A good workout and some Grand news

Tuesday morning I did a gym session and then headed for the river.  Once again there was a screaming wind from the south and it looked like there might be some decent downwind action out on the Mississippi.  But I'll refer you to my comments last week on that topic.

Anyways, I had a workout to do.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the sheltered area on the west side of Mud Island Marina, I pointed my boat north and did three 1000-meter pieces in the harbor with the wind at my back.  I started a new one every 12th minute.  I aimed for 80 strokes per minute during each piece.  My times were 5:11, 4:57, and 4:58, and yes, those efforts were very wind-aided, but the fact that I was having to paddle up and over waves in some areas of the harbor offset the wind advantage somewhat.  I think the main reason that first piece was so much slower than the other two was that I did it in the section of the harbor between the Memphis Queen Line boats and the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, where the waves tend to be at their biggest.

In any case, it was a good substantial workout.  I felt pretty good about my hip rotation; as I mentioned in my last post, the rotation isn't automatic for me yet--each time I paddle I'm still having to say "Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be rotating my hips"--but it's encouraging to see that it's no longer so awkward for me that it's slowing me down to a crawl like it was a few weeks ago.

I didn't do any training activities yesterday, but I received a bit of big news: I am among the lucky winners of permits to run the Colorado River through Grand Canyon next year.  My launch date is August 27, 2025, the day before my 58th birthday.  Even though I'm in my fifth decade of paddling, this will be my first true multi-day wilderness river trip.  At this time I have absolutely no idea who will be in my group, what kind of raft support we'll need for carrying food and camping gear, what the daily schedule will be, or how many days total we'll be on the river.  It's a good thing I've got 18 months to make myself an expert in all these areas (well, actually 15 months--I have to complete the trip application and provide a participant list with the National Park Service by May 29, 2025).  I've always been terrible at rounding up groups of people to do anything, so I don't know where my up-to-15 companions are going to come from, especially since I'll need some people with expertise in remote wilderness paddling trips.  People I know who have taken Grand Canyon trips in the past assure me I'll have a hundred best friends as soon as the word gets out I've got a permit, so I guess I'll find out soon how true that is.  For now, I'm just excited to have this adventure waiting for me on a distant horizon.

The other thing that happened yesterday is a front came through with a mass of colder air behind it.  So I donned more layers and put the pogies back on my paddle down at the river this morning.  All told it wasn't too bad; if it hadn't been for a pesky east-northeast wind, it would have been a nice morning to paddle.  The sun was shining more than I'd expected and the temperature was rising toward 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  I paddled for 60 minuets and worked on--you guessed it--rotation from the hips.

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Monday photo feature

It's the spring of 2017, and I'm charging up Old Fort Bayou at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, with Jeb Berry breathing down my neck.  I think Doug Heller took the picture.

The "Battle On The Bayou" canoe and kayak race has taken place at Ocean Springs each March since 2010 (excepting the pandemic year of 2020).  The 2024 edition is slated for March 23, and that's just three weeks from this Saturday.  I plan to show up down there and do whatever I'm capable of doing.  Jeb, who hails from Gulfport, Mississippi, is signed up to race in a double surfski, and I expect his partner will be his teenage son Thaison.  Anybody who'd like to join us can register here.

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Trying to get it right, and more

The weekend arrived with sunny skies but cool temperatures and chilly breezes from the north.  I did a gym session Friday morning.  Yesterday I got in the boat and did a longer steady paddle--100 minutes.  I went to the north end of the harbor first, then paddled all the way back to the harbor's mouth and up the Mississippi just above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  I'd been feeling good and paddling with good mechanics for the first 75 minutes or so, but barge traffic out on the river created bumpy conditions that messed with my balance and control, and I was probably just getting tired, too.  Back in the harbor I tried my best to pull myself back together for the last couple of kilometers back to the dock.

In general, I think I'm seeing some improvement in the hip-rotation component of my stroke, but I'm not at all sure whether somebody outside my body will see it.  It was Coach Chris Norbury who first informed me of my false rotation down in Florida last month, and I'm fearful that the next time he watches me paddle he'll tell me I'm doing all the same wrong stuff I'd been doing before.  In my lonely sessions here on the Memphis riverfront all I can do is strive for that magic connection between my legs and my torso the best I can.  And again, I think I'm doing it better, albeit not with every single stroke.  In other words, I'm getting it right more often than I used to, but in the spirit of this post several months ago, I need to keep practicing until I can't get it wrong.

