Monday photo feature

Pete Greene of Beaufort, South Carolina, charges down the Mississippi River with Eric Mims of Isle of Palms, South Carolina, on his wake.  A boatlength back is Chris Hipgrave of Bryson City, North Carolina.  The year is 2012, and the event is the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race at Memphis.  Photo by Roger Cotton Photography.

Plowing through January

I paddled for 60 minutes Thursday morning.  My deltoids and biceps felt tired and a bit sore, and the only cause I could think of was the Hannibal pushups I'm doing as part of the current strength routine.  Then something else occurred to me: for the last week or so I've been doing a lot of painting at a rental property I own.  Now it all made sense.  I have quite a lot of painting yet to do over there, so I guess I'm doing double duty in the arm and shoulder conditioning department.  For those who are wondering: yes, as a matter of fact I am doing my painting mindfully like Daniel LaRusso does in The Karate Kid.  I'm using both arms and doing specific motions.

Yesterday was a rainy day.  We never got any especially heavy rain, but I spent 60 minutes of the morning paddling in a steady drizzle that occasionally escalated into a drenching shower.  The Fahrenheit temperature was in the low 50s--certainly not freezing but not as warm as I'd like it to be when I'm getting rained on.

The sun was back out today and the river was beautiful during my 100-minute paddle.  It was a good way to pass the morning before spending another afternoon with a paint brush in my hand.

I did a set of three 8-stroke sprints on each of the days I paddled.  They felt better than they'd been feeling.  I'm sure they're far from perfect, but they seemed more fluid than they'd been in a long time.

I did the strength routine on Wednesday and Friday, and I think I've had enough of this particular set of exercises.  I'll be drawing up a new routine this coming week.

Mmmm... cake

I let a milestone slip by two days ago.  On January 23, 2012, I put up the very first post on this blog.  That's right: My Training Blog by Elmore is now six years old.  I sincerely appreciate every person who has taken even a few seconds to have a look at it.  I especially appreciate those who have taken the time to tell me what they think.  Do I have another six years of this in me?  Hmm... I dunno.  As the current occupant of our White House might say, "we'll see what happens."

A desire to shed

I found the harbor ice-free when I went down to paddle yesterday morning.  The Fahrenheit temperature was headed for a high in the mid 60s.  I gleefully ditched the wetsuit pants for some lighter-weight tights and removed the pogies from my paddle.  You have no idea how much I prefer paddling without pogies.

And the river was on the rise after sitting below zero on the Memphis gauge for quite some time.  Yesterday's reading was 12.4 feet, opening up a lot more paddleable real estate.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, I decided to ferry over to the Arkansas side of the Mississippi and up into the Loosahatchie Chute.

There was a pretty good breeze blowing from the southwest, and it had picked up considerably by the time I was coming back downriver.  The river was quite choppy and icy water splashed into my cockpit.  Suddenly I didn't feel so smart for not wearing those wetsuit pants.  I went a little bit into self-preservation mode, trying to avoid a flip until I was back in the harbor.  Once there I had the wind at my back, and yet it was blowing hard enough that it still had a chilling effect.  I got back to the dock and put on dry clothes as fast as I could.  I went home shivering and it took several hours for me to get comfortably warm again.  Even with the balmier temperature, it was still January.

Today's high barely made it out of the 40s, and that took the guesswork out of today's attire as I met Joe for a loop of the harbor.  The pogies and the wetsuit pants were back on, along with some better upper-body layering.

Monday photo feature

Having just finished a race at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, I ponder the whole state of affairs.  I think the year is 2015.  Photo by Robert Nykvist.

Landscape thawing; trying to get my attitude to follow suit

It was 13 degrees Fahrenheit outside when I got up Thursday morning, but the high was predicted to be in the high 30s--our first time above freezing since Monday.  So it wasn't a hard decision to wait until the afternoon to paddle.

