News flash: some racers are better than others

"The people who win aren't just faster, they are better.  They are better and they know more."

These words were spoken by Sylvan Poberaj, the long-time coach of the U.S. whitewater slalom team.  The statement is almost absurdly simple, but Scott Shipley thought it was profound enough to print it in his book Every Crushing Stroke: The Book of Performance Kayaking.  Since this book came out in 2001, I've been pondering the deeper meaning.

In just about all great sports, the object is simple.  Take baseball, for instance.  A player goes up to bat hoping to hit the ball into the field and then run at least as far as first base before the fielders can round up the ball and throw it there.  But delve deeper and you find layers of complexity.  And the best players see all the many nuances.  What pitch to expect when the count is 2-1.  When it's better to go for a home run and when it's better simply to put the ball in play.  There are many, many things going on at once, and the best players are not the ones who can simply hit the ball the hardest or run the bases the fastest or make the most acrobatic plays.  The best players have the mental acuity to be aware of the many variables in play and of every scenario that could possibly unfold from each pitch.

This is very much the case with whitewater slalom, the sport Poberaj is referring to in the quote above.  Slalom, too, has a simple objective: paddle through all the gates on the course as fast as you can without missing any gates or touching any poles.  But that's just the bare outline of what takes place.  When I was racing slalom back in the 1990s, I always felt as though the top athletes were seeing things I simply could not see.  Certainly they could all make their boats go faster than I could, but there was more to it than that.  They seemed to know exactly what stroke to take at every instant during a race run.  When they made mistakes they typically recovered from them with a single stroke.  They seemed to have anticipated everything that could possibly go wrong at every place on the course.  They knew when to use all their power and when to back off a little.

On the trip I've just completed I participated in my first true downwind race.  There, too, the elite athletes were all fast; I expect every single one of them could beat me handily in a sprint on flatwater.  And they almost certainly have a high degree of balance and control to keep their boats moving in downwind conditions.  But I think they have even more than that.  Their movements are informed by a superior intellect.  They can read how the waves are developing in front of them and plan four or five moves in advance.  While guys like me are sliding backwards off the backs of waves, they are using the smallest of bumps to maintain their speed and are ultimately moving forward in the waves.  And they're probably doing other things that I haven't imagined yet.

The top racers are simply... better.  And they know more.  I mean, duh, but... yeah.  Maybe that statement really does sum it up as well as any other.

The top female surf ski racers at the 2018 Gorge Downwind Championships.  Left to right: Michelle Eray (5th), Teneale Hatton (2nd), Naomi Flood (1st), Ana Swetish (3rd), Rachel Clarke (4th).  Photo by Tom Gomes.

The top male surf ski racers at the 2018 Gorge Downwind Championships.  Left to right: Patrick Dolan (5th), Cory Hill (2nd), Kenny Rice (1st), MacKenzie Hynard (3rd), Austin Kieffer (4th).  Photo by Tom Gomes.

Monday photo feature

This photograph is a symbol to me.  A symbol of my technological ineptitude.

You see, my intention was to set my Go Pro camera to take a picture every ten seconds during my paddle on Lake Tahoe last Monday.  This is the first photo it took, as I was getting in my boat.  It's also the only photo it took.  I paddled my boat on the beautiful lake for an hour, thinking the camera was capturing all kinds of lovely scenes, only to get back and discover that I'd actually set it to take one photo on a ten-second timer.  And so here's the only photo of Lake Tahoe I can offer you.

Some paddlers never go anywhere without their Go Pro cameras, but I'm not an avid user of mine.  To me it seems like kind of a nuisance that distracts me from what's important (paddling).  I only break it out when I'm paddling someplace unusual like Lake Tahoe, or maybe when there's interesting weather or high water or something on the Mississippi at home.  Because I don't use it often, I'm perpetually out of practice and make dumb mistakes like I did at Tahoe.

I don't know if I'd describe myself as tech-phobic, but technology does have a way of passing me by.  To become proficient at using any sort of device or software you have to spend time playing around with it, and I never seem to have the patience for that.  I don't sit still well, and if the thing I'm trying to learn is not exceptionally user-friendly, my eyes quickly glaze over and I throw up my hands and quit.  I'm also sort of a tightwad and wait as long as possible to upgrade my hardware.

As a result, I have a phone that is at least a decade out of date.  I tend to miss deadlines for certain taxes and fees I owe because I'm now expected to pay them online rather than fill out the forms that I used to get in the mail.  I don't know the results of some lab tests I had at my doctor's office recently because instead of sending them to me in the mail like they used to, they want me to use their decidedly user-unfriendly "patient portal" now.  I've been putting off forming an LLC for my rental property concern because it's an online process that looks scary and boring.  I'm perfectly awful at promoting my woodworking business on social media.

It's not New Year's Day, but I'm thinking a resolution is in order.  I need to get myself up to speed.  The video I posted the other day is a part of the resolution, and I plan to spend this week taking some more such baby steps.  Of course, I've still got a boat that needs paddling and a lot of work to do on my rental properties and so on, so this is going to take some discipline on my part.

