Outfitting the tandem kayak, Part 4: The bulkheads

Okay, enough small talk.  Time to start doing some actual work.

Bulkheads are walls that seal off chambers in the bow and stern of a boat.  They are a safety feature, as they prevent the boat from filling entirely with water in the event of a capsize.  When combined with hatches in the deck, they allow for storage space for camping gear.

When installing the bulkheads, or doing any other work inside a boat, it's nice to have as much access to the inside as possible.  So the next step for me is to go ahead and cut the holes for the hatches.

Here is the boat without hatches:

Since I will be making my own hatch covers, the shape of the hatches is entirely up to me.  I know I want the hatches to be as big as possible; I own a couple of large dry bags and on previous trips I have really had to cram them hard to get them stored in boats with smaller hatches.  So I have designed the stern hatch good and big, while the bow hatch, though smaller, is still a good size for easy access.  On a piece of paper, I drew a half-trapezoid, and then traced around margarine lids to round off the vertices.  Then I used the pattern to trace the shape onto the deck of the boat, flipping it over so the hatch will be nice and symmetrical with respect to the boat's long axis.  The bow hatch pattern is pictured at right.

Once the hatches were laid out, it was time to cut.  It takes some real confidence in what you're doing to take an electric reciprocating saw to a beautiful boat.

 And here is the boat after the hatch holes have been cut.

Most of the bulkheads I have seen are made of minicell, but I was looking for a way to avoid the use of minicell here because it's hard to make a minicell bulkhead truly watertight.  I called up Doug Bushnell, the man who made this boat, to ask for advice.  He told me to use any piece of one-eighth-inch plywood, making sure it's well coated in epoxy to make it waterproof.  Since I have no shortage of plywood scraps lying around, this was no problem.  At left is the plywood for the stern hatch.  I kept cutting and test-fitting until it fit the cross-section of the boat aft of the stern.  My bandsaw was very helpful in this process; lacking a bandsaw, I would have used the reciprocating jigsaw and rasps.

Mr. Bushnell pointed out that I did not want the plywood to fit snugly inside the boat, because it would wear a ridge onto the outside of the deck and hull.  I'm very glad he told me that, because I would have driven myself crazy trying to create a perfect fit.  Here is the plywood in place, with some gaps visible.  The gaps will be filled in with thickened epoxy.

Here is the plywood for the bow bulkhead, also with gaps in places.

I'll tell you some more in my next post.

Pleasant paddling

Today I did six laps of the March strength circuit and paddled for 115 minutes.  The weather was gorgeous, and I was paddling with my friend Joe, so there was no reason not to get a couple of extra miles in.

Monday Photo Feature

This past weekend the Brooks Museum of Art here in Memphis showed several films by the late Canadian naturalist, canoeist, artist, and filmmaker Bill Mason.  The scenes of tandem canoeists playing in whitewater reminded me of the canoeing I did at summer camp in North Carolina in the 1980s.  Above, Donnie Kohler and I peel out below Bull Sluice on the Chattooga River near Clayton, Georgia.  Photo by Todd Tyler.

Outfitting the tandem kayak, Part 3: The boat and the guy who's working on it

Here's another look at the boat that I'm about to work on.  It's a Seafarer K-2, built by Doug Bushnell at his West Side Boat Shop in Lockport, New York.  This photo, in which I'm paddling in Wolf River Harbor with our friend Kendra, shows the boat without any hatches.  I'm going to install hatches, along with bulkheads, and modify the seats to make them more comfortable.






As I prepare to work with these fiber-reinforced plastics, the question comes up: how does somebody become an FRP expert?

I can't really tell you, because I am not that guy.

But over the years, I have learned a thing or two.  My education began in earnest when I started to enter whitewater slalom races, and got my first FRP race boat.  If you race on whitewater, you WILL break your boat sooner or later, so learning to patch it is a must.  The first time I had to patch a boat, I bought some resin and fiberglass mat down at the auto parts store.  The resulting patch was acceptable, but as time went on and I got to see how other racers were patching their boats, I picked up a few tricks of the trade, learning how to make patches neater, smoother, and more permanent, and also learning about better resin to use.  (Newcomers to this blog can read a post here about a patching job I did earlier this month.)

In late 1994 I got a bee in my bonnet to convert a playboat kayak into a C-1.  For some reason I chose the Lazer kayak, manufactured by the Wave Sport company of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, for this project (it turned out to be a terrible choice, but that's another story).  I spoke on the phone with Chan Zwanzig, the owner of Wave Sport at the time, and he told me that because the kayak seat assembly in the Lazer is an important part of the boat's structural integrity, I would have to replace it with a Kevlar and fiberglass layup in the cockpit area.  I was a little intimidated, but he kindly coached me through the process, and he pointed me toward Sweet Composites, my most important source of materials ever since.

Here's a picture of the Kevlar-and-fiberglass layup I made inside that boat.  It's not the prettiest thing, but it held up fine and served as a solid anchor surface for the pedestal, thigh straps, and everything else a C-1 needs.  (I took this photo while I was in the process of converting the boat back into a kayak recently.  I have removed the pedestal and thigh straps.)





Over the next decade I started up a woodworking business, and found frequent uses for epoxy resin in my wood projects.  Epoxy works not only as a glue, but also as a filler, so it's a good choice for securing a loose joint.  And many of the tools and skills I use for woodworking cross over into FRP work.

I received another great learning experience several years ago when I built a Coho kayak, offered in kit form by the Pygmy company of Port Townsend, Washington.  A lady here in town had bought a Coho kit, realized she was in over her head, and was seeking a builder.  Somebody gave her my name, and there I was.  Though I had never built a boat before, the kit came with easy-to-follow instructions, and I combined that with my FRP experience to get the job done.  Pygmy boats are "stitch and glue" construction: the parts are all pre-cut to fit together precisely, and the builder simply "sews" them together with steel wire, injects resin into the seams with a syringe, removes the wires, and laminates the whole thing with a layer of fiberglass cloth saturated in resin.  The project included bulkheads and hatches, so I will be drawing directly on that experience to outfit our Seafarer tandem kayak.

And this Seafarer project will be my latest independent study in the college of fiber-reinforced plastics.  Whether I ever accumulate enough credits to earn the degree of master boatbuilder remains to be seen; but anytime I come away from an experience with new skills, that experience has been well worth the effort.  This project includes a couple of things I've never tried before, but I figure I'm a smart enough guy to figure it out, and I hope I might inspire similar confidence in somebody who reads this.

Training volume considerations

Today I did six laps of the March strength circuit and paddled my boat for 100 minutes.

I recently revisited this article addressing the question of how much training one should do.  My favorite line is this: "Training does not make you better or faster. It's the RECOVERY from training that brings improvement."

I knew rest was important before I read this article, but seeing the idea put in those words prompted me to take it more seriously.  These days I try to make sure that my rest days are as restful as possible.  For example, I schedule my strength workouts on the same days that I schedule hard workouts in the boat (which I'll be starting up very soon) so that the "off" days will be totally off.  I'm also thinking more about the role nutrition plays in recovery.

Dodging the wind

Today I paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar again, and it took me 140 minutes.  Two weeks ago I paddled this course counter-clockwise, but today I opted for clockwise.  An annoying beam wind was blowing from the west, and paddling up along the forested Arkansas bank afforded me some shelter from that.

It was cool but sunny, and the wildlife was out.  I saw many ducks and turtles, a few jumping fish, and a great blue heron.

Symmetry

Today I did five laps of the March strength circuit and paddled for 100 minutes.

