Monday photo feature

My friend Meghan and I have a little picnic across the river from downtown Memphis about five years ago.  The water was very high, and the landowner, who keeps a picnic table down by the river so he and his friends can go down there and watch July Fourth fireworks and stuff like that, had moved the table to the highest piece of land (we call it the "atoll"), where it was dry but accessible only by boat.

Another pleasant summer Sunday on the water

This afternoon I paddled the K1 in the harbor for 60 minutes.  Except for a little one-sided paddling at the end, I gave myself a break from the drills and tried to get in a good rhythm and help my muscles recover from yesterday.

My left elbow is killing me these days.  I think I strained it while stripping paint off old doors several weeks ago.  I'm right-handed, so it doesn't interfere with most daily activities, and it doesn't really bother me while I'm paddling, either, but the pain is always there, and sometimes while I'm in bed at night it just throbs.

I think it's your basic "tennis elbow."  I had the same thing in my right elbow several years ago, and it eventually went away after a few months, so maybe that's what I have to hope for now.  My experience with over-the-counter anti-inflammatories like Advil is that they don't do me much good, and I really don't like popping that stuff anyway.

A trip around the Bar

This morning I went out for a longer paddle--a trip around the Loosahatchie Bar.  The Loosahatchie Bar is the big island you see looking upriver as you take Interstate 40 over the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.

I paddle around the Bar several times a year.  It affords views of the many faces of the Mississippi River at Memphis.  You get the big-city feel as you paddle out the harbor by the cobblestones, with the tall buildings of downtown up on the bluff; you see various city-dwellers availing themselves of the Greenbelt Park for walking, running, fishing, relaxing, and more; you experience a little heavy industry as you paddle by the Maynard C. Stiles wastewater treatment plant and the sand and gravel operation up above it; and you feel like you're in sure-enough wilderness as you paddle down the Loosahatchie Chute on the Arkansas side of the Bar, with nothing in sight but water and forest.

I think I average two and a quarter hours or so when I paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar, starting and finishing at Harbortown Marina.  Once or twice I have broken two hours, but I don't expect to do so these days because an enormous sand deposit has formed at the north end of the Bar in recent years, adding a fair bit of paddling distance to the course.  Today I made the journey in 130 minutes.  That included hopping out of the boat for brief swims in the Loosahatchie Chute.

I'm a little surprised at how soft I've gotten after just ten days or so out of the boat: by the time I was halfway through today, a couple of sizable blisters had formed on my left hand.

I paddled my surf ski today.  As I've said earlier, I want to spend as much of my paddling time this summer as possible in the K1, but with the water still fairly high for this time of year (it was about 19.3 feet on the Memphis gauge this morning), I decided to get out and see some of the beautiful sights that aren't accessible by boat during the low-water months of late summer and fall.  Also, it's probably not the worst thing to break up the K1 paddling with some time in a boat I'm more comfortable with, lest I end up wobbling around in all my other boats like I've been doing in the K1.

Back to K1 drills

We're having a pleasantly mild week for this time of year in Memphis, as a breeze from the north has kept temperatures below 90 degrees Fahrenheit.  It's not cool, but just how I think summer should be, with just the right level of humidity keeping things green against a backdrop of insect serenade in our wooded city.

This afternoon I went down to the harbor and paddled the K1 for 60 minutes.  There were numerous motorized pleasure craft out on the water--not a surprise on this national holiday, but it did make the harbor quite choppy.  I tried to relax and not get my undies in a bunch over it--I'll have to get comfortable in turbulent water sooner or later, after all.

I did some more one-sided stroking drills.  I tried to do ten in a row on one side without letting the opposite blade touch the water; if I had to do a stroke or a brace with the opposite blade, I started over.  My coach is a real taskmaster.

I also did a drill where I paddled on both sides, but leaned the boat one way or another as I did so, trying to get a feel for the boat's point of secondary stability.

As I headed back to the marina, I decided, on a whim, to time myself from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the Auction Avenue bridge (six or seven hundred meters, maybe).  I used to do this time trial fairly often, with a best time of 2:57 or so, and I was curious to see what I could do in the K1.  But it quickly became apparent that there would be no PR today: every other stroke seemed to be part brace, and I couldn't keep the boat on a straight line to save my life (I think some adjustment to the rudder might be in order).  As I flailed through the plane of the Auction bridge, I looked at my watch: about 3:42.  Ugh.

Oh well, I guess I'll keep at it, and try to enjoy the punishment.

Update on the kayak classes this summer: Kids' day August 17

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I will be teaching some kayak classes for Outdoors, Inc., this summer out at Patriot Lake.  The schedule and registration information are posted here.

It's now been announced that August 17 will be "kids' day."  The class that day is open to students age ten to seventeen.  So if you, your siblings, or your friends have kids who would like to learn a little kayaking technique, sign them up!

Monday photo feature

The U.S. C2 team of Horace Holden (bow) and Wayne Dickert approaches the rapid known as Humungous at the 1996 Olympic slalom race on the Ocoee River near Ducktown, Tennessee.  I was paddling this piece of water myself a week ago Saturday, though probably not well enough to make a good showing in the Olympics.

Get some instruction from yours truly

If you're interested in getting started in kayaking, please consider taking a class this summer offered by Outdoors, Inc., here in Memphis.  The instructor?  Me!  Details and schedule are here.

Back on the grid

Well, here I am back among the living.  Actually, I've done plenty of living all along, but haven't been able to broadcast until now.

Last Saturday (June 22) I joined my friends Curtis and Ruthie from Atlanta for a run of both the upper and middle sections of the Ocoee River near Ducktown, Tennessee.  I was already sore and achy from all the paint stripping I had done that week, and I felt anything but sharp in my whitewater boat, which I was paddling for the first time since last November.  I sort of shied away from the more challenging moves and just tried to get used to using muscle groups that had fallen into disuse.  I was hurting from head to toe by the end of this long day, but there's no such thing as a regrettable day on the river.

That evening I drove over to Long Creek, South Carolina, where I camped.  The next morning I met my buddy Travis at the U.S. 76 bridge over the Chattooga River.  Travis had been out of his boat for a long time too, so we decided to run the section of river between Fall Creek and Woodall Shoals--not the most difficult whitewater the Chattooga has to offer, but at a gauge reading of 1.7 feet, some good action nevertheless, especially the intimidating Bull Sluice rapid.

The first thing I noticed as we put in was how much more peaceful the Chattooga is than the Ocoee.  While the Ocoee has been dammed into submission by the TVA, has a road following most of its length, and is clogged with tourists who pay to see the river from rafts, the Chattooga is free-flowing, has no development along its banks, and, save for a few auto-accessible points where locals congregate to swim and fish, offers plenty of solitude.

Once I had a chance to loosen up on the easy whitewater in the early part of the run, I felt quite a bit better in my boat, and a nice clean run of Bull Sluice did much to lift my spirits.  It was also fun to spend a few hours with Travis, talking about nothing in particular like we always do.

When the paddling was done it was time to move on to the main agenda item for this trip: a six-day class in cooperage at Country Workshops in the mountains north of Asheville.  It was the same course I had taken last summer, and you can read this post for an explanation of why I think it's relevant material for a canoe and kayak racing blog.

Fortunately I did manage to come away with a passable bucket, but at this stage of my woodworking (and paddling) career I pick classes based not on what sort of object I'll take home but on the potential to advance my skills.  This one was taught again by Carl Swensson, sort of a mountaintop guru of woodworking technique, and he pointed out that the top performers in any field are lifelong learners who even late in life seek the advice of teachers or coaches.  I'm not sure I'm a top performer in any field, but I'll continue to emulate them.

I'm spending today visiting my sister's family in Lincolnton, North Carolina.  Tomorrow I'll head home at last, eager to see what's gotten done at my building and to rescue my poor kittycat from his long days alone in my little apartment.

Signing off for a while

Well, I'm headed out of town for about ten days, during most of which I'll be off the grid entirely.  I apologize in advance for the lack of posts.  Once I'm back online I'll set about the task of winning back all the readers who have gotten out of the habit of checking in here.