Race results

The results of the Gorge Downwind Championships are now posted.  You can view them here.

Americana fun, 2018 edition

For years I had a personal goal of visiting every state of the United States.  I have now almost achieved that: I've been to every one except Alaska.  I'll get up to "The Last Frontier" one day, but in the meantime I've set a new goal: paddling a boat in every state.  On the trip I've just finished I added three new states to this list: Oklahoma, Nevada, and Kansas.

Here's the updated list.  States marked with an asterisk (*) are the ones I have merely visited.  States marked with a pound sign (#) are the ones I have visited and paddled a boat in.

Alabama#
Alaska
Arizona*
Arkansas#
California#
Colorado#
Connecticut#
Delaware*
Florida#
Georgia#
Hawaii#
Idaho#
Illinois#
Indiana#
Iowa#
Kansas#
Kentucky#
Louisiana#
Maine*
Maryland#
Massachusetts#
Michigan#
Minnesota*
Mississippi#
Missouri#
Montana#
Nebraska*
Nevada#
New Hampshire#
New Jersey*
New Mexico#
New York#
North Carolina#
North Dakota*
Ohio#
Oklahoma#
Oregon#
Pennsylvania#
Rhode Island#
South Carolina#
South Dakota*
Tennessee#
Texas#
Utah#
Vermont#
Virginia#
Washington#
West Virginia#
Wisconsin#
Wyoming#

Home at last

I rolled back into Memphis yesterday afternoon after driving some 2700 miles over six days.  There were moments when I wondered if I would ever make it: I was within 40 miles of home when I hit a horrible traffic jam on Interstate 40 just east of Crowley's Ridge in Arkansas.  I ended up getting home at least an hour later than I should have.

But I made it, by golly.  And I'm so glad to be back.  The Columbia River Gorge was beautiful, and I saw all kinds of fascinating things on the drive out there and the drive back.  But I've been missing everything about home.  My family and friends here.  My cats.  My familiar training ground on the Memphis riverfront.  My kitchen and control over my diet.  My familiar comfy bed.

I'm pretty certain about one thing: if I participate in the Gorge Downwind Championships again (and I would definitely like to), I believe I will fly out there.  Driving across the country is a valuable experience that's worth doing once a decade or so, but it's exhausting and takes me away from home for a long time.  And while it's a hassle making sure I have a rental boat lined up and a rental car and stuff like that, I'm pretty sure that once I've crunched the numbers on what I spent on this trip, I'll conclude that flying and renting a boat and a car will be a better deal financially, especially if I share the car rental with other paddlers.

On Thursday morning I left Burlington and crossed into Kansas on Interstate 70.  A while after that I re-entered my own Central Time zone.  I continued on through towns like WaKeeney, Hays, and Russell, and then headed north from I-70 to Wilson State Park.  Having pored over my maps, I had determined that Wilson Reservoir might be a nice place to paddle.  This impoundment was created by the construction of an earthen dam on the Saline River.

The name of the river suggests that the water is salty.  It did not seem so, but apparently the salinity is high enough to make the Saline River unsuitable for irrigation.  Whatever the case, I thought Wilson Reservoir was quite lovely.  People think of the Great Plains as being flat as a pancake, but there is actually plenty of relief out there, and Wilson Reservoir takes advantage of the terrain of the Smoky Hills region.  It's easy to delineate the tributary streams that form the "fingers" of the reservoir.  I put in on one such finger, formed by Hell Creek, a tributary that comes in from the southeast.

With several competitions still on the schedule this year I was feeling eager to get back into some sort of training mode.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did several 10-minute pieces in which I pushed the pace.  For much of the time I tried to pull fast through the stroke but keep the stroke rate low by taking my time between strokes.

It was already 3 PM by the time I finished paddling, but sheer determination got me east and south all the way to Sallisaw, Oklahoma.  That left me with a pretty easy drive for yesterday, at least until I hit that traffic jam.

I've been spending today doing all the usual chores that follow a long trip: unpacking and putting things away, tidying up the house after 17 days of unmonitored kittycat hijinks, re-stocking the pantry, and so on.  But I did make time to go down to the riverfront for a 50-minute paddle.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then tried to surf behind a barge rig that was coming down the Mississippi.  It's usually the upstream-bound rigs that generate the best waves; the ones going downstream typically don't run their engines as hard because they've got the current working in their favor.  But this one must have been behind schedule, because it was trailing some huge waves behind it.  They looked good for surfing, but because they were moving so fast they were hard to catch.  I had to paddle at maximum power, and just like out in the Columbia Gorge that was hard to do when I was off-balance on the crest of a wave.  I did get a couple of decent rides.

I'm still processing a lot of the stuff that happened on my trip.  I'll try to write some more later.

