I should've thought about this sooner

Last night I joined a half-dozen or so other local paddlers for a few sprints on Walnut Grove Lake on the east side of Memphis.

I paddled my old Apple Turnover boat (shown above in a file photo) for the first time in a long time.  It was my main race boat back in the late 1990s and early 2000s before I got my first surf ski.  After I got the surf ski I continued to use this boat at least once a year in the Hatchie River Canoe and Kayak Race over near Bolivar, Tennessee.  Since that race folded, I have paddled it only very occasionally.

This season I have a couple of races I want to use it in--the one on the Chickasawhay River in eastern Mississippi a couple of weeks from now, and the USCA Downriver Kayak Championships (for which this boat was originally designed) at the end of July.

But until last night I'd failed to realize just how out of practice I am in paddling such a boat.  The boat has no rudder--it's basically a wildwater boat designed for Class I-II water--and so the paddler must lean it right or left to steer it.  Once upon a time I totally had the hang of this skill, but by last night the relevant muscle groups hadn't done such duty in a long, long time.  "Awkward" was the word for how I felt as we went out and did five 500-meter sprints.  I didn't even bother looking at my times because I knew they were slow.

Tomorrow I will give this boat another outing on the White River at Batesville, Arkansas.  Then I'll be back in my surf ski all next week doing my final tuning for the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race on the 18th.  After that I'll worry about how quickly I can be ready for that Chickasawhay River race.