My car's temperature display said it was 36 degrees when I arrived at the riverfront just after 3 o'clock.  36 degrees feels awfully warm after you've been through at least a 48-hour period when it got no warmer than about 23 degrees.  But when I got down to the dock it appeared that I might not be able to paddle: the harbor was frozen over with a decently-thick sheet of ice all around the marina.  Further investigation revealed an open channel out in the middle of the harbor, however, so I got in the boat and managed to bust through the ice to some paddleable water.

Heading north, I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints.  I continued along until I was about 400 meters shy of the harbor's northern tip, next to the old Cargill plant.  Ice prevented me from going any farther, so I turned around and headed south.

I felt tired in the boat at this hour of the day, and I tried to relax and take good strokes.  As I navigated the narrow channel of open water, the ice floes on either side of me made ethereal sounds as my wakes passed beneath them.  Eventually, just south of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, I had to turn around again because of impassable ice.

As I finished my 60-minute session back at the marina, the sun was setting and I was eager to get into dry clothes.  It was apparently back below freezing at river level because the water on my boat had frozen.  Back in my car the temperature registered at 34 degrees.

Friday's high was around 40 degrees, and yesterday the temperature got all the way up to 60.  By the end of the day yesterday the snow and ice had been reduced to isolated patches in the shady areas.

I went back to the river yesterday morning and was surprised to find quite a bit of ice lingering in the harbor.  I put in from my usual dock, thinking the ice there would surely be thin enough to bust through, but it turned out to be quite thick, and I had to get out of my boat and try putting in from a different dock just so I could get out to the open water.  A harbor-wide sheet of ice between the marina and the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge barricaded my access to the southern half of the harbor, so I did my entire 60-minute paddle in the northern half, which was almost entirely ice-free.

Today's high is supposed to be 63 degrees--surely that will finish off the remaining snow and ice on the ground.  Because of some non-paddling-related commitments today I won't make it back to the river until tomorrow, and maybe I'll find the water completely open by then.  According to The Weather Channel's website the temperature will be mostly in the 40s or warmer for the next ten days--that's much more the sort of winter I was expecting when I signed up to live in this part of the country.

For today, I did a round of the strength routine just like I'd done on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this past week.  I'm still struggling with those rolling squat burpees, and I can't understand how I've gone from being able to do them reasonably well two years ago to barely being able to do them now.  The rest of the routine is going okay.  My back soreness from the previous week has mended and that's helping me feel better about it all.

Another good exercise video

My friend Lindsey, a canoe and kayak racer in the Lake Lanier area of Georgia, has made a video of a bunch of the strength exercises she does.

There's all kinds of good stuff here, including some exercises I've never seen before and some I used to do years ago but had forgotten about.  I expect many of these will show up in future strength routines of my own.

Snow day thoughts: more on whitewater racing

The high temperature yesterday was about 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  Most of the snow and ice that fell last Friday had melted away by the end of the day.  Then, overnight, a new winter storm moved through the Mid South, and we are now blanketed in a new two to three inches of snow.  So far this winter I'd been stiffening my upper lip and paddling on these icy days, but with the high temperature not even making it out of the teens, I raised the white flag today.

Instead, I spent part of the day dreaming up something to post here on the blog.  Here's a little followup to yesterday's "photo feature" post.  The U.S. team trials for wildwater took place this past weekend, and Jamie McEwan's son Devin has made the team for 2018.  Devin has extensive slalom racing experience and raced C2 at the 2016 Olympics at Rio de Janiero.  But just like his dad, he's doing some wildwater, too.  Here is this year's U.S. wildwater team as reported by Jeff Owen of the USA Wildwater Committee:

Selected to represent the USA at the World Championships in Muotathal, Switzerland, on the Muota River:

~C1 Man - Devin McEwan
~K1 Man - Chris Hipgrave
~K1 Man - Cameron Thacker
~K1 Woman - Alessia Faverio
~K1 Woman - Marin Millar

All of these athletes were also selected to represent the USA at the World Cups in Banja Luka and Celje, with the following additions:

K1 Woman - Joslin Coggan
K1 Woman - Lili Brandon

Additionally we thank Chris Norbury for volunteering to be the USA Team Manager.