I made a video (and that's a big deal)

Here's a clip of some video I shot while paddling on the Columbia River last Saturday.  I'm in an area known as Swell City, near the Washington side across from Hood River:

 

Though it seems simple enough, the very existence of this post is a mammoth achievement on my part.  Twelve hours ago I had never edited a digital video clip and never posted anything on my You Tube channel.  Sitting here in my motel room in Burlington, Colorado, somehow I've managed to accomplish both those things.  This poor web-unsavvy soul will accept any and all pats on the back.

Back across America

The long journey home is underway.

On Sunday morning in Hood River the weather was picture-perfect: clear blue skies, mild temperatures, and for once no wind.  I know we surf ski paddlers are supposed to love the wind because it provides those epic surfing conditions, but I have to admit I got weary of living my out-of-the-boat life with that gale-force wind constantly blowing last week.

I headed south, hoping to make it at least as far as Klamath Falls.  As I drove into the afternoon, the blue sky was replaced by a gray haze.  South of Bend I began to realize the reason: wildfires.  There was one stretch of 50 miles or so where I must have been quite close to a fire, because the smoke was disturbingly thick.  I had supper in Klamath Falls and decided to keep going, hoping I could find some cleaner air.  I drove into California and camped in Modoc National Forest.

On Monday some paddling was on the agenda.  I'd never been to Lake Tahoe before, so I decided to check that out.  I looked for access on the Nevada portion of the lake because I'd never paddled in Nevada before.  The sky was still hazy from fires in the region but otherwise the lake was beautiful.  I paddled for 60 minutes, trying to practice some of the downwind skills I'd learned on the many motorboat wakes.

After that I got back in the car and began to cross Nevada on U.S. 50, known as "the loneliest road in America."  I thought it was quite lovely.  Expecting barren desert, I was instead treated to a whole variety of landforms and colors.  I found a place to camp some 20 miles off the highway, up in a place called Kingston Canyon.  There was abundant vegetation and even a bold creek flowing through.

Yesterday I did nothing but drive.  I completed the trip across Nevada and got most of the way across Utah, camping in the town of Green River.  I might have savored the ambience there if the mosquitoes hadn't been so bad.

Today was another all-driving day.  I made it all the way across Colorado.  Having camped the last three nights I was ready to check into a motel, and so here I sit in a room in Burlington, Colorado, just west of the Kansas state line.  I woke up this morning in the Plateau Province and now I'm getting ready to hit the hay on the Great Plains.

The plan for tomorrow is to find a place to paddle in Kansas, because I've never paddled in Kansas before.  Otherwise I hope to make good progress in the car so that maybe I'll arrive home in Memphis at a reasonable hour on Friday.

Monday photo feature

This is the vacation rental house I called home last week.  It's a charming, comfortable little place right in the main business district of Hood River.  2700 square feet.  It's not in bad shape, but it could use some updating and sprucing up.

If you want it, it's on the market.  All you need is $1.5 million.

I first visited Hood River 20 years ago.  Back then it felt like a really down-to-earth sort of town... a place an ordinary guy like me could live.  Now it's an ultra-wealthy resort town like Aspen.  It's not hard to see why, as the Columbia Gorge area is an absolute paradise for people who love water sports, mountain sports, or both.  For paddling alone, the Gorge has it all for both whitewater and open-water enthusiasts.

But Hood River suffers the typical problems that bedevil every "it" town.  The cost of living is through the roof, and on the weekends when tourists flood in it's nearly impossible to find a place to park and the streets and highways are gridlocked.

I can't overstate how beautiful and fun it is here, but I can't see myself living in a place like this.  I've learned to appreciate the upside of living in a city that the rest of the world doesn't want to move to.

Race photography

To give you an idea of the conditions in the Columbia River Gorge, here's a photo taken this past week by official race photographer Tom Gomes:

There are many more such photos posted on the Gorge Downwind Championships Face Book page.  I haven't spotted myself in any of them, but there are some impressive shots nevertheless.  Go have a look.

Post-race regrouping

The results of Thursday's race were posted online for a while, but now they're gone again.  Apparently the company that was hired to tabulate the results had no end of technical difficulties and the results that were posted were rife with errors.  I would like to believe that my result was one of the errors because my name was alarmingly close to the bottom, but I'm afraid it was correct.  I did not conquer the world here in the Columbia Gorge.

Strong winds continued yesterday.  People who know this area better than I said that the wind we'd had on Wednesday, Thursday, and yesterday was about as strong as it gets in the Gorge.  In the morning I did one run from Viento State Park to Hood River, and while I had some fun and got some good rides I felt like I was getting blown all over the place.  I spent the rest of the day taking it easy and putting paddling out of my mind for a while.

Today it's still windy but not nearly as much so as the last several days.  I took the shuttle back to Viento State Park and was on the water around noon.  With the conditions slightly more manageable, I paddled with much more confidence.  Where in the last several days I felt unstable and resorted to bracing often, today I was aggressive and paddled hard, always looking for the next wave or bump to ride.  One of the things Chris Hipgrave had told me back at the beginning of the week was "always keep paddling," and indeed whenever I've managed to do so this week I've been consistently rewarded.  Today I paddled and paddled and kept pace with nearly every other paddler out on the river at that time.