As I continue to work on my stroke, I realize that the strokes on my right are not the same as the strokes on my left.  That's probably not uncommon; most people are either right-handed or left-handed, after all.  And when I raced slalom I competed in the single canoe class, paddling on the left, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's related.  Anyway, I'd like my strokes to be effective on both sides of the boat even if they're not mirror-images of each other.  Something to work on.

Outfitting the tandem kayak, Part 2: Workspace and tools

When it's time to do some work on your boat, putting some thought into your work space can make the difference between a satisfying experience and a miserable one.

I'm probably more fortunate than many paddlers, because my woodworking shop converts fairly easily to a boatworking shop.  My workshop is an amenity that I, in the grand American tradition, married into.  Martha's house had a three-car garage out back that she wasn't doing much with other than storing the sort of old junk that every homeowner accumulates.  When I moved in with Martha, I cleaned the place out, did some renovation work, and set up shop.

I screwed some eye-bolts into the ceiling joists and tied ropes to them.  Most of the time I keep the ropes tied up out of the way, but when it's boatworkin' time, down they come.  I've got the ropes rigged so I can easily adjust the height of the boat: sometimes I want the boat at shoulder height so I can turn it upside-down and work up inside the cockpits; sometimes I want it at waist-height so I can work on the outside of it; sometimes I want the bow higher than the stern, or vice-versa, so I can use gravity to make the resin flow where I want it to.

If you don't have a good workshop space for working on your boat, look for other places where you can suspend ropes: a porch, an arbor, the eaves right next to a house, even a tree branch.  Because rain, wind, and windblown dust are not your friends, a sheltered place is desirable; an indoor space is even better, especially in the wintertime.  The general rule of thumb, as I've always understood it, is that the temperature must be warmer than 60 degrees Fahrenheit for resin to cure properly.  (A chemist would know how to formulate the resin to cure over a larger range of temperatures and pressures, but since I last studied chemistry 26 years ago as a high school senior, I lack such expertise.)  The only heat source in my shop is the wood stove that's visible in the lower-left of the photo, so if it's cold outside I'll fire it up and get the place good and toasty, and the building's insulation keeps the place adequately warm for at least 24 hours or so.  This year we had a mild winter and it's been an exceptionally warm March, so the temperature hasn't been an issue for this project so far.

Now... on to tools.  Different people seem to prefer different implements for applying the resin: brushes, spatulas, foam pads... browse your local hardware store and you'll see all kinds of things that could work.  Sweet Composites has a selection of applicators for sale as well.

I like to use a piece of minicell, using it like a squeegee.  In three decades of paddling and outfitting boats, I've accumulated a near-endless supply of scraps.  The beer box pictured at left holds merely the smallest of my scraps; I've got several big boxes of larger scraps up on a high shelf in the shop.  For best results, I try to cut a nice clean piece without little shreds of foam hanging off it that can come off into the resin.  A bandsaw is the best tool for doing this (see below), but hack saws and mat knives work pretty well.

 An electric drill is often useful for work on a boat.  You can bore holes with it (obviously) and you can attach a sanding disc and do some aggressive sanding.  Another electric tool I'll be using in this project is a jigsaw.

Some sort of wastebasket is a good thing to have.  These fabrics, especially fiberglass, have loose fibers that stick all over everything once they're wetted out with resin.  Wherever I'm working, I try to have the wastebasket within reach so I can scrape these sticky fibers off my hands onto the inside of the bag.

Get yourself some latex gloves.  Resin is not pleasant stuff to get all over your hands.  It's been linked to all kinds of dermatitis-like ailments.  Some people are more sensitive to it than others, but since resin is also a real pain to wash off, it just makes sense to wear gloves.

 A respirator or dust mask is an important piece of equipment whenever you're sanding any part of a boat.  A respirator is not really that expensive and is worth getting if you plan to do a lot of this kind of work (you replace the cartridges once in a while).  If you opt for the less expensive dust mask, be sure to get a better-quality one with an exhale valve like the one in the picture has.

A syringe is a useful tool for getting resin into tight, hard-to-reach spaces.  I think I bought the one with the long pointy tip from Sweet Composites many years ago (I've still got a little packet of them).  I've accumulated many others over years of taking sick pets to the vet and coming home with medicines to be administered by syringe.  If you're starting to think I'm some kind of packrat, you're catching on fast.

Resin is messy, messy stuff, and it has a way of getting on just about everything.  Acetone is the best solvent for cleaning up wet resin.  You can buy it in any hardware or auto parts store.  An eco-friendly alternative is white vinegar, available in any grocery store.  I've used acetone for years because for a long time I thought it was the only solvent that would clean up wet resin, but I'm starting to use white vinegar more and more, especially for cleaning resin off my skin.

Because I am a woodworker by profession, I own a bandsaw, and occasionally it is quite handy when you're working on a boat, too.  But it is a luxury item--please do not go out and buy one because you think you can't work on your boat without one.  You can.  In fact, the other day I spoke on the phone with Doug Bushnell, the man who built the boat I'm getting ready to work on, and he told me the only power-driven tools he owns are a jigsaw and a drill.  And he's a full-time, professional boatbuilder.

Having said that, I have to admit that my bandsaw makes quick work of jobs that can otherwise be a little tedious.  And it has no equal when it comes to cutting minicell.

Finally, if you're doing work inside a boat like I'll be doing here, a headlamp is a very nice thing to have.  Thank you, miners and cavers, for giving the world this simple but incredibly useful piece of equipment.

And here I am getting started on the bulkhead phase of this project.  The boat is at a comfortable work height.  The gloves are on.  The wastebasket is at my feet.  And I'm probably wearing the headlamp.

Outfitting the tandem kayak, Part 1: The Materials

I. Resin

The resin I use is pictured at left.  Resin is simply a plastic in liquid form.  When the two parts are combined, it hardens into a solid in an hour or so, and cures to its full strength over the next one to three days.  The pumps on the two cans (sold separately) are calibrated to dispense the resin and hardener in the correct ratio.  I mix the two parts in a plastic party cup like the red one in the photo.

The resin pictured is epoxy resin, generally the best thing for building boats and other marine-related objects.  There are other types of resin, such as polyester and vinylester, that I understand are fine for building accessories like the bulkheads and hatches and stuff that I'll be building in this project, and they generally cost less than epoxy resin.  But at this time I have no experience with them, and I'm sticking to what I know.  One day I'll get around to trying those other resins out.

Whatever type of resin you use, take this advice: spend a little extra and get the good stuff.  If you use the stuff they sell down at the auto parts store, you WILL be disappointed.  The Gougeon Brothers West System brand pictured is about as good as you can get for marine applications.  I've also used the System Three brand, on a project I did several years ago, and it seemed fine as well.

So, where do you go to get good resin?  I buy my resin (and numerous other things, as I'll explain later) from a mail-order supplier called Sweet Composites.  John Sweet, one of the best whitewater racers in the U.S. back in the 1960s and 70s, founded Sweet Composites to provide boatbuilding materials for his fellow paddlers (back then, in the days before Perception Kayaks and other manufacturers, the best way to get a good boat was to make your own).  When Sweet retired a few years ago, he sold the company to Jennifer Hearn and her husband Davey, a world champion and three-time Olympian in whitewater slalom, and they now run it out of their home in Bethesda, Maryland.

There are other places to get good-quality resin; the West Marine chain of stores is probably the best-known.  I have not compared prices to see where I can get the best deal; personally, I prefer mom-and-pop companies over large national chains even if I have to pay a few more dollars.  Since Sweet Composites is operated by paddlers, for paddlers, they're a cinch to get my business.

