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.

Trying to maintain the speed a little longer

Though my out-of-the-boat life seems determined to consume every last microcalorie of my energy, I've managed a passable amount of training activity this week.

Joe and I did just half a loop of the harbor Tuesday.  We were both having busy days, and I was still a bit tired and sore from what I'd done over the weekend.  I was also having some discomfort in my left shoulder and lat area, probably from moving some massive oak planks in my workshop.

That discomfort had eased by yesterday.  I went down to the riverfront and did my first "work" workout since returning from out West.  With a short race on the schedule three weeks from tomorrow I'm trying to keep up a regimen of short, fast pieces.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did a set of four 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals, then did one of my "bridge-to-bridge" sprints in 1:58, then did another set of four 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals.  The sprints didn't feel particularly sharp or smooth but I focused on good form the best I could.

I did rounds of the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and today.  I'm not sure what I'll manage to do this weekend, as I'm scheduled to have a colonoscopy Monday and am on a restricted diet between now and then.

My "bridge to bridge" sprint

Now that I'm finally learning a few video-editing skills, I want to start posting footage of some of the things I often refer to in this blog.

One such thing is my "bridge to bridge" sprint.  In the harbor on the Memphis riverfront, the distance from the southern edge of the monorail bridge to the southern edge of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge is very nearly 450 meters.  This makes it a good place to practice sprints of the Olympic variety, because all you have to do to get a 500-meter equivalent time is divide your time by 0.9.

Monday photo feature

At about this time two years ago I was paddling on the Hudson River near Peekskill, New York.  If you look closely you can see the Bear Mountain Bridge just to my right.

A bit of summertime survival; and, I'm not a daredevil

The Mississippi River is settling down into the low water levels that are typical in late summer and fall.  This weekend it's below 5 feet on the Memphis gauge, and unless there's some appreciable rainfall in the Midwest I expect it'll be dropping below zero in the next few weeks.

It's also hot here, not exactly a surprise in the month of August.  But the humidity has been down a bit, making the heat more bearable.  Even though we've had Fahrenheit highs in the high 90s, it hasn't been particularly unpleasant outside.

Since returning from the Columbia River Gorge I've been keeping an eye out for surf opportunities here on the Memphis riverfront while the weather is still warm and getting soaking wet isn't a big deal.  When I got down there yesterday morning there was no barge traffic in sight and, feeling sore in my lats and abdominals from the new strength routine I'd started Friday, I figured I would just do a steady 80-minute paddle.  But then, shortly after I got out onto the Mississippi, an upstream-bound rig appeared down near Presidents Island.  I was in the mood to surf and I paddled down to meet it.  While the waves weren't smooth and consistent like in the Columbia Gorge, I did find a few to ride, and I captured it on video:



Of course, even on the best waves surfing is a lot of work, and by the time I was done surfing yesterday I found myself hot and exhausted and facing a long paddle upriver to get back to the harbor.  I took a deep breath and paced myself the best I could.  I took several breaks to cool off in the water as the sun beat down.  I never doubted I would make it back, but it was a slow, not very pleasant journey.  Once I was finally back on the dock I relished some swigs of cold water from my insulated water bottle and a nice bath under the hose.

I figured I'd spend today recovering from yesterday's exertion, but when I reached the mouth of the harbor there were two barge rigs--one going upriver, one down--passing by.  I couldn't resist the urge to surf a little more.  Of course, this time the mouth of the harbor was right there and I could head in as soon as I started getting tired.

The waves today were a little bit better than yesterday's and I was sorry I didn't have the Go Pro camera with me.  I've mentioned before that I'm not really an avid user of my Go Pro, and that's partly because I'm just not a big tech nut, but there's a deeper reason as well: one of the biggest misconceptions I'm constantly fighting here in the Memphis community is that I must be some kind of daredevil to go paddle out on the Mississippi River, and I think the presence of a camera on my boat strengthens that impression because it looks like I'm trying to glorify my exploits in a "hold my beer and watch this" sort of way.  I'm an athlete, not a daredevil, and I care about safety as much as anybody you'll ever meet on the river.  I believe that a skilled paddler is generally a safe paddler, and I've spent decades trying to raise my skill level as high as I can.

So... I'm glad I got a bit of surfing footage yesterday because I'd been wanting to capture some to share with the readers of this blog.  But I'm not going to keep taking my camera out there hoping to find the ultimate set of waves.

Trying to resume normal life

I'm trying hard to settle back into some normalcy here at home.  On Tuesday I paddled with Joe in the harbor for the first time in almost a month, and that was a big step in that direction.

Yesterday I did a fairly hard 60-minute paddle out on the river.  It included a warmup and three 8-stroke sprints, followed by some long up-tempo pieces.

Another step in the path back to normalcy is getting back into a strength routine.  I've drawn up a new one and I did a cursory round of it this morning.

A new strength routine

Strength work sort of went by the wayside during my Western odyssey, and since I've been home I've had many, many things to deal with and that has made it hard to get a new routine going.  But at last, I've drawn something up.  I'm keeping it short because of all the other heaping helpings on my plate.

