Monday photo feature

One of my very first slalom races was one of the old "Citizen Race" events they used to have on the Nantahala River in western North Carolina.  I think this photo is from 1992, at which time I was in my mid-20s, a very advanced age to be entering such a sport.  But every time I look at this photo I see myself as a little kid.  Photo by Michael Stout.

Sometimes, winter is not as bad as you think

Before yesterday we'd had a decent run of mild weather, with Fahrenheit temperatures rising into the 50s and even the 60s.  I'd gone several weeks without wearing pogies.  But yesterday morning the pogies were back on.  When I got down to the river the mercury was straining to touch 40 degrees and there was a bitter north breeze blowing.  It felt more like winter again.  But there was a literal "bright" side: the sky was mostly sunny.  Once I was in the boat paddling I got comfortable, and it turned out to be not a bad day to paddle at all.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor; I think the sprints felt a little bit more fluid than they had been.  Then I paddled out onto the Mississippi and spent the rest of the 60 minutes focusing on involving my legs and feet in each stroke.

This morning it was overcast and things seemed sort of a gloomy as I headed downtown to paddle.  Then again, it was a few degrees warmer than yesterday, and there was practically no wind.  The harbor was as smooth as glass.  I warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and again the sprints felt not great but not terrible either.  I paddled out onto the Mississippi, which was also mostly smooth with a minimal amount of motorized traffic.  Conditions were really pretty ideal.  I paddled a good strong pace up and down the river before returning to the harbor and the dock to complete an 80-minute session.

"Neither rain nor sleet nor snow..."

I spent Wednesday driving home and was in the mood to paddle Thursday morning even though there was a bit of inclement weather about.  A check of the Internet radar showed a big mass of rain closing in on the city of Memphis, and with a couple of errands to run on my way downtown, I knew it would be falling on me by the time I was in the boat.  Fortunately the temperature was mild--around 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

I paddled for 60 minutes in a hard drizzle.  A stiff south wind drove the raindrops right into my face as I paddled from the marina to the mouth of the harbor.  But I didn't let it bother me.  When I was a kid at summer camp, anytime a camper complained about having to do something in the rain, the standard glib reply was "Skin is waterproof."

I paddled a brisk pace until the last ten minutes or so, when I eased up and coasted back to the dock.  The rainfall got quite a bit heavier as I was driving home, so at least in that respect my timing was good.

I followed through on the plan I mentioned in my last post, and did the strength routine while visiting family on Monday and Wednesday.  I did it again back here at home today.

Seizing the mild-weather paddling opportunities

This week we had two lovely warmish sunny days, and I paddled on both of them.  On Tuesday Joe and I did a loop of the harbor, and today I paddled for 80 minutes out on the Mississippi.  In between those two days the weather was wet and/or cold and blustery.

I started today's paddle by warming up and doing another rusty-feeling set of three 8-stroke sprints.  Then I paddled out onto the Mississippi, where an upstream-bound barge rig was creating some good-sized swells.  I went out and tried to surf without much success.  Part of the reason is that I tend to be conservative with such activities in the wintertime, but even if my attitude had been a hundred percent "Sydney or the Bush," I still might not have gotten any decent rides because the waves' troughs were a little too broad.  But at least I got in a few decent sprints.  Soon the waves started petering out, so my bit of surf practice didn't last more than maybe five minutes.  We take what we can get here in the Mid South.

I ferried over to the Arkansas side and paddled upriver toward the Loosahatchie Chute before coming back down and returning to the harbor.  During this period the "thing" I decided to work on was pulling hard through each stroke while keeping the stroke rate pretty low.  It was almost like a "hesitation" drill as I had to make myself go slow during each recovery between strokes.  It made for some good balance practice out on the river.

I'll be out of the boat for most of next week due to holiday travel.  I did the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week, and since my Smart Bell is nice and portable I'll be sticking to that aspect of training next week.

Monday photo feature

We've all seen those heartbreaking photos of birds, turtles, and other critters caught up in plastic six-pack rings that have found their way into our world's waterways.  Yesterday while paddling out on the Mississippi I saw this one in a stand of willows over near the Arkansas side.  So I paddled into the willows and grabbed it.  I took it home, used a pair of scissors to cut apart all the rings, and put it in the trash where it belongs.  Goodie goodie for me!!!!

Muscle memory

This morning was reasonably nice by wintertime standards.  The sky was partly sunny, and with the gentlest of breezes blowing from the south, the water in the harbor was dead calm.  At 50 degrees Fahrenheit it was right on the cusp of being cold enough for pogies, and I opted to go without.  Pogies are a wonderful invention (thanks to whitewater racing pioneers Bill Nutt and Bonnie Losick for the roles they played in their conception and development), but any day I don't have to wear them is a good day in my book.

I started by warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor.  The sprints are still feeling rusty, as my body just doesn't seem to have much turnover right now.  Then I paddled out onto the Mississippi, ferried over to the Arkansas side, and paddled up above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge before coming back downriver and returning to the harbor.

The thing I decided to focus on today was getting my blades fully immersed at the beginning of each stroke.  For some reason I've long had a tendency not to get my right blade all the way in the water; you can see me doing that at times in this video, most of whose footage was shot around 2011-12.  I think I've done a better job of it in more recent years, but I probably ought to charge up the Go Pro camera and shoot some new footage soon so I can see how I'm doing.

Of course, stroke mechanics is something I'm always working on, to one degree or another, every time I paddle.  But today was one of those days when I moved one particular component onto the front burner in my mind, if that makes any sense.  And so I paddled along and tried to plant the blade with precision each time--"speared the fish," as it were--without thrusting my body forward and causing the boat to bob.

I got back to the dock 70 minutes after I'd started.  I can check off another day of practice as a new season looms off in the future.

Milder weather and a variety of activity

The miserable weekend weather finally began to give way to some sunshine Monday, and Tuesday was a gorgeous day with clear skies and an afternoon high around 52 degrees Fahrenheit.  It was a brisk 41 degrees when I arrived at the river to paddle Tuesday morning but it had warmed up to a comfortable 48 degrees by the time I was finished.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor.  It was the first time I had sprinted in any way in a couple of months, and while the energy was there, the form was rusty.  I paddled up the Mississippi to the south end of the Greenbelt Park and then returned to the harbor, where I spent the last 25 minutes of my one-hour session doing a bunch of stroke drills: hesitation drills, one-sided drills, and the "one-two-three-four-FIVE!!!!" drill that Morgan House showed me when I took his clinic last year.  It had been a long time since I'd isolated the various components of my stroke for study, and I'm always struck by how tiring it is to focus that hard on something while I'm paddling.

I'd done a round of my new strength routine on Monday, and I did another round on Wednesday.  I woke up yesterday feeling stiff and sore in my arms and shoulders.  I don't know what might have caused it other than the strength work, but I thought it was odd that the soreness took that long to appear.  Usually it starts up within a day of my doing something new.

Joe hadn't been available for our usual Tuesday paddle, so he joined me yesterday for a loop of the harbor.  The relaxed, "conversational" pace we paddled was helpful as my body worked out the soreness.

I did another round of the strength routine today to close out a decent "business" week here in the early offseason.

Monday photo feature

I'm at a loss for words just after finishing a race on the Pascagoula River on the Mississippi Gulf Coast last year.

A new strength routine

Now that I'm finally feeling better it's time to start thinking about some offseason conditioning again.

I've been doing a "Smart Bell" workout for some 20 years now.  I learned it from a friend named Emerson Wickwire who coached wrestling at the school where I taught back in the late 1990s.  A friend of his, a really good wrestler named Paul Widerman, invented the Smart Bell so he could do a whole variety of dynamic strength exercises.

At long last, I've made a video of the routine I do with the Smart Bell.  I'll be the first to admit it's not the best quality production--I made it all by myself with a camera on a tripod in my house--but hopefully everybody can see what's going on.