Sometimes it is desirable to add a thickener to your resin to increase its viscosity.  Unthickened resin has the consistency of thin maple syrup; you can thicken it into a putty thicker than peanut butter.  Happily for me, one of the most common thickeners is a by-product of my woodworking business: wood dust.  I keep a jar (pictured at right) full of the dust from my belt sander and random orbital sander and keep it handy for resin-thickening purposes.  The downside of wood dust is that it turns the resin a chocolate-brown color, which could be a cosmetic problem.  I only use it on the inside of a boat, or in non-visible woodworking applications.  Sweet Composites sells a variety of thickeners for a variety of situations.




II. Cloth

Race boats and other high-performance canoes and kayaks are made of cloth.  The cloth is saturated with resin and laid into a boat-shaped mold, and after the resin cures, it all comes out of the mold, and it's a boat!  That's the very basic explanation, anyway.

There are different kinds of cloth, each having desirable properties that the others lack.  Therefore, most boats contain layers of two or more of them (that's why such boats are often called "composite" boats).  The photo at left shows the two types of cloth I use the most.  The white cloth is basic fiberglass, sometimes called e-glass or s-glass depending on its weave and strength.  The gold cloth is Kevlar, developed and trademarked by the DuPont company.

What's pictured here are assorted scraps of cloth that I keep in Rubbermaid containers to protect them from dust and moisture.  In the little white sleeve with "KEVLAR" written across the top is a pair of scissors that I keep with the Kevlar and use ONLY for cutting Kevlar (Kevlar is difficult to cut with anything other than very sharp scissors, and using a pair of scissors to cut fiberglass quickly ruins it for cutting Kevlar).

When I buy cloth, I sometimes buy part or all of a large roll like those pictured at right.  Sweet Composites sells fabrics in rolls or by the yard from said rolls.  If I don't need such a large quantity--if I need just enough to patch a boat, for instance--I can buy small bolts of it here in Memphis at Outdoors, Inc., our local outdoor sports retailer that I'm happy to support because it's owned by Memphians, one of whom is my good friend and training partner Joe Royer.  Fiberglass of various qualities and grades can also be bought in hardware stores and auto parts stores.  One disadvantage to buying cloth in some way other than from a roll is that it will typically be folded up into a plastic package, and as a result will have creases in it.

(By the way, the black fabric on the left in this photo is graphite (carbon) fiber, which I use only very occasionally.  Martha's boat has a carbon-fiber deck, and if it gets cracked I'll patch it with a piece of carbon fiber along with some fiberglass.  I also use the carbon fiber if I have to repair one of my carbon-fiber paddles.  In any case, this roll should last me a good long while, as long as I keep it carefully stored.)

These cloths also come in tape form, pictured at left.  The most common use is for the seams where a boat's hull meets its deck.

The Sweet Composites website has more information on all the different kinds of cloth and the pros and cons of each.  Go there if you want more information than I'm providing here.






Whew... I feel like I'm writing a book here.  Hopefully future posts on this project won't be so long once I get this background information out of the way.

Happy equinox

Today I did five laps of the March strength circuit and paddled for 100 minutes.  It was quite breezy this morning.  Weather reports call for gusts up to 45 mph this afternoon, so I'm glad I paddled when I did.

Off schedule

Today I paddled for 100 minutes.  I continued to work on my blade submersion, and felt a little more comfortable with it today.

Because of a variety of unusual events in the last few days, I've been off my usual Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday schedule.  The result is that I sort of feel like I've missed a lot of training even though in fact I haven't missed any at all--I even got my strength sessions in on their regularly scheduled days Thursday and Sunday.  As a routine-driven sort of guy who's also probably a little obsessive, I'm feeling a bit out of whack.  But I think the outside events have settled down and I should be back on track the rest of this week.

Monday Photo Feature

I bought a tandem touring kayak several years ago from a friend who was selling it at a good price.  Since then I've used it to take non-paddling friends out on nice days, like I'm doing above, but nothing more ambitious than that.

The boat lacks bulkheads, meaning that the entire vessel will fill with water in the event of a flip.  The absence of bulkheads also means no hatches for storing camping gear for a longer trip.  And the seats are uncomfortable.

I've reached a lull in my woodwork, so I'm spending some time jazzing up the tandem boat.  I'm going to install bulkheads and hatches and do something about the seats.  Because I think every canoe and kayak racer should have at least a basic working knowledge of fiber-reinforced plastics, I plan to share my project here in both words and pictures over the next few days.

By no means am I a master boatbuilder myself; my 30-plus-year paddling career has been a hodgepodge of learning-by-doing experiences.  The project before me involves a couple of things I've never tried before.  I'll share it all here so that others might learn this stuff a little faster than I have.  And if anybody knows of a way to do something that's better than the way I do it during the course of this project, I invite him or her to share it in the Comments section so that we may all learn something.

Blade in the water

The other day I saw some video footage of my finish at Ocean Springs two weeks ago.  I noticed I wasn't getting my paddle blades fully submerged on my strokes.  Granted, I was worn out from racing for an hour and a half and probably couldn't be expected to take flawless strokes at that point, but it bothered me anyway.  So today, as I paddled for 130 minutes on the Mississippi and Wolf Rivers, I worked on this one aspect of my stroke, making sure I inserted the blade completely into the water every time.

Concentrating on one little thing like that is exhausting.  As I try to get the blade down in the water, I have to make sure I don't bob the boat by lunging forward and downward too hard, or slump my body too much in an effort to get a little closer to the water.  And for me at least, there's a feeling in the back of my mind that while I may be doing that one thing perfectly, the rest of my stroke and my boat control are falling apart.  The result is that I feel like I've altogether forgotten how to paddle, and I feel all frustrated by the time I get back to the dock.

One thing I probably need to do is get someone to take some video of me paddling on a regular basis to see if I really need the sort of work I put myself through today.

Too warm too soon

Today I paddled my boat for 100 minutes.  These days I'm on a Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday training schedule, but as I have a dentist appointment tomorrow morning and another doctor appointment after lunch, I decided to go to the river today rather than try to squeeze it in tomorrow.

I haven't yet heard today's high temperature, but it's freakishly warm--in the 80s, no question.  I felt pretty hot while doing some work outside this afternoon.  I'm not terribly sorry we had a mild winter, but I sure hope we have some bona-fide spring weather before the summer dog days get here.

One thing about a warm sunny day is it brings out the turtles and snakes out on the river.  I saw one snake and a whole bunch of turtles today.  I really enjoy the turtles: they sit on floating logs and sun themselves, sometimes a dozen of them lined up on one log.  When they see me coming, they file off into the water, creating a series of "ploop, ploop, ploop" sounds.  I've always thought that's kind of cute.

Learn to love where you live

Today I did four laps of the March strength circuit and paddled my boat for 100 minutes.

There's really not that much I can tell you about these paddling sessions this time of year.  I'm out there just paddling along, practicing my strokes and balance, trying to put as many miles under my boat as I can.  It's all part of building the aerobic system, as I discussed in earlier posts.

At times it can seem like a grind, as though I'm just putting in the time because I have to more than because I want to.  But most of the time that's not how it is.  These paddles are the time I get to see the most beautiful scenes that the Mississippi River environment has to offer.  After all, one of the main reasons we do this sport is to get outside and enjoy beautiful places.

Whenever some glossy travel or outdoor magazine publishes its list of the top destinations for canoe and kayak touring, it typically includes places like the San Juan Islands, the Baja Peninsula, the Florida Keys, the Boundary Waters, maybe the Great Lakes or the desert canyons of the American Southwest.  It never includes the Mississippi River at Memphis, Tennessee.  But as a result of my training routine, I know better.  And I hope all people who train for canoe and kayak racing will take the opportunity to discover and appreciate the natural beauty in the places they live, regardless of whether those places get written up in glossy magazines.

