Back home and recovering

This morning I paddled in the rain for about ten minutes, and thought I detected a theme for the weekend.  But then the rain let up and I did the rest of my 70-minute recovery paddle under overcast skies in high humidity.

I'd decided that as long as my boat was on the car I ought to paddle someplace different, and give myself a break from the same old, same old.  I drove down south of downtown Memphis to McKellar Lake, which in fact is not a lake at all, but a slackwater harbor off the Mississippi, lined by an assortment of industrial concerns as well as TVA's Allen Fossil Plant.  It'll never be mistaken for pristine wilderness, but it's ours, by golly.

Beautiful McKellar Lake.

I felt sluggish and tired in the boat--not unusual for a recovery paddle.  The whole point of a recovery paddle, after all, is to flush out the lactic acid and get some fresh blood into your race-damaged muscles so they can mend more quickly.  Tempting though it is to stay home and lie on the couch after a race or hard workout, you'll feel better sooner if you drag yourself down to the river and paddle a bit.

Now I turn my attention to my second competition is as many weeks: the Big River Regional, a 13-mile race on the Mississippi River at Baton Rouge.  I have five days to get my (as of this Friday) 48-year-old self ready to go.

Fun while it lasted

Racers gathered at Alton Slough on the Mississippi River yesterday morning with the intention of racing ten miles, doing five laps of a two-mile loop.  But right as I was completing my second lap the race was called due to lightning.

I had checked the forecast at www.weather.com before I left the motel, and it predicted slim chances of rain before noon.  But a check of the Internet radar showed some heavy storms moving east from the Jefferson City area, and when I arrived at the race site the sky looked like it would let loose well before noon.  In the pre-race meeting, race director Bryan Hopkins said the race would start on time, but that the Corps of Engineers, whose rangers were operating safety boats for the event, would call the race if lightning moved into the area.

We lined up and the gun went off, and I found myself with plenty of company in the first few hundred meters even though I had sprinted hard off the line.  After making the first buoy turn, two tandem kayaks and I began to separate from the pack a bit.  I found myself in a stiff competition with Jim Short and Dylan McHardy of Springfield, Missouri, and Ron Ladzinski and Mira Doneva of Olathe, Kansas.  The pace was fairly brisk and I found myself working hard to stay on my competitors' wakes.  I wasn't exactly on the ropes, but by the time we were finishing our second lap I was wondering whether I would be able to hang with these tandems for all five.  Then the sirens went off, calling everybody to shore, and the question became moot.

We gathered in the park pavilion and discussed what to do next.  One option was to try to resume the race with everybody where he had been when the sirens had started, but since that could not be done truly fairly we decided to do the whole race over, this time over two laps instead of five.  The plan was to start the race about seventy minutes later, but a heavy rain began to settle in and the storm became ever more severe, the Internet radar showing no let-up, so eventually the race organizers decided to send us home.

Medals were awarded based on each racer's position at the moment of the stop-command.  I had been in second place overall, right behind Dylan and Jim and right ahead of Mira and Ron, but since I was in first place among single kayakers, I got myself a first-place medal.  It wasn't really fair, of course--there's no telling who might have mounted a surge and taken me down later in the race.  But the race organizers had medals to get rid of, and there was no fairer way to hand them out, so there it was.  After getting thoroughly drenched while carrying my boat back to the car and strapping it down, I drove away generally happy to have gotten a good workout and paddled in a somewhat different part of the country from most of my race settings in recent years.

As I drove south through the city of Saint Louis, the rain eased and finally stopped.  I found a place to park and had lunch consisting of an apple, celery, and some crackers.  Then I stopped for dessert at Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, a Saint Louis institution since 1929.  At the suggestion of the radio announcers for Cardinals baseball games, I tried the lemon crumb concrete.  It was mightily good.

Monday photo feature

This week's photo feature is actually a set of photos I took this past Friday.  It supports my belief that if you look hard enough, you can find some whitewater in almost any part of the world.

As I've been mentioning in this blog, the Mississippi River recently spent several weeks at a pretty high level--around 32 and a half feet on the Memphis gauge.  When the water rises that high, it inundates a wide swath of bottomland in the basin, and oxbow lakes like Dacus Lake, on the Arkansas side of the river just across from downtown Memphis, become reconnected with the river from which they were born.  If you look back at some of my recent posts you'll see that I was able to paddle onto Dacus Lake during training sessions.

Then, when the river level drops, all that water must run off the bottomland back into the main channel.  On most of the acreage of the Mississippi basin, this happens as quickly as the water recedes; but in places where the floodwater fills in a lake, more interesting things can happen.  The photo above shows what happens where Dacus Lake drains back into the Mississippi, straight across from The Pyramid.

The waterfall in the photo is actually an artificial creation: somebody--the Corps of Engineers, maybe--piled some boulders and poured some concrete in the channel, perhaps to maintain a higher "pool" level in Dacus Lake.  And so, as the Mississippi drops back down from flood stage, water cascades over this precipice just like it would in a mountain creek.  Here's another shot of the falls:

Yes, fellow whitewater paddlers, I most certainly did scout the falls for good lines.  But the rapid is full of sharp rocks and concrete and steel rebar (that's rebar sticking up in the foreground), so a paddler would be banging and scraping at best and pinned at worst.  But if you can ignore the non-natural aspects of this rapid, it does at least offer the pleasant sensations of fast rushing water, and it's a nice place to visit on a hot Mid South summer day.  Here are several more shots of the channel as it runs out to the main river.  You can see The Pyramid across the river in the last one:

I get very excited whenever I find a place like this out there in the vast Mississippi basin, but I've found it difficult to get anybody else to care.  I posted one of these photos on Face Book the other day, and the response I got was mostly a bunch of chirping crickets.  Oh well... perhaps it's an acquired taste.  My excitement is probably similar to what astronomers feel when an eclipse happens.  Over the next few days this rapid will dry up as the Dacus Lake level drops below the top of the concrete-and-boulder dam.

