Climbing the ladder to success, I hope

I had another full morning on Tuesday.  After a short run and a gym session at home, I went down to the river for a workout in the boat.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did three 1500-meter pieces starting every 15th minute.  I paddled at 75-80 strokes per minute and recorded times of 8:02, 7:47, and 7:53.  I was a little off the pace of last week's 1000-meter pieces, but that day I had more of a tailwind than I did this week.  The wind on Tuesday was blowing from the west and was as light as it had been in several weeks, and that portended tough days ahead as the temperature was forecast to hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit by today.

But I didn't let that bother me Tuesday.  With just one more killer Tuesday morning left before I leave town, I was feeling pretty good as I put my boat away back on the dock.

Over the weekend, as I paddled up the Mississippi along the Tennessee bank, I noticed a six-foot ladder revealed by the receding water.  The aluminum and fiberglass thing had clearly been there a while.  Here it is in situ:

As the owner of two properties, I find myself using ladders quite often.  So I decided to go down to the river and retrieve this one yesterday morning.  It was no small amount of work pulling it up out of the silt and carrying it up the steep, rocky bank, and I found it was in need of some repair, too.  But it always feels good to remove a piece of garbage from one of our local waterways.  The one thing I can't help wondering is, How on Earth did a ladder end up in this spot?  At normal water levels this place is some 40 or 50 yards from the bank.  Did it fall off a boat?  If so, what use did it have on that boat?  Or did somebody purposely dump it in the river to get rid of it?  If so, why?  There are plenty of places where it's easier to dispose of a ladder you don't want, even if you are the kind of so-and-so who dumps things out in the wilderness.

So many questions, and so few answers.  Oh well... the ladder is at home now, and when I find time I'll fix it up, and then I'll use it.  Or if it turns out I don't really need it, I'll give it to somebody who can use it.

Today it is indeed hot, hot, hot.  It was well into the 90s this morning when I got in the whitewater boat for some more drills.  At least it was perfect for doing some Eskimo rolls.  I've actually really enjoyed having a different kind of paddling to do one day each week.  My work in the whitewater boat is very technical, so a session doesn't last more than 50 minutes or so.  Highly technical paddling quickly tires you out both physically and mentally, and once your technique starts breaking down, you're just practicing bad technique if you stay out there too long.  I remember reading in one of the books by U.S. whitewater team coach Bill Endicott that he rarely worked his slalom athletes for much more than an hour at a time for that reason.

Once I'd put in my 50 minutes today, I enjoyed a nice bath under the hose on the dock, and came on home to beat the heat anyway I could.

Tomorrow I get my nerve block injection!  I've been hearing that such a treatment works for some people and doesn't work for others, but I hope it'll work for me, at least for the duration of my travels.

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Monday photo feature

In the summer of 2005 I paddled the Colorado River from Moab to Potash in the state of Utah.  It's not one of the more remote sections of the Colorado, and no permit is required, but I thought it was quite a pretty place.  I understand that the river has its biggest flow in a number of years this summer, and part of me wishes I were out there paddling in that rugged environment again.

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I believe summer is here for real now

Friday morning I put in a run and a gym session.  The Hindu squats took a lot out of my legs again, but I think my body is starting to adapt.

Yesterday I went down to the river and paddled for 80 minutes.  The session was a mixture of "work" work and "play" work.  I did four 5-minute surges at 70 strokes per minute--that was the "work" part--but I also did some surfing behind a barge rig that was moving upriver.  The waves weren't great, and they didn't last long, and they were wandering back and forth, but I still got a couple of good rides in.

Hotter weather is moving in, and the temperature was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday.  The big national weather news right now is the "heat dome" that's centered over Texas, and I understand that in the coming days it'll be moving and/or expanding so that the Mid South will be within its eastern boundary.  The current forecast shows temperatures moving into the high 90s and low 100s this coming week.  The past week has been pretty warm and fairly humid, but there have been breezes offering some relief.  I hope we'll continue to have some air movement as the heat gets more and more oppressive.

