I departed around 9 AM Central Time Friday and by late afternoon had reached my home for the next two nights in Charlestown State Park on the Indiana side of the Ohio River. Before making camp I went to the river access for a short paddle. I did four 12-stroke sprints and otherwise unwound from the six-plus-hour drive.
The campground was the kind that caters primarily to RVs and similar "industrial tourists." I heard loud music and plenty of noisy kids running around as I pitched my tent and made a quick supper, and as I settled down for the night I wondered how well people there abided by the quiet hours. Eventually I dozed off, and when I woke up at one point in the early morning hours all was peaceful.
I got up around 5:30 and made some breakfast in the dark. The greater Louisville area sits near the western edge of the Eastern Time zone, and it was nearly 7 o'clock before some daylight finally began to appear in the eastern sky. A fog was descending on the landscape, prolonging the darkness.
The race site was only eight or ten miles upriver at Westport, Kentucky, but it took me nearly an hour to get there because I had to drive downriver via a network of roads to cross the Lewis & Clark Bridge and then navigate another network of roads back upriver on the Kentucky side to reach the tiny hamlet. Once there it was simple enough to find the racers congregated in Schamback Park.
Fist bumps and waves replaced the usual handshakes and hugs, and everybody wore a mask, but otherwise it was the usual pre-race buzz. Athletes checked in and taped their numbers to their boats. Race directors Elaine Harold and Lee Droppelman greeted visitors and disseminated information while keeping an eye on the food preparation for after the race. Little by little the nearly two dozen racers made their way down the boat ramp and onto the water.
The course for the Ohio River Invitational was two laps of a loop that measured a hair over 4.5 miles (about 7300 meters). We would start alongside Schamback Park, proceed downriver to Eighteen Mile Island, round the lower end of the island in counterclockwise direction, and paddle back upriver to a buoy where we'd started.
We lined up, listened as Lee counted down the seconds from the deck of his motorboat, and got to work as he shouted "Go!" Though I feel like I've done more than my share of short sprints this summer, that didn't translate into blazing speed off the line. In the blink of an eye I was chasing five or six other racers and frantically trying to put my boat in a desirable position.
Fast-improving Chattanoogan Roy Roberts rocketed into the lead. Scott Cummins of Louisville did the best job of keeping Roy within reach in the first few hundred meters. West Virginian Gregg Peters and Michael Alexeev of Columbus, Ohio, charged hard to stay in contact with the two leaders while I dug deep to stay with them. By the end of three minutes we had formed a fragile single-file string: Roy, then Scott, then Gregg, then Michael, then me. We were flying along at 8.5 miles per hour, and as I strained to stay on Michael's stern wake, my challenge wasn't so much the physical toll as simply keeping my boat moving fast enough to hold that position. I would slip off the wake and sprint hard to get back on; but after several rounds of that, I decided there had to be a better use of my energy, and I let the lead pack go.
Just like that, I was where nobody likes to be: all alone. The lead pack quickly increased its lead on me, while my nearest pursuers appeared to be 20 or 30 seconds back. As I chugged along I realized my only choice was to maintain the fastest pace I could and hope that the guys up ahead would eventually slow a bit so I could reel them in.
That possibility wasn't farfetched, really. Roy and Scott had separated themselves from Gregg and Michael, but by the 3000-meter mark Roy had dropped Scott and Scott was fading back toward Gregg and Michael. Maybe my old friend Scott would be ripe for the plucking, I thought.
But the early quick pace had done a number on me, too. As we rounded the lower end of Eighteen Mile Island for the first time, the shallow water there felt like a cinder block tethered to my boat. As we headed up the narrow channel between the island and the Kentucky bank, I struggled to move at 6.8 mph. Lee had told us before the race that the river had virtually no current, that we were basically paddling on a lake. Was this slow pace really all I had left in me for the rest of the way?
