Time to race again

The last several days have been hot, yet noticeably more pleasant, as we're getting a break from the soul-crushing humidity that has hung over the Mid South for much of the summer.  I'm hoping the break will last at least through tomorrow, when I participate in this race over in middle Tennessee.

I spent this week trying to work on some speed and power while also resting up for the race, to the extent that's possible.  On Tuesday I did the strength routine before heading downtown to paddle with Joe.  On Thursday I got back in the boat and did a set of ten 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals.  Having had a commitment prior to paddling that morning, I got my strength work in that afternoon.

This morning I paddled for 50 minutes, doing a quick loop out on the Mississippi before returning to the harbor to do a set of six 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals.

Tomorrow's race doesn't start until noon Central Time.  That's unusual, but it'll allow me to make the drive over there tomorrow morning.  A few good racers are signed up... we'll see how it goes.


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Monday photo feature

I've been told for years that I look like Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Tom Glavine.  I have finally put together a side-by-side test.  Hmm, I dunno... what do you think?  I know it wouldn't be hard to tell us apart if we were in the same room: according to Google, Glavine is 6 feet 0 inches tall to my 5'7", and he weighs 205 pounds to my 155 or so.

Of course, you never do see Tom and me in the same room, now, do you?  Sort of like Clark Kent and Superman.


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A productive weekend

I'm leaning in favor of attending this race in middle Tennessee next weekend, and I figured that yesterday was my last chance to do a workout from which my body will be able to benefit by then.

After doing a round of the strength routine at home, I went down to the riverfront intending to do a set of ten 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals.  This is a workout I've done a lot in recent years, and sometimes it's felt good to me and other times it's been painful.  My muscles throbbing from the strength work, I had a feeling it would be the latter yesterday.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints and then got down to business.  I did most of the workout in south end of the harbor, but ventured out onto the Mississippi for several of them, just to push the balance envelope a little.  Oddly enough, the workout felt good.  I seemed to have a lot more turnover than I'd had earlier in the week, and was moving the boat well.  My stroke form was holding up well through the late stages of the workout, so I added two sprints to make a total of twelve.

Today I was ready for a Whatever I Feel Like sort of day in the boat.  I paddled to the mouth of the harbor and headed up the river.  I paddled most of the way to the mouth of the Wolf River with more gusto than even a tall-boy can of Schlitz beer could contain.  There was a barge rig coming downriver and I paddled out to see if there was any surfing action to be had, but the waves behind it amounted to a big nothingburger.

By this time I had been paddling a little over 40 minutes, and it suddenly hit me: I was tired.  I backed off the intensity and eased back down the river, returning to the harbor and paddling back to the dock to complete 80 minutes total in the boat.


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Ramping back up

After being abnormally high all winter and spring and well into the summer, the Mississippi River is now dropping to the kind of levels that we're used to in late summer and fall.  This week the river fell below ten feet on the Memphis gauge for the first time since maybe last October or November.  I'm seeing objects along the riverbank for the first time in months because they were buried deep underwater.

We're also having the sort of weather we're used to in August in the Mid South.  While the air temperature hasn't gotten as high as it sometimes does here--I think the highest so far is 97 degrees Fahrenheit--the humidity has been plentiful and pushed the "heat index" well up into the triple digits. I'm trying to grin and bear it and hope that fall weather is not too far off.

On Tuesday I did a round of the strength routine, and then joined Joe for a loop of the harbor.  Yesterday I did the strength routine again, and then returned to the riverfront for a fairly hard 60-minute paddle.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then paddled out onto the Mississippi to see what was going on.  A big barge rig was coming downriver trailing some decently-surfable waves, so I fell in behind it to see what I could do.  Just like last Sunday, I struggled to generate the sort of turnover necessary to catch a wave, but I did manage to grab a couple of brief rides.  I'm hoping that with some persistence I can get my top gear back in the next week or so.

In the last two or three seasons I've done my strength work on the days I don't paddle, but you'll notice that this week I've paddled and done strength work on the same days and done nothing on the other days.  I've done it this way in the past and now I'm trying it again.  The drawbacks of doing it this way are that I have to dedicate a whole morning to doing athletic stuff rather than my job and other chores, and that I'm tired by the time I get in the boat; the upside is that the "off" days are complete recovery days and days I can devote entirely to non-athletic stuff.