By this morning the wind had shifted to the south-southeast.  The March winds have arrived a few days early.  I went out and paddled for 60 minutes, practicing my stroke mechanics at a variety of easy-to-medium intensity levels.  By the time I finished it was about 66 degrees Fahrenheit and rising toward a high in the 70s.  Another weather pattern we don't normally expect in February.

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Paddling hard in a couple of different ways

I started up a new gym routine Tuesday morning: some oblique abdominal exercises and some lunges with dumbbells in addition to the rotation drills I'd already been doing.

After that I went down to the riverfront to paddle on a lovely calm sunny morning with the temperature above 50 degrees Fahrenheit and rising.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did a workout of nine times (2 minutes on, 2 minutes off).  During each "on" interval I aimed to paddle at 75-80 strokes per minute; I tried my best to synchronize my hip rotation with my leg drive and use my arms as little as possible to pull the paddle, instead letting my torso follow my hips.  The workout was a tough one.  I was feeling it in my quads, and the lunges I'd done earlier were probably part of the reason for that.  By the third or fourth interval I was wondering if I could really get through all nine.  But I focused on one piece at a time, and soon enough it was over.  Back on the dock I was exhausted but savoring the endorphin rush.

The warm temperatures continued yesterday, but the wind picked up, too.  By the time I got to the river this morning there was a rather ferocious south wind blowing.  I paddled right into the wind until I was at the mouth of the harbor, and gazing out over the Mississippi I saw some pretty legitimate downwind conditions--not Miller's Run caliber or Columbia Gorge caliber, but decent rideable stuff nevertheless.  Unfortunately, I just don't feel entirely safe going out there on days like today.  The water is cold this time of year, and a flip while paddling by myself could put me in a situation I really don't want to be in.  So I stayed in the harbor, and that's definitely one of the downsides of living in a place where paddling companions of any kind are hard to find, let alone ones with the interest in and aptitude for downwinding.  In the harbor the waves were about as big as I have ever see them there, but not full-fledged downwind conditions.  Still, I've heard the Mocke brothers say many times that a paddler can get help even from small bumps, so I looked for patterns and worked a variety of angles on them.

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Monday photo feature

I've been paddling regularly on the Memphis riverfront for some 30 years, and in that time I've spotted all kinds of things floating in the water.  And it's not beneath me to occasionally pluck something out and bring it home, especially if I find it close to the marina.  I've got an old ice chest, a couple of trash cans, a few of those 5-gallon paint buckets (they come in handy around the house and the workshop), and even a Hoover vacuum cleaner that worked just fine once I got it dried out.  The Mississippi River giveth, I tell you.

Of course, most of what's floating out there is just plain old litter.  Once in a while I get motivated to pick up as much as I can fit in the space just fore of my surfski's footboard.  The litter problem is much too big for any one person to solve, so I concentrate primarily on stuff that's recyclable, like beer cans and soda bottles.  I know I'm not removing even a thousandth of a percent of what's out there, but at least I can say that in some small way I'm part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

The item pictured above is a first for me: an urn for somebody's ashes.  As I paddled up the Mississippi yesterday morning, just above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge I spotted something among some pieces of driftwood that was definitely no ordinary flotsam.  I hoisted the hefty object into my boat and continued on my way.  Back at the dock I removed the lid and found it half-full of muddy water.  If there were any ashes in there, they were indistinguishable from the Mississippi River sediment.

Initially I thought it might be a valuable finely-crafted piece, possibly made of silver or at least silver-plated.  But once I got it home and took a closer look I realized it was just stainless steel and probably a mass-produced Pier 1 sort of thing.  Oh well, at least it's a sturdy container with plenty of heft to it.  I don't exactly need any more tchotchkes around my house, but I'm sure this item will settle into its niche.

I'll just add this: last night I had supper at a local Chinese joint, and the little slip of paper in my fortune cookie said "You discover treasures where others see nothing unusual."  Pretty timely, hey?

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Brrr.

I did some full stretching and a gym session Friday morning.  That evening the balmy weather we'd been having gave way to some gusty storm showers followed by a mass of cold air.  The temperature dropped below freezing overnight, and when I got down to the river yesterday morning it was 33 degrees Fahrenheit.  The sun was trying to come out, but the sky remained what I would call mostly cloudy.  A frigid north wind was blowing.

