Stress

Blog posts aren't exactly flying off my fingertips lately.  I apologize to those who check in hourly hoping for new bits of canoe and kayak racing wisdom.

In the last week or so I've been experiencing some tightness in my upper back around the base of my neck, between my shoulder blades.  I first became aware of it during my time trial in the harbor last weekend.  I can't really tell you the cause of this discomfort, but I have noticed over the years that I tend to carry a lot of stress in this area--in other words, I get all worried over life's minutiae, and my body responds by tensing the upper torso area.

Anyway, it's not going to stop me from paddling or going ahead with my race at Ocean Springs next Saturday, but it's making things a bit less pleasant.  I don't know many stretches that target this particular spot, but I've been trying, with mixed success, to relax this past week.

That's been especially true in the boat, where on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday I put in 60-minute sessions that emphasized short, fast pieces with long recoveries.  Having recently done a long grind around the Loosahatchie Bar and a grueling time trial, I want to spend the remaining time before my first race reinforcing the notion that my boat is a happy place, a place where going fast feels effortless and fun.

Today I did a round of the March strength routine before lunch, and after lunch I did a recovery session, following a soak in the tub with some stretching.  The nice thing about soaking in the tub is that there's not much else I can do there but relax and enjoy it.  I'm bad about wanting to do chores even when I'm supposed to be relaxing and enjoying myself.

It's a bit frustrating to be feeling less than great six days before a race, but in the forty-six and a half years I've been alive I've seen this scenario a few times before.  There's still time to pull myself together and race well.

My glossies

Yesterday I met Joe Royer down at the marina so he could take some pictures of me paddling my boat.  He plans to use them as part of the promotional materials for the classes I'm teaching this summer and the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race this June 14.

He e-mailed me a few of the best ones, and I will post them here in small doses--Semele was killed when she laid eyes on Zeus in his full glory, after all, and I wouldn't want that to happen to my readers.  This one shows me looking particularly focused:

Compare it with this photo of Greg Barton, the U.S. kayaker whose career highlights include two Olympic gold medals, two Olympic bronze medals, and four world championships:

I dare anybody to say that Greg looks any more awesome than I do.  Yes, I know that in reality Greg is more awesome than I, but since when does reality matter more than appearance?

Monday photo feature

Okay, I'm ready for the race season to get going.  The tail-end of a long winter is a time of year when training feels really, really tedious.  Happily, my first race is just around the corner: a week from this Saturday down in beautiful Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

The photo above, meanwhile, was taken right here in beautiful Memphis, Tennessee.  It's yours truly approaching the finish line at the 2012 Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  My main memory from that day was that it was quite hot outside, and that last half-mile in the harbor, with the breeze at my back, was a killer.  But right now, with winter still refusing to leave us entirely, that doesn't sound so bad to me.

On recovery and the passage of time.

I did my hard paddling session yesterday, and then had sort of a late night last night (I had a party at my house and then went out to hear some live music), so a good recovery session seemed in order today.

Ron Lugbill, by way of his blog, introduced me to the idea of spending a couple of your official "workouts" of the week doing things that help the body recover from hard work: stretching, soaking in a hot tub, getting a massage, doing some deliberate relaxation exercises... stuff like that.  With the higher-intensity sessions I've been putting in this winter, it would make a lot of sense for me to incorporate some regular recovery sessions into the routine--after all, the body becomes stronger during recovery from training, not during the training itself.  Alas, my observance of these sessions sort of fell by the wayside during the crazy series of events I've endured in the last year.

But there's no time like the present to turn things around.  Before lunch this morning I treated myself to a nice soak in the bathtub followed by a comprehensive stretch routine.  I listened to the Cardinals play the Mets in a spring training game via Internet stream, and that served as a pleasant reminder that summer is on its way.

*          *          *

Continuing a thought from yesterday's post, I sometimes ponder the relationship the stopwatch has with paddlesports.

I competed in track in high school and college, and track is a sport in which records are kept meticulously.  The sport's governing body, the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF), recognizes a world record in every one of its sanctioned events, and has very specific criteria a result must meet for world-record recognition (for example, a 100-meter time cannot be recognized if the athlete had a tailwind above an allowable limit).  And so track events and the stopwatch are very closely linked in the public consciousness: everybody understands the meaning of the phrase "four-minute mile," for instance.

For me, at least, this made track a very easy sport to understand, and gave me some obvious concepts to think about in training.  If I wanted to be competitive with guys who were running faster than 4:40 in the mile, I knew I had to average better than 70 seconds per quarter.

I took up canoeing at camp around the same time I took up running at school, but I didn't venture into competitive paddlesport until after I finished college.  I started with whitewater slalom, a discipline whose space-time parameters were entirely different from those of track and field.  No race course was ever used for more than one day of racing.  Even if it were, the constant fluctuation in water levels and shifting of riverbeds would make saving times in record books pointless.

In training for slalom, the stopwatch was a very important tool.  But it's used for relative measurements rather than absolute ones: your time for a course run relative to your times on previous runs and relative to the times of other paddlers; or, your time doing a gate combination one way versus doing it another way.  It took me a long time to get used to training this way, not to mention to get used to all the technical aspects of whitewater paddling that affect one's time at least as much as his degree of exertion.

I remember that when I was in high school, hearing that a rival had won a race was not necessarily enough to pique my interest, but hearing that a rival had, say, broken 4:30 for a mile most definitely was.  In slalom, a rival's time was meaningless; I had to consider other information, such as what other reputable racers were in the field, to know whether that rival had done well.  The best way to gauge your progress relative to that of your rivals was to do some training and competing with them.  Scott Shipley, the great slalom kayaker on the U.S. Team in the 1990s, preferred to do the majority of his training alone, but always incorporated some training time with other world-top-ten-ranked racers several times each year.

Whitewater slalom racing was about as different from distance running as it can get, and I struggled to achieve a modicum of competence.  But I think the experience has greatly helped my transition into forward-speed racing, which inhabits a middle ground between slalom and running.  In this type of racing, course times mean less than they do on the track (consider the effect of different water levels on the harbor that I explained yesterday, for instance), but there are subsets of the discipline, like flatwater sprint with its 200-, 500-, and 1000-meter events, where the stopwatch is a very reliable indicator of how fast an athlete is.

For some reason, the ICF does not seem to recognize world records in flatwater sprint events.  Some venues and weather conditions are faster than others, of course, but the same is true for track meets.  Just as water depth and wind direction can influence the speed of a boat on the water, surface firmness and altitude can influence the speed of a runner on a track.

Over the years here on my home water, I've established benchmark times on courses that don't change much over the Mississippi's wide range of water levels.  I know that if I can paddle from the Mud Island monorail bridge to the Hernando DeSoto bridge in under two minutes, or from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the Auction Avenue bridge in under three minutes, then I'm doing well.  I have a couple of shorter courses that help me measure my pure speed as well.

Anyway, like I said, the relationship between the watch and the movement of my boat is something I ponder, and over a number of years I've developed some decent training methods based on my observations.

Time trial

Conditions were ideal for a mock-race today.  When I got down to the riverfront this morning there was a light south breeze blowing, and the water was like glass.

The last time I timed myself on a lap of the harbor was three or four years ago.  It was before I started this blog, and right now I can't find my training log from that year, so I'm not sure what all the circumstances surrounding that effort were.  I'm pretty sure I did the whole thing at anaerobic threshold, and my time was about 56 minutes.

Today my plan was to go out really hard and see how long I could maintain an intensity level that was outside my comfort zone.  I did five 6-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals as part of my warmup, and then settled into the starting gate between two willow trees at the north end of the harbor.

I charged hard off the line and hammered a crushing stroke rate for about two minutes before settling down into a lower (but still higher than normal) rate.  I felt pretty good and relaxed for most of the first half, though I knew it was not an intensity level I could keep up for too long (better educating myself on this topic was one of the main purposes of today's workout).  As I approached the south end of the harbor, I was beginning to feel the effects of my fast start.

