"If you've got a good stroke, your body won't feel broke!"

Yeah, I know... I could have made my living writing slogans for the Burma Shave billboards if I'd been born a half-century sooner.

But my innate corniness should not diminish the importance of my point: if you find yourself dealing with a lot of nagging injuries, you should take a good, hard look at your stroke.

When I started doing some kayak racing with a wing paddle in the late 1990s, I thought I had a pretty good handle on the forward stroke.  I had studied the photos and diagrams in William T. Endicott's The Barton Mold, and the blades seemed to be doing the right thing in the water as I paddled, so I figured I was good to go.

But in my first couple of years I ran into some problems with wrist tendinitis.  At times the pain was so keen that I couldn't paddle or do much of anything else.

Then I saw the then-new forward stroke video, The Brent Reitz Forward Stroke Clinic.  In the video Brent discusses a common mistake people make in their strokes that causes tendinitis, and recommends what he calls the "Chicken Wing": as you finish a stroke on one side and withdraw the blade from the water to begin a stroke on the other side, you should raise not just your hand, but your entire forearm including the elbow, as you do so.  I took Brent's advice and incorporated this simple change into my stroke, and I never got wrist tendinitis again.

For the next few seasons I trained hard and raced pretty well without any injuries that kept me out of the boat.  But I was not always free of pain.  The most common discomfort was soreness and stiffness and pinched-nerve feelings in my shoulders and neck.  I was frustrated by all that but sort of resigned myself to the idea that these ailments were simply my price of admission to the sport I loved.

Meanwhile, I continued to ponder my stroke.  A couple of times I asked Greg Barton, when he was in town for the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, how my stroke looked.  He told me it wasn't bad, but cautioned me to rotate fully and not use my arms too much.

In the summer of 2005, after my biggest races were over, I made a conscious decision to increase my rotation to the extent I was capable.  For a few weeks or even months paddling was quite uncomfortable as I tried to internalize this unfamiliar motion.  But eventually I got used to it and now I don't know how to paddle any other way.

I don't know if this alteration to my stroke improved my competitive results at all--it seems like I have continued to finish about where I always have in my races, and my times have remained roughly the same.  But my shoulder and neck pain has all but disappeared.  I think the less-complete rotation I had been doing had concentrated the work in my upper back and shoulders, whereas now the work is better distributed throughout my torso.

This topic came back to my attention last week when I suddenly found myself with one of those old shoulder knots.  I thought to myself, "I'll bet this is the result of paddling my K1."  As I have described in recent posts, my stability in that boat is pretty dicey at this point, and I haven't been able to relax and rotate fully.  The episode has reinforced my belief that my improved stroke has eliminated most of my shoulder and neck pain.  Not a bad return on my investment even if I do wish I were faster.  I advise anybody with nagging pain to look over everything that he or she is doing with the paddle: there's probably a flaw in there somewhere that can be fixed.

Month's end

On Thursday, I brought January to a close with two sets of the January strength routine and an 85-minute paddling session.  Joe and I stayed in the harbor and did a fairly strong tempo session: it wasn't too intense for conversation, but I think we were slightly out of our normal cruising comfort zone.

Now I'm taking a couple of days off, partly to catch up on some other work and partly to regroup physically for some new training routines for February.

Warm and wild

This morning I did two sets of the January strength routine.  Then, because the weather was much too warm for sitting in a car, I hopped on my bicycle and pedaled it down to the river.

Today's temperature is somewhere in the mid 70s, Fahrenheit.  When it gets like that at this time of year, it typically is accompanied by some serious south wind, and that was the case today.  My friend Joe showed up at the dock about the same time I did, and we decided it was a day for paddling in the harbor.  We paddled for 75 minutes and got in as much conversation as we could with the wind howling in our ears.

Word on the street is that the Mid South is in for some severe storms sometime tonight.  Behind that will be some more seasonable weather.

Monday photo feature

I've mentioned in recent posts that I did some slalom racing back in the 1990s.  This activity took me all over the country, but it all started with practice on the course I set up here in Memphis on the Wolf River at Walnut Grove Road.  Photo by Erick Clifford.

More water

Today I did two sets of the January strength routine and paddled for 90 minutes, all in the surf ski.

A couple of weeks ago a system came through that dumped over three inches of rain on Memphis, and it moved on across the Ohio and Tennessee valleys.  As a result, the river is now over 20 feet on the Memphis gauge for the first time in at least ten months.  It crested at 23.2 feet a couple of days ago.  Since then it's been fairly dry here at Memphis, but precipitation farther north, such as the ice storm that just hit the upper Midwest, should keep the river at a reasonable wintertime level for the next while.

Make every session count

I'm still reading the back-posts on Ron Lugbill's whitewater slalom blog, and new posts are appearing frequently.

One of the recurring topics on the blog is that of the importance of quality in all training sessions.  In his most recent post on the topic, Lugbill says,

Your goal should be to have excellent runs in practice.  Training is not about just some physical conditioning to train a particular energy system.  Training is about learning to have top quality runs so you will have top quality runs in competitions.

If for some reason, you cannot have quality runs in practice, you are better off not training than to practice having poor runs.  Wait for another time or another day to practice when you can do quality runs.

If you are too tired, in such a bad mood, sick, have bad equipment, or for some reason you are not up to having a top quality practice, then you should not go out and just do poor runs for the sake of conditioning.  Rest, fix your boat, do what you need to in order to get yourself ready to have good quality runs.  And only then should you go out and train.

Even though I'm not really racing slalom anymore,  I try to make every session a good session.  In flatwater/open water racing, it might not be as obvious what constitutes a good session as in slalom, where you know you're doing well if you're having good crisp runs without all the poles swinging behind you.  But just remember the main objective: propelling the boat forward as fast as you can.  That means taking nice fluid strokes with full rotation, and keeping your boat quiet (i.e., not rocking or bobbing the boat).

That's what I try to do every time I get in my boat, whether I'm doing an excruciating set of lactic intervals or just paddling around with my nieces and nephews.  If I let myself get sloppy at times like those, there's no reason to think I won't be sloppy when I race.

And I think this counts for out-of-the-boat sessions as well.  Two or three times in the past I've referred to what Greg Barton said in William T. Endicott's The Barton Mold: if you don't practice good form and technique while lifting weights, you're likely not to have good form and technique in the boat.

One of my favorite times to give serious thought to my stroke and boat control is on days after hard workout when I go down to the river for some light paddling.  It's actually harder keep a tippy boat balanced when paddling slowly, and I use this time to explore the connection between my hands that pull the paddle and my core and legs that keep the boat upright and push the boat forward.  In this way, even a low-intensity session can have high training value.

Some more K1 fun

This morning I did two sets of the January strength routine and paddled for 80 minutes.  I wanted to paddle my new K1 today and the conditions were fair for it (mostly cloudy and chilly, but dead calm), but I didn't want to spend the entire session wobbling around in a tippy, unfamiliar boat and not getting any good strokes.  So I went half-and-half, paddling the surf ski for 40 minutes and the K1 for 40 minutes.

When I got in the K1 I felt pretty good (I think it helped to be warmed up from paddling the surf ski), and I set off toward the north end of the harbor.  But some 300 meters from the marina I let my center of gravity slip just a hair too far to the right, and over I went.

The harbor does not have many good places to pull out on the bank; the banks are steep and covered with trees and/or underbrush.  I pulled myself onto the boat's stern deck, face-down, and paddled myself over into the trees, dodging vines floating logs, and seeing the bright side of winter in that the snakes are hibernating.  I used a sturdy sapling for support and climbed back into the boat, which hadn't taken on too much water.

The problem now was that I had to dodge more logs and vines to get back out of the trees, and in my effort to do so I flipped again.  The boat took on more water, but that actually made it more stable and this time I hopped back in quickly (using another tree for support).  I paddled back to the marina, dumped the water out of the boat, and spent the rest of my 40 minutes paddling laps around the marina. I didn't flip anymore, though I did have a couple of close calls.