Long-time readers of this blog might also recognize the name Chris Hipgrave, a visitor to Memphis for many Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Races over the years.

What exactly is wildwater, you ask?  "Wildwater" is downriver racing through whitewater rapids.  Like I mentioned yesterday, it was partnered with whitewater slalom for decades much like downhill skiing is partnered with the various forms of slalom skiing.  But now that slalom is an Olympic sport and wildwater isn't, wildwater is laboring to get by on its own.  Few athletes compete in both disciplines these days.

That's a shame, because I believe slalom and wildwater are a lot more similar than many people realize.  Sure, the boats are very different: wildwater boats put a premium on forward speed while slalom boats sacrifice forward speed for greater turning ability.  But one skill is absolutely crucial for success in either discipline: boat positioning.

When you're trying to get down a slalom or wildwater course as quickly as possible, you want as many of your strokes as possible to be forward strokes, or at least strokes that propel the boat forward in some way while also effecting some necessary change in direction.  You want to avoid strokes that slow the boat down, like stern rudders and (especially!) back strokes.  A so-called "perfect run" would be one in which you do nothing but forward strokes, using the river's features (waves, holes, eddies, oblique currents) in combination with leans and body English to do all the steering.

To make sure you're doing mostly forward strokes, it's very important that, at every instant during your race run, your boat is in the right place and pointed the right way to allow you to take a good, solid, maximum-blade-pressure forward stroke.  This is what whitewater racers mean when they talk about "boat positioning," and no, it is not easy.  It requires not only a considerable degree of skill, boat control, body control, and balance, but also an intimate familiarity with every aspect of the course.  Accomplished racers spend hours studying the course from their boats and from the riverbank, and going over the course in their minds away from the river.  This is quite a commitment of time in the case of wildwater racers, who have as much as several miles of river to learn.

During the years I spent trying to race slalom in the 1990s, I struggled mightily with boat positioning.  Just gaining an appreciable intellectual understanding of it took me a few years (and I probably didn't help myself by living hundreds of miles from other racers and coaches).  By the early 2000s I had definitely improved and was even winning some club-level races, whose courses are typically pretty easy and take place on non-threatening whitewater.  But the big national-level races like the team trials always required more difficult moves on bigger water, and there my lack of athletic ability was laid bare for the world to see.  I remember sneaking in a lot of rudder strokes and doing a lot of braces while my more gifted competitors powered through all the moves as if they were on flatwater.

Throughout that period, friends of mine would sometimes tell me "You ought to race wildwater!  With your endurance background (I'd been a runner in high school and college) and your river-running experience you'd be a natural!"

Eventually I did enter some wildwater races, and I was not a natural.  Endurance was never a problem, but just because I'd done plenty of river running didn't mean I was ready to get down a river fast.  The main thing I struggled with was exactly the thing that had given me so much trouble in slalom: boat positioning.

One wildwater race I did was the 2000 nationals on the Kern River out in California.  The course had several long flatwater sections, and those were no problem: I paddled through them as hard as I could, just like I do in the races I'm doing these days.  It was in the rapids that I lost an absurd amount of time.  The biggest rapid was a circuitous route through a jumble of rocks, and all I remember now, nearly two decades later, is all the big, fat, ugly back strokes I was doing to get myself through the rapid without wrecking my boat.  Meanwhile, I guarantee you that the top racers were forward-paddling through that rapid as if they were on a lake.  At every instant, their boats were positioned just right so that they didn't have to do any corrective strokes.