I rounded an imaginary buoy on the line you get by extending the Beale Street center line down into the harbor.  My time for the first half was about 24:50, but with the fatigue I was feeling by then I felt it was a long shot to break 50 minutes.

As I headed back north with the breeze at my back, my eyes began to sting and I had to stop paddling a couple of times to splash water on them.  I lowered my stroke rate and tried to paddle as efficiently as I could in my increasingly tired state.  I began to wonder if I would even break the 56 minutes or so that I had clocked several years ago.

But as I rounded the last bend before the finish line (the same as my starting line), I was surprised to find that I still had at least a slight chance of breaking 50 minutes.  I dug deep for my best possible finish, and ended up with a time of 50 minutes, 32 seconds.  Breaking 50 would have been nice, but I was pleasantly surprised at my ability to complete the second half not much more slowly than the first half even though my muscles were screaming for most of it.

And I was much faster than I was several years ago, although it's hard to compare one result to another in a sport like this.  I'd like to know how the weather was that first time, and also the level of the Mississippi--higher water submerges the insides of bends and allows a paddler to take straighter lines through them.  Hopefully I'll find that training log sooner or later.

Catching up

There have been a lot of things on my mind besides training this week, but I'm getting my work in one way or another.

I've done the March strength routine on Monday, Wednesday, and today this week.  I haven't really described this month's routine yet, so here it is:

It starts with an exercise on the exercise ball that you can watch Chinese slalom racer Jing Jing Li demonstrate at the 2:54 mark of this video.  It's quite a bit harder than it looks.

Then I do a set of clap-pushups.  I'll increase the number of reps per set as the month goes along, but I want to keep that number low enough that I can do each pushup with maximum explosive power.

Then it's back to the exercise ball, with an exercise that Jing Jing Li demonstrates at the 3:11 mark of that video I linked to above.  This one is also much tougher than it looks, both in the distress it puts on the abdominals and in simply keeping one's balance.

Finally, I do a little rotation drill with my ten-pound medicine ball.  I tried to find a video of this exercise, but couldn't find one of somebody doing it exactly the way I do it.  This guy comes close, but what I do on each rep is let the ball roll behind my back, and twist around and retrieve it for the next rep.  I do sets in both directions (clockwise and counterclockwise).

In the boat today I paddled for 60 minutes, doing six 12-stroke sprints and some balance drills in beam waves driven by a strong south wind.  Tomorrow I'm hoping to do a lap of the entire harbor for time.

Monday photo feature

As I was winding up my paddling session yesterday, Joe and Carol Lee Royer came down to the marina with the intention of doing just what I had done: paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar.  Here's a picture Joe took of Carol Lee as they descended into the lower portion of the Loosahatchie Chute, where one can see the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and the downtown Memphis skyline.  Carol Lee is supposedly looking up at some white pelicans on their spring migration northward.

For those who don't know, the Loosahatchie Bar is a big island in the Mississippi River upstream of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  The Loosahatchie Chute is the channel of river between the Bar and the Arkansas bank.  In this photo, that's the Loosahatchie Bar to the boat's port (left) side.

I guess it's fairly common for me to share pictures that Joe has taken.  That's both because Joe is a good photographer and because he takes a camera in the boat with him a lot more often than I do.

Going around the Bar

Conditions were calm today, so I did that paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar that I didn't do last Sunday.  I felt a bit sluggish in the early going, but I did my best to shake it off and paddle a crisp pace with strong strokes.  I got up to the mouth of the Wolf River pretty quickly--about 45 minutes--and continued to feel good for another 45 minutes as I ferried across the river and entered the Loosahatchie Chute, which was beautiful on this chilly, somewhat foggy day.

With the wind at my back in the Chute, I was slowed by sweat stinging my eyes.  By the time I returned to the mouth of the harbor my arms and shoulders were aching pretty good.  I tried hard to keep my stroke form together as I made my way up the harbor back to the marina.

The elapsed time between my departure from the dock and my return to the dock was about two hours and ninety seconds.  The river level today was 18.4 feet on the Memphis gauge.

Fatigue and stroke mechanics

It's a nice sunny day at last.  Fahrenheit high in the 50s.  The last of the snow and ice is quickly disappearing.

My abdominals have been wicked sore since I did my new strength exercises on Tuesday.  I did a light version of the strength routine and then headed for the river.

I paddled for 60 minutes, doing a set of 30-second sprints at four-minute intervals during the half hour from 0:20 to 0:50.  I haven't wanted to admit it, but this is a tough workout.  I got in eight sprints, and during the last several I was debating whether my form was holding up well enough to continue.  I did finish it out because as a kid I was taught that that's what tough guys do, but I need to pay attention to my mechanical quality when I do pieces like these.

Still winter

The bleak, overcast conditions continue today, with the Fahrenheit temperature currently sitting in the 30s, expected to break 40--maybe--this afternoon.

Joe and I paddled for 70 minutes this morning.  There's still a lot of ice at the marina, melting ever so slowly.  My rudder was not frozen today, and that's positive news.

Freezing temperatures mean trouble for moving parts

I never lost my electricity, but it was a fairly nasty storm we had here.  A drenching rain very slowly turned to ice and made a real mess outside.

Since then it's only just barely risen above freezing.  I stayed in Monday and yesterday, and yesterday I started easing into a new strength routine for the month of March.  Lately I've been taking several days to get a routine together, sort of like a band working up an arrangement for a new song.  So far I know this month's routine will have some dynamic exercise ball drills and some clap pushups.  I'll describe it in more detail soon.

This morning Joe and I braved the still-frigid weather and paddled in the harbor for 80 minutes.  Often in the wintertime I find my rudder frozen, and spend the first several minutes of the session working it free.  Today, however, it stayed frozen for almost the entire session.  At first it was stuck in a right-turn position, and I paddled one clockwise circle after another trying to work it loose.  When it wouldn't budge, I got out of the boat and moved the rudder by hand into a straight position so I could at least paddle forward.  For the next hour I paddled a boat that kept tending very slightly to the right, and every minute or so I would have to do some extra strokes on my right to correct the course.  Finally, about ten minutes before we finished, the cables came loose and I was able to steer pretty well even though the rudder was still not fully functional.  Back on the dock, I unscrewed the cap on the stern deck that allows access to the rudder's post (this cap had been frozen on earlier), and discovered that this area was packed full of ice, preventing the rudder from moving more than just a little bit.  It must have filled up with that drenching rain Sunday evening.

Anyway, it was just one more ordeal in this seemingly never-ending winter.  Spring will feel that much sweeter if and when it finally arrives.

Monday photo feature

(I've decided to go ahead and post this Sunday evening.  Looking at the winter storm developing outside right now, I won't be at all surprised if I have no electricity in the morning.)

More summer memories for an icy Monday: Mike Davis, who worked with me at Camp Carolina in the late 80s and early 90s, draws a quick breath right before being dunked in a hole on the Pigeon River during the summer of 1992.

Adjusting on the fly

I mentioned yesterday that March had come in like a lamb.  Turns out the lion wasn't far behind, and it's now feasting on said lamb.  When I got up this morning it was perhaps 50 degrees Fahrenheit but predicted to drop some 20 degrees during the course of the day.  This was definitely a day to be on the water earlier rather than later, and I was in the boat by about twenty minutes after nine.  According to my car's temperature display, it was already below 40 degrees by then.

I've said before that I've been doing longer paddles on Sundays, and all this past week I had been looking at today as a good time to go around the Loosahatchie Bar, a trip that usually takes me 130 minutes or so on average when I start and finish at Harbortown Marina.  But I ditched that plan when I found the wind blowing hard from the north.  To those inclined to call me a wuss for doing so, I'll just say that I see things a little differently: epic slogs are not very useful as a training staple, in my opinion.  Sure, one or two per season might provide a little boost to one's mental toughness, but in general I don't want to think of my boat as a place of pain and suffering.  In the boat I want to feel crisp and sharp and, you know... speedy.