Feeling hot, in a good way

We had some truly delightful weather late this past week.  Now the heat and humidity are moving back upward, but it's not too bad yet.  Actually, today was the sort of day I think all summer should be.  Summer should be hot; just not so stifling that I dread stepping out the door.  I think today's high was around 92 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was fairly humid but not suffocatingly so.

I paddled for 80 minutes this morning, doing my usual 8-second sprints before settling into a strong pace with several hard surges.  I felt good in the boat and am looking forward to racing on the mighty Mississippi above St. Louis next Saturday and at Baton Rouge the Saturday after that.

Balance is a skill

Today I did two rounds of the August strength routine.  A couple of the exercises require some pretty keen balance, and when I started the routine a week ago I could barely do them.  Today I'm doing them a lot better even though they're still not easy.  It's a nice little reminder that balance is something you can improve with some practice and persistence, even in a very tippy race boat.

Yesterday I paddled for 60 minutes out on the Mississippi.  As usual I started with a warmup and several 8-second sprints.  During the course of the session I did several pretty hard two-minute surges.  Anybody who's raced with me knows that mid-race surges are a big part of my racing game, and I hope to be prepared to throw in some more during the two races I've got coming up this month.

We've finally gotten a true break from the dog days of summer, as some drier air has moved in from up north.  I don't know if it'll last until my race a week from this Saturday, but maybe the weather won't be as oppressive as it has been for the last few weeks.

Monday photo feature

It looks like an exotic coastal locale, but it's actually just Greer's Ferry Reservoir back in September of 2006.  Greer's Ferry is a hundred miles or so west of Memphis near Heber Springs, Arkansas.

River dynamism here in the flatlands

Today's forecast called for a high temperature near 100 degrees Fahrenheit with a heat index up near 110.  But once again I got out this morning before conditions were that bad.  I paddled for 80 minutes, and my energy held up well and I felt about as good in the boat as I have in quite a while.

I paddled over to the channel where Dacus Lake drains into the Mississippi.  A couple of weeks ago I was able to paddle up this channel and onto the lake, but today, with the river some 18 feet lower on the Memphis gauge, there was a waterfall where the channel meets the main river.  No joke--there's a pile of boulders there, probably put there by the Corps of Engineers long ago, and the water that had filled Dacus Lake during the recent high water period was rushing down the channel and over these rocks.  I paddled right up to the base of it, and for a brief moment I felt like I was on a Blue Ridge Mountain creek as I felt the spray and took in the smell of the aerated water.  I also beheld with curiosity the sight of the clear green water from the lake flowing into the muddy brown water of the mighty Mississippi.

This afternoon I submitted my registration for the Big River Regional race on the Mississippi River down at Baton Rouge on August 29.  I'm now signed up for two races on consecutive weekends: on the 22nd I'll be doing the Firecracker Race on the Mississippi up at West Alton, Missouri.

Summer continues its ups and downs

This week we've had some lower temperatures, but not lower humidity.  Between Wednesday and yesterday several inches of rain fell here.  I mentioned two Sundays ago that the Mississippi was about to start dropping fast, and it has done just that: when I paddled this morning, the Memphis gauge reading was a hair under 15 feet.

On Thursday I paddled for 50 minutes, doing several of my backpaddling-then-forward-paddling power drills followed by steady paddling with a couple of long surges. Yesterday I continued to get my body used to the August strength routine.

This weekend we're heading back to some high heat indices, but it wasn't bad at all when I paddled this morning.  A mild north breeze kept things bearable.  I started off my 60-minute session with a warmup and three 8-stroke sprints, and then did eight 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals.  Actually, I took a break after the sixth sprint because a down-bound barge rig was putting out some good waves and I had to surf.  I got several brief rides and then one totally sweet ride before my waves began to mix with the wake of an up-bound rig and the water became too confused for surfing.  Once my frivolity had run its course, I got back down to business and did my last two 30-second sprints.

A new strength routine; races coming soon

I'm easing into a new strength routine for the month of August.  With races coming up later in the month, I'm keeping this one pretty simple and focused on "pre-hab" exercises:

1.  Stability ball drill shown at 1:35 of the Jing Jing Li video
2.  Flies with the rubber bands
3.  Stability ball drill shown at 1:53 of the Jing Jing Li video
4.  A compound exercise with the rubber bands that includes squats and overhead curls

Yesterday I did a "pyramid" workout in the boat: pieces of 1', 2', 3', 4', 3', 2', 1' with two minutes recovery in between.  My objective was to paddle at the maximum pace I'm likely to reach during the two-hour race I have coming up on the 22nd of this month.  I usually top out with a 5-minute piece in this workout, but scaled it back a bit yesterday because of the heat.  Another heat-dodging move was to do most of the workout in the shadow of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  Even with those precautions, the workout took a lot out of me and I felt worn out the rest of the day.

Monday photo feature

Having just survived the maelstrom that is El Horrendo, I turn my attention downriver during a 1997 trip to the Russell Fork of the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River near Elkhorn City, Kentucky.  Photo by Ward Graham.

Another week, another recap

For about the last six weeks I'd been doing the June-July strength routine on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays, but last Monday I gave myself the day off.  It was the first day in a while that I hadn't either paddled or done strength work.  I've had a lot going on in my non-athletic life lately, and it was nice to have a day to focus on other stuff.  I did do the strength routine on Wednesday and Friday, and now with a new month underway I'll be drawing up a new routine shortly.

