Getting slightly more serious (baby steps)

I'm starting to grind the gears back into motion in preparation for summertime racing.  On Tuesday I started up a new gym routine--some arm exercises with rubber bands and some core exercises.  Then I went down to the river and did a simple tempo workout.  I warmed up for 3 kilometers, paddled a strong tempo for 4 km, and cooled down for 3 km.  My target pace for the tempo piece was 11 kilometers per hour; paddling with a tailwind, I had no problem maintaining between 11.5 and 12.0 kph.

Tuesday's weather was cool but bright and sunny.  Since then the Fahrenheit temperature has risen toward the low 80s, and it's gradually gotten a bit cloudier.  It was still very sunny yesterday when I went to the river and did a steady 60-minute paddle.

This morning I did another gym session.  It's supposed to be partly cloudy and warm this weekend and I hope that'll be the backdrop for some good paddling.

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Monday photo feature

It looks like a pretty nasty rash, but it's just a few superficial burns.  On Friday evening I was cooking a swordfish steak in sesame oil in an iron skillet, and I didn't have a shirt on, and when I flipped the steak some hot oil splashed across my torso.  I guess I need to go out and buy an apron.

It actually didn't hurt as much as one might think.  It stung at first, and then sort of smarted for the rest of the evening.  By the next morning I couldn't feel a thing, and with a shirt on all day I forgot all about it.  I noticed how bad the marks looked when I took a shower in the evening.

By yesterday morning the spots had started to blister.  They still didn't really hurt, but at one point when I was scratching an itch I ripped the skin off one of the blisters and that hurt a lot.

Oh well... I guess they'll heal when they heal.  I figured my readers would want to know all about it since my general health is pertinent to my athletic endeavors.

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Keeping it going even though my mind is elsewhere

I've been busy with all kinds of stuff this past week, but I've managed to maintain a general fitness routine.  I paddled for an hour both Tuesday and Friday, just steady sessions in which I tried to take good strokes and not get distracted enough for my form to get sloppy.  While I do keep an eye on speed, I try not to get bent out of shape if I don't go that fast.  All kinds of things out there in nature can slow a boat down.

I did bike rides Thursday and yesterday.  I'm trying to heed the advice that the Mocke brothers offer in their instructional video series--that cross-training activities should feel like a break from training, not training workouts themselves, even though they do have training value.

This morning I did another loop around the Loosahatchie Bar.  With the Mississippi flowing at 22.7 feet on the Memphis gauge, the course measured 19.76 kilometers and I covered it in one hour, 58 minutes, 10 seconds.  I think the fastest I've ever done this course is around an hour 50 minutes, or maybe even a little under that, but once again, I try not to get too obsessed with my time; anything under two hours is a strong effort.  The water at the north end of the Bar was shallow and that slowed me down a little.

In another week or so it'll be time to intensify the training a little, now that my next big race (the Gorge downwind race in the Pacific Northwest) is less than three months off.

The weather has been quite warm for the last few days: the temperature has exceeded 80 degrees Fahrenheit each day since Thursday.  But summer's not here yet.  I think we're supposed to get some rain tomorrow, followed by some highs in the 60s for a couple of days.

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Monday photo feature

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, my film "A Paddler's Journey" is available for viewing for ONE WEEK ONLY!  You can go watch it here.

For this latest cut of the film, I cheated in several shots from my trip to South Africa this past January.  Pictured above is a screen shot from some footage that Dawid Mocke shot on his Go Pro camera.  I'm a little blurred by a drop of water on the lens, but that Roman Rock Lighthouse looks majestic as always.

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Late spring doldrums

This past weekend brought us another stretch of cool, rainy weather that makes me wonder if those warm, sunny, carefree days will ever arrive.

Saturday morning I got to the river and realized I was slightly underdressed.  The temperature was above 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but a north-northwest breeze made things chilly.  Once I was in the boat paddling I felt okay, but not cozy.  I paddled for 100 minutes, venturing up into the Loosahatchie Chute before heading back.  A few raindrops fell on me as I approached the entrance to the harbor.