Monday Photo Feature

My niece Ada and my nephew Joel enjoy some foggy canoeing on the White River near Calico Rock, Arkansas, in July 2008.  This section of the White will host a big weekend of racing on June 23-24 this summer, with the Aluminum Canoe Nationals followed by the Arkansas "Big Dog" canoe and kayak races.

Pressing forward on a less-than-lovely day

Today I did four laps of the March strength circuit and paddled my boat for 100 minutes.  The overcast skies and stiff east wind made it feel like a chilly, grey day out on the river... quite unlike yesterday, which was sunny and beautiful.

Paddling around the Loosahatchie Bar

I got the surf ski back on the water today, and it seemed to do just fine.

In the six weeks between now and my next race, I hope to lay down a big chunk of my distance base for the season.  Today I did a long session, and plan to do one of those once a week.  (As I discussed back on February 18, "long" for me is two to two and a half hours.)

My route today was a counterclockwise lap of the Loosahatchie Bar.  If you look upriver from the Hernando DeSoto (Interstate 40) Bridge, the Loosahatchie Bar is the big island over toward the Arkansas bank.  Paddling around it, starting and finishing at Harbortown Marina where I keep my boat, takes me about two and a quarter hours on average.  Today it took me 140 minutes.

One of my favorite places in the whole Mid South is the Loosahatchie Chute (the river channel between the Loosahatchie Bar and the Arkansas bank).  Once I'm in the Loosahatchie Chute, out of view of downtown Memphis, the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and all other manmade structures, I feel like I'm in a wilderness area as remote as the Yukon or the Amazon.  The illusion doesn't last--the Chute is only a couple of miles long--but it's neat to be able to spend part of an otherwise busy day in the city in such a place.

Touring on a windy day

Today I did three laps of the March strength circuit and paddled for 100 minutes.  I hope to have the surf ski back on the water in another day or two, but today I paddled my plastic touring boat.  And it was a fitting day for it: it was very windy from the south, and I was glad to be in a stable boat out on the Mississippi.

Boat repair

Occasionally having to fix a boat is a part of life for a canoe and kayak racer.  As you might guess, whitewater racers have to do it the most, but no boat built from composite materials is immune to mishaps like the one I committed last Saturday.  Here's a pictorial account of what I'm doing to get my race boat back in order.


When there's a boat that needs fixing, my woodworking shop becomes a boatworking shop.  I keep ropes attached to the ceiling for just that purpose.

The worst part of the damage, where the hull was broken through, is where the brown blob in the middle is.  On Monday I sanded the area, grinding out as many broken fragments as possible, and filled the break with some thickened epoxy (that's what the brown blob is--I thickened the epoxy with some wood dust from my belt sander).  I let it cure until today (Wednesday) so it will be good and hard and won't gum up the sandpaper when I sand it.  The jagged lines radiating above and below the blob are not really as bad as they look; they are just breaks in the gelcoat.  I have filled them in with some G-flex epoxy.

Now, I have sanded the cured epoxy as flush with the rest of the hull surface as possible.

The next step is to patch the area.  The Kevlar (gold-colored) patch will cover the place that was actually broken, where the thickened epoxy filler is.  The e-glass (white) patch will cover a greater area that includes the Kevlar patch.

The patches have been wetted out with resin and applied (you can't see the e-glass patch because e-glass becomes invisible when it is saturated with resin).  I have taped a piece of plastic wrap over the area and squeegeed the air bubbles out of the resin.  After the resin cures and I peel off the plastic wrap, it will leave a nice smooth surface that should require little sanding, if any.

The boat will not be as pretty as it was before I broke it, but it'll float, and I hope it will glide almost as well as before.  And the patch will be underwater where people won't see it anyway.

Back to training

Update from yesterday's post: Jake Stachovak spent last night at our house on his way back to his home in Wisconsin, and it was great to get another little visit with him.

Well, with my next likely race about seven weeks away, it's time to settle back into a good training routine.  First, a new weight circuit.  Today I did three laps of the following:

Dips, 10 reps
4-way abdominals, 8 reps
Front and lat raises with 10-lb. dumbbells, 10 reps
Yoga back extension, 40 seconds
Bent-over rows with 35-lb. dumbbells, 10 reps

A "Yoga back extension" is something I learned at a slalom training camp years ago, when one of the coaches was showing us some simple yoga exercises: it's like a regular back extension, where you lie face-down on a bench and lift your torso, except there's no bench.  You just lie face-down on the floor and lift both your legs and your torso and hold them up for a length of time.

One day I'll teach myself how to mess around with mpeg files and stuff, and I'll post some video of myself doing all these exercises.  Until then, feel free to ask me if you're curious about any of the exercises.

After the strength work, I went to the river and paddled for 105 minutes.  I paddled my wife's touring boat since my surf ski is in the shop.

Monday Photo Feature

In late 2009, Jake Stachovak embarked on his "Portage to Portage Paddling Project," a journey that took him from Portage, Wisconsin, down the Wisconsin River to the Mississippi, down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, along the Gulf coast around the tip of Florida, up the Atlantic coast to New York City, up the Hudson River to the Erie Canal, up the Erie Canal to Lake Erie, across Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan to the Fox River, and up the Fox River to his starting point at Portage.  The whole thing took about ten months.  A website that contains a log of his journey is still up here.

Jake arrived in Memphis the day before Christmas, 2009.  The photo above shows him landing at Harbortown Marina after a perfectly miserable day of paddling from up near Randolph, Tennessee.  Martha and I had a wonderful visit with him over Christmas Day, and then I accompanied Jake on his next leg of paddling down to the Tunica River Park in Mississippi on the 26th.

I post this picture today because this past weekend I saw Jake in person for the first time since we parted company at the Tunica River Park.  His business travel schedule allowed him to attend the Battle On The Bayou race at Ocean Springs.  It was great to catch up.

The results from the race are now posted here.

Race debrief

I'm plenty sore this morning after racing in the third annual Battle On The Bayou canoe and kayak race on Old Fort Bayou at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, yesterday.

The first two editions of this race felt like spring break in Florida, but yesterday's weather was more what I'm used to in late winter: overcast, cool (mid 50s) and very windy.  The first mile or so takes place in open water, and while the conditions were not what I would call gnarly, we had to deal with a beam wind and waves that made balance very tricky.  Once we were up in Old Fort Bayou above the Washington Avenue bridge, the water calmed down but we continued to paddle into frequent headwinds.

Going into yesterday's race, this event had had only one person as its overall winner in its history, and that would be I.  But a Mr. Christian Maßow (it's a German name, pronounced "massow") of Missouri City, Texas, added his name to the list by finishing about three and a half minutes ahead of me.  I had hoped I could press my boat advantage in that first mile on open water (he was in a K-1, I was in a surf ski), but he handled it remarkably well.  Actually, the beam wind seemed to hurt me more because of the higher profile of my boat; I very nearly flipped twice.  Mr. Maßow reached the Washington Avenue bridge some five or six boat lengths ahead of me, then continued to pull away from me for the remaining eight miles.

It's always fun to win, but seeing as how there are plenty of people out there who are better than I, it was only a matter of time before one of them showed up at this event.  And it's probably better for the event if the same guy doesn't keep winning it year in and year out.

The worst moment of my day occurred right after the race.  As I climbed up the bank with my boat on my shoulder (and declined a couple of offers of help carrying it), my cold, slightly numb hands lost control of the wet, slippery boat, and the boat crashed to the ground and suffered a crack on the bottom of the hull several feet aft of the seat.  So now my surf ski is out of commission for a few days while I do some repair work.  It's not a bad crack, and I should be able to make it almost as good as it was, but it's hard not to cringe when something like that happens to a $3000 race boat.