So instead I did a 60-minute session in the harbor with lots of short sprints--30 seconds or less, generally--with full recovery.  I capped off the workout by timing myself from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the monorail bridge, and clocked about 1:58.  I think it might be the first time ever I've broken two minutes on this course, and definitely the first time in the surf ski.  It was wind-aided, but I'll take it just the same.

I came home feeling good about what I'd done.  Like I said yesterday, I've been feeling a bit unenthusiastic about training lately, and I think what I did today was a much better antidote than a long, hard, frigid ordeal would have been.

Out of sorts

I'm going through a period of low motivation right now.  I have these occasionally, as do, I would guess, most other athletes, and I'm just trying to keep moving and work through it.  It's taking me a few extra ounces of gumption to get myself down to the river to paddle or do my strength routine here at the house.

On the bright side, February is gone for another year.  It's almost certainly my least favorite month of all: any afterglow from the holiday season has worn off, and the worst weather of winter often comes at this time.  March has arrived like a lamb, with calm conditions and a high temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

But winter's not done yet: according to the forecast on The Weather Channel's website, it'll be back down in the 50s and raining tomorrow, and the high will be 29 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday.  Sigh.  Surely we're almost finished with this stuff... aren't we?  Aren't we?

Well, I'd better stop rambling and tell everybody what I did today.  I paddled for 60 minutes, during which I warmed up, did eight six-stroke sprints at one-minute intervals, and did a half-dozen or so long (30- to 40-second) sprints with full recovery.

This past week I did the February strength routine on Tuesday and yesterday.

What doesn't kill me makes me stronger

The balmy spell has passed, as I knew it would.  But the cold snaps are becoming less severe as we draw closer and closer to spring.  This latest one features highs in the 30s (Fahrenheit) rather than highs in the 20s.

I've paddled with Joe the last two days.  Joe is recovering from the shoulder surgery he had last summer and can't really do any hard paddling, but I got in a few sprints yesterday and today, just to keep my body used to it.  We paddled for 60 minutes yesterday and 80 minutes today.

The weather this morning was about 30 degrees Fahrenheit with bright sunshine.  It might have been a lovely day to paddle had an icy wind not been screaming out of the northwest.  That was enough to make it seem like an ordeal instead.  I got chilled to the core and remained so for the rest of the day.  But I'm still a believer that when the weather is bad--cold or hot--you just have to immerse yourself in it.  The beautiful days seem that much sweeter if you do.

Monday photo feature

These February days have me dreaming of summer.  And nothing says summer like a camp canoe trip.  Rion Smith snapped this photo of me leading some campers down a section of the French Broad River in 1992.  I appear to be clowning around for the camera.

Confused water and confused muscles

I went to the river this morning and paddled for 100 minutes in bright sunshine.  A stiff northwest wind kept the temperature below 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

After warming up I did six of those pieces where I follow a few back strokes with six hard forward strokes.  Then I spent the rest of the time doing a loosely-structured workout where I did sprints of varying lengths with long recovery periods.  Parts of the river were quite choppy because of the wind, and a lot of my attention was occupied by balance and control issues.  Once again, my muscles were firing in sync some of the time, but not all of the time.  I'd like to achieve more consistency with that.

Trying to nail the sprints

This morning I did the February strength routine and paddled for 60 minutes.  In the boat I did eight six-stroke sprints at one-minute intervals, and then spent the half hour from 0:25 to 0:55 doing 30-second sprints at four-minute intervals.

I had hit the strength work pretty hard, and as a result was tired in the boat.  The workout felt taxing, but I tried to maintain good technique throughout.  Making a canoe or kayak go fast demands good technique, and I feel like I nail it some of the time, but not all of the time.  Of the eight 30-second sprints I did today, it seemed there were maybe two or three where I felt I truly had all cylinders firing.

Spring tease

A break from the winter misery has arrived in a big way.  We're on our third day of temperatures in the neighborhood of 70 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale.  Of course, at this time of year warm weather usually comes at a price.  It has been quite breezy, and the forecast calls for a chance of violent storms this afternoon.  After this front goes through we're supposed to return to more sealable temperatures.  Tempting though it is to believe winter is over, the reality is that it's still mid-February.

Oh well, one way or another I'll get my work in.  This week I've done the February strength routine on Monday and Wednesday and will do it again tomorrow.  Joe and I have logged some time on the water together--70 minutes on Tuesday and 80 minutes yesterday.

Race season is still a ways off.  The Battle On The Bayou race at Ocean Springs used to be the first Saturday in March, but this year it's been pushed back to the last Saturday in hopes of warmer weather down there.  So, I'll wait.  But I never seem to lack for things to do.

Monday photo feature

Andrew McEwan, the top U.S. wildwater racer in the late 1990s and early 2000s, competes in the 2001 FIBArk downriver race on the Arkansas River in Colorado.  This race, starting in Salida and finishing in Cotopaxi, is the oldest whitewater competition in the U.S.

Winter eases up a little

We're finally getting some nicer weather here in the Mid South.  Today it's sunny with a forecast high in the mid 50s Fahrenheit.  As I took my paddling gear out to the car this morning, I was tempted to think that spring was in the air.  But on the 16th of February, I know better.  Sure enough, I later found myself paddling up the Mississippi against a stiff north breeze.  But compared to the long frigid stretches we've had, today is an awfully nice day.

I continued my pattern of going longer on Sundays, and paddled for 120 minutes.  I paddled up to the mouth of the Wolf River, then couple of miles up the Wolf to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge that links North Memphis with Frayser.

For most of the session I tried to maintain a good solid aerobic pace.  When I reached the mouth of the Wolf, I embarked on a set of three long surges.  The first one went from the power lines that mark the start of the OICK Race to the Second Street bridge (elapsed time: about seven minutes).  I returned to my cruising pace from there up to Danny Thomas, and then did another surge back down to Second Street (elapsed time: about eight and a half minutes).  I recovered from there back down to where the Wolf enters the Mississippi, and did my last surge on the big river down to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge (elapsed time: about eleven minutes).  That left me about a 25-minute cool-down back to the dock.

I was plenty tired by the time I returned to the harbor, and my stroke form was really faltering as I approached the dock.  I'm glad I finished when I did--I sure don't need to be reinforcing bad strokes.

On the mend

My left ring finger has a long way to go, but there's visible improvement.

I'm always fascinated with the body's ability to mend itself, and the simple medical procedures that can help it along.  As I mentioned back when the accident occurred, I had no flap of skin that the ER doctor could fold over the wound and sew in place, so instead he ran the thread through the finger's deep interior, and cinched it tight like a drawstring bag:

All I can say is, thank goodness for the nerve-deadening shot he gave me first.  The stitches went right through what was left of my fingernail:

These stitches held the whole mess together for ten days.  Yesterday I returned to the plastic surgeon's office, and she removed them:

It hurt, but it was over in a minute, and I think my finger will feel a lot better as the perforations heal up.

In the meantime, I continue the business of getting myself into racing shape.  It started this morning with another iteration of the February strength routine.  Then I headed to the river, where I was greeted with partly-sunny skies and a Fahrenheit temperature in the mid 30s.  I paddled for 60 minutes, starting off with my little power-building drill where I follow a few backstrokes with six hard forward strokes.  I did six of these at two-minute intervals.  For the rest of the hour I did a loosely-structured workout in which I did a long sprint every few minutes.  I did five in all, which is not bad considering that I felt a bit tired in the boat for some reason.

No blizzard here

This morning I went through the February strength routine and then headed down to the river to paddle for 60 minutes.  Somehow the Memphis area has dodged the biggest winter storms this season: while the snow and ice currently hitting the southeastern U.S. is making national news, here we've seen just a dusting.  A very light precipitation fell during the hour that I was on the water, and I was never quite sure if it was snow or sleet or just plain rain.  But the temperature was apparently below freezing, as I came away with another ice trophy:

After doing the Kieffer warmup, I spent the next half hour building very gradually into a strong tempo piece.  Then I cooled down for the last fifteen minutes.  I felt tired in the boat today but not too much so to focus on good stroke mechanics.

