Race schedule update

My big change of plans for the summer means some changes to the race schedule.  As I mentioned in my last post, the venerable Blackburn Challenge north of Boston is scheduled just a week before my woodworking course in Maine begins, so I'm seriously considering entering that event.  And the Ohio River Paddlefest is scheduled for a week after the course's conclusion, making it a potential stop on my way home.

Meanwhile, the Saline River race that was planned for this past weekend has been rescheduled for June 3. Since it's not far from home and I'm already registered, I reckon I'll probably go.

May

13    Chitimacha Nation Race.  Bayou Teche, Jeanerette, Louisiana.  10 miles (16 kilometers) down a Class I stream.  Register

June

3    Saline River Canoe Race.  Saline River, Benton, Arkansas.  4 miles (6.4 kilometers) down a Class I river from Peeler Bend to Lyle Park.  Register (Warning: the registration site this event uses is extremely clunky.)

July

15    The Blackburn Challenge.  Gloucester, Massachusetts.  A 20-mile (32.2-kilometer) open-water circumnavigation of Cape Ann.  Register

August

5    Ohio River Paddlefest.  Ohio River, Cincinnati, Ohio.  9 miles (14.5 kilometers) down this major drainage artery of the Midwestern United States.  Register

September

16    The Firecracker Race.  Mississippi River, Alton, Illinois.  15 miles (24.1 kilometers) downriver from Grafton to Alton. Register

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Plans can turn on a dime

Well, as if on cue, my plans for this summer have suddenly come into sharper focus.

Last fall I tried to enroll in a woodworking class scheduled for this July at the Maine Coast Craft School in Bristol, Maine, but was informed that the class was full.  They told me I was first on the waiting list, and it's been my experience that cancellations in these classes do in fact happen.  But I knew I shouldn't count on it, and I sort of put it out of my mind and started thinking about what else I might do this summer.  Those of you who have been reading the blog lately know that I was contemplating a trip up to the Great Lakes region.

But just several days ago I got an e-mail from a school official telling me that an enrollee had canceled and I had the opportunity to take his or her place.  I decided to claim the spot.  And so I'm going to Maine this summer!

And that opens up some new possibilities for canoe and kayak racing.  The class runs from the 22nd through the 29th of July; the Blackburn Challenge, one of the oldest and most venerated open-water races in this country, is scheduled for July 15 at Gloucester, Massachussetts.  Its distance (20 miles/32.2 kilometers) is at the outer limit of what I like to do, but the overall adventure aspect, as well as the hallowed history of the race, makes it something I feel like I ought to do.

Meanwhile, long-time readers of this blog, as well as viewers of my film "A Paddler's Journey," know that I want to paddle a boat in every state of the United States.  Maine is one of the states I haven't paddled in yet, as are Delaware and New Jersey.  So this trip offers me the opportunity to pick up three states and raise my total to 47.  Very exciting, indeed.

Suddenly I have renewed motivation to do some training.  Because Blackburn is a longer, more endurance-oriented event than what I've trained for in recent years, I'll be shifting the focus a bit.  In the coming weeks the emphasis will be on base, base, base.  Some more work on stroke power (i.e., distance per stroke) is in order as well.

Fortunately, it's not like I'm starting from zero here.  I've been doing plenty of base work since last November or December.  So I've got some time to get my mind fully into a new phase of training.  For the last week we've had a stretch of very cool weather--"Blackberry Winter" is what my mom tells me it's called--and it hasn't made me especially eager to be in the boat.  I also continue to have lots of work to do in the woodworking shop.  After taking yesterday off, I got myself out on the river today on a sunny but cool and breezy morning.  I paddled for 90 minutes, neither really hard nor really easy.  I felt sort of sluggish the whole time and it was one of those days when it was nice just to get something in the books.

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It's all just so... complicated

Just in case anyone was wondering... yes, I'm still here.  Posting stalled out for a few days.  It was partly because of a little existential crisis and partly because I've been just plain busy.