It was also a bit warmer today.  Thursday and yesterday were almost chilly, but today felt perfect.  There was not a cloud in the sky and the gorge was as beautiful as ever.

When the run was over I didn't feel as though I had a second run in me, but I hadn't quite had enough fun, either.  So after going back to the house and having some lunch, I drove over to the Washington side of the river where there is a run of juicy waves known as "Swell City."  Swell City is maybe a couple of miles long, and you can surf the run, paddle back upwind along the bank, do another lap, and so on.  I did three lengthy laps and one briefer one, and my body had had enough.  I wasn't quite as confident in my balance in the bigger conditions, but I was still aggressive and got several good solid runs.

It was the best I've felt in the boat all week.  I really needed a day like today.

Well... it wasn't boring

Yesterday morning it was quite windy and cooler--the temperature was in the mid 60s Fahrenheit, and there was some cloud cover, too.  After enduring the heat earlier in the week I was now having to throw on some extra layers.

Like I've said before, the Gorge Downwind Championships race would proceed up the Columbia River, because that's the way the wind blows.  The start was at a place called Home Valley, located on the Washington side near the mouth of the Wind River.  The finish was some 14 miles upriver at the town of Hood River.

Parking at Home Valley is tight for an event of this size, so I got an early start to make sure I'd have a place to park my car.  I arrived around 9 o'clock and picked up my race packet with my number and a timing chip to strap onto my ankle.  The pre-race meeting wouldn't start until 11 o'clock, with the race itself starting sometime between 12 and 1, so I grabbed my therma-rest pad and a pillow and walked off to the far side of a big field to lie down and be alone away from all the hubbub.  I tend to be a little nervous before almost every race I do, just because I want to go out and perform up to my exacting standards.  This event had the additional pressure of some challenging conditions.  The wind was gusting over 40 miles per hour and the waves out on the river were pretty huge.  Race director Carter Johnson was repeatedly urging people with even the slightest doubt in their ability to re-mount in rough conditions to withdraw from the race.  The safety boats, he said, would be rescuing people but not boats, and so anybody who needed a rescue should expect never to see his boat again.

I practice re-mounts all the time and felt pretty good about my ability to handle the conditions.  But not even the slightest doubt?  Man, there's hardly a minute in the day when I'm not doubting myself about something.  So all this was going through my mind as the minutes ticked by and the looming race drew closer.  I lay there on the ground and tried to think soothing thoughts and conserve every ounce of energy I could.

At the pre-race meeting Carter spent close to an hour explaining the starting procedure.  He gave all kinds of explicit instructions, but once we were finally out on the water it all devolved into chaos pretty quickly.  A truly fair start was simply not possible.  I positioned myself in the middle of the mass of boats and tried my best to hold that position until we were given the go-ahead.  After what felt like forever they let us start, and the race was underway.

I spent the first ten minutes or so simply surviving.  I was too close to the Washington bank and I was trying to sidle toward the middle of the river without getting creamed.  Finally I was where I wanted to be and slowly began to find a groove, to have a feel for what the waves were and were not doing to me.

The rest of my race proceeded much like my practice runs earlier in the week:  I would link together several good rides in a row, and then leave some good rides on the table.  In downwind racing it's important to be paddling forward or poised to paddle forward at all times; when I missed a wave it was usually because I was off balance and leaning on a brace.  The elite downwind racers almost certainly have a high caliber of balance and don't rely on braces.  I will say that when I had to put down a brace, the spray off my paddle created the most beautiful rainbows I've ever seen.

I had one pretty close call near Viento State Park where I have no idea how I managed to stay upright; but otherwise I felt good and not particularly fazed by the conditions.  As the finish line at Hood River Beach came into view I emerged from the big stuff unscathed and prepared to paddle hard to the end.  There were several surf skis ahead of me that I thought I could overtake.  Then, out of the blue: WHUMP!  Over I went.  I have no idea what happened other than that some supernatural force was reminding me of my fallibility.  I lost some 30 seconds as I scrambled back onto my ski.

Mad at myself, I put the hammer down and churned toward the beach, where I would have to hop out of my boat and run across a cable on the sand that would register the chip on my ankle.  I ran the hardest I've run since my cross-country-running days, and just like that, it was all over.

Like I said in my last post, this competition was like no other I've ever done.  Sitting here almost a day later, I still have a surreal image of the whole thing in my mind.  All told, I'm satisfied with how it went: I used the conditions as competently as I was able, and I can make a good-sized list of the new things I learned.  Right now the only thing I know about my result is that my time was somewhere around two hours--forty minutes or so behind winner Kenny Rice.  I would like to believe I was right smack in the middle of the pack, but for all I know my name could be down near the bottom whenever the results get posted.  For the time being there's no point worrying about that.  I'll link to the results when they are available.

Big racing in the Columbia Gorge

The 2018 Gorge Downwind Championships race has been run, and it was unlike any other  competition I've ever done.  The wind was screaming through the gorge--gusting around 40 miles per hour, I understand--and the waves were plenty big enough for me.  The race organizers have reported that more than 290--290!--people opted out of racing because of the epic conditions.