(Just in case anybody's curious: I had the radio on while I was making this.  What you're hearing is the "Down In The Alley" program, hosted by Eddie Hankins each Friday morning on WEVL FM 89.9.  It makes about as good a soundtrack as anything I could have come up with.)

Where does one get a Smart Bell these days?  I'm not sure.  They're listed on this Amazon page as "currently unavailable."  As you can see there, their look has changed from the first-generation Smart Bell I'm using in the video.  If you want one then I encourage you to poke around the Internet and see what you can find.  There might be some on Ebay.

Improved health and unimproved weather

Well, I had my CT scan Thursday, and the little bit of information I've been able to extract from my doctor's office indicates it wasn't entirely conclusive.  I have an appointment there next Tuesday, so I should know more no later than then.

In the meantime, I've been feeling significantly better.  Monday was the last full day I dealt with that abdominal discomfort.  I wasn't feeling totally better Tuesday morning, but I went ahead and paddled with Joe in the harbor anyway.  By Tuesday evening I knew I was feeling better, and I've felt more or less back to normal ever since.  And believe me, I'm pleased about that.  But I'm still a little puzzled about this mysterious two-week malady.  I really don't get sick that often, and when I do it almost never lasts more than several days.

I'm now trying to get myself back in motion.  The weather has not been helpful.  I don't think it's been warmer than 45 degrees Fahrenheit in the last week or so.  This weekend has been particularly lousy, as the same storm system that has brought snow and ice to much of the Southeast has given us relentless rain for close to 24 hours.  The temperature has not escaped the mid 30s.

Mind you, winters here in the Mid South are nowhere near as harsh as in places like the upper Great Plains or New England or the Great Lakes region, but in a way I wish that if it must be cold at all, it would just go all the way: I have a friend who lives in New Hampshire who posted on Face Book that he cross-country skied ten miles yesterday, and that's the kind of offseason cross-training I could really sink my teeth into.  Instead, the water stays liquid here just about all winter, and I feel obligated to go out and paddle with a stiff upper lip.  I pleaded the "recovering from illness" excuse to stay in this weekend, but soon enough I need to get back in gear.

Of course, winters are funny here, and just because we've had some nasty blasts early, there's no guarantee it'll stay that way until spring.  Last January I paddled a couple of times when the temperature was in the teens, but after that frigid period the rest of the winter turned out to be quite mild.  The best I can do with this winter training thing is what I always do: take it a day at a time.  With any luck it'll add up to a decent amount of work by the time Earth swings around to its vernal equinox.

Body woes

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything on this canoe and kayak training blog.  The main reason for that is that lately very little canoe and kayak training has taken place around here.

Back on the evening of Tuesday, November 20, I started feeling some discomfort in my abdominal area.  The feeling was still there the next morning, and when I tried to do a round of the strength routine I found I had very little energy.  I concluded that I must have some kind of mild stomach bug and my body was fighting it off.

For the next several days I felt not horrible, exactly, but very low in energy.  I didn't do much more than lie around the house during this time.  Then I started to feel better, and thought I was on the mend--pretty typical when you've got a virus, right?  But the moment I began to resume some normal-life activities, the discomfort returned.  I decided it was time to go see the doctor.  I went in last Tuesday morning and they referred me for an ultrasound procedure and also took blood for some lab tests.

By Thursday the tests had come back negative, and my doctor told me the next step was to have a CT scan to see if there was some kind of mass in my insides.

A mass?  As in, a tumor?  Seriously?

I have to get pre-certification from my insurance company before I can have a CT scan, so I'm having to wait until Thursday to get it done.  (Note: if I had just gone to the emergency room they could have done the scan with no pre-certification requirement.  And there I thought I was doing the right thing by going to my primary-care doctor instead of the emergency room.)  I sincerely hope that my thoughts of tumors and cancer are just me blowing things out of proportion.  But in the meantime I'm still not feeling well and I don't know what else to think.  By tomorrow evening it'll be two weeks that this has been going on.

It's hard even to describe how this feels.  Much of the time it's a perpetual feeling of having to use the bathroom (sometimes Number One, sometimes Number Two) even though my digestion and bodily functions have been working just fine throughout this period.

Saturday was a beautiful day and I decided to try paddling--if nothing else, the cabin fever was driving me mad.  I paddled for an hour and felt just fine in the boat.  I didn't do anything bold; I stayed in the harbor because a south wind was making things rough out on the Mississippi, and even though I was feeling good enough to paddle at a healthy clip, I didn't throw in any all-out sprints.  Once I was back on the dock I was happy to have gotten out and done something with my body at last.

By Saturday evening, as if on cue, I was back to that mild lousy feeling.  It continued all through yesterday and I'm still not feeling so hot this morning.

It's still early in the offseason, so if I have to go through a forced layoff, I guess this is about as good a time as any.  But not knowing how much longer this is going to go on is frustrating.  Right now there's nothing I can do but see what the CT scan reveals this Thursday.

My resolve gets an early test

Winter has decided to come early to the Mid South.  When I got down to the river to paddle on Tuesday it was 36 degrees Fahrenheit, overcast, and windy.  As I mentioned in my new stretching video, it was definitely a day to do my stretching before leaving home.  I broke out the heavy winter gear for the first time: wetsuit pants, pogies, fleece shirt, long-sleeve shell.  Once I was actually in the boat paddling I didn't feel too bad: going against the north wind wasn't fun but it wasn't anything I haven't endured many times before.  I stayed in the harbor and paddled on the quick side of medium for 60 minutes.  The worst moments were standing on the dock before and after paddling.

Every year around this time I ask myself if I have it in me to put myself through another round of winter training.  It would appear that the answer is... yeah.  At least once more, I guess I do.

Winters here in the Mid South are never really that bad.  In a typical winter we might have two or three blasts of Arctic air, plunging temperatures down into the 20s or teens for several days at a time, but we have a lot of stretches in the 40s and 50s as well.  Portions of the harbor might occasionally freeze over, sometimes bad enough to make me skip a day of paddling, but that's just once every three or four years, maybe.  Some snow and ice isn't uncommon, but it doesn't happen every year.

But I'm pretty sure this is the earliest round of winter weather in my lifetime, especially one that includes snow.  Yes, yesterday afternoon enough frozen precipitation moved into the area to force the cancellation of evening activities and close some rural school systems today.  Weird.

I'm in the mood to hunker down for a long cold winter, but actually this is quite temporary: the current weather forecast says it'll be sunny and in the 60s this weekend, and the highs will be above 50 for the next nine days.  It wouldn't surprise me that much if the rest of this winter isn't as cold as it is now.

I did the strength routine Monday and yesterday and plan to do it again tomorrow.

Update: Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame

The Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame has announced its latest induction class.  The group of nine includes two football players, two football coaches, one football administrator, two basketball players, one tennis player, and one bull rider.  Eight of the inductees are male, and one female.

I'm sad to say that our canoe and kayak racing friend Mike Herbert did not make the cut.  Neither did any of the other people I voted for on my ballot.

Nevertheless, I thank everybody who took the trouble to buy an ASHOF membership and vote on Mike's behalf.  Just getting Mike's name on the ballot took close to a decade of effort, and I hope there will be opportunities to try again in the future.

Monday photo feature

It's been a long time since I've been on a good old-fashioned paddling tour.  But that's what I've just done in this photograph.  Back in 2009 I joined a group of folks to run a 22-mile section of the Mississippi River from Ashport to Randolph.  Here I'm helping Heather Havens and Alicia Huettel carry their big old kevlar canoe up the hill to the parking area at Randolph, located on the Tennessee side some 40 miles upstream of downtown Memphis.

Stretching my body and my tech skills

Joe and I did our customary paddle on Tuesday, and I did rounds of the strength routine on Monday, Wednesday, and today.  Right now the strength work isn't ending there: those oak planks I'm dealing with in the workshop are still pretty heavy even though I've got them milled down close to their final dimensions.