As we lumbered up the chute, I calculated that the Scott/Gregg/Michael trio was about 55 seconds ahead of me. The only way I was going to catch any of those guys was if he died completely, or flipped, or broke his rudder. The chances of this vampire getting his blood meal seemed slim.
It was maybe 1500 meters from the top of the island back to where we'd started, and I tried to push my doubts aside and keep going. Once in a while my favorite baseball team falls behind by a gaudy number of runs, and the radio announcers always say "At this point, the guys just need to keep playing. Keep taking good at-bats, and stick to the fundamentals they practice every day... they've got an uphill climb, but comebacks do happen!"
Fundamentals. I've worked on them for years, and now they were all I could count on to take care of me. I tried to relax my body, take solid strokes, use the power of my legs and lower abdominals. As I rounded the buoy and headed back downstream for the second lap, I got a mental boost as my speed shot up to around 7.5 mph. Apparently there was some current of at least a half-mile-per-hour or so, and my slow progress in the chute wasn't entirely my fault.
Lee had been tooling around the course in his boat, and as I made my way downriver toward Eighteen Mile Island he came up alongside me trailing an inviting wake. I hopped on and rode it while first mate Cindy Massa stood on deck and shot video, and I couldn't help smiling as my speed leapt up near 9 mph. But of course, it wouldn't be fair for me to let them pull me all the way up to where I could rejoin Scott and Gregg and Michael, so I gave up my surf after maybe ten seconds. Lee then zipped over to Scott and Gregg and Michael and offered them a ride; Scott got the best ride and opened a several-boatlength gap on the other two. But then he voluntarily backed off the speed so that the pack could re-form.
If only we could count on such selfless sportsmanship in the upcoming presidential election.
I reached the bottom of Eighteen Mile Island with my spirit uplifted by the aid of both the current and Lee's motor. But once I was plodding up the chute I again calculated about a 55-second gap between me and the pack up ahead. By this time I didn't seem to have any close pursuers, so it looked like a fifth-place finish was my destiny unless one of the top-four guys had the mother of all collapses.
Roy Roberts had taken his training up a notch this year, and that was evident from the start of the race to the finish. Once he'd dropped Scott he cruised along unchallenged to take first place in one hour, 12 minutes, 31 seconds. The chase pack finally began to string out a bit as the three athletes made their final charge toward the finish line. Scott claimed second overall nearly two minutes behind Roy. Gregg was third five seconds back, with Michael fourth ten seconds later.
I made up my mind to surge as hard as I could over the final kilometer to the finish, but I was unable to nudge my speed much above 6.9 or so. I crossed the line more than a minute after Michael and more than four minutes ahead of the sixth-place finisher, Gregg's son Corbin Peters. At 15 years old, Corbin has a future that promises faster and faster times while quinquagenarians like me get slower and slower.
Elaine Harold of Louisville was the lone female surfski racer in the field, and she acquitted herself nicely five seconds behind Corbin. Here are the complete results:
I've spent all summer looking for towboat wakes to play around on. So even though I was beat to the socks when the race was over, my reaction was automatic when I saw a barge rig moving up the river. I paddled out to it and found a very nice set of waves trailing behind. Once I got myself situated I was gliding along between 7 and 8 mph, and it wasn't long before at least a half-dozen other boats were paddling out to join me. There was a pattern to the waves not unlike a downwind run and we had a blast moving back and forth linking rides together.
I for one could have spent the next several hours out there, but doing so would have carried me miles away from the barbecue luncheon, generously prepared by members of Elaine's family, that awaited back at the park. The others realized the same thing, so before long we were all paddling back to get in the chow line.
After some great food and the usual rituals of awards, raffle prizes, and swag handouts, we all headed our separate ways. I returned to my campsite in Charlestown State Park for an afternoon nap. There's nothing like the exhaustion of a canoe and kayak race to help you doze off in a noisy RV compound.