Tuesday was a speed day in the boat.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did six sprints of approximately 30 seconds on fixed courses in the harbor.  I sprinted from one set of pilings to the other beneath the Auction Avenue (A.W. Willis) bridge (best time was about 30 seconds), from one set of pilings to the other beneath the Hernando DeSoto Bridge (about 32 seconds), from one piling to the other beneath the Mud Island Monorail bridge (about 28 seconds), and the entire length of the Beale Street Landing floating dock (about 38 seconds).

On Friday and today I did 60-minute sessions in which I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then paddled steady with a couple of strong surges of three minutes or so.

And yesterday I taught my last "Intro to Kayaking" class of the summer.  It was a pleasure meeting and working with the couple dozen or so students who signed up this year.

We finally got a break from the stifling heat in the second half of the week.  The high temperatures were still quite warm--low to mid 90s Fahrenheit--but a mass of drier air moved in from up north, keeping the heat index at a much more bearable level.  I expect we'll be back to sweltering discomfort soon, but at least with July over it feels like we're on the downhill side of summer.

Monday photo feature

Nick Kinderman, a long-time friend of My Training Blog by Elmore, paddles to a second-place finish in the Pink Paddle on the Mississippi Gulf Coast this past weekend.  Photo by Jennie Wetmore.

Summer (cont'd)

It's been another week about which I can't muster a whole lot to say.  I'm getting in all my paddling and other training activities, but it has sort of a going-through-the-motions feel.  There's almost another month before I'll have any races to do, and in the meantime the heat and humidity have been soul-crushing.

The Mississippi River has been sitting above 31 feet on the Memphis gauge for several weeks now, but the forecast on the NOAA website indicates it's about to start dropping fast.  Today I paddled up onto Dacus Lake one last time before the water will be too low to do so.  It was actually my best of these Sunday "long" paddles as far as dealing with the oppressive weather: I paced myself a bit better and also took full advantage of what little shade exists out there, and I think that was surprisingly effective in helping me conserve energy.  I even did the ferry across the river in the shadow of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.

Monday photo feature

Sometimes unfortunate things happen to one's paddling equipment.  A Rocky Mountain river landed a direct hit on this paddle back in the summer of 1997.

Dog days

It's been hard finding much inspiration to write here this past week.  Blame it on the withering heat of the last ten days or so.

But it was in fact a fairly standard week of training.  In the boat I worked on technique like I always do, and I did several rounds of the June-July strength routine as well.

On Wednesday I managed to throw my back out while doing some work on the deck at the rear of my building.  I was up on a ladder using my cordless drill, which is a rather heavy tool--I think it's four or five pounds, and that's a lot when I'm reaching up and out and boring a hole in either a leftward or a rightward direction, as I was doing Wednesday.  The next thing I knew, I was feeling some acute discomfort in my right hip, as though it had come out of joint a bit.  The condition gradually eased over the next couple of days.  I also felt some soreness in the shoulder that had been injured a couple of months earlier.  It has not bothered me while paddling, and that supports my belief that I'm a lot more likely to get injured doing some mundane task on dry land than I am while paddling my boat.

Yesterday I taught my next-to-last class of the summer on Pine Lake out at Shelby Farms.  The final class will be on August 1, so go here if you or somebody you love wants a bit of instruction from yours truly.

Today I paddled for 100 minutes, a slightly shorter session than I did the last two Sundays but still a long time to be out in this heat.  It wore me out thoroughly, but I managed to enjoy it.  The river is still quite high--31.8 feet on the Memphis gauge, just three tenths of a foot lower than last Sunday--and I took the opportunity to paddle over onto Dacus Lake again.  The water was beautiful, especially in the narrow channel that connects Dacus Lake with the main river.  The channel runs through a piece of densely forested bottomland, and I enjoyed this rare moment of shade.  I'm sure there were plenty of snakes about, though I didn't see any.  By the time I was paddling back across the river toward the mouth of the harbor the heat was taking its toll on me.  I drank from my camel back frequently and tried to keep my form together.  Back at the dock I enjoyed some cold water from an insulated bottle I had left there, and took a little bath with the hose.

There's not much relief from this oppressive summer heat in sight.  Right now it appears we might get a brief break on Tuesday, when some thunderstorms are expected to keep the high temperature down at 90 degrees Fahrenheit, but the rest of the ten-day forecast calls for highs of 97 or higher.  Oh well... I've survived my share of Memphis summers, and I reckon I'll make it through one more.

Monday photo feature

One of my favorite sets of photos from the Mississippi River is one from a high-water period in April of 2008, when I paddled down around the old bridges that span the river just below downtown Memphis.  In the foreground here, we see the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge that carries Interstate 55 over the river.  The next bridge back is the oldest span, the Frisco Bridge; and beyond it is the Harahan Bridge.

The river is quite high right now, with a Memphis gauge reading this morning of 32.1 feet.  The water in this photo is at least several feet higher than that: I paddled down by the old bridges yesterday, and the landscape pictured here was still dry.

A weekend at the height of summer

This morning I paddled for 110 minutes, going down to the Frisco and Harahan and Memphis-Arkansas bridges, then back upriver above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, up onto Dacus Lake, and then back into the harbor and to the dock.

Dacus Lake is an oxbow lake, which is to say that it occupies an old meander that has been abandoned by the Mississippi River.  When the water is high like it is right now (32 feet on the Memphis gauge this morning), Dacus Lake and the Mississippi become united once more, and the intrepid guy or girl can paddle his or her boat freely from one to the other and back again.  I didn't stay on Dacus Lake for long today, but it was nice to have that little change in scenery from what I have most of the year.

Before exiting the harbor I did several backstrokes-then-forward-strokes power-building drills.  After paddling down to the old bridges, I did eight 30-second sprints, starting at three-minute intervals, as I paddled up the Arkansas bank.

It was very hot here today.  I don't normally carry water in the boat with me during training sessions, choosing instead to hydrate thoroughly beforehand and have water waiting on the dock when I finish, but on these days of triple-digit heat indices I break out the camel back.  Even though I had loaded it up with ice before leaving the house, the water was getting warm before I had been paddling for an hour.

On the last leg of today's paddle, in the harbor heading back to the dock, I practiced flipping and remounting my surf ski.  It's a good idea to practice this self-rescue skill from time to time, and a broiling hot day like today feels like the perfect time to do it.

Yesterday I taught another class out at Shelby Farms.  Only two such classes remain this summer--one next Saturday and one on August 1.  Go here for more information if you or somebody you know would like to sign up.

Be sure to recover

Hard workouts are not what get your body in shape.  It's the recovery from these workouts that brings improvement.

I know I've pointed this out in the past, and the idea is simple enough.  But I competed in sports like running and canoe and kayak racing for quite a few years before I really had a good understanding of it.  So I bring it up again--to remind myself, if nothing else.

Several factors contribute to a good recovery.  Good nutrition is one; a regular good night's sleep is another.  And, of course, resting your muscles is another, but this means more than just lying around.  Easy movement of the muscles gets blood flowing and facilitates recovery.  For a canoe/kayak racer, easy paddling will accomplish this, but there are also things you can do out of the boat, such as stretching and simple movement exercises.  One of the positive results of the shoulder ailment I had for a couple of months is that it renewed my commitment to thorough stretching and warmup exercises, even on days when I don't paddle.

Ron Lugbill, in this post on his blog, discusses the use of "active" rest to help the muscles recover and come back stronger.

Yesterday I paddled with Joe for 80 minutes in the harbor.  Some hot weather is beginning to move back in here, but we had a delightful breeze yesterday that made our session not just bearable, but delightful.

I'll be paddling with Joe again tomorrow morning.  Monday and today I did two sets of the June-July strength routine.

Monday photo feature

For years now, the North Fork Canoe Race and Show-Me State Championships has taken place each Fourth of July weekend on the North Fork of the White River at Tecumseh, Missouri.  Paddlers race their USCA-spec craft on an out-and-back course on Norfork Reservoir, and their aluminum canoes on a Class II+ section of the North Fork from Sunburst Ranch to Dawt Mill.  Here, Mike Herbert and his daughter Savanna claim the mixed tandem title in that latter event.  Photo by Christel Herbert.

The week that was

With my next race a while off now, I'm trying to settle back into a good-quality routine.

On Thursday I paddled for 60 minutes in very windy conditions on the Memphis riverfront.  I did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then spent some time trying to surf some medium-sized waves out on the river near the southern tip of Mud Island.  I wasn't achieving much sweetness in the surfing department, so when I got tired of trying I returned to the harbor and did some balance drills in the beam waves.  All told, I got a pretty good practice session in, and because I was having fun with it I didn't feel like I was working that hard.

On Saturday I paddled for another 60 minutes, and this time the conditions were mostly calm, but quite wet.  We had just had an enormous amount of rain on Friday--3.41 inches between 6 PM Thursday and 6 PM Friday--and there were a few remnants of that system lurking around the river Saturday morning.  As I paddled from the mouth of the harbor up toward the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, I could see heavy rain falling on the Loosahatchie Bar, less than a mile away.  About ten minutes later that rain was drenching me.  But I forged ahead, having learned at camp years ago that "skin is waterproof."

My plan is to do a longer paddle on Sunday for the next several weeks.  Today I paddled for 120 minutes, going up to the mouth of the Wolf River and then a couple of miles up the Wolf.  The Mississippi, at a pretty high level of 30.1 feet on the Memphis gauge this morning, was backed up the Wolf for quite a few miles, so the couple of miles I paddled between the mouth of the Wolf and the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge consisted basically of flatwater.  On this section of the morning's route I pushed the tempo for three minutes out of every ten minutes.  I was getting very tired by the time I was heading back down the Mississippi, and I tried to paddle with good form even though the intensity was dropping.

Meanwhile, I'm still doing the June-July strength routine on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Monday photo feature

The oldest whitewater canoe and kayak race in the U.S. is the FIBArk Downriver Race, a 25.7-mile race down the Arkansas River from Salida, Colorado, to Cotopaxi, Colorado.  It started in 1949; in this photo, I am participating in the 2005 edition.  "FIBArk" stands for "First In Boating on the Arkansas."

The 2015 FIBArk Downriver Race took place yesterday on very high water that almost produced a course record.  You can read the account of it in The Mountain Mail here.

Circumnavigation! Circumspection!

A front came through the Mid South overnight Friday night and Saturday morning, and we've enjoyed a weekend of lower temperatures and lower humidity.  The Fahrenheit highs have been in the mid 80s under partly cloudy skies.

Yesterday I taught another good introductory kayaking class out at Shelby Farms.  There are three more such classes scheduled for this summer; go here for more information if you'd like to give this paddling thing a try.

This morning I paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar.  Starting and finishing at Harbortown Marina, I made the trip in about two hours, four minutes.  I've done this circumnavigation quite a few times over the years, and every time it has exhausted me thoroughly.  There's a long upriver leg from the mouth of Wolf River Harbor up to the sand-and-gravel operation next to DeWitt Spain Airport, and then there's a long ferry across the river at a spot where it is quite wide.  By the time I'm finally paddling down the chute over on the west side of the Loosahatchie Bar, fatigue is really setting in.  I've spent the rest of today just lounging around the house feeling thoroughly spent.  Hopefully a good night's sleep will have me feeling good as new tomorrow morning.