One might think I'd be demoralized by the experience, but actually I feel good about the session.  It was only my second time in the boat, and swims notwithstanding I already felt quite a bit more stable than I had last Saturday.  It was also reassuring to have some idea of the consequences of a swim this time of year: today, with the air temperature in the high 40s, they weren't bad.  I'll continue to make sure I'm properly dressed.

The objective, of course, is to become comfortable enough in the boat to take good forward strokes with full rotation, and today I had short stretches where I was able to do that before I had to stop and brace.  Now I just have to lengthen those stretches, and that will come with more time in the boat.  I figure for the next several months I'll keep working in short sessions like today's whenever the conditions are calm, and then I'll really hit it hard this summer.

Monday photo feature

I traveled to Chicago in August 2011 to visit friends and see the Cardinals play at Wrigley Field.  And I entered the Chicago Shoreline Marathon on Lake Michigan.  En route we saw lots of the iconic landscape of northern Illinois, the cornfield.

Trying to stay on track

This morning I did two sets of the January strength routine and paddled for 90 minutes.  I would have liked to paddle the K1 again today--what kid doesn't want to play with his new toy?--but I needed a real session today after yesterday's ten minutes or so in the boat, and so the surf ski it was.  I think for the duration of winter my K1 paddling will be limited to sunny days when it's dead calm.

I paddled at a good strong pace today, throwing in a long surge about 25 minutes out.  I was trying to get back across the river from the Arkansas side ahead of a tow rig coming downriver.  He blew his horn at me, but I got across with plenty of room to spare.

Struggles

I didn't make it to the river yesterday, but I did do two sets of the January strength routine in the afternoon.  I think my lower abdominals must be getting in better shape, because those exercise ball drills have been feeling easier the last several times.  The exercises that still feel very difficult to me are the core drills that Daniele Molmenti does at 4:40 and 5:03 of this video.

The big excitement came this morning, when I went down to the harbor to paddle my new K1 for the first time.  At least, I was excited during the drive down there.  But that faded as I found myself spending a lot more time fussing with the adjustments of the seat, footboard, tiller, and rudder than I spent in the boat.  Apparently the boat's previous owner and I are polar opposites in our settings preferences.  And it's possible I'll be fussing with the settings some more once I get somebody to look at me in the boat and tell me how trim it is.

Once I was finally in the boat, I was reminded of just how much tippier than a surf ski a K1 is.  I managed to stay upright, but I dared not stray far from the marina in case of a swim in that cold water.  The weather was not helpful: even though it was some 20 degrees warmer today than it was earlier this week, it still wasn't exactly balmy, and a pretty stiff south wind created a fair amount of chop.  In the end I just did a few laps in the interior of our U-shaped marina where I had a little protection.

In short, very little actual paddling took place today, and I think it could be a while before I really get comfortable in this new boat.  We've still got two months of winter ahead of us; would've been nice if I'd gotten this boat in the summertime.  But no worries... stability will come.  And this new challenge will give me some fresh motivation.

Santa came in January

Well, my Vanquish K1 has arrived.  The nice man from KAS Transport came through Memphis last night.

I'm having a very busy day in my workshop, so it remains to be seen whether I put it in the water today.  If not, I'll take it down to the harbor tomorrow morning.  I'm sure I'll have to spend some time making adjustments to get the boat trim and get the rudder working the way I like it.  And then the first few sessions will probably be spent trying to keep the thing upright.

No whining, even on crummy days

This morning I did two sets of the January strength routine and then paddled my boat for 70 minutes.

There had been a very mild ice storm here yesterday, which is to say that while it put a coat of ice on almost everything, it did not affect the streets and did not bring down tree branches and stuff like that.  When I got down to the marina the temperature display in my car's dashboard said it was 32 degrees Fahrenheit, so whatever thaw took place today had only just begun.  After surviving an extremely dicey walk down an icy ramp, I struggled to untie the ropes that secured my boat to its rack and to undo the zipper and fastex buckles on my boat's cover.

The rest of the session was simple enough, though it felt like sort of a chore on this cold, dreary, cheerless day.

Since I'm sitting here fighting off waves of self-pity, it's a good time to point you toward a new post on Ron Lugbill's blog about being a good sport.  He talks about the things we all think about, such as not whining about poor officiating and not congratulating the people who beat you, but he also mentions more general things like not forgetting the huge variety of people who help you along your way and maintaining good relationships with fellow competitors.  Good advice for athletes in any sport.  Read the post here.

Another blog to look at

Ron Lugbill, a member of the U.S. national team in whitewater slalom in the 1970s and early 1980s, has a blog I've just found out about.  Take a look at it here.

Ron is the less-famous of the two Lugbill brothers: his brother Jon was a five-time world champion in the C1 class.  I've never met Ron myself--he had long since retired from competition by the time I started racing slalom in the 1990s--but I admire him based on my second-hand experience with him, such as reading articles he's written and talking to racers he's coached.  I think he's a lawyer these days, but does some freelance coaching and, as one can tell from reading his blog, spends a lot of time thinking about the sport.

Of course, the racing I'm doing these days is not slalom, so there's a lot of stuff on Lugbill's blog that doesn't really apply to my training.  But there's a lot of stuff that does.  It'll take me a while to read through all his back-posts and ponder what it all means for me.  One thing that's already caught my attention is his assertion that one should work on speed and power throughout the year; I've always done most of my speed work in the couple of months before the biggest races.  He also talks about how best to incorporate strength training into a paddler's regime.

I learned of the blog when somebody linked to it on the Whitewater Slalom Alumni and Friends page on Face Book.  Go "like" that page if you're looking for more paddling stuff to chew on.

Monday photo feature

Just a neat photo, that's all.  Southeast Mississippi in the summer of 2010.

My boat and I get together in all kinds of weather

I've got several days to catch up on here, days highlighted by severe swings in the weather.

Friday was flat-out beautiful--sunny and reaching 68 degrees by the afternoon.  After doing two sets of the January strength routine that morning, I decided it was too nice a day to drive down to the river, and rode my bike.  I paddled for 70 minutes amid quite a few floating logs that had been flushed out of the Wolf River by the heavy rain we'd had Wednesday and early Thursday.

The warm temperatures remained through yesterday, but the sun didn't.  We got about a quarter-inch of rain during the day, and then overnight last night it started pouring.  It continued to rain hard this morning as I did another two sets of the January strength routine.  And it was distinctly colder outside.  There would be no bike ride to the river today.

One thing I can say about that Go Pro camera that Martha gave me for my birthday last August: it gets me out in my boat on days like today when a person could be forgiven for staying home.  I'm on sort of a personal mission to shoot footage of the Mississippi River in all kinds of weather, and opportunity knocked today.

I planned to paddle for 70 minutes, and that's exactly what I did.  The cold, wet conditions prompted me to push the pace even though I knew that wouldn't make the time pass by any faster.

The rain continued past lunchtime.  I'm actually glad to see it considering the severe drought our region, like most of the rest of North America, has had.  We need a lot more days like this to pull us out of it.

More continental drainage 101

Well, it's pouring down rain here in Memphis today, and that might get up one's hopes for a major rise in the Mississippi, until one looks at today's national weather map:

As the map shows, the heaviest precipitation is south (i.e., downstream) of Memphis, where it will have no effect on our part of the big river.

There is, according to this map, some rain falling in the Ohio Valley, along the state line between Kentucky and Indiana and between Kentucky and Illinois.  That will send some water our way.  And I believe the rain showing up along the Kansas-Nebraska border is falling in the Missouri River watershed, so we'll eventually be paddling on that water.  It'll add some much-needed flow to the section of the Mississippi between St. Louis and Cairo as well.