I ventured into the nearby town of Charlestown, Indiana, for supper. The choices were few, and I opted for the local pizza joint. Due to COVID-19 restrictions the place offered carry-out only, so I took my 10-inch pie across the street to a picnic table in the city park. The pizza wasn't great, but it was good, especially at the end of a physically-demanding day.
I was in my sleeping bag by 9 PM. Scott and I had agreed to get together the next morning for a Sunday paddle, so once we were both awake yesterday morning we reached a text-message agreement to meet at the Harrods Creek boathouse upriver from downtown Louisville.
We were both tired and sore, but we knew a good 90- or 100-minute session would help us on the road to recovery. We paddled up the Ohio, looped around Twelve Mile Island, and came back to where we'd started. There was a steady wind blowing and we almost had some downwind conditions to play in... almost. But that was nothing to fret about. I had fun paddling along and catching up with my friend whom I hadn't seen face-to-face in over a year. On the way back toward Louisville several big pleasure craft cruised by us and we had some fun trying to surf their wakes as they moved against the wind-driven swells. We didn't get any sweet rides but it was a good way to practice some skills in confused water.
We got back to the boathouse, changed into dry clothes, and drove farther into Louisville to have coffee at a shop owned and operated by members of the local paddleboard element. After some conversation and relaxation there, it was 2 PM Eastern Time and I had to head home. I got in the car and headed south on Interstate 65, happy to have seen some friendly faces and raced semi-respectably in this oddest of years.
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The remnants of Tropical Storm Beta passed through the Mid South this week, bringing weather that felt like a mild stretch of our winter. Tuesday was cool and overcast with occasional sprinkles, and yesterday it rained all day while the temperature stayed below 65 degrees Fahrenheit.
On Tuesday I did a round of the strength routine and then joined Joe for a loop of the harbor. I was hoping some cheerier weather might return today, but this morning I paddled in a stubborn drizzle and the sky remained cloudy all day. I did a set of six 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals during a session of 40 minutes overall.
Aside from a quick trip to Little Rock in June, I haven't left the Memphis area since February. That will change tomorrow when I head for a weekend race on the Ohio River a few miles upstream of Louisville. The race is Saturday morning, and I'll be camping in a state park across the river in Indiana.
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Yesterday was the first truly fall-like day we've had this season. It was almost chilly outside when I got up in the morning, and it remained brisk and a bit breezy for the rest of the day. In the boat I did three 8-stroke sprints and otherwise paddled steady and relaxed for 60 minutes.
The weather was much the same today. This morning I did a round of the strength routine before heading to the river. In the boat I paddled out of the harbor and up the Mississippi to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and then returned to the harbor, where I did a set of eight 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals.
The news is good in the aftermath of my mother's surgery. The doctor said the procedure went extremely well and that he doesn't believe any cancer is present.
This positive outlook for my mom's health makes me more confident that I can travel to a race or two this fall. The first is coming up next weekend; I'll provide more information soon.
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On Tuesday I did a round of the strength routine and then paddled a loop of the harbor with Joe. Temperatures this week are still quite warm--mid to high 80s Fahrenheit--but not unpleasantly hot. It's looking like this weekend will be much more fall-like.
I wasn't expecting to paddle today. My mother had surgery this morning to remove a tumor from her colon, and my plan was to spend the day at the hospital with her. But we found out just yesterday that COVID-19 restrictions allow a patient to have only one companion in the waiting room, and since my sister had come into town for the surgery, we agreed to let her be that person. So I was able to paddle today after all, although needless to say my mind wasn't entirely on the river.
After another round of strength work, I went downtown and got in the boat with the intention of doing a workout. I've been favoring "play" workouts in this unorthodox year, but with two or three possible races of 8-12 miles coming up this fall, I could use to do some pace work, and it takes more of a "work" workout to accomplish that. I made a deal with myself: if there was some barge traffic out on the river, I'd go out and try to surf; if not, I'd do three one-mile pieces in the harbor.
