Monday photo feature

Joe and I met to paddle on a cool but lovely morning last Tuesday.  Joe liked the way the light was playing off the water, and paused to take a photo.

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Down time

I've been getting in the boat just a couple of times per week for the last couple of weeks.  I've been attending to some things in my non-athletic life, and I'm also just ready for a break.

Taking a training break sort of rubs up against my regimented nature.  When I allow myself to think about it too long, I'm tormented by ideas of deteriorating skills and lost muscle tone and the specter of "lagging behind everybody else."  But the fact is that the body just can't perform at a high level every day for years on end.

I've come back from every break I've taken in years past, and I need to relax and be confident that I will again this year.  Next year's race season looks to be somewhat busier than this past year's, but probably not back to a full slate of events--even if the coming vaccines are every bit as good as advertised, it will take the better part of 2021 for them to be administered to the general population and for true "herd immunity" to develop.  And so, it's not like there's anything right around the corner that I have to be in top form for.  Really, it won't be until June that I'd really like to be rounding into shape, with the hope that the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race and the Gorge Downwind Championships will be able to happen again.

So there's plenty of time.  And I have no shortage of activities--some vocational, some purely hobby--to fill it.

This past Tuesday I did a round of my strength routine.  Then went to the river to join Joe for a loop of the harbor, and I felt as tired in the boat as I can ever remember.  What's usually a relaxed session felt like a chore from start to finish.  The strength work I'd just done was part of the reason, but there was also a general weariness in my bones.

On Friday I did another round of the strength routine and then got back in the boat down on the riverfront. I felt a bit more energetic this time, and did a steady loop out on the Mississippi.

Sooner or later I'll be champing at the bit to get back at it for real, but until then, I hope I can savor the lighter load.  One thing I plan to do this offseason is check out the Mocke brothers' new video course on surfski training; I purchased it last summer but haven't gotten around to watching it yet.  I hope it'll give me some fun new ideas when the time comes to ramp up a new season.

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A new strength routine

 I've been doing this routine for the last couple of weeks, and will probably continue it for a couple more.

1.  Front and lat raises with dumbbells

2.  Leg kicks and leg kicks swim (demonstrated at 3:33 of this video)

3.  Bicep curls with dumbbells

4.  Lunges

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Monday photo feature

 

I've been visiting this lady a lot lately.  Dr. Lindsey Carr of Midtown Chiropractic has been treating my neck ailment both with skeletomuscular adjustments and with tools like the scraper she wields in this photo.  It looks harmless enough, but she manages to inflict plenty of pain with it.  She used it for deep scraping of muscle tissue when she treated my plantar fasciitis a couple of years ago, and now she's using it on my neck.

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My body, if not my boat, is moving in the right direction

My main focus this past week has been nursing my neck back to health.  This bit of literature, courtesy of my chiropractor, offers the most likely explanation of what's going on:

My chiropractor also showed me a few exercises I can do to work on the area.  She'd actually promised to e-mail them to me a couple of weeks earlier, but she forgot, and I kept forgetting to remind her.  But we finally got that straightened out this past week and I've been doing the exercises every day since then.  And I think they're having an effect.  My neck pain isn't gone yet--there's still a lot of tightness--but I'm not wincing every time I turn my head to the left.  If nothing else, I'm getting a psychological boost from actually doing something myself to address the problem in between visits to the chiropractor's office.

Aside from an easy paddle with Joe on Tuesday, I spent most of last week out of the boat.  Simply put, I was ready for a break.  I very well might have continued that break through the weekend, except that a run of exceptionally nice weather had moved in.  With sunny skies and temperatures in the mid to high 70s Fahrenheit, I simply couldn't stay away from the river entirely.

On Friday I went down to the dock and spent some time stretching, doing a round of my strength routine, and doing my neck rehab exercises.  Then I got in the boat and set out with the intention of doing what I felt like doing--nothing more, nothing less.