By the middle of last week I was starting to ask myself why, exactly, I was putting myself through rigorous workouts with no significant competitions on the horizon.  Even though I'd more or less decided to attend tomorrow's race on the Saline River over in Arkansas, the small amount of intel I was able to gather on that event indicated that it would be a rinky-dink affair with little or no real competition.  And then just yesterday I learned that the event has been called off due to high water.  While I know almost nothing about the Saline River, I'd been thinking high water would be a good thing: the current images of the river on Google Maps were apparently taken during a dry period and it looks like you could practically walk down the race course, so as a paddler of a boat with an understern rudder, I was hoping for lots of rain over in central Arkansas.  But it seems the race organizers see things differently.

So I won't be racing anytime soon.  And frankly, I've been wondering lately if I even should be racing.  I mean, I'm 55 years old, and I probably got as good as I'm ever going to get in this sport a long time ago.  And though racing does have a social aspect to it, there's not much of that where I live.  While cities like Chattanooga and Knoxville seem to have developed robust scenes for training and racing, here I'm paddling by myself day after day, week after week.  There are, of course, a handful of other Memphians with racing backgrounds, but it's been years since we've put together any sort of group-training activities.  Yes, I could take the lead in getting something going again, but that's not something I'm particularly good at.  Part of the problem is that I have pretty rigid ideas about the kind of training I want to be doing, while other paddlers have other ideas.

It is, of course, possible to paddle without any racing involved.  But the branches of the sport I enjoy most--downwind paddling and whitewater paddling--require that I travel quite a way from home.  Maybe I should move someplace else, but my roots here are pretty deep.  My family is from here, I own property here, and the fact is that in most respects I like it here.  I've developed some strong friendships and enjoy a nice community.

Of course, I do enjoy paddling my boat here on local waters.  I get to the end of some days thinking that going down to the river was the only good thing I did all day.  General fitness is important to me--not being trained up for racing, but just the kind of fitness that will help me stay active and feeling good into old age.  "Self care" seems to be the modern-day term for it.  But I have a hard time keeping that from morphing into more serious training, and if there's not a specific purpose for that training (i.e., an upcoming race or a trip for downwind or whitewater paddling) I just end up exhausted and frustrated.

On top of all the angst described above, I've become quite busy in my woodworking shop lately.  After a slow start to the year, suddenly I've found myself working on projects for at least four different clients.  And I'm enjoying the work, too: each day I've been waking up more excited about my shop work than about going to the river.  Last weekend, after a halfhearted session in the boat on Saturday, I skipped paddling altogether on Sunday and spent the whole day in the shop, getting lots and lots of work done and feeling good about it.

Tuesday and yesterday I did some short, hard sprints in the harbor, thinking that I had a race tomorrow and I needed to sharpen up the speed a little.  And as the week went on I found myself looking forward to tomorrow: even rinky-dink races can be fun, and maybe another good paddler or two would show up.  But now the race is off, and so... here we are.

I think for at least a little while I'll lay off the focused training and just keep up a general fitness routine while I continue my work in the shop.  I need to get some firm plans on the books for this summer and find something to do that will make me want to paddle with gusto again.

This morning I did a gym session since there's no race tomorrow.  I also decided to try some running again.  When I tried to run last winter I arbitrarily picked 20 minutes as a reasonable duration for a run, but my body (especially my calves and Achilles tendons) protested loudly once I was 10 minutes in.  So this time I'm really taking baby steps.  Before my gym session I went out and ran around my block, covering maybe 800 meters.  It was little more than a warmup for the gym work.  But such a warmup is good, and I think I'll keep on doing very short runs two or three times a week, and increase the distance very gradually.

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Keeping it moving in unremarkable fashion

On Tuesday morning I did a gym session and then headed for the river to paddle.  My arms were achey and tired as I warmed up in the boat, partly because of the gym session and partly because of some work I'd done in my woodworking shop Monday afternoon: I'd done some aggressive planing on some tough oak boards.

After the warmup and a set of three 8-stroke sprints, I commenced a workout of eight 200-meter pieces starting every 4th minute.  I kept the stroke rate around 80 strokes per minute--very controlled for 200 meters.  I aimed for my goal pace of 12 kilometers per hour (that would be one minute for 200 meters), but with a tailwind my speed was more like 12.5-13.0 kph, and so my time for each piece was a little under a minute.