A "frozen pogies" day

The latest snowstorm has bypassed the Memphis area, but cold temperatures haven't.  The display in my car's dashboard read 22 degrees Fahrenheit as I arrived at the river this morning.  The north wind probably pushed the wind chill value down close to single digits.  Oh, yeah.  I might have stayed in today except that my schedule gets busier later in the week.  Among other things, I'll be visiting the plastic surgeon again Friday and I hope she'll be taking my stitches out.

I paddled in the harbor for 60 minutes.  I tried to set a quick steady pace with several long surges.  The sun came out shortly after I put in, and I really wasn't that uncomfortable.  My finger felt a little better on the paddle shaft today, and I would guess that the flexing and relaxing of its muscles with each stroke is good therapy for it.

On days like today, I come off the river with an ice trophy:

Yesterday morning I went another round with the February strength routine.

Monday photo feature

Last Tuesday was a really, really rainy day.  Joe Royer and I paddled that morning, and then Joe took this "selfie" of us on the dock, letting our smiles be our umbrellas.  It's a little hard to see, but the rain is most definitely coming down behind us.

For this week there's all kinds of talk about snow coming our way.  If it does, I'll try to post more pictures to arouse the envy of readers in tropical climates.

Grinding back into motion

I spent Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday laying low in the house, doing a few minimal chores but mostly just lying around and taking long naps.  I felt crummy, almost sick--partly because of the medication I was on, I think, and partly because my body was having to devote much of its energy to dealing with my finger wound.  Friday morning I went and saw the plastic surgeon, who thought my injury was not so serious and wouldn't require any further operation.  She said as long as I kept the wound clean I should be able to go back to most of my normal activities.  She prescribed a different antibiotic that wouldn't make me feel so lousy, and by late Friday I felt on my way back to the world of the living.

Yesterday morning I got back to the February strength routine, which goes something like this: a couple of drills on the exercise ball, a set of bent-over rows with a dumbbell, a couple more exercise ball drills, a set of power cleans with a cinder block, one last drill on the ball, and a set of step-ups on the stairs.  I had a little bit of trouble gripping the dumbbell with my left hand, but otherwise it all went just fine.  My core is weak and I'm looking forward to un-weakening it.

I was out of the boat for four days, and they were a pretty good four days to be out of the boat: I think the temperature stayed below freezing for some 72 straight hours during that time.  This morning's weather was not exactly cheer-inducing--grey skies and 35 degrees Fahrenheit--but it's supposed to go back to sub-freezing with some frozen precipitation soon, so down to the river I went for a 90-minute session.

My bandaged finger felt a little awkward, but didn't really hinder my paddling at all.  Most of the time it's not necessary, and in fact not even desirable, to have a rigor-mortis-type grip on a kayak paddle.  By keeping your hands relaxed you conserve energy and avoid undue stress on your wrist and forearm muscles.

After a ten-minute warmup, I did eight six-stroke sprints at one-minute intervals.  Then I spent the forty minutes from 0:25 to 1:05 doing 30-second sprints at four-minute intervals.  The workout felt hard, and my finger was a mental distraction, but I think it went pretty well.  There were several pieces right in the middle where I felt I was moving the boat with authority.

I came home and cleaned the wound and changed the dressing, per doctor's orders.

First more rain, and now a forced layoff

I think I've worked up a good strength routine (from now on I'll call it the February strength routine) involving most of the static drills in the Jing Jing Li video, some bent-over rows with dumbbells, some power cleans with a cinder block, and some step-ups on the stairs.  I did this routine for the first time yesterday morning, and refreshed my memory of how hard these exercises are.

Then I went to the river and paddled with my friend Joe on another incredibly rainy day.  The temperature was 33 degrees Fahrenheit--just warm enough for the precipitation to be liquid.  The temperature had been below freezing all day Monday, and there was still plenty of ice on the dock and on the ramp leading down to the marina.  We did a full lap of the harbor in 70 minutes.  Once again, the paddling was reasonably comfortable, but getting my boat on and off the rack in the rain was a real endurance test.

It all added up to a satisfying morning of work.  Unfortunately, for me the afternoon was full of unwanted drama.  I was just starting to make a table and was running some boards for the top over the jointer machine, and when a splinter began to dig into my left palm, I jerked that hand away and my ring finger went into the cutterhead, chopping off maybe a centimeter of its tip.  I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening at the emergency room, and now the finger is stitched up and covered with a honking-big bandage:

(For those of you who are familiar with jointer machines: yes, mine is equipped with a guard that is supposed to cover the part of the cutterhead that is not contacting the workpiece, but the spring mechanism that pulls the guard against the fence has worn out and doesn't really work anymore.  I'll accept the blame for not having fixed that.)

How long this is going to keep me out of the boat is uncertain.  I'm counting on a few days, minimum.  Right now I can barely grip anything with my left hand, and I expect it would behoove me to keep the bandage clean and dry as much as possible.  Part of the problem is that I had no fold of skin left that the doctor could sew over the wound, so he sewed it up as much as he could and we're hoping the hole that's left is small enough to heal on its own, with no further surgical procedures (I have a followup visit scheduled for this Friday at this doctor's plastic surgery practice).

I should be able to continue with most of my strength routine--I'm not sure at the moment about the couple of exercises that use weights.  I've never felt compelled to get one of those kayak ergometer machines because winters are usually pretty mild where I live, but I sort of wish I had one now.  I'm not aware of one in my city.

The following photo will give you an idea of how much this thing was bleeding.  At one point the doctor placed a stack of gauze sponges in my lap and asked me to rest my unbandaged finger on top of it.  When we were done with that, we realized the blood had soaked all the way through the gauze and into my jeans.  I came home looking like I'd taken a gunshot to my right thigh:

Monday photo feature

I post another warm-weather photo to take our minds off the wintry precipitation descending upon the Mid South.  Oddly enough, this photo was taken right at this time of year--early February--but the setting is a few degrees latitude closer to the equator.  What we have here is a mangrove tunnel just inside Everglades National Park near Key Largo, Florida.

All wet

With a new month comes a new strength routine.  I've sort of been neglecting my core, so I'll be working it hard for the next couple of months.  In recent years I've learned some great core exercises involving an exercise ball, many of which are demonstrated in this video by Chinese whitewater slalom racer Jing Jing Li.  I actually only managed a cursory strength session today because I was pressed for time, but I hope to work up a good routine over the next couple of days.

Down at the river it was anything but unseasonably warm like yesterday was.  When I arrived at the marina it was 34 degrees Fahrenheit and raining.  But the rain eased up as I paddled out of the harbor and was no worse than a drizzle for most of my 90-minute session.

I started with a little warmup routine that I learned from one of Austin Kieffer's posts, here.  Then I paddled from the mouth of the harbor up to the mouth of the Wolf River at approximately the pace I'll likely race at down at Ocean Springs at the end of next month.  There was a cold north wind that wasn't too bad, but threw some occasional gusts at me.  The elapsed time was about 33 minutes.  I recovered from that with ten minutes of easy paddling on the flatwater of the lower Wolf.  Then I paddled at a faster pace back down the Mississippi to the mouth of the harbor.  My elapsed time was less than half of what it had been paddling up that same piece of river: fifteen and a half minutes.  Makes a big difference having the current and the wind in your favor.

As I paddled up the harbor back to the marina, the rain began to pick up again and it was coming down pretty hard by the time I reached the dock.  I guess you could say I hit the window of lighter precipitation perfectly, though it was kind of a drag putting my boat away in the pouring-down rain.

Up and at 'em

Today it's overcast and breezy, but unseasonably warm--up into the 60s on the Fahrenheit thermometer.

Having stayed out late seeing some live music, I slept in this morning, and as I dragged myself out of bed I just about decided to skip paddling.  But once I was more awake I realized that days as nice as today are rare this winter, so I went on down for a 60-minute session.  I was a bit tired in the boat and just paddled steady.

As I paddled past the Memphis Queen docking facility, I saw a big, fat, furry brown beaver on one of the floating docks.  I was almost on top of him before he saw me and slipped into the water.  He didn't slap his tail on the surface, so I guess he didn't consider me too much of a threat.

Back at it

The Mid South has emerged from deep-freeze mode for now, and has returned to the clammy chill that's more typical of winter in these parts.  I came out of hibernation this morning and headed for the river with my patched-up boat.

I did my rubber band exercises on the dock and paddled for 60 minutes.  After a ten-minute warmup, I did eight six-stroke sprints, one at the top of each minute.  Then I spent the half hour from 0:20 to 0:50 doing sort of a fartlek session, surging for various distances and speeds and intensities.

Dry dock

With below-freezing temperatures forecast for the next couple of days, I figure it's a good time to address a couple of minor boat-repair issues that I've been putting off.  I'll be using epoxy resin, which needs a temperature of at least 60 degrees Fahrenheit or so to cure properly, so I've brought the boat into the house, where the thermostat is set on 66 degrees F.  It sure is nice to have a long hallway.

I neglected to mention in Sunday's post that Austin Kieffer has just returned from a two-month training adventure in South Africa, home of some of the world's best surf ski racers.  In this blog post, he talks more about his goals for this year.  He also offers to provide coaching advice to other racers--whether he's willing to do so for just anybody, or only for his friends at Surf Ski Northwest, I'm not sure, but I expect that if you approach him politely he won't just blow you off.

Monday photo feature

With this latest cold snap moving in, I looked for a warm-weather photo for this week.  This one was taken along North Carolina's Outer Banks in 2008.

Some new information... I love it!

I made sure to paddle today before the next big temperature plunge gets here tomorrow.  It was in the mid 50s Fahrenheit this morning, and the wind, though steady from the south, wasn't bad.

I did some sprints today at about four-minute intervals.  Each time I would pick an object in the distance and sprint toward it.  I wanted to keep the sprints in the 30-to-40-second range, so it was a good exercise in judging distances out on the water.

There's an interesting blog post here by a guy named Austin Kieffer.  Austin was a whitewater slalom racer of some note in the last decade, and has now embraced a second career as a surf ski racer.  While true surf ski racing involves a lot more big-wave surfing (hence the name) than most of the racing I do, and therefore has a whole tactical element that I don't get to experience much, Austin does make some interesting physiological points in this post as well.  Elite surf ski races are generally quite long--the winning times in the shorter ones are maybe two and a half hours--but as Austin notes, they involve a lot of long, hard sprints.  The entrant who opts for the slow, steady pace will be left in the dust.

Anyway, more stuff for me to ponder.  So far in this young season I've been sort of making it up as I go, but in the next month or so I'll need to lay out a more precise training plan.

Trying to work with Mother Nature

It was above freezing today for the first time in maybe 50 or 60 hours.  Down in the harbor there was a crust of ice along the banks, and I encountered a good-sized sheet of ice in the cove where Mud Island Marina sits.

I paddled for 60 minutes, doing five 12-stroke sprints at 90-second intervals, and a few balance drills across the harbor in a beam wind.

I'm still doing the rubber band exercises.  I did a set today to go with sets Tuesday and Thursday.

Tomorrow the temperature is supposed to rise into the 50s on the Fahrenheit scale.  It's also supposed to be quite breezy, but I plan to get on the water tomorrow because the forecast calls for more frigid weather from Monday onward.

Sprinting for endurance

It was really cold yesterday and is supposed to be frigid again tomorrow, but we're getting a little bit of a break today, with a high of around 43 degrees Fahrenheit forecast for this afternoon.

It was only 29 degrees when I went to the river this morning, however.  But the wind, predicted to increase as the day goes on, wasn't bad, and I'll take 20s and calm over 40s and windy anytime.  I paddled for 60 minutes; my rudder was frozen at the beginning, but it took just a couple of minutes out in the sunshine for me to work it free.

Anybody who's been reading this blog for a while knows that I'm trying some new things in my training this season, based largely on research that Ron Lugbill has been sharing on his blog.  His latest post sums up nicely the sort of approach I'm taking.  Today I spent the 35 minutes from 0:15 to 0:50 doing 30-second sprints with three and a half minutes of easy paddling in between.  I got in nine sprints during this period.

More January beauty (for one more day)

My original plan was to spend today working and paddle tomorrow.  But today was a beautiful warm day, and the rest of the week is supposed to be freezing, so I went on down to the river this afternoon.  My car's in-dash temperature display read 63 degrees Fahrenheit, the wind wasn't bad, and there was not a cloud in the sky.

I didn't do anything special today.  I was a little tired in the boat, so I just paddled steady for 60 minutes, trying to take good crisp strokes the whole time.

It had been a long time since I'd paddled in the afternoon, and I felt discombobulated with the sun in a different part of the sky.  It was right in my eyes the whole time from the marina down to the mouth of the harbor.  Then I turned north and paddled upriver with the breeze at my back, and my sunglasses fogged up.  There are probably legally blind people whose vision is better than mine was on the river this afternoon.

The sun was about to set by the time I returned to the dock, and the temperature was dropping down into the 50s.  I tried to enjoy this mild weather for as long as I could before the next Arctic blast arrives.

Monday photo feature

Here's an oldie-but-goodie: the start of the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race in 2001.  I look so young.  And in fact I was young (I was 33).  Photo by Emerson Wickwire.

Several decades ago the United States Canoe Association, hoping to attract more wildwater racers to its national championships, created a "downriver kayak" class specifically for wildwater boats.  In the ensuing years several boat designers came up with boats that met all the specs of a wildwater boat, but were lighter and narrower for greater speed on the Class I-II water of the typical USCA Nationals.  The boat I'm paddling above is one of those boats: the "Apple Turnover."  It's got the wings behind the cockpit to satisfy the width requirement of a wildwater boat, and like a wildwater boat, it has no rudder: you steer it by leaning the boat to the side opposite the desired turn direction.

I think this boat is of 1980s vintage.  I bought it from a friend in 1997, at which time my primary focus was on whitewater slalom but I thought it would be fun to have some kind of flatwater boat to paddle in the Memphis area.  As my interest grew in the flatwater/open water racing I'm doing now, I worked this boat hard, and it was a valuable tool for learning the many nuances of making a tippy boat go fast.

This brings me to the main point of this post: though I am rather fond of this relic, I might be willing to part with it.  Right now it is stored in my old woodworking shop, and as I move things over to my new shop, I'm looking for ways to lighten the load.  The boat has been patched a few times but is solidly seaworthy and in reasonably good shape for a 30-year-old craft.  I would love to see another person have the rich learning experiences in it that I had.

I hope to receive a low-three-figure sum for it.  Interested persons may leave comments here, or contact me directly if they know how.

January beauty

Today was a fairly ideal day for paddling: sunny, mid 40s Fahrenheit, and (finally) not much wind.

I did my rubber band routine on the dock and then paddled for 90 minutes.  After a ten-minute warmup, I did my little power-building drill in the harbor: a few back strokes followed by six hard forward strokes.  I did six of them, one every two minutes.

Then I paddled up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, and back down.  I did so at something shy of race pace.  When I got back down to the harbor, I cooled down back to the marina.

Working in higher-intensity paddling, but trying to be smart about it

It's been sort of a busy week, I guess.  A few little nuisance things I had to take care of and some not-so-fun chores.  But still I paddle my boat.

I went to the river on Tuesday and, after a set of rubber band exercises on the dock, paddled for 60 minutes.  After a ten-minute warmup, I did three ten-minute pieces at race pace with five minutes rest in between.  It was not so different from the 30-minute higher-intensity periods I've been including in many of my sessions; just breaking up the monotony a little.

It seems we're going back and forth between cold days and mild days right now.  I paddled in mild weather (Fahrenheit temperature in the 50s) Tuesday, but today it was cold (30s) with a chilly breeze blowing from west-northwest.  After another set of rubber band exercises on the dock, I got in the boat and warmed up for ten minutes, and then did eight 6-stroke sprints, one at the top of each minute.  A little while later I started into five long sprints--each one was between 45 and 90 seconds.  I just made it up as I went, each time picking out two landmarks in the harbor and paddling at sub-max intensity from one to the other.  I gave myself a good long rest in between each two sprints, because at this early stage of the season I want to keep my workouts aerobic as much as I can.