Right now I have no idea what place I finished, who I beat, who I didn't beat, anything like that.  The timing company the organizers brought in had some technical difficulties and the results won't be available until sometime later today.  And out on the river I had to employ sort of a tunnel vision, completely focused on the waves in front of me, and really didn't have much chance to assess what other competitors were doing out on the river.  In a way it was like a slalom or wildwater race, where I was just trying to put together the best run I could and wouldn't know how it measured up until after the finish.

At this time it is known who the top finishers were.  I wish I could tell you how the race unfolded for them, but I can't, because I wasn't there.  I was off in my own little world.  With any luck you'll be able to read about their races on other websites before long.  Here are the podium finishers:

Surf Ski Female
1.  Naomi Flood
2.  Teneale Hatton
3.  Ana Swetish
4.  Rachel Clarke
5.  Michelle Eray

Surf Ski Male
1.  Kenny Rice
2.  Cory Hill
3.  MacKenzie Hynard
4.  Austin Kieffer
5.  Patrick Dolan

Single Outrigger Canoe (OC1) Female
1.  Lindsey Shank
2.  Brandy Cumin
3.  Anna Mathisen

OC1 Male
1.  Kua Nolan
2.  Will Reichenstein
3.  Kaihe Chong

Stand-Up Paddleboard (SUP) Female
1.  Fiona Wylde
2.  Hannah Hill
3.  Angie Jackson

SUP Male
1.  Chase Kosterlitz
2.  Paul Jackson
3.  Jarkko Simmons


In my next post I'll talk more about how my own day went.

Racing on a Thursday

The Gorge Downwind Championships race will take place tomorrow.  It's been understood all along that the race date would be either tomorrow, Friday, or Saturday, depending on how the wind forecast looked.  Today the race organizers decided that tomorrow looks best.

Some of the best downwind surf ski racers in the world are here.  Jasper and Dawid Mocke.  Kenny and Sean Rice.  Austin Kieffer.  Cory Hill.  Older guys who are still formidable like Oscar Chalupsky and Greg Barton.  Top female racers like Teneale Hatton and Hayley Nixon.

How am I going to do?  The best I can, I hope.  It's always my attitude that when I'm in a race I'm going for first place, but... well, let's just say that anybody who puts $100 on me to win tomorrow will become an instant billionaire if I actually pull it off.  Friends keep telling me "Just go out and have fun."  And they're absolutely right.  But I want to have a competitive effort I can feel good about, too.

Rest and mental preparedness remain my biggest challenges.  I spent yesterday recovering from the beating I had taken Monday.  I paddled for about 50 minutes right at Hood River in the afternoon, and I actually felt better afterward than I had before.

This morning the announcement came down that the race would be tomorrow, and so today would have to be another easy day.  Once again I did a short paddle down on the Hood River waterfront.  The wind was screaming up the gorge, and as I paddled into it the noise in my ears made it seem like things were crazier out there than they really were.  After paddling nervously for some ten minutes, I realized that aside from the steady dose of big waves, there was nothing about the conditions that I don't deal with fairly often back home on the Mississippi.  At that point I relaxed and felt good in the boat the rest of the time.

It would be nice if I could go into tomorrow's race with several more days of hard downwind training under my belt.  But the truth is that even an entire week of such work is not going to turn me into an instant downwind star.  I'll just have to go out and race like I normally do and draw on my nearly four decades of paddling experience to adapt to whatever the conditions might be.

It sounds like tomorrow could be a real circus.  We have to be at the start, at the mouth of the Wind River on the Washington side about 15 miles downriver from Hood River, between 9:00 and 10:45, with the race to start "between 12 and 1ish."  I can envision a lot of hurry-up-and-wait, and I'll have to do my best to stay out of the sun and conserve energy until the organizers finally fire the starting gun.  I guess the next time I post here I'll be telling you how it all went.

Overdoing it a little to start the week

Here in Hood River I'm sharing a nice little rental house with four other people: Ted Burnell of Chattanooga, Tennessee; Will Schaet of Jacksonville, Florida; and Ulli Sherer and Michael Meredith of the Detroit area.  It's an easygoing group of folks and we're having all the fun one could imagine.

The Columbia River Gorge is a section where the river is enclosed between steep ridges on both sides.  The wind from the Pacific Ocean gets funneled through this landform and turns the river's surface into a playground for sailors, windsurfers, kiteboarders, and surf ski and outrigger paddlers.  The Gorge Downwind Championships race will go some 13 miles up the Columbia River (i.e., with the wind at the racers' backs), starting at the mouth of the Wind River and finishing at the town of Hood River.