The weather was gorgeous when Joe and I paddled Tuesday: sunny and calm with a temperature in the mid 60s Fahrenheit.  That now seems a lifetime ago.  We've had periods of rain the last couple of days, and for the next week we're looking at highs in the 40s and 30s.  Meanwhile, the Mississippi River continues to be unseasonably high as a result of heavy rain in the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Ohio watersheds.  It's supposed to crest around 25 feet on the Memphis gauge in the middle of next week.

I try my best to make my training activities as understandable as possible, whether you've been reading this blog for years or you're looking at it for the first time.  For instance, I've been building up a reservoir of pages I can refer the reader back to, like the one about the harbor, or my 8-stroke sprints, or my bridge-to-bridge sprint, or strength routines like the one I linked to above.

I can't really blame you if you haven't noticed, but lately I've been trying to make My Training Blog by Elmore a sure-enough multimedia experience.  In the last several months I've been developing a modicum of video-production skill.  I do mean a modicum: I don't expect anybody to be impressed by what I can do.  But as a guy who's still stuck in the 20th century when it comes to technological know-how, I'm impressed with myself, and that's good enough for me.

Here's my latest creation: a video about my pre-exercise stretch routine.  Just like this blog in general, I offer it not as the last word on the subject, but simply as an example of what one guy does.  I hope at least a few people might gain some useful ideas and even a bit of inspiration from it.

Monday photo feature

Joe pulled out his iPhone and snapped this picture as he and I paddled a loop of the harbor a couple of Tuesdays ago.  These Tuesday sessions are all the paddling I've been doing lately, and the rest of my life has expanded to fill the extra time.

Oaken muscle

All my paddling in the last several weeks has taken place on Tuesdays.  My friend Joe joins me most Tuesdays to paddle a loop of the harbor, but this past Tuesday he was busy setting up for the annual Outdoors, Inc., Cyclocross Race ("OICX" for short), so I paddled alone.  It was the warmest day of the week with a pretty good south breeze blowing, so I ventured out onto the Mississippi for a short while.  There was a barge rig coming downriver and I attempted to surf behind it, but there were practically no surfable waves.  A south wind tends to knock the waves flat behind downstream-moving rigs.

I mentioned a while back that my arm muscles are getting plenty of work from my current project in the woodworking shop.  The project itself is simple enough--a small cabinet--but processing the material has been a bear.  The client brought me several 9'-long-by-20"-wide-by-3"-thick planks that he'd had milled from a willow oak tree that stood on his property.  The stock includes a high content of early-growth wood:

The wide portion of each growth ring is the early-growth wood, and such material is dense, hard, and heavy.  Moving each plank from the client's truck into my workshop was quite a chore for the two of us woking together.  Once I'd cut up the lumber into rough-sized parts for the cabinet, I had some hefty hunks of wood to run over the jointer and through the planer:

The rough-sawn lumber was not very true, so it took quite a few passes over the jointer to establish a flat face on each piece.  And the client wanted me to get the thickness of each piece down to two inches, so that required quite a few more passes through the planer.

If you can picture me picking up each piece, running it through a machine, then repeating that process many times, then you can imagine that I'm getting quite a workout.  Each time I do a round of jointing and planing, my arms end up throbbing for the rest of the day.  The fine-milling of lumber is best done over a period of days rather than all in one day, so I've done a few of these workouts over the last couple of weeks.

But of course, exertion in the woodworking shop is not official canoe and kayak training.  I said in a previous post that I'd resume "official" strength work come November.  It's now November, so it's time to keep my word.  I began doing this strength routine this morning.  The road to 2019 racing begins here.

A new strength routine

It's time to get some offseason conditioning in motion.  I plan to do the following strength exercises for the next little while:

1.  Pushups

2.  Hindu squats (demonstrated in this video)

3.  Bicep curls

4.  Hanging planks (demonstrated by yours truly in this video)

5.  Cleans

Monday photo feature

Last week I filled out my ballot for the latest induction class at the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

There were 43 names on the list.  37 of the nominees were male, and six were female.  The sports or categories represented broke down like this: football 17; basketball 9; coaching 4 (all four were football coaches); baseball 2; golf 2; track and field 2; tennis 1; officiating 1; broadcasting 1; football administration 1; multiple sports 1; canoe and kayak racing 1.

It should go without saying that my top vote went to the lone paddler on the list, Mr. Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas.  Deciding who would get my remaining four votes took some thought.  In the end I voted for a pair of runners, a distance runner (Leah Thorvilson) and a sprinter (Veronica Campbell Brown). I voted for a basketball player with strong Memphis connections: Keith Lee grew up across the river in West Memphis, Arkansas; starred at Memphis State University in the 1980s; and lives in Memphis today.  My final vote went to baseball player Johnny Ray, because baseball is the one big pro sport I like.

How good a chance Mike has of being inducted remains to be seen.  Last year's induction class consisted of nine people, and I'm assuming this year's class will be similar in size.  My heart sank a little when I got my ballot in the mail and saw that his name was but a tiny speck in a sea of 43.  All I can do is cast my vote and hope enough other people feel the same way.

The week, and the season, in review

No paddling took place last weekend, as I was fulfilling my annual commitment to demonstrate wooden bowl carving at the Pink Palace Crafts Fair here in Memphis.  All in all it wasn't a bad weekend, even though I was using muscles I hadn't used in quite a while since I've spent this year toiling at my rental property a lot more than working in my shop.  I also had to be careful moving heavy logs around, given my recent back woes.  The biggest bummer was the weather: for the first couple of hours on Friday we had true "chamber of commerce" conditions of sunshine and blue skies, but then it abruptly clouded over and the rest of the weekend was chilly and rainy.

We got more rain on Monday, and then a cold front moved in with a steep drop in temperatures.  When I finally made it back to the river Tuesday morning for my weekly loop of the harbor with Joe, it was gray and drizzly and the temperature barely exceeded 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  For the first time I wore long pants and long sleeves in the boat.  I stubbornly refused to break out the pogies so soon.  Standing on the dock was chilly indeed, but once I was in the boat paddling I felt just fine, even when paddling into the north wind.  I reminded myself that by February I'll be savoring this kind of weather.

I plan to paddle just once or twice a week for the next little while, to give myself a mental break and catch up on some things I've been neglecting lately.  I've been slacking off on the strength work, and I'll probably give myself until the start of next month before I get that going again.  Actually, my latest project in the shop involves milling some massive oak planks the client provided, so it's not like my muscles are lying around unused.

Yes, for me the offseason has begun, and I guess this is where I'm supposed to offer some kind of profound observation in summary of the season that's just concluded.  Certainly the big event that distinguished this season from previous ones was the long trip out to the Pacific Northwest in July for the Gorge Downwind race.  In terms of how I finished it was by far my worst race of the year: according to the posted results (which were initially, and may still be, full of errors), I was 332nd out of 489 racers.  But there are many other metrics for evaluation.  Fitness was not the problem: I felt fresh as a daisy within a half-hour after the finish.  Where I found myself struggling was with the technical aspects, many of which I was experiencing for the first time even though I've been paddling all kinds of water for more than three and a half decades.  I'm now pondering ways to be better prepared for next year's race even though true downwind conditions are hard to come by where I live.  It feels like when I was training for whitewater slalom in a part of the country with no whitewater.

Elsewhere in my season, I was reminded that I'm a shorter-distance athlete.  When I was dealing with two-hour-plus distances, I had some trouble.  I bonked in both the 19-mile Kentucky River race in May and the 14-mile Big South Fork race two weeks ago (in the latter race there was less than a mile to go when I bonked, but I was limping across the finish line just the same).  I was the overall winner in another two-hour race, on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg in April, but the competition there was less formidable and I had the luxury of pacing myself on my own terms.