Monday photo feature

Last week the "Polar Vortex" came and went without much precipitation in the greater Memphis area.  I've done my share of paddling on snowy days, like this one in December of 2012, but I won't shed a tear if I get through this winter without that experience.

Going a little longer

In this part of the world we have nice days even in January, and today was such a one.  The Fahrenheit temperature as I drove to the river this morning was in the low 50s on its way to a high in the low 60s, and there was not a cloud in the sky.  Conditions were calm when I arrived at the marina, but the wind picked up as I did my rubber band exercises on the dock, and by the time I was in the boat I had some chop to deal with out on the river.  But in January, I can't complain.

I paddled for 80 minutes today.  Over the next couple of months I hope to put in one "longer" day each week--my first couple of races will be in the ninety-minute-to-two-hour range--and today was my first step in that direction.

I paddled at race pace for the middle half-hour (0:25 to 0:55) of the session, and felt good.

Winter's swinging pendulum

Yesterday I did another set of rubber band exercises and paddled for 60 minutes.

In the boat I did six 12-stroke sprints, one at the top of every second minute.  Twelve strokes felt like a lot after all those six-stroke sprints I've been doing lately.

We have survived the great Polar Vortex and now temperatures are warming up into the 50s Fahrenheit this weekend.  But around here there's usually a price for that in the form of wind, rain, or both, sometimes with some violent thunderstorms thrown in for good measure.  We got quite a bit of rain yesterday (mostly last night), and the next several days are predicted to be quite breezy.

The "Polar Vortex" is receding

According to my car's temperature display, it was just reaching the freezing point as I arrived down at the marina this morning.  The harbor and river were surprisingly free of ice: I think the strong winds we had during the extreme cold of the last two days might have prevented the water from freezing over.  My boat's rudder was frozen, but it didn't take me long to get it free.

The first thing I did at the marina was hook up my rubber band to a post and do the little routine I've worked up for this month.  I'm not sure I can really describe this workout; I don't really know what any of these exercises are called.  But this video is worth watching for any athlete, and in it Daniele Molmenti (the reigning Olympic champion in whitewater slalom K1) does a few of the exercises I'm now doing.  Basically, there aren't many body movements, especially involving your limbs, that you can't rig up a rubber band to provide resistance for.  I think exercises like these are great for injury prevention, and this month I'm working several sets of opposing muscle groups.  It probably wouldn't be bad for me to incorporate a little of this type of work throughout the year.

After working with the rubber band, I paddled my boat for 60 minutes.  After a 15-minute warmup, I did eight pieces where I followed a few backstrokes with six hard forward strokes.  This is a good power-building exercise, but it's not fun to do in cold weather because I always splash water into my cockpit.  I then paddled a pretty quick tempo out on the river before returning to the harbor and cooling down back to the dock.  The air temperature was well on its way to 40 degrees Fahrenheit by then.

"Orca" was gone from the Mud Island Marina dock, so I guess Kev Brady is on his way downriver.  But I saw another canoe with a pair of guys who had put in on the New River in North Carolina and were paddling to the Gulf of Mexico by way of the New, Kanawha, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers.  They told me this was Day 90 of their journey.  I wish I had asked them if they had paddled the New River Gorge in their tandem cruising canoe.

Monday photo feature

Joe Royer took this photo of me four years ago.  Cold air had descended upon our nation, and while we Memphians experienced relatively mild temperatures in the mid 20s, the Midwest had it much worse, evidenced by the ice floes that came drifting down the Mississippi.

I think I have posted this photo here before, but I believe a re-post is in order as this more serious mass of Arctic air could very well send some more ice floes our way this week.

The lesser of two evils

I paddled in some fairly stiff winds both yesterday and today.  Yesterday was nice and sunny, but today I had some occasionally heavy rain to deal with.

At this time of year, when I'm in the boat no more than four times a week, I have the luxury of looking at the weather forecast and picking out the least-miserable days to get out on the water.  So why did I choose to go out in the wind and rain this weekend?  Because it's about to get a lot worse.

The temperature while I paddled this morning was a not-bad-at-all 49 degrees Fahrenheit.  But according to my latest check of The Weather Channel website, the temperature is supposed to drop this afternoon on its way to an overnight low of 10 degrees.  Tomorrow, the high temperature--the high--is forecast to be 13 degrees, followed by an overnight low of 7 degrees.  It's been quite a while since the Mid South has had a single-digit Fahrenheit temperature; our local newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, says this will be the coldest weather we've had since 1996.

So, I got some paddling in this weekend so I can hunker down indoors for a couple of days.  I paddled for 60 minutes both yesterday and today.  Yesterday I warmed up for fifteen minutes and then did six-stroke sprints at maximum intensity at the top of each minute, doing eight of them in all.  Then I did some pieces across the harbor, practicing balance on the beam waves driven by the south wind.

Today I paddled at anaerobic threshold from 0:15 to 0:45.  I did this with the wind at my back until I got to the north end of the harbor (the wind was from the south again), doing about the last five minutes into the wind.

Kev Brady's aluminum canoe, "Orca," was still sitting on the dock at Mud Island Marina this morning.  I wouldn't blame him a bit for choosing to wait out the cold here in the Memphis area.

Yesterday I started up a strength routine for this new month.  I'm doing some rubber-band exercises, and I'll explain it more once I come up with a full routine to stick to for the rest of the month.

Welcome, thru-paddler

Today is one of the days that enable us to say we have mild winters here in the Mid South.  Skies are clear and the temperature was in the 40s Fahrenheit while I was on the water this morning, on its way to a high in the 50s.

Up, up, up comes the river!  As I paddled this morning the Memphis gauge reading was about 21.8 feet.  It's supposed to crest around 22 feet in the next several days.

I paddled for 60 minutes.  After a ten-minute warmup, I did six pieces at one-minute intervals where each piece consisted of eight backstrokes followed by six forward strokes at maximum intensity.  The idea was to get a little power-building exercise by overcoming the backward inertia.

There's a guy named Kev Brady who is currently paddling a canoe down the Mississippi River from its source at Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico.  I've been following his Face Book page; he's raising money for a charity in his native England, and there is information about that here.  Right at this moment he is in Memphis, and I spotted his canoe ("Orca") on the dock at the little gas station next to Mud Island Marina.  I noticed that other people had written notes on the boat in magic marker, so I borrowed a marker from the store clerk and wrote one of my own.

Another round of winter

Here in the Mid South we have pretty mild winters that allow us to paddle year-round, but we do have a good cold snap at least once every ten days or so this time of year.  Such a snap got here last night, and as I drove to the river this morning a few flecks of sleet fell from the sky and the in-dash display in my car said it was 31 degrees Fahrenheit.  Not the worst I've paddled in, but... cold!  Brrrr!

Fortunately I was dressed for the occasion, and soon I was reasonably comfortable in my boat.  I paddled for 60 minutes, doing a couple of pieces around the Mud Island Marina (one lap takes around three minutes at medium intensity) and otherwise paddling steady.

Before paddling this morning I did my last strength routine for the month.  I did ten sets of 30 Hindu squats and ten sets of 10 front and lat raises.  I'm always fascinated with the body's ability to adapt quickly to new stresses: at the start of this month I struggled through 200 Hindu squats and was quite sore for the next couple of days, but today I did 300 of them don't really feel a thing.

Monday photo feature

Jake Stachovak (left) and I depart downtown Memphis on the Mississippi River on one of the last days of 2009.  Having spent Christmas day in Memphis,  Jake was resuming a ten-month journey that started and finished at Portage, Wisconsin.  On this day I joined him for the 35-mile leg from Memphis to the Tunica Riverpark in Mississippi.  Photo by Ernest Kelly.

New for me: very short sprints

I'm back from my trip, and even though the dreary, grey skies here are sort of a bummer after a week of nice sunny days, it feels good to be home.

