympic selection is not the simplest thing to talk about, and I apologize for being so long-winded. But there's one more part of the story I'll address, and it's a process that to me seems truly byzantine: how a nation qualifies spots in the Olympics. As I mentioned above, the IOC allows only so many paddlers on the water in the Games, and each nation must demonstrate, in competitions like the world championships, that it has paddlers who can compete at the world-class level in order to be awarded berths in the competition. A further complication is that the IOC wants the berths to be as evenly distributed as possible among the different regions of the world--Europe, Asia, the Americas, Oceania, Africa, and so on.
A nation can have at most one boat entered in each class. That means that in slalom, each nation may have at most five Olympians: a female kayaker, a male kayaker, a male single canoeist, and a pair of male tandem canoeists. That brings me to the part I haven't figured out yet: according to an article I read in Canoe and Kayak magazine the other day, the IOC and/or the ICF have determined that the U.S. is limited to four warm bodies on its slalom team. That means that at least one member of the U.S. C2 must be somebody who's already on the Olympic team as a single-boat racer. It just so happens that both Casey Eichfeld and Michal Smolen are racing in C2s as well as their single boats, so that shouldn't be a problem, but it's nevertheless weird. I'm sure there's a full explanation somewhere in the bowels of either the ICF or the USA Canoe-Kayak website, but as both those organizations are notorious for releasing information in the form of long, excruciating legalese-laced PDF documents, I just don't have the will to unearth the answer. I invite anybody who can provide us a readable explanation to do so in the "Comments" section.
I'll just add this: I'm sort of rooting for Casey Eichfeld's C2 to make the Olympic Team because his partner is Devin McEwan, son of the first U.S. Olympic medalist in whitewater slalom. Devin's dad Jamie took the C1 bronze medal in the 1972 Games at Augsburg, West Germany. We just lost Jamie to cancer two years ago, and I know he would be thrilled to see another McEwan running the gates in the Olympics.
Once again, thanks for reading down this far. I'll post updates here about both the flatwater and the whitewater selection processes as they develop.
Mind you, not all canoe and kayak racing will be included. There will be no surf ski or outrigger racing; no wildwater; no flatwater marathon; no extreme creek racing. Just one discipline for whitewater (slalom) and one for flatwater (sprint).
But anytime I'm tempted to get my undies in a bunch over that, I just remind myself that the same is true for most other sports. For instance, the bicycle disciplines of mountain biking, road racing, and velodrome events are all in the Olympics, but not cyclocross. Wrestlers, weightlifters, and martial artists can probably all give you their lists of disciplines within their sports that are not on the Olympic programme. And many believe that's not the worst thing: 1992 whitewater slalom Olympian Eric Jackson makes some interesting points about that in this interview.
But the Olympics are a big deal, if nothing else because they're on TV all over the world and give the broader public a brief glimpse at sports like ours that carry on in total obscurity most of the time. Here in the U.S., the process of selecting the athletes that will paddle in Rio has moved into high gear. Over the weekend there was a slalom competition in Charlotte at which two people were named to the U.S. Team.
Michal Smolen of Gastonia, North Carolina, claimed the U.S. Olympic Team spot in men's kayak (K1). Michal is a native of Poland but has lived most of his life in the U.S.: his dad, Rafal Smolen, moved here to begin a career in coaching the sport in the late 1990s. Michal has been a member of the U.S. national team for the last few years and just recently got his U.S. citizenship in order to make himself eligible for Olympic competition.
Casey Eichfeld of Mount Holly, North Carolina, punched his ticket to Rio in the men's single canoe (C1) class. Casey grew up in Pennsylvania and was just starting to show up at races in the 1990s as my own slalom career was winding down, and I remember watching the nine- or ten-year-old kid and thinking that if he stuck with it he might be very good. That, of course, was a big "if"--many fabulously talented kids have come and gone in this sport without going "the distance" to international prominence. But lo and behold, Casey has stuck with it, and it seems that especially in these last few years he's really stepped up his game and made himself one of the top racers in the world in slalom C1.
