Summer stubbornly persists, but fall is coming

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

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

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

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

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