Those who are only casually familiar with "downwind" canoe and kayak racing tend to think that all a racer has to do is hop on a wave and ride it all the way to the finish line.  Alas, it's not that simple.  A typical wave has a life span of maybe 20 or 30 seconds at the most, and when it peters out the racer must find another one to ride.  Catching a wave requires a hard five-second sprint, and doing a bunch of those becomes extremely taxing after a while.  The most skilled downwind racer is able to keep these hard sprints to a minimum, using the momentum from one wave ride to carry him onto another wave.  And so downwind racing requires a good eye for waves and a laser-like focus: the racer is constantly looking for the next good wave.  It sort of reminds me of the slalom racing I used to do, where the top athletes were able to link together moves seamlessly; but where slalom racers are able to study the course and plan every move ahead of time, downwind racers must do it all on the fly.

I should note that much of the previous paragraph was informed by conversations with my long-time racing friend Chris Hipgrave, who is out here from North Carolina to race this week.  He has been an assiduous student of downwind racing for a number of years, even flying to South Africa last winter for a clinic taught by some of the sport's top athletes, and he very kindly took time to explain some of the essentials and tell me what I might expect in the Gorge this week.

My biggest challenge for this week is to be rested and mentally prepared on race day.  The event site down on the Hood River waterfront is quite a carnival atmosphere, with no end of distractions.  And here in the arid West the sun is relentless.  I've remarked on the triple-digit Fahrenheit temperatures we're having here right now, how it's not nearly as unpleasant as the Memphis heat because of the lack of humidity.  But this "dry heat" is deceptive, especially out on the water: you can be out there doing your thing, feeling perfectly comfortable and having big fun, but then before you know it, you're dehydrated.

I did not do a good job of managing my energy yesterday.  I had to go down to the event site to get myself checked in, and then I spent too much time in the sun, wandering around and talking to people.  I drank some water during the day, but not nearly enough.

Yesterday afternoon I did two runs of an eight-mile section of the course with Ted Burnell.  For the most part, the first run was a barrel of fun.  I felt comfortable out in the conditions, and congratulated myself for the time I'd spent working towboat wakes on the Mississippi at home.  But I also was thinking about what Chris had told me and strove to link as many wave rides together as I could.

I remember something Lecky Haller, a two-time U.S. Olympian in whitewater slalom, once told me when he heard me wondering aloud, in anguish, why I couldn't perform like the elite-level racers did. He told me that while I might not be an elite-level racer, I'd had pieces of elite-level runs.  That's exactly how I'd characterize my first run with Ted in the Gorge yesterday: once in a while I would link together a few good rides and want to shout, "Whoo hoo!  I'm nailing this!!"  Then, moments later, I would sit on a wave too long or mis-time my sprint to get on another wave, and find myself paddling up the back side of a wave and losing all my speed.  I know the top guys in this week's race will be linking successful moves much more consistently.  They'll make mistakes, of course, but their mistakes will be smaller, and they will recover from them more quickly.

As fun as that first run was, I was feeling pretty worn out in the last couple of miles.  As we paddled in to the finish at Hood River I figured I'd put in a good day's work.  But Ted said he was going to grab a quick lunch and then hop on the shuttle to get another run in.  I said, "You're doing another run?" and he replied "Of course," the implied message being, "Come on!  We've got all this travel invested!  We need to be out there having all the fun we can get!!"  And so, against my better judgement, I went with Ted for another run.  And it was on this second run that my inadequate hydration and poor energy management really caught up with me.  I managed a few decent moves in the first several miles, but then I was finished.  Paddling against the Columbia's current with no energy left to sprint for waves, I was barely moving at all.  So I paddled over to the Oregon side and limped along in the slacker water there.  Though I never doubted I'd make it back to Hood River--I do paddle up the Mississippi all the time, after all--I knew it would be a miserable slog.

This morning I'm feeling as though I did a hard race yesterday.  No matter how good the conditions might be out there today, I need to recover.  Maybe I'll get one run in... we'll see.  But priority number one today is to avoid the intense sunshine, stay hydrated, and take care of my body.  I'm a little miffed with myself because it's kind of a rookie mistake, not managing myself better yesterday, but... you never stop learning, I guess.

Monday photo feature

Once in a while, I treat myself.  I picked up this cowboy hat at a feed store in Dumas, Texas, thinking there couldn't possibly be a better place to find authentic gear for that ideal of rugged, self-reliant masculinity, the American rancher.  But later I found a tag inside the hat that said "Made in China."  Hmm.  Oh well, I suppose it's no worse than those MAGA™ ballcaps.

Far from home

I have completed the very long drive to Hood River, Oregon.  On both Friday and yesterday I found myself in the car quite a bit longer than I'd expected.  If I ever do this drive again, I think I'll try to get an hour or two farther on each of the first two days to even it out.

Adding to the unpleasantness was that I had considerable trouble finding places to stay both Friday night and last night.  On Friday I'd planned to stay in one of the U.S. Forest Service campgrounds around Flaming Gorge Reservoir in northeastern Utah so that I could paddle there yesterday morning; but when I got there the campgrounds were all completely full.  I ended up driving another couple of hours before I finally found a motel with a vacancy in southwestern Wyoming.  I didn't paddle yesterday but it was just as well because I had another formidable drive ahead of me.  The trip across southern Idaho and eastern Oregon went smoothly enough, but when I started to look for a place to stay the night there were no vacancies anywhere because of a Blake Shelton concert in the town of Pendleton.  (What is it like when somebody good is performing?)  I had to drive some 50 miles farther than I'd planned to grab the last vacancy at a motel in the town of Boardman.

