Monday photo feature

In March of 2010, I participated in the inaugural Battle On The Bayou canoe and kayak race on Old Fort Bayou at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  In this photo I'm racing alongside Keith Benoist and Melissa Morrison of Natchez, Mississippi, just before passing under the Washington Avenue drawbridge.

This past Friday I got myself signed up for the tenth edition of this race.  And so on March 30, barring an injury or a family emergency, I'll be back down in Ocean Springs for more good times on the Bayou.


(For more information on what this blog is about, click here.)

A balmy break

We've enjoyed a nice weekend for this time of year--sunny skies with Fahrenheit temperatures in the 50s.  I've tried to savor it because colder weather is set to return in the next day or two.

It was already 40 degrees when I got down to the river to paddle yesterday morning.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then paddled up the Mississippi to the lower reaches of the Greenbelt Park before heading back downriver and back to the harbor.  In the harbor I did a few stroke drills on the way back to the dock.

It was well on its way to 50 degrees when I arrived at the river this morning.  The plan was to do a longer paddle, and with balmy temperatures, hardly any wind, and the Mississippi flowing at a robust 26.8 feet on the Memphis gauge, conditions were ideal for paddling around the Loosahatchie Bar.

I'm not a big believer in "overdistance" paddling as a regular training staple, but in the winter and spring I do like to get in a few long paddles to establish a good endurance base for the year.  "Long" for me means two to two and a half hours.  If I paddle much longer than that my stroke form starts to break down, and then I'm just practicing poor mechanics.  Meanwhile, I do have several two-hourish races on the schedule, and a few training paddles in that time frame benefits me mentally as much as anything, reassuring myself that I can push through that tough last half-hour or so.  I always try to focus hard on taking good strokes when I'm tired like that and it's easy to let them get sloppy.

When I reached the mouth of the harbor I found three barge rigs moving up the river.  The nearest one was just above the Harahan Bridge, and fortunately it wasn't running full-throttle.  I was able to widen my lead on it during the paddle upriver and have a comfortable amount of space for the ferry across.

The hardest part of going around the Bar is fighting the current while rounding the upper end.  I always think of this moment as the paddling equivalent of summiting a mountain.  Once I'm heading down the Loosahatchie Chute, I'm always getting tired but at least have the current working with me.

I always like to to this paddle in less than two hours if I can.  Today I hit the 90-minute mark as I approached the lower end of the Bar, and I knew I'd have to paddle strong the rest of the way to break two hours.  And that's what I did.  I was pleasantly surprised at how well my energy held up.  I arrived back at the dock about an hour and 56 minutes after I'd started.

I knew I'd be tired the rest of the day, but I consider this the good kind of tired.



(For more information on what this blog is about, click here.)

Another week of winter behind me

On Sunday afternoon I told one of my non-paddling friends that I'd paddled that morning, and he was awe-struck by the thought of somebody doing that on such a frigid day.  I explained that it really was not a bad day to paddle at all because the sun was out and the wind was light.  I went on to say that if it had been fifteen degrees warmer, but overcast and windy, it would have been miserable out there.

That's exactly the sort of day I had when I went down to paddle on Tuesday.  The temperature was around 44 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was as cloudy as could be, and the wind was screaming out of the southeast.

But in the end I wasn't really that miserable.  I tried to stay in the most protected areas of the harbor, and the hour in the boat went quickly enough.  I did my three 8-stroke sprints in a downwind direction and paddled a good solid tempo after that.  As usual, the worst part was the ten minutes I had to spend on the dock afterward, changing into dry clothes and putting my boat away before I could flee to the comfort of indoors.

For most of Wednesday the rain poured down, just like it did last Saturday.  And just like last Saturday, the system had a mass of cold air behind it.  Could this be a pattern for the next little while?

When I woke up yesterday morning the temperature was in the mid 20s under sunny skies.  I headed for the riverfront expecting a carbon-copy of Sunday's paddle, but when I got down there it was a few degrees warmer.  My rudder was frozen when I got in the boat but it didn't take even a minute for it to free itself from its icy bonds.

I warmed up and did another set of three 8-stroke sprints.  I ventured out onto the Mississippi, but returned to the harbor in short order because of approaching barge traffic.  I was not eager to take a bunch of frigid waves in my lap.