Yet to be determined are the U.S. Olympians in the women's kayak class (K1W) and the men's double canoe class (C2). The selection process will continue on May 7-8 with a competition on the new course at Oklahoma City.
I believe two questions are obvious at this point: Why have Olympic Team berths been decided in two classes, but not all four? and, Why are there no canoe classes for women?
I'll field the second question first: I can't say I know the origin of this issue. Maybe there were very few women racing slalom in canoes when the world championships debuted in 1949; maybe the cigar smoking good ol' boys in the International Canoe Federation considered women too "dainty" for the manly business of canoeing... I don't really know. But that's how things were for the first six decades of the ICF world championships, and plenty of people were unhappy about it and lobbied for change. I think it finally took an ultimatum for greater gender equity from the International Olympic Committee to get the ICF to do something about it. A women's single canoe class (C1W) was added to the world championships in about 2010 with the intention of adding it to the Olympics a quadrennium or two later. Plans are now set for C1W to make its Olympic debut in the 2020 Games at Tokyo. Women's canoe classes also will debut in flatwater sprint racing, where they also had been absent.
There's no doubt that gender equity is important and necessary. But I'm saddened by the cost of adding C1W to the Olympics. The IOC is very stingy when it comes to the overall number of "fringe sport" athletes like paddlers that it will allow to participate in the Games, and to make room for C1W the ICF has had to remove C2, arguably the most interesting and beautiful class, from Olympic competition.
As for that first question above: athletes vie for selection to the U.S. Olympic Team by earning points in several events in the year prior to the Games. One such event was the 2015 world championships at the Lee Valley White Water Centre outside London, and Michal Smolen and Casey Eichfeld were the only two U.S. athletes to earn points there. Their performances were in fact quite magnificent: Smolen claimed the bronze medal in K1, while Eichfeld appeared on the verge of winning the C1 class until a tiny but devastating time error knocked him back to fourth place.
In any case, if Smolen finished third or better in Charlotte this past weekend, he would amass a point total that no other athlete would be able to surpass, and therefore clinch a spot on the Olympic Team. He won. Eichfeld came to Charlotte needing to finish second or better; he also won. No paddler in the other two classes has yet accumulated such an insurmountable lead in points, and so their competition will continue in Oklahoma City next month.
If you're still reading this post, then you know that Olympic selection is not the simplest thing to talk about, and I apologize for being so long-winded. But there's one more part of the story I'll address, and it's a process that to me seems truly byzantine: how a nation qualifies spots in the Olympics. As I mentioned above, the IOC allows only so many paddlers on the water in the Games, and each nation must demonstrate, in competitions like the world championships, that it has paddlers who can compete at the world-class level in order to be awarded berths in the competition. A further complication is that the IOC wants the berths to be as evenly distributed as possible among the different regions of the world--Europe, Asia, the Americas, Oceania, Africa, and so on.
A nation can have at most one boat entered in each class. That means that in slalom, each nation may have at most five Olympians: a female kayaker, a male kayaker, a male single canoeist, and a pair of male tandem canoeists. That brings me to the part I haven't figured out yet: according to an article I read in Canoe and Kayak magazine the other day, the IOC and/or the ICF have determined that the U.S. is limited to four warm bodies on its slalom team. That means that at least one member of the U.S. C2 must be somebody who's already on the Olympic team as a single-boat racer. It just so happens that both Casey Eichfeld and Michal Smolen are racing in C2s as well as their single boats, so that shouldn't be a problem, but it's nevertheless weird. I'm sure there's a full explanation somewhere in the bowels of either the ICF or the USA Canoe-Kayak website, but as both those organizations are notorious for releasing information in the form of long, excruciating legalese-laced PDF documents, I just don't have the will to unearth the answer. I invite anybody who can provide us a readable explanation to do so in the "Comments" section.
I'll just add this: I'm sort of rooting for Casey Eichfeld's C2 to make the Olympic Team because his partner is Devin McEwan, son of the first U.S. Olympic medalist in whitewater slalom. Devin's dad Jamie took the C1 bronze medal in the 1972 Games at Augsburg, West Germany. We just lost Jamie to cancer two years ago, and I know he would be thrilled to see another McEwan running the gates in the Olympics.
Once again, thanks for reading down this far. I'll post updates here about both the flatwater and the whitewater selection processes as they develop.
What makes a winner?
I don't really follow golf, but I've always regarded it with the respect it deserves as a test of skill, athletic ability, and composure. While browsing Face Book this morning this quote from Jack Nicklaus regarding this past weekend's Masters tournament caught my attention:
I’ve watched Danny Willett play on television a few times and when I’ve seen him swing the golf club, I have thought, “Well, this young man looks like he’s a pretty darn good player.” He had moved himself up to 12th in the world, so he’s obviously done something right and was playing very good golf coming into Augusta. What impressed me so much is that when he realized he was in a position to win, he finished it—and that’s the mark of a champion: To finish a good round; give yourself an opportunity to win; and when the other fellow doesn’t finish, you’ve got to be there. Danny Willett was and kudos to him.At the world class level it is very, very rare to see an athlete so exceptionally dominant that he or she wins every competition in a rout. More often, winning is a matter of putting yourself in a position to capitalize when other competitors falter, and then grabbing that opportunity. We've seen it in the Super Bowl, the Masters, the Indianapolis 500, Wimbledon, and just about any other high-profile sporting event you can name. And we see it with regularity in canoe and kayak racing. Most of time there's not one dominant athlete, but a group of top athletes, in any given paddling discipline; and the one who wins a world or Olympic title is the one who had the most things fall into place that year or that month or that day.
Monday photo feature
Ride 'em cowboy! That's ME out there on the Ocoee River during the 2000 whitewater slalom U.S. Olympic Team Trials! My mom, perhaps the only person who cared to point a camera my way that weekend, snapped the photo. Even though I had worse than a Slurpee's chance in Hell of actually going to the Olympics, it was an experience I'll never forget.
The selection process for the 2016 whitewater slalom Olympic team began in earnest this past weekend with a competition at Charlotte. It'll continue next month at Oklahoma City. A couple of spots on the team actually got filled this past weekend, and I'll write more about that when I get a chance.
The other Olympic canoe and kayak discipline, flatwater sprint, has its U.S. Olympic Team Trials on April 29-30 at Gainesville, Georgia.
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Beat to the socks
As I said in my last post, I did four one-mile pieces yesterday, preceded by a long paddle up the Mississippi and followed by a paddle back down the Mississippi and back up the harbor to the dock. For recovery in between the pieces, I paddled easy for several tenths of a mile. My overall time in the boat was 140 minutes, and in contrast to Thursday's workout, I was thoroughly worn out when it was over. I don't think a workout like yesterday's is what Ernie Banks had in mind when he exclaimed "Let's play two!" on beautiful summer days at Wrigley Field.
With tomorrow and Tuesday reserved for recovery, I wanted to get another good-quality session in today. Strong south winds were in today's forecast, but it wasn't that bad yet when I put my boat in the water this morning. I paddled out of the harbor and up the Mississippi just above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and then paddled a brisk pace back downriver to get a bit of practice on the sort of water I'll be racing on at the end of the month.
Back in the harbor I started easy but built up into a strong pace all the way to the north end. Aided by a tailwind, I was occasionally hitting 8 mph on the GPS.
I backed off the pace and paddled easy from the north end of the harbor back to the dock, though it didn't feel so easy because I was fighting a headwind that was becoming stronger by the minute.
Today's 90-minute session completed what turned out to be a bear of a weekend. Now I get to relax for a couple of days and let my body build itself back up and get ready for greater challenges.
With tomorrow and Tuesday reserved for recovery, I wanted to get another good-quality session in today. Strong south winds were in today's forecast, but it wasn't that bad yet when I put my boat in the water this morning. I paddled out of the harbor and up the Mississippi just above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and then paddled a brisk pace back downriver to get a bit of practice on the sort of water I'll be racing on at the end of the month.