As for today, the weather seems calmer, and I plan to paddle easy on the Back Bay of Biloxi before Martha and I head home.  I hope getting some blood flowing through my paddling muscles will relieve some of this soreness.

Rough drive

I am now in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, after a stressful drive down from Memphis.  Martha and I left home just after 9:00 AM amid strong southwest winds, and once we were on I-55 south frequent gusts caught our boats and threatened to take them right off our car.  Finally, just south of Batesville, the front crossbar jarred loose and the bows blew up, planting the sterns on the trunk.

I have never had much confidence in the Yakima Q-Tower style racks on our 2005 Corolla.  I think I blame the auto industry more than I blame Yakima.  I never had a problem with the Yakima racks that clipped onto the exterior rain gutters that cars had prior to 1995 or so, but the internal rain gutters on virtually all later-model cars seem to defy the best efforts of Yakima's designers.

Anyway, I managed to pull the car over into the emergency lane without any damage to the boats.  Martha and I removed the boats and reattached the rack, using some duct tape to keep the clips from coming undone.  After reloading the boats, we drove until we saw a truck stop, where we bought some rope for bow and stern tie-downs.  (Yes, I should have put such lines on the boats before we left Memphis, but I didn't.)

We drove slowly.  Once we were south of Jackson, the wind seemed to abate some.  We arrived in Ocean Springs at about 4:30 PM.  I put my boat in the water and paddled for about a half-hour, doing four 12-stroke sprints.

It's time for bed.  The race starts at 10:15 AM tomorrow.  After paddling mostly by myself for the last two months plus, I finally will enjoy the company of some other paddlers.  Yippee!

Vote for Greg!

Today I did seven laps of the February strength circuit and paddled for 90 minutes.  Yes, I know it's March now, but with a race this Saturday, I'm waiting until next week to start up a new strength routine.

Even though this blog is less than two months old, I've dropped the name Greg Barton at least five or six times already, so I guess it's safe to say the man is a big influence on how I train and approach the sport.

And I'm not the only one impressed with Greg: he has been nominated for induction into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame.  Fan voting is open until April 9, and I encourage you to vote for Greg at the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame website, here.

Greg's nomination should be no surprise, for not too many U.S. Olympians can boast of an achievement record like his.  He was a member of four Olympic teams (1980, 1984, 1988, 1992) and won four medals, two of them gold, in flatwater kayak competition.  He was nominated for the Sullivan Award for the nation's top amateur athlete (the winner of which is usually a household name like Carl Lewis) in 1988.

And yet, after three previous nominations, induction into the Hall has eluded Greg.  I try not to engage in arguments over whether Greg deserves induction more than the other nominees--not knowing any of the others personally, I must assume that each is just as outstanding as every other.  But at the same time, I'm convinced that Greg does not deserve induction any less than the other nominees.  I am fortunate enough to know Greg and have participated with him in numerous race events over the years, and I simply cannot imagine a classier representative of the Olympic spirit.  What's more, the Hall of Fame currently contains no canoe-kayak athletes, and it's time to change that.  The governing bodies of many other sports can only dream of having a person like Greg to offer for induction.

The Hall of Fame website is vague about the weight of fan voting in the selection process, saying only that "Hall of Fame inductees are selected by the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame Nominating Committee, U.S. Olympians Association, the Olympic Family and the general public."  It could be that no matter how many people vote for Greg, the induction class is ultimately subject to the whims of a few USOC muckety-mucks.

Well... all we can do is vote for Greg and keep hoping that this will be his year.  Once again, please go here and cast your vote.

Good strokes

Today I did seven laps of the February strength circuit and 90 minutes in the boat.  In the boat, I warmed up and did another six of my 12-stroke sprints before settling into a steady rhythm.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, probably not for the last time: the technical aspect of training is at least as important as the physical aspect.  And as I prepare to race this weekend, even though I'm not dialing back the volume, I'm pushing the pace a bit less and focusing more on relaxing and taking good strokes.

Good strokes... there's a phrase I've been casually tossing about.  What exactly am I talking about when I talk about "good strokes"?  A good kayak stroke gets its power from the core muscles in the body--the shoulders and the torso.  Because these muscle groups are much larger than the arm muscles, they can propel the boat faster, longer.

The best instructional tools I know of for a good kayak forward stroke are a pair of videos.  One is The Brent Reitz Forward Stroke Clinic.  Brent is one of the more successful racers the U.S. wildwater team has ever had, and he narrowly missed a spot on the U.S. Olympic team as a flatwater kayaker in 1988.  After all his hard work developing the precise stroke that an Olympic racer must have, he decided to start teaching classes to share what he had learned with touring paddlers along the California coast where he lives.  He later made this video to bring his instruction to the rest of the world.  You can order it on Brent's website, here.

The other video is The Kayak Forward Stroke, hosted by Greg Barton and legendary ocean racer Oscar Chalupsky.  While I think the Brent Reitz video does a better job of breaking down the stroke into its components and explaining each one clearly, Greg and Oscar's video makes use of more sophisticated video technology and offers some camera angles that Brent's video lacks.  Greg and Oscar's video can be purchased from the Epic Kayaks website, or at retailers who carry Epic products.

I strongly recommend watching both videos, and once you compare and contrast them I think you'll find they're talking about exactly the same thing.  Then, get in your own boat and practice.  Trying a new stroke, or even just modifying it a little, can feel very awkward at first, but don't be discouraged.  Keep at it and after a while the movements will start to feel natural.  Be sure to repeat the process of watching the videos and then paddling a few times, as the videos contain more information that most people can process in just one paddling session.

Monday Photo Feature

Canoeist Richard Savoie prepares to warm up along with other racers for the Battle On The Bayou race at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, last year.  The course will take them several hundred yards across this cove of the Back Bay of Biloxi, then up Old Fort Bayou for about nine and a half miles to a finish next to The Shed Barbecue.  The third edition of this event takes place this Saturday.  I'm hoping we're as lucky with the weather this year as we were during my two previous visits.  Photo by Robbie Capel.

Staying the course

Today I did seven laps of the February strength circuit, then paddled my boat for 90 minutes.

As I move up to seven laps of the strength circuit in this final few days of the month,  I notice that I'm doing a better job of keeping the workout moving than I did earlier in the month, when I was doing only four laps or so.  Back then I would do a lap, do a quick e-mail check, do another lap, brush my teeth, and so on.  But with the tighter time constraint of doing more laps (I always do my strength work right before I head down to the river to paddle), I stay on task.

This is not really a major revelation for me; I've known for a long time that I am much more efficient during a really busy day than I am on a day with few pressing matters.  But one of my goals for this "circuit" format of strength work was to keep me moving constantly, and it's nice to see that really take effect late in each month.

Weight lifting and other strength work has never been my favorite thing to do.  In past years I have done it in a more traditional manner: in each set I strove to meet a goal for amount of weight or number of reps or both.  Doing things that way, there always seem to be moments I dread.  For example, if in my last workout I managed 15 pullups, today I am telling myself that I must get 16 or else... or else... well, I don't know what else, but I'm sure it will be just awful.

Since this whole business of canoe and kayak racing is supposed to be something I enjoy doing, I would like to eliminate moments like that wherever I can.  Sure, I suppose I enjoy the satisfaction anytime I conquer such mental challenges, or anytime I race well because I had the discipline to gut out those unpleasant moments.  But there's a balance in there somewhere, and I've decided it's time to try something new on the strength-building front.