One interesting wrinkle in the Mississippi's watershed is southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas.  Rain that falls in that region does not affect the Mississippi at Memphis.  The region is part of the St. Francis River watershed, and the St. Francis flows almost as far south as Helena, Arkansas--well downstream of Memphis--before it joins the Mississippi.

Well, that's enough lecture for today.  Perhaps I will continue this lesson in a later post.

Training session and ASHOF update

Yesterday morning I did two sets of the January strength routine.  I've gotten over most of the soreness, but I still can't believe how much the core exercises hurt, especially ones with the exercise ball.

Then I went down to the river, where misty precipitation increased into a hard, steady drizzle during my paddling session.  I think the river is exceptionally beautiful in this sort of weather.  And the temperature was higher than it had been in recent days--I think it was in the upper 50s when I was down there--so I was reasonably comfortable.  I didn't wear pogies, and that's always a bonus in January.

In the last several years my friend Phil Capel, a fellow paddler and the director of the Arkansas River Canoe and Kayak Race at Little Rock each June, has been speaking with voting members of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame regarding the candidacy of Mike Herbert that I talked about in my last post.  Phil tells me that there are some 300 potential inductees on their list right now, meaning that anybody hoping to be inducted could have to wait some years yet.  Right now he's trying to get some assurance that Mike is on that list.

And at the moment that's the main thing I'd like to be sure of, too: that the voters are aware that Mike exists and that he's getting the same consideration as candidates who perhaps have a higher public profile.  I've never received a reply to any correspondence I have ever sent to ASHOF, so right now I have no idea whether anybody is listening or not.

For now, what I would like is to know who the voting members are so that I might send them a polite letter in support of Mike's candidacy and encourage others to do the same.  I'll share what I find out here.

Just what I need: another project...

Yesterday the daily newspaper here in Memphis ran an item in its sports section announcing the 2013 induction class for the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

Several years ago it occurred to me that my friend Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, had not been inducted into the ASHOF, so I composed a letter to the Hall's powers that were, hoping to convince them that Mike is every bit as outstanding as the men and women already inducted and therefore should be considered for induction himself.

I never got any sort of response to my query, and eventually I got busy with other things.  Whether any influential person ever laid eyes on my letter, I have no idea; all I know is that now, in 2013, Mike still has not been inducted into the Hall.

So I am giving it another go.  This morning I sent an e-mail to Mr. Ray Tucker, the ASHOF executive director.  This effort alone will probably not do the trick, and in the coming days I hope to track down contact info for members of the ASHOF board, and perhaps bestow some paper snail-mail upon them.

If anybody reading this would like to join in this effort, please do.  I welcome any advice on how I can get the ear of the actual decision-makers in this process.

The rest of this post consists of the e-mail I sent to Mr. Tucker.



To the board of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame:

I wish to congratulate the eight new inductees in the Class of 2013, and I commend your selection committee for choosing such an exemplary group.  These eight men and women represent a standard of achievement that all Arkansans can be proud of.

It is my privilege to be acquainted with another outstanding Arkansan and I urge you to consider him for future induction into the Hall.

Mike Herbert of Rogers is one of the greatest athletes ever to compete for the United States in the sport of flatwater sprint kayaking.  He made his first Olympic team in 1988 and became the first American ever to make the final of the 500-meter single kayak event.  In that final, he fell just inches shy of winning the bronze medal.  You can watch the television footage of that final race in Seoul, South Korea, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95iuP4jnonM&feature=relmfu


During the next two years Mike won three world championships medals, a rare feat for U.S. paddlers in this European-dominated sport.  Then, in 1991, Mike won the 1000 meters at the Pan American Games in Havana, making such an impression on Fidel Castro that the Cuban dictator saluted the U.S. flag during the medal ceremony:

http://articles.latimes.com/1991-08-05/sports/sp-183_1_gold-medal


In 1992, Sports Illustrated ran this feature of Mike in its Olympic preview issue prior to the Games in Barcelona:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1004021/index.htm


The following is a summary of Mike Herbert's athletic career:

Michael Adam Herbert
Sport: Flatwater sprint kayak
Born September 30, 1960, Belleville, Illinois
Residence since early teens: Rogers, Arkansas
Current address: 8865 Galleon Drive, Rogers, AR 72756; k1herbert@msn.com

     Mike Herbert began racing canoes as a teenager with his father, Bob.  The two quickly became the tandem to beat on the circuit in northern Arkansas, where marathon canoe racing is popular on rivers like the Arkansas, the Black, the Buffalo, the Current, the Eleven Point, the Mulberry, and the White.
     After watching the 1984 Olympic kayak races on TV, Herbert switched over to kayak and set the goal of becoming an Olympian himself.  He found himself on the water in Seoul for the 1988 Games, in which he missed winning the bronze in the 500-meter single kayak event by mere hundredths of a second.
     The next several years were remarkably successful, as Herbert won a bronze medal at the 1989 world championships, two silver medals at the 1990 world championships, and a gold medal at the 1991 Pan American Games.  Precious few Americans have won world championships medals in this European-dominated sport, and Herbert's three medals from the worlds make him the second-most decorated U.S. flatwater kayaker ever, behind the legendary Olympic champion Greg Barton.
     Though his international career is behind him, Mike Herbert continues to be active in the sport, attending the national championships of marathon canoeing most years and renewing his friendly rivalry with Greg Barton each year at the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race at Memphis.
     Mike Herbert's achievements on the international level and his continuing enthusiasm for his sport on the regional and national levels present an overwhelming case for his induction into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.


Olympic results
1988 Olympics, Seoul, South Korea: 4th, single kayak 500 meters
1992 Olympics, Barcelona, Spain: 9th, 4-man kayak 1000 meters
1996 Olympics, Atlanta, USA: 8th (semifinal), single kayak 500 meters

World Championships results
1989 World Championships, Plovdiv, Bulgaria: Bronze Medal, single kayak 500 meters
1990 World Championships, Poznan, Poland: Silver Medal, single kayak 500 meters
1990 World Championships, Poznan, Poland: Silver Medal, double kayak 500 meters

Other international results
1987 Pan American Games, Indianapolis, USA: Gold Medal, double kayak 500 meters
1987 Pan American Games, Indianapolis, USA: Gold Medal, 4-man kayak 1000 meters
1991 Pan American Games, Havana, Cuba: Gold Medal, single kayak 1000 meters


About flatwater sprint kayaking:
     The format of this sport is similar to that of swimming: racers are placed in lanes on a lake or other calm body of water, and propel their boats forward as fast as possible.  At the Olympics, world championships, and most other international events, paddlers compete over distances of 200 meters, 500 meters, and 1000 meters.
     The national governing body for canoe and kayak racing is USA Canoe-Kayak: www.usack.org.
     The international governing body is the International Canoe Federation: www.canoeicf.org.

Monday photo feature

Epiphany marked the end of Christmas yesterday.  Joe Royer took this photo during a yuletide river outing a couple of years ago, and it's as good a way as any to say goodbye to this holiday season and get on with a new year.

Adapting to some new stuff

This morning I did two sets of my new strength routine for the month of January.  All the exercises are harder than they look in the videos, especially the core exercises.  My lower abdominals have been very sore since I did the new exercises on Friday, so today's workout brought the pain.

After that I went down to the river and paddled for 70 minutes.  I had a mission: on Friday I saw a flock of migrating pelicans over near the Arkansas side above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, but I was pressed for time and didn't get far enough up there for a good luck.  So today I brought along my Go Pro camera and planned to go up there and spend as much quality time with the pelicans as they would allow.

Sadly, when I got up to where they had been, they were gone.

Oh well.  At least my paddling session was good.  I was feeling it in my muscles from the strength workout, and I concentrated hard to make sure my stroke form didn't get sloppy.

It had been overcast and gloomy when I started paddling, but by the time I returned to the dock it had turned into a beautiful blue-sky sunny day.  I drove home with the happy feeling of having done some good work for the morning.