The Mississippi was at 28.1 feet on the Memphis gauge, and this high level made the trip a little bit quicker: there were bigger eddies along the Tennessee side for the trip upriver, and as I rounded the north end of the Bar I was able to paddle over some sandbars that are exposed at lower water.

Moving into the next phase

Teresa Faulk took this photo as racers charged out of the Wolf River and onto the mighty Mississippi last Saturday.  That's Mike Herbert in the lead, followed by Waylon Willis in the orange shirt.  I'm in third place, over to Willis's right, with Kata Dismukes in between us in fourth.  Rick Carter holds fifth place on Willis's stern wake.

The day after race there was a boat demo event out at Shelby Farms, and I used that for some recovery paddling while trying out several different boat designs.

This week has seen some oppressive summer weather move into the Mid South.  On Tuesday and today I did some easy paddling in the harbor with Joe, and I've been pondering my goals for the next few months.  There are several races I'm considering, the soonest being on the Fourth of July up at Alton, Illinois.  Rumor has it this race will be in the afternoon, and if the forecast calls for the sort of hot weather we've had here this week, I may pass.

Right now my arms and abdominal muscles are sore from starting up a new strength routine.  For a couple of exercises, I've turned once again to this video featuring Chinese slalom Olympian Jing Jing Li.  The other exercises are classics that need no introduction:

1.  Pushups (variety of styles)
2.  Stability ball drill shown at 2:56 of the Jing Jing Li video
3.  Pullups
4.  Lunges while holding a pair of dumbbells down at my sides
5.  Stability ball drill shown at 3:10 of the Jing Jing Li video

Monday photo feature

It's time for a change of pace from all the newspaper clippings and all the race talk and so on.  With hot, steamy weather moving into the Mid South this week, I think I'll share this photo from a chilly early-spring day on the Hailstone River in the high Ozark Mountains of Arkansas.  I'm not sure of the year, but I believe it was early in the last decade.  Photo by Sonny Salomon.

The race is in the books

Race Day arrived yesterday, and the storms had indeed moved out.  Racers went down to the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi Rivers to find a warm sunny day with a pleasant southwest breeze.  The one annoyance left in the storm’s wake was a lot of floating logs and woody debris out in the main channel.

The gun went off, and I executed a good start, though maybe not a great one.  Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, rocketed into the lead, to no one’s surprise; I found myself alongside fellow Memphian Kata Dismukes in pursuit of South Carolinians Waylon Willis and Eric Mims.  Mims would normally be a factor in the fight for medals here, but this time he was “taking one for the team” as a rep for Epic Kayaks, paddling the company’s new V7 surf ski, a short, wide, polyethylene plastic model intended for novice ski enthusiasts.  He fell off the pace not long after we had entered the big river from the mouth of the Wolf.

After a few hundred meters I overtook Willis as well, and the competition began to take shape as I found Tony Short of Traverse City, Michigan, on my stern wake.  Over to our left Rick Carter of Eutawville, South Carolina, was opening a gap on Kata Dismukes, and knowing that he would be one of my main adversaries, I sidled over to get on his stern wake.

Rick and I and Tony paddled in single file, in that order, for the rest of the river leg, dodging plenty of flotsam along the way.  As we rounded the southern tip of Mud Island to enter the harbor, Rick took a tight line—too tight, I thought.  I tried to give the point a wider berth, but doing so required me to go around a floating log; Tony followed my lead.  Rick’s gamble paid off, and just like that he had a couple of boat lengths on us.  I had a feeling Rick had me beat: the only way I was going to overtake him was if he faded badly, and in my experience racing with him, he’s always been too strong to do that.  I put the hammer down anyway.  Tony was an unknown quantity to me, but I had to assume that he would have a fast finishing surge up his sleeve.  As it turned out, Rick and I and Tony would get a bit more strung out but otherwise finish in the same order we’d been in all along.

Mike Herbert finished first in 16 minutes, 58 seconds.  Recovering from a bout of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Mike was not at his best; but he didn’t need his best effort to win this one.  Kata Dismukes finished nine seconds behind Tony Short for fifth place overall and first place among the women.

My time was 18:32.  That’s quite a bit slower than I was last year and the year before, but I think it’s kind of a fool’s game to try to compare one year’s race with another.  Even though the river was slightly higher this year than last—18.8 feet on the Memphis gauge, compared with 18.5 feet last year—the debris in the river was a hindrance, and it seemed as though the times were a bit slower across the board.  The exception was Kata, who bettered last year’s time by six seconds.  I consider that a testament to the training she’s done this season.

As for Rick Carter, he’s now beaten me in two of our three meetings so far this year, and there’s no question the man is an improved racer.  Fellow South Carolinian Eric Mims told me he’s been working very hard on his stroke mechanics, and I think we’re seeing the results of that.  It sounds as though Rick is doing a lot of the things I try to advocate here in this blog.

Nearly two hundred boats participated in the race.  People in racing kayaks took the first nine places; the first non-race-boat finisher was Phil Capel of Sherwood, Arkansas, who paddled his “fast touring boat” to a time of 19:32.  Dale Burris and Don Walls, residents of the Lake Dardanelle area in Arkansas, added to their long list of tandem canoe titles in this race with a time of 19:58.

The results of the 34th Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race are posted here.  The second-place finisher, a Mr. "Spartacus Rabinowitz," is in fact Rick Carter.  Sometimes he likes to register under a fake name.  Be sure to note his "club name" over on the right.  He's an odd one, that Rick...