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Monday photo feature

I'm in a throwback mood this week.  Here's a photo I dug out of a shoebox full of prints from the 2000s decade.  If I ever had a digital copy, I'd lost it.  So I scanned in a new one.

This is February of 2004, and I'm paddling my old Speedster surf ski on the Ichetucknee River near Gainesville, Florida.  It was a chilly, overcast, misty day, and the river had an ethereal, haunting quality to it.


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Onward toward fall

I have completed my two-week training break.  I spent the second week feeling a lot better physically than I had felt in the first week.  Monday afternoon I got in to see the chiropractor who'd helped me beat that plantar fasciitis I suffered from for a couple of years, and she cracked me right back into proper form.  I also told her about the wrist ailment, and she thought it was probably a muscle imbalance, and she showed me an exercise I can do to strengthen the weak opposing muscle.

On Wednesday I received the disappointing news that the downwind training camp in South Africa that I'd hoped to attend this November is already full.  When I posted my intentions here last weekend I had notified the Mockes that I wanted to attend and was awaiting instructions on how to register.  It was dumb of me to announce it here before it was a done deal, but I thought surely there would still be an opening or two three months out, and I also just wanted to explain my training plan for this fall.  Well... maybe next year.  Sigh.

I was pretty despondent for a couple of days, thinking that my whole plan for the fall had been ruined.  But as usual, one's perspective evolves with the passage of time.  In a way I'm even more glad I took a training break, because toward the end of it I was really missing that regular athletic routine.  I really should appreciate the paddling opportunities I've got right here, even if world-class downwind action isn't among them.

Today I started with a round of the new strength routine, and then headed down to the river.  Over a 70-minute paddle I mostly felt good in the boat; the effects from the layoff didn't really become apparent until the last 20 minutes or so.  My fatigue by then told me that my stamina was down a bit (the hot weather didn't help).  When I tried to surf some small waves behind a downstream-moving barge rig, I didn't have the top gear I needed to do so.

But I shouldn't get too bummed out by that.  I've got a solid base from the paddling I've done this year (and for that matter, the last several decades), and I think I'll get those little things back soon enough.


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A new strength routine

Okay, the two-week break is over.  Time for a new strength routine:

1.  Lateral abdominals (demonstrated by Michele Ramazza at 3:52 of this video)

2.  Pullups

3.  Stability ball back extension (demonstrated by Lindsey at 1:15 of this video)

4.  Pushups

5.  Stability ball drill demonstrated by Jing Jing Li at 2:55 of this video




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Just kidding

It now appears that I will in fact NOT be going to South Africa in November.

Right now I'm trying to determine what my alternatives are.  The flow of information is slow between here and the greater Cape Town area.  I'll update when I know more.


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Monday photo feature

I love where I live, but I shouldn't ignore its problems any more than one should ignore the problems of one's spouse or other loved ones.  And so, in the spirit of the bummerfest that this blog has been lately due to my hurting back and the brutal humidity and so on, I give you this week's photo feature.

One of the things I couldn't help noticing out in the Columbia Gorge last month was that there was virtually no trash in the river.  I don't remember seeing even a single floating bottle.  That's quite a contrast to what I often encounter on my home water as well as the rivers and lakes I race on in my part of the country.

The Columbia Gorge area has a largely affluent, educated population, and litter and illegally-dumped garbage seem to correlate strongly with the poverty and ignorance that we have more than our share of in cities like mine along with the entire South and Appalachia.  That's the region of the country in which the late William Nealy, who drew the cartoon above, lived and did most of his paddling.


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Race schedule update

Pursuant to my last post, here's an updated list of events I have left in 2019.  Obviously I won't be doing all of them, seeing as how two of them are on the same date, but it's a list of possibilities.

September
1  Rock Island Rampage.  Center Hill Reservoir, Walling, Tennessee.  A 14-mile flatwater race.  Register

28  River Rat Paddle Challenge.  Ouachita River, West Monroe, Louisiana.  6.5 miles down a Class I river.  Register


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

5  Lake Jocassee Paddle Splash.  Lake Jocassee near Salem, South Carolina.  A 6-mile flatwater race.  Register

November
16  Seadog Downwind Race.  Fish Hoek, South Africa.


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Reset

I'm taking a couple of weeks off.  I haven't done any paddling or other training activities this week, and I don't plan to next week either.

