Monday photo feature

That's me cruising down a frothy, pothole-rich rapid on the "Farmlands" section of the White Salmon River near Trout Lake, Washington.  A lady named Wendy Peterson took this photo in July, 1998.  I'd met Wendy and her husband Dan that morning in the campground I was staying in, and we ended up running the river together.

The White Salmon flows into the Columbia River across from the town of Hood River, Oregon.  I plan to return to this region almost exactly 20 years after that '98 visit.  This past week I signed up to participate in the 2018 Gorge Downwind Championships, a surf ski and outrigger canoe race that takes place each July on the Columbia.

Registration opened this month, and I really would have preferred to sign up much closer to the race date.  After all, there's no telling what could be going on next July: I could be injured, or I could hit a rash of unforeseen expenses, or I could have a death in the family, or who knows what else.  But registration for the GDC is capped at 600 racers and it fills up fast, and so there's not much I can do but pay the hefty entry fee a full eight months ahead of time and keep my fingers crossed that it will all work out.  I certainly hope it does, because I sure did enjoy my trip out there all those years ago.

More going on than it seems

I'll start with a bit of inspirational fare.  Eric Jackson, a whitewater rodeo world champion and a whitewater slalom Olympian, has raised his children with this three-step motto in their paddling life:

1. Be happy, be motivated, be helpful.
2. Paddle early, paddle late, paddle hard.
3. Impress with what you are good at, work on what you are not good at, and put your best foot forward on competition day.

Eric's daughter Emily and son Dane, in their twenties now, are both among the world's elite whitewater paddlers.  His nine-year-old son K.C. will likely be there himself eventually.

Down here at the non-elite level, meanwhile, I continue to keep a little something going to stave off the early-offseason doldrums.  This past week I did the new strength routine on Monday and Thursday.  And I paddled a loop of the harbor with Joe on Tuesday and out on the Mississippi a little bit yesterday.

I continued the work on my stroke mechanics yesterday, and I'm happy to say that the adjustments Morgan House suggested in that clinic I took are beginning to feel more natural.  The main thing I have to keep reminding myself is that I was already doing a lot of things pretty well and I shouldn't throw those things out.  Morgan said as much in this message he wrote me:

Your technique is not bad and the fundamentals of your stroke are quite good. All of the things I taught during the clinic should be practiced in each training session. It is important, though, to not try and force each aspect of the stroke to be perfect as the kayak stroke is very fluid. Keep your focus on one thing for an interval of time or distance and then change to another thing for another interval and so on. Eventually it will all start to come together.

In other words, my stroke really doesn't need much more than some tweaking.  My shaft needs to be more vertical throughout each stroke, and exiting closer to the boat helps make sure that happens.  So I'll continue to work on that but I'll try not to wear out my brain obsessing over it.

A new strength routine

After several weeks off from strength work, it's time to start settling into some offseason conditioning.  I think the biggest mental hurdle is simply sitting down and picking out the exercises to make up a new routine; once that's done it's easy enough to get right to it on each appointed day.  I've carried out that chore once more, and so here's what I'm doing for the next little while.

1.  Lat pulls

2.  Dead lifts

3.  Military press

4.  Stability ball drill demonstrated by Jing Jing Li at 2:55 of her video on this page

5.  Pullups

Recommended reading

Regarding this post from a couple of weeks ago: I should point out that the "fascination with the process" concept is not something I came up with myself.  Former U.S. whitewater slalom team coach Bill Endicott has mentioned this concept many times in his various books.

The reason I bring this up now is that I've just seen the topic brought up by slalom-racer-turned-English-teacher Alden Bird on his blog.  He's written a good review of the book Every Crushing Stroke by U.S. slalom Olympian Scott Shipley, whose influences include Mr. Endicott.

I got myself a copy of Shipley's book shortly after it came out just like Alden did.  Even though it's more about whitewater paddling than the sort of paddling I'm mostly doing these days, it's still been a significant influence on my overall approach to training and even to life itself.  Longtime readers of this blog have seen me refer to it once in a while.  I don't think it's in print anymore but there are probably copies floating around here in cyberspace.  I recommend it highly.