New strength routine

I paddled this morning for 60 minutes.  It was cold, but the bright sunshine and calm conditions made it an ideal day to paddle.

In the early part of the year, when the competitions are still months in the future, I sort of plan my training month to month.  Here we are in a new month, so it's time to begin a new phase.

For paddling, that means turning up the volume a little.  Last month I was getting down to the river twice a week, and I'll be making it three times a week this month.  I'll lengthen my sessions a bit, too: I've been paddling for an hour each time, but in the next couple of weeks I'll be stretching that out to 80 or 90 minutes.

It's on the strength-building front that I really adopted the habit of monthly routines.  I got the idea some fifteen years ago when I read The Barton Mold, William T. Endicott's case study of world and Olympic champion Greg Barton.  Here's an excerpt from the book that I posted last February, when I was addressing this same topic.  (The Barton Mold is available in PDF format on the International Canoe Federation website, here.  This excerpt is from the section entitled "How Barton trains.")

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.

For the last few weeks I've been focusing on my core.  As I move forward I plan to continue some core exercises but also incorporate some other stuff.  The strength routine I have made up for the month of January draws, once again, from the videos I have cited in recent posts that star Jingjing Li and Daniele Molmenti.  Both are Olympians in whitewater slalom, and Molmenti won the gold medal in men's kayak at the Games in London last summer.

Here is my routine for January.  The exercises are difficult to describe and I don't know what any of them is called, so I'll refer to the time at which they occur in either the Jingjing Li video or the Daniele Molmenti video:

1.  Rubber band exercise at 5:42 of the D.M. video
2.  Exercise ball exercise at 2:55 of the J.L. video
3.  Rubber band exercises (hand paddling?) at 6:56 and 7:10 of the D.M. video
4.  Core exercises at 4:40 and 5:03 of the D.M. video
5.  Rubber band exercises at 8:42 and 9:30 of the D.M video
6.  Exercise ball exercise at 3:10 of the J.L. video

I did a very light version of this routine this afternoon, mostly just trying to familiarize myself with all these different movements.

Seasonably cold

It must be January.  A pale sun didn't provide much warmth this morning as I went down to the river.  Once on the water, I found my rudder was frozen and I had to work the pedals gently for several minutes until the lines came free.

But I was dressed for the cold, and once I got moving I was reasonably comfortable.  A north breeze was blowing, but not the sort of screaming gale that makes me want to ditch my boat and hop the next one-way flight to the equator.  And the temperature had risen above the freezing point by the time I got back to the dock: the water that had dripped onto my deck and my pogies was in its liquid state.

Monday photo feature

Richard Savoie of Bayou Des Allemands, Louisiana, competes in the 2011 Battle on the Bayou race at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  I think Robbie Capel took the photo.  The fourth annual installment of this event is scheduled for March 2, and as of right now, it looks to be my season opener.  So I've got two months to get into some degree of race fitness.

The complicated business of draining the continent

Yesterday afternoon I went downtown and paddled for 60 minutes on a cold but calm day.  The river level was 10.9 feet, the highest Memphis gauge reading since last May.  Even though this level is on the low side of medium for this time of year, it felt very high, with the water covering parts of the landscape that had been high and dry for months.

The Mississippi River has been in the national news lately because its low levels have threatened the smooth flow of barge traffic, and so some readers might be surprised to hear me say the water is up here at Memphis.  But the Mississippi is a long river, and Memphis is not where the current news-making problem is.  That distinction belongs to the section between St. Louis, Missouri, and Cairo, Illinois.  Above St. Louis, the lock-and-dam system on the river is pretty reliable for keeping the river at adequate depths for commercial traffic, and at Cairo the Ohio River comes in and increases the Mississippi's flow capacity by about 200 percent.  Months of drought conditions in the watershed of the Missouri River (which reaches the Mississippi just above St. Louis), combined with frozen water in the upper reaches of the Mississippi, have resulted in a scarcity of water from St. Louis down to Cairo, where the Ohio provides relief.

Fairly often I find myself explaining the river's behavior to people in other parts of the country, and even to people right here in Memphis who just don't pay much attention to the river.

Back in 1993, when footage of the devastating floods on the upper Mississippi dominated the national news on TV, there was some wailing here in Memphis over our impending doom.  But that was all wasted breath, because below-normal flows on the Ohio that summer meant that the lower Mississippi's riverbed had plenty of room to accommodate the water coming down from the upper Midwest.

When we have had heavy rain here in the Memphis area, I sometimes hear the question "Has all this rain brought the Mississippi up?"  The answer is always no.  Local rainfall does bring up our small rivers, like the Wolf.  But even an enormous infusion of water from the Wolf is not enough to make a noticeable change in the Memphis gauge reading on the Mississippi.  Wolf River water does, however, combine with flows from other area tributaries like the Loosahatchie River and Nonconnah Creek to affect Mississippi River levels farther downstream.

The most appalling display of local ignorance of our river's ways occurred in May of 2011, when the river rose to the second-highest level ever recorded at Memphis.  Before the floodwater had even arrived here, I had a conversation with a conspiracy theorist who claimed that the government was holding back information and that anything and everything near the river was liable to be washed away at any moment.  I calmly explained that flash floods don't happen on the Mississippi and that flows are entirely predictable based on precipitation data from higher up in the watershed.  But the guy didn't seem convinced.  Then came the flood, and with it a caravan of national network news trucks, and suddenly hundreds of people who had never before given the river five seconds of thought were experts on our continent's grandest waterway.  One of the worst was Bob Nations, our local director of emergency preparedness, who might really know his stuff when it comes to tornadoes or earthquakes but clearly had no idea how the Mississippi River works.  Many other people were so thoughtful as to lecture me on why I should never, ever go near the river with a kayak at any level.  Even in the best of times I have a tendency toward misanthropy, so in the interest of personal sanity I had to close my eyes and try to shut out all the misinformation swirling around during the Great Flood of 2011.

Most of the time, thankfully, I am able to do my thing on the river without attracting much attention.  As the song goes, the Mississippi "just keeps rollin' along," through times of flood and times of drought and everything in between.  And as long as I'm able, I'll keep paddling my boat out there, getting my exercise and enjoying the natural wonders of the place.  Happy New Year.

Race schedule 2013

I've been pondering my competition schedule for this coming year.  Right now I definitely plan to do these four races, barring injury or other unforeseen  circumstance:

March 2: Fourth annual Battle on the Bayou, Old Fort Bayou, Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  Starting in the Back Bay of Biloxi near the mouth of Old Fort Bayou, the course winds nine and a half miles up the bayou to the finish next to The Shed barbecue joint.

April 27: Ninth annual Bluz Cruz Marathon, Mississippi River, Vicksburg, Mississippi.  The race starts at Madison Parish Port and finishes 22 miles downriver on the Vicksburg Front.

June 1: Tenth annual Arkansas River Canoe and Kayak Race, Arkansas River, North Little Rock, Arkansas.  The five-and-a-half-mile course starts at Murray Park and heads downriver to the Interstate 30 bridge.

June 15: 32nd Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, Mississippi River, Memphis, Tennessee.  Known as "The fastest 5000-meter race in the world," this race draws both world-class racers and people who pull their canoes out of the backyard once a year to participate.


I'd love to work in several more if I can.  Generally, I'm looking for events that are either within a reasonable driving distance of Memphis or something that coincides with a vacation trip to a more distant area.  And I am not interested in ultra-long races (more than two hours or so).

Anyway, I'll post any updates here as they develop.

A little snow

It snowed here late Tuesday night and early yesterday morning, though not nearly as much as it did west of the river in Arkansas and Missouri.  We ended up with an inch or so here in Memphis, and the dock looked like this yesterday morning:

I paddled for an hour.  It was quite windy and busy barge traffic made things rough out on the river, so after about ten minutes of fighting that I returned to the harbor.  The sky was overcast and the damp, penetrating cold made it the sort of session I couldn't wait to be done with.  As soon as my hour was up I threw the boat back up on the rack and made a beeline for my car.