I did three 8-stroke sprints on the way to the harbor's mouth, and when I got there I found the river deserted. So, one-mile pieces it would be.
I was hoping to maintain around 7.5 miles per hour for each piece, but there was a pretty good northwest wind blowing that forced me to adjust my expectations. I did the first piece going north from the mouth of the harbor, and with the headwind I could only manage around 6.9 mph. My elapsed time was 8:31. After a five-minute recovery I did the second piece, still headed north. By this time I was in the upper half of the harbor and I thought I might have more shelter from the wind because the banks are more forested there. But this time I struggled to keep it above 6.7. And I ground to a complete stop at one point because of some ropes tethering something beneath the surface to the bank. I saw the first one just in time to avoid being decapitated.
I finished that second piece with a time of 9:07. I recovered for another five minutes, and then turned back south to do the last piece with the wind at my back. The difference was stark as I averaged 7.6ish in speed. Of course, there's a downside to having the wind at my back: I get sweat in my eyes and they sting badly. I had to stop once and wipe my eyes with my hat, losing a couple of strokes. I finished with a time of 7:56.
I can't say that the workout was much fun, but hopefully it'll pay off if I make it to a race or two. Whether I do depends on my mom's health in the coming weeks. I spoke to her this afternoon and it sounds like her surgery went well. She'll be in the hospital over the weekend, and I hope we'll know soon what further treatment she'll need.
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The next OICK race is scheduled for June 19, 2021.
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I felt sluggish and unmotivated as I headed down to the river yesterday. The weather, overcast and muggy, wasn't helping.
I stretched slowly on the dock, eased myself into the boat, and headed south toward the mouth of the harbor. I could see it raining down on the South Bluffs, and eventually the rain moved up to where I was. That was okay with me: if it's going to be humid anyway, why not push it up to a hundred percent?
After a set of 8-stroke sprints, I headed out onto the Mississippi, and through the rain I could make out a barge rig moving upstream beneath the Harahan Bridge. I headed for it with the hope that some surfing could get my juices flowing. But the waves were a weird shape and proved very difficult to catch. I never did get a full blown ride where I could stop paddling, but several times when I kept sprinting hard I got some aid from the waves, even hitting 6 miles per hour a couple of times (going against the current on the Mississippi River, that's pretty fast).
Eventually the waves died down and I headed back to the harbor. By now I was feeling much more energetic in the boat. It's remarkable how good a remedy some hard sprints can be for lethargic feelings. You could say they jump-started my engine, or primed my pump, or whatever other silly metaphor you prefer.
Some heavy showers had moved through while I was out on the river, and as I paddled back toward the dock water was gushing from the storm drain outfalls along the bank. I could see many plastic soda bottles and other floatable trash tumbling into the harbor. Anything we leave on the ground will find its way to the river eventually.
Shortly after I'd reached the dock, the heavens really opened up. The rain on the marina's steel roof made a deafening roar. By this time I'd changed into my dry clothes, and I now stood there waiting for a break in the rain so I could run up to the car without getting drenched. I cooled my heels for close to a half hour before it let up enough for me to make a run for it, and I still got pretty wet.
By this morning the precipitation had moved out, but the sky remained overcast. I did a round of the strength routine at the house, then went to the riverfront and warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and then paddled out onto the river to see what was going on. There was no barge traffic in sight, and I decided to do an up-tempo paddle for an hour or so. I ferried over to the Arkansas side and paddled up into the Loosahatchie Chute, whose surface is more sand than water at this morning's level of 1.5 feet on the Memphis gauge.
I paddled up the channel of water near the west side of the Chute, thinking at some point I'd find a route through the sandbars to the east side and get back over to the main river. But it had been a long time since I'd been up here at such a low water level, and apparently the sandbar configuration had changed or my memory was faulty, or both. Finding no water on which to work my way eastward, I finally got out of the boat and started hiking across the sand. What I found was that while there is still a deeper channel on the east side of the Chute, there was not enough water today for it to be paddleable. So I had to trudge southward toward the lower end of the Loosahatchie Bar, and there I finally found deep water connected to the main channel.