The circuit format gives me a set number of reps per set to do, and the number of sets increases as the month goes along.  Since I've set the number of reps per set relatively low, I can concentrate on good form and technique in my movements without worrying whether I can make a certain rep goal, and I can move quickly to the next exercise.  Early in the month, when I'm doing only three or four laps through the circuit, the workout seems almost ridiculously easy; in fact, when I first started telling people about this blog, I was a little embarrassed about how little I seemed to be doing.  But by the end of the month I can tell I'm getting a good, meaningful workout, and I'm happy about that.

Shaking off the sluggishness

Today I paddled 100 minutes out on the Mississippi.  After a couple of days of fighting through windy conditions, it was nice to have a much calmer day.  It was cool--probably about 50 degrees when I was on the water--and there was a light but chilly north breeze, but the river was about as glassy smooth as it ever gets.

During these weeks-long periods of doing nothing but LSD, I tend to start feeling tired and sluggish at times.  I've found that it's often helpful to work the ATP-CP system a little to get myself feeling sharp again.  As I said in my post back on February 16, I do this by doing very short sprints as hard and fast as I can, with a good long thorough recovery in between.  If the sprints are longer than 15 seconds or so, or if you don't allow enough recovery time in between sprints, the body will abandon the ATP-CP system and start to go lactic.  Since timing myself in the boat for a short intense interval is a pain, I just do 12 strokes (where one "stroke" is actually a complete cycle of a stroke on the right and a stroke on the left).

Today I did six of these 12-stroke sprints, with two minutes of recovery in between.  I always do these sprints at the beginning of a paddling session, after a good warmup, while I'm feeling fresh.

Another good reason to do a small bit of speedwork is that my first race of the season, the third annual Battle On The Bayou down at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, is a week from today.  I generally train through these early-season races, which is to say I'll continue doing my normal distance paddles and strength sessions for most of next week, but at the same time I want to make a good showing, so I'll hone my speed just a little and try to go down there as rested and focused as I can.

Wind advisory

Today I did six laps of the February strength circuit and 90 minutes in the boat.

The freakishly warm weather is back, with the high today predicted to be about 77 degrees Fahrenheit.  At this time of year, warm weather is usually accompanied by unstable conditions.  Today the NOAA has a wind advisory in effect for the greater Memphis area.  After my time down at the river this morning, I'd say they got it right.  The wind that was blowing on Tuesday was nothing compared to what it was doing today.  Today was one of the windier days I've ever seen down on the river.

I paddled to the mouth of the harbor, took one look at the river, and decided to stay in the harbor.  The mile and a half or so I paddled into the wind from the marina to the mouth of the harbor had me pretty tired, so I let the waves carry me back downwind for a while until I'd recovered.

One drill I like to do on windy days is to paddle in a beam wind by going back and forth across the harbor.  I try to keep the boat as "quiet" (free of rolling, pitching, and bobbing) as possible while dealing with the tricky balance issues presented by the waves coming at me from the side.  What I hope to accomplish is to keep the boat moving smoothly and efficiently while I'm a little off-balance.

Keeping the boat dry

This morning I did six laps of the February strength circuit and paddled for 90 minutes.

It's sunny and warmer today, but rather windy.  The wind is from the south, and for some reason that makes the Mississippi a lot rougher than a north wind does.  I guess it's something to do with the current flowing against the wind.  If there are towboats pushing barges upstream, the river can get extremely rough.  The wind seems to push up the waves and make them last a long time.

Today the river was free of towboat traffic, so the conditions were not big as much as they were choppy and confused.  I spent some time working on keeping my boat gliding over that stuff.  Back when I was doing a lot of whitewater racing, one of the things I learned was the importance of keeping your boat "dry," or running on top of the water.  Waves splashing over the deck will slow the boat down.  The worst thing you can do is plow through a wave and have it smack you in the chest: that will stop your boat dead in its tracks.

The sort of racing I do now is not nearly as technical as slalom or wildwater racing, but I figure keeping your boat dry in rough conditions is just as important.  I always enjoy finding ways to apply my whitewater experience to the challenges of flatwater or open water racing.

A cheerier day

Today I did six laps of the February strength circuit and paddled for 90 minutes.  I didn't go to the Wolf and back today because I felt like doing something different; but 90 minutes it was.

Yesterday was a chilly, dreary day, and when I got to the dock this morning it sure looked like today would be more of the same.  But about a half-hour into the session, the sky cleared up and I got to paddle in the sunshine.  The weather forecast in this morning's newspaper had made it sound like we might have some sun peeking through later in the day, but it's turned out to be a sure-enough sunny day.  A pleasant surprise.

How long is "long"?

Today I paddled from the marina to the mouth of the harbor, then up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, then back down the Mississippi and back into the harbor and back to the marina.

I first starting doing this circuit in the late 1990s, when Joe Royer and I started getting together to paddle.  The annual Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, of which Joe is founder and director, starts at the mouth of the Wolf and finishes about a half-mile or so up in the harbor.  So basically we're doing the race course backwards and then forwards when we go up to the Wolf and back.  Doing so has become a habit for Joe and me; it's sort of what we automatically do when we paddle together, unless one of us expresses a desire to do something different.

So I have paddled this route hundreds of times in the last fourteen or fifteen years.  The entire round trip takes me approximately 90 minutes.  Which brings up this question: when I discussed "long steady distance" in my post this past Tuesday, what exactly did I mean by "long"?

Because I've done the Wolf-and-back course so many times, I would say that an average LSD session for me is 90 minutes.  Even if I decide to paddle somewhere else, I typically paddle for 90 minutes if an average-length session is what I'm looking for.  No scientific research went into this; it's just what I'm used to.

If I want to do an "extra-long" session, as I try to do about once a week during the height of the spring training season, I'll paddle somewhere from two to two and a half hours.  I rarely paddle for longer than this for a specific training session (i.e., not counting the times when I get together with some friends and paddle a long section of the Mississippi or something like that).  The reason is that I just can't maintain good stroke form for longer than several hours, and there's no reason to continue practicing my strokes if I'm doing them poorly.  And considering that the longest race I'm likely to enter this year will take me around two hours, there's no reason for me to log ultra-distance sessions.  Also, while paddling is certainly an important part of my life, it's not more important than other things I've got going on--working in the workshop, petting the dog... stuff like that.  So two and a half hours is about my upper limit for a training session.

Now, how about a minimum paddling time?  After all, many people just don't have 90 minutes or even an hour in their day that they can spare for paddling.  What advice do I have for them?

Well, once again, I don't claim to have the last word, but I will point out that the technical aspect of an LSD paddle is at least as important as the physical aspect.  Therefore, I recommend doing a session that's long enough for you to get in a good warmup and then spend a meaningful length of time practicing your strokes.  Forty minutes, perhaps.

But rather than simply listen to me or anybody else, you should get out and do whatever your time and ability allow you to do.  If what you're doing feels beneficial, then it probably is.  As Greg Barton told Bill Endicott in The Barton Mold:

It's sort of a philosophical thing: Why am I doing this? If you can answer that, it's easier to motivate yourself to go out there and do the workout than if you are doing it just because someone tells you to. At times, even if your assumption is wrong, it's better than having no assumption at all. If somebody honestly believes that doing a lot of 250 meter sprints will improve his aerobic base, it probably will, although he might do even better doing some longer pieces. At least he has a purpose for doing it.

The body's three energy systems

Today I did five laps of the February strength circuit and paddled for 90 minutes.  It's warmed up into the mid-50s here, and I paddled without pogies.