1.  Core exercise demonstrated my Daniele Molmenti at 3:44 of his video on this page

2.  Lat pulls with barbell (demonstrated by yours truly in this video)

3.  Stability ball exercise demonstrated by Jing-Jing Li at 2:55 of her video on this page

4.  Bent-over rows

Fontana followup

Here are the results of this past weekend's race on Fontana Reservoir.  It looks like the times column got squeezed so you can't see the last seconds digit, but at least we've got the overall order of finish here:

Sarah Ruhlen got some really nice photos at the finish.  Here's a visual of what I could only describe in words in my race-report post:

Here comes the lead pack!  That's Chris Hipgrave in the lead, followed by Terry Smith and Pete Greene.  I'm somewhere behind Terry or Pete; the guy in the orange PFD is Sven Jonsson.

Chris beats out Terry for the title.

Second place is all Terry's.

The race for third is on!  Pete had just a little too much cushion for me or Sven to run him down.

I manage to edge out Sven for fourth place.

Laurens Willard was the sixth person to paddle his boat across the line.

Cindy Massa and Ted Burnell raced in a tandem outrigger canoe (OC2).  They took first place in a class of one.

The first all-female boat to finish was this tandem surf ski.  One of the paddlers is Leslie Brass; I don't know the other's name, so I'd appreciate it if anybody who does know would tell me.

Heather Frogge was the first female solo finisher.

Race schedule update

Well, we're gettin' down to the short rows, as one of my farming ancestors might have said.

Best of luck to everybody participating in the USCA Nationals up at Syracuse this week.  I've enjoyed attending the nationals for the last two years, but this year it's just too tall an order considering the travel I've put in this past month.

I believe I will race two more times this year: in Louisiana on September 8 and in central Mississippi on September 22.  I have a wedding to go to on September 29, so I'll miss the race on the Ouachita River that day.


August
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.  Register

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.

Monday photo feature

This tire made it as far as mile marker 66 on Interstate 40 in Haywood County, Tennessee, on Friday. Then it had had enough.  What I think happened is that part of the plastic lining on the inside of the wheel well had come loose and rubbed against the tire, abrading it until the tube was able to burst through.  My Toyota Corolla has 179,000 miles on it and it's running as well as ever, but little things like those plastic liners are starting to crumble.

Fortunately I have a full-size wheel for a spare.  I found it in a junkyard in Missouri last year.  It had a good tire on it and everything.  Best 50 bucks I've ever spent on an automotive item.  I was able to complete my trip to and from North Carolina, and now getting a new tire is on my to-do list today.

Racing back East

The drive from Memphis to western North Carolina on Friday could have been smoother.  I blew out a tire in the first hour, and the traffic in the Chattanooga area was heavy and slow-moving.  But I still made it in less than nine hours' time.  In the last few weeks I haven't quite driven from sea to shining sea, but I've come pretty close.

I made myself comfortable in the Forest Service campground at Tsali and woke up yesterday morning feeling ready to go.  Racers were gathering in the parking area just down the road from Tsali campground and I quickly found myself greeting folks I'd just shared a house with out in Oregon: Cindy Massa and Ted Burnell had come over from Chattanooga, and Will Schaet was up from Jacksonville.  And the race director, Chris Hipgrave, had been out at "The Gorge," too.

Because of the mountainous terrain, Fontana Reservoir is a skinny impoundment with many "fingers" where all the various tributary streams come in.  The Paddle Grapple's course would start and finish at the Tsali boat ramp, at the end of one of these fingers.  Racers would paddle out of that finger and around a couple of bends to the left, loop clockwise around an island, cross a piece of open water to another island, round that island and head back into the finger to where they had started.  The 6-mile course would be two laps of this circuit.

The gun went off and I found myself in hot pursuit of Laurens Willard, while off to our left a lead pack was quickly forming up consisting of Chris Hipgrave, Terry Smith, Pete Greene, and Sven Jonsson.  I knew this was the train I needed to catch to have any shot at a top-five finish, and I spent the next mile throwing in sprint after sprint to advance up the series of wakes these four were trailing behind them.

After a considerable expenditure of energy I finally pulled up onto Sven's stern.  Unfortunately, Sven had just dropped off the lead pack and now Chris, Terry, and Pete were pulling away from us.  Needing a breather in the worst way, I settled onto Sven's stern wake and watched as the top three pulled farther and farther out of reach.  It looked like I was now racing for fourth place.

I stayed put for the rest of the first lap, hoping to conserve energy for aggressive moves in the second.  As we began the second lap I could see that Laurens was in sixth place, close enough behind to run us down if Sven and I didn't keep our boats moving.  Once we were out of the finger and approaching the first island I moved up alongside Sven, looked ahead, and saw that we had inexplicably made up a lot of ground on the lead pack.  The objective for the final couple of miles was clear: find a way to reel them in.

The lead pack moved along in single file with Chris in first, Terry in second, and Pete in third.  Once again I was throwing in sprints to try to gain on them one wake at a time.  After a while Sven took over and led the way with a few sprints of his own.  But we never got any closer than maybe two boatlengths.  Pete's stern seemed almost close enough for me to reach out and touch, but the building fatigue in my body made closing that last little gap a taller order than ever.