Nowadays I'm doing a different type of racing, and while I'm not world-class in it either, at least I'm demonstrating a bit more competence.  Not coincidentally, boat positioning is not really a part of this type of racing.  I've even got a rudder to do almost all the steering.  There are technical challenges, to be sure: I keep working to make my next stroke the perfect forward stroke.  But these challenges seem to fit my particular set of athletic gifts better.

Still, I think a lot about all that whitewater racing I did, and there's a lot I miss about it.  I wasn't winning much--more often, I was fighting to avoid last place.  But in a weird way, that was part of the allure.  Over many years, toiling to get good at something that did not come naturally to me built profound self-confidence and a sense of who I am in this world.  It reminds me of a slogan that was painted on the wall of the basketball locker room at a school where I once taught.  It was a trite slogan, but hey, it didn't become overused by not having any truth to it: "Most players practice what they do best.  Good players practice what they do worst."

I'll leave you with an example of good boat positioning in wildwater racing.  Vladi Panato of Italy was perhaps the greatest wildwater C1 racer ever.  The video below presents a retrospective of his career.  Except on one very technical boulder-strewn course that required some extreme turns, you will not see Mr. Panato switch paddling sides or take any strokes across the bow.  He does all his steering by leaning the boat and by positioning it so that the whitewater features turn the boat for him.  I am in awe every time I watch this footage.

Vladi Panato: Il Mito (The Legend) from WildWater TV Italia www.wwtv.it on Vimeo.

Monday photo feature

Cathy Summers has posted more photos on Face Book since last Monday.  If you use Face Book I encourage you to visit the pages "Catherine Summers' Photography" and "Whitewater Slalom Alumni and Friends" to check them out.

Her latest albums contain photos from the 1989 season.  1979 had been a special year because U.S. athletes won multiple world championships medals for the first time ever, and 1989 was just as special because the world championships took place in the U.S. for the first time ever.  The best whitewater paddlers in the world put their boats on the Savage River in Maryland to compete for the sport's most prestigious titles, and Cathy Summers was there with her camera once more.

Paddling here are the late Jamie McEwan in the bow and Lecky Haller in the stern.  These two need no introduction to anybody familiar with whitewater slalom racing in the U.S.  Jamie had won the first-ever Olympic medal for the U.S. when he took the C1 bronze in 1972, and Lecky had been a C2 world champion with his brother Fritz in 1983.  After joining forces in the mid 1980s, Jamie and Lecky quickly became one of the top slalom C2s in the world: they were silver medalists at the 1987 world championships, won the overall World Cup title in 1988, took fourth at the 1989 worlds, and finished fourth at the 1992 Olympics.

What fewer people are aware of is that Jamie and Lecky did some wildwater racing as well.  Nowadays the non-Olympic wildwater discipline is sort of the unfortunate stepsister while slalom basks in the Olympic spotlight, but once upon a time the two were considered equal and many athletes, like Davey Hearn and Ron Lugbill in last week's photo feature, participated in both, just as skiers commonly race both the slalom and downhill events.  Slalom's re-inclusion on the Olympic programme in 1992, along with wildwater's non-inclusion, brought that relationship to an end.  1993 was the last year in which the slalom and wildwater world championships took place together on a regular basis.

Because of that, Ms. Summers's photo sets contain many relics of a bygone era.  In this photo Jamie and Lecky switch over to the wildwater boat for a run down the Savage River at the 1989 worlds.

Back in the deep freeze

I paddled without pogies Thursday morning.  The Fahrenheit temperature was in the low 60s.  As I drove home I saw people out in their yards in short sleeves.

"What a difference a day makes," the tired old saying goes.  I woke up before dawn Friday and heard sleet beating against my bedroom window.  By the time I was out of bed a while later the streets were thoroughly iced over.  The sleet changed into plump snowflakes around nine o'clock, and by the time "Winter Storm Hunter," as I later found out it was named, had moved out, our fair city was all but shut down.  Bear in mind that we're one of those Southern cities without much in the way of snow removal equipment.