A couple of friends of mine have told me I really ought to get an erg machine for winter training, and on days like this I really can't argue with them.  But I haven't taken that step yet, and so there I was shivering on the dock and murmuring to myself "Just get your session in.  Don't expect it to be fun.  Someday it'll be nicer outside and then you can enjoy it."  I paddled for 60 minutes in the northern half of the harbor, which is somewhat more sheltered from the wind than the southern half.

Last night it got even colder, and it was 23 degrees when I got up this morning.  It was just 33 again by the time I got down to the river.  But there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and there was just a light breeze coming from the west-southwest.  So it was a significantly nicer day to paddle than yesterday.  I was in the boat for 90 minutes, paddling out of the harbor and up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf, and then back. Work continued on my stroke mechanics: I think I'm starting to get a better feel for the hip rotation I'm shooting for, but it's definitely still sometimes, not all the time.  It's easier on still water than out in the swirly currents of the big river, and I also seem to revert to "false" rotation whenever I get tired or distracted.

It was 41 degrees outside by the time I was driving home.  So it was still quite a chilly day.  It is still February, after all.

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Sunshine

After a few dreary rainy days, the sun finally came out again Tuesday morning.  Having been idle and/or feeling crummy for a few days, I was keen to re-inject some positivity into my athletic life.  After some stretching and a gym session here at home, I headed down to the river.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did twelve 30-second sprints starting every 3rd minute.  I didn't have my cadence sensor with me, but I'm pretty sure I was doing between 90 and 100 strokes per minute during the sprints.  It had been a long time since I'd paddled at that intensity level, and I found myself struggling a bit with the breathing.  I tried to relax and keep my breath in rhythm with the effort, and of course I also focused on good hip rotation.  I'd been working on that a lot during slower paddling sessions, but it takes practice to do it well going fast, too.

It was a fairly hard workout, but I felt good when it was over.  It was chilly when I got down there, but I think it was over 50 degrees Fahrenheit by the time I finished, and paddling under a deep blue sky was just what the doctor ordered after the days of heavy rain.  And I almost always feel good after a more intense workout--endorphins are a real thing, folks.  I spent the rest of the day in an upbeat mood, and that should be motivation I need to keep a good training routine going with my first race of the year less than six weeks off.

The sunny skies and warmer temperatures continued yesterday and into today.  It's supposed to rain tomorrow and then get cold again, so I'm trying to enjoy the nice weather while it lasts.  This morning I paddled for 60 minutes, steady with a few surges.  The hip rotation still isn't feeling entirely second nature, but it seems maybe a bit less uncomfortable than it used to be.

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Monday photo feature

This is a screen shot from an old VHS video I bought back in the early/mid 1990s.  At the time I was determined to practice whitewater slalom any way I could in my whitewater-poor part of the country, and the video showed a bunch of stroke drills that an athlete can do on flatwater.  In the photo above, Dana Chladek, a U.S. team member in the 1980s and 90s, demonstrates "SWEEPS Weaving a Line."

I did lots and lots of these drills in the harbor downtown and on Patriot Lake over on the east side of town.  Now, 30 years later, I'm still doing a lot of drills, although these days they're oriented more toward effective rotation at the hips for maximum stroke power.

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Ups and downs in water levels and energy levels

On Tuesday morning I did a gym session and then headed down to the river.  I paddled in the harbor for 60 minutes, and during the 40-minute period from 0:10 to 0:50 I did a little workout of (1 minute on, 2 minutes off).  For each "on" period I kept the stroke rate in the 70s; I didn't have my cadence sensor with me, but when you're doing one-minute pieces it's easy enough to count your strokes.  The workout felt good and it was nice to have something besides the hip rotation to occupy my attention.  I came away feeling good about what I'd done, and it's seemed like that hasn't often been the case lately.

The Mississippi River had crested over the weekend around 22 feet on the Memphis gauge.  Over the 30 years or so that I've been paddling regularly on the Memphis riverfront, that's not a remarkable level, but it sure feels high compared to the levels we'd been having since last summer.  It's dropping now and the current forecast says the level will be back in the single digits in a few days.  Hopefully some more rain will fall in the Midwest soon and keep the river up.  There's something satisfying about paddling atop a mass of freshly-fallen rain.