I spent the rest of the 60 minutes doing some minute-long surges, trying to get all the involved muscles firing in unison.

I did rounds of the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and today.  By this time next week I'll have made it through another January.

7

On this day in 2012, My Training Blog by Elmore put up its very first post.  At the time I didn't have any particular goals for the blog's duration.  I'd have been perfectly happy to abandon it after a few months if it turned out to be more of a hassle than I cared for.

Yet here I am still doing it seven years later.  The main idea hasn't changed since that first day: I post the stuff I do, day by day and week by week, for people to read or not read as they are so moved.  But having put up one thousand three hundred twenty-nine posts over 2557 days, perhaps I'm ready to articulate some "greater purpose."


1.  First and foremost, the purpose of this blog is to share ideas.  Never would I suggest that readers abandon their own methods and adopt mine.  I mean... why would they?  It's not like I'm a world-class athlete or even one of the best in my own country.

Just like it says at the top of the page, this blog is simply an example of what one guy does.  And just about everything I do in this sport is something I learned from somebody else at some point.  Either it was shown to me by a coach or a fellow paddler, or I picked it up while watching other athletes.

So read this blog with a desire for self-examination.  If you see something you like here, go ahead and incorporate it into your own training.  And if you know a way to accomplish something that's better than what I'm doing, by all means, tell me.  Let's all grow, and maybe even advance the sport, together.


2.  This blog is written by an athlete, for athletes, about being an athlete.  There's something about the word "athlete" that unnerves some people.  And there's kind of a mostly-implicit debate about who is an athlete and who is not.

In the way sports are covered in our society, I detect a prevailing attitude that the word athlete  cannot apply to the average person.  I feel fairly certain that the typical Memphian does not consider somebody like me an athlete.  I've even been told, once or twice, some variation of "You're not an athlete.  The guys on the Memphis Grizzlies are athletes.  You're just some schmo who likes to play around in a silly boat."

Frankly, I pity such people who have to put somebody down like that to feel validated.  But that's a topic for another time.  For now I'll just say that speakers of such sentiments are wrong.  They don't get it.

Whether you're an athlete isn't something that can be measured by how much you get paid, or how many products you endorse, or how many fans you have.  Being an athlete is a state of mind.  It starts with a simple curiosity about what you can do with your body, what the limits are, how good you can be.  You then organize your daily life in such a way as to satisfy that curiosity.  You make time to get your workouts in.  You pay attention to your general health--a good diet and adequate sleep, stuff like that.  You take your sport seriously and try to do it a little better each day than you did the day before.

If you become the kind of athlete who has lots of fans and even people willing to pay you... hey, that's great.  But the only person who has to care about what you're doing is you.  And I hope you'll find something in this blog that gives you a boost.


3.  This blog is about Memphis.  My hometown.  Where more than 90 percent of my paddling takes place.

A sizable portion of our citizenry believes that anybody who would get in a kayak or canoe and paddle it should be locked up in a padded cell.  Perhaps even more frustrating, however, are the people who think paddling is in fact a neat idea, but are infected with this bizarre belief that it's something you have to go someplace else to do--namely some chic resort in the mountains or on the seashore.

I happen to believe that you can and should paddle regularly no matter where you are.  You'll gain a unique familiarity with the natural world where you live, and you'll develop solid skills that will be there for you anyplace in the world you choose to visit.

And I think my hometown is ideal for paddling.  Do I suggest that my home water is one of the best places to paddle in the world?  Well, no... but then again, maybe I should.  Our local river is the biggest in North America, after all.

When I look out over the Memphis riverfront, I see a paddling mecca that could be.  Every time I put my boat in the water at Harbortown Marina, I embark on a session that might include everything from the flatwater in the harbor to occasional offshore-like conditions out on the Mississippi River.  In the same day I might find myself paddling in an urban setting (downtown Memphis) and semi-remote wilderness (the Loosahatchie Chute, the bottom miles of the Wolf River, the more distant reaches of the Mississippi beyond the city).

And of course, we have a second-to-none race event, the annual Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.