Looks like the weather may work out about right

This morning I paddled for 40 minutes, doing four 12-stroke sprints.  I paddled through several brief but heavy showers, and it was quite windy: according to the weather reports, it was blowing from the south at 15 to 20 miles per hour, with gusts up to 30 mph.

The good news is that it's looking more and more likely that the worst weather will be long gone by race time tomorrow morning.  The current forecast calls for partly cloudy skies with a 10% chance of precipitation and a southwest wind at 7 mph. Wind would probably be our main concern--there has been virtually no lightning even during the most severe moments of today's storms--but 7 mph from the southwest is just enough to cool us off.  Until we make the turn up into the harbor, that is; then, the wind will be at our backs and we'll be withering in 90-degree-Fahrenheit heat.  Oh well, I've survived that before, and I reckon I'll survive it one more time.

One more from the Memphis media juggernaut

Our weekly newspaper, The Memphis Flyer, has a cover story this week on the Mississippi River in general and the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race in particular.  Read it here.

Sometimes I make the news, too

This article appeared in The Commercial Appeal of Memphis this past Sunday, June 14.

Mike Herbert makes the news here

Today's edition of The Daily News of Memphis has an article about three-time Olympian, three-time world championships medalist, and Pan Am Games champion Mike Herbert.

Foul or fair?

This week I'm doing what I usually do when I want to be in peak form for a race: some brief, easy paddling; some short sprints; and as much rest and as good a diet as I can get.  On Tuesday I paddled for 60 minutes and did eight 12-stroke sprints.  Today I paddled for 40 minutes and did six 12-stroke sprints.  I'll do something similar tomorrow and load up the boat for transport to the starting area Saturday morning.

My out-of-the-boat life has been rocked by a somewhat stressful event this week.  Without boring you with the details (and the details are relatively mundane--no death in the family or anything like that), I'll just say that every athlete has to put up with some kind of distractions, and the challenge is not to let it disrupt his rest or his focus on the big competition at hand.

Rain in the Missouri and upper Mississippi drainages has prompted the National Weather Service to revise its river level predictions upward a bit.  Right now it looks like the Memphis gauge will read a little over 17 feet on Saturday.  That's good news, not because it will make much difference in the actual racing, but because it will make putting in and taking out a bit easier by covering up more of the rough terrain at the start and finish areas.

Somewhat more worrisome is the weather forecast.  I've been watching it all week, and the chances of showers and thunderstorms have risen as high as 100% and dropped as low as 0%... in other words, your guess is as good as mine, and apparently our guess is as good as that of the professional weather forecasters.  As I write this on Thursday afternoon, the prediction is heavy thunderstorms from Friday night into Saturday morning, but only a 20% chance of rain on Saturday.

The thing that seems fairly certain is that we'll have some thunderstorms in the area Saturday morning, but at least right now it looks like the chances aren't bad for a good racing window.  I saw Joe this morning and he was anxious about it, just like any good race director would be, but we agreed that all we can do is be prepared and otherwise think happy thoughts.

Monday photo feature

This photo, taken by Lance Murphey, ran on the cover of the May 1-2, 2010, issue of The Memphis News.  It was part of the pre-race publicity for that year's Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, which, sadly, had to be canceled at the last minute due to inclement weather.  That's me paddling in the foreground, with my friend Joe, who happens to be the OICK race director, in the background.

As of today, the forecast for this Saturday on www.weather.com calls for scattered thunderstorms with a 60% chance of precipitation.  That, of course, is likely to change one way or another between now and Saturday.  Keep your fingers crossed for at least a storm-free window between 10 and 11 AM for us to get the race in.  One thing we can count on is that it'll be hot: we're supposed to have highs in the low to mid 90s (Fahrenheit) all this week.

The river level, according to www.water.weather.gov, is predicted to be somewhere around 15 feet on the Memphis gauge.  That's some five to ten feet lower than it's been the last two years, but not a bad level.  We've had great races with much lower water.

Trying to get everything in line

On Thursday I did what is likely the hardest workout I'll do this year: ten pieces of 75 seconds on, 45 seconds off.  It's basically a lactic tolerance workout.  By the third or fourth piece my muscles were starting to burn, and as always my challenge was to keep my form together and not get sloppy.  In next Saturday's Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, when I enter the harbor with eight hundred meters or so to the finish line, I'll surely have to put the hammer down, either chasing somebody in front of me or holding off somebody behind me, and this workout is intended to prepare me for that.

On Friday I did the May-June strength routine for the last time, and yesterday I taught a beginner class out at Shelby Farms.  I plan to spend this coming week doing a few short sprints to polish my speed and getting as much rest as I can.

I haven't talked much about my shoulder lately, so here's an update.  In short, it's doing much better; but there are hints of pain in the area now and then.  I continue to be conscientious about the stretching and the warmup and the rehab exercises.  The best news is that it has held up very well through a few crushing workouts in the boat.

It seems to be out-of-the-boat activities that pose the greatest threat to my shoulder.  A couple of days ago I was in my workshop doing some tool sharpening, standing at a counter pressing blades down onto sharpening stones; after a while I realized that the previously-injured part of my shoulder was starting to hurt, and it continued to hurt the rest of the day.  Fortunately the pain has subsided, but I'm re-thinking my body position while I sharpen my tools.  The Japanese tradition is to kneel on the floor and put more of the entire body into the sharpening motions, and I think I'll give that another try the next time I'm sharpening.

What's the meaning of all this?

On Monday I did two sets of the May-June strength routine.

Yesterday was another rather hot but lovely day out on the river.  I started with four of my little power-building drills, where I backpaddle and then do eight hard forward strokes, overcoming the inertia; then I did ten 30-second sprints with two minutes recovery in between.