By now there was a barge rig coming down the river, so I paddled onto its wake to see what I could get. The towboat was following an arcing path through the eastern span of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and because of that the waves had a lot of lateral movement to them and it was hard to keep track of the sweet spots. But I did manage to get several decent rides, and I tried hard to keep my "nose in the hole," as Dawid Mocke likes to say, and sustain each one as long as I could.
When I reached the mouth of the harbor I said goodbye to the waves and headed back toward the dock. My unplanned portage across the sandbars had added at least a half hour to my intended time in the boat, but I had nothing pressing scheduled for the rest of the day and was glad to add a bit of surfing to the strong-paced paddling I'd already done. I drove home feeling pleasantly tired and pleased with the pretty good weekend of paddling I'd put together.
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Just in case anybody's curious about the goings-on at Casa de Elmore... I've just wrapped up another big round of masonry work and am taking it easy for a couple of days to admire the results. I spent most of this morning doing some serious housecleaning because of all the dust that project produced. Previously the mortar between the bricks was crumbling and raining sand all over everything, and I hope this work I've done has fixed that problem. Even in the Before Times I was sort of a homebody, and now in Pandemic Times I'm spending more time at home than ever, so I think it's worth a few rounds of hard work to make my home as pleasing as it can be.
On Tuesday I did a relaxed loop of the harbor with Joe. That felt good after the fairly strenuous paddling I'd done on Monday.
Yesterday I did a round of the new strength routine and then headed back to the river. After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I went out on the Mississippi and did a workout that I first did under Dawid Mocke's watch back in February as we paddled from Muizenberg Beach to Fish Hoek Beach in South Africa. I did ten strokes on, ten strokes off, twenty strokes on, ten strokes off, thirty strokes on, ten strokes off, forty strokes on, ten strokes off... and so on, all the way to a hundred strokes on. Once I'm up over fifty strokes on, I'm really feeling this workout--ten strokes off seems like a very meager rest interval at this point.
After completing this workout, I paddled easy back to the harbor and up to the monorail bridge. Then I timed myself in a bridge-to-bridge sprint. I didn't have a particularly crisp start, and by the time I reached the halfway mark I could tell I wasn't on pace for a fast time. I was tired from my workout on the river, and it felt like every time I bore down I was actually slowing down a little. My thighs were throbbing big-time in the last hundred meters. I broke the southern plane of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge with a time of 2 minutes, 7 seconds. Not terrible, but not really that good either.
The Fahrenheit highs have been in the 90s most of the week, but this might be our last hot stretch: the extended forecast is showing highs in the 80s with some rain this weekend, and then highs in the lower 80s and even the 70s for the next couple of weeks. And of course, the official end of summer is less than two weeks away.
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I'm finally back at it in the strength department. Here's a routine I plan to do for the next little while:
1. Power plank-ups (demonstrated at 1:16 of this video)
2. Pullups
3. The "achy-arm" exercises my chiropractor showed me
4. Pullups
5. Super crunches (demonstrated at 3:09 of this video)
6. Pullups
7. Leg swing (demonstrated at 4:28 of this video)
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My buddy Rob, a native of New York State, was living in Colorado when I made a trip out there in the summer of 1999. A good amateur photographer, Rob shot a bunch of slides of me paddling in various locales. He sent me prints of several of them back then, but I never saw most of them until just this past month, when Rob scanned the slides and sent me a disc with the digital images.
In the photo above I'm paddling on the Cache la Poudre River near the community of Mishawaka in the northern part of the state.
*Edited to add: I think Rob may have scanned this slide backwards, because I'm a lefty paddler in a C1.
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That muggy weather we'd had for a week finally gave way to some cooler, drier air Friday evening, and by the time I was heading to the river Saturday morning it was sunny and beautiful with a Fahrenheit temperature in the low 70s. I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then headed out onto the Mississippi with the intention of doing some kind of "play" workout that pushed the intensity.