The bright side is that I had a mere 90 minutes or so of driving this morning to get to Hood River.  I wouldn't be able to check into the rental house I'm sharing with four others until four o'clock, so I spent some time wandering around the town.  In the mid afternoon I did a 60-minute paddle down on the Columbia River.  Putting in where the race will finish later this week, I warmed up and did a set of eight 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals.  Having not paddled since Thursday, I was ready to rev the engines a bit.  After that I just checked out the environs, even paddling several hundred meters up the White Salmon River, which flows into the Columbia across from Hood River.

It's hot out here in the Pacific Northwest.  Today's high was around 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  But because of the lower humidity, triple digit temperatures here are not as bad as days in the 90s back in Memphis.

I can see the Rockies

Well, I found some wifi sooner than I thought I would.  The campground I'm staying at off Interstate 25 just south of the Colorado-New Mexico state line has it.  The signal is quite strong, too: I'm about a hundred meters down a hill from the router and it's coming in well, albeit a tad slow.  So here's a quick update.

I made it to Oklahoma City yesterday and stayed at a pretty lousy Motel 6.  No, I do not expect the Ritz Carlton when I check into a Motel 6, but this one was bad even by Motel 6 standards.  The one saving grace was that the air conditioning worked.  If you want to escape the sweltering summer heat in Memphis, you'll have to flee farther than central Oklahoma.

This morning I was up and out of that crummy motel bright and early.  I drove into the heart of Oklahoma City and found Regatta Park, site of some of the biggest flatwater sprint events in the United States these days.  Today there was no regatta and I had the Oklahoma River site more or less to myself.  I paddled for 40 minutes and did three 8-stroke sprints.  It was my first time ever to paddle a boat in the state of Oklahoma.

I spent the rest of today driving across western Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, and the northeast corner of New Mexico.  There were some thundershowers moving across the region, and the Fahrenheit temperature display in my car registered as high as 94 degrees and as low as 54 degrees during the course of the day.  It's about 70 degrees here at my campsite at the top of Raton Pass.  I do believe I have come far enough to escape the Memphis summer.

The plan for tomorrow is to do a round of the strength routine and then hit the road.  I hope to make it up into the Wyoming-Idaho-Utah tri-state area.

Here we go!

I did a round of the strength routine Monday morning, and yesterday I paddled a loop of the harbor with Joe.

Sweltering weather is moving back into the Mid South.  I was drenched in sweat as I packed the car yesterday afternoon.  I plan to make it as far as Oklahoma City today, and I expect it'll be stifling hot there, too.  But maybe I'll start getting some relief by tomorrow evening: I'm hoping to get into northeastern New Mexico, within view of the Rockies.

I did another round of my short-n-sweet strength routine this morning, and now I'm fixing to hit the road.  How soon I post here again will depend on wifi availability; it might not be until Sunday when I check into my accommodations out in Hood River.  In any case... here we go!

Monday photo feature

Jim Priest of Wenatchee, Washington, surfs a popular park-and-play wave on Idaho's Lochsa River in the summer of 1996.  It's possible I'll drive by the Lochsa on my way back east from the Columbia River Gorge, but it's doubtful I'll paddle there, seeing as how my main whitewater boat was stolen a couple of years ago.  My old slalom race boat could handle a river like the Lochsa, but I'm not sure I want to carry it all the way out there when I'm not likely to use it more than once or twice, if at all.  I guess I've got two more days to make up my mind.

Final days at home

I registered for the Gorge Downwind Championships last November.  For most of the ensuing eight months the epic journey out to the Pacific Northwest has seemed like an abstract concept looming off in the distant future.  But now it stands right before me, with just a couple of packing days left.  I plan to depart Wednesday, and I'm beginning to make lists.  Lists of all the things I need to take with me: paddling gear, camping gear, clothing, food.  Lists of the many loose ends I must tie off before I leave.

As far as actual paddling goes, I'm tapering off a bit.  But the Gorge Downwinder will be a bit different from most of the other races I attend these days.  When I arrive out there I'll be spending several days doing some pretty hard paddling just to get used to the conditions on the race course.  It reminds me of the slalom racing I used to do, where racers always arrived early to a race site to get some practice time on whatever whitewater the race would be contested on.  I guess one of the main objectives of the training I've been doing in recent weeks is to prepare my body for that kind of stress so that it can still recover and be ready on race day.

Yesterday morning I went downtown and did two of the three exercises in the current strength routine--the Hindu squats and the four-way abdominal crunches--on the dock.  Then I got in the boat and paddled for 60 minutes.  I was feeling a little on the tired side, so I just paddled steady at medium intensity.  A front had just moved through the Memphis area and the humidity was down a bit.  It was still humid, but not quite as absurdly so as it had been.  And so it felt pretty good down on the river.