Sometimes I wish open-water paddlers would flock to my city like they do to Hawaii, or Florida, or the Columbia River Gorge.  Sometimes I wish the city itself would embrace the incredible recreational opportunities that our riverfront offers.  And then other times I'm happy to have the place mostly to myself.  Whatever the case, I'm going to keep paddling my boat here--leading by example, as it were--and representing my town the best I can whenever I race.


4.  This blog is about the world.  While I loyally paddle my home water, I'm also fascinated with everyplace else.  That's one of the biggest reasons I like to race: it gets me out of town to visit other parts of the region and the country a few times a year.  The world is full of beautiful places, none more so than the places people paddle.

Every time I travel someplace, I imagine what it would be like if I lived there.  I imagine what my paddling routine would be and how I would have to organize my life to make it possible.  This mental exercise helps me notice a lot of the more innocuous qualities of a place.  It also almost always deepens my appreciation for what I have at home.

And, canoe and kayak racing takes me to some fascinating places I might not otherwise visit--places like the Missouri Ozarks, the Cumberland Plateau region of Kentucky, and the Louisiana Bayou.


5.  This blog is about the mundane.  At the top of the page it says I'm a canoe and kayak racer.  That means I go to races.  Each time I attend a race I try to post an entertaining summary here that captures all the moment-by-moment drama of the event.  But races aren't really the main point of this blog.  Sure, races are fun and exciting, but they comprise no more than eight or ten days out of an entire year.

The rest of the time, it's just me in my boat.  I paddle because I want to do well in the races, but that alone isn't enough to get me out there week in and week out, all year long.  Mostly I paddle because I love to paddle.  In this blog I try to celebrate our sport as something simply to devote ourselves to and enjoy, an everyday enhancement to the richness of our lives.

Jon Lugbill, an American whitewater slalom canoeist who won five world championships, once said: "It's not worth suffering to get to an end.  The means must be enjoyable."  I don't consider the training I do to be a great sacrifice or an ordeal that must be endured.  I like it.  It's a part of my life and a part of who I am.


So, there you go... the essence of this blog, at least as I interpret it.  I can't overstate my gratitude to every single soul who takes the time to read this thing.  Let's see if I can make it another seven years.

Monday photo feature

My friend Chris Hipgrave of Bryson City, North Carolina, has just returned from a sea kayaking expedition in Antarctica.  He's posted some pretty spectacular photos on his blog and his Face Book page and kindly given me permission to share one here.  With this blast of cold weather we've just had here in much of the U.S., I figure we could all use a reminder that there's always someplace colder and icier than where we are.  And it's summer down there in Antarctica.

Which of Chris's photos to share here was a tough decision.  I encourage everybody to go here and have a look at his entire album.

I will sneak in one more, however.  I've written many times about how much I love our critters on the Memphis riverfront--the birds, the turtles, the fish, the beavers, even the snakes.  But I have yet to see any penguins around here.  Says Chris, "Although technically not an albino, this Gentoo penguin has a genetic mutation that makes him stand out from the crowd."

A tale of two January days

A system of rain and thunderstorms moved in Friday night, and the temperature rose above 60 degrees Fahrenheit in the early hours of yesterday morning.  It was still raining pretty hard when I got out of bed, but by the time I got down to the river it seemed to have moved out.  The temperature had dropped into the mid 50s, but it was still warm enough to paddle without pogies.

The wind was blowing from the south, hard enough to make paddling toward the mouth of the harbor feel like a chore.  When it was time to do my 8-stroke sprints I turned around and did them with the wind at my back.  Then I turned back around and paddled out onto the Mississippi.

The river was quite calm in spite of the south wind.  It helped that there was no barge traffic in the area.  I was feeling a bit tired in the boat, maybe from the fast surges I'd done on Thursday or the strength work I'd done on Friday.  I had to make myself paddle with the best form I could.  This got easier once I was back in the harbor with the wind at my back.

I cruised on back to the dock to complete a 60-minute session, and right as I was getting out of the boat I realized I'd been wrong about the rain being over.  A thick drizzle quickly moved in, and a short time later the wind abruptly shifted to the north, and I could feel the temperature dropping fast.  By the time I was back in the car heading home, the in-dash temperature display said it was 46 degrees.  It would keep on dropping the rest of the day toward an overnight low in the 20s.  So it turns out I got my paddle in just minutes ahead of the nastier weather, and that was kind of a nice feeling.