A barge rig was coming downriver with some nice waves trailing behind it, and I peeled out to see what kind of surfing I could get. A couple of waves passed beneath me as I searched for my balance; then I threw in a good sprint and seemed on the verge of catching a ride when CRACK!!!! My right pedal broke free from the footboard. Just like that, my surf session was over and I ferried over to the bank to inspect the damage. The little eyes on which the pedal swivels had worn through--not really such a big surprise on a boat that's more than a decade old. But it was disheartening to have to abandon my fun on the river on such a beautiful morning. It's about 2000 meters from the mouth of the harbor back to the dock, and paddling this stretch was a chore with a compromised steering system. Any time I needed the boat to turn right I had to reach down and pull on the starboard rudder line with my hand.
I finally made it, and I carried the boat up to my car to take it home for repairs. I was annoyed to have such a project added to my to-do list, but if you use something long and hard enough it's eventually going to break, and any paddler worth his salt must be willing to fix his boat.
I spent time Saturday afternoon and yesterday doing the repair. I unmounted the footboard from the footwell, but I didn't disconnect it from the rudder lines because reconnecting the lines is always a royal hassle, and I thought I could make the repair without disconnecting them. Basically, I rebuilt the eyes on the pedal with Kevlar, fiberglass, and marine-grade epoxy resin, like this:
Once I had the fiber pieces glued on, I inserted some thickened epoxy inside each eye to make it more substantial and replace the plastic that had broken away. That brown stuff that looks like it's dripping is the thickened epoxy; I used wood dust from one of my electric sanders as the thickening agent. A woodworking background doesn't hurt when there's a boat that needs fixing.
Once the epoxy had hardened, I trimmed away as much of the messy stuff as I could, drilled out the eye holes, and put it all back together:
One can quibble with the cosmetics; in addition to the patches on the pedals, you can see previous repair work where the rudder lines emerge from inside the boat. But I'd rather paddle an ugly surfski whose steering system works than a pretty surfski with no steering.
I took the boat back to the river this morning and met Adam for a brisk paddle of about 70 minutes. My pedals weren't moving as freely as I would have liked, and I may have to tweak them a bit, but otherwise I had no trouble steering.
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I took some time off from strength routines, partly because of the achiness in my arms and partly just because I needed a mental break. I've written here many times how strength work is my least-favorite part of training.
But now that my arms are feeling better I'm finding some motivation again. I'm still doing the achy-arm exercises that my chiropractor showed me, and I'm starting to work in some more stuff slowly. So far I've added pull-ups and plank-ups, and I plan to add a couple of more things in the next week or so to form a full routine. I'll post more about that later.
Meanwhile, the weather here has been not particularly hot, and I'm glad about that, but it's not what I'd call delightful because of high humidity, overcast skies, and on-and-off rain. It's been feeling rather swampy. But I'll take it over the triple-digit heat indices we typically have this time of year.
I paddled this week both Tuesday and yesterday. On Tuesday I joined Joe for a loop of the harbor. Yesterday I got in the boat for an intense 60 minutes: after warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I started my main workout: ten 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals. I did the first six of these sprints while paddling up the Mississippi along the Tennessee bank. Then I went out and tried to surf behind a downstream-moving barge rig that was producing good-size waves. I never quite managed to achieve any lengthy rides, but I threw in a lot of short- hard sprints in the attempt. Once the commercial craft had outdistanced me I returned to the harbor and did the final four 30-second sprints. So in a 60-minute session I got in both a "work" workout and a "play" workout. I got back to the dock with that "elated tired" feeling that I described Sunday.
Getting back into some more intense training has me feeling my mojo coming back. But what exactly am I training for? Well, it's possible that I'll attend a race three weeks from tomorrow, depending on how some things in my non-athletic life work out. I'll talk more about that later.
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