Ordinarily I'd have done another round of the strength routine Friday, but the beat-up state of my body, combined with the "holiday" feel of a snow day, made me decide to take a break from that.  Instead I did a full-body stretching session and soaked in the bathtub.

It was snowing again yesterday as I headed down to the river, but it didn't seem to be sticking to the streets where the previous day's traffic had blazed some decent trails.  It was 23 degrees when I arrived at the marina, and the scene down at the dock looked like this:

It was definitely a day for the fleece-lined pogies.

The rudder system was all frozen up, of course.  The pedals came free after about five minutes, but the rudder itself remained stuck.  Fortunately it was stuck in an almost perfect straight-ahead position, so I was able to paddle toward the south end of the harbor with virtually no corrective strokes.  When I did have to alter my course with some one-sided paddling, I treated it as a stroke drill and used good precise strokes.  The rudder finally came loose about 20 minutes in, and from then on it was a pretty typical, if cold, 60-minute session.

Yesterday afternoon the sun came out, and that aided the clearing of the streets even though the high temperature was only about 28 degrees.  This morning I headed back down to the riverfront in driving conditions that were about as good as we could ask for two days after a heavy-by-Memphis-standards winter storm.  Down at the marina, where the temperature was 24 degrees, the banks were slightly less snow-covered but the dock seemed just as snowy:

Knowing my rudder would be frozen, I took a hammer with me today so I could tap the rudder-post hatch cover loose and then free the rudder by hand.  The cover shattered:

I'm not really surprised: it was made of a pretty low-grade plastic and had been exposed to years worth of ultraviolet radiation, and the cold temperature just made it that much more brittle.  Fortunately a rudder post hatch cover is not an especially essential piece of equipment.

On my way out of the harbor I did three 8-stroke sprints.  Out on the Mississippi I paddled up along the Tennessee side to the mouth of the Wolf River.  As I came back down there was some turbulence in the water from a couple of barge rigs, and my main priority was staying upright--I did not want to go swimming on a day like today.

Once back in the harbor's safe haven I tried to take the most perfect strokes I could to make up for the de-tuning out on the river.  In his clinic back in October, Morgan House had urged his pupils to focus on one aspect of the stroke at a time, and that's what I did here.  I'd concentrate on exiting close to the boat for a couple dozen strokes, then I'd concentrate on having the shaft as close to vertical as possible at the catch for the next little while, and then I'd concentrate on rotating my body... there's never an end of things to think about.

(1) Warm, wet paddling. (2) Ow!!!! (3) Strength routine struggles.

This week has been significantly warmer than last, the Fahrenheit thermometer hitting 60 degrees by yesterday.  It's also been overcast and rainy and gloomy.  Picture-perfect days are rare in January.  And the forecast calls for the return of sub-freezing temperatures overnight tonight, possibly accompanied by sleet and freezing rain.

Joe and I paddled a loop of the harbor on Tuesday, and today I went back to the river with the intention of paddling for 60 minutes.  I discovered upon arrival that I'd forgotten my watch, so I paddled a loop that usually takes me about an hour to do.  I warmed up, did three 8-stroke sprints, and then practiced my stroke at a variety of speeds.  I got back to the dock about 65 minutes after I'd left--typical of me, I erred toward excess.

I paddled with a bit of discomfort today because as I was leaving the house this morning I slipped on the stairs out back.  I'm glad no one was around to see it because it was one of those spectacular feet-out-from-under-me moves, like when a cartoon character slips on a banana peel.  It had been raining in the early hours of the morning and my back stairs can get very slippery when wet.  My back slammed down hard on a stair just below the shoulder blades.  I don't think I hurt myself seriously--just a deep bruise--but now I'll be living with that soreness for several days.