To elaborate a little on what I was talking about in Tuesday's post, I've put together a summary of the three systems by which our body produces energy (with substantial help from William T. Endicott's books The Ultimate Run and The Danger Zone):

1.  The aerobic system.  This is the one I was talking about on Tuesday.  This is the system by which our bodies produce energy in the presence of oxygen breathed in with the air.  In Tuesday's post I offered a very basic description of how it works; one of the things I didn't mention is that the product of this (and the other two) systems is adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a compound necessary for muscle contraction to occur.  In the case of the aerobic system, the mitochondria produce ATP from glycogen in the muscles and liver.  The glycogen comes from the food we eat.

The aerobic system takes the longest to develop of the three systems--three or four months.  So athletes start on it early in the season with long aerobic sessions such as the long paddles I'm doing these days.  In a long-distance endurance sport like the one I do, the body uses the aerobic system to produce its energy a great majority of the time.

2.  The anaerobic system.  You're probably familiar with the point, once you reach a certain level of exertion, at which you start to feel that burning in your muscles or, if you're really out of shape, the muscles tie up completely.  What's happened is that the oxygen supply from the air is no longer adequate for producing the energy for what you're doing, and the body is now converting glycogen to ATP anaerobically.  The by-product of this reaction is lactic acid, and that's what causes the burning sensation in your muscles as well as the soreness you feel after a hard workout.

The anaerobic system takes some six to eight weeks to develop.  My most intense races are scheduled for the first half of June, so I'll start doing some workouts that specifically target this system  around the end of March.

3.  The ATP-CP system.  This system uses the ATP stored in the muscles along with creatine phosphate (CP) to enable muscle contractions.  The system is depleted after about only 15 seconds, so in a sport like flatwater/open water canoe and kayak racing, it get used up in the sprint off the starting line.  The ATP-CP system can be developed very quickly.  I typically work on it in the week or two leading up to a big race, doing short (maximum 15 seconds) sprints with full recovery in between.


So that's my very basic understanding of the physiological principles of training.  I've probably made some mistakes in my summary above, so feel free to offer corrections in the comments section.  Meanwhile, I'll refer back to this post in the future when I explain some of the workouts I'm doing.

LSD

Today I did five laps of the February strength circuit and paddled the surf ski for 90 minutes.

At this still-early point in the season, my paddling regimen consists of, well, lots and lots of paddling.  By logging many hours of steady, aerobic paddling, I'm building my "base," something that athletes in all endurance racing sports (and I think most other types of sports) do.

When I was running in high school and college, we referred to the typical base-building session as "LSD," which stands for "Long Steady Distance."  I don't know whether this term predates the 1960s-70s popularity of  psychedelic drugs, but all the runners and coaches I knew seemed to throw it around without giggling.

Biology was not one of my better subjects in school, but here's what I understand is going on when you string together days, weeks, and months of steady aerobic exercise:

Your heart muscle gets stronger to meet the demand for a greater volume of blood.  This blood gets pumped to the muscles doing the work.  In the case of paddling a kayak or canoe, this would be primarily the arms, shoulders, and abdominal muscles.  In the early going, when you're out of shape, the muscles are not able to process the amount of blood they are receiving.  But as time goes on, during the recovery periods between workouts, new capillary beds form in the muscles and enable the muscles to handle the increased volume of blood more efficiently.  Your body also forms more mitochondria, cells that convert the oxygen in the blood to energy.

Eventually, your body becomes a much more efficient machine for performing the required movements of your sport.  And the blood-processing infrastructure--what exercise physiologists call your "VO2" system--will be needed later on when you move into anaerobic exercise: it will facilitate your recovery from super-intense workouts by washing excess lactic acid from your muscles.

On the technical side, these steady distance sessions are the time when a paddler develops a smooth, fluid, efficient stroke.  It's much easier to concentrate on good form when paddling at a comfortable speed that allows conversation with a fellow paddler than when paddling as hard as possible.

So these days I'm doing plenty of LSD, nudging up my volume of paddling week by week.

Monday Photo Feature

Since winter has suddenly asserted itself here in the Mid South, I'm sharing another cold weather paddling photo.  Joe Royer snapped this picture of me in almost the exact same location as last week's photo, but in a more recent year (2009 or '10, I think).  A blast of cold air had gripped the middle and lower Mississippi basin for a few days, and we began to see ice floes coming down the river.

Winter has arrived

Late Friday night the most malevolent cold front we've had so far this winter roared in.  Yesterday morning I got in my boat as the temperature hovered around 30 degrees, the sun tried desperately to find gaps in the cloud cover, and a fierce wind howled from the north.  I paddled the touring boat.  The pogies were on.  I stayed in the harbor and sought out as much sheltered water as I could find.  I paddled for 90 minutes, and was thankful to have the session over with.

This morning, after doing five laps of my strength circuit, I returned to the dock with the mercury even lower--25 degrees or so.  But this time the sky was clear and there was very little wind.  The harbor was as smooth as glass, so I decided to go for the surf ski.

One problem I've encountered on sub-freezing days is that my surf ski's rudder is prone to freezing up.  Such was the case this morning.  I didn't want to force the pedals because I once broke a cable inside the boat and it was extremely difficult to repair.  So I just got in the boat and hoped it would thaw out as I paddled.  The rudder was turned slightly to the right, so I pushed away from the dock and muscled the boat into an open part of the harbor where I could paddle in large circles.  I completed almost one full circle when the rudder, warmed by the sun and the liquid water, came free.

I headed south toward the mouth of the harbor.  The sun felt good on my legs, clad in my heavy black neoprene wetsuit pants.  The day was pleasant enough that I decided to go out on the Mississippi and paddle up to the mouth of the Wolf River.  That plan changed, however, when I reached the mouth of the harbor and found the big river stirred up by some busy barge traffic.  If you paddle a surf ski on anything other than flat water, you will get wet.  And it wasn't a good day to be wet.  I had enough time to paddle up to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and come back to the harbor before a big upstream-bound tow rig would arrive with its monster waves, so I did that.

Back in the harbor I headed north, planning to go up to the north end and then return to the marina.  Energized by the simple fact that I was not miserable on such a cold day, I paddled a strong tempo and thought happy thoughts.  I was getting pretty tired by the time I turned around and headed back south toward the marina, but it was the good sort of tired you feel when you've had a solid training session.  Actually, I'm sure I got a perfectly good workout on Saturday too, but where Saturday's session was an ordeal to be survived, this morning's outing, though colder, was delightful.  I'm always fascinated by the difference the presence or absence of wind and sunshine can make on a winter day.

It was still below freezing when I finished today.  Back on the dock, which is in the shade during the morning hours, the water was freezing to the bottom of my boat as I toweled it off.  I figure I'm not really training unless I do at least a couple of sessions on days like these each year.

Waxing philosophical

Today I did four laps of the February strength circuit and paddled my boat for 95 minutes.  It was a touring boat sort of day--overcast, low 40s, chilly north wind--but I sucked it up, threw on some extra layers, and paddled the surf ski anyway, because the weather is supposed to get worse in the next few days.  I wore pogies today for the first time in several weeks.

In my "vocational" life I am a woodworker.  A friend of mine showed me this TV news piece on a friend of his, a woodworker in Virginia:

http://www.fox2127.com/story/16700463/john-carlins-virginia-talented-local-woodworker

Mr. Giguere articulates a couple of points I have long considered relevant to my training and to life in general.  At about the 1:25 mark, Giguere says "Work is work, but I don't see it as separate from my life.  It's all my life."  This is how I think of my woodworking, along with paddling and everything else I do: simply as aspects of a rich, satisfying life.  Each day that I manage to paddle my boat, work in my workshop, eat three good meals, spend time with my wife, pet our dog, check in with my mother, pet her dog, and read a book is a pretty darn good day as far as I'm concerned.