Yesterday the temperature stayed below 60 with periods of rain.  I stayed in and worked in the shop most of the day.  In the late afternoon I decided to drag myself outside for a bike ride.  I normally prefer to get my athletic stuff done in the morning so I can wind down at the end of the day, but once I was on the bike I found a groove and had a great ride.  I covered 34.5 kilometers in 95 minutes, traveling out the Greenline to Shelby Farms and doing a loop around Patriot Lake before coming back home.  I felt better after the ride than I'd felt all day, and after a good supper and some reading I promptly fell asleep.

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NOW PLAYING! ONE WEEK ONLY!

If you haven't managed to catch my film "A Paddler's Journey" yet, you now have another chance: I've got it posted on Vimeo for one week.  The run will end next Sunday morning.  You can go watch it here.

This is my leanest, meanest cut of the film yet: it comes in at a svelte one hour 45 minutes, nine minutes shorter than the cut I submitted to the festival.  So even if you've seen the film, it's worth checking out again to see what you think.

The film won the Viewers' Choice award at the festival.  If you're one of the people who helped it do so, thank you so much!  And if you haven't seen it yet, go see if you agree with the people who voted for it!

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Wind and water

As I paddled away from the dock Tuesday morning I found myself paddling into a stronger-than-usual south wind.  I felt sure it had to be over 20 knots.  Approaching the mouth of the harbor, I was curious to see what conditions I might find out on the Mississippi.  What I found was some sure-enough downwind.  It wasn't the Miller's Run or anything, but there were definitely some organized swells out there.

Unfortunately, downwind conditions are so rare around here that I'm usually not prepared when they do happen.  On Tuesday I was dressed for the air temperature (72 degrees Fahrenheit and rising) rather than the water temperature (no more than 50 degrees).  I was paddling the least-stable ski I own with a small rudder.  I had no leash.  So I was sort of timid as I attempted to get something going out on the river.  I flailed around out there for maybe a half-hour before heading back in.

This week I've got a lot going on in my non-athletic life, and I'm just trying to maintain a modicum of general fitness until I start ramping the training back up a couple of weeks from now.  My current project in the workshop includes a lot of strenuous labor-- not exactly organized training, but if nothing else I'm burning calories and falling asleep quickly at night.

I worked hard in the shop all day yesterday.  Late in the day a storm front moved through that brought us a huge amount of rain.  As of this writing I haven't seen the total, but my guess is that it was more than three inches.  The storms moved on across the Tennessee and Cumberland and Ohio watersheds, and as a result the Mississippi is expected to rise from yesterday's level of 17.5 feet on the Memphis gauge to 24.7 feet by next Wednesday.

This morning I did a bike ride.  I decided to head out east on the Greenline because I was curious to see what the Wolf River looked like after all that rain.  The Wolf is normally a sleepy little stream that you can't hear flowing, but as I crossed the bridge over it today I heard that ever-so-soothing sound of rushing water.

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Monday photo feature

Once in a while somebody asks me "Why would you want to paddle on that polluted river?"  I think that's the wrong question.  The one I want to hear people asking is "Why have we decided it's acceptable for our river to be polluted?"

The lower Mississippi certainly has its share of pollutants, the majority being of the agricultural variety--fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, stuff like that.  The cities and towns in its watershed discharge treated sewage, and of course "treated" can be an elastic term that depends on everything from weather conditions to mechanical problems to administrative and political issues.  Then again, the lower Mississippi River is not the fetid open sewer that some people seem to think it is.  It's supposed to be muddy: it's carrying the sediment of two-thirds of the continent, continental erosion being part of the never-ending geologic cycle.

The pollutant that's the least possible to ignore is the floating litter.  The photo above popped up as a Face Book "memory" yesterday.  The cartoon ran in our local paper seven years ago, and it reminded me of one of the more mendacious lines I hear tossed about by our gutless city leaders in both the public and private sectors: "We have no control over litter that comes to us from those cities up north."

Having spent thousands of hours paddling my boat on the Memphis riverfront, and I am quite sure that over 95% of the litter in the water originates in the greater Memphis area.  Go down to the river after a heavy thunderstorm and you'll see trash flowing from the Wolf River, the Loosahatchie River, Nonconnah Creek, and Bayou Gayoso--watersheds that cover all of Shelby County, most of Fayette County, and portions of DeSoto, Marshall, and Benton Counties.

Shortly after the Riverfront Development Corporation, the quasi-governmental organization that manages public properties along the riverfront, completed its signature project, the Beale Street Landing docking facility for the riverboat tourism industry, a local newspaper columnist called attention to the mass of litter that had collected in the area of water between the dock and the riverbank, deeming it a civic embarrassment that resembled a miniature version of the great "island of plastic" that's floating in the Pacific Ocean.

The R.D.C. knew it had to respond.  Did it do so by seeking an effective solution to the riverfront litter problem?  Oh, heavens no.  It placed floating booms at each end of that gap between the dock and the bank, assuring that the litter would just float someplace else.  Problem solved.  Hey, it was the Riverfront Development Corporation--their job was to build stuff, not care about the health of the river itself.  (The R.D.C. has since been re-branded as the Memphis River Parks Partnership, or M.R.P.P., or, as I like to call it, Mr. P.P.)

Of course, it's easy to point fingers at the people in charge, but the biggest finger needs to be pointed at us. Me, you, and every other ordinary citizen.  What are we doing to stop litter from escaping into the environment in the first place?

Speaking for nobody but myself, I try to keep my household and workshop garbage contained and pick up as much litter as I can around my neighborhood (I could write many, many paragraphs on nothing but that).  But there are further steps than that: I know I need to look hard at what I consume.  I practically never drink sodas anymore, so I don't consume many of those plastic bottles, and it's good for my health to boot.  I do not buy bottled water; why on Earth would I, when my city happens to have one of the best drinking water sources in the world?  Even if that weren't the case, bottled water is often no better than the local tap water.  (Yes, I know there are exceptions here and there.)  I take my own tote bags to the grocery store so I don't consume the plastic bags they're so eager to give me.

Those are just a few suggestions and I'm under no delusion that I'm superior to anybody else.  There are always areas where I could do better.

And... I'm not sure where to take this rant from here.  I know it's not what my readers expect from a simple Monday photo feature.  I guess I'll wrap it up with this: have some faith that our government institutions can address the problem, demand that they do address the problem, and conduct yourself in a way that doesn't make it any more difficult than it already is for them to do so.

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Blowing in the wind

On Tuesday I paddled for 60 minutes.  The session was utterly unstructured; just a chance to get out and use my muscles for a while.

I spent the rest of the week out of the boat.  Part of the reason was a lot of work to do at home; part of the reason was a lot of not particularly inviting weather; and part of the reason was the desire to take some time off.  The time to fire up the training again will come soon enough, and in the meantime I never seem to lack other things to do.

I did get out on a bike ride Thursday afternoon.  I rode for an hour, covering a little over 20 kilometers.

This is the time of year when I've had it with winter, but the weather isn't quite ready to give me what I want.  Since Thursday the annoyance has been primarily the wind.  Friday was the worst day, when the temperature stayed below 60 degrees Fahrenheit, the skies were overcast, and the wind screamed outside all day long.  No, these conditions are not exactly Arctic, but right now anything shy of blissful sunshine and warmth is unacceptable to me.  I barely even ventured outside Friday, mostly just hunkering down in the shop.

Yesterday was quite a bit nicer: the sun came out and the temperature rose into the 60s.  But the wind persisted.  I got myself out for another bike ride.  I rode downtown and across the river to the Arkansas side, where I did a nice loop on the Big River Trail.  All told I covered between 35 and 40 kilometers.

The wind continued today, this time from the south, and that has brought some warmer temperatures.  I'm still trying to get in a longer paddle each week, and with the river getting a bit too low for paddling around the Loosahatchie Bar (it was 17.1 feet on the Memphis gauge this morning), I decided to paddle up the Mississippi and up the Wolf River to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge and back.I could feel the south wind picking up as I paddled upriver, and I was afraid it would be a monster to paddle against on the trip back down, but it wasn't so bad.  I just relaxed and let the current carry me.  My distanced covered was 19.69 kilometers, and I completed it in two hours.  When I paddled around the Bar last Sunday I covered 20.09 km and did it several minutes faster than two hours.  The difference maker, I'm guessing, is that today's paddle included more flatwater.

The forecast calls for more windy days with some storms this coming week.  Not unusual for this time of year.  Soon enough we'll be having those tranquil hot days that Mid South summers are known for, and I'll be yearning for some cooler, breezier days.

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Monday photo feature

Yesterday I paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar for the third time this year.  Maybe this is a good time to remind readers what this route looks like.  The image above was generated by Adam Davis's G.P.S. device when Adam and I paddled around the Bar a couple of years ago.

The Loosahatchie Bar is the big island in the Mississippi River.  Paddling around the Bar involves leaving the harbor, paddling upriver along the Tennessee bank for a while, ferrying across the main shipping channel, rounding the north end of the Bar, coming down the channel on the west side (the Loosahatchie Chute), and then returning to the harbor.  The numbers on this picture are mile markers: Adam started and finished at the big red marker next to the word "Memphis," so he traveled about 10.5 miles in all.  I started and finished at the marina where I keep my boat: it looks like a little "equals" sign below where it says "Harbor Town."  The marina is about a mile up the harbor from where Adam put in and took out, and so my total distance was about 12.5 miles.

Paddling around the Bar is a good distance session, and it's a beefy one, too.  You've got a five-mile upstream climb with a hard ferry across the main channel thrown in.  And more often than not this time of year you've got a south wind to deal with on the paddle back down.  Things can get particularly turbulent between the south end of the Bar and the entrance to the harbor.

My favorite stretch of this paddle is the Loosahatchie Chute.  Between the 5-mile and 7-mile marks, all signs of civilization are out of view and you feel like you're in a remote wilderness even though downtown Memphis isn't far away.

I mostly do this paddle in the spring, and that's because you need a certain amount of water.  Many tons of sand have been deposited in the Loosahatchie Chute, and if the level isn't at least 16 or 17 feet on the Memphis gauge, it's hard to find a navigable channel of water through there.  As I mentioned yesterday, I encountered some shallow water at the north end of the Bar with a level of 19.8 feet.  The course is at its best in the mid 20s and higher.

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Cooling the agenda back down for a while

I was out of the boat all week until Friday.  I had an overabundance of nuisance matters to deal with, and trips to the river moved to the back burner for a while.

I was sort of ready for a break anyway.  The fact is that I'd been working pretty hard since late November.  First there was the effort to be fit for my trip to South Africa, and then there was the training block I did for the race at Ocean Springs last weekend.

And there's just not much in the way of racing events anytime soon--not within a reasonable drive of Memphis, anyway.  Sadly, many events that used to be staples of my schedule have faded away: the Outdoors race here at Memphis, the race on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, even the Little Rock race. These days there seem to be no events within five hours of here.  It's a six-hour drive down to Ocean Springs, and I just don't have the energy or desire to do that too many times in a year.  The current high price of gasoline doesn't help.

So I'm sort of hitting the reset button.  After a few days off from athletic stuff I'm settling back into some base training for a while.  On Friday I did just an easy 40-minute paddle.  Wanting to incorporate some more bike riding into the mix, yesterday I rode about 24 kilometers (15 miles) out the Greater Memphis Greenline and back.

This morning the weather was cool but lovely, and I decided to paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar.  I think my stamina is definitely up these days--I felt really good during the entire upriver leg, and didn't start feeling some fatigue until I was leaving the Loosahatchie Chute and heading back toward the harbor.  A good bit of the sandy northern end of the Bar was exposed at this morning's level of 19.8 feet on the Memphis gauge, so my course was about 400 meters longer than it was when I paddled around the Bar back on March 6 when the level was 30.3 feet.  My total distance today was 20.09 km (12.5 mi.), and I completed it in one hour, 56 minutes, 50 seconds.

I've been tired the rest of the day, but it's generally a good tired.  I'm looking forward to some fun relaxed activity for the next little while.

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