Back in the harbor I started easy but built up into a strong pace all the way to the north end. Aided by a tailwind, I was occasionally hitting 8 mph on the GPS.
I backed off the pace and paddled easy from the north end of the harbor back to the dock, though it didn't feel so easy because I was fighting a headwind that was becoming stronger by the minute.
Today's 90-minute session completed what turned out to be a bear of a weekend. Now I get to relax for a couple of days and let my body build itself back up and get ready for greater challenges.
I have been globally positioned
This past week I finally gave in and bought a GPS device. So far I'm having some fun playing around with it in training, but I'm quite aware of its limitations.
I've always been something of a Luddite when it comes to the gadgets being marketed to athletes. I really think that anybody with an appreciable amount of training under his belt should be able to determine intensity and pace by feel. With a bit of practice and familiarity with your body it's not that hard to tell when you're in the "aerobic zone" or when you're "going lactic." And if you tell a decent high school runner to run a lap of the 400-meter track in 75 seconds, he'll probably hit it within a second or so because he's become familiar with what 75-second pace feels like.
I doubt I will use my GPS during a race, especially one on anything rougher than dead-calm flatwater. If I do take it in the boat with me, it'll be with the miles-per-hour display turned off. When the objective is simply to compete with the other racers, knowing how fast or not-fast I'm going seems like an unwanted distraction.
Having said all that, I'm having fun using the GPS in practice. One of my favorite things to do with it is measure distances. In the harbor I have several courses defined by permanent objects that I've been timing myself on for years, and it's nice to know at last what the exact distances are. I'm also experimenting with using the device in pace workouts, though it's important not to accept the feedback at face value. The workout I did yesterday is a perfect example: I paddled from the marina out of the harbor and up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River; then, paddling on the Wolf, I timed myself over four one-mile pieces (note to my international readers: my GPS seems to deal only in British units). My times were 9:24, 9:11, 8:16, and 8:07, and the rather large differences had everything to do with atmospheric and surface conditions. I did the first two pieces going up the Wolf, but I should note that current wasn't much of a factor because at yesterday's Mississippi River stage (16.7 feet on the Memphis gauge) the big river backs pretty far up into the Wolf. However, there was a stiff northeast wind blowing, and on the first piece in particular I was paddling right into the teeth of that wind. For the second piece I was in a more protected section of the river, but by the end of it I was far enough up that I was running into some current. I did the third and fourth pieces coming back down the Wolf, with the conditions opposite what they'd been going up, and that's the reason for the faster times.
Now that I think about it, I probably haven't said anything that profound in this post. The athletes I race with are smart guys and gals and have probably figured these things out for themselves: I'm sure that when their GPSs tell them they're going really slow they can deduce the reason from the conditions they're paddling in. I guess the main point I'm trying to make here is that I hope to have some fun with this new toy but I don't expect it to bring about any dramatic changes in my training.
I've always been something of a Luddite when it comes to the gadgets being marketed to athletes. I really think that anybody with an appreciable amount of training under his belt should be able to determine intensity and pace by feel. With a bit of practice and familiarity with your body it's not that hard to tell when you're in the "aerobic zone" or when you're "going lactic." And if you tell a decent high school runner to run a lap of the 400-meter track in 75 seconds, he'll probably hit it within a second or so because he's become familiar with what 75-second pace feels like.
I doubt I will use my GPS during a race, especially one on anything rougher than dead-calm flatwater. If I do take it in the boat with me, it'll be with the miles-per-hour display turned off. When the objective is simply to compete with the other racers, knowing how fast or not-fast I'm going seems like an unwanted distraction.
