I'm signed up for what will probably be my last race of 2020. My friend Susan Jordan of Lucedale, Mississippi, asked if I would join her in a tandem surfski for the Skull Harbor Canoe and Kayak Race at Orange Beach, Alabama, on October 31. I saw no reason not to, and so it's now on my schedule.
Meanwhile, here in the Memphis area the outer bands of Hurricane Delta moved in Friday, with the heavy precipitation arriving in the early hours of Saturday morning. I woke up to sloppy, wet, blustery conditions. The rain had abated by the time I was heading for the river around 9:30 AM, but the Internet radar indicated it would be back.
As I walked down the ramp to the marina, I saw Joe and his wife Carol Lee paddling their tandem boat toward the north end of the harbor. So when I got my boat in the water I headed north too so I would meet them on their way back south. After a 10-minute warmup I did a set of three 8-stroke sprints. I also spent some time picking up litter: the rain had washed a whole bunch of garbage into the harbor, and I focused on aluminum cans because the grocery store near the marina has a collection bin for cans. Whatever pennies the recycler pays for them goes to the Humane Society.
So I had a footwell full of cans by the time I saw Joe and Carol Lee coming back down. I turned and fell in alongside them. We paddled down to the mouth of the harbor and headed up the Mississippi River along the Tennessee bank. A barge rig was coming downriver and we decided to continue upstream until the vessel had passed us, and then head back downstream.
I headed for the towboat's wake and found some interesting conditions: not exactly easy to ride, but rideable nevertheless. The waves were changing rapidly and I had to be on my toes to prolong each ride as much as possible. My footwell full of cans gave me some extra motivation to keep the boat upright.
I kept thinking about what Dawid Mocke had told me in South Africa last February: "Put your nose in the hole (the trough), and then try to keep it in the hole as the hole moves around." I had some success doing that in this particular set of barge waves.
I reunited with Joe and Carol Lee at the mouth of the harbor, and we headed back toward the dock. The rain was picking up, and the gusty north wind was blowing it at an angle of maybe 50 degrees with the horizontal.
All told, I paddled for just shy of two hours, during which I visited with a couple of friends, gathered a footwell-load of aluminum cans, did a few hard sprints, and got some practice with balance, control, and mobility in the waves. If that's not a successful morning of paddling, I'd like to know what is.
The rain really began to pour as I put my boat away and changed into dry clothes. By the time I got up to my car in the parking lot, my clothes weren't dry anymore. I drove home and changed clothes again.
The rain had mostly moved out by the end of the day yesterday. This morning there was just a fine drizzle falling, and that was gone by the time I was in my boat. I warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and then commenced a pace workout: four 2000-meter pieces with 500 meters recovery in between. My target pace was 7.0 miles per hour for each piece. There was enough wind blowing to make that difficult at times, but I maintained it without much trouble for most of the workout. My remaining workouts between now and October 31 will likely be shorter and faster.
For more information on what this blog is about, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment