Monday photo feature

"The Doctor," one of the biggest races on the international ocean surfski racing calendar, took place on Saturday at Perth, Western Australia.  Pictured here are the top three men's finishers: Uli Hart (third place), Kenny Rice (first place), and Mark Keeling (second place).  All three are South Africans from the town of Fish Hoek, which I have had the pleasure of visiting twice.

In last week's photo feature I mentioned that Ana Swetish of the United States was favored to claim the women's Under-21 title.  On Saturday, she went out and did that very thing.  What's more, she was the third finisher among all the women in the race.  Danielle McKenzie of New Zealand took first place and Jemma Smith of Australia was second, just five seconds ahead of Ana.

In all, 439 boats finished The Doctor, making it comparable in size to the Gorge Downwind Championships event here in the U.S. that I have entered four times.  But I was struck by how much higher the quality of the field seemed to be at The Doctor: the fact that Ana Swetish was the 14th fastest overall racer in the Gorge last July, but only 60th overall at Perth, is just one piece of evidence.  I'd chalk that up to an ocean-sports-crazy culture in Australia that we just don't have an answer for in my country.

The complete results are posted here.  The summary article from which I lifted the photo (I think the photographer is Shane Myers) is here.

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Testing what my ailing body will tolerate

I did a gym session Friday morning.  My left biceps and forearm muscles bothered me a lot--not necessarily during the exercises, but just in general as I went through my day.

My arm was still bothering me as I went down to the river to paddle yesterday morning.  I could feel the discomfort in my arm as I paddled, but the ailing muscles were not so directly involved as to impede what I was doing.  They bothered me a little more out on the Mississippi than they did in the harbor, so I probably need to steer clear of paddling in anything rougher than flatwater for a while.

What surprised me yesterday is that I felt as good in the boat as I had in a long time.  I felt energetic and motivated, and that's a feeling that's been elusive for me all year.

It was overcast yesterday morning, with a temperature around 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  In the afternoon a system of rain moved in, and it rained for the better part of the night.  By this morning the rain was gone but it was still cloudy, and it was quite a bit breezier with a temperature not expected to rise above the mid 50s.

For most of this fall Sunday has been a bike riding day for me.  But on a blustery day I would rather paddle than ride, and considering how good I'd felt in the boat yesterday, I decided to go back to the river. Once I was underway I again felt good in terms of energy and mood.  But when I paddled out of the harbor onto the Mississippi, the choppy windblown water there put more stress on my arm, so I retreated to the harbor after just a couple of minutes.

The Mississippi was flowing at -3.0 feet on the Memphis gauge this morning.  The forecast says it will drop to about -5.2 feet by midweek, but then rise back to -3.2 feet halfway through the following week.  So even though the river is still very low these days, there's been enough rain in the watershed lately to keep it from going back toward that record low level of almost -10.9 feet.  I hope this is a trend toward wetter conditions in the Midwest that will return the river to a more bountiful version of itself.

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More paddling and biking and running

I did a gym session Tuesday morning, and then went downtown and got in the boat to paddle a mostly-easy 60 minutes.  My left biceps area bothered me again, but maybe not quite as much as it had Saturday.  After cresting at 1.48 feet above zero on the Memphis gauge over the weekend, the Mississippi had dropped back to an even zero when I was there Tuesday.  Right now the forecast has it continuing to drop for the foreseeable future, but I hope maybe some rain will fall in the watershed and change that prediction.

I left the river and went and got both a flu shot and a Covid-19 booster shot.  So far I've been lucky enough not to get too sick from the shots, and yesterday morning I had nothing worse than mild head congestion and a swollen gland in my right armpit (I got the shots in my right shoulder because of all the muscle woes I've had in the left).

It was nothing that was going to put me out of action.  My left calf was feeling much better and I considered trying another short run.  But a look at the weather forecast revealed that yesterday afternoon was going to be quite warm (about 65 degrees Fahrenheit) while today was going to be cooler with chances of rain.  I'd rather ride my bike in warmer weather and run in cooler weather, so I "let the weather be my coach," as Greg Barton had suggested, and went out for a bike ride yesterday afternoon.  I did the usual 34-kilometer loop out to Shelby Farms and back.  I'd love to have a couple of other courses to incorporate into my riding routine, but this is the only one easily accessible from my house on which I can get in some good distance with a minimum of motorized traffic to deal with.

It was indeed cooler and sort of rainy this morning.  I set out with the intention of doing a 20-minute run, but a short distance in I realized that my calf muscle wasn't as healed as I'd thought.  I tried my best to go easy on it, stopping a several times to do some light stretching on it or just let it rest for a minute.  In the end I probably didn't spend more than 12 or 13 of my 20 minutes actually running, and the running I did do was tiring--I just don't have the cardiovascular infrastructure I once did for that purpose.

My calf muscle didn't "pop" on me like it did last week, but it's very sore now.  I'm not panicked over it--it is normal, after all, to be sore when you start running again after a long layoff, and the calf muscles are where I've always had a lot of soreness as a runner.  But I'm going to have to proceed with caution.  I think getting back into some running is going to have to be a very slow, gradual process.

I'll just add that my left arm is really hurting these days, mainly in the biceps and forearm areas.  I'm sort of at a loss what to do about it.

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Monday photo feature

While chilly temperatures are settling in here in North America, spring is blossoming in the southern hemisphere, and in no place is the action hotter than in Western Australia, where a big week of surfski racing is in progress.  It'll culminate this Saturday with "The Doctor," one of the most prestigious events on the international racing calendar.  The Doctor starts at Rottnest Island and finishes on Sorrento Beach at Perth.

Only a handful of U.S. paddlers have made the trip "down under" to participate, and one of them is standing at the right end of this group of ladies.  Ana Swetish of Bellingham, Washington, is a contender for the Under-21 title in The Doctor.

Anybody who has seen my film "A Paddler's Journey" knows that Ana is part of my "panel of experts."  If you have not seen my film, I'm planning to make it available for viewing again very soon.  Stay tuned for further details.

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Keeping it going

Yesterday morning I went down to the river for the first time in eight days.  On the Mississippi River, a lot can change in that length of time: the river had risen to about a half a foot above zero on the Memphis gauge.  That's a very low level, and yet it's more than 11 feet higher than it was a few weeks ago when the river dropped to the lowest level ever recorded at Memphis.  I found the marina fully afloat:

I could actually put my boat in the water from my own dock again:

(In case you missed it, this post shows what the marina looked like at near-record-low water.)

Such a radically-fluctuating water level is exactly why Memphis riverfront real estate developers hate the Mississippi River.  They look enviously at riverfront cities like Chattanooga (on the Tennessee River), Louisville (the Ohio River) and Little Rock (the Arkansas River): the river levels at those cities are dam-regulated and stay pretty constant.  Here in Memphis developers have resurrected a stupid idea that we though had been put out of its misery 20 years ago: they want to dam up the harbor (at the taxpayers' expense, I'd wager) to create a big lake that they can build high-priced lakefront communities on.  I suppose my marina would be removed, and even if it weren't I'd no longer be able to paddle out onto the river.  I've always believed you should take what nature gives you, but developers just don't think that way.

Anyway... yesterday was supposed to be bright and sunny according to the forecast, but it was overcast and a motivation-suppressing 38 degrees Fahrenheit when I got down to the dock.  The saving grace was that there was almost no wind, and the harbor was as smooth as glass.  As usual, the worst part of paddling on a cold day was the time on the dock; once I was in the boat paddling I became reasonably warm.

My left arm wasn't doing so well, though.  The biceps area in particular bothered me for the entire hour I paddled.  I tried to stay relaxed, keep the intensity moderate, and use the best stroke mechanics I could.

I left the harbor and paddled a mile or so up the Mississippi before turning around and coming back.  The sky was finally clearing by the time I was back in the harbor paddling back toward the marina.  The rest of yesterday was bright and sunny.

It was sunny again this morning, but cold.  It was around 35 degrees when I set out on a bike ride.  I rode the first few miles into a headwind, and I seriously considered doing a shorter ride than usual.  In the end, though, I sucked it up and did my usual 34-kilometer loop.  I had not exactly a tailwind, but at least less of a headwind for the ride back, and I'm sure the temperature had risen a few degrees by then, too.

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More on that winter routine

Three days after my truncated First Run In 20 Years my left calf muscle is still sore, but I think it's definitely improving.  Maybe by next week I'll feel ready to attempt another short run.

The chilly weather (low 40s Fahrenheit) weather we've been having is not fun to go bike riding in, but yesterday afternoon I found it in me to bundle up and ride out the Greater Memphis Greenline to Shelby Farms and back.  I did my usual 34-kilometer loop, riding around Patriot Lake out there before heading back.  The sun was shining, so that helped make it feel not quite so miserable.

Both Wednesday and today I did rounds of the gym routine I started on Monday, and that's starting to feel beneficial.

So, I feel like I've got something started.  I'm still trying to incorporate maybe one more cardiovascular activity: I'm interested in finding a rowing ergometer nearby that I can access without having to pay too exorbitant a membership fee.

Right now I think the most important thing is just to get something--anything--going.  After several months of sort of flailing around, trying to deal with motivation and energy level and aches and pains, I think it's more important than ever to have a solid routine that I can follow each day and feel good about.

In my last post I said that I didn't do anything athletic last weekend.  But by Sunday afternoon I was tired of sitting around feeling like a slug, so I decided to go out and do a little hiking in the Mississippi River bottoms.  I drove across the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge and parked in Big River Park, and hiked down to a big expanse of sand that was exposed on the inside of the big bend just downstream of the trio of old bridges.

There were a good dozen other people out on the sandbar, and at first I expected them all to have metal detectors: both our local newspapers had just run stories of interesting artifacts found by treasure hunters.  But as I walked closer I realized they were all just fishing.

Treasure hunters probably had been by in recent days, and I was expecting no miraculous discoveries of my own.  But I did see a couple of interesting things.  One was this scuttled fishing boat:

I think it had been mostly buried in the sand and silt, and then partially excavated by passersby during this current low-water period.

And then there was this thing: part of a winch, maybe?  Or of a towboat's engine apparatus?

These were the only things I saw out of the ordinary.  I can only imagine what artifacts there are buried beneath layers upon layers of mud down there.

The river level on Sunday was about 7.1 feet below zero on the Memphis gauge.  Since then the river has been on a big rise: it's forecast to crest this weekend about a foot above zero on the gauge.  That's still a very low level, but compared to what it's been the last month or so, it's going to look like an ocean of water down there.  I haven't been paying close attention to where it's been raining in the watershed, but my guess is that the remnants of Hurricane Nicole must have dumped enough rain on the west slope of the Appalachians last week to bring about this big rise.

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Trying to get a winter routine going

Knowing it was my last chance to paddle in mild weather before much colder air arrived, I found the gumption to get down to the river Friday afternoon.  My body still feeling the effects of my struggle with the whitewater boat on Tuesday, I opted for the surfski and did a reasonably nice 60-minute paddle.

Friday evening I tuned in to Greg Barton's lecture.  Greg's suggestions for offseason cross-training didn't really include anything I hadn't thought of; he mentioned things like weight training, bike riding, running, and cross-country skiing (sadly not available where I live).  But he did give me some ideas of where to focus my strength training, and maybe the best thing he said was "I let the weather be my coach," meaning that if it's a particularly nice day when he'd planned to do an indoor workout, he'll go paddle instead.  I've behaved similarly myself, of course, but hearing a guy like Greg say it is always reassuring.

As if on cue, the weather turned blustery and much colder over the weekend.  I gave my body a break and spent time on non-athletic things.  Then yesterday I started a new gym routine that includes some arm and core exercises all done on the stability ball.

Also yesterday I took the bold step of buying a new pair of running shoes.  I was quite the serious runner back in high school and college, but up until now I think it had been some 20 years since I'd so much as gone for a run.  That changed today.  This morning I put on my new shoes, stepped out the door, and started to run.  I'd been wondering whether my body would even remember how to run, but I'm happy to say that it does.

I knew the important thing was not to bite off too much on my first time out.  And my body quickly chimed in with its opinion just a couple of minutes in: running was not going to be anywhere near as effortless as I remember it feeling in the prime of my competitive career.  I'd gone out thinking I'd run maybe 30 minutes, but I quickly scaled that ambition back to 20.  All those capillary beds I'd once built up in my running muscles are long gone, I realized.

I was headed back toward home, and then, about 14 minutes into the run, I felt a sharp pain in my left calf muscle.  I knew better than to push through it.  I stopped and walked the rest of the way.

I'm still feeling some pain there now, but it doesn't have the feel of a terribly serious injury.  I was thinking I'd do my next run Thursday or Friday, but now we'll just have to see how soon this thing heals.  Sigh... sometimes it seems like my body doesn't want to let me do anything these days.

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Monday photo feature

Get a load of this old relic.  25 years ago this was a cutting-edge slalom-racing design.  Now it's just my old beat-up slalom boat that I hadn't paddled for six years before last Tuesday.

I was worried about how my ailing left arm and shoulder would respond to whitewater-style paddle strokes, and it turns out I was right to be.  The pain in my shoulder/biceps area worsened, and I did something to my forearm as well.

I'd been flirting with the idea of getting back on some whitewater soon, but that plan is now on hold.  It's discouraging not to be able to do something that for most of my life felt as natural as could be.

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The period that has passed since my last training-related post has been full of ups and downs.  Right now things are sort of down.  My left shoulder and biceps area has been acutely sore, and lately even my left wrist and forearm have been hurting some.

In recent months I've had thoughts of getting back out on some whitewater, but I don't know if my body will let me do that in its current state.  On Tuesday this week I broke out my old Superglide C1 that I raced slalom in from the late 1990s into the mid 2000s, and took it down to the harbor.  Forward paddling wasn't really a problem, but my left arm and shoulder didn't respond particularly well to draw strokes with the blade opened way up (I paddle on my left in a whitewater C1).  I finished 40 minutes of paddling feeling sore and discouraged.  I think part of the problem is that the boat's outfitting is the same as it was when I last raced slalom back around 2005, and my body has surely changed some since then.  I probably should find myself a more comfortable, more forgiving boat to paddle than this high-performance race boat, but that would involve some financial investment, and again, I'm not sure serious whitewater paddling is something I can do right now.

Today is the last day of pleasant, balmy weather before much colder air moves in, so it would make sense to paddle one more time today, but my body just doesn't want to do it.  I've actually done a lot of out-of-the-boat stuff this week: bike riding, rehab exercises, and some light weight work.  Today I'm feeling pretty tired from all that.

This evening Greg Barton is delivering an online lecture about wintertime cross-training.  I plan to tune into that and see what good ideas I might get.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.