Monday photo feature

I know, the resolution is awful, but it's appropriate for the season.  I think Joe snapped this one of me on the same day as last week's photo.  Apparently there are chances of snow in the Memphis area tomorrow night, but I'll believe it when I see it.

All tired out

We're having some more December-like weather now.  The sky was dark and threatening rain all day today, but I don't think it ever actually rained except for a light drizzle as I rode my bike down to the river this morning.

I had planned to paddle for just an hour, but I found Joe and Carol Lee Royer getting ready to paddle when I arrived down at the dock, and I ended up paddling all the way up to the mouth of the Wolf with them.  At this time of year I see them only once in a while, so it was nice to catch up.

Feeling a little pressed for time, I paddled pretty hard from the mouth of the Wolf back down into the harbor.  I was feeling it all over when I got back to the dock, and the bike ride home was the final knockout punch that sent me into naptime after lunch.

Chill

The winter solstice arrived with appropriate weather.  When I went down to the river this morning it was somewhere in the low to mid forties with a brisk wind from the north.  I wore pogies today for the first time in a very long time: last winter was so mild that I don't think I wore them after February.

At least it was bright and sunny today, and I got good and warm during my hour-long paddling session.  The paddling itself is almost never that bad in cold weather; the hard part is standing on the dock before and after, getting the boat down or putting it away, and changing clothes.  I guess it's time to get used to it, as the forecast for the next week calls for more seasonable weather.

Various stuff that's going on

My back is feeling better and I'm doing my strength workouts again.  Yesterday I did three sets of Jingjing Li's exercise ball drills and today I did the other little thing I do--pushups and cinder block lifts and step-ups and stuff.

I'm still paddling twice a week right now; I've fallen into a Friday and Sunday routine.  Today was a nice day and I thought about paddling today since we have some unpleasant weather on the way.  But I didn't.  We'll see if I regret it when it's time to go to the river on Friday.  Channel 5 weatherman Dave Brown says we're going to have some serious wind tonight and tomorrow, and I hope that moves on out by Friday.

My friend Don Walls, an Arkansan who's a mighty good canoe racer both in C1 and in C2 with partner Dale Burris, has a device that's both a heart rate monitor and a GPS, and he downloads maps of where he's paddled and graphs of what his heart has done.  An example from one of his workouts is here.

Don Walls (bow) and Dale Burris en route to victory in the 2012 Aluminum Nationals on the White River near Allison, Arkansas.

I especially enjoy looking at the map feature.  While I'm certainly interested in the physiological stuff that goes on during training, I'm also interested in where a paddler goes and what he sees and experiences.  One reason I like paddling so much is that it's a sport that engages all the senses.

As for a heart rate monitor, I used one back in the late 1990s and early 2000s until the chest belt broke, and since then I've just trained by feel.  Most of the time I think I know when I'm in the aerobic zone and when I'm going lactic and stuff like that.  I know great athletes who claim that a heart rate monitor is indispensable, and maybe I'll come around to that view by and by, but for now I'm happy enough without one.

Comedy gold from Frank & Ernest

Monday photo feature

Joe Royer took this picture of me back in February of 2003.  A nice little blanket of snow had just fallen, and the river appears to be somewhere around 30 feet on the Memphis gauge.  Right now, as we head into another winter, the temperature is much higher and the water is much lower.

Lower back healing, higher water coming

There's still a spot of soreness in my left lower back, but I'm otherwise feeling much better.  I paddled for an hour this morning, and I felt a lot better in the boat than I did on Friday.

The river is on a pretty dramatic rise right now: the Memphis gauge level this morning was 5.8 feet, and it's forecast to be over 8 feet a couple of days from now.  The front that brought some pretty good rainfall here last weekend stretched well up into the upper Mississippi and Ohio basins, and I think that's what's brought about this boost in the water level.

And yet, the river is still quite low--a more typical level for this time of year would be in the teens.  That means that any sort of return to normalcy will require continued rain higher up in the watershed.  Unless rain continues to fall in the Midwest, we could easily be back below zero a couple of weeks from now.

Agony and entropy

I spent this week with a hurt back.  It started last weekend--the result, I think, of spending all Saturday afternoon standing up at an event.  I was in some fairly severe pain Sunday morning.  I did paddle Sunday, and actually felt little pain in the boat, but everything else--walking down the ramp to the dock, lifting my boat off the rack, and stuff like that--was a real ordeal.

I was all but laid up the rest of Sunday and Monday.  By Tuesday I was starting to move around a bit more and by Wednesday I was stretching gingerly and doing abbreviated versions of the strength exercises I've been doing.  Though not pain-free today, I'm feeling significantly better, and this morning I went down to the river to paddle.

Once again, my back felt fine in the boat.  But the paddling session felt terrible.  It felt as though I hadn't been in a boat in months: sitting upright and taking good strokes was an incredible chore, and I felt somewhat out of breath the whole time even though I paddled easy.  Very odd, considering that except for the back issue, this week of training wasn't much different from what I've been doing for the last month.

The body is a funny thing.  When I was young and competing as a distance runner, I remember that in training I felt good about fifty percent of the time and terrible about fifty percent of the time.  As I got older I gained a better understanding of the roles that good nutrition and hydration and full nights of sleep play in one's mood and energy level, and these days I'd say I feel good out paddling about nine times out of ten.  I guess I would chalk today's labored session up to the physical and mental disruption that my back ailment caused me this week.

Doldrums

I've got a nice little routine going these days--doing some strength exercises, paddling my boat a couple times a week--but I'm definitely not in "training mode."  At the moment my heart and mind are just not in it.  It's a busy time in my professional life, with the holiday season upon us and all.  And with three months to go before what will likely be my first race of the season, I haven't been particularly motivated to go out and work my body hard.

Sometimes I hit roadblocks in the thick of the season, too.  I might get sick or injured, or I might have some outside obligation suddenly come up, or I might just fall into an emotional funk where I just don't want to deal with training for a few days.  In short, a season never goes exactly as planned.

During periods like this I just try to keep moving in some way.  If that's not possible because of illness or injury, I tell myself that the rest is not a bad thing--fitness is the result of your recovery from training, after all, and not of the training itself.  Either way, when I get back to full speed I'll feel that I've got something to build on.

I spent an hour in my boat on Thursday and another one yesterday.  It's turning cold today, but the last few days have been quite warm while also overcast and wet.  My two paddling sessions were done in light, misty rain, and I'm not sure the Mississippi River is ever more beautiful than it is in these conditions.

Ducky

In my last post I forgot to mention the enormous flock of ducks I encountered as I paddled Friday.  It was really windy so I stayed in the harbor, and up near the north end there were some thousand ducks hanging out, taking a break from their southward migration.  When they saw me coming they took off en masse, and while I was sorry to disturb them, it was a beautiful sight.

Today I followed the same routine as I did Friday: some strength exercises followed by a bike ride to the river for an hour of paddling.  It was windy again today but I ventured onto the river anyway.  There was no barge traffic and the water was surprisingly calm.

Yesterday I did a set of the exercise ball drills I've been doing.  I'm trying to get in three of those per week.

Engine's been cool

This morning I did my little cinder block/step-ups/pushups/core exercise routine, and then went down to the river and paddled for an hour.

I rode my bike to the river and back.  Until yesterday, I'd had a six-day streak going during which I did not drive a car; I had to drive Martha to the airport yesterday, and that's what broke the streak.

I didn't have many places to go during those six days, and when I did go somewhere I rode my bike.  I hadn't set any lofty goal of staying out from under the wheel; it just sort of worked out that way.  Once I get in the habit of riding my bike places, it's really pretty easy to do.  I think being an athlete and living simply are complementary things.