Having said all that, I'm having fun using the GPS in practice. One of my favorite things to do with it is measure distances. In the harbor I have several courses defined by permanent objects that I've been timing myself on for years, and it's nice to know at last what the exact distances are. I'm also experimenting with using the device in pace workouts, though it's important not to accept the feedback at face value. The workout I did yesterday is a perfect example: I paddled from the marina out of the harbor and up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River; then, paddling on the Wolf, I timed myself over four one-mile pieces (note to my international readers: my GPS seems to deal only in British units). My times were 9:24, 9:11, 8:16, and 8:07, and the rather large differences had everything to do with atmospheric and surface conditions. I did the first two pieces going up the Wolf, but I should note that current wasn't much of a factor because at yesterday's Mississippi River stage (16.7 feet on the Memphis gauge) the big river backs pretty far up into the Wolf. However, there was a stiff northeast wind blowing, and on the first piece in particular I was paddling right into the teeth of that wind. For the second piece I was in a more protected section of the river, but by the end of it I was far enough up that I was running into some current. I did the third and fourth pieces coming back down the Wolf, with the conditions opposite what they'd been going up, and that's the reason for the faster times.
Now that I think about it, I probably haven't said anything that profound in this post. The athletes I race with are smart guys and gals and have probably figured these things out for themselves: I'm sure that when their GPSs tell them they're going really slow they can deduce the reason from the conditions they're paddling in. I guess the main point I'm trying to make here is that I hope to have some fun with this new toy but I don't expect it to bring about any dramatic changes in my training.
Friday, April 8, 2016
Sometimes the strokes just flow
My next race is down at Vicksburg three weeks from tomorrow. The next ten days or so are an important window for doing some work that my body can internalize by that date.
With my weekends filled with long, hard stuff right now, I was looking for shorter-duration intensity when I got in my boat yesterday. I paddled for 60 minutes overall. After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did a set of eight 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals. I did all but the last one out on the river, in the same kind of water I'll be racing on at the end of the month. I tried to stay relaxed and take good strokes with full rotation on that somewhat squirrelly playing field.
After that, as I headed up the harbor back toward the dock, I paddled at or slightly above the pace I hope to maintain in the Vicksburg race for ten minutes or so.
I felt particularly good in the boat yesterday. Maybe it was because I was good and rested; maybe it was because my diet has been good and my energy was up; hopefully it was also because I'm reaping some fitness benefit from the workouts I've done in the last several weeks. Whatever the case, it was one of those days when I felt more invigorated after paddling than I'd felt before. Sometimes that 30-second-sprint workout is really tiring, but yesterday I finished those eight sprints feeling like I could do eight more.
I did the April strength routine Wednesday and plan to do it again today.
With my weekends filled with long, hard stuff right now, I was looking for shorter-duration intensity when I got in my boat yesterday. I paddled for 60 minutes overall. After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did a set of eight 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals. I did all but the last one out on the river, in the same kind of water I'll be racing on at the end of the month. I tried to stay relaxed and take good strokes with full rotation on that somewhat squirrelly playing field.
After that, as I headed up the harbor back toward the dock, I paddled at or slightly above the pace I hope to maintain in the Vicksburg race for ten minutes or so.
I felt particularly good in the boat yesterday. Maybe it was because I was good and rested; maybe it was because my diet has been good and my energy was up; hopefully it was also because I'm reaping some fitness benefit from the workouts I've done in the last several weeks. Whatever the case, it was one of those days when I felt more invigorated after paddling than I'd felt before. Sometimes that 30-second-sprint workout is really tiring, but yesterday I finished those eight sprints feeling like I could do eight more.
I did the April strength routine Wednesday and plan to do it again today.
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
What I'm doing these days
For this period leading up to the longish races awaiting me in late April and May, I seem to be settling into a pattern of paddling long and hard over the weekend, recovering on Monday and Tuesday, and doing strength work and some shorter, faster paddling on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
This past Saturday I paddled for 80 minutes overall, doing four pieces of varying lengths and intensities. I started the first piece out on the Mississippi at the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and finished it at the mouth of the harbor. It was quite windy and I had to back off the intensity a bit, focusing mainly on keeping the boat moving over the waves and chop. Once back in the harbor I recovered for several minutes and did one of the pieces I did last Sunday, starting next to Beale Street Landing and finishing at the H.D. Bridge.