I stayed busy yesterday with out-of-the-boat things.  This morning I went out for an unstructured 60-minute paddle.  There was a strong wind blowing from the south, and when I reached the mouth of the harbor I saw some small but workable downwind conditions out on the Mississippi.  I played around just off the tip of Mud Island for a little while, and couldn't really relax because the water was still quite cold and I wasn't really dressed for a swim.  It didn't help that I was paddling my least-stable surfski with a short rudder.  I much prefer mid-summer for my downwinding.  But at least I got some paddling in.  I used the trip back to the dock to relax and take good strokes.

We've had Fahrenheit highs in the low 80s this week, but it looks like later today a line of storms will move through that might have some strong winds with it.  Then it's supposed to get quite a bit cooler.  The current forecast shows high temperatures in the 60s all next week.

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Monday photo feature

Amelia Taylor of Cosby, Tennessee, admires the wildflowers on the Loosahatchie Bar last Thursday.  Regular readers of this blog know that I sometimes go out and paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar, but it's much less common for me to get out of the boat and walk on it.  Amelia's visit gave me a reason to check it out.  We saw wildflowers, deer footprints, piles of driftwood, beaver tooth marks... all kinds of stuff.

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Plodding along through motivational doldrums

I mentioned in my last post that the weather was quite lovely when I paddled with Amelia Thursday afternoon even though there were scattered showers in the area.  Amelia took a photo that captured the beauty very nicely:

It just goes to show that not all nice days involve clear blue skies and abundant sunshine.

On Friday I stayed home and did a gym session.  I woke up yesterday feeling unusually sluggish, apathetic, and uninterested in doing anything serious in the boat.  Saturday is usually a workout day for me, but yesterday I just did a calm 60-minute paddle.  I actually felt good in the boat once I got going, but I needed a mental break from intense training.

Some strong thunderstorms moved through the area last night, and this morning it was sunny, cooler, and quite breezy.  I was feeling somewhat sluggish again, but I was determined to do the workout I couldn't find the gumption to do yesterday.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did two 1500-meter pieces and one 1000-meter piece, starting every 15th minute.  As I've said before, I like the idea of being able to average 5 minutes per kilometer (7:30 for 1500 meters; that's a 12-kilometer-per-hour pace), but the wind, though supposedly from the west, was the kind that swirls all over the place, so I knew I shouldn't have my heart set on any particular speed.  I tried to focus on good stokes and stroke cadence (80-85 strokes per minute for the 1500s, closer to 90 for the 1000).  I clocked 7:48 and 7:55 for the two 1500s, and 5:10 for the 1000.  The workout felt hard every stroke of the way, and I was fading badly in the closing meters of the last piece.  Not exactly my finest hour.  But as I returned to the dock I felt good about myself for overcoming the lethargy and getting some decent work in.

As for upcoming races, I'm still thinking about attending the event on the Saline River at Benton, Arkansas, in two weeks.  But I'm not sure what the competition will be like.  I've already heard that one person I'd hoped would be there will not be.  So I'm sort of playing it by ear.

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Taking care of business while savoring what matters

I woke up Tuesday morning feeling a bit swamped with things to deal with.  In addition to the ongoing haggle with doctors and insurance flunkies over my M.R.I. plans, I had a water heater that was acting up and in possible need of replacement, and I had a couple of new jobs in my woodworking shop that had just come my way Monday.  I considered taking a break from training activities and devoting the whole day to attacking the pile of stuff. But once I'd had a chance to drink some coffee and eat some breakfast and think things over, I decided the to-do would keep and I would feel better after some physical activity.

I did a gym session and then headed down to the river.  In the boat I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did twelve 30-second sprints starting every 3rd minute.  One thing I like about this workout is how taut it is: along with the warm-up and cool-down periods, it fits nicely into 60 minutes.  By the time I was back on the dock I was feeling a nice endorphin rush and looking forward to knocking out some chores for the rest of the day.  And I was feeling proud of myself for making the time for some physical self-care.