On Monday and yesterday I did rounds of the current strength routine.  Like I've mentioned before, these exercises are Hard with a capital H.  I'm a little perplexed by the trouble I'm having with the rolling squat burpees: I remember them being difficult when I last did them two years ago, but I'm pretty sure I got the hang of them after just a few days of trying.  But right now I'm struggling to do even one rep.  I realize there's no reason to get too upset: I'm a paddler, after all, not a burpee master.  But I'm feeling discouraged anyway.  The truth is, I don't want to believe that my athletic ability has declined that much between age 48 and age 50.

Wintertime tips

Go back and read this post from two and a half years ago.  I'd forgotten all about it but I think it's quite timely for those of us in the northern hemisphere for whom the new race season is still just a glimmer on the horizon.

Monday photo feature

A lady named Cathy Summers has posted some really neat photos of the 1979 whitewater racing season on Face Book.  Apparently she has had them in the form of slides all these years, and she is now scanning them and sharing them.  Face Book users can view her albums on the page "Whitewater Slalom Alumni and Friends."

1979 is the season covered in the movie Fast and Clean, a documentary of whitewater slalom racing in the United States and U.S. racers' quests for medals at the world championships.  Having spent most of the 1990s trying my hand at slalom, I've watched Fast and Clean many, many times.  Seeing these photos now makes me feel like I'm learning "The Rest Of The Story."  The photos include all the athletes and events we see in Fast and Clean, plus many other athletes and many other events.

Pictured above are Davey Hearn and Ron Lugbill.  Davey and Ron both appear in Fast and Clean competing in slalom single canoe (C1), the discipline for which they are best known.  But the fact is that they were also on the wildwater national team during the early part of their careers, and in this photo they are paddling a wildwater C2 on Rivière Saguenay at Jonquière, Quebec, the site of the '79 world championships.  I'm guessing this is a practice run since Ron is not wearing a number bib.  (A whitewater racer usually gets a bib to wear rather than a number to tape on the boat's deck.)

It just so happens that Davey and his wife Jennifer have DVD copies of Fast and Clean for sale through their company Sweet Composites.  Anybody reading this who hasn't seen the film should order a copy right away and experience the magic for himself or herself.  Though I don't see this product actually listed on the site, Jennifer has confirmed that they do in fact have it.  25 bucks apiece... money you will not regret spending.  Get busy and call them up, and tell them My Training Blog by Elmore sent you.

Race schedule update

More race directors are beginning to announce their dates for 2018, and online registration is now live for a number of events.  Here is an updated edition of my 2018 schedule.  I'd appreciate a heads-up from anybody who knows of other events within a reasonable drive of Memphis, Tennessee.


March
18  Battle On The Bayou.  Old Fort Bayou, Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  8.5 miles on flatwater.  Register


April
7  Top Of The Teche.  Bayou Teche, Leonville, Louisiana, to Arnaudville, Louisiana.  7.7 miles down a Class I river.  Register

7 Kayak Trader Oyster City Challenge.  Apalachicola River, Apalachicola, Florida.  15 miles down a coastal river.  Register

21  Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River from Madison Parish Port, Louisiana, to Vicksburg, Mississippi.  21 miles down the largest river in North America.  Register


May
12  Osage Spring 12.  Osage River near Osage City, Missouri.  12 miles total (10 miles downriver and then 2 miles back up) on a Class I river.  Register

12  Bluegrass River Run.  Kentucky River near Richmond, Kentucky.  19 miles down a Class I river. Register


June
9  Taylorsville Lake Paddle Battle.  Taylorsville Lake, Taylorsville, Kentucky.  A flatwater race of "TBD" distance.

16  Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River, Memphis, Tennessee.  The 37th edition of this classic.  5000 meters down the largest river in North America.  Register


July
7  The Lovely Laurel River Lake Paddle Blast.  Laurel River Lake, Corbin, Kentucky.  A 10-mile flatwater race.  Register

16-21  Gorge Downwind Championships.  Columbia River, Hood River, Oregon.  A race for surf skis and outrigger canoes in the legendary downwind conditions of the Columbia River Gorge.