This morning I did two more sets of the May-June strength routine.  On Friday I'll do my last round of this routine before the June 20 Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.

Here's a question I'm sure every athlete asks himself or herself once in a while: Do I really need to be doing all this training?  Could I perform just as well on eighty percent of the training I've been doing?  Sixty percent?  Forty percent?

I'm not really going to attempt to answer this sort of question.  The answer is different for every athlete, and there are many variables: the athlete's age, the level of competition, the type and frequency of competitions... the question will always be asked because there is no definitive answer.

But it's a good question nevertheless, because I think you should always analyze and evaluate what you're doing.  Long-time readers of this blog know that in the last couple of years I've been focusing more on the mechanics of my stroke and not quite so much on the physiological stuff like aerobic fitness and lactic endurance and so on.  I think I've said on many occasions that technique is more important than anything else for the person who wants to go fast in a kayak or canoe.  And, as I get older, my body doesn't handle a high volume of training so well, but I can always make technical improvements.  And it's not like my fitness doesn't benefit even though I'm paying more attention to technique.

Then again, the physiological principles do remain important, and I'll say a few words here about how they play into my preparation for the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race ten days from now.

The OICKR is a pretty short race--about 5000 meters.  When the starting gun goes off, racers sprint off the line to get the best position they can; after several hundred meters, they settle into a pace they can sustain for the majority of the race.  For those familiar with the course, I'd say this transition takes place about where racers pass the boat ramp at the north end of Mud Island.

Racers maintain this sustainable (but still pretty quick, to be competitive) pace down the Mississippi for some three to four thousand meters, passing beneath the Hernando DeSoto Bridge in the process.  As they round the southern tip of Mud Island and head up into Wolf River Harbor, where the finish line awaits some 700 meters away, they pick up the intensity again for the final push.

That "middle of the race" pace is something I think I can handle no matter how much or how little training I've done.  Sure, it'll probably hurt more if I'm out of shape, but I can still make it happen.

It's the first several hundred meters and the last several hundred meters that I'm really preparing for in my training.  In my experience, if I haven't been practicing any kind of speed, then I have no turnover to get myself quickly off the starting line.  And in that final surge to the finish, lactic acid is beginning to assert itself in my muscles, and if I haven't done any kind of work on that energy system my muscles simply tie up and leave me in the lurch.

So that's been the focus of these workouts last week and this week.  (Ideally, I'd have started this sort of work a few weeks prior, but my shoulder ailment put that on hold for a bit.)  The workouts I did last week were for the lactic system: most of the pieces were at least as long as the recovery interval, and the objective was to maintain good stroke form while paddling at my OICKR start/finish pace throughout the workouts.  Yesterday's workout was more of a speed workout: the pieces were 30 seconds, versus two minutes for the recovery interval.  But the pieces were long enough for my body to go a bit lactic toward the end of each one.

The plan for tomorrow is to do the last hard workout before race day.  I'll discuss it in my next post.

Monday photo feature

This article appeared in The Commercial Appeal, the daily newspaper of Memphis, the day after the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race in 2012.

The race was back on for the first time since 2009.  A violent storm system swept in and scuttled the 2010 race at the last minute; in 2011, flooding on the Mississippi River forced the event's cancellation a couple of weeks ahead of time.  Shell-shocked by two hard-luck years in a row, race director Joe Royer considered retiring the event for good; but in the end he decided "the show must go on."  Having staged the race on the first Saturday in May for its entire history, he took this opportunity to pick a new date with a smaller likelihood of inclement weather: the day before Father's Day, which in 2012 fell on June 16.

One thing I've learned over years of watching reporters cover my sport is that even the good ones rarely get everything right.  While I think Mr. Brasher did a pretty good overall job with this story, I'm naturally pedantic and I tend to notice even the slightest inaccuracies.  I'm going to shine my blog's light on a gripe I have with this one.

When the results are posted during the post-race party each year, they are always posted by class: one sheet of paper for women's tandem kayak, another sheet of paper for men's solo canoe, and so on.  In making his list of "Top Finishers," Brasher apparently looked only at the sheet of paper for men's racing kayak (the class for surf skis, wildwater boats, flatwater K1s, and all other kayaks designed specifically for racing).

As a matter of fact, the top seven finishers in men's racing kayak were also the top seven finishers overall.  But then some racers in other classes came across the line.  With all due respect to Chris Brown, the following six people ran the course faster than he did, and therefore should have been mentioned in the paper as well:

Phil Capel (Sherwood, AR), men's fast touring kayak, 21:27
Dale Burris (Russellville, AR)/Don Walls (Dover, AR), USCA Pro C2, 21:33
Jim Budi (Beaufort, SC), men's fast touring kayak, 22:01
Laurens Willard (Charlotte, NC), men's fast touring kayak, 22:18
Wim Nouwen (Memphis, TN), men's fast touring kayak, 22:24

As you can see, there was in fact much more than just "a trio of Memphians" coming in on the heels of the top five.

As long as I'm in "wrong-righting" mode, I'll also recognize the top female finishers, who also deserved some newspaper ink:

Tonya Tittle (Memphis, TN), women's fast touring kayak, 24:19
Karen Kesselring (Hot Springs Village, AR), women's touring kayak 13'3" to 17'6", 25:19
Carol Lee Royer (Memphis, TN), women's racing kayak, 26:42
Traci Clever (Vicksburg, MS), women's touring kayak 13'3" to 17'6", 26:52
Kata Dismukes (Cordova, TN), women's touring kayak 13'3" to 17'6", 26:59
Trish Hipgrave (Bryson City, NC), women's touring kayak 13'3" to 17'6", 27:07

Pleasantly hot

The weather was unseasonably mild in late May, but with Fahrenheit temperatures hitting the 90s for the last several days it's beginning to feel summer-like.  Once the dog days arrive and we're flirting with triple-digit heat, life will be tough out on the river, but right now, with low-90s readings, I love it out there.