Haste makes waste

I think I've mentioned before that I'm currently living in the apartment over my mother's garage.  My mother has moved to a retirement community, so it's just me here (the house is on the market but has not yet sold).

The locks on the doors here are such that it's pretty easy to lock oneself out.  I've mostly been careful about that, but this morning I went outside and shut the door behind me without unlocking it.  I spent the better part of the next hour knocking on neighbor's doors, trying to borrow somebody's phone so I could call my mother and have her come let me back in the house.  Few of my neighbors seemed to be home, but I finally got my hands on a phone, and my mother very kindly came right over.

Though I really didn't lose that much time, I felt in a rush the rest of the morning, and in my haste I went down to the river without my paddling clothes.  I discovered my mistake on the dock, and ended up paddling in my underwear for 40 minutes.

I paddled the K1, a boat that requires maximum concentration from me right now.  Feeling flustered and distracted, I might have been better off just skipping paddling, but eventually I got my mind on the business at hand.

One thing I did today was paddle on one side for ten or twelve strokes at a time.  I have done this in the surf ski many times and had no trouble, but I found it very difficult in the K1, especially when paddling on my right side.  Each time I took a stroke, I badly wanted to counter it with a stroke on the other side. I was frustrated with how awkward I was feeling, but I'm hoping that this and similar drills will bring about some improvement in my balance.

Monday photo feature

Joe Royer, the founder and director of the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, usually participates in the race himself.  But a freak accident on his bike a couple of weeks ago left him with an injured shoulder that required surgery to repair, so he watched Saturday's race from a seat on a motorized boat. Never one to spend time unproductively, Joe took a number of photographs, including the one above.  The canoes, who started two minutes after the kayaks, are beginning to overtake some of their twin-bladed brethren.

A K1 summer

This morning I paddled my K1 in the harbor for 60 minutes.  It was both a recovery session after yesterday's race and a transition into my summer paddling routine.  I'll be spending most of my time this summer just working on my building and getting my workshop and all my stuff and myself relocated, but I hope to get out in the K1 at least two or three times a week.  I'm hoping that on these long hot summer days, when a swim is no big deal, I can gain confidence in this incredibly tippy boat.

Another OICKR is in the books

Several hundred paddlers descended on the Memphis riverfront today for the 32nd Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  The race course is approximately 5000 meters in length; racers start in the mouth of the Wolf River, paddle out onto the Mississippi and down the river to the mouth of Wolf River Harbor, and up into the harbor a half-mile or so to the finish.

I expected the times to be fast today: the river was at a pretty high level at 26.3 feet on the Memphis gauge, winds were light and variable, and the water was calm. But once we had finished and the results were tabulated, they were quite a bit faster even than I had guessed.  Mike Herbert, the three-time Olympian and three-time world championships medalist, bettered Greg Barton's course record by one second with his time of 15 minutes, 38 seconds.  A short while later Pete Greene, Eric Mims, and I finished second, third, and fourth, respectively, each of us breaking 17 minutes for the first time in his many appearances in this race.  Fast times continued to be the rule moving down the list through all the various boat classes.

Greg Barton set his course record back in 2002.  That year, the river was almost as high (25.6 feet), conditions were calm, and the river was smooth.  Racers in all boat classes posted fast times.  The only difference between that year and this one that I can think of is that in 2002, race director Joe Royer placed a buoy some twenty feet off the southern tip of Mud Island to keep paddlers out of the shallow water there, whereas this year there was no buoy, making the course slightly shorter but subjecting racers to the shallow-water hazard.

My time in 2002 was 17:32, and until today that stood as my PR.  Today I clocked 16:51.  Am I really that much better than I was eleven years ago?  Were the conditions just faster in subtle ways?  Are the little changes to my stroke that Shaun Caven suggested two weeks ago already making that big a difference?  But then, I was about the same relative to Pete and Eric that I usually am.  I could drive myself crazy trying to analyze these results, and it's probably a fool's game because there's absolutely no guarantee that today's course was anywhere near the same length as the 2002 course.

Oh well.  I had a great time and a hard-fought competition.  I love this time each year when canoe and kayak racing takes over the Memphis riverfront for a morning.



UPDATE: The results are now posted here.  If you scroll down a bit you'll see the results in "finish time sequence," or the overall order of finish regardless of boat class.

The excitement is heating up

Well, here we are one day before the big race.  The Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race is scheduled to start at 10:15 AM tomorrow.  The field in the race boat class is looking less strong than usual this year: Greg Barton won't be making it, leaving fellow Olympian Mike Herbert as the heavy favorite for the overall win.  Whereas last year there were five or six entrants around my level of ability,  only maybe two or three are currently registered for tomorrow.  The canoe classes will be a little thin tomorrow as well, as the race this year conflicts with the Aluminum Canoe National Championships upriver in Dubuque, Iowa.

But as always, I try not to pay too close attention to who else is coming or what others are doing.  I can control nothing but my own performance, and I'm trying to make sure I am prepared to do the best I can.

Yesterday I paddled for 60 minutes and did six 12-stroke sprints with full recovery.  This evening, when I meet my friend Katie to load our boats and formulate our shuttle plan for tomorrow, I'll paddle for maybe 40 minutes and do about four such sprints.  Other than that my plan for today is to do a little work in my workshop and rest and relax as much as I can.

We're having our first real hot spell here for 2013, with temperatures reaching the low to mid 90s.  I'd been resisting the urge to turn the air conditioning on in my apartment, but when the thermostat's temperature display said it was 93 degrees Fahrenheit inside a couple of evenings ago, I decided it was time.  I've got it on now, with the thermostat set on 80.  If I can get some relief from the humidity, I'm perfectly happy not to have my place feeling like a meat locker.

And, not knowing what scientific studies have been done on the topic, I believe intuitively that shutting yourself up in the climate-controlled indoors at all times is not really congruent with a healthy, fit life.  The human body has evolved to withstand some heat and humidity in the summer and some cold, grey clamminess in the winter.  I'd be lying if I said I love the typical Memphis summer weather, but I'm not afraid to get out and immerse myself.

More speed, more rest

Today I paddled for 60 minutes, doing a set of eight 12-stroke sprints with full recovery.  I'm getting more and more comfortable with the changes to my stroke, though I'm not yet to the point where my body automatically does it the new way.  We'll see how it goes this Saturday.

For Saturday's Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, we're expecting warm temperatures--low 90s Fahrenheit--and a river level somewhere around 26.5 feet.  The times should be fast as long as the wind stays moderate.

Monday photo feature

Here's a vintage photo from the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  This is up at the starting line around 1996 or 1997.  I'm near the middle of the picture in the kayak with the green deck--that's an old John Jaycox-designed Colorado River Machine.  Photo by my mom, I think.

The 32nd Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race will take place this Saturday at 10:00 AM.  I'll be there doing my best just like always.

Rest time

I paddled for 60 minutes this morning, doing ten 12-stroke sprints.  I hope to get in several more such sessions this week to polish my speed and leave me feeling sharp next Saturday morning.  At the moment I am not feeling particularly rested, and I guess that's mainly because of the strenuous week I just had.  I'm getting pretty full nights of sleep, but I've been waking up tired each morning lately.  Hmm...

Riverfront litter pickup

I paddled in the harbor today for 80 minutes.  I participated in a litter pickup put on by Memphis River Warriors, the Tennessee Sierra Club, Memphis City Beautiful, the University of Memphis, Outdoors, Inc., and others who value a clean environment on our riverfront.  The effort was focused on the cobblestones and the finish area for next Saturday's Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, so I wanted to be sure the paddling community was represented.

So it wasn't really a training session, but I can find training value in almost any in-the-boat activity.  This morning I would stop at one patch of floating litter and pick it up, then paddle over to another patch, and so on, and I concentrated on my stroke with its recent alterations during those bursts of paddling.  In this way, I worked toward internalizing the new movements without obsessing over them, because most of my attention was on the very important business of removing some pollutants from the water that we paddle on.