Today was shaping up early to be the hottest of the year so far: when I got down to the river just after 9 AM, it was already well up into the 80s.  A strong south wind helped keep me cool, but only when I was paddling something other than away from it.  As I paddled for 100 minutes, I did a lot of zig-zagging so I wouldn't have the wind at my back for any extended length of time, but even so the sweat stung my eyes badly whenever I did have a tailwind.  I had to stop and mop my face pretty often.  The intensity level wasn't high, but I tried to concentrate on good precise strokes as much as I could.  I sure hope New England comes through with some mild weather when I'm racing up there in several weeks.

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The pile of days is shrinking

Monday marked just three weeks to go until I get in the car and start driving up toward the northeastern United States for some racing, some recreational paddling, and a one-week woodworking class.

Tuesday morning I did my little around-the-block run.  That half-mile or so still feels like a half-marathon.  I don't know if I'll ever run effortlessly again, and I probably shouldn't get obsessed with reclaiming that bit of my youth.  After the run I started a new gym routine: some Hindu squats, some front- and lat-raises, a lower abdominal exercise, and some bicep curls.  I didn't do but one set of 60 Hindu squats, but for a few hours afterward my legs felt like rubber.  Even though my previous gym routine included some lunges with dumbbells, it felt like it was the first time my legs had been worked in ages.

After that I headed down to the river.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did four 1000-meter pieces, starting every 11th minute.  I aimed for 80 strokes per minute, fairly high but not crazy-high.  There was a north breeze blowing and I did the first piece into that breeze, so I knew my time wouldn't be fast.  The fastest I could go was around 11.5 kilometers per hour and I ended up with a time of 5 minutes, 26 seconds.  By then I'd reached the north end of the harbor and I turned back south, with the wind at my back.  I knew my remaining three pieces should be much faster, and they were: 4:57, 4:54, and 4:58.  The workout was taxing but overall it didn't seem as tough as the two 2000-meter pieces I'd done a week earlier.  I left the marina feeling satisfied and glad there are just two hefty Tuesday mornings left before I leave town.

Yesterday the North Pole moved as close to the sun as it will be all year.  Dawn arrived extra-early and darkness fell extra-late.  While I generally like the long daylight hours of summer, I don't think I need any more daylight than we got yesterday.  In other words, I live at a latitude that suits me just fine.

Today was another Whitewater Boat Thursday.  I worked those different muscle groups and dreamed of getting back on some swift-moving water.

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Monday photo feature

The Slovenian town of Tacen hosted a whitewater slalom World Cup event over the weekend, and the U.S. team netted a rare medal.  Zach Lokken of Durango, Colorado, finished second in the men's C1 class.

The picture above is a screen shot of the television coverage.  At the beginning of each run, a motion image of the athlete in street clothes is superimposed on the real-time footage of the athlete sitting at the starting line.  If you'd like to watch the actual video of this tableau, along with the runs of all ten C1 finalists, you can do so here.

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Trying to keep my edge sharp

I did a run and a gym session on a not-so-hot but extremely humid Friday morning.  That humidity has continued through the weekend, accompanied sometimes by rain and sometimes by bright sunshine.

I've been feeling a bit low on energy, and the humid conditions haven't helped with that.  Yesterday I paddled for 70 minutes and tried to do some varied-pace work that wouldn't grind me down to nothing.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then, starting at the 20-minute mark, I upped the stroke rate for three of every ten minutes.  I paddled at 70 strokes per minute for two minutes and 80 spm for one minute; for the rest of the 10-minute period I kept the rate below 65 spm while trying to apply good power at the beginning of each stroke.  It was nowhere near the toughest workout ever, but I think it's mentally tiring when I focus hard on details like that.

The Blackburn Challenge is just four weeks off now, I'm backing off the volume a bit while trying to keep the quality of each session high.  Sure, the Blackburn course will take me the better part of three hours to finish, but I think lasting that long is more a matter of managing hydration and blood sugar and stuff like that.  Overdistance training has its place, but I think it offers diminishing returns.  Even when I do what I call a "long" paddle I rarely go for more than two hours: in an ultra-long session your stroke form is bound to break down eventually, and then you're just reinforcing poor mechanics.

With all that in mind, I went out for a mere 80 minutes this morning.  I was expecting to be tired again today, but once I got going I felt surprisingly good in the boat.  I think the humidity was down at least a little: a very heavy thunderstorm had passed through early in the morning, and maybe that blew out some of the moisture in the air.  It definitely lowered the temperature.  I didn't pay much attention to stroke rate today, but I did concentrate on good crisp strokes again.