It's been a while since I've provided an update on the aches-and-pains front, and I guess that's because I haven't been feeling too bad lately.  But there are definitely little things I'm dealing with.  That pain in my right clavicle that was so bad a couple of months ago isn't gone, but it's not as bad as it was.  Meanwhile I'm having soreness in my wrists and forearms, and I suspect that's being caused more by chores in the woodworking shop than by paddling my boat.  Some days I have some stiffness in my lower and upper back, and some days I don't.  Maybe the best news is that the pain I was having in my hip flexor in December seems to have run its course.  That means I've got the option of incorporating some running into the routine again, though I'll probably wait until the weather is consistently warmer.

I've also had a few days this week where my digestion felt out of whack-- sort of a low-grade unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach.  As of this writing I think it's doing better, but it's lasted long enough to make me start thinking of morbid scenarios like some terrible cancer of the stomach or colon or intestines.  I sure hope that's nothing more than my silly imagination.

I was back in the boat Thursday doing another 60 minutes in the harbor.  It was mostly a steady paddle this time in which I focused, as usual, on hip rotation.  On Friday I stayed in and did a gym session.

The weather was cool but sunny when I paddled on Tuesday and Thursday.  By Saturday it was just the opposite: a bunch of rain had moved into the Mid South, while the temperature was up in the 60s on the Fahrenheit thermometer.  I went down to the river Saturday morning and found it shrouded in fog, and the fog seemed to thicken as I paddled out of the harbor, up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, and back down.  Coming downriver I stayed within sight of the left bank just so I would know where I was, and so I wouldn't be surprised by any silent barge rigs.  It wasn't until I was maybe 400 meters from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge that I was able to see the bridge's steel trusses.  Once I was back in the harbor the fog was thick for several hundred meters, and then, suddenly, I came out of it.  By the time I was back in my car, maybe a half-hour later, departing the riverfront, the fog was all gone from the river.

As for how I felt in the boat Saturday, well... I felt lousy.  I was sluggish and slow, and the low visibility out on the river had almost a vertigo effect.  I guess I've always struggled to have some giddy-up during the gloom of January and February, but I think it might be worse than ever this year.

I was out of the boat yesterday because the handbell group I play with had a gig.  I'm also busy with a fairly complicated project in my woodworking shop.  I'm hoping that spending some time with those things for a bit will be a good way for me to hit the reset button.

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Monday photo feature

Here's an issue that got my attention just this morning.

The photo above is a screen-grab from the Go Pro camera footage shot by a Mr. Ryan McAvoy as he paddled over Looking Glass Falls in western North Carolina.  The photo is featured in an opinion piece by John Boyle for the Asheville Watchdog news website.  I saw it when my friend Cathy shared it on Face Book this morning.  The site has also posted the full video of McAvoy's descent.  You can read it here.

Mr. Boyle's piece addresses an issue that I've thought about often in my 40-plus-year paddling career: is it irresponsible to paddle a boat over something like Looking Glass Falls?  Mr. McAvoy's feat has attracted quite a bit of attention on social media, much of it critical; the main thrust of the critics' arguments is that when such an adventure goes sideways it can require a response from publicly-funded emergency personnel, who then might find their own safety at risk.

The thing is, paddlers are regularly running drops that are even more dangerous than Looking Glass.  So why has this particular event drawn so much flak?

Certainly, a big part of the reason has to be that Looking Glass Falls is one of the best-known waterfalls in the eastern United States.  I think I saw it for the first time on a family vacation when I was younger than 10 years old, and I became very familiar with it once I started attending summer camp in the nearby town of Brevard.  The falls is located right alongside U.S. 276 near the heavily-used entrance to Pisgah National Forest just outside Brevard, and there's a parking area right there with a balcony from which to view the falls.  I would guess that hundreds of thousands of tourists lay eyes on Looking Glass Falls each year.

Many of these tourists probably don't see a lot of waterfalls more formidable than Looking Glass, because such falls are farther off the beaten path.  So in their minds, paddling a kayak off Looking Glass is right up there with the most reckless things a human being can do.  Here in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, where there aren't any waterfalls, I'm occasionally accused of being certifiably insane for paddling my boat on the Mississippi River or even just in the harbor.  I expect the people who make such accusations are unfamiliar with rivers and with paddlesports, and they simply can't imagine a crazier thing for somebody to do.  It doesn't help that there are a number of silly myths swirling around our mighty river: even some of the smarter, more thoughtful people I know believe that there are randomly-occurring whirlpools all over the Mississippi that will suck a poor hapless guy like me down into a watery grave.  (There are not.)