Of course, then there was the matter of paddling today, and there was no avoiding the cold.  The conditions I might face were uncertain: the cold front brought some pretty strong winds with it that raged overnight.  This morning I layered up good, broke out the fleece-lined pogies for the first time this winter, and headed downtown.  When I got there I found that the wind had abated and the sun was fighting a winning battle with the cloud cover.  My car told me it was 28 degrees.

My rudder was frozen.  That was no surprise, considering my boat had been soaking wet from the rain when the colder air moved in yesterday.  When my rudder freezes I have to be patient so as not to break something.  Today I put my boat in the water and started paddling large clockwise circles, because that's the position the rudder was stuck in.  It finally came free after about eight minutes.

I spent the rest of the 80-minute session paddling a steady relaxed pace.  With the sun shining I was pretty comfortable in the boat.  I stayed in the harbor to be on the safe side.  There was some barge traffic out on the river, and having waves splash into my seat bucket and footwell in sub-freezing weather is not a sensation I cherish.

It was still below freezing when I got back to the dock.  The water droplets on my boat quickly froze while I changed into dry clothes.  I toweled the boat off as best I could, put it away, and headed home, proud of myself for not having let some Arctic air stop me.

The week

On Tuesday Joe and I paddled a loop of the harbor.  I did a 60-minute higher-intensity session yesterday.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I paddled on the fast side of medium with several minute-long surges.

The sun has peeked out a little bit this week, but most of the time it's continued to be cloudy with mild temperatures.  An Arctic blast is on its way for the weekend.

A new strength routine is underway.  I did rounds of it Monday, Wednesday, and today.

Monday photo feature

This little run of cold, cloudy, cheerless weather we're having reminds me of a miserable winter day 22 years ago when I entered a slalom race on the Saint Francis River in Missouri.  Most of the races I was doing back then were too far away for my parents to go watch, but they made this trip.  I was sorry my late dad couldn't have more pleasant weather for sitting on a river bank, but he seemed to take it in good humor.  Photo by my mom.

Good old January

By yesterday I was definitely over the worst of my cold.  But it was pouring down rain outside and the temperature wasn't much over 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so I gave myself the day off.

The rain eventually moved out of the area and I was back to business this morning.  Even though it wasn't wickedly cold--it was 41 degrees when I arrived down at the river--it had the feel of a bleak winter day because of the overcast skies and cold northwest wind.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then headed up the Mississippi River.  My plan was to paddle for 80 minutes total, and out on the river I decided to keep paddling upstream until I got to 50 minutes of elapsed time or reached the mouth of the Wolf River, whichever came first.  I usually have no trouble getting up to the Wolf in less than 50 minutes, but today it was slow going because I was paddling into a headwind and at the current river level (31.6 feet on the Memphis gauge) I had to paddle against a lot of strong current.  Eddies were few, and the best ones seemed to be in dense stands of trees and brush that forced me farther out into the main river flow.

So, when my watch hit 50 minutes I was still several hundred meters shy of the Wolf.  All I could do was turn around and hope to go faster next time.

The rest of the day has remained dark and depressing.  When I paddle in the morning on a day like today it seems like it takes me all afternoon to work the chill out of my body.

A new strength routine

After a week off from strength work because of the crud I caught, it's time to start something new.  Here's what I'll be doing for the next little while.

1.  Delt wings (demonstrated at 1:42 of this video; I do mine while chest-down on a stability ball)

2.  Plank exercise on stability balls.  Looks like this:

3.  Trx pull (demonstrated at 1:27 of this video)

4.  Ball back extension (demonstrated at 1:15 of this video)

5.  Military press with dumbbells

ah-CHOO

The theme of this week has been the bad cold I've had.  Colds for me usually start with a sore throat, and I could feel that coming on as I finished paddling Sunday morning.  The throat pain was at its worst on Monday, bad enough to make me wonder if I had a case of strep throat.  But by Tuesday it had given way to ordinary coughing and sneezing and clogged sinuses.

The weekend's balmy weather continued through Tuesday.  When Joe and I paddled a loop of the harbor Tuesday morning, it was partly sunny and the Fahrenheit temperature was rising into the 60s.