August
4  The Paddle Grapple.  Fontana Reservoir near Bryson City, North Carolina.  A 6-mile flatwater race.  Register

9-12  U.S. Canoe Association National Championships.  Onondaga Lake and Erie Canal, Syracuse, New York.  Marathon races in a variety of boat classes sanctioned by the USCA.


September
1  Big River Regional.  Mississippi River, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  13 miles down the largest river in North America.

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

22  Gator Bait Race.  Barnett Reservoir outside Jackson, Mississippi.  A 5.5-mile flatwater race.  Register

29  River Rat Paddle Challenge.  Ouachita River at Monroe, Louisiana.  6.5 miles on a Class I river.

Winter backs off a little

It was 16 degrees Fahrenheit when I got out of bed Friday morning.  The temperature was forecast to go all the way up to 39 by the afternoon, so, weary of fighting with a frozen rudder and having icicles all over my clothes, I waited until the afternoon to paddle.  The high for the day was in fact 42 degrees, and when I arrived down at the riverfront it was amazing how warm it felt after a whole week of almost constant subfreezing temperatures.  It helped a lot that the sun was out and there was very little wind.

I happily swapped out my fleece-lined pogies for the unlined ones and set out on a 60-minute paddle. I did three 8-stroke sprints, during which it wasn't easy to use my "new and (I hope) improved" stroke.  I'll just keep practicing, I guess.  I paddled steady for the rest of the hour.  During the last ten minutes or so, as I headed back toward the dock, some soft ice started forming on my deck.  I'm curious to know how that was happening, seeing as how the air temperature was still well above freezing at that moment.

Yesterday I did another round of the new strength routine.  I'd started it by doing sort of a cursory round Thursday, and yesterday I did it the usual two times through.  As I mentioned before, most of the exercises I'm doing come from this video; I'd last done them about two years ago, and I'm now being reminded of just how much more technically difficult they are than they look in the vid.  The Hannibal pushups, rolling squat burpees, and 180 depth-tuck jumps are particularly tricky, and right now I'm struggling to do just a few reps of each even close to respectably.  Two years ago I did manage to get reasonably proficient, so now I just need to have faith that I will again with continued practice.

Today's weather is pretty emblematic of winter as I have come to know it on this particular parcel of our planet's surface: not bone-jarring cold, but cold nevertheless, and overcast and gloomy as well.  The temperature was in the high 30s when I got down to the riverfront this morning, and it was quite breezy as well.  The wind was from the southeast, and that's not as bad as a north wind, but it was still a wind and it was not exactly warm.

In recent years Sunday has been my day for a long paddle.  To me, "long" is two hours or more.  Since I'm building back toward a full training load for the new race season, I settled for a mere 90 minutes today.  After doing another three 8-stroke sprints I paddled out of the harbor and up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River.  As I came back down the river there were two barge rigs coming up and they created somewhat turbulent conditions.  I de-tuned my stroke and focused on staying upright until I was safely back in the harbor.  The temperature may have been above freezing but I still didn't want to go for a swim.

A new strength routine

It's a new month!  Time to get going with a new strength routine.

It's been a long time since I've done any of the exercises in the video that appears at the bottom of my last post--in fact, I'd almost forgotten about that video, to be honest.  So five of the six exercises in this new routine are covered in that video.  These exercises involve near-constant motion, and I figure that's a good thing to focus on during these cold days we've been having in which getting moving at all takes a bit of willpower.

1.  Hannibal pushups

2.  Pendulum planks

3.  Bent-over rows with a dumbbell

4.  Rolling squat burped

5.  Glute/ham single-leg plyo bridge

6.  180 depth-tuck jumps

Reposting some good exercise videos

This is something I repost about once a year.  Below are several videos from which I have drawn exercises for my strength routines in the last few years.  While I believe traditional "pumping iron" has its place, I'm always on the lookout for exercises that emphasize precise movements and full ranges of motion.  Not only are these things important for paddlers, but also I think they promote "later-life" general fitness and wellness.  I, for one, am not getting any younger.