I think my single best performance of the year was at the six-mile race on Fontana Reservoir over in western North Carolina.  Sadly, my hometown event, a delightful sub-20-minute dash down the Mississippi River at Memphis, had to be canceled this year.  And the races I'd planned to attend in September, all of which were in the less-than-one-hour category, were called off as well.  So I had few opportunities to race over distances to which I'm best suited.  Not coincidentally, the season was lacking in moments where I crossed the finish line feeling like I could pump my fist and say "Yes!  I nailed it!!"

But that's no reason to write the season off as a disappointment.  On the contrary, I achieved a high level of fitness and ventured pretty far outside my comfort zone.  I participated in three events for the first time and encountered athletes I'd never raced before.  And as always, even during moments when my non-athletic life seemed barely under control, my boat was waiting for me down at the dock, my regular paddling routine insuring that there was at least one thing going on that I could feel good about.

So there you go.  The season might not have been something nice and neat and tied up with a bow, but it sure wasn't boring.  I'm grateful for all the readers who took the journey with me.  All I can do now is see about doing it all over again in 2019.

Monday photo feature

Louisville paddlers Elaine Harold and Scott Cummins compete in the 14-mile Big South Fork River Dash this past Saturday.  Although Scott described their boat as a short, fat pig, they still managed to school the rest of us and take the overall win.  Photo by Greg Davis.

My race weekend, Part 2: post-race

On Saturday I finished third overall and second in my boat class at the Big South Fork River Dash.  While not the most triumphant possible way to end a season, I'll take it.  All told, I'm satisfied with how I competed.

I was sore and exhausted the rest of the day.  My right lower back still has not emerged from its depressing stiffness.  I knew I wouldn't have the energy to head back home Saturday, so I registered for another night of camping at Alum Ford.  Most of the other racers had cleared out and the place was quiet.  It was dark around 7 o'clock and I was in bed by 8:30.  I proceeded to sleep great, free of the sinus trouble of the night before.  By the time I crawled out of my tent Sunday morning I was still wicked sore but at least I was rested and feeling awake and alert.

I was eager to head home, but I decided that as long as I was in an area with lots of lovely natural attractions I should at least do a bit of sight-seeing.  I broke camp and headed for Cumberland Falls.

Cumberland Falls is widely thought to be the highest waterfall in North America east of the Mississippi River and south of Niagara Falls.  Paddling over the falls is illegal, but it has been done.  Dane Jackson and Nick Troutman ran the falls in March of 2016, and got fined for their trouble:



I didn't want to get fined, and I also didn't want to destroy my composite surf ski, so I was happy to behold the falls from the overlooks on the river-right bank.  I read some of the informational placards posted there, and my favorite fact was this: the Cumberland River was named in 1758 by an explorer named Thomas Walker.  He named it the Cumberland River because "the crooked nature of the river reminded him of the Duke of Cumberland."

I always like to do a recovery paddle the day after a race, and the stretch of river upstream of the falls appeared to be deep and flat and entirely suitable for this purpose.  I put in and paddled upriver toward the stone bridge that carries Kentucky Route 90 over the river.  Once I was above this bridge I realized that I had not scouted the area as well as I should have: the river there flowed over a series of rocky ledges and shoals, making it impassable for my surf ski.  So I had only a half-mile piece of river to paddle on.  In the end it was no big deal, since I was paddling easy for just a half-hour.  I ended up ferrying back and forth across the river, letting the blood flow through my race-ravaged muscles.

My race weekend, Part 1: pre-race and race

I left home around 9 o'clock Friday morning.  Driving to any destination in eastern Kentucky always seems to take longer than I expect it to: I was hoping to make it the greater Stearns-Whitley City area in between five and six hours, but it was nearing 6 o'clock when I finally rolled into Alum Ford Campground on the bank of the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River.  It didn't actually take me nine hours of driving--I lost an hour when I crossed into Eastern Time, and I also stopped for supper before heading into the woods to camp.  I estimate the driving time at around seven hours.

Anyway, without much daylight left, I didn't have time to do a short paddle as I typically do the day before a race.  I got busy pitching my tent, and in the process I realized that even though it was cooler on the Plateau than in Memphis, it was every bit as muggy.  By the time camp was set up I was wet and sticky and exhausted.  Alum Ford is a primitive camp with no running water, so I would be carrying on this existence for the weekend.

Just after dark my old racing friend Scott Cummins of Louisville, Kentucky, rolled in.  I invited him to share my campsite and he put up his hammock.  After a couple of beers and lots of conversation, we hit the hay.

It was not a good night of sleep for me.  Something was bothering my sinuses in the worst way and I was unable to breathe through my nose.  I'm guessing I got three or four hours of sleep at the most.  It was still dark at 6:45 Saturday morning--Alum Ford is only a couple of dozen miles inside the western border of the Eastern Time zone--but I went ahead and got up and walked around, hoping that would clear my head.  It sort of did.

Scott rolled out of his hammock a while later and we made some coffee and breakfast.  The race would be starting right next to the campground, so we didn't have to go far to attend race director Gerry James's pre-race meeting and then put our boats in the water.

Scott and I have had a number of memorable head-to-head matches, but this weekend we were not in the same boat class, as Scott had decided to race tandem with fellow Louisvillian Elaine Harold.  Even though they were paddling a Nelo boat designed more for instruction and surf-play than for speed ("this boat's a pig," said Scott), I knew this pair of fine athletes would be in the mix for the overall win.  Once our 14-mile race was underway we were joined in the lead pack by a couple of guys who were in my boat class: Lee Droppelman of Louisville and Ryan Landis of Corwin, Ohio.

The course was laid out like so: from the start we were to paddle downstream for five miles, and then round a buoy and paddle back up to Alum Ford.  We would continue on upriver for another two miles to another buoy, then come back down and finish at Alum Ford.

By the end of the first mile Ryan was looking strong in the lead and I settled onto his stern wake with the intention of staying there for a good long while.  Lee was hanging in there off to our right.  Elaine and Scott had fallen out of view but I figured they were someplace nearby.  A bend to the left, a bend to the right, a bend to the left once more, we wound our way down the river.  I say "down the river," but in fact there was no current at all that I could detect.  I think we were in the upper reaches of Lake Cumberland even though on a map our race course appears to be quite a distance from that reservoir.

At last our first buoy came into view.  I moved up onto Ryan's right-side wake and then took the lead so that I could be in control during the clockwise turn.  Lee was right on our sterns.  I kept my boat pointed straight downriver until we were abreast of the buoy and then I turned my rudder hard.  Just like that, I had a boatlength lead.  I rounded the buoy and threw in a surge: I wasn't ready to try to break away yet, but I wanted to make the other guys work a little to get back on my wake.

After this little episode it seemed as though the pace slowed down a bit from our early clip.  Ryan rejoined me in the lead, and I could hear Scott chit-chatting about something behind us.  As we pressed on, I could see Elaine and Scott's red boat moving up into my peripheral vision, and it sounded like they were bringing some roaring whitewater with them.  As they pulled even with us, I saw where the racket was coming from: their bow was pushing a wad of leaves.  There were quite a few leaves strewn over the surface of the water, and once in a while Ryan and Lee and I would get one caught on the bow and have to shake it off.  But the tandem boat seemed designed to grab as many leaves as possible.  "I'll be serving a salad at the finish," quipped our ever-witty friend Scott.

I'd noticed that Lee had mysteriously vanished from the lead group, and Scott went on to explain why.  Moments earlier Lee and Elaine/Scott had paused to clean leaves off each other's boats, and Scott had inadvertently knocked the rudder guard off Lee's boat.  So now Lee's rudder had no protection from the leaves, and the rest of the race was likely to be slow and miserable for him.