I recovered from that by paddling back south to the monorail bridge, and then I sprinted from there to the H.D. Bridge. I recently used a GPS to measure this distance and it's about 450 meters. My time Saturday was about 2 minutes 20 seconds--not a performance that's likely to take me to the Games at Rio this summer.
Finally, after another few minutes of recovery, I sprinted from the H.D. Bridge to the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge. This distance is around 660 meters, and my time was 3:20ish.
On Sunday the weather was calmer and warmer, and I went back down to the river for a 120-minute paddle. Going around the Loosahatchie Bar like I did the previous weekend was not an option this time, as the river was too low (16.9 feet on the Memphis gauge Sunday morning). I decided to paddle downriver from downtown, something I hadn't done in quite a while. Going downstream I paddled close to the pace I hope to maintain in the Mississippi River race down at Vicksburg at the end of the month. After 45 minutes, I decided I should start heading back upriver to make it back to the dock in my allotted two hours. I paddled along the Arkansas bank, using the eddy/slackwater on the inside of the big bend to the west the river makes below the old Frisco Bridge.
Overall, this past weekend felt less taxing than the weekend before. I wonder whether that's partly psychological: the timed-pieces workout I did on Saturday was less structured than the workout I'd done the previous Sunday. When I go out and do six or eight pieces at regular intervals it's hard to avoid that "time to make it hurt" mindset, whereas doing a variety of distances with whatever recovery I feel like feels more like play.
My strength routine (I guess I'll call it the April strength routine even though I started it right after my trip to Ocean Springs last month) is my Smart Bell workout. One day--I promise--I'm going to teach myself to shoot, edit, and post video of me doing this workout and other exercises so readers of this blog can see what they look like. In the meantime, have a look at this post from last year in which I describe what a Smart Bell is and how I work out with it. Right now Wednesdays and Fridays are dedicated to strength work.
This past Saturday I paddled for 80 minutes overall, doing four pieces of varying lengths and intensities. I started the first piece out on the Mississippi at the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and finished it at the mouth of the harbor. It was quite windy and I had to back off the intensity a bit, focusing mainly on keeping the boat moving over the waves and chop. Once back in the harbor I recovered for several minutes and did one of the pieces I did last Sunday, starting next to Beale Street Landing and finishing at the H.D. Bridge.
I recovered from that by paddling back south to the monorail bridge, and then I sprinted from there to the H.D. Bridge. I recently used a GPS to measure this distance and it's about 450 meters. My time Saturday was about 2 minutes 20 seconds--not a performance that's likely to take me to the Games at Rio this summer.
Finally, after another few minutes of recovery, I sprinted from the H.D. Bridge to the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge. This distance is around 660 meters, and my time was 3:20ish.
On Sunday the weather was calmer and warmer, and I went back down to the river for a 120-minute paddle. Going around the Loosahatchie Bar like I did the previous weekend was not an option this time, as the river was too low (16.9 feet on the Memphis gauge Sunday morning). I decided to paddle downriver from downtown, something I hadn't done in quite a while. Going downstream I paddled close to the pace I hope to maintain in the Mississippi River race down at Vicksburg at the end of the month. After 45 minutes, I decided I should start heading back upriver to make it back to the dock in my allotted two hours. I paddled along the Arkansas bank, using the eddy/slackwater on the inside of the big bend to the west the river makes below the old Frisco Bridge.
Overall, this past weekend felt less taxing than the weekend before. I wonder whether that's partly psychological: the timed-pieces workout I did on Saturday was less structured than the workout I'd done the previous Sunday. When I go out and do six or eight pieces at regular intervals it's hard to avoid that "time to make it hurt" mindset, whereas doing a variety of distances with whatever recovery I feel like feels more like play.
My strength routine (I guess I'll call it the April strength routine even though I started it right after my trip to Ocean Springs last month) is my Smart Bell workout. One day--I promise--I'm going to teach myself to shoot, edit, and post video of me doing this workout and other exercises so readers of this blog can see what they look like. In the meantime, have a look at this post from last year in which I describe what a Smart Bell is and how I work out with it. Right now Wednesdays and Fridays are dedicated to strength work.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)