Unfortunately, to spend my break feeling good seems to be too much to ask.  I hurt my back while working in the shop on Wednesday, and I aggravated it on Friday.  It's not anything that shouldn't get better in a few days, but it sure is making me feel miserable right now.  And that wrist ailment I've been dealing with for a few weeks is acting like it wants to get better, but just can't seem to get over the hump to being fully healed.

Why take a break now?  Several reasons.  There's a lull in my race schedule, and I've got a lot going on in my non-athletic life and it seems like a good time to devote more of my attention there.  And there's the mental fatigue I've been talking about in recent posts.  It felt good to go win a race last weekend but here at home I continue to lack enthusiasm.  The Dog Days of summer are partly to blame.  Thunderstorms in recent days have made it not so hot here in the Mid South, but the humidity has been through the roof, and it seems to suck the life out of me.

So, a break it is.  I'm hoping the aches and pains will run their course while I get some work done.  It'll probably still be hot and humid a week from now, but at least I'll be that much closer to fall.

Once this break is over, what's the plan?  Well, it'll start with a return to strength training, along with some paddling with a nonspecific agenda.  There's a race on September 1 that I might do, mostly because some good racers I know are registered.  Will my training to date be enough for me to produce a good showing after this training break, or will I be in for an old-fashioned spanking?  That's anybody's guess right now.

As the weeks roll on I'll work myself into a new training cycle for the late-season events.  Those events will include at least one race in late September or early October, and then in November I've got something BIG planned: I'm going to South Africa for a camp led by Dawid and Jasper Mocke!  We'll be training on one of the most legendary downwind stretches in the world, "Miller's Run" off the Cape of Good Hope.

And really, that's another reason for the break I'm taking right now: I want to be in excellent shape for that camp, and seeing as how it's such a long way off I think a bit of downtime is in order.

Like I said, right now I feel about as far from peak form as a guy can get.  But I've been doing this long enough to know that with some planning, I have the power to round into shape when I want to.


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Monday photo feature

Lookit me, hangin' out with a gin-u-wine U.S. Senator.  That would be Mr. Rob Portman, the junior senator from the state of Ohio, to my right.  (To my left is Kentucky Waterman Series director Gerry James, also an important man but not a U.S. Senator.)

I won't say if I would or would not vote for Mr. Portman if I were an Ohioan, but the fact that he came out and raced on the Ohio River on Saturday is a mark on the positive side of the ledger.

Photo by Hollie Hall.


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Racing in the Queen City

When my race on Fontana Reservoir in western North Carolina got called off, I shifted my attention to an event in Cincinnati, Ohio, about the same driving distance from my home.  This weekend, I made the trip.  I broke the drive up there into two legs, spending Thursday night in Nashville with my old college friend Genie and traveling the rest of the way Friday.

I arrived at the site of the race start, the Schmidt Recreational Complex, in the mid-afternoon Friday.  With a couple of hours to kill before the race check-in opened, I did a 60-minute paddle on the Ohio, paddling down to the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge and back.  It was hard to detect any flow in the river, but down at the bridge I could just barely discern an eddy behind a piling.  So we would get at least a tiny bit of help in our nine-mile journey down the river the next day.  I did a set of four 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals and paddled back to the Schmidt Complex to get myself checked in.

The Ohio River Paddlefest has been going on for nearly two decades.  The event is put on for the benefit of Adventure Crew, an organization that gets urban youth in the Cincinnati area involved in outdoor activities.  The Paddlefest has become enough of a local institution that permanent signs have been installed on city park facilities:

According to the event's website,

The Ohio River Paddlefest is recognized as the nation’s largest paddling celebration with over 2,200 participants traveling 9 miles through downtown Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky in canoes, kayaks, and other human-powered craft.

I wondered where they got that participant number, because at the close of online registration only about 60 people had signed up for the race.  I found the apparent answer when I visited the check-in booth: a couple of thousand people would be participating in a "tour," rather than the actual race, down the course.  I believe the race is actually a later addition to this event: I've been aware of it going on for only a half-dozen years or so.

But that's really no matter.  I do what I like to do whether it's the most popular thing or not.  I picked up my race packet and went to pitch my tent in an area of the park where event participants were allowed to camp.

Cincinnati is located not so far within the western boundary of the Eastern Time zone.  That meant that nightfall occurred well after nine o'clock Friday, and that dawn would not come until around six o'clock yesterday morning.  Have I mentioned that the race was scheduled to begin at 7 AM?  If I'd wanted to race in the dark, I'd have registered for the Au Sable Marathon.