Those of us who remained continued to press on up the river.  Whether it was the quick pace in the early miles, or my poor night of sleep, or my flagging commitment to training in the last few weeks, or improper nutrition, or the simple fact that I'm not really a long-distance athlete, I'm not sure; but I was really starting to feel the pain after eight or nine miles.  As the start-finish buoys at Alum Ford came into view Elaine and Scott surged into the lead.  So far they had been disappearing and reappearing in the lead pack, but now it looked like they planned to keep the lead for good.  I started thinking less about the overall win and more about fighting for a win in my class.

We passed Alum Ford and entered the final four miles.  I was feeling light-headed and I fought hard to keep my body engaged even though my brain was slipping away.  At this point I knew my only chance of beating Ryan was if he was hurting at least as badly as I was.  I tried a little sprint to see if he would fall off my right-side wake, but he responded right away, so I backed off.  We continued on for another mile, and even though Ryan was moving his boat steadily he was not pushing the pace.  Feeling I had to make him at least think I still had the competitive juice, I picked it up again, and this time... he fell off!  He had nothing left!  This was my big break!  I was going to win this thing!

With the very last ounces of fight I had in me, I began to surge, hoping to put the race away right then and there.  If I could steadily pull away from here to the last buoy, then surely I would be able to hold him off over the last two miles even if I blew up completely.  He was out of my peripheral vision now and I pressed the advantage as hard as I could.

I was running on fumes as the final buoy came into view.  From the buoy it would be a long two miles back to the finish, but I knew that as long as I kept my boat moving it would require a huge amount of energy from Ryan to catch me.  After all, I've been in that position plenty of times myself, a minute or more behind somebody and struggling in vain to reel him in.

There was just one problem: Ryan wasn't a minute or more behind me.  As Elaine and Scott rounded the buoy Scott called out: "He's three boatlengths back, Elmore!"  Three boatlengths?  That's all??  I paddled into the buoy turn myself and looked over my right shoulder.  Ryan was right there.  Right.  There.  I hadn't put anywhere near the gap on him that I'd thought.

At this moment, I realized that I was a dead man.

I had nothing left.  I was teetering on the edge of the bonk-abyss.  I went ahead and let Ryan pull back even with me so at least I'd have some assistance from his wake.  But even then I could barely match his speed.  With less than a mile to go Ryan left me behind and I fell over into bonk-despair.

Elaine and Scott cruised to the finish to claim the overall win in one hour, 57 minutes, 22 seconds.  Ryan closed strong to win the single-kayak class a mere five seconds behind them.  I was ashen and fighting off waves of nausea, but I still managed to bring my race to a close forty seconds behind Ryan.  Lee fought off his technical difficulties to finish just 12 seconds over the two-hour mark.

Hollie Hall of South Point, Ohio, was the top solo female finisher, clocking two hours, 10 minutes, 4 seconds.  The complete results are posted here.

I apologize for this post rambling on so long.  Right now I'm just trying to get it done.  Maybe later I'll come back and do some editing and tighten it up a little.  Meanwhile, stay tuned for a second post about the rest of my weekend.

Oww

I have spent the week dealing with an ailing back.  On Sunday I had some things that needed washing under an outside spigot and ended up performing that chore in a bent-over position.  As a result, I woke up Monday morning in agony.  Just what I need the week of a race.

On Tuesday my back bothered me a lot as I paddled a loop of the harbor with Joe.  I tried to stay relaxed and let the area loosen up as much as it was willing to do.

The condition has gradually improved during the week but I was sort of hoping I'd be over it by now.  By this morning there was still an acute soreness in my right lower back.  I went back down to the riverfront and embarked on a 50-minute paddle, and was pleased to find that the discomfort in the boat wasn't nearly as bad as it had been Tuesday.  After a ten-minute warmup I did six 12-stroke sprints, and my body handled that intensity well.  I felt better after paddling than I'd felt before.  For the rest of the day there has still been a bit of soreness, but I'm getting the feeling that it'll be gone in another day or so.

Muggy heat has returned to this region.  I'm hoping it might be a little bit more fall-like up on the Cumberland Plateau.

Monday photo feature

It's the spring of 1994, and that's me paddling my old Gyramax C1 down the lovely bluish waters of the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River near Oneida, Tennessee.  Photo by Sonny Salomon.  I think that's Tony Hickey sitting in the river-left eddy there.

This weekend I'll be returning to the Big South Fork, albeit some distance downstream near Stearns, Kentucky.  The occasion will be the Big South Fork River Dash, a 14-mile race down what I expect to be a much flatter section of the river.  I'm hoping for some nice early-fall weather.

Preparing for my last hurrah of '18

My favorite baseball team has gone home for the winter.  They were eliminated from playoff contention yesterday, and so today's season finale was meaningless for them.  In light of what I wrote this past week, you could say the same thing about the final race of my season that's coming up next Saturday.  But I'm trying to stay upbeat about it.

Yesterday started foggy but the sun was coming out when I got down to the river.  The Fahrenheit temperature was in the mid 70s, rising to a high in the low 80s.

Paddling from the marina to the mouth of the harbor, I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints.  Then I paddled out onto the Mississippi to see what was going on.  A coal-laden barge rig coming downriver in a hurry is what was going on.  It was producing some of the biggest waves I've ever seen from a downstream-going vessel.  I knew I should take it easy after Thursday's hard workout, but opportunities to surf don't present themselves every day.  So out I went.  But a lot of hard sprints and a couple of near-flips later I couldn't boast much in the way of good rides.  The waves were a little too big and moving a little too fast.  I eventually gave that up and paddled a steady pace for the rest of my 70-minute session.

Today we had some chamber of commerce weather: clear sunny skies, warm temperatures, and a pleasant breeze.  I went down to the river starting to set my mind on next Saturday's race.  After warming up I did six 12-stroke sprints and then paddled mostly easy.  Again I was tempted by a couple of towboats coming downriver, but I restrained myself.

The Mississippi is still quite high for this time of year.  Having dropped to around 18 feet on the Memphis gauge, it's now rising again toward a crest of some 22 and a half feet.  This morning the level was 20.4 feet while I was paddling.

Feeling like fall at last

This week has been a slow transition from damp and warm to drier and cooler.  Even though last weekend's rain brought lower temperatures with it, it remained very muggy for the first half of this week.  Yesterday morning we had our first true chill in the air.  I'm not eager for winter but I'm hoping for a good long period of comfortable fall days.

On Tuesday I paddled away from the dock feeling tired and lethargic.  For the first time in several weeks, I did a set of three 8-stroke sprints, just to see if I could even make my body move that fast.  I was pleased to discover that I could.  For the rest of my 60-minute paddle I felt somewhat more upbeat and energized as a result.

It was only 60 degrees Fahrenheit when I got down to the river yesterday.  I thought I might be underdressed, but once I was in the boat and paddling I felt fine.  With nine days to go before my last race of the year, it was my last chance to do a workout that my body will have internalized by race day.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did a set of five 5-minute pieces with two minutes recovery in between.  I had my G.P.S. device on board and shot for 7 miles per hour during each piece.  As it turned out I was able to maintain 7.2 or 7.3 mph while paddling well within my comfort zone.

I did this workout in the harbor, and during that time the Memphis Police Harbor Patrol was cruising around in the fancy new boat they've got.  The boat is equipped with a big nozzle for fighting fires, and as I headed in to the dock the officers were spraying the prettiest arc of water you've ever seen.  I wondered where they were a week earlier when the heat index was in triple digits: I'd have been paddling right into that spray.

Monday photo feature

Yep, I'm a national champion.  Says so right on my shirt.

The reason for this post, besides the blustery braggadocio you've all come to expect of me, is to illustrate a curious quandary faced by participants in the particular branch of canoe and kayak racing that I do.

First, let me explain the circumstances of my national title.  I won it in the men's "K1 Unlimited" class at the 2017 USCA Nationals up at Dubuque, Iowa.  I actually finished fourth overall in the class, but because I was the first racer in the 40-49 age group to finish, I was awarded this shirt as the "champion" of that age group, even though there wasn't but one other forty-something entrant in the whole race.