The only way I know to respond to such criticism is to be as responsible as I can and set the best example I can.  Of course that includes having my PFD and other sound safety equipment when I'm out on the river, and more importantly, being as skilled as I can be.  I practice self rescues often, and I also work on skills that help me avoid the need for rescue in the first place.  And I try to educate family and friends and anybody else who will listen as to what our sport is about.  It's a big part of the motivation behind this blog, as well as the movie I made a couple of years ago.

It appears that Mr. McAvoy is of the same mind.  Not only did he study Looking Glass Falls at length before making his run, but also he waited for a day when the conditions were most favorable, and he had his own support team in place.  The worst thing you can call a dedicated paddler is a daredevil or a thrill-seeker or an adrenaline junkie, and McAvoy makes that point in his response to the online criticism.

I encourage everybody to read Mr. Boyle's piece in its entirety.  I don't have anything more profound to say than what I've already said, but this is an issue that you learn to live with when you take up paddling or any other sport that has a wilderness adventure aspect to it.

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Fun in the future, uncertainty in the present

This past week I made a couple of Internet transactions relevant to this blog.  One of them was to sign up for the annual "Battle On The Bayou" canoe and kayak race on March 23.  It's a 13.7-kilometer (8.5-mile) mostly-flatwater race on Old Fort Bayou at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  Anybody who'd like to join me down there can register here.

The other thing I did was submit an application for a permit to paddle the Colorado River through Grand Canyon in the summer of 2025.  Yes, that's a long way off, and as of now I have given absolutely no thought to equipment I'll need or food I'll need or who will accompany me on the trip (the permit specifies up to 16 people).  Right now I'm just hoping to get a permit.  If I'm successful, there will be plenty of time to get my whole plan in order.

The race in Ocean Springs is definitely the more immediate concern, being just seven weeks off.  I'm spending a bit more time in the boat now, and pretty soon I'll have to get some workouts going.  On Saturday I took advantage of a 21.6-foot Memphis gauge reading to visit some places I couldn't paddle to when the river was low.  I paddled over to the Arkansas side and went up the outflow channel from Dacus Lake until a mass of floating wood blocked my path.  Then I paddled a short distance up into the Loosahatchie Chute before heading back to the harbor.  It was a nice sunny morning, warmer than 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and I tried my best to enjoy it, but the truth was I was feeling tense in the boat.  There was a lot of barge traffic on the river that made things turbulent, and even though the weather was nice I really didn't want to go for a swim in that cold water.

Normally I would have gone back to the river yesterday, but with nearly constant rain falling all day long, I opted to stay in and focus on non-athletic obligations.  I did at least make time to do some full-body stretching and some rotation drills with a broom handle across my shoulders.

The sun was shining again this morning, so I went down to the river and did a calm session in the harbor, trying my best to stay relaxed and rotate at the hips.  This is something for which I really could use the help of an in-person coach.  While I know the general outline of what I'm supposed to be doing in my boat, I'm having a hard time knowing whether I'm really doing it the way I should.  I need somebody to slap my wrist when I get it wrong and offer reinforcement when I get it right.

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Drills continue in nicer weather

Once we emerged from the deep freeze early last week, the rest of the week was overcast and rainy.  The Memphis area got some six inches of rain during the course of the week.  So I was pleased to have a sunny day for paddling at last on Tuesday.  I spent 60 minutes doing more work on hip rotation.

Before paddling Tuesday I did a gym session: more Hindu squats and core exercises on the stability ball, plus some rotation drills sitting on the floor with a broomstick across my shoulders.

One nice thing about all that rain that moved through this area is that it also fell higher up in the watershed, and the Mississippi River is rising fast.  It was about 16.5 feet on the Memphis gauge when I paddled on Tuesday, and the current forecast says it will crest close to 24 feet early next week.

Skies were clear at dawn this morning, but it was getting cloudy-ish by the time I made it down to the river.  The Fahrenheit temperature was climbing from the low 30s toward a high around 60 degrees.  The river was flowing at about 19.7 feet.  I did a loop out on the main river, and this time I threw in some surges and tried to keep up good hip rotation at a higher intensity level on less-stable water.

It's nice to have January in the rearview mirror, but some years the weather here in February has been awful, so I'm trying not to get too used to this warm spell we're having.  Around here one can count on plenty of chilly weather throughout February and March and sometimes even into April.

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