By yesterday morning we were back to more typical January weather.  When I got down to the river it was still in the 30s, and the pogies were back on my paddle.  There was a cold north breeze blowing, but it wasn't too bad, and the sun was out.  I was starting to feel somewhat better but not ready to be a hero in the boat yet.  I paddled a steady, relaxed 60 minutes.

The river level as I paddled yesterday was around 31.8 feet, and it crested later in the day just shy of 32 feet.  Yesterday morning the lowest-lying bits of the Greenbelt Park were under water.

Today I think my health is continuing in the right direction even though my head is still full of gunk.  Strength work has been on hold, and I hope to have a new routine underway by Monday.

Monday photo feature

I'm not sure where this photo originated--a friend of a friend posted it on Face Book this past week.  But it's an interesting look at how the Memphis riverfront has changed over the last few decades.  (The Hernando DeSoto Bridge opened in 1973; I think the photo was taken a few years before construction began.)

In this photo we're looking north (upstream).  That's the main Mississippi River on the left, with the Wolf River flowing in on the right.  The Wolf would later be redirected to enter the Mississippi farther to the north.  The former Wolf riverbed we see in this photo was transformed into our present-day slackwater harbor.

Those sandbars in the Mississippi are now long-gone as a result of the Corps of Engineers' dredging and channelization efforts.  I'm pretty sure the river was quite low when this picture was taken, but today even at low levels the main channel is plenty deep for barge traffic.

This is about the best photo I could find on Google Images of what the same landscape looks like today:

In this photo, the river is at a medium-low level.

Paddling the rising river

The Mississippi River usually drops to very low levels (below zero on the Memphis gauge) in the fall, but for most of this past fall it was 15 feet or higher.  Now it's rising to some mild flood levels: the current forecast says it'll crest at 32.5 feet toward the end of the week.  Almost nobody in the city of Memphis will be affected because the city sits on a high bluff.  The low-lying bottomlands will start to get flooded, and some water may lap into the southern end of the Greenbelt Park, but most Memphians won't notice a thing.  Personally I enjoy the high-water periods because of the increased acreage of liquid real estate that I can paddle on.

A thick fog hung over the river when I arrived down there yesterday morning.  It would eventually give way to sunny skies--a welcome sight after a week that was mostly dreary and rainy.  The afternoon high yesterday would be close to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but in the morning when I paddled it was in the low 40s and quite nippy.  I paddled for 60 minutes, warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor before heading out onto the river and maintaining a good solid pace.

When I arrived at the river to paddle this morning the temperature was 50 degrees and rising, so I left the pogies on the dock.  I paddled for 100 minutes, going out of the harbor and up the Mississippi along the Tennessee bank to the mouth of the Wolf River, and then up the Wolf for ten or twelve minutes before turning around and heading back.  The river level was 29.4 feet, and it looked like the water was just a half-foot shy of starting to spill onto the Greenbelt Park in a few places.

2019 Race Schedule (first draft)

Here's an early look at some of the places I might be going to race this year:


March
30  Battle On The Bayou.  Old Fort Bayou, Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  An 8.5-mile flatwater race.  Register


April
6  Oyster City Challenge.  Apalachicola River, Apalachicola, Florida.  8 miles down a coastal river.  Register

13  Perche Creek Gutbuster.  Perche Creek, Columbia, Missouri.  10 miles on a Class I river.

27  Lake Cumberland Regatta.  Lake Cumberland near Columbia, Kentucky.  A 12- to 15-mile flatwater race.

27-28  Carolina Cup.  Intracoastal Waterway and Atlantic Ocean, Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.  Flatwater and open-water racing.  Register


May
11  Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River, Vicksburg, Mississippi.  A 22-mile race down the largest river in North America.  Register

18  Almost Heaven Paddle Battle.  Summersville Reservoir near Summersville, West Virginia.  A 12-mile flatwater race.  Register


June
8  Taylorsville Lake Paddle Battle.  Taylorsville Reservoir, Taylorsville, Kentucky.  A 10-mile flatwater race.

15  Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River, Memphis, Tennessee.  The 37th edition of this classic.  A 5000-meter dash down the largest river in North America.


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

18-20  Gorge Downwind Championships.  Columbia River, Hood River, Oregon.