The Dubuque Nationals wasn't particularly well attended.  In the 2016 Nationals at Northfield, Massachusetts, the competition was much more formidable: I managed only 14th place in men's K1 Unlimited, and I know at least one of the guys who beat me was in the 40-49 age group.  If I had made it up to this summer's Nationals at Syracuse, New York, my result would probably have been similar, as the K1 Unlimited field was loaded.  And having turned 50 in the previous year I would have been in a tougher age group, oddly enough.

I don't mean to throw cold water all over my 2017 accomplishment--you've got to show up to win, and that year I was the better of the two guys in their 40s who showed up.  The point I'm really trying to make in this post is the challenge of assigning "titles" in our sport: just because an event is billed as "The Nationals" doesn't mean you can count on having the very best racers in the nation there year in and year out.  Indeed, it's hard to get people to agree on just what "The Big Race" is.

Flatwater/open water/marathon canoe and kayak racing is not an Olympic discipline, so there's no gold medal to aspire to there.  The International Canoe Federation has recently begun having a world championships for surf ski racing, but I suspect a lot of top surf ski racers still take the annual Molokai race in Hawaii, long considered the unofficial "world championship," more seriously.  Many North American-style canoe racers are more interested in the "Triple Crown" events (the General Clinton Regatta, the Ausable Marathon, and La Classique Internationale de Canots de la Mauricie) than they are in the USCA Nationals.  On the U.S. domestic circuit many downwind enthusiasts shoot for the Gorge Downwind Championships on the Columbia River, while the more flatwater-endurance-oriented folks might save their best effort for the Chattajack race on the Tennessee River, which has managed to become very popular and therefore always has a competitive field.  Ultra-endurance types focus on the Texas Water Safari or the Missouri River 340 or the Tour du Teche.  As for myself, most years my biggest race is the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, because (a) it's a distance to which I think I'm athletically well suited, and (b) it's my hometown race and I want to do whatever I can to make canoe and kayak racing "a thing" in Memphis.

In the end, it all seems like a big hodgepodge that produces no agreement on who "the champion" really is.  But that's really the lesson we should be taking away from all this: awards and titles are not why we race.  We do it because we love it.  I've mentioned before that spending an hour or two in my boat is likely to be the most satisfying thing I do on any given day.  That's more valuable than anything you can print on a tee shirt.

Trying not to be terrible as the sun sets on my season

I'm sort of plodding through these last few weeks of the race season.  Motivation continues to be a challenge.  Most days when I paddle, I feel tired and sluggish in the boat.  The reasons abound:

Physical labor in my non-athletic life.  Most recently I've been painting the outside of a rental property I own.  This past week I spent a lot of time up on a ladder, and somehow that makes the work a whole lot more exhausting.  Paying attention to balance and making sure I don't fall and break my neck increases the stress level, and I think that adds up to a greater expenditure of energy as the day goes on.  One thing I've learned from listening to baseball games on the radio is how much more stressful it is for a pitcher to pitch an inning with a lot of baserunners than to pitch an inning with the bases empty, even if the total number of pitches is the same.  I imagine there's a similar difference between painting up on a ladder and painting while standing on the ground or a solid scaffolding.

Hot, humid weather.  The last couple of weeks in the Mid South were marked by Fahrenheit highs in the 90s with triple-digit heat index values.  Even while doing light chores outside I'm drenched in sweat in no time.  With such conditions piled on top of the challenges described above, I've been in a perpetual state of lethargy.

My epic trip out West.  Exciting and rewarding as it was, the trip took a lot out of me.  It felt as though I packed an entire season into that two-and-a-half-week period.  The idea of continuing the race season since then has been difficult to wrap my mind around.

The cancellation of all my September races.  This has made it that much more difficult to keep my head in the game.  By the time I line up to race on October 6, it'll have been over two months since my last race.  Sharp racing form isn't something you can turn off and on at will; it takes some practice and some fairly regular repetition to do it well.

I guess in a way this post is a preemptive excuse for whatever lousy effort I manage in my October 6 race on the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River up in Kentucky.  Then again, maybe I shouldn't be such a pessimist.  I am still getting down to the river for my regular paddling sessions, putting my body through the motions if not my brain, and once I'm there on the starting line alongside athletes I respect, maybe the adrenaline and the competitive juices will kick in and I'll produce a result I can feel good about.  And even if that doesn't happen, it'll be good for me to make the trip.  That part of the country is lovely in October, and I expect to see some people whose company I enjoy.

On Tuesday I paddled a loop of the harbor with Joe.  Thursday, yesterday, and today saw me doing 60-minute sessions in which I mostly just paddled steady.  The Mississippi River crested at 23.3 feet on Thursday, and remains unusually high for this time of year.  The heat finally broke Friday evening when a system of rain moved into this region, so I was no longer enduring the scorching heat this weekend.  Instead there was rain, and I've been torn between elation at the cooler temperatures and melancholia over the gloomy weather.  As I paddled this morning the precipitation built from a steady drizzle to a pretty heavy downpour.  I didn't let it bother me.  It sort of suited the mood I've been in lately.

Monday photo feature

Mike Herbert races at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, in the spring of 2016.  Photo by Doug Heller.

Today's photo feature is a follow-up to Friday's post: let's all help Mike Herbert get inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.  There are three things you need to do:

1.  Go here to join the ASHOF.  (Anybody may join--not just Arkansans.)

2.  Receive a ballot for the next induction class that has Mike's name on it.  (Ballots are supposed to be sent out the first week of October.)

3.  Vote for Mike and submit your ballot!

Furious activity in the late-summer heat

This past week I've been as busy as ever with out-of-the-boat concerns--some good and some bad, but all hectic and demanding of my mental energy.  I still managed to get in the boat and at least go through the motions.

On Tuesday Joe and I did our usual loop of the harbor, and on Thursday I went out and found some good barge traffic moving up the Mississippi.  As I went out to play on the wakes, I focused hard on the need to keep paddling in order to prolong wave rides, link one ride to another, and advance to waves in front of me.  When you're getting a great ride it's tempting to stop paddling and savor the sweetness, and there's nothing wrong with that, but this time I was in a mood to work on my maneuverability in the waves.

Like I mentioned before, the Mississippi has been on a big rise this week.  With a long-ish race coming up in several weeks I figured my mileage base could use some freshening up, and I decided to spend yesterday morning paddling around the Loosahatchie Bar, made possible by the 21.7-foot Memphis gauge reading.

It's gotten quite hot again--we had a cool spell earlier in the week but now that seems like it was just a dream--and as I paddled south from the marina toward the mouth of the harbor yesterday, I could feel the sun beating down on the left side of my body.  Once I was out on the main river it felt like an early-summer day in June: the vegetation on the bank is still dense and green and lush, and the high water level enabled me to paddle alongside it or even through it, the crickets and katydids singing away.  With the water rushing through the trees the big river had the feel of a playful babbling brook.

Back at the house I'd packed my camelback full of ice cubes, but by the time I reached the north end of the Bar they'd long since melted and my water was becoming lukewarm.  I got what refreshment I could from it and reminded myself that some lovely cold water awaited in an insulated bottle on the dock.

I felt as though I was making decent time throughout the trip, but as I neared the southern end of the Bar I realized I would have to hoof it to break two hours as I like to do.  So hoof it I did for the last half hour, and at last I glided alongside the dock at right about an hour and 59 minutes after I'd left.  Not my best time ever, but under two hours.

The reward for my efforts was to be dead tired and achey in my back for the rest of yesterday.  By this morning the aching had eased but I was sore in my midsection.  I went down to the river and paddled easy for 60 minutes.  It was another hot day but a north breeze made it bearable.

Vote for Mike!