Giguere also mentions technique and body mechanics as important parts of what he does.  All woodworking tools work best when used with proper technique, but this is especially so in the Japanese style of woodworking in which Giguere specializes (and which I'm trying to learn more about myself).  I believe that if I strive for technical precision in all the other things I do, it will carry over into my kayak racing.

I'll probably have more to say on this theme by and by, but this video is worth noting now because it really resonates with me.

Out comes the surf ski

Today I did four laps of the February strength circuit and 75 minutes in the boat.

It was quite chilly this morning, but with very little wind blowing and the harbor looking glassy-smooth, I decided to paddle the surf ski.  My first race is in less than a month and it's time to start getting the feel of it again.  For the rest of the winter I figure I'll paddle it when the weather is nice, and paddle the touring boat when it's not.

Monday Photo Feature

It's been a mild winter, but we're not in the clear yet.  February has been known to get nasty.  Joe Royer took this photo of me in February of 2003, one of the bleakest winter months I can remember.

More thoughts on strength development

Today I did four laps of the new strength circuit and paddled for 80 minutes.  In the boat I did the same backpaddling pieces that I described last Sunday.

Early in the season I focus on strength quite a bit.  Of course, there are many different ways to approach strength building and weightlifting.  One way, of course, is to push yourself to lift more and more weight.  I've done my share of that; at the all-boys schools I attended growing up, how much weight you could "bench" was one of the many variables that determined your place in the pecking order.

As I got older and more serious about my sports--distance running in high school and college and canoe and kayak racing after that--I began to realize that raw bulk was not the best thing for what I was doing.  In the winter of eleventh grade, I stopped hanging out in the school weight room and started working out with a small set of dumbbells at home, experimenting with lighter weights and more reps.  After a while there was noticeable improvement in my muscle tone, and I felt much stronger and more confident on the track that spring.

 If you watch a high school junior-varsity distance race, chances are you'll see some kids struggling across the finish line, their arms flailing and their bodies contorted.  If you turn on the TV and watch, say, the Olympic final of the 5000 meters, you'll see runners competing all the way to the finish, their form just as fluid at the end of the race as it was at the beginning.  I'll bet you anything that with 300 meters to go, those world class runners are hurting just as bad as those JV kids are late in their race.  The difference is the physical maturity of the Olympic runners.  In other words, they are stronger.  But it's not bulk; theirs is a strength in motion.

Maintaining form is at least as important for a canoe and kayak racer.  Probably more so, for without good stroke form, the boat will slow down no matter how fit the person paddling it.  So my weight work has been concentrated more on good technique than on intensity of resistance.

This season, I'm doing strength work in a circuit format, with the idea of keeping myself moving with little rest.  Consider this month's circuit, in which I have three exercises in a row (orbital circle, the Russian, behind-the-head lifts) that require my arms to be up over my head.  During those three exercises, the blood runs out of my arms and by the end my arms are screaming.  I try to relax and do the exercises as precisely as I can in spite of the discomfort.  I'm hoping such commitment to technique will pay off in the final quarter-mile of a race where I'm digging as hard as I can to reach the finish line before my competitors, but at the same time striving to maintain good stroke form so I don't beat myself.

One last point I should make is that a quality strength routine can be done in less than 30 minutes.  Since lifting weights has never been a favorite activity of mine (I wouldn't do it at all if I weren't convinced that it helps my racing and my overall health and fitness), and since I have plenty to do elsewhere in my life, I'm all too happy to keep my strength work short and sweet.

Polar bears on the Mississippi

Today I paddled for 90 minutes.  No strength work today--I'm doing that only three times a week.

I paddled out of the harbor and down to the trio of old bridges below downtown Memphis, then paddled up the Arkansas bank to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge before returning to the harbor.  The weather report called for thunderstorms, but fortunately all was calm out on the river this morning.  Or, I should say the sky was calm, but thanks to busy towboat traffic, the water was rather turbulent.  Turbulent in a good way: I love bouncing around in the chop.  It's not quite whitewater, but it sort of feels like the stretches between rapids on a big-water river like the New River Gorge.  I enjoy the challenge of keeping my boat gliding in those conditions.

Mild winter or no mild winter, the Mississippi is cold right now.  As I paddled through some big waves behind a towboat, I took a big splash that sent a stream of icewater down my neck and inside the tube of my sprayskirt.  It took a good twenty seconds for the shock to wear off.  If I had been on the surf ski I'd have been soaked to the bone for the rest of the session.

As I paddled back into the harbor and headed for the marina, I passed a bunch of people participating in some sort of polar bear swim charity event.  Nobody was staying in the water for long.  I didn't blame them.

New month, new strength workout

Today I made three laps of the following circuit.  All the exercises here are done with a Smart Bell:

Tai Chi rotations, 10 reps
Orbital Circle, 12 revolutions each direction
The Russian, 12 reps
Behind-the-Head lifts, 12 reps
Pushups, 10 reps
Situps, 6 reps
The Russian with squats, 10 reps
Circle, 12 revolutions each direction
Lunges, 10 reps

I also paddled my boat today for 80 minutes.

The "Smart Bell" is another exercise tool I learned about from my friend Emerson Wickwire, the wrestling coach at my last school.  A friend of his, in fact, invented the Smart Bell: former U.S. national team wrestler Paul Widerman.  The company website is www.thinkfit.com.  I'm having trouble finding specific video examples of the exercises listed above, but there are some good general videos of Smart Bells in action here.

Just for the record, I have no endorsement agreement with Smart Bells or with any other people or companies whose products I might mention on this blog.  Indeed, there seems to be no shortage of people hawking their fitness products on the Internet and on TV infomercials--exercise balls, the Bowflex, those bungees and pulleys and stuff you can attach to a doorknob, and so on.  Each company wants to claim that its product is the last exercise tool you will ever need.  I'm skeptical of that, but I think that many of these things do have value and I enjoy incorporating as many of them as possible in my monthly exercise routines.  An exercise ball will make an appearance in a later strength workout, for instance.  Basically, if I think some fitness product is interesting, I try it, and if I like it, I keep it, and if I don't, I don't.

I got the idea of having a different strength routine each month from The Barton Mold, William T. Endicott's case study of Olympic champion flatwater kayaker Greg Barton.  Endicott writes

Barton takes two or three exercises from each of [his categories of lifting exercises] and makes up a routine consisting of 10-12 exercises, which he continues for three or four weeks. He then creates a new routine. Some exercises would stay in the routine, but a number would be different.

I do this is because I think it helps to get over plateaus. I'll change to another
exercise that works the same muscle, but maybe from a little different angle.
As soon as I start the new exercise, I can make improvements right away.
But pretty soon I reach a plateau. Then maybe I'll go back to the old one and
find that, sure, maybe I've lost a bit initially, but not much. And then after
a week or two, I've actually surpassed where I was. It's a way of tricking your
mind and body into improving beyond what it felt was a barrier.

The book also notes that Greg is less concerned with the amount of weight he lifts than with precision in his muscle movements, much like a paddler must strive for in the boat.

I first read The Barton Mold in the late 1990s, and have followed Greg's example of strength conditioning ever since.  As the month goes on, I increase the weight or the reps or the number of laps through the circuit, and I like how the workouts build to the point that they're quite taxing by the end of the month, only to "start over" when a new month begins.

The Barton Mold is available in PDF format on the International Canoe Federation website, here.  The excerpt above is from the "How Barton trains" section.