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Time on and time off

It was another burly Tuesday morning, and once again I found myself wondering if I was up for it as I got out of bed.  Would it be so terrible, I asked myself, just to take it easy today, and maybe push the tough stuff back to tomorrow?  But once I'd had some breakfast and woken up completely, my body and brain came around, just like they usually do.  That's largely what being an athlete is about: when it's time to go, you go; but then it's important to give yourself the down time you need so you'll be ready for the next hard effort.

I went for a short run and did a gym session, and then went down to the river.  In the boat I warmed up for 15 minutes, and commenced my workout: two 2000-meter pieces at 80 strokes per minute.  I told myself to focus on the stroke rate, a crisp catch, and good power in the early phase of each stroke, and not worry about my speed or the elapsed time.  But of course it's hard not to peek.  For most of the first piece I moved around 11.5 kilometers per hour, and clocked 10 minutes 27 seconds.  I took a 10-minute break and  began the second piece, and this time my speed was up over 12.0 for much of the time.  The stroke rate crept up into the mid 80s several times, and I had to make myself lower it.  I was definitely feeling fatigue by the halfway mark, and in the last several hundred meters my legs were screaming.  I finished with a time of 10:11, and was pleased with that.

The weather continues to be very nice just a week before the summer solstice.  The daily highs have been not much above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and the extended forecast says they'll be mostly below 90 for quite a few days to come.  It's definitely getting more humid, but I'll accept whatever reprieve from the worst of a Mid South summer I can get.

I was back in the whitewater boat this morning, doing some more drills and getting my muscles used to the idea of doing some river paddling this summer.

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Monday photo feature

Here's a map of the precipitation that was falling in the lower Mississippi River watershed yesterday afternoon.  The heaviest storms in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana are all in the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Ohio River drainages.  Over in Missouri there's some not-so-heavy rain falling in the Merrimack and Missouri River basins.  All that water will, at least in theory, flow by Memphis eventually. (The precipitation in Arkansas and southern Missouri will reach the Mississippi downstream of Memphis.)

And yet, though it looks like a lot of rain, it's created only a small bump in the river stage forecast at Memphis.  Right now the river is about a foot below zero on the Memphis gauge, and that bump is still below zero.  To produce a significant rise in the Mississippi here, we need to have quite a few days when the weather map looks like the one above.  That certainly could happen, but if it doesn't, we could be seeing never-before-recorded low water levels by the late summer and fall.

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Sort of a grinding weekend

On Friday I did my usual short run and did a gym session.

The weather has been somewhat unseasonably cool, with Fahrenheit highs in the low to mid 80s.  The wind has shifted to the south, and that's bringing in more humidity.  The haze in the air has lessened some, but is still around.  I now understand that it is indeed caused by the Canadian wildfires.  We've also had some scattered showers in the area, but in recent weeks it has been dry in the watersheds upstream of here, and the Mississippi River is quite low as a result.  By Friday the river had dipped below zero on the Memphis gauge, and that's notable because May and June are typically the high-water season around here, with gauge readings of 30 feet or higher.  I hope we're not in for another record-low period like we had last fall, but that's what will happen if the dry conditions persist in the Missouri and Ohio and upper Mississippi drainages.

Yesterday I paddled for 70 minutes.  During the 50-minute period from 0:10 to 1:00, I maintained a stroke rate of 70 strokes per minute, and that made it a taxing long tempo session.  I think the fatigue was more mental than anything--it's hard to push the pace when you're all by yourself.  It's sort of the in-the-boat version of training on an erg, the way you're constantly looking down at the digital readout making sure you're on the stroke rate.

That's why I was happy to leave the G.P.S. device turned off today, and paddle without worrying about stroke rate or speed or any of that stuff.  I was tired and lethargic in the boat, and it amounted to a long recovery session, though I did pay attention to good stroke mechanics and rotation.  I paddled up the river along the Tennessee bank about as far as the DeWitt Spain Airport, and then came back.  It took me not quite two hours.

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Working out! Fixing my boat! Going to the doctor!