Some Eighties TV

My left bicep is killing me.  I think I might have hurt it in the workshop this morning, when I was moving a bookcase I'm working on.  I was trying to lower it from the workbench to the floor and found myself in an awkward position.  Middle age... sigh.

I did manage a set of exercise ball drills just before lunch (for those of you just tuning in, I'm doing the static drill demonstrated by Jingjing Li, an Olympic kayaker from China, in this video).

If I'm not mistaken, the U.S. has won five Olympic medals in flatwater sprint.  Yes, that's a small number: the sport has been dominated by European nations for most of its history.  But 1988 was a remarkable year for the U.S. Team, which entered the Olympic regatta in Seoul with legitimate medal hopes in three events.  While the '88 Olympics are now cemented in U.S. canoe and kayak lore, I had never actually seen the television coverage of that competition myself until this past week, when I noticed a link on Face Book of footage that is now posted on You Tube.  It is particularly enjoyable for me to watch it now because my involvement in flatwater and open water kayak racing in the last fifteen years or so has given me the opportunity to become friends with two of the leading athletes in those '88 Games, Greg Barton and Mike Herbert.

Here, Mike becomes the first U.S. paddler ever to compete in an Olympic K1 500-meter final.

Greg entered the Games as the reigning K1 1000-meter world champion, and here he tries to win it all again in the Olympic K1 1000-meter final.

Just a little more than an hour later, Greg is back on the water with partner Norm Bellingham for the Olympic K2 1000-meter final.

Many readers of this blog probably already know how the guys did, but I won't spoil it for anybody who doesn't.  Watch the videos and re-live the excitement!

Monday photo feature

Since I've been reminiscing about the good old days of Toes and Elbows and camp in general, I thought I'd post a camp picture this week.  I went to camp in the days before roto-molded kayaks were widely available, and at that time my camp owned a fleet of aluminum canoes for the lake and a trailer of Royalex canoes for river trips.  Most of the time we paddled tandem.  Here, I shoot the photo as Wyly Brown mans the stern and Pierre Villere the bow for a run of Lost Guide on the Pigeon River near Hartford, Tennessee.

Gimme Toes and Elbows, you little punk!

Yesterday I did the exercise ball workout I've been doing lately.  One of the exercises looks like this:

As I strained to hold the position for 60 seconds, it occurred to me that it was very similar to something my fellow campers and I were made to do back when I was a kid at summer camp: the dreaded "Toes and Elbows."  Toes and Elbows was the one-size-fits-all punishment for any of a long list of infractions.  Here I am assuming the traditional Toes and Elbows position:

The most sadistic counselors made us do it on a gravel surface so we would end up with rocks embedded in our elbows, or maybe over a pile of fresh horse dung to ratchet up the stakes.  But Toes and Elbows was plenty unpleasant on its own because of the extreme discomfort it caused in the abdominal area.  Who knew that we were actually strengthening our core muscles?

By the time I was a counselor myself in the mid 1980s, our society's attitude toward corporal punishment was changing, and the camp administration, fearing accusations of child abuse, ordered an end to Toes and Elbows and all other forms of physical discipline.  So I never got to exact "revenge" on the next generation of campers.  And that's probably a good thing: emotionally-disturbed souls don't need to be running around with carte blanche to dispense torture.  But did we unwittingly deprive subsequent generations of the core strength to conquer the world?

Since Rebecca Giddens and Scott Shipley wound up their competitive careers a few years ago, U.S. paddlers have had a tough time in international competition.  Even though I am a fan of the U.S. Canoe and Kayak Team, I'm not outraged about it; very few people get to be among the best in the world, and that small group simply doesn't happen to include any U.S. athletes at the moment.  But for those who are determined to point the finger of blame, I suggest a look at the demise of Toes and Elbows.

The glory days of U.S. canoe and kayak racing were the 1980s and early 1990s, when flatwater athletes like Mike Herbert, Norm Bellingham, and Greg Barton and whitewater athletes like Jon Lugbill, Dana Chladek, Cathy and Davey Hearn, the Haller brothers, and Rich Weiss were putting our nation on the podium.  These people would have been summer campers in the early 80s or before; could it be that they were especially naughty, and had to do lots and lots of Toes and Elbows?  I think it is a question that deserves serious study.

By this morning I had recovered enough from my exercise-ball-enhanced Toes and Elbows to do my little workout with the pushups and step-ups and stuff, and then head down to the river.  I paddled for 60 minutes in a pretty stiff wind.

Addition to the family

As the week moves along I'm sore but feeling some benefit from these new strength exercises I'm doing.

This morning I did the exercise routine I alternate with the exercise ball workout.  This routine consists of some behind-the-head lifts with a cinder block, some plyometric step-up exercises, some pushups, and a core exercise that Daniele Molmenti demonstrates at 3:47 of this video.

Then I pedaled down to the river and paddled for an hour.  It was awfully breezy and cool but the bright sunshine kept me from getting too cold on my surf ski.

Right now I'm paddling just a couple of times a week, but I'll start increasing that in a month or so.  I'm hoping that by then I'll have something to help get me excited about it.  I've never owned a flatwater sprint K1, and while I've always felt it would be neat to have one I've always restrained myself because it just isn't something I need that badly.  I have neither the speed nor the desire to do a bunch of regulation nine-lane sprint races, and the conditions out on the Mississippi River are often not suitable for such an unstable, low-profile craft.

But this week I decided to get one anyway.  After doing some shopping around on the Internet, I decided on this beauty:

It's a 2007 Vanquish II ML, manufactured by the Nelo boat company of Vila do Conde, Portugal.  Right now it's in Massachusetts, and I have hired KAS Transport to bring it down here on their next run from the Northeast to the Mid South.

I still don't know that I really need a K1, but as midlife-crisis obsessions go, it's a lot more practical than a high-end sports car or a twenty-something nymphomaniac with big blonde hair and breast implants.  It should be fun to paddle it in the harbor and mix up my training a little, and I may take it to some of the calmer-water races I do.

Harbor cleanup video

Back on the 15th of September I participated in a cleanup of the Wolf River Harbor at downtown Memphis.  Here's a video that the folks at Outdoors, Inc., one of the event's sponsors, put together.

Monday photo feature

Regular readers of this blog know I've been taking some time off from any serious training for the last couple of months.  But I haven't exactly been lying around.  My vocation can be quite strenuous.  In this picture I'm using a drawknife, and the photo must have been taken right after I'd started, because even on a chilly day I work up a sweat pretty quickly and shed my sweatshirt.

From drawknife work to axe work to sawing to moving logs and lumber around, I get plenty of exercise as a woodworker.  But I've never really been able to incorporate it into what I consider my "formal" training because it's not something I can easily quantify.  One project might have me doing several days of heavy drawknifing, and then the next project won't involve any drawknife work at all.

And so, I do strength exercises like the ones I've been talking about in my last couple of posts.  My hope is that piling that on top of my non-sedentary day job will make me one strong dude indeed.

Getting back into a daily routine

I had two good 60-minutes paddling sessions on the river this weekend.  I rode my bike down there and back each day.  It was cool but sunny, and almost dead calm.  We've had a lot of windy days this month and it was nice to get a break from that.

I've also got what I think is a good strength routine worked out.  Every other day I'm doing the exercise ball drills in the Jingjing Li video--the static ones that she demonstrates in the first 2:27.  They're surprisingly taxing.  On the days I don't do that routine I do a simple set of exercises including pushups and behind-the-head lifts with a cinder block, just to get a little arm work in.

And so here I go, easing into training for a new race season after taking some time off.  It's still way early and it'll be a while before I get serious in the boat again, but the first step is to get into doing a little something every day.  Once I pile up a few weeks of these simple little workouts, I always start to feel some physical and psychological benefit.

Back to the gym

The race season is still quite a ways off, but I've decided it's time for me to start up some offseason strength conditioning.  As a reader pointed out to me this week, my recent back ailment is a sign that my core needs some work, and I think that's something I will emphasize for the next while.