Yesterday was spent doing out-of-the-boat tasks, and I figured this morning I'd be doing what I do most Thursdays: some kind of calm, steady paddle.  But last night I got a message from my friend Amelia, a whitewater paddler from east Tennessee, telling me she was passing through town and wanted to paddle on the Mississippi River today.  So I got out a touring boat and some gear for her to use, and met her when she arrived in town this afternoon.  We spent some two and a half hours paddling at a leisurely pace, hiking through the underbrush on the Loosahatchie Bar, and checking out the scale model of the lower Mississippi on Mud Island.  We got rained on a bit, but the mixture of clouds and sunshine made the sky pretty and even gave us a rainbow as we were collecting our gear after the paddling was finished.  I might have gotten a bit more work done or some more specific training in if Amelia hadn't shown up, but I don't regret that even a little bit.  It's important to pause and savor moments sometimes.

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Monday photo feature

It started raining in Memphis last Wednesday evening, and it rained and rained and rained, and didn't stop for good until sometime after lunch on Thursday.  I, of course, was down on the riverfront to paddle Thursday morning, and I tried my best to let a smile be my umbrella.

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Our health care finance machinery is a mess, but I can still wear myself out in the boat

Friday morning I did a gym session.  Then, after lunch, I went to have my M.R.I. done.  And when I got to the place, I was informed that my insurance company had rejected the procedure.  I was supposed to get a phone call in advance, but apparently somebody in the office had written down my phone number incorrectly.

So I came back home.  There's a process by which my doctor can persuade the insurance meisters to reconsider, but that won't happen until a new business week is underway.  And so, thanks to an industry whose overlords have dedicated their lives to making the world a worse place to live, I'll have to grin and bear my discomfort a little longer.

Yesterday I went down to the river to paddle on a cool, overcast morning.  I wanted to do some long-ish sprints for pace work, and I decided to do several 1000-meter pieces downstream out on the Mississippi, starting a new one every 10th minute.  My goal was to do each one in 3 minutes flat (a 20-kilometers-per-hour average pace).  As it turned out, my times were 2:57, 3:34, and 3:13.

There was a good reason for that broad variation in times.  At 24.2 feet on the Memphis gauge, the river had a strong flow; and a brisk north breeze was helpful for speedy times as well.  But there was another variable: the topography of the water surface.  During the first piece the surface was glassy smooth, and my speed rose as high as 21 kph a couple of times.  But during the recovery interval before the second piece, a big barge rig driven by two towboats came charging upriver, churning the river into a sloppy mess.  That slowed my hull speed during the second piece and disrupted my rhythm, but more significant than that, it wrecked my concentration and tensed my muscles.  The water is still very cold at this time of year, and my desire not to swim made it impossible for me to relax.  And so the second piece was a full 37 seconds slower than the first.  The water had calmed down some by the start of the third piece, but not enough for me to get locked back in.  I finished the workout frustrated, but I knew there was no reason to write it all off as a failure.  Unexpected disruptions are just a fact of life for any outdoor wilderness sport.  My arms and shoulders were aching from the de-tuned half-stroke-half-brace strokes I'd done in the second and third pieces, and once I was back in the protected waters of the harbor I tried to calm down and get back to good solid strokes.

This morning it was time to do something longer, and I elected to leave the harbor, paddle up the Mississippi, paddle up to the Wolf River to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge, and turn and come back.  The wind was light, and there was very little barge traffic to interfere with the proceedings.  Just like I like to break two hours when I paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar, I like to break 110 minutes when I do what I did today.  Such is the way my regimented, obsessive-compulsive brain works.  As I came back down from my turnaround point I reached the mouth of the Wolf at the 81-minute mark, meaning I would have to hoof it to be back at my dock by 110.  I pushed the pace down the Mississippi and when I re-entered the harbor with 12 and a half minutes to go, I knew I would make it but not without keeping the power on for a few more minutes.  Once I was north of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge I finally let myself back off the intensity so that my heart rate could settle down the rest of the way.  I was back at the dock about 20 seconds shy of 110 minutes.  I'm now spending the rest of the day thoroughly tired as a reward for my effort.

Tomorrow will be a rest day, and I'll be spending some of it seeing what I can find out about my chances of an affordable magnetic resonance image.