Under pressure

This morning I paddled for 60 minutes.  It was my first time in the boat since Tuesday, but the days since then haven't exactly been restful.  The ground floor of my building had all kinds of broken plaster and peeling paint on the walls and ceiling, and I decided to use a pressure washer to knock down as much of that stuff as I could.  I discovered that pressure washing is very hard work.  The washer I used shoots water around 3000 psi, and my hands and arms feel like jelly after hours of handling that thing.  I doubt any of the top coaches or sports physiologists would recommend my way of spending the two weeks before the season's big competition.

Oh well, I still have a week to try to get in some rest.  My paddling sessions will be short in duration, but I'll paddle as fast as I can in that time.  Today I did ten 30-second sprints with full recovery.  I'm slowly starting to feel better with the change to my stroke.  One thing I've noticed is that I'm capable of a higher stroke rate than I had been before, because I'm not wasting as much motion between strokes.  I also need to re-figure my balance--I don't feel as stable as I did when I was paddling with my elbows farther from my body and the blade farther from the boat.  I very nearly flipped this morning as I paddled across the squirrelly slackwater at the southern tip of Mud Island.

I'll be paddling again tomorrow, but at lower intensity as I participate in a litter pickup down at the riverfront.

Soreness persists

This morning I paddled for 60 minutes, doing the same workout as last Monday (45 seconds on, 30 seconds off), except today I did just eight intervals rather than twelve.

I'm still feeling awfully sore in my upper arms, especially the right one, and I wonder whether I haven't strained them a little.  This change to my stroke could be the reason, but it's just as likely that strength work or paddling that big tandem boat last week is the culprit.  I skipped the strength work this morning.

Little Rock results

The results of Saturday's race are now posted here.  I guessed right: I was the tenth overall finisher, about three and a half minutes behind winner Dylan Puckett.

Monday photo feature

Racer David Christopher took this photo before the start of Saturday's Arkansas River Canoe and Kayak Race at Little Rock.  Facing upriver, the paddlers watch a mass of ominous black clouds roll toward them.  The downpour began shortly after the starting gun went off.

Something new, late in the season

This morning I did two sets of the May strength routine--yes, I know it's June now, but since I'll be doing only a couple more strength sessions between now and the OICKR, there's no reason to start up anything new.  Then I went downtown and paddled for 60 minutes.  It felt good to be back on my home water.

In the boat I worked on the stroke modifications that Shaun Caven recommended yesterday.  He mentioned several things he thought I should do: keep my elbows closer to my body, insert the blade farther forward, lift my wrist before my elbow in the recovery phase.  Today I decided to focus mainly on keeping my elbows close to my body.  As Carl Swensson emphasized in the cooperage class I took last summer, when learning a skill it's best to break it up into as many components as possible and take them one at a time.

Paddling this way felt a little strange, but not as awkward as it sometimes feels when I make a change to my stroke.  And when I reverted back to the way I had been paddling, I realized that there was indeed some wasted motion like Shaun said.  Having somebody to point out things like that can be very handy, because once you get used to doing something a certain way it's difficult to detect that anything is wrong.

Now, a few hours later, I'm feeling very sore in my upper arms and deltoids.  It's probably partly the result of the strength work, but I expect it also was caused by the unfamiliar motions in the boat.

A wet, wild morning at Little Rock

I'm pretty sure I've never raced in a rain as heavy as what we had today.  As we warmed up this morning, the sky to the west (upriver) was black.  Less than a minute after the gun went off, we slammed head-on into the deluge, and it felt like smacking into a liquid wall.  The rain came down in buckets for the entire race, and continued to do so through the awards ceremony, which was held under the nearby Interstate 430 bridge because it was the only shelter of any size available.

At this point, I really don't know what my place was; counting the boats ahead of me was impossible in all the chaos, and the race organizers didn't have the results posted promptly like they usually do because of the inclement weather.  And it was very hard to hear them announce the award winners because of the traffic roaring overhead on I-430.  My guess is that I was something like tenth place overall.  I'll link to the results once they are posted online.

I do know that we had a very high-quality turnout from the Oklahoma City training center, with a number of racers signing up since I wrote my post yesterday.  Dylan Puckett, a junior (under 18) racer whom I've watched improve steadily over the last four editions of this race, edged everybody's favorite world-class-country-boy-athlete, Mike Herbert, for the win.  Maggie Hogan was the fastest lady, finishing not so very far behind the top men.  For much of the race I actually thought I might run down Kaitlyn McElroy, who spent the race paddling alongside Arezou Motamedi a tantalizingly short distance ahead, but once we got into the last 1500 meters or so I knew it wasn't happening.

What did happen for me is that I targeted the tandem surf ski paddled by Bill Cains and Phil Capel, because I knew they would be a little faster than I but also would offer a better wake ride than the skinny little K1s.  I paddled hard to stay on their stern for the first half of the race, with Shaun Caven, the Oklahoma City coach and a former British national team member, hanging out on their right-side wake in his K1.

Then I got a break at the buoy turn: Phil and Bill had trouble getting their ultra-long boat around the buoy and nearly rammed the bank, and in doing so they trapped Shaun, who had been on the outside.  I swept my boat around on their inside and put the hammer down to try to drop them.

I didn't get to savor my opportunity seizure for long: somehow, Shaun had gotten himself back on track and within a couple of minutes was sitting on my right-side wake.  I knew I had to push the pace, because there was no way I would beat him in a final-50-meter sprint.  With some 400 meters left I tried to throw in a surge, but it didn't shake Shaun, and a few seconds later he was sprinting away from me.

I knew he had me beat, but then Phil and Bill came charging into my peripheral vision on the left--those tough old guys had made it back from their awful buoy turn.  With the last bit of energy I had, I managed to hold them off by a foot or two.

Shaun, who had gotten a good look at my stroke while sitting on my wake, told me I can improve it by keeping my elbows closer to my body and the blade closer to the boat.  He also noted that at the end of a stroke I should lift my wrist ahead of my elbow.  This seemed to contradict the injury-preventive "chicken wing" recovery that Brent Reitz talks about in his forward stroke video, but after trying out the changes that Shaun suggested I think the two concepts can coexist.  Two weeks before the big race of the season is not the best time to make major changes to my stroke, but I'll be thinking about what Shaun told me as I paddle this coming week.

Race tomorrow

I did a 40-minute paddle in Mississippi Sound this morning, during which I did six 12-stroke sprints.  Then I got in the car and made the long drive to Little Rock, the host city for tomorrow's Arkansas River Canoe and Kayak Race.

Because of abnormally high river levels, the race tomorrow will actually take place on the Little Maumelle River, upstream of the usual race course.  Race director Phil Capel says it will be a 5-mile out-and-back course.

In recent years Olympic hopefuls based at the Chesapeake Boathouse training center in Oklahoma City have been coming to this race.  Among them has been Kaitlyn McElroy, one of the best female paddlers in the U.S. (she has spanked me each of the last three years).  McElroy won all three of her events at the U.S. Team Trials about a month ago, making her the woman to watch in this early stage of the new Olympic quadrennium.  Other registrants whose names I recognize are Austin Schwinn and Maggie Hogan, whom there's a fair chance we'll see on our tee vees in 2016.

I'm just sitting here in my motel room hoping I can get a good night's rest and be ready to go in the morning.  I'm feeling a bit tired and sore even though I don't think I overdid it during my vacation trip.  That tandem boat is big and heavy, and I guess muscling it around in that wind was enough to leave me feeling a bit achy.  Whatever the case, I'll just get out there tomorrow and try to paddle as hard as I can.

Windswept

My nephew Joel and I paddled the tandem boat for an hour this afternoon in Mississippi Sound.  A stiff wind from the southeast continues to blow, and we got bounced around plenty.  By the time we returned to the dock, I felt as though I'd paddled a whole lot more than just an hour.  It probably was not the best thing for me to do two days before a big competition, but niece-and-nephew time trumps training concerns.

The surf was up

This afternoon the kids went off with their father for adventures elsewhere on Dauphin Island, and the wind was strong enough that I'm not sure I really would have wanted to take them paddling anyway, so I went out myself for 70 minutes.