In any case, doing this race required some adjustments to my biological clock.  I retired for the night before 9 PM and set my alarm for 4 AM so I would have time for some coffee and breakfast and all the elements of my pre-race ritual.  As 7 AM approached and I maneuvered my boat to the starting line alongside a few dozen fellow competitors, the sun was not quite up over the ridge to the east.  But it was clear we would be racing in lovely weather and I was glad to be getting it done before the heat of the day descended on the region.

The starting gun fired and within the first half-mile I found myself alone in first place.  I consider that position to be a mixed blessing.  Certainly it's more fun to be in first place than, say, last place.  But being all alone up there means there are no wakes to ride, and it means you're sort of a sitting duck for competitors lurking within striking distance.

In this case I was glad to have my G.P.S. device on board, because it helped me make sure I was keeping my boat moving and not lapsing into some more lackadaisical pace that would allow the pack to reel me in.  In the early miles I was maintaining 8.0 miles per hour without much trouble.  Based on what I know about my abilities on flatwater, I estimated that I was getting between 1.0 and 1.5 mph of help from the current.  I made up my mind to keep myself moving at or above 8.0 for the whole race.

Besides having the G.P.S. to tell me how far I'd traveled, I was aware of where I was on the course because of the seven bridges we would pass beneath.  I entertained myself by keeping count as I advanced past the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge, the Purple People Bridge (yes, that's what it's called on the Google map), the Taylor Southgate Bridge, the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge, and the Brent Spence Bridge.

When I crossed under the last bridge, a railroad bridge that's nameless on the Google map, I had almost three miles left to go.  By this time I was having to work a lot harder to maintain 8 mph.  I would swear I was getting less help from the current, but the nearest dam on the Ohio is quite some distance down from Cincinnati, and I was staying in the part of the river where the main flow should be.  Maybe I was just getting tired.  My speed was dipping as low as 7.6 mph at times.

At last, as I rounded a long, large-radius bend to the right, the big yellow buoy marking the finish came into view beyond some barges moored against the Ohio shore.  I bore down and paddled as hard as I could until I passed between the buoy and the dock at the Riverside Park boat ramp.  The finish line officials had a device that read the timing chip strapped to my right wrist, and it measured my time at one hour, 7 minutes, 49 seconds.

I circled around to watch my nearest competitors come in to the finish.  A tandem surf ski paddled by Clint Bradley and Will Hanson was the second to cross the line, clocking 1:10:33.  Just behind the tandem in 1:10:40 was one of my housemates out in the Columbia Gorge a couple of weeks ago, Michael Meredith of the Detroit area.  Five seconds behind Michael was the top female finisher, Hollie Hall of South Point, Ohio.  The complete results are available here.

I grabbed a shuttle bus back to the Schmidt Complex to get my car and returned to Riverside Park just in time for the awards ceremony.  For anybody who wishes I would post more photos of myself on "the podium," here's the shot from yesterday's race:

From left to right, it's yours truly, Michael Meredith, and the third-place finisher in the men's race boat class, Erik Snider.

I should add that nowadays the race is part of the Kentucky Waterman Series.  KWS founder Gerry James was on hand to perform the race director's duties alongside Mr. Adrian Angell.

One of nice things about the race's early start was that I still had the whole day ahead for the trip back to Memphis.  After eating a couple of pretty good tacos from a food truck that was parked nearby, I loaded my boat and hit the road.  It was a long trip home, but at least I gained an hour when I crossed back into good old Central Time.

I slept good in my own bed last night.


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Time for another race

I've had a hard time busting out of my post-Columbia-Gorge funk.  After the week of hard training and racing out there, I ought to be feeling fit and ready to go get 'em.  Instead, I'm just feeling... old.  The aches and pains I listed in my previous post are a big part of the reason.

But I've pulled myself together enough to sign up for a race this weekend: the Ohio River Paddlefest up at Cincinnati.  I'm hoping that a good showing there will rekindle my enthusiasm.

On Tuesday I did an easy loop of the harbor with Joe.  Today I went down and paddled for 60 minutes, doing six 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals in the middle of it.  I do at least seem to have a decent top gear.

We'll see how it goes this weekend.  I hope some racing will be what the doctor ordered.


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