As the five of us headed back into the finger where the finish line awaited, I reminded myself that the lead pack's lead had seemed insurmountable late in the first lap, but now they were right there within striking distance.  In other words, "it ain't over until it's over."  As we rounded the last bend and the finish line came into view, I briefly debated whether I should go after Pete, who was now by himself in third place, or hang back and concentrate on holding off Sven.  It hit me that I was still feeling really good even after all the wicked sprints I'd done, and there was no excuse for holding back.  With about two hundred meters left I began paddling as hard as I could.  I knew catching Pete was a long shot, but little by little I was closing the gap on him and I could feel myself opening one on Sven.

Chris pulled away from Terry in the last few dozen meters to win in 47 minutes, 41 seconds.  Terry crossed the line just six seconds back.  Despite my furious charge Pete held onto third place, clocking 48:07 to my 48:11.  Sven rounded out the top five just a couple of seconds behind me.  Laurens took sixth a short while later.

After the finish I learned why Sven and I had gotten back in contention: Chris, miffed at having to lead the entire first lap, stopped paddling at the beginning of the second lap, forcing either Terry or Pete to take the lead.  They must not have been very cooperative because Chris was the only person I remember seeing in the lead at any time in the race.

Chris and Sven both live in the area surrounding Fontana Reservoir.  Terry is from Chattanooga, Tennessee, while Pete hails from Beaufort, South Carolina.  Laurens lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The top overall female finisher was Heather Frogge of Gainesville, Georgia.  The complete results are not yet posted online, but I will link to them whenever they are.

It seems that I can always find a reason to ask "what if?" after a race; this time, I'm wondering "what if" I had been a little quicker at the start and made contact with the lead pack right away.  But in general I'm happy about my fourth-place finish.  This is one of those races where you have to beat out some good athletes for even a prayer of cracking the top five, and that's a big reason I decided to make the drive over for it even though I was weary of driving.

I'm also pleased with how I held up during the race.  I was able to race aggressively and still have the energy for a strong finish.  Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that I'm in good shape considering all the hard paddling I did while surfing out in the Columbia Gorge, but those were all "play" workouts, and I'm the stubborn regimented sort who can't quite believe that anything but a "work" workout can bring real improvement.  Oh well... I turn 51 later this month, and maybe I'll dedicate my 52nd year to lightening up a little.

I spent another night at Tsali and got an early start back west this morning.  I stopped at Parksville Reservoir, part of the Ocoee River, and paddled for 60 minutes.  Now I'm back home at last, with my next race more than a month away.  I'm glad to have some time to get settled back in at home and do some good training for what's left of the season.  I've also got a mountain of chores to deal with in my non-athletic life.  It's time for life to get boring again.

Here I go again

The weather in the Mid South has been unseasonably mild since I got home.  We've had Fahrenheit highs in the 80s, and the overnight lows have been below 70.  The humidity hasn't gone anywhere, though.  Having been in the much more arid American West, I can't not notice the humidity here.  Even light chores get me sweaty in a hurry.  But I shouldn't complain: the weatherman says oppressive heat will be returning next week, so I'd better enjoy this break while I can.

I had an odd morning on Tuesday.  I'd woken up in the wee hours with considerable discomfort in the area where my left triceps muscle meets my left lat, approximately.  I was hoping maybe I'd just slept on it wrong and it had gone to sleep, but later on when I was up having breakfast the pain persisted.  I couldn't think of anything I'd done to hurt that area and I hoped it was just a mild strain as opposed to a tear or worse.

After breakfast I went over to my rental property and worked on replacing some rotted-out siding.  That took my mind off what was happening with my left arm/shoulder.  Then I went down to the riverfront to paddle, and it was then that I realized the discomfort was just about gone.  Lest I become too elated, a hornet flew up and stung me on my left elbow.  Hornets like to make nests inside the more rarely-used kayaks, canoes, and rowing shells that are stored at my marina.  I shrugged, got in my boat, got a good long warmup, and did eight 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals.

Since Tuesday that arm/shoulder issue hasn't been entirely absent--I can feel a hint of it when I move the joint around--but it hasn't been as bad as it was when I woke up Tuesday morning.  This morning I went back to the river and did something similar to Tuesday's exercise: six 12-stroke sprints.

Why all these 12-stroke sprints?  Well, I have another race this Saturday.  I haven't been talking about it here because I wasn't entirely sure I would have another driving trip in me so soon after my Wild West adventure, but I've decided to go ahead.  It's The Paddle Grapple race on Fontana Reservoir in western North Carolina.  It'll take me a good eight hours to get over there, but I really like the event.  I like the distance (6 miles), and there's usually plenty of solid competition there.  And the Nantahala Gorge is a place I've enjoyed visiting since I was a kid.

Meanwhile, following up on earlier posts, I've continued playing around with my digital movie-editing software.  I've always wanted to star in a music video, and what follows is my first.  Be forewarned: it's dumb.  D students in film school are making better ones as we speak.  Seriously, don't even watch it unless you truly have nothing better to do for the next three minutes and ten seconds.



Okay, if you did watch it, and if you actually like the song, you can buy the album it's on here.