Years ago I bought an exercise ball, and while I've done stuff with it off and on, I feel I haven't used it to its full potential.  During the Olympics this past summer I happened across a video of Jingjing Li, China's female entrant in the whitewater slalom race in London, demonstrating some exercise ball drills, and I have now gone back and found it here.  I tried a set of her static drills this morning, and for me, the most difficult exercise was the one starting at about 1:50.  I had a very hard time balancing myself in this position for more than 10 or 15 seconds, especially with my left side up.  I got pretty frustrated, but I think it simply highlights a weak area for me and I think it's a good opportunity to get stronger if I stick with it.

While searching for Jingjing Li's video I also found this video of Italian Daniele Molmenti, the Olympic champion in men's slalom kayak in London, demonstrating some "backpacker" exercises (i.e., exercises that require little or no equipment and therefore can be done while traveling).  He shows us some interesting pushup variations and rubber band exercises.

Over the next few days I plan to keep trying out these exercises and put together a routine to carry me through the next month or two.

Monday photo feature

I took this picture from my boat while paddling from Ashport to Randolph three years ago, and it's a cautionary message for anybody who wants to build a house overlooking the Mississippi River.  This home, located some 45 miles upstream of Memphis at Fulton, Tennessee, belongs to a cousin of mine, and I remember attending a family reunion there when I was a kid.  At that time, the house was a good hundred yards from the edge of the bluff, and there was even a tennis court between the house and the bluff's edge.

Today the tennis court is long gone, and the house is unlivable to say the least.  My cousin's family blames the Corps of Engineers for constructing wing dams that directed the river's flow against the bluff, and for all I know they may be right.  But the wandering, meandering river would have claimed the home site eventually, in a few centuries if not in a few decades.

Mugging for the camera

I rode my bike downtown today and paddled for 80 minutes.  It was awfully windy out on the river, and the presence of heavy barge traffic made the water fairly rough.  I tried to stay relaxed and not fight the water.

My back is still hurting, but improving.  One thing that hadn't occurred to me when I wrote my last post is that I might have hurt myself doing yard work, of all things, on Thursday.  There was a layer of half-composted leaves in the street gutter along one side of the house, and I used a flat-nosed shovel to scrape it up and put it in a wheelbarrow.  The shovel has a pretty short handle, so I was bending over a lot.  And I've found that once you reach middle age, you bend over at your peril.

Outdoors, Inc., was hosting its annual cyclocross race this morning in the Greenbelt Park that runs along the Mississippi above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  They always shoot video at this event, and I paddled up there hoping they might get some footage of me while they were at it.  In the Major League Baseball postseason last month, San Francisco Giants closer Sergio Romo attracted attention by persistently getting his face into TV shots and photos, a practice he calls "Romo-bombing."  I guess what I was doing today would be called... what?  "Elmo-bombing"?

Home again; should I start building an ark?

I leave town for a few days and when I get back it seems the whole world has changed.  The Mississippi River is above zero on the Memphis gauge for the first time since early June.  This morning's level was 2.4 feet above zero, and my dock looked like this:

For comparison, look at the picture I posted here back on the 26th of August, when the river was 9.1 feet below zero.

Mind you, the water is still quite low; I would say a "medium" level is around 12 feet or higher.  But it sure did feel high today after the months of near-historic lows we've had.

I paddled for an hour, trying to keep the intensity low.  I've been dealing with some aches and pains from last weekend: I strained something in my middle back area on the Cheoah last Saturday, and aggravated it the next day on the Tallulah.  And I think I may have a mild virus that's making me feel achy and tired all over.  So I hoped some easy paddling would make me feel better.  Too early to tell as I write this.

Monday photo feature

Travis Trimble paddles a flooded South Sauty Creek near Guntersville, Alabama, in 1994.

Travis now lives in Athens, Georgia, with his wife Mandy and their 21-month-old daughter Olivia.  I'm spending a couple of days with them before I head home to Memphis.  I'd have loved for Travis to join me on the rivers I paddled over the weekend, but he's not feeling up to paddling right now after a recent bout with the shingles.  We're hoping for many happy days on the river in the future.

Another whitewater weekend

I got in my car Friday morning and began to drive east.  My day ended in the San-Ran Motel in Robbinsville, North Carolina.  The Cheoah River awaited down below Santeetlah Dam.

My plan was to meet Ruthie and Curtis, a couple from Atlanta I had met at the Gauley at the end of September, for a run of the river.  But when I got up Saturday morning and walked outside to find a decent cell signal, I found a voice mail from them saying that the roof rack, with boats attached, had blown off their car on Highway 400, and they wouldn't be making it.  So I went down to the putin to see who else might welcome my company.  I found Ava Carr, a former Memphian whom I had last paddled with in the late 1990s, and I joined her and her two friends.

The Cheoah can be divided into a couple of distinct sections.  The first several miles of the run are in a narrow riverbed that feels even narrower because of the vegetation that has grown there during the long periods when the river is dewatered.  Since most of my whitewater friends have run the Ocoee River, I typically describe other rivers in terms of the Ocoee: if you take an average piece of the Ocoee, choke it down to about a third of its width, and increase the gradient by a few degrees, you've got this upper part of the Cheoah.  Expect to spend most of your time weaving through long series of ledges with numerous rocks and holes sprinkled in.

Then you reach Bear Creek Falls, a drop with several obstructed lines, and the riverbed's character changes.  Below Bear Creek the river becomes wider and, more significantly, much more cluttered with big rocks.  Suddenly, picking out clean lines becomes more difficult.  I have now run the Cheoah three times, and each time I have come off the river with busted-up knuckles from doing low braces off rocks in this section below Bear Creek.

But busted-up knuckles ain't gonna kill nobody.  I had a good day of hard work and play on the Cheoah and it was great to see Ava again.

As I headed down the road away from the Cheoah, I raised Ruthie on the phone and learned that they had fixed their roof-rack problem, and would meet me Sunday morning for my very first run of the Tallulah Gorge.

The Tallulah River is located in Rabun County in the northeast corner of Georgia.  I had been aware of the river's existence since I was a teenager working at a summer camp up in Brevard, NC, and I had driven right by the dam at the top of the gorge many times while in the area to run the nearby Chattooga River.  But since neither the dam nor the gorge is visible from the highway, I had never actually laid eyes on the place.

In fact, the Tallulah (and the Cheoah, too, for that matter) has only recently become known to the greater paddling community.  Several scenes of the movie "Deliverance" were shot in Tallulah Gorge in the early 1970s, but the riverbed otherwise lay dewatered until a coalition of paddling organizations began lobbying for scheduled dam realeases during the dam's relicensing process with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the early 1990s.  The result is that Georgia Power and Light now realeases water for paddlers during several weekends in April and November.  There's an interesting account of a 1993 "exploratory" run in Tallulah Gorge here.

I made camp Saturday evening in Tallulah Gorge State Park on the river-left canyon rim.  The next morning I met Ruthie and Curtis in the parking area next to the dam.  A gate was open and water was spilling over the dam into the deep gorge below.

We hiked the path that runs beneath U.S. 441 and descended the long staircase into the gorge that was built when recreational releases began some fifteen years ago.  I was immediately taken with the incredible beauty of the place and couldn't believe I had zoomed right by it in my car all those years.  We put in and immediately had to run one of the trickier rapids in the gorge, Last Step (so called, I suppose, because it's the "last step" of that long staircase).  Then we ran Tanner's Boof and found ourselves on the brink of one of the Southeast's most famous rapids, Oceana Falls.