Long-time readers of this blog should be familiar with Mike Herbert, with whom I've enjoyed many a memorable race.  Mike lives in the town of Rogers up in the northwest corner of Arkansas.  This region might not be known for producing elite-level canoe and kayak racers, but Mike has risen awfully close to the pinnacle of the sport.  He has competed in flatwater sprint in three Olympic Games, falling just inches shy of the medal podium in one of them.  He has won three medals at the sprint world championships, something precious few U.S. athletes have ever done.  He was the 1000-meter champion at the 1991 Pan Am Games in Havana, eliciting a salute to the U.S. flag by one Fidel Castro.  And he has won many national titles both in flatwater sprint and in USCA marathon racing.

Some eight or ten years ago, I learned of the existence of an Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.  As the name suggests, the purpose of The Hall is to recognize Arkansans who have distinguished themselves at the highest levels of their sports.  As I browsed the list of past inductees it occurred to me that the caliber of Mike's accomplishments places him right alongside the athletes in The Hall.

Others in the paddling community agreed, most notably Phil Capel.  Phil lives in suburban Little Rock and is acquainted with some of The Hall's "insiders," and as such he has taken the lead in trying to get Mike on their radar.

At long last, these efforts have produced a result: Mike's name has made it onto the voting ballot for the next induction class.  So get yourself a ballot and vote for Mike!

There is one catch: you have to be a member of the ASHOF to get a ballot and vote.  A membership costs $75.  Just how steep that is depends on who you are, I guess.  To me, it's a little pricey considering that I'm otherwise not that interested in being an ASHOF member.  But I can't not join, really, considering I was among the early instigators of this movement.  So I'm going to pay up.  Anybody who would like to join me may do so here.

Now in his late 50s, Mike Herbert continues to participate in races from the international level all the way down to the local "sandlot" level.  Here he poses with Joe Royer (left) and me after a 2010 race on the White River near Mountain View, Arkansas.

I can't imagine a more deserving candidate than Mike.  But for me it goes even deeper than that.  I want to see our sport get a bit of the recognition it deserves.  If you look over the list of past inductees, you'll see that the great majority of them come from the big commercial spectator sports, especially football.  It's no surprise, really.  But those who know will tell you that performing at the elite level of canoe and kayak racing takes every bit as much hard work and dedication as performing at the elite level of any sport with greater mass popularity.  And it just so happens that one of the best canoe and kayak racers the U.S. has ever had is an Arkansan.  Mike Herbert needs to be in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

I hope at least a few readers of this blog will consider joining the ASHOF and casting a vote for Mike.  Once again, the link to join online is here.  The ballots will be sent out in the first week of October, so please join soon if you're going to do it.

Monday photo feature

The city of Saint Louis presents the Mississippi River paddler with vistas that are a mixture of glass-and-steel glitz and humming industry.  I paddled here in the summer of 2011, just a few miles downriver from where I should have been racing this past weekend.

Summer stubbornly persists, but fall is coming

All these casualties on my race calendar are a good reminder of how much we should appreciate the race directors in our sport.  Putting a race on is an enormous, largely thankless job even under the best circumstances, and if it weren't for the dedication of these men and women my entire race schedule would be just what it is here in the month of September: empty.

For me there's just one race left to do in 2018, and it's four weeks off, and it's a longer-distance event in which speed won't be of premium importance.  So I'm sort of hitting the reset button.  I expect that for the rest of the year my routine will consist of more touring and playing than "serious" training

The last few days here have been overcast with occasional showers.  Unfortunately it's been the kind of rain that makes it muggier, not the kind that cools things off.  When I got down to the dock yesterday afternoon the air was thick with the heaviest humidity I think we've had all year.  Joe and his wife Carol Lee arrived at the marina a few minutes after I did, so we paddled together, they in a tandem surf ski and I in a solo.  There was just enough of a south breeze blowing to keep us reasonably comfortable out on the water.

The Mississippi is about to rise sharply as the water that has forced the cancellation of the Firecracker Race and one other event on the upper river runs down into the lower.  Today the river sits at a very seasonable 4.8 feet on the Memphis gauge, but the current forecast shows a rise to almost 21 feet over the next ten days.  Last night a system of heavy rain moved through here, and a check of the radar revealed that it's moving on up into the Ohio River valley, so that crest prediction may well be revised upward.  So we're in for a lot of water at a time of year when the Memphis gauge readings are typically hovering around zero.

This morning I paddled for 60 minutes, during which the last half-hour of the rain gave way to a north breeze that would finally bring some cooler, drier air into the Mid South as the day went on.  There was a barge rig coming upriver and I got behind it to do some surfing.  I got several nice rides, but even when the rides weren't solid the waves were the sort of size and configuration that allowed me to paddle aggressively and work on some of the concepts I learned during my week in the Columbia River Gorge two months ago, such as advancing onto waves in front of me.

Monday photo feature

Fairly often I mention the various bridges we have spanning the Mississippi River here at Memphis.  Pictured here is a trio of bridges down at the southern end of the Memphis riverfront.  The oldest bridge here is the middle one: the Frisco Bridge, the first bridge ever attempted across the lower Mississippi, was completed in 1892.  The next-oldest bridge is the Harahan Bridge on the left.  Finished in 1916, the Harahan, like the Frisco, continues to carry rail traffic across the river, and it enjoys newfound fame as a conveyance for the Big River Crossing bike and pedestrian trail.

The bridge that's visible beyond the Frisco Bridge is the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge, completed in 1949.  It carries Interstate 55 across the river.

Locals commonly refer to these bridges as the "old" bridges.  That's because there's a newer bridge, the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, a couple of miles upriver near the northern end of the riverfront.  Completed in 1972, the Hernando DeSoto Bridge carries Interstate 40 across the river.

The spot from which this photo was shot is usually dry land.  I took it during a high-water period, on the Arkansas side of the river looking east.  The main channel of the Mississippi passes beneath where the trusses appear atop the Harahan and Frisco Bridges.

Hobbled

In my last post I should have mentioned another contributor to my weary mood these days: the return of my plantar fasciitis.  My right foot is hurting as bad as ever.  I'm back to making frequent visits to the chiropractor and I hope I'll start to get some relief soon, but it's disheartening because it feels like we're back to square one treating a problem I'd thought I'd licked.

I guess there's a bright side: while this injury puts a damper on my daily existence, at least it doesn't stop me from paddling.  The river is about the nicest place to be during these steamy, muggy days because there's usually more of a nice breeze there than in the middle of town.  Yesterday I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, then headed out onto the Mississippi hoping to find some barge traffic for a "play" workout.  But the river was quiet and I ended up doing a steady up-tempo loop around the Harahan Bridge to the south and the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the north.  As I headed back toward the harbor I ran into a couple of other surf ski paddlers, Adam Davis and Mike Womack.  They'd put in about 18 miles upriver at Shelby Forest and were paddling down to the Memphis riverfront.

Today I did a set of eight 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals.  I typically do stuff like this in the harbor, but today I did them out on the river.  The conditions were calm, but on the river the water is always squirrelly enough to add a balance aspect to the workout.

Mental fatigue

While it hasn't been as hot here this week as it sometimes gets in August, I'm feeling a bit sandbagged by the humidity.  Motivation has been an issue.  Getting in my boat and paddling isn't a problem--that continues to be the most satisfying thing I do on any given day--but making myself do any kind of high-intensity work has been tough.  The cancellation of the September races I'd been planning to do hasn't helped.  My workouts may be of the "play" variety for the rest of this season.

Tuesday was a good "play" workout day, as there were two barge rigs moving past downtown Memphis when I got to the mouth of the harbor.  The upstream-bound rig was putting out the better surfing waves and I got several decent rides behind it.  The one going downriver was just churning up the water into a swirly mess that didn't do much more than pitch me around.