The river is quite a bit higher than it was when I paddled on it last Sunday.  That's not really a surprise, considering the system of heavy precipitation that passed through here last weekend and went on to cause all kinds of problems for folks from the upper Midwest to the Northeast and eastern Canada.  The water I paddled on this morning submerged the Memphis gauge up to the 20.7-foot mark.

I paddled for 60 minutes in all.  Taking a suggestion from this post on Ron Lugbill's blog, I followed a ten-minute warmup with ten six-stroke sprints in the harbor at maximum intensity, doing a sprint at the top of each minute.

As a pre-emptive response to those who might want to say "Lugbill's blog is about slalom racing; the type of racing you're doing doesn't require the bursts of speed or quick accelerations that slalom does," I'll point out two things.  First, a quick acceleration off the starting line can be very important, especially in shorter races like the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race; and second, my goal is not just speed but also to practice the motor skills associated with high-intensity paddling, in the hope that paddling a quick pace won't feel like such a big deal on race day.

After my ten sprints I went out on the river and paddled at race pace for about a half hour before returning to the harbor and doing a nice cool-down back to the dock.

Before paddling this morning I did ten sets of 28 Hindu squats and ten sets of 10 front and lat raises.

Trying new things

I'm still in North Carolina visiting my sister's family.  My mother and I plan to head back to Memphis tomorrow.  In the meantime, we're mostly just hanging around doing a whole lotta nothing, and that's kind of nice.

But I'm still observing my minimum-level exercise routine.  This morning I did ten sets of 27 Hindu squats and ten sets of 10 front and lat raises.

My right hamstring feels somewhat better today.  I was a little concerned about it yesterday afternoon when I played baseball with my nephew Ben.  For a while I pitched to him and he kept hitting grounders to left-center, each of which I had to chase at a dead run (it was just the two of us out there--no fielders behind me).  I was just waiting for something to pop in my right leg, but it held up fine.

This post is one of a number on Ron Lugbill's blog that have been influencing my approach to this coming race season.  Basically, I hope to work as much race-pace training into each session as I can, and this post summarizes as well as any the research that supports such an approach.

I've never been convinced that long, slow paddling sessions of three hours or more are a good idea.  For one thing, a paddler who does a great many of these is simply practicing to go slow.  For another, since it's hard to maintain good stroke mechanics for a very long period of time, the ultra-distance paddler is probably ingraining poor technique.  The longest sessions I ever do (not counting multi-day wilderness trips, which are another matter) don't last much more than a couple of hours, and I do only a handful of them each year.

Meanwhile, I'm inspired to try this latest round of new things by something my woodworking instructor Carl Swennson has said many times: you shouldn't expect different results if you keep doing the same thing.  So, thanks to Mr. Lugbill and his blog of research-based training advice, I'm embarking on something slightly different this time around.  If it doesn't make me world-class, well, neither did the training I'd been doing before.

Aches and pains. I've got 'em.

Things are pretty relaxed here at my sister's house--we're mostly just sitting around enjoying some time off.  But I'm sticking with my little strength routine: today I did ten sets of 25 Hindu squats and ten sets of 10 front and lat raises.

I don't talk much about injuries here, mostly because I really haven't had anything major in a long time.  It's been very uncommon for me to experience any pain that I consider bad enough to keep me out of the boat.  What's more, I don't think I've been sick with anything worse than a common cold in some ten years.  For that I am most grateful.  There probably aren't too many 46-year-old men doing much better than I am.

On the other hand, it seems like I've always got some sort of little discomfort going on.  For several years I had a lot of soreness and stiffness in my lower back.  It's been less of a problem in the last year or two, partly because I've learned some strategies to deal with it and partly because... I don't know why.  But I can't complain.

My worst ailment these days is a bout of "tennis elbow" in my left arm that's been going on for about a year now.  I've been grinning and bearing it, hoping it will eventually go away, but it hasn't yet.  Over Thanksgiving I talked to a cousin's husband, who is an orthopedist in middle Tennessee, and he recommended I get a cortisone shot.  He gave me the names of a couple of doctors he knows in Memphis, and I guess after New Year's I'll give one of them a call even though I hate going to the doctor for any reason.

The most recent thing is some tightness in my right hamstring.  I really started noticing it while driving in the car during my recent trip down to Florida.  Even when I used the cruise control, my leg sort of ached and throbbed.  It bothered me again yesterday as I drove over here to North Carolina with my mother, and I'm feeling it today.  I stretched it gingerly this morning, and I guess I'll just see how it goes these next few days.

It's hard to know what's caused any of my injuries, but I think very few of them are the result of paddling my boat.  I think the weight room is where injuries happen for many athletes.  For me, heavy lifting and other chores around my woodworking shop are likely to blame.

Monday photo feature

I took this photo of my nephew Joel as we paddled a canoe down the Little Tennessee River near Bryson City, North Carolina, in October of 2010.  I'll be visiting Joel and his brother and two sisters at their home near Charlotte this week.

Winter solstice fun

It's warmed up over the past week, reaching the low 70s Fahrenheit yesterday.  That's the good news. The bad news, certainly nothing new in the wintertime, is that the balmy temperatures have been accompanied by violent weather.  Here in Memphis we got by with just some wind and rain, but it was quite heavy rain.

Yesterday morning I checked the Internet radar and the storms had advanced this side of Little Rock, so I got up and out and was on the water by nine o'clock.  There was a pretty strong wind blowing from the south, so I warmed up toward the south end of the harbor, trying to stay relaxed and not fight the wind, and then did four 12-stroke sprints with the wind at my back.  I then spent the rest of my 60-minute session doing pieces across the harbor, with beam wind and waves, at 3-minute intervals.  I tried to take crisp, precise strokes while balancing on the waves that passed beneath me.  The temptation here is to tense one's body and brace, and I strove to stay relaxed and rotate fully instead.

I thought for sure I would get rained on at some point, but the whole hour went by without a drop of rain.  (The storm front was moving more slowly than I thought, it turned out; the heaviest rain didn't arrive until evening.)

By this morning the rain had moved out, and some cooler air was moving in behind it.  Tonight's low is supposed to be around 30, but this morning it was in the fifties, warm enough to paddle without pogies.  I did another 60 minutes, this time pushing the pace in that half hour from 0:15 to 0:45.  By "pushing the pace," I generally mean race pace for a race of an hour or so.

On Friday I did ten sets of 24 Hindu squats and ten sets of 10 front and lat raises.  This morning before I paddled I did ten sets of 25 Hindu squats and ten sets of 10 front and lat raises.

I'll be out of the boat for the next few days, as my mother and I are traveling to North Carolina to visit my sister's family.

Going fast (cont'd)

For those who don't know what Hindu squats are, here's a video of a guy doing them.  I posted it long ago but am posting it again for those later-arrivers to this blog party.

Both Monday and today, I did 240 Hindu squats (ten sets of 24) and 100 front and lat raises (ten sets of 10).

I also paddled for 60 minutes both Monday and today.  The sun has come out this week and that has made it much nicer out on the river.  It's also warmer: today's high was in the mid 50s Fahrenheit.

I'm continuing my theme of working some higher intensity into each paddling session.  Some days I might push the pace for one long period, while on other days I might do several shorter periods of higher intensity.  If I'm feeling tired I might keep the harder paddling to a minimum, but still do at least a little something to practice the motor skills associated with going fast.

Today I warmed up from the dock to the mouth of the harbor, then paddled harder upriver from the mouth of the harbor to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  I ferried over to the Arkansas side at an easy pace, then ferried back to the Tennessee side at a higher intensity.  From there I returned to the dock at an easier pace.

     Both my harder pieces were eight or nine minutes in duration.  I paddled at a fairly low stroke rate, concentrating on taking good precise strokes and really exploding through each one.

Monday photo feature

Corey Nielsen competes in the 1998 U.S. Team Trials for whitewater slalom.  The venue is a section of the Wisconsin River in Wausau, Wisconsin.  This was the first Team Trials I qualified to compete in myself, and I have fond memories of the entire experience.