That was the case again today, as some cloud cover added to the relief.  I had only a vague idea of what I wanted to do in the boat today.  In general I'm feeling good about my fitness level two weeks before the big race, and I'm now in something of a holding pattern, trying to rev my engines every several days while making sure my body gets the rest it needs, too.  What I ended up doing today was warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, paddling up the Mississippi to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and then sprinting hard while doing several ferries from one bridge piling to another. At times it was a little tricky taking full-power strokes out on the swirly water, but overall I was satisfied with how I moved the boat.  I'm looking forward to seeing how this work translates onto the turbulent conditions in the Columbia Gorge.

Starting to champ at the bit

It seems that Tuesday is my day to be dead-dog tired lately.  Once again, I was so tired Tuesday that just stringing together a few dozen paddle strokes in a row felt like a tall order.  I was also sore in my quads from the new strength routine I'd started Monday.  I limited my paddling to an easy 40 minutes.

It's a good reminder that rest and recovery are more important than ever with a long road trip and challenging race coming up.  I absolutely don't need to be getting injured or sick.  For what's left of my time here at home I plan to make sure I'm actually spending my down time recovering.  When I get in the boat I'm still paddling hard and fast, but as soon as I'm out of the boat I need to flip off the intensity switch.

The heat and humidity here in the Mid South definitely contributes to the fatigue.  I'm starting to watch what the weather is doing out in the Columbia River Gorge, where I'll be racing in a couple of weeks.  According to the ten-day forecast for Hood River, Oregon, the temperatures are pretty high out there too--above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, even--but the humidity levels look much lower.  The nights could be chilly, so I'd better pack some cool-weather clothing; and I understand the water is cold, so some cool-weather paddling gear is in order, too.  It's easy to overlook stuff like that here in Memphis as I pack my things in a triple-digit heat index.

This morning I did a round of the strength routine and then went down to the river with a "work" workout in mind.  But when I got to the mouth of the harbor I saw a big barge rig coming up the Mississippi that was producing some good-looking waves, so I quickly changed my plan to a "play" workout.  I paddled out and looked for the first waves I could find in which the churning of the towboat's screws had settled out.  They were quite steep and a little intimidating, but knowing I'll need to show up in The Gorge with my "aggressive" shoes on, I dove right in.  The result was some really, really good rides.

After ten minutes or so I was breathing hard from all the sprinting I'd done, and the waves were starting to peter out.  I ferried over to the Arkansas side and pushed the pace upriver almost to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge before heading back to the harbor.  In the harbor I spent the last fifteen minutes paddling easy back to the dock, cooling down and letting fresh blood move into my muscles.  Upon the conclusion of this taut 60-minute paddle, I took a cool hose bath and headed home for some good recovery.

Another strength routine

Here's a new routine to carry me into my big journey out West.  This one's short and sweet, and completely portable so I can do it once or twice during rest stops along the way.

1.  Hindu squats (demonstrated in this video)

2.  A few rubber band exercises like the ones Daniele Molmenti is doing starting at 7:50 of his video that's posted here

3.  Four-way abdominal crunches

Monday photo feature

I can always count on a hard-fought contest anytime Rick Carter (left) is entered in a race.  In this photo we're on the Mississippi River, headed toward Vicksburg.  The year is 2014.  Photo by Paul Ingram.

Savoring summer, even as it wears me down

Yesterday I did manage to make up the round of the strength routine I'd missed on Friday.

Yesterday was clearly destined to be another hot one, but it was a beautiful morning.  Summers here in the Mid South are known for some god-awful heat and humidity, and when I'm spending the better part of each day in wet sweaty clothes it's easy to get preoccupied with how unpleasant it is.  But there's a lot to like about summer, too.  When I got down to the riverfront yesterday there was a pleasant south breeze and I felt delightfully unstressed as I got in the boat for an 80-minute excursion.  I guess I was in what you'd call a grateful mood... I mean, I'm injury-free, and the burdens of my non-athletic life haven't been too much to bear lately, and I've got what should be an exciting cross-country trip coming up in less than two weeks.  The river level has even been coming up, opening up more liquid real estate for me to check out.  I paddled out of the harbor and up the Mississippi to the Greenbelt Park, then ferried across to the lower end of the Loosahatchie Bar and paddled up the chute back there for a few hundred meters before heading back.

This morning it was time for another workout.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, I paddled onto the river and did a session at the race pace I hope to maintain at the Gorge Downwind race several weeks from now.  Every four minutes I threw in a hard 20-stroke sprint to simulate the sprints I'll have to do to catch waves during the race.  I did this session long enough to get twelve sprints in, and I was plenty taxed by the time it was over.  It was nearing noon and the heat was bearing down, and I did some remount practice back in the harbor to cool off.

Though I felt fine back on the dock, by the time I'd gotten home and finished lunch I was feeling very tired and sluggish.  Doing that workout out in that heat had taken a bigger toll than I'd realized.