Core strength is an asset for paddlers of all disciplines.  Here's Chinese slalom racer Jing Jing Li demonstrating some simple core exercises one can do with a stability ball:




I love exercises that require little or no equipment.  In this video, slalom kayak world and Olympic champion Daniele Molmenti of Italy shows us some "backpacker" exercises, so named because they're easy to do anyplace on the planet you might find yourself:




The guy in this video, Michele Ramazza, has excelled in "extreme" or "freeride" racing--downriver kayaking in pretty gnarly whitewater:

  


Finally, here are some exercises that focus on explosive power.  They are technically quite tricky, and I typically have to spend the first several sessions of a strength routine just learning them: I watch an exercise in the video, then I get down on the floor and try it myself, I see where I'm having difficulty, and I watch the video footage again to see how this athlete handles it.

F-f-f-frigid wa-wa-wa-water

I understand that yesterday was among the coldest New Year's Days on record for the greater Memphis area.  When I got down to the river yesterday afternoon the temperature display in my car said it was 22 degrees Fahrenheit.  That was about as warm as it got the entire day.  My boat's rudder and its cables were frozen in place, and the best remedy I've found is to put the boat in the water and start paddling and hope that the slightly-above-freezing water, along with any sunlight there might be, will help free them up.  This time it took between five and ten minutes for me to have steering.  After that I paddled steady to complete a 60-minute session.  The north wind had some bite to it and I think it picked up while I was out there: the last 20 minutes or so, during which I paddled from the south end of the harbor back to the marina, was particularly uncomfortable.  By the time I'd changed into dry clothes and put my boat away back at the dock, I was chilled to the core.

Ever the glutton for punishment, I returned to the riverfront this morning for another round.  The temperature as I parked in the lot up the hill from the marina: 15 degrees.  I realized I'd forgotten the shell I usually wear in such weather, so I decided to keep today's session short: 40 minutes.  I put the boat in the water and began the usual effort to free the rudder.  I mentioned in my last post that I don't usually do drills and stuff when it's this cold, but with no steering I found myself doing many one-sided strokes just to get the boat to go where I wanted.  I paid the same attention to stroke mechanics as I always do when doing stroke drills.

After 15 minutes the rudder was showing no signs of coming unfrozen.  I stopped at the dock to try to work it free by hand, but to no avail.  I finally gave up and resolved to paddle as well as I could under the circumstances.  As it turned out, the rudder was positioned in such a way that I was able to do smooth clockwise laps of the marina with only a little bit of one-sided paddling or backpaddling to adjust the boat's direction.  In the end, I achieved what I thought was a good-quality training session, and I was pleased to have done something good in such less-than-ideal conditions.

The paddling itself is generally the least-unpleasant part of paddling on a frigid day: once I get going I generate plenty of body heat.  The chores back on the dock are what's tough, changing into dry clothes and putting the boat away.  Today I just put the boat away and skipped the change of clothes, dashing back up the hill to the car.  I drove home and peeled off the paddling gear and hopped in the shower to warm myself back up.

I guess one obvious question is, Why wasn't the harbor iced over?  And I don't really know the answer.  I've seen the harbor freeze over a few times over the years, but yesterday and today it was as liquid as could be even though the temperature has been well below freezing for a good three days running now.  All I can think of is that there must be certain atmospheric conditions required for ice to form.

The last time I'd paddled in this kind of cold was almost exactly a year ago.  Last winter went on to be quite mild after that cold snap.  So I guess there's some hope that we won't be subjected to too much more of this deep freeze.  But you never know.  I'll just keep taking it a day at a time.

Monday photo feature