The southeast wind was certainly howling, and as I got farther offshore the waves started getting pretty hefty.  But hey, that's what surf skis like mine were designed for.  Once I got used to the conditions I started having a lot of fun.

In the middle of the session I managed to get in eight of my 12-stroke sprints to work the ATP-CP system.  I do have a race this Saturday, after all, though I expect the water to be much flatter than what I was on today.

Vacation

I'm relaxing with my mother, sister, brother-in-law, a niece, and two nephews on Dauphin Island near the mouth of Mobile Bay.  I'm an awfully regimented guy at home, so a little unstructured time for a few days will probably do me some good.

I thought the day might get by without any paddling, but in the late afternoon the kids expressed some interest, so I took each of them out.  A thunderstorm had blown through earlier and the wind was rather fierce--not a great day for novice paddlers.  The worst place was where we put in, where the waves slammed against a little concrete wall lining the bank.  But the kids handled it all reasonably well.

Back to the coast

This morning I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 50 minutes.  I did a shorter, faster lactic tolerance workout: 12 intervals of 45 seconds on, 30 seconds off.

Then I put the boat on the car and headed south.  I took Interstate 55 to Jackson and U.S. 49 and Mississippi 67 down to Ocean Springs.  There I met Nick and Dana, subjects of today's photo feature, for supper.  It was nice to visit with them and hear the latest on their wedding plans.

The last leg of my trip took place on Interstate 10 and a bunch of secondary roads that eventually got me to Dauphin Island on the Alabama Gulf Coast.  I'll be spending the rest of this week with my mother and my sister's family in a rented beach house.  I have the tandem boat with me, for what kind of uncle doesn't take his nieces and nephews paddling?

Monday photo feature

After the Vicksburg race last month, Joe Royer snapped this photo of me with Nick Kinderman and Dana Robertson.  They're getting married this coming weekend at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  I'm happy for the kids.

Boat designs

Yesterday morning I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 60 minutes.

For the last several days we've had what my friend Joe likes to call "chamber of commerce" weather--sunshine, clear skies, low humidity, lots of people out running, riding bikes, just playing in the parks... the sort of scenes every chamber of commerce depicts in its promotional brochures.

The water was calm down at the harbor yesterday, so I got out the K1.  As usual, I had comfortable stretches and unstable stretches.  As I mentioned in Thursday's post, my fastest time in those pieces I did in my surf ski from the monorail bridge to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge was 2:14; out of curiosity, I decided to see what I could do in the K1.  In the much less stable boat, I didn't feel like I had the hammer down like I did in the ski, and every forward stroke felt like partly a brace.  My watch was on my wrist so I couldn't really look at it while I paddled, but as I neared the finish line I guessed that my time would be 2:25 or 2:30.  Then I crossed the line and looked at my watch: 2:15.  Hmm.

I've always had the attitude that "It's not the boat; it's the motor."  I hate it when people say things like "Oh, Billy beat Charley because he was in a faster boat," and I sneer at people who are always buying new boats because they weren't having the race results they wanted in their previous boats.

But boat design certainly is not irrelevant.  There's an obvious speed difference between a surf ski and a sixteen-foot touring boat, and I guess the speed difference between a K1 and a surf ski, while less obvious, is nevertheless genuine.  I do a couple of races each year--including next Saturday's race at Little Rock--that are attended by Olympic hopefuls in K1s.  I've always wondered if their fitness and their power and their technique are really that much better than mine.  I expect that if we all raced in surf skis they would still beat me, for they are younger and their training is more elite-level than mine, but maybe they wouldn't beat me by as much.

Long sprints

Today I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 60 minutes.

I paddled to the mouth of the harbor and upriver to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, where I looped around and returned to the harbor.  Once back in the harbor, I commenced my workout for today: four sprints from the monorail bridge to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  This distance is somewhere around 500 meters--probably a little less, as I was doing these pieces as fast as 2:14 and I don't think I'm much better than a 2:20 guy in a true 500 meters.

In any case, it was some good mental preparation for my race at Little Rock next Saturday, where the last 1500 meters or so of the course, passing under four or five bridges, always seems to last forever.

Some novel cross training

I took a break from training today, but I hardly felt as though I was lying around.  Parts of the downstairs in my building were ankle-deep in water from yesterday's torrential rains, so I spent the day sweeping water out with a push broom.  As I worked, I was reminded of another Olympic sport: curling.

I admit I know little about the sport of curling, but I do know that it includes a couple of guys (or gals) armed with brooms, which they use to manipulate the ice ahead of the sliding stone, thereby influencing the stone's direction.

Who knew that there is a place in the Olympic movement for housework skills?  As I moved swiftly along, trying to steer the water flow toward the front door with my broom, I thought perhaps I should learn more about this obscure sport.  I wonder what sort of athletes excel at curling?  What body type and physique is typical of a curler?

Rainy recovery

This morning I paddled in the harbor for 60 minutes.

I'm sure I've been over this before, but it seems like a good time to mention it again.  When you do a really hard workout like the one I did yesterday, you are in fact inflicting damage on your muscles.  During recovery, your body builds the muscles back stronger than they had been before, and this is where your strength and fitness level improve.  And so the recovery periods are crucial parts of training: without them, you'll just wind up worn out and injured rather than in good shape.

Plenty of rest, full nights of sleep, and good nutrition all play a role in the recovery process.  And then there is active recovery, which is what I was doing on the water this morning.  An easy, relaxed session in the boat gets the blood flowing in your paddling muscles, washing away lactic acid and repairing the damage done by the hard workout.

It was a rainy morning here in Memphis, with a line of heavy thunderstorms moving in around nine o'clock.  The heaviest showers had moved out by the time I got down to the riverfront, but I still found myself paddling in some steady rain.  I don't really consider rain a deterrent from paddling, especially from May through October, but my mind was ill at ease because the building I recently bought has no roof on it at the moment.  Contractors are currently at work replacing the fire-damaged roof with a new one, but as of yesterday afternoon they had gotten no further than the installation of new rafters.  So I expect that when I go by there later today the ground floor will be soaking wet from water that seeped down from the second floor.  It's probably nothing we can't clean up and fix up, but it's left me with a worried mind just the same.

Aside from the rain, the harbor was calm this morning.  So I went another round in the K1.  Getting comfortable in that boat is much like renovating a burned-out building or healing the hurt of a divorce: it is a process.

Lactic tolerance

Today I did two sets of the March strength routine and paddled for 60 minutes.

In the boat I did eight intervals of 75 seconds on, 45 seconds off.  A workout like this is what some people call a lactic tolerance workout, because the body produces lactic acid during the high-intensity pieces and it doesn't have time to dissipate during the short rest intervals.

For me, the main objective of a lactic tolerance workout is to maintain precise form and technique even when the muscles are in utter agony.  I felt myself starting to flail a bit by the fourth interval in today's workout, so I adjusted by lowering the stroke rate a little while still pulling as hard as I could on the paddle.

I try to get in two or three such workouts once I'm within a month or so of a big race.  I always forget what a killer they are.  Doing this one right on top of my strength routine didn't make it any easier; it took me a long time to recover once it was done.  I started it at 0:17 and finished at 0:33, so I still had 27 minutes of paddling to complete the hour I had planned for today, and I spent that long cool-down period just paddling steady and letting my blood flow wash the lactic acid from my muscles.

Monday photo feature

Here's one from 2006: I'm crossing the finish line after racing 13.2 miles in Blackwater Sound and Florida Bay off Key Largo. The event was the Bogey and Bacall, named for the lead actors in the film Key Largo.

A new low

This morning I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 60 minutes.

Conditions were calm down at the river, so I got out the K1.  This time I lowered the seat a little: it was already on the second-lowest setting, and moving it to the lowest setting made a difference of no more than a centimeter, but I could immediately detect an improvement in stability.  The boat is still very tippy, mind you, but not as bad as it was.

It hadn't even occurred to me to adjust the seat height until I happened to read this blog post by Greg Barton right after the 2008 Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, in which he paddled his Legacy K1.