More strength work, more paddling, more chill

True to my word, I bumped it up to 22 reps per set, and did ten sets for a total of 220 Hindu squats this morning.  I also did ten sets of ten front and lat raises with 10-pound dumbbells.

Then I went down to the river and paddled for 60 minutes.  Like yesterday, I pushed the pace from 0:15 to 0:45, and then allowed myself a good long cool-down from the mouth of the harbor back to the dock.  The Memphis gauge reading was about fourteen and a half feet--up two and a half feet in the last 24 hours.

Today's weather is dreary and overcast with a Fahrenheit temperature of about 40 degrees.  It sure feels like winter is here even though its official arrival is another week away.

Chillin' once more

Well, the beach party is over and I'm back home in the cold.  At least it's not as bad as it was last week: it's supposed to be in the mid 40s Fahrenheit for the next several days.

I'm continuing my Hindu squats for this month.  I did 200 of them both Tuesday and yesterday.  I'm getting comfortable enough with it that I think it's time to start nudging up the volume: I might try ten sets of 22 reps tomorrow.  Now that I'm home with my own weight equipment I'm using ten-pound dumbbells to do my front and lat raises, and I think that's a pretty good weight.

Today I paddled for 60 minutes downtown.  I did four 12-stroke sprints and paddled a fairly hard pace from the 15-minute mark to the 45-minute mark.

The Mississippi is on a big rise after hovering around zero on the Memphis gauge for several months.  It was right about 12 feet while I was on the water today, and it's supposed to be up to about 17 feet by the middle of next week.

Monday photo feature

Who doesn't love a parade?  This was the scene last night on the Hillsborough River in Tampa, Florida.  Photo by Heidi Bissell.

I love a parade

Yesterday morning I paddled for 80 minutes near the Davis Islands in the northern reaches of Tampa Bay, near downtown Tampa.  I did stroke drills and generally just enjoyed my last full day of warm Florida weather.

In the evening I teamed up with Heidi in her inflatable kayak and participated in the Hillsborough River Holiday Boat Parade.  The parade proceeded at a leisurely pace from Lowry Park upriver to Sulphur Springs.  After that we paddled a more vigorous pace back down to Lowry Park to retrieve the car.

Still basking in the warm

It sounds like Memphis didn't get hammered with ice nearly as badly as Texas and Oklahoma and Arkansas and Missouri did these last couple of days.  But I'm glad to be here in Florida, where yesterday we had sunny skies and about 80 degrees on the Fahrenheit thermometer.

Yesterday morning I did another ten sets of 20 Hindu squats and ten front and lat raises.  My quads were still sore but the workout didn't seem too painful.

Then I went out on the Hillsborough River for 60 minutes.  I did a few high-intensity pieces that included both forward and backward paddling.

The Hillsborough, like most coastal rivers, is generally flat and influenced by the tides.  I grew up paddling whitewater and still love it, but I've found value, and even some enjoyment, in playing around on flatwater in a whitewater boat.  You can get a much better feel for the kinesthetics of your boat, and address issues of precision much better, without the distraction of waves, holes, and drops, and what you learn will carry over to whitewater.  I would bet that the very best "extreme" whitewater paddlers--Dane Jackson, for instance--have done their share of playing around on flatwater and easy whitewater.

Challenging conditions

Though the worst of the winter weather is apparently passing to the north, it's a gloomy day in Memphis today.  It's overcast and sub-freezing, and the forecast calls for freezing rain with a high of 34 degrees Fahrenheit.  Memphis drivers are already going insane, as they always do when a smidge of snow or ice falls anywhere in the area.  I hear the grocery store shelves have been gutted.

And you know what?  I don't care!  I'm down in Tampa, Florida, where yesterday it got into the mid 80s on the Fahrenheit scale, and it's supposed to do the same today.  I'm staying with my friend Heidi, and while she's at work I'm getting a little exercise but also doing quite a bit of relaxing, something I have not gotten to do much in the past year.

On Wednesday I started up a little strength routine for the month of December.  In the past I have always done Hindu squats in a couple of long sets, typically starting off with sets of 60 and nudging that upward through the month until I'm doing sets in the 80s.  I think the most squats I have done in a single set is maybe 100.

This time around, I'm following the model I started last month with pushups: I'm doing ten sets of a smaller number per set.  Yesterday I decided to start with 20 squats, and by the last couple of sets I was feeling it big-time.  It's possible I overdid it a little--I was very sore yesterday and still am today.

Between sets of Hindu squats I did a set of ten front and lat raises with four-pound dumbbells, which is all Heidi seems to have; I'll use heavier ones when I get home next week.

Later Wednesday I paddled on the Hillsborough River, which flows next to Heidi's house.  I brought my old slalom C1 down here with me, mostly because I just didn't feel like fooling with a longer, heavier boat on this trip.  And I think at this time of the year there's some good cross-training value in paddling a different boat and working out a slightly different set of muscles.  I did quite a bit of backpaddling--always a good thing to incorporate some of that into your training to prevent muscle imbalances.  After a while Heidi got home from work and joined me on the river in her inflatable kayak, and that was another reason I brought the whitewater boat instead of a touring or racing boat, so that I could do a reasonable amount of paddling but still move at Heidi's pace and visit with her.

Yesterday, like I said, I was sore from Wednesday's Hindu squats.  I borrowed Heidi's bike and went out to the Flatwoods Wilderness Area northeast of town, and rode for an hour or so.  Probably not a bad active recovery.

Heidi's off work today, and we're going to the beach!  Enjoy your little Snowmageddon up there in Memphis, y'all.

Monday photo feature

It was a positively lovely memorial service for Nath Thompson on Saturday.  In this photo from the Camp Carolina Face Book page, I'm seated just beyond the kid sitting in the foreground next to the fire: that's me in the tan coat and white fleece cap (it was cold).  My good bud Allen Sparks, whom I hadn't seen in too many years, sits to my left.

For the readers who are tired of me going on about Nath, I promise this is the last post.  But this blog is about all aspects of my life as a paddler, after all, and Nath, in so many intangible ways, influenced the way I go about life in my boat, and everywhere else.  I spoke to one person after another on Saturday who revered Nath for all the same reasons that I did.  Our sentiments were articulated beautifully by Bill Smith, who attended Carolina from 1964 until 1976, in a eulogy.  "I can't say I remember too many details of my time at Carolina," Bill said (approximately), "but indelible in my memory is the example Nath set for living one's life.  Nath taught me that to have a rich, meaningful life, it really doesn't take much more than giving a firm handshake, and paddling a canoe, and singing some songs, and being part of a small community of great friends."

Another eulogist was Cliff Heaton, known as "Heaty" around camp from the late 60s through the early 80s.  "My contemporaries and I just kept coming back to camp summer after summer, and it wasn't because the camp had the best tennis courts, or the nicest waterfront, or whatever," said Heaty.  "It was because of Nath, and the wonderful world he provided for us here."

Years ago, it was common for a chant to go up in the dining hall: "Nath in the Lake!  Nath in the Lake!"  Toward the end of each summer, a group of counselors would grab Nath and carry him down to the lake for just that purpose, only to end up in the water themselves when their surprisingly strong, wily camp director suddenly fought back.

At the conclusion of the service on Saturday, we all walked down the hill to the water's edge, where Nath's son Charles pulled out the urn with Nath's ashes, and put the old man in the lake at last.

Recapping the week

Time to catch up after a little holiday interruption.  I paddled for just 40 minutes Wednesday morning because it was darn cold, and windy.  I stayed in the harbor and avoided the wind as much as I could. I did four of my 12-stroke sprints and otherwise paddled a nice crisp pace.

I did 200 pushups both Tuesday and Thursday, and shortly I will do another couple hundred on this last day of November.  Doing 200 pushups is noticeably tougher than doing 150.

Right now I'm in Asheville, having a little breakfast before I head about thirty miles up the French Broad River to Brevard for Nath Thompson's memorial service.