August
3  Ohio River Paddlefest.  Ohio River, Cincinnati, Ohio.  A 9-mile race on this Midwest artery.


September
7?  Lower Atchafalaya Sprint Races.  A series of 3-mile races on flat, gently-flowing water.  A racer may participate in both solo and team-boat classes.


October
5  Big South Fork River Dash.  Big South Fork of the Cumberland River near Whitley City, Kentucky.  A 12-mile mostly-flatwater race.

*          *          *

Finding races to do is easier than it used to be now that we have Internet search engines and social media and stuff like that.  Even so, it still takes some persistence to put together a full schedule.  Some race organizers do a better job than others of announcing their dates and publicizing their events.  You can expect this race schedule to evolve as the year goes along.

The usual disclaimer: this is by no means a comprehensive list of all the canoe and kayak races in 2019.  These are simply the events I know of at this time that I am at least somewhat likely to attend. With a couple of notable exceptions, I have selected the events here because they are within a reasonable drive of my home in Memphis, Tennessee.  I also look for races of the two-hours-or-less variety, since I'm not an ultra-endurance athlete.

In any case, I hope this post is a useful resource for readers as they put together their own race schedules.

Making the most of my time in the boat

After Christmas is when I usually try to move back into a more "serious" training routine.  Exactly what "serious" means depends on the person.  If I were an 18-year-old Olympic hopeful, I'd probably be doing ten or more in-the-boat workouts each week, along with strength work and stuff like that.  But I'm not an 18-year-old Olympic hopeful, and these days I think of "serious" as four times in the boat, plus two or three strength routines, each week.  Most of the time my paddling days are Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, because I'm just a regimented guy that way.

Once in a while I get anxious, thinking maybe I'm not doing enough, especially when I hear somebody talking about how much more he's doing.  But most of the time I feel pretty good about it.  I think I'm doing about as much as my 51-year-old body can withstand, and as much as I can fit into a busy schedule that's full of the typical adult responsibilities.

If you need an example of a more accomplished racer than I whose time in the boat is limited, check out this profile of Erik Borgnes of Stevens Point, Wisconsin--he paddles just three times a week for much of the year.  I think Erik is maybe a year or two older than I am.

Actually, I think even younger athletes could accomplish a lot with just a few paddling sessions a week. Keep in mind that it's not the workouts themselves that make you stronger and fitter and faster. It's during the recovery from those workouts that your body rebuilds and fortifies itself to perform at a higher level.  The more workouts you do each week, the greater the likelihood that you will "overtrain"--that is, not allow yourself adequate recovery.

Whatever the case, for me, for most of my "serious" training year, four times in the boat a week it is.  I try to get the best recovery I can when I'm out of the boat so my body can internalize the work I've done.  And when I'm in the boat, I try to be all there, mentally as well as physically.  In recent posts I've mentioned a specific "thing" (usually a stroke component) I worked on each time I paddled; the reason for that is to keep myself mentally engaged in the task at hand as opposed to letting my mind wander who knows where and lapsing into sloppy paddling.  Actually, in most paddling sessions I work on a lot of "things," not just one, but the point is the same: because my paddling time is limited, each time I'm in the boat I'm on sacred ground (or sacred water, I guess I should say), and I want to get as much out of it as I possibly can.

On Tuesday it was overcast but the temperature was mild (mid 50s Fahrenheit).  I paddled for 60 minutes, warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor before heading out onto the main river.  I didn't really have a "thing" in this session other than just taking good strokes and maintaining a strong pace.

Yesterday seemed a lot more like a classic winter day for this part of the country: overcast and 42 degrees with a biting north wind blowing.  But as usual, once I was in the boat paddling it wasn't too bad.  I warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and then paddled up the Mississippi about a third of the way up the Greenbelt Park before returning to the harbor and the dock.  My "thing" for the day was getting all my muscles firing in unison--that is, as soon as the blade was planted, I tried to take each stroke with one good focused movement of my body, with every muscle engaged in the business of propelling the boat forward.  This gets harder as the water gets more turbulent, because in rough water the average person will have to devote some muscle power to staying upright.  The Mississippi wasn't very rough yesterday but it's always swirly and provides good routine balance practice.

I did the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and today.  After a good four weeks I think it's time to put away the Smart Bell and start up something new next week.