Sluggish

A busy morning pushed my training activities after lunch today.  My energy tends to flag in the mid afternoon, and it definitely was doing so today, but I fought through it.

I started with two sets of the May strength routine.  Then I went to the river and paddled for 60 minutes, doing eight intervals of 2 minutes on, 90 seconds off.  I managed to shake off the lethargy and feel strong in the boat.

Lower intensity but strong effort

Today I went to the river and paddled for 60 minutes.  Even though it was a recovery session after yesterday's workout, I still took good deliberate strokes and tried to get good solid blade pressure on each stroke.  I do not want to train myself to go slow.

Strength and endurance and high water

This morning I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 80 minutes.

On the river I did eight intervals of three minutes on, three minutes off.  Two minutes of each "on" interval were at anaerobic threshold, and the third minute was at sub-maximal intensity--basically the same workout I did back on April 29.  My arms were pretty tired from the strength work, but I maintained good form throughout the workout.

I did this workout while paddling down below the I-55 and old railroad bridges and back up the Arkansas side.  At today's Memphis gauge level of 33.8 feet, the farmland on the Arkansas side was underwater, but it looked a little too shallow for paddling.

Monday photo feature

The Mississippi River has crested at 34.0 feet on the Memphis gauge.  It's apparently going to hang out at that level for several days.

34 feet is the official flood stage here at Memphis, and it does seem pretty high after the low-water year we had last year, but almost exactly two years ago the river was some 14 feet higher.  Any residents on Mud Island who are concerned about the current river level should be reminded of the big 2011 flood, when the river was still a good four or five vertical feet shy of the houses in this photo.

Out of whack

I paddled the K1 in the harbor for 60 minutes yesterday.  I guess I had a few comfortable stretches again, but mostly what I remember is felling like every other stroke was a brace.  I guess there will be days like that, where I seem to have taken a step backward.

My body is not the same on left and right.  I guess that should be no surprise for a non-ambidextrous person like me, but I think it's more than just right-handed versus left-handed.  For a long time now I have felt a vague tightness or soreness in the oblique abdominal muscles on my right side that isn't there on my left side.  It hasn't really affected my paddling in the surf ski and other more stable boats, but in the K1 it's impossible to ignore.  I often find myself sitting on braces on my left side and shying away from full rotation on my right.  The times I've flipped in the K1, it's been to the right.

I'm not sure what's going on in my body.  Maybe I have a muscle imbalance, or a mild injury, or a chiropractic misalignment.  Like I said, it hasn't bothered me much in my other boats, so I've sort of been ignoring it, but I wonder if it will continue to be an issue in the K1.

Mild flooding

Today I did two sets of the May strength routine and paddled for 70 minutes.  On the water I did a "pyramid" workout: pieces of 1', 2', 3', 4', 5', 4', 3', 2', 1' with 2 minutes recovery.  With 24 minutes total "on" time to 14 minutes "off" time, it was a pretty taxing workout.  But I felt pretty good as far as paddling hard while maintaining good technique.

The river is supposedly cresting today.  The Memphis gauge reading this afternoon is about 33.8 feet.  That's high enough to put the lower tier of the Greenbelt Park underwater.  I always enjoy paddling among the trees there.

I have an ouchie

I had a little accident in the workshop yesterday afternoon--cut my left thumb pretty badly:

The offending tool, a biscuit joiner, gouged right through the thumbnail.  It's not a tool I often associate with accidents, but I was sort of in a hurry and being careless, and that's how accidents usually happen in a woodworking shop.  I'm just glad it isn't any worse.

I arguably should have gone and had the thing stitched up, but for now I've decided to see how it heals on its own.  After the initial gush, it hasn't bled too badly, so I'm hoping it'll be okay.  Of course, avoiding infection is a concern, and I'm doing my best to keep it clean.  I was worried that it might hinder paddling, but it didn't really bother me at all in the boat this morning.

I paddled my K1 for 70 minutes.  I think the issue of getting comfortable in the K1 is almost entirely psychological for me.  I continue to have stretches where I'm able to relax and let the boat do its thing, only to suddenly start thinking too much and tense up.  But it seems like with each session the good stretches get a little longer.  I'm actually looking forward to a summer of paddling the K1 and just having fun with it.

I'll conclude this post with a not-so-gory photo:

One of the simple pleasures of this time of year is having the purple martens in our marina's birdhouses for a couple of weeks.

Trying to get serious about May

I've been a little slow getting it going, but I've worked up a strength routine for the month of May:

1.  Dips
2.  The core exercise that Daniele Molmenti demonstrates at 3:45 of this video
3.  Pullups
4.  Another core exercise: hanging from the pullup bar and raising my legs straight out in front of me
5.  Power cleans with a cinder block

This is a pretty short workout; I can get two sets of it done in under 20 minutes.  I try to put the highest-quality effort into it as I can: I concentrate on good form and technique and try to explode through the three dynamic exercises.

And as I mentioned in last Saturday's post, that's how I want my in-the-boat workouts to be this month, too: short but high-quality.  After two sets of the strength routine this morning, I went to the river and paddled for 60 minutes, doing eight intervals of two minutes on, 90 seconds off.  It's the same workout I've done a couple of times previously this season, but with a shorter rest interval.  It didn't really feel any more taxing than the previous workouts.

Monday photo feature

I've taken a little training break to make the twenty-hour round trip to Lincolnton, North Carolina, where my nephew, Joel, was awarded the rank of Eagle Scout over the weekend.  Becoming an Eagle Scout is a daunting challenge, and a low percentage of Boy Scouts realize the achievement.

Central among the requirements is a substantial community project.  Joel's was to conduct interviews with the surviving World War II veterans in Lincoln County.  The recorded interviews and their transcripts are now archived in the county library.  Four of these veterans made it to Joel's Court of Honor this weekend, and considering that nearly all WWII vets are in their nineties, that's not bad.

Joel is maturing into quite the man.  It doesn't seem so long ago that he was this little kid soaking up the awards ceremony after racing with me in Wolf River Harbor in 2007:

2013 has not been a very good year for me up to now.  But my life will never be a lost cause as long as I have Joel and his equally-awesome brother and sisters.  Here they all are when Joel was several years older--2010 or '11, I think:

That's Ben and Rachel in the front, getting hugged by Ada, with Joel standing.  Thank you for humoring me during this sentimental indulgence.  I promise to be back on topic within the next two days.

Contemplating the month of May

I spent all yesterday driving, and now I sit in the charming North Carolina Piedmont town of Lincolnton.  My mission: to see my nephew become and Eagle Scout tomorrow.  My mother and I plan to visit for several days and then come home Tuesday.

I'm out of the boat for this period, so I guess it's a good time to consider my training plan from  now until my two big races next month.  On June 1 there's a race at Little Rock of some 9 kilometers in distance, and two weeks after that we have the big Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race here at Memphis, a 5-kilometer dash down the Mississippi.  Both events will feature very good competition.

So I've got some work to do to get ready, but that's not all.  Just this past Monday I completed my purchase of a two-story building in which I plan to relocate my workshop downstairs and my domicile upstairs.  It sounds great, and it is great, but like everything else in my life, it's not that simple.  In January a fire ravaged a large percentage of the upstairs, and so the place is not exactly move-in ready.  I'll be paying contractors to do as much of the work as I can afford, and since that sum is all too finite, I'll be doing a lot of the work myself.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to function in my vocation as if all were normal.  Right now I'm midway through a bookcase/cabinet project for a valued client, and I want to keep that moving along as steadily as possible.

So I'm one busy guy these days, and I need to get the most I can from what training time I have.  In past years at this point in the season, I've often done my higher-intensity workouts in the middle of paddling sessions that were rather long overall: for instance, I might paddle steady for 45 minutes, then do a set of intervals that takes a half-hour or so, and then paddle steady for another 45 minutes for two hours or so in the boat.  This season I think I'm going to do all the workouts I usually do, but not paddle for so long before and after.