Yesterday I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor.  When I got to the main Mississippi I found it barge-free, so I just paddled at a medium-hard pace for the rest of the hour.

I did rounds of the strength routine on Monday, Wednesday, and today this week.

Monday photo feature

It was a very competitive field in the men's kayak unlimited class a couple of weeks ago at the USCA Nationals at Syracuse, New York.  At this moment in the race, photographed by JoAnn Hanowski, Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, held the lead, followed by Matt Skeels of Lake Placid, New York; James Mallory of West Henrietta, New York; Erik Borgnes of Stevens Point, Wisconsin; and Craig Impens of Toms River, New Jersey.

Not too hot, but not pain-free, either

As predicted, hotter and stickier weather is moving back into the Mid South.  But it's still not as bad as it can be here in August.  Daytime Fahrenheit highs are in the low 90s rather than the high 90s or 100s, and there's been just enough breeze to ease the discomfort.

Right now we've got another interesting phenomenon going on: the skies are hazy.  That in itself is not particularly unusual, but apparently this haze is smoke from the wildfires in the Pacific Northwest.  Several nights ago the TV weatherman showed a map of the air currents that are currently running directly here from that part of the country.  So if I'm having wistful memories of my trip out to Oregon and Washington this summer, I suppose I should be savoring that region's polluted air.

Anyway, that's been the meteorological backdrop for this weekend's paddling.  Yesterday I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then headed out onto the Mississippi to surf some towboat wakes.  There was a barge rig coming upstream and one headed downstream, and while I was able to get only a handful of brief rides, it was a good workout with a lot of hard short sprints.  There were moments when I had to stop and brace, but more often I felt confident in my balance and control.

Today there was no barge traffic in the area, so after warming up and doing another three 8-stroke sprints, I just paddled a quickish tempo out on the river for the rest of the hour.

I've been delightfully injury-free for most of this year, but this weekend I find myself feeling a little beat-up.  I've been working on floors at my rental properties, and as a result my lower back has been aching for the last couple of days.  And I'm back to having foot pain: after suffering from plantar fasciitis for a couple of years, I'd seemed to have gotten it under control with the help of a chiropractor; but now, suddenly, it's back with a vengeance.  My chiropractor visits had dropped to just one a month, but I'm going to have to call the office tomorrow and see if I can get back in there right away.

My insides are all clean

I had my colonoscopy Monday morning and got just the news I'd been hoping for: "Colon looks great.  See you in ten years."  Just like that, the unpleasant weekend of prep seemed worth it.  But I'm still not looking forward to going through it again a decade from now.

By Tuesday I was slowly but surely rejoining productive society.  Paddling a loop of the harbor with Joe was a good symbolic step.  By Wednesday I was back with the strength routine, and did another round of it this morning.

Yesterday I went down to the river for a 60-minute session and a plan to paddle harder.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, I spent the "middle" half-hour (0:15 to 0:45) paddling at about the pace I would maintain in a 6-mile or 10-kilometer race.

We've had a week of mostly pleasant weather, with lower humidity and cooler temperatures.  The mornings especially have been lovely.  The weatherman is saying the next week or so will be closer to what we're used to in a sweaty Mid South summer.

Race schedule update

Here's another update to the schedule of remaining races on my radar in 2018.  Apparently the "Gator Bait" race, slated for September 22 just outside Jackson, Mississippi, is off for this year.  As an alternative I'm looking at a race on the Big South Fork of the Cumberland on October 6.  It's about twice as far away as Jackson, but I think the competition will be good.


September
8  Lower Atchafalaya Sprints.  Atchafalaya River, Patterson, Louisiana.  A series of 3-mile races on flatwater.  Register


October
6  Big South Fork River Dash.  Big South Fork of the Cumberland River near Stearns, Kentucky.  A 14-mile flatwater race.

Monday photo feature

I mentioned yesterday that Conrad Anker was in town over the weekend.  That capped a pretty big week for Memphis in terms of entertaining significant outdoor-sports visitors.

Earlier last week a giant of paddlesports passed through my fair city.  Even though Andrew McEwan might not be the most famous name in the paddling world, I rank him right up there with the most accomplished paddlers I've ever met.

That's a rather bold statement, I know, seeing as how I'm acquainted with several world and Olympic champions, and Andrew doesn't have anything like that on his resume.  But the breadth of what Andrew has done is something I find truly impressive.  He's sort of like a world-class decathlete in our sport: not the best at any one discipline, but able to perform at a very high level in all of them.

Andrew is the son of Tom McEwan, a whitewater racing pioneer in this country in the late 60s and early 70s and, later, a leader of international paddling expeditions.  And he's the nephew of the late Jamie McEwan, the first Olympic medalist for the U.S. in whitewater slalom.  So it's no surprise that Andrew was paddling at an early age.

Andrew grew up doing some slalom and some wildwater racing, eventually becoming the top wildwater kayaker in the U.S. in the 1990s and 2000s.  He tried his hand at flatwater sprint racing in the early 2000s, and raced very well even though he fell short of his goal of making the 2004 Olympic team.  Though I'm not aware of him doing a huge amount of surf ski racing, he did manage to finish fourth at the U.S. surf ski championships in San Francisco Bay one year.  All the while, he was piling up wins in events like the Upper Gauley Race and the Cheat River Race.

In the mid to late 2000s Andrew followed his dad's path into expedition paddling, navigating the harsh sub-Arctic wilderness of the Back River in Nunavut Territory and the high-altitude streams of the Pamir Mountains of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.  During that latter expedition he even helped start a camp for the youth of the region.

So it would seem that at the tender age of 38, Andrew has just about done it all.  And yet, he's still doing it all.  Just this past year he entered extreme races on steep whitewater like the Great Falls of the Potomac and the Green River Narrows.  Then, two months ago, Andrew finished first among solo racers (fifth overall) in the Texas Water Safari, a 260-mile ultra-endurance race down the Lone Star State's Guadalupe River.  Those two types of racing are about as different as it gets.

When I saw Andrew last week he was picking up a boat I'd been holding for him.  He'd left his Texas Water Safari boat in Texas and arranged to have it delivered to me so he could grab it on his way through Memphis.  From here he continued on toward his ultimate destination in the Pacific Northwest, where he and his family are moving from his native Washington, DC, area.  They will be living in White Salmon, Washington, just across the Columbia River from Hood River, Oregon, where I spent a week last month.  I don't expect it'll be long before I'm reading of Andrew's latest feats on the Columbia and its many whitewater tributaries.

The joys of pre-op

I'm allowing myself a bit of a training break this weekend as I prepare for my colonoscopy tomorrow.  Today I am restricted to a diet of clear liquids: water, coffee, tea, broth, sodas, apple juice, Gatorade, Koolaid.  I can also have Jello, popsicles, and hard candy if I want.  No non-clear liquids, like milk.  And nothing that's red or purple in color--apparently that'll make the inside of my colon look all bloody.  I can only imagine the alarm bells and cries of Red Alert! Red Alert! that would set off in the doctor's office.

This weekend a rock-climbing and mountaineering legend is visiting Memphis: the one and only Conrad Anker.  The main purpose of his visit was to teach some classes at the Memphis Rox climbing gym yesterday afternoon.  For the rest of the weekend he's just checking out the sights.  He's staying with my friends Joe and Carol Lee, and yesterday morning we took him paddling on the Mississippi.  I shared a tandem surf ski with Carol Lee while Joe and Conrad paddled a tandem touring boat.  Joe shot this photo of Conrad in his bow; that's Carol Lee and me off to the left:

I had fun paddling with Carol Lee.  She paddles tandem with Joe all the time and has no trouble following the bow paddler's stroke.  The ski we paddled was one of those stable V8 models that Epic Kayaks makes, and when some barge rigs came by and created some big waves she was all-in with my desire to dive in there and play.  Maybe I should consider taking her out to the Columbia Gorge as my tandem partner next summer.