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A taste of all weather for those of us who are active outdoors

I woke up Tuesday wondering if I didn't have some kind of mild bug.  I had almost a sore throat, and my energy level seemed low.  Still, I found the energy to start the rudiments of a new gym routine (a couple of sets of dips and bent-over rows) and go down to the river to paddle for 60 minutes.  There was a strong south wind blowing and I kept the intensity moderate.

Tuesday was a freakishly warm day, with a Fahrenheit high in the mid 80s.  Though I generally like a day in the 80s, I don't think I like it in April.  I really don't like the idea of turning on the central air conditioning in my house in April.

Of course, in April you can count on some weather volatility.  Yesterday another big storm system moved in that brought violent weather to places like southeast Missouri and Louisville, Kentucky.  Here in Memphis it was mostly just a lot of rain.  The electricity went off in my neighborhood for five or six hours last night, but I don't know what could have caused that.  I ended up going to bed a half hour earlier than I'd planned, because when there's no light to read by and no Internet access, what is there to do but sleep?

Now, today, it's cooler: I don't think it got much over 50 degrees all day.  This morning it was in the high 40s, and I had to layer up a little more to paddle.  And as it turned out, the rain wasn't gone yet.  I paddled in intermittent light showers, and then the rainfall intensified as I was returning to the dock.  I got pretty soaked putting my boat away and walking back up to the parking lot.

The extended forecast shows high temperatures mostly in the 70s, and that's about what I expect in April.  There are several days in the 80s, however.  I just hope we can have a nice spring before the sultry heat of summer settles in.

Meanwhile, my M.R.I. is scheduled for tomorrow, pending insurance company approval.  So far nobody has called to tell me the cretins have decided to reject the claim, so my fingers are crossed that we can get this done and move me a step closer to finding some true relief from my discomforts.

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Monday photo feature

Greg Barton of Seattle, Washington, a longtime friend of My Training Blog by Elmore, is pictured on the right here as he works to keep pace with current U.S. flatwater sprint team members Jonas Ecker and Aaron Small.  The three are participating in an 8-mile race on Lake Washington at Sand Point this past weekend.  Ecker won with a time of one hour, 1 minute, 19 seconds; Small took second in 1:02:38; and the 63-year-old Barton was third in 1:03:09.  Photo by Drea Park.

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March went out like a lion

For the second Friday in a row, a violent weather system passed through the Mid South.  The state of Arkansas suffered extensive damage from tornados, specifically in the capital city of Little Rock, the town of Wynne just west of Crowley's Ridge, and the delta town of Earle.  Here on this side of the Mississippi River the town of Covington got hit hard, as did a chunk of McNairy County.

Here in Memphis the mood was tense as the sirens blared several times throughout the evening.  I'd taken a few precautions such as charging up my phone, making sure the batteries in my flashlight were good, and even grinding some coffee in case I had no electricity the next morning.  But in the end, we were spared.

By yesterday morning the sky was clear, and I looked forward to a pleasant sunny paddle.  It was still quite breezy, however, and that prompted me to stay in the harbor for all but a few of my 60 minutes in the boat.  The wind was swirling all over the place but seemed to be primarily from the west-southwest.  I stayed in the shelter of the trees along the bank of Mud Island and paddled a pretty good strong tempo.

The wind got even stronger as the day went on yesterday, and by mid afternoon it was screaming.  It finally abated overnight and had shifted to the south-southeast by this morning.  It was time for my Sunday long paddle, and conditions were ideal for a trip around the Loosahatchie Bar, with plenty of sunshine and a river level of 26.7 feet on the Memphis gauge.  I paddled out of the harbor and enjoyed a nice tailwind during the long paddle upriver.  There were no barges or riverboats moored along the bank, so I had no interruptions like I did the last time I paddled around the Bar.  Conditions were a bit bumpy during the paddle back downriver because a barge rig had just moved through heading north, but I kept the boat moving and completed the 12.6-mile (20.3-kilometer) circuit in about one hour, 55 and a half minutes.

I'm now thoroughly worn out and ready for a break tomorrow.  I'm still waiting for the orthopaedic clinic to call me to schedule my M.R.I., and I hope maybe they'll do so tomorrow.

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