And this might not be a bad plan.  As Ron Lugbill has pointed out in several recent posts on his blog, modern-day research is challenging the conventional wisdom that high-volume low-intensity training is necessary, even for long-distance endurance sports.  So to some extent I'll be testing that out for myself this coming month... although I should point out that I have put in a fair amount of volume earlier this season.

Cats and dogs

It was an afternoon paddling session for me again today, and there was no "soft spring shower" this time.  I had steady rain for my first stroke, steady rain for my last stroke, and steady rain for every stroke in between.

But hey... it is a water sport, right?  Once I got going, the rain warn't no thing.  I did eight intervals of two minutes on, two minutes off.  I felt stronger throughout the workout than in similar workouts I've done this season.  Total paddling time for today: 60 minutes.

K1 paddling today

I didn't make it down to the river until this afternoon.  I've got a huge bunch of things going on that I'll talk about more when I have more time.

It was raining when I got down there, but otherwise calm (i.e., it was a "soft spring shower").  So I pulled out the K1 for the first time in several months.  The rain stopped some twenty minutes in.

I paddled for an hour, and kept the boat upright, though I felt awfully unstable much of the time.  Even so, I had stretches where I was able to relax and rotate fully and let the boat do its thing.  I do think confidence and competence will come with time in that boat, and it sounds like a good use of a hot Memphis summer.

Degrees of hard

The results for Saturday's race are now posted here.

This morning I did two sets of the April strength routine and paddled for 70 minutes.  In the boat I did eight intervals of three minutes on, three minutes off, paddling at anaerobic threshold for the first two minutes of each "on" interval and at sub-maximal intensity for the third minute.  One thing I've learned over many years of racing at there are many degrees of "hard" paddling: there's "easy" hard and "all-out" hard and everything in between.  One thing I try to do in my training is get my body to recognize those "easier" degrees of hard as an opportunity for recovery.  During the course of any race there are periods where I'm pushing the pace, doing something close to "all-out" hard, but there are also periods where I'm hanging back, maybe sitting on another paddler's wake for a while, and if I'm in good shape it feels like I'm taking a breather.

Having just done a long race on Saturday, I normally might have waited another day before doing a workout.  But tomorrow I'll be spending the day visiting with some family up in Jackson, Tennessee, and later this week my mother and I are driving to North Carolina to see my nephew get his Eagle Scout award, so I want to get a couple of quality sessions in before these forced layoffs.

Monday photo feature

Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, sets a new course record with his first-place finish at the Bluz Cruz Marathon race on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg this past Saturday.  I swiped this photo from the Face Book page of Phil Capel, the bowman in the second-place tandem kayak.  My guess is that Phil's lovely wife Robbie snapped the picture.

Up and at 'em

I woke up this morning pretty sore from yesterday's racing.  I might have been tempted to spend the entire morning in my motel room drinking coffee and doing nothing in particular.  But a student I tutor in math had called me and asked if I could meet with her late this afternoon, so I got busy having breakfast and getting moving so that I could get back to Memphis with time to spare.

By 8:45 AM CDT I was down on the Vicksburg Front, where the race had finished yesterday, putting my boat in the water for a recovery paddle.  I paddled down the Yazoo to the Mississippi and continued south below the Interstate 20 bridge, then made my way back upriver along the Louisiana side.  I paddled a nice relaxed pace, trying to get a full range of motion in my strokes to work out the soreness, and enjoyed the scenery.  I think the riverfront at Vicksburg is just as beautiful as the one at Memphis, maybe even more so.

I could see dark clouds moving in from the northwest, so I decided to ferry back across the river before any lightning appeared.  As I paddled back up the Yazoo toward the Vicksburg Front it began to drizzle, and it was quickly becoming a torrential downpour by the time I was taking my boat out of the water after 90 minutes of paddling.  I owe my student thanks for getting me moving early and not ending up in the thick of that mess.

The ninth annual Bluz Cruz Marathon: a record-breaking performance, but not by me

Well, we had another successful Bluz Cruz Marathon canoe and kayak race on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg today.  It was great to see friends both old and new.  My Training Blog By Elmore extends its deepest gratitude to the race organizers and all the volunteers who made the event possible.

Up at the start, at a place on the Louisiana side of the river called Madison Parish Port, it was clear that the river was up (today's Vicksburg gauge reading was 38 feet).  And once the race got started, it was clear that the wind would be a factor.  It was largely a beam wind coming from our right, and it had me doing all kinds of little gymnastic moves to keep the boat balanced and moving forward.

The conditions kept my attention and consumed my energy the entire way down.  At one point about midway through I very nearly flipped during a half-second lapse in concentration.  Nevertheless, as I neared the mouth of the Yazoo River, up which I would paddle the last mile or so to the finish, I saw that I had a shot at bettering the course-record time I set two years ago.  With the wind finally at my back on the Yazoo, I paddled as hard and efficiently as I could... and I just missed the record with my time of one hour, 56 minutes, 49 seconds--fifteen seconds slower than the 1:56:34 I clocked two years ago.

But it's silly to get too upset over it.  For one thing, I doubt the starting line and finish line are in precisely the same locations year in and year out, and for another, I'm pretty sure the wind conditions were more challenging this year than they were two years ago.  This actually might be the best I've ever done in this race.

And it wouldn't have really mattered if I had beaten the course record anyway, for the record was obliterated by Mr. Mike Herbert, who was participating in this race for the first time.  Herbert, a three-time Olympian and a three-time medalist at the world championships of flatwater sprint kayaking, came in today under one hour and 52 minutes.  I took second, about five minutes back.  It was the first time in five tries that I had failed to win the Bluz Cruz race, but anybody who is disappointed over a loss to Mike Herbert is either very, very good or very, very full of himself.

No disappointment here... just elation from having competed well.  You can see it on my face in this photo that Joe took of me afterward:

Race tomorrow

This morning I did six short sprints (less than 15 seconds each) in the harbor.  Then I put the boat on the car and headed south.  If I had had plenty of time, I would have taken the "Blues Highway" (U.S. 61) through the Delta, but I didn't, so I took Interstate 55 to Jackson and I-20 to Vicksburg.

And here I am.  The Mississippi is plenty high, and some breezy conditions are forecast for tomorrow, so I expect it will be an exciting contest.

In an effort to relax and promote a good night's sleep tonight, I thought I'd soak in the bathtub in my motel room this evening, only to find that those Super 8 cheapskates have rigged the drain so it won't close.  But I'm too smart for them: just so happens I have a pill bottle whose lid fits right into the drain hole, so my tub held water.

Who knows how to stick it to The Man?  This guy.  That's who.

Last workout before my next race

This morning I did two sets of the April strength routine and then met Joe down at the dock.  We stayed in the harbor again today, paddling for 80 minutes and doing a set of ten 30-second forward sprints with full recovery.

30-second pieces are long enough to make the body produce some lactic acid, but short enough that there shouldn't be too much wear and tear on our bodies ahead of this Saturday's race (Joe will be racing at Vicksburg in a tandem kayak with his wife, Carol Lee).  Like I said before, I've been trying to get in some faster pieces so that on Saturday my body can turn over at a suitable rate for 22 miles and not feel like it's working too hard.

This week I received my copy of Canoe News in the U.S. Mail.  Canoe News is the magazine that the United States Canoe Association puts out three or four times a year, and this issue contains an article written by yours truly.  I wrote up something about the nine-day stretch last June that included the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race here at Memphis and the USCA's Aluminum Nationals on the White River in Arkansas several hours from here.  Yes, I know last June was quite some time ago, but the lady who puts Canoe News together spent a big chunk of last year going through cancer treatment, so I think her tardiness can be forgiven.

Anyway, if you would like to get your own copy of this issue of Canoe News, you must join the USCA.  Happily, it's very cheap to do so--a mere $20 for a year of standard ("governing") membership.  Go join up, and they'll mail Canoe News right out to you.

Relax = boat go fast

I did a low-intensity 100-minute paddle in the harbor this morning, recovering from yesterday's workout.  I paddled and chatted with Joe, whom I've seen a bit less of this season because of all the crazy stuff I've got going on.  It was nice to catch up.