A paddler must make many decisions on a whitewater river, and "to run" vs. "to portage" is one of the most basic.  As I stood on the bank and regarded the very impressive rapid that is Oceana, several things were going through my head.  Certainly, I was evaluating my ability to make the crux move, which in this case involved putting my boat in just the right spot at the top of the rapid and then simply hanging on for the rest of the drop.  I was also thinking about the hole at the bottom and the likelihood that I would be stuck there--not really an issue of personal injury, as there is nothing but a large pool below, but rather of the hassle and demoralization of having to rescue myself and my gear should I come out of my boat.  Finally, there was the knowledge that later, whenever I would tell somebody I had run Tallulah Gorge, his or her first question would be, "Did you run Oceana?"  I don't like to admit that I care what others think of me as a paddler, but the reality is that I sort of do, and I would bet that most other good paddlers are the same way to some degree.

In the end, I decided to run it.  I chose the "safest" line on the far left (the choice of most other boaters on the river), and hit the spot I wanted to hit at the top.  The rest of the run went by so fast that it's all a blur in my memory.  At the bottom I was upside down, but not stuck in the hole, and after rolling up I was done with this particular milestone.

Oceana Falls was by far the part of Tallulah Gorge that I had heard the most about, but as we continued on downriver, I discovered that there was much more excitement in store.  Most of the run consists of read-as-you-go whitewater that is really, really fun.  I did have one scary moment at the bottom of a rapid known as "Tat": without paying attention to what Ruthie and Curtis were doing, I went ahead and ran the drop on the far left side, and found myself being sucked into an undercut rock at the bottom.  My boat got flipped, and before I could even attempt to roll I was out of it.  As I swam underwater for some five seconds, I figured I was in a dire situation until I saw daylight above me.  When I broke the surface, I was well downstream of the rock and my boat was floating upright a few feet away.  It was the coziest I had ever gotten with an undercut rock and I don't care ever to repeat the experience if I can help it.

The Tallulah Gorge run ends the same way its neighbor, the Chattooga, ends: with a paddle out on Lake Tugaloo.  It was good to get back together with Ruthie and Curtis and I hope to do so again before long.  And it was good to spend some more of this fall in the mountains.  I love my home in the lower Mississippi basin, but a change of scenery can recharge one's spirit.

Re-starting... again

I finally got back in the boat after being out of it for nine days.  There were just too many things going on off the river.

I paddled for an hour and felt pretty good.  The weather is getting warmer now after a few chilly, windy days--a big front came through last Friday that was probably part of that system that collided with Hurricane Sandy to create the big "Frankenstorm."

All kinds of wildlife were hanging out just above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge near the Arkansas side.  I saw a beaver, and then a big flock of migrating waterfowl that didn't let me get close enough for a good look.  From a distance they looked like baby ducklings, but I wouldn't think it's the right time of year for that.

Monday photo feature

I have no idea when or by whom this photograph was taken, but I love the idea of all these genteel ladies making the trek (without the aid of the wooden staircase that exists today) down into Tallulah Gorge for a day alongside Oceana Falls.

I'll be making my first trip down the Tallulah next Sunday.  I've heard many stories of the Oceana experience, and I guess I'll finally learn what all the fuss is about.

Monday photo feature

Somebody's busted-up dory turned up on the Densford Bar near Shelby Forest in the fall of 2008.  I snapped the picture while camping with some friends there: we had put in at Duvall's Landing, some 40 miles upriver from downtown Memphis, and were camping on the Densford Bar, with the intention of completing the trip to Memphis the next day.  Fall usually offers both the weather and the low water that make camping and exploring on the Mississippi River sandbars a delightful experience.

Offseason thoughts

This weekend I put in a pair of 60-minute sessions on the downtown riverfront.  I drove down there yesterday but rode my bike today.  It's been a classic fall weekend, and yesterday in particular was picture-perfect: sunny, low 70s, no wind.

Here in my offseason I'm paddling just a couple of times a week.  But I'm not that worried about getting too far out of shape because I always seem to be doing something.  It helps that my line of work doesn't have me sitting at a desk all day long.  As a woodworker, I'm constantly moving logs and lumber around, and sawing, and planing, and carving, and chopping.

Different people do different things during the competitive offseason.  Some people feel no need to take a break from paddling at all, and just train throughout the year.  Others could use some sort of mental break from the boat, and seek out other physical activities: running, bike riding, skiing, basketball... there's really no wrong thing to do as long as you keep your body moving.

I'm trying to catch up on some whitewater paddling during this offseason--I took a trip several weeks ago and hope to take another in a couple of weeks.  But around this time every year, I pick up the pace with my woodworking.  Last weekend, for instance, I demonstrated bowl carving at a crafts fair here in town, using an axe, an adze, a saw, and numerous chisels and gouges, and at the end of each day I felt just as tired as if I'd spent the day lifting weights.

Speaking of weightlifting: in William T. Endicott's The Barton Mold, Greg Barton comments on the importance of using precise technique in the weight room: "I feel that if you start cheating, really jerking around a lot, there are two things that happen. One is you're starting to pull into play muscles other than the one you are targeting.  Secondly, what happens when you get into the boat? Are you going to start jerking around there, too?  Start pulling all over the place?  I think some of that carries over.  If you use strict technique in the weight room, you're thinking in that mode and it's a little easier to transfer that into the boat."

Just like paddling and weightlifting, woodworking is a technical endeavor.  There's a right way to hold and move each tool to get the most from the tool's design in concert with the power of your body.  Having taken courses taught by Carl Swensson, a staunch proponent of good technique, this summer and last summer, I've been thinking a lot about how I use my tools.  It's plenty of exercise, and I hope it will carry over into my paddling in the next year.

The low water continues

I paddled my surf ski today for the first time in about three weeks.  Part of that time off was spent paddling up at the Gauley, and part was spent doing stuff having nothing to do with paddling.  Yes, I do have a life away from the sport.

The Mississippi River has been below zero on the Memphis gauge for as long a period as I can remember.  It dipped below zero around the eighth of June, and about a week later it was at -1.7 feet for the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  It hovered up and down for the next few weeks before dropping precipitously in late August, bottoming out at -9.8 feet on September 1.  After that it came up for a while, holding steady around -6 feet, but now it's dropping again and was at -9.3 feet when I paddled this morning.  For now it doesn't appear that it will threaten the record low of -10.7 feet from July of 1988, however.  The current forecast has it rising to around -8 feet by the end of the week.

When the water is this low, I have to proceed with caution as I paddle upriver along the Tennessee bank.  The bank is lined with revetment, a matrix of concrete slabs placed there by the Corps of Engineers to prevent the river from eroding its banks, and some of this revetment has buckled after decades underwater, getting hammered by the river's currents.  I lost my rudder once last year when it hit a piece of concrete that was sticking up near the surface of the water in an unlikely place.

Returning soon

I think the Internet problems at our house are fixed at last.

Soon, I hope to get the gears grinding back to life here at this blog.  I've been busy with a lot of non-paddling activities lately, so that's part of the problem along with the broken connection.  I thank all my loyal readers for their patience.

Here's one piece of good news: that kayaker I mentioned in my last post has resumed his journey down the Mississippi, destined for Costa Rica.  The local TV news covered it here.

Please stand by

I apologize to those of you who have been looking here for new posts.  We've been having a lengthy saga of Internet connectivity problems at our house and my online time has been limited to whenever I can drop by my mom's house and use her computer.

I'll have more to say about this when I get back online for real, but here in Memphis this week we've seen a sad story reach a happy ending.  Best of luck to Mr. Stewart as he continues on to Costa Rica.

Monday photo feature

Because of technical difficulties (hint: I'm about to drop our wireless router on the floor and stomp on it), I was not able to post this week's "Monday photo feature" on Monday.  I apologize to those of you who kept checking this site for it yesterday.

Here's another Gauley River photo in honor of my trip up there this past weekend.  This one also was taken during my first trip there in 1994.  From left to right, the paddlers are Jason Salomon, Richard Carson, Greg Raymond, and Tony Hickey.  The location is Five Boat Hole on the lower Gauley.  Good times.