It's not uncommon for me to shy away from the mighty Mississippi and stay in the harbor.  In the wintertime hypothermia is a concern, and there's no reason to push my luck.  And then for much of the spring, the wind blows hard and the water is rougher out there than I want to deal with.  You might be surprised to hear that, seeing as how I've paddled some Class V whitewater and stuff like that, but the boats I paddle here in the Memphis area are much tippier than a creek boat, and are typically not rollable.  And if I'm dealing with an injury, like I have been the last few weeks, I want to stay in easier water where I'm not putting undue stress on it.

But when summer begins to settle in, the big river is a much more inviting place.  With a higher temperature for both the air and the water, an unplanned swim is not nearly such an ordeal.  And with the wind not blowing so hard, the river is smooth.

The weather was just right today, and after an easy session in the boat yesterday I looked forward to getting after it a bit more today.  I did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, then went out on the river did all kinds of fun stuff in the moving water: I worked on keeping the boat gliding through the squirrelly eddies along the bank, and then did some quick ferries beneath the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, paddling a pretty brisk tempo to keep from washing downstream as I went from one set of bridge pilings to another.  It was some of that "unstructured play" that I talked about last Monday, and it was a good way to paddle hard without it feeling like the sort of gut-busting workout that I did with Joe this past week.

More race training

Yesterday I did two sets of the May-June strength routine, and today I was back in the boat, doing another workout with Joe.

We did a "pyramid" workout: pieces of 1', 2', 3', 4', 5', 4', 3', 2', 1' with two minutes recovery in between.  I went out a bit too hard in the first half of the workout, and by the five-minute piece I was feeling the pain for sure.  I had to back off the intensity a bit, but I concentrated hard on taking good strokes and not letting my form fall apart.  All told, I feel good about how I finished out the workout.

Race training

With the big Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race less than three weeks away, it's time to get down to serious business.  Today Joe and I did eight pieces of two minutes on, two minutes off.  I aimed for a pace somewhat faster than my average pace is likely to be on June 20--something like what I might be paddling if I'm in a tight race in the last few hundred meters after the course enters the harbor.  I felt good for the first two or three, but by the fourth I was definitely feeling the pain.  I tried my best to maintain good form and control through the remainder of the workout.

Joe and I plan to do a workout together on Thursday, and on Tuesday and Thursday of next week.  The week after that we'll be tapering off and making sure we're ready for race day.

Don't take my word for it. Take Dawid Mocke's.

Here are a few tips from Dawid Mocke, one of the world's top surf ski paddlers for the last decade or so.

I like this article for its concise simplicity.  Improving your paddling should be a simple, fun thing to do rather than a complicated, tedious process.  True, many top-level paddlers have very sophisticated ideas about what they are doing, but such ideas are the cumulative result of many years of playing and having fun with the sport.

When I raced slalom back in the 1990s I attended many races that featured the nation's top racers, and one thing I noticed as I watched them paddle before and after competition is that they were always playing around on whatever river features were around.  No wave or hole was too small, and no maneuver was too silly.  I promptly adopted this habit and brought it back with me to Memphis, where whitewater features are small if they exist at all.  I think it helped me develop a modicum of skill in the dauntingly complex sport of whitewater slalom.

I've continued the habit in open-water/surf-ski racing, and it's helped me as much as anything in the areas of balance and technique that Mocke mentions in tips 1 and 2.  For example, it's not uncommon for a north or south wind to produce a steady procession of small waves in Wolf River Harbor, and I practice balance by paddling parallel to the waves' ridges and troughs--that is, I paddle east and west, back and forth across the long, narrow harbor.  This and other little drills are a staple of my training, and what you must understand is that I never expect to achieve any noticeable improvement in my balance in one session; it's a process that goes on over weeks and months and years.

Fortunately, I actually enjoy doing these little drills and stuff, and that's the whole point that I'm trying to make, and that I think Mocke is trying to make: you have to have fun with this.  When great paddlers get in their boats and work on balance and technique, it isn't something they have to do; it's something they want to do.

Monday photo feature

The first Battle On The Bayou race took place in 2010 at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  I won the first two editions of this event, but since then the quality of the field has inched upward and it's become a harder race to win.  But that's a good thing.  The next race is March 19, 2016.  The distance is actually about nine and a half miles, not 12 miles as this article states.

Way back inland

I arrived home Friday evening after about seven and a half hours of driving.  I enjoy visiting the seashore and the mountains and all such wonderful places, but I'm always happy to get back to my home here in good old Memphis, Tennessee.

I took it relatively easy on Thursday after a couple of fairly tiring sessions in the boat on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I did two sets of the May-June strength routine Thursday morning, and in the afternoon I went to the beach with the rest of the family and let the water of the Gulf work its therapeutic magic on me.

I was feeling the pep back in my step Friday morning, and I went out in the boat for sixty minutes, doing four backstrokes-followed-by-forward-strokes power-building drills and then some ultra-short race-pace training.  I usually feel pretty tired after 40 minutes or so of u.s.r.p.t., but this time I felt like I could go at least another half-hour.  I didn't do that, however.  Instead, I let my niece Rachel and my nephew Ben join me on the water one more time before I headed home.

Yesterday I did another two sets of the May-June strength routine.  I planned to get back in the boat this morning, but when a look at the Internet radar revealed a huge bunch of rain moving in, I decided to put it off until the afternoon.  I went down to the river