For this current phase of training, Tuesday mornings have been pretty loaded, with some running, a gym session, and a workout in the boat.  I've been waking up each Tuesday wondering if I've got it in me to do it all once again.  The physical intensity is one reason for this anxiety, and another is the time aspect: I do have other things going on in my life, after all, and I feel some pressure to pack all the training activities into the morning so I'll have the afternoon to tackle the non-athletic stuff.

So far, every Tuesday I've managed to get the work done, and it's given me a nice satisfied feeling by lunchtime.  And this week I managed to do it once more.  I started with my usual around-the-block, half-mile-ish run, followed by a gym session, followed by some work in the boat.  I paddled for 60 minutes, and I broke the 40-minute period from 0:10 to 0:50 into 3-minute intervals.  For the first two minutes of each interval I paddled at 60 strokes per minute, and for the third minute I alternated between 70 spm and 80 spm.  With a pretty long race coming up in less than six weeks, I think it's useful to move around among some different cadences and intensities, because while I might not need much top speed in a long grind of a race, I will nevertheless need more than one gear.

The weather continues to be hot here, but not oppressive.  As I paddled on Tuesday I had a nice northwest breeze keeping me cool.  Sooner or later I expect the wind will shift to the south and bring moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and then it'll be that sweltering summer we know so well around here.  It's also been very hazy the last several days; whether it has anything to do with the Canadian wildfires, I'm not sure.  Right now on the news I'm hearing about dangerously poor air quality in the Northeast and upper Midwest.  I hope things get better up there before I travel to Massachusetts and Maine.

I spent Tuesday afternoon doing some repair work on the damage I'd done to my boat and rudder in last Saturday's race.  Of course that included using some epoxy resin that I had to let cure overnight.

Yesterday morning I went to see the surgeon to discuss my options for fixing my nerve woes.  I told the doctor that any surgical procedure I might undergo would have to wait until after my trip to New England next month; the doctor, meanwhile, thought it would be sensible to try medication and nerve-block approaches before making the leap into surgery.  So it was an easy decision to start with those things and see how I'm feeling after I return in August.

I came home from the doctor's office and took a look at my boat-repair work.  I had applied a Kevlar and fiberglass patch to the hull over the hole where the rudder comes out, and then turned the boat over and poured resin into the rudder-shaft housing with the hope that it would seep into the cracks that had allowed water into the boat.  Now that the resin had cured, I had to drill out the blockage in the rudder shaft housing.  I did this with an old-fashioned hand-operated brace and bit to put as little stress as possible on the waterproof seal.  I reopened the tunnel, then used a rasp to gently enlarge it so that the rudder shaft would fit again.  Then I filled the boat with water again to see how successful my repair was, and... not a drop leaked from that area!  Forgive me for my blatant self-congratulation, but I think the repair method I devised was quite clever and elegant, and I am extremely pleased that it seems to have worked.

I also did some cleanup work on the rudder.  Like I said in my previous post, I've ordered a new one, and I'll keep the repaired one for emergency backup purposes.

This morning I went down to the dock and hopped in the whitewater boat.  More drills ensued.  I'm encouraged by how my body has responded and I'm looking forward to getting on a river or two soon.

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Race schedule update

 I'm signed up for the Blackburn race, and I might attend the other two as well.

July

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

August

5    Three Rivers Regatta.  French broad, Holston, and Tennessee Rivers, Knoxville, Tennessee.  Races of 6 miles (9.66 kilometers) and 24 miles (38.6 kilometers) on flatwater.  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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Monday photo feature

A photographer for The Daily Memphian shot this photo from an airplane some time ago.  It shows a nice broad swath of where I paddle on the Memphis riverfront.  The main channel of the Mississippi River is on the right, flowing southward (away from us).  That's the harbor on the left.  If you squint really hard, you might be able to see my boat sitting on its rack at the marina.

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Racing on an abrasive river

I went to the race on the Saline River at Benton, Arkansas, yesterday.  There were two noteworthy items about my experience there.  One, I had no competition whatsoever: nobody else showed up with anything remotely resembling a race boat.  The next-fastest boat in the field was probably one of the many ABS plastic tandem canoes people had entered.  I learned a long time ago not to be cocky as an athlete, but as we lined up yesterday, I was some ninety-nine-and-a-half-percent sure I was going to win (and in fact I did).  And two, my boat was all wrong for that river.  The section of the Saline we raced on features long deep pools alternating with shallow, gravelly shoals, and with its understern rudder, my boat was unfit to handle the shoals.  I ended up hopping out and portaging every time I came to one (with no competition, I had plenty of time to do that).  I even started the race on my feet because there was a shoals in the first 30 meters of the course.  But those efforts weren't enough to save the rudder from some damage.