When I reached the mouth of the harbor I saw a barge rig heading upriver from beneath the Harahan Bridge.  I headed straight for it, for I certainly couldn't let a surfing opportunity go by in such warm weather.  The waves weren't the most ideal I've ever seen, but they were playful.  I had great fun just working the boat to prolong each run, and each time a run ended there was another good wave right behind it for me to catch.  The few days of rest seemed to have done me good: I was able to sprint hard again and again with no debilitating fatigue.

As I glided along, I wondered if the morning could possibly be any more perfect.  The weather was gorgeous, I'd done some good work on the dock, and now here I was enjoying the most pleasing sensation a paddler can experience.  Life was good indeed.

Then, just like that, my morning became slightly less perfect.  I needed to turn the boat to the right to keep my "nose in the hole" (as the Mocke brothers like to say), so I pressed on my right foot pedal... and the boat didn't respond.  I pushed the pedal all the way down.  Nothing.  My boat continued moving off to the left, off the wave.  My rudder had inexplicably quit on me.

I muscled the boat over to the Arkansas bank, paddling mostly on my left side because my inert rudder was turning the boat to the left.  I found a place to hop out and see what the deal was.  In short, the little bracket that attaches to the top of the rudder post was no longer gripping the post.  Tightening it required an Allen wrench, and I didn't have one with me (note to self: start keeping one in a life jacket pocket from now on).

I did everything I could to remedy the problem with just my fingers, but I couldn't get the rudder functioning again.  I did at least get it fixed in the center position so it would act as a skeg as I made my way back toward the harbor.  I was now sullen because a lousy equipment failure had yanked a really fun surf session out from under me.  And there probably aren't many days left this year when it's not too cold for such activity.

Yesterday morning I replaced my rudder with a different one with a slightly longer post that I hope the bracket will keep its grip on.  According to the forecast we still had several more balmy days, so both yesterday and today I paddled with the hope of finding some more barge wakes to surf.  Alas, commercial traffic was nowhere to be found.  The environmentalist nature-loving side of me should have been happy to enjoy a river free of the air and noise pollution those beasts create, and in fact I did have good hour-long sessions both days.  But the feeling of being robbed on Friday continued to gnaw at me.

Oh well... I'll get over it.  There ought to be plenty more surfing in my future.  For now my training break will continue and with any luck I'll get this neck ailment under control.

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Monday photo feature

 

Joe Royer shot this photo of me in January of 2010.  Frigid weather in Missouri and Illinois had sent a whole series of ice floes downstream to us.  I can't remember exactly how cold it was in Memphis that day, but my guess is around 25 or 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

Here in 2020 it's not that cold yet, but it seems we're headed in that direction.  The temperature dropped into the mid 30s early this morning.

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On your mark... get set... stop

Wellllll...

I didn't race this weekend.

My plan had been to spend Friday night at my partner Susan Jordan's farmstead home in southern Mississippi, and then travel with Susan to the race at Orange Beach, Alabama, yesterday.

But "the devil fools with the best-laid plans," or "man plans, God laughs," or whatever other adage you prefer.  In this case, Hurricane Zeta was the culprit: Susan's property sustained quite a bit of damage, including the guest house where I was supposed to stay.  The storm knocked out the electricity there, and on Thursday evening it didn't seem likely that power would be restored before the end of the weekend.  So, Susan decided she would not be able to host me and that she could not attend the race.

Upon learning this news, I pondered my options.  I was already registered for the event, of course, and when I asked the director if I could switch to the single surfski class, he assured me that would be no problem.

The trouble was, the field as it appeared on the event's registration web page offered no competition for me at all.  It had already looked thin when I was expecting to race tandem with Susan: in the long-course race there was only one other tandem surfski entered, along with some kind of non-surfski tandem kayak.  Single surfskis in the long-course race?  Zippo.

So, I was looking at a sevenish-hour drive and motel expenses just to race against nobody.  I pulled the plug instead.

It's a little disappointing, but it's okay.  If I've learned anything in Pandemic Times, it's not to get all upset when a race gets called off or otherwise doesn't work out for me.

And right now, my body is tired.  I'm ready for a break.  I've got a lot of other things on my plate--some are there because they have to be, others because I want them to be--and I want to give them more attention.  One of them is healing this neck pain, which continues to make my days much less pleasant than they ought to be.

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