The wind was really blowing from the south today.  I had to make myself relax and not fight it.  Right now the forecast for Saturday in Vicksburg calls for some pretty good wind, so relaxation practice is good.

Speaking of relaxation and recovery... it's been a while since I've mentioned the concept of a "recovery session."  When I first read about the idea on Ron Lugbill's blog several months ago, I was all excited because it was the perfect use for the hot tub in my backyard.  But a short time later I found myself being hit with a divorce, and with that came displacement from the house and discontinued access to the tub.

But you don't have to have a hot tub to do a decent recovery session.  I do have an ordinary bathtub where I live now, and lately I've been trying to get in one or two good soaks, followed by some stretching, each week.

Bringing the pain two minutes at a time

Today I did two sets of the April strength routine, then went out into the beautiful day to paddle for 90 minutes.

I did eight intervals of two minutes on, two minutes off.  Basically, it felt like the hardest parts of my "spike" workout last Friday, without the "easier" longer pieces.

More on water levels

I hope nobody thought I was being flippant when I mentioned the rising Mississippi River in my post on Friday.  At the time I wrote that, I didn't realize the scope of the flooding higher up in the watershed.  Right now some communities on the upper Mississippi, the Missouri, the Illinois, the Wabash, and some smaller tributaries are enduring a soggy mess as a result of the heavy rains that moved through the Midwest last week.

At the moment the lower Mississippi, whose riverbed can accommodate a much larger volume of water, does not face any major problems.  At Memphis the river is expected to crest around 32.5 feet, shy of the official flood stage of 34 feet.  At 32.5 feet a couple of low-lying settlements begin to see a little floodwater, but for them it's just an annual nuisance, sort of like snow is for denizens of the Minnesota prairie.  More than 99.9% of the Mid South population will have no idea the river is doing anything unusual.

Down at Vicksburg the current forecast for this Saturday is a level of 38 feet on their gauge.  I expect a low-lying community or two will feel the impact, but the city of Vicksburg, most of which is high above river level, will be fine.  For racing purposes, the level will seem nice after last year's 19.2 foot reading, at which it took me over 140 minutes to slog to the finish line.  Two years ago, when the level was 36.4 feet, I set the course record of one hour, 56 minutes, 34 seconds.

Whether I'll have that kind of performance this year remains to be seen.  I have been feeling good in the boat lately, but in general I haven't been giving my undivided attention to training this year.  In any case, I'd be remiss not to note that while we canoe and kayak racers generally love lots of water, it's not a welcome sight for everybody.

Monday photo feature

Jake Stachovak of Wausau, Wisconsin, pauses during his trip down the muddy Mississippi River in 2010.  One of the low points of his trip occurred at Vicksburg, where he was pepper-sprayed by a couple of juvenile delinquents.  I'm happy to say that my Vicksburg experiences have been better, and I hope to have another good time this weekend when I go down to participate in the Bluz Cruz Marathon, a 22-mile race that finishes along the Vicksburg Front.

Everything in flux

Today I did two sets of the April strength routine and paddled for 90 minutes.  In the boat I did what I call a "spike" workout: pieces of 3', 2', 2', 6', 2', 2', 6', 2', 2', 3' with 2 minutes recovery in between.  I'm hoping that with this steady diet of short, hard pieces under my belt, I won't be too fazed by my 22-mile race pace next Saturday.  In this workout, the six-minute pieces actually felt like a break from the shorter, more intense pieces.

I guess we're in the typical weather pattern for this time of year: several days of warm, muggy weather followed by a line of heavy thunderstorms with cooler temperatures behind it.  We'd had a couple of days in the 80s, but then the thunderstorms came through last night, and today it's cool (forecast high: about 57 degrees Fahrenheit) and breezy.  The wind was coming directly from the west out on the river this morning; that's not very common, and it creates water conditions that I'm not all that used to.  Balance and control were tricky as I did my workout.

Meanwhile, the river is on a big rise.  It had been down around eleven feet on the Memphis gauge for a couple of weeks, but it's now over twenty feet as a result of the storm systems that have moved across the Midwest in the last ten days or so.  I'm happy about it because this water is moving on down toward Vicksburg, where it will combine with water from the Saint Francis, White, and Arkansas drainages to give us a good, fast race course next Saturday.  Let's hope the wind cooperates.

Active recovery

Today I paddled for 100 minutes.  I was quite sore from yesterday's workout, so I kept the intensity low, letting the blood flow through the relevant muscle groups while not distressing them.

Pace workout

Today I did two sets of the April strength routine and paddled for 100 minutes.

I paddled down to the mouth of the harbor and then up the river along the Tennessee bank.  When I was 40 minutes in, I began my workout for today: eight intervals of three minutes on, three minutes off.

I did the first interval while continuing upriver, and then turned back downriver for the next several.  I'll be racing on a 22-mile section of the Mississippi down at Vicksburg a week from this Saturday, so I'm trying to get in some river time every time I paddle in these weeks leading up.  Today a pretty strong south wind was blowing, generating some chop on the river, but since there was no barge traffic it wasn't too menacing.

The fourth interval took me back into the harbor.  Paddling on calmer water with the wind at my back, I was able to concentrate more on good form.  I felt strong and fast in the fifth and sixth intervals, but by the seventh and eighth I was getting pretty tired and just trying to take good, smooth strokes.

It's quite warm today, supposedly heading for a high around 84 degrees Fahrenheit.  The turtles were out sunning themselves on floating logs in the harbor.  I do love our turtles, yessiree.

Monday photo feature

Here I am competing in one of my first slalom races, one of those "citizen races" they used to have on the Nantahala.  This photo was taken in the summer of 1992, at which time I was going on 25 years old.  If I had started slalom racing about twelve years earlier, I might have gone on to be decent at it.  Photo by Michael Stout.

A little of everything today

This morning I did two sets of the April strength routine and paddled for 120 minutes.

I paddled from the marina up to the mouth of the Wolf River in less than 45 minutes, something I don't do very often.  I paddled a pretty strong pace, but I also got a lot of help from favorable weather and water conditions.

After that I paddled a couple of miles up the Wolf to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge.  The bottom couple of miles of the Wolf is usually flatwater, backed up from the Mississippi, but today there was some steady current coming down: the Memphis area got three inches of rain on Thursday, and it's still draining.  So I paddled up against some resistance, especially once I had gotten solidly above the elevation of the Mississippi's level.  It was slow going, but of course the trip back down with the current canceled that out.

When I got back to the Mississippi, I thought I had taken a wrong turn and arrived at a different river.  The steady south breeze that had blown during my trip up the river had grown into a gusting gale, and on top of that the river was suddenly choked with barge traffic, so I had to navigate some rough water for the two and a half miles or so down to the harbor.  It was a challenge to keep the boat moving and not let too many of my forward strokes be replaced by braces.

When I reached the harbor, I had the wind at my back and I breathed easier as I let it blow me back to the marina.  It was a classic training day on the Memphis riverfront: in one session I encountered five or six different water conditions.

The start-to-boat-ramp workout

Today I did two sets of the April strength routine and paddled for 110 minutes.

I paddled up to the mouth of the Wolf and did a workout I've been doing for years.  Starting beneath the power lines where the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race starts, I paddle at sub-maximum intensity down to the boat ramp at the south end of the parking lot that serves as the OICKR staging area.  I do this five times, the recovery being the paddle back up to the starting line.  Each piece takes me around 1:45 to 1:50; I estimate the distance at about a quarter-mile (probably less than 500 meters, since I'm pretty sure I'm not a sub-2-minute 500 guy).

This has been what I consider a perfect spring day: cool with plenty of sunshine, the air feeling washed clean by yesterday's rain.

Ever serious

Today I paddled for 90 minutes in the harbor.  It was a "recovery" session after yesterday's workout, so I kept the intensity pretty mild, but even during easy sessions I'm thinking a lot about my stroke and other technicalities.

Wakeup resistance

This morning I did two sets of the April strength routine and paddled for 100 minutes.

In the boat I did the same workout I did last Tuesday: four 8-minute buildup tempo pieces with 4 minutes recovery.  I felt a little stronger throughout the workout today than I did a week ago.