In the early part of the race I tried to maintain a stroke rate in the mid 70s, but the frequent disruptions to portage quickly made that seem pointless.  I did the first couple of portages at a run; the footing wasn't too bad over the pebbly bars next to the shoals.  But as my lead grew I sort of lost my motivation to do that.  On the water I had to work hard to move at even 11 kilometers per hour.  There wasn't much current helping me, and the pools were often shallow enough to create bottom drag.  And by the late stages of the race my rudder was damaged enough that it was creating some drag, too.  It felt like I had one golf whiffle ball of resistance on the boat.

When I reached the finish line, my G.P.S. device told me the course was about 6.2 kilometers (3.85 miles) long.  My time was 46 minutes, 34 seconds, and that means little to me given all the portages and stuff.

The river did indeed do a number on my rudder:

I'll accept the blame, seeing as how I didn't do my due diligence regarding the sort of river I'd be racing on.  I can fix it, but I think I may go ahead and order a new one and relegate this one to emergency-spare duty.

More troubling to me is that as I carried the boat up to the car, I realized there was a lot of water sloshing around inside.  I let it all flow into the bow, opened the drain plug, and tipped the boat so it would drain, and at least a half-gallon of water came gushing out.  How had it gotten in there?  I couldn't remember the hull taking any bad impacts, and when I looked it over carefully, I could see no damage.

Further investigation would have to wait until later.  I enjoyed the catfish lunch that the organizers fed us, socialized a bit with fellow participants, and received my award.  Trophies and medals aren't the reason I do my sport, but I have to say these race organizers went all-out with their hardware:

If they want to say I'm a champion, who am I to argue?  Well, anyway... all told, I don't regret going over there yesterday; it's always nice to get out of town and paddle in a different place.  But if I'd known a little more about the venue I probably would have skipped it.  What I really should have done once I was there yesterday was leave my boat on the car and offer myself up for anybody looking for a canoe partner.

Yesterday also happened to be my mom's birthday.  I'm not sure I should say how old she is, so I'll just say that she's age-appropriate to be my mother.  I came back home and took her to supper at our favorite Indian restaurant.  With some Indian cuisine on top of that catfish lunch, I got all the calories I needed yesterday.

This morning I went down to the riverfront for a 100-minute paddle.  The heat is rising here in the Mid South: as I drove home on Interstate 40 yesterday afternoon, the temperature display on my dashboard rose as high as 96 degrees Fahrenheit.  And yet, it's really not so oppressive.  The humidity has been low and a nice north breeze has been blowing.  I felt quite good out on the river this morning as I paddled a strong but not murderous pace.

This afternoon I took a closer look at the boat I raced in yesterday (I keep a different boat down at the dock for training here at home, in case you're wondering).  I filled the shell with water and looked for leaks.  It turns out that during the beating the rudder took yesterday, the seal got broken where the tube that holds the rudder's shaft meets the bottom of the hull.  I'll have to think about the best way to try to fix that, but I'll get it done one way or another.

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Time for some racing again

That race that was originally scheduled for April 29 is tomorrow.  I'm talking about the four-mile (6.4-kilometer) race down the Saline River at Benton, Arkansas.  I'm basically winging it: other than skipping the gym routine this morning, I'm just training through it.  We'll see how it goes.  I have no idea who else will attend.  I plan to get up early in the morning to drive over there; I expect the trip to be a little under three hours.

Yesterday morning I was back in the whitewater boat doing some more drills: forward paddling, backpaddling, spins, Eskimo rolls, side-slips, stuff like that.  My left side has always been my better paddling side in a canoe, but I did the drills on both sides in the interest of muscle balance.  I need to tweak the boat's outfitting a bit; I'd forgotten how quickly a paddler's ankles can fall asleep in a C1.

I've spent today getting all my race gear ready while otherwise doing non-athletic stuff.  We'll see how things go tomorrow.  I know a lot more now about what's going on in my body than I did the last time I raced, but if I can I'm just going to pretend like everything is normal.

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