Memphis and the Mid South is known for its sweltering summer heat, and we've had just such days here in the second half of July. In the last couple of weeks the mercury has climbed up to about 100 degrees on the Fahrenheit thermometer, with heat index values exceeding 110.
But we've also had some pretty nice days during this period. The weather here seems to go in cycles: it'll be oppressively hot, but then a front will come through, often with thunderstorms, and then for a couple of days we'll have a north breeze that brings in more pleasant air. At some point the wind will shift back to the south, bringing in humidity from the Gulf of Mexico, and then we'll be back to miserably hot weather for several days.
Early last week we had some of the worst heat and humidity I can remember, at least in the last decade. Then a line of thunderstorms came through, and by Wednesday the weather was quite pleasant. It was still pretty warm, with afternoon highs reaching the high 80s and even low 90s, but the wind was blowing from the north and the air was much less humid. Over the next several days the wind shifted back to the south, bringing that humidity with it, and another hot spell settled in here over the weekend and lasted through Tuesday. Then yesterday the wind shifted to the north and we had some scattered showers, and by this morning it was again much more bearable.
Back and forth it goes, and that's the story of summer around here.
It was still very hot on Tuesday, and I got in the boat hoping for some wet fun. For much of this summer I haven't had much luck finding surfing opportunities on the Mississippi; most days there has been no commercial traffic in sight during the times I've paddled out there. But on Tuesday I reached the mouth of the harbor and found a huge barge rig just below the trio of old bridges, coming upriver. I moved onto the river and proceeded downstream at a leisurely pace, doing a few warmup sprints along the way, aiming to meet the rig once it was just above the Harahan Bridge.
I made my rendezvous with the commercial vessel and found some of the best surfing conditions I've seen in a long, long time. The waves were big and beautiful, and they were linkable, too. I would ride one for close to a minute, and "follow the hole" to keep myself in a trough or move onto a building wave. I could almost hear Dawid Mocke's voice in my head: Nose in the hole, Elmore! Okay, now FOLLOW the hole!! Where's it going???
Once in a while my bow would plunge into the trough and throw up a burst of spray that sure was pleasant under the scorching sun.
I rode the waves for maybe a third of the distance between the Harahan Bridge and the Hernando DeSoto Bridge. That's not bad considering I was moving against the big river's current. But no matter how well I navigate the waves, those towboats always move upriver faster than I do. And so the waves eventually petered out as the barge rig put more and more distance on me. Finally I ferried back over to the Tennessee bank and paddled back up toward the harbor. The sun continued to beat down and I was baking by the time I was back in the harbor, so I remedied that with some remount practice. At this time of year it's more about cooling off than practicing a skill, but it pays off nevertheless, especially when I travel someplace like the Miller's Run in South Africa.
I got back to the dock and treated myself to a lovely cool bath under the hose. Too many of my paddling sessions this summer have felt like slogs, but with some awesome surfing and the attendant adrenaline and endorphin rushes, some remount practice, and a refreshing hose bath, Tuesday's visit to the river was about as perfect as it could have been on a blazing hot July morning, and I left the dock with a smile on my face.
Yesterday afternoon I rode my bike for a little over an hour. This time last year I had a solid general fitness program going in preparation for the Grand Canyon, with lots of paddling and bike riding as well as stroke drills in the whitewater boat and some strength exercises. This summer I haven't had the motivation of a big wilderness trip, and I've had numerous distractions that I've talked about in previous posts. And so I haven't been on the bike as much, or done much of anything else besides bare-minimum surfski sessions on the riverfront downtown. But in the last week I've gotten in a couple of decent rides and I hope I can keep that going for the rest of the summer.
This morning I got even bolder and signed up for a race! The Firecracker canoe & kayak race is scheduled for a week from this Saturday on the Mississippi River from Grafton, Illinois, to Alton, Illinois. I did this race last year, and for the last several weeks I've been debating whether to return: I'm not nearly as fit as I was a year ago, and of course it's always possible that a development in my mother's condition could require my presence here at home. But this morning I made up my mind to go ahead and enter. If it turns out I can't go, at least I'll have made a donation to the Mississippi River Water Trail organization that puts the event on.
Knowing that I might do this race, I've stepped up my efforts in the boat a little in the last couple of weeks--just some long surges and stuff, nothing too sophisticated. Anyway, at nine days out, today was pretty much the last day to do any kind of substantial workout that my body will be able to internalize by race day. So I went down to the river this morning with a simple but solid plan: I would paddle for 60 minutes, and from 0:10 to 0:50 I would do some two-minute pieces starting every fifth minute. Within each piece, I would paddle at my likely Firecracker race pace for 90 seconds, and then push it up to sub-maximum intensity for 30 seconds.
Meanwhile, with Tuesday's fun in mind, I was also in the mood for some more surfing. So I made a deal with myself: I would start my workout in the harbor, and if there was any well-positioned commercial traffic out on the river when I reached the harbor's mouth, I would suspend the workout and go out and try to surf. After that, I would resume the workout for whatever portion of my 60 minutes remained.
It takes me around 15 minutes to paddle from the dock to the harbor's mouth, so at the 10-minute mark I started the first workout piece. At the 15-minute mark I was able to see out onto the river, and there was indeed a barge rig in a good spot out there. So I did my second piece en route to the towboat's wake, and then spent a few minutes seeing what kind of surfing I could do. The waves weren't nearly as user-friendly as what I'd seen on Tuesday; they were sort of wandering right and left. But I got a handful of brief rides. Then I resumed the workout having missed just one of my pieces.
By the 40-minute mark I was headed back toward the harbor, planning to finish the workout there. But there was a bigger barge rig coming upriver from beneath the Harahan Bridge, and even though I had planned to paddle for just 60 minutes, I had no pressing commitments back in my non-athletic life, and I reminded myself that this was my last day to get in some good hard paddling before race day. So I finished the workout near the harbor's mouth, and then, with the barge rig now in a good spot for me to access it, I paddled toward it with high hopes for the kind of surfing I'd enjoyed on Tuesday.
On my approach I could see that the waves were big and beautiful. But once I was in the middle of them, I realized that they were slightly out of my league. Like the ground swell that I saw in South Africa six months ago, these waves were a little too big and moving a little too fast for a mere mortal like me to catch them. I gave it my best effort, but I didn't get a single ride.
By now I was feeling pretty spent, so I headed back to the harbor. I did a couple of remounts on the way back to the dock, and took out after 80 minutes of paddling.
So... it's been quite a week here in the dog days of summer. Between now and race day I'll shorten the sessions a little, work on my speed, and hopefully get some rest.
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