Even though I got a full night of sleep last night, for some reason I woke up feeling sleepy and groggy, and that feeling lasted into my first half-hour of paddling.  Once I got into my workout, though, my body finally seemed to get the memo that it had work to do.

Monday photo feature

Thanks to its high clearance, this truck parked on Mud Island made out just fine during the great Mississippi River flood in May of 2011.

More southern breezes

This morning I did two sets of the April strength routine and paddled for 120 minutes.

It was quite breezy from the south today, but because of light barge traffic the river wasn't as rough as it sometimes gets in a south wind.  As I've said before, ideal conditions are no guarantee down at Vicksburg in three weeks, so I decided to get in a good long downriver leg into the wind.  I paddled into a headwind for several miles, then experienced some beam winds where the Mississippi turns sharply to the west below downtown Memphis.  That was probably good for me: the river at Vicksburg flows in a southeasterly direction, so beam winds are possible there.

I think paddling in windy conditions are a mental challenge as much as anything.  Having the wind noise in your ears can make things seem gnarlier than they actually are.  I just tried to stay relaxed and get into a nice rhythm, keeping the boat running over the chop.

Spring... maybe?

This morning I did two sets of the April strength routine.  My abs are mighty sore as they adapt to the medicine ball drills.

Then I went downtown and paddled for 100 minutes.  I paddled up to the mouth of the Wolf, and then started a "pyramid" workout: pieces of 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes, 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute with 2 minutes recovery in between.  I did the first three pieces on the flatwater in the bottom mile of the Wolf.  By the first four-minute piece, I was back out on the Mississippi, and some heavy barge traffic meant that I did that piece, along with the five-minute piece and the second four-minute piece, on some confused water.  The last three pieces took place back in the harbor.

Could it be that spring is here at last?  I woke up to a very foggy morning; here's a cool picture I pulled from the Face Book page of WREG-TV Channel 3 here in Memphis:

Once the fog burned off, it became beautiful and sunny with temperatures in the mid 60s Fahrenheit.  I'm likin' it.

Forging ahead stoically

I had a doctor's appointment (annual physical) this morning, so paddling had to wait until this afternoon.  I paddled for 90 minutes.

I swear, Mother Nature is toying with us and cackling cynically as she does so.  After a gorgeous day Monday, we were back to overcast and chilly yesterday, and today I found myself paddling in a light rain.  The temperature was around 49 degrees Fahrenheit.  Considering the year I'm having so far, I'm having a hard time not taking this personally.

Time to get a little more serious

Here's a new strength routine for the month of April:

1.  Exercise ball drill demonstrated by Jingjing Li at 2:55 of this video
2.  Clap pushups
3.  Hindi squats (demonstrated in this video)
4.  Bicep curls with 25-lb. (about 11.25 kg) dumbbell
5.  Exercise ball drill demonstrated by Jingjing Li at 1:57 of this video

This morning I did two sets of this routine.  Then I went to the river and paddled for 100 minutes.  With my most intense competitions of the season now just two months away, it's time to start dialing up the intensity in the boat.  Today I did four 8-minute buildup tempo pieces with four minutes recovery in between.  I struggled a little, but it nevertheless felt good to go faster after all the distance paddling I've been doing.

Monday photo feature

It was a chilly but lovely autumn day in 2010 when my nephew Joel and I ran a section of the Little Tennessee River in western North Carolina.

A long trip round

I was slow to get going this morning after hearing some late-night live music last night.  I got in two sets of the March strength routine before lunch, but waited until the afternoon to paddle.

When I got down to the river I found calm, comfortable conditions for paddling.  Needing to get two or three more longer sessions in before the Vicksburg race, I paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar.  It took me 140 minutes, which I guess is about average for me.  Actually, it's a little slower than average, and I attribute that to a portage I had to do up at the top of the bar.  In the last several years a sandbar has developed up there, and I mistakenly thought I saw a passage through it.  Once I realized I was wrong, I just carried my boat over the sandbar rather than paddle a half-mile upriver to get around it.

It was a rather rainy weekend here, but as I was leaving the marina the sun came out at last.

Wet but bearable

This morning I did two sets of the March strength routine and paddled for 100 minutes.

A rainy day was predicted, but when I got up this morning it was partly sunny with no rain in sight.  A check of the hourly forecast suggested I might get my paddle in before the rain arrived.  But as I drove over the Auction Avenue bridge onto Mud Island, drops began to fall, and I ended up doing my entire session in a light but steady rain.

Even so, it was not nearly as bad as the weather we had a few days ago.  It felt more like a springtime rain than a dead-of-winter rain.

More on temperatures

Because of all this goofy weather we've been having, I have been citing the temperature on this blog often lately.  I've been careful to include the "Fahrenheit" designation with my temperature observations so as not to confuse readers outside the United States, who most likely use the Celsius temperature scale.

Anybody who wishes to convert my Fahrenheit temperature observations to the equivalent Celsius readings may do so with this simple formula:

[°C] = ([°F] − 32) × ⁵⁄₉

For example, yesterday's high temperature here in Memphis was 56 degrees Fahrenheit.  To convert to Celsius, do this:

[°C] = (56 − 32) × ⁵⁄₉

[°C] = (24) × ⁵⁄<sub>9

cross-canceling, we obtain</sub>

[°C] = 8 × ⁵⁄3

[°C] = 40/3

And so, 56 degrees Fahrenheit is equal to about 13.3 degrees Celsius.

Here in the Mid South United States we enjoy a pretty temperate climate; the summertime is when we approach temperatures that some might consider extreme.  Last summer we had a day or two when the temperature in Memphis exceeded 105 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 40.5 degrees Celsius.  More often the summertime highs are in the 90s Fahrenheit, the same as 32 to 37 degrees Celsius.  In the spring and fall the temperatures here range from around 55 degrees Fahrenheit (12.8 degrees Celsius) to around 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29.4 degrees Celsius).  This past winter was actually quite mild in terms of air temperature: I don't think the overnight low ever dropped below 20 degrees Fahrenheit (-6.7 degrees Celsius), and I think every daytime high exceeded the freezing point of 32 degrees Fahrenheit or 0 degrees Celsius.  The coldest temperature recorded in Memphis in my lifetime is something like -6 degrees Fahrenheit, or -21.1 degrees Celsius.

There's hope after all

This morning I went downtown and paddled for 100 minutes.  It was a significantly nicer day out on the river today: clear skies, temperatures in the mid 40s Fahrenheit on the way to a forecast high in the mid 50s.

I paddled downriver below the old bridges that I posted pictures of a few weeks ago.  A fairly stiff south wind was blowing, and while that's good because it usually means higher temperatures, it was also bad because it chilled my pogie-free hands.  But once I was headed back upriver with the wind at my back, that problem was over.

With a two-hour race coming up a month from now, I'm trying to nudge the volume up a little.  But I'm trying to keep the quality high at the same time, paddling a good, strong pace and concentrating on planting my blade and rotating fully for maximum power in my strokes.

¡No más!

Today I did two sets of the March strength routine and paddled for 100 minutes.

At first I was feeling mightily glib about this latest blast of cold weather, but now I'm ready to say ¡No más!  Today the temperature remained in the low 40s and a chilly north breeze penetrated my bones.  At least there was some intermittent sunshine, and that alone made today's session much more bearable than Sunday's.

Monday photo feature

On a March day in 1994 that was much like these last few days--cold and blustery--I ran Big Laurel Creek near Hot Springs, North Carolina.  Here I am at the bottom of Stairsteps rapid.  Photo by Alfred Thompson.

It's not going out like a lamb

This morning I did two sets of the March strength routine and paddled for 100 minutes.

The dreary, wet weather continues, and today it had more attitude.  Strong winds from the west were forecast for today, but when I left the house it didn't seem to be blowing that bad.  Then I got in my boat, and within the first 20 minutes the wind picked up with a vengeance, driving what had previously been soft, misty raindrops hard into my face.  I had planned to paddle up to the mouth of the Wolf and back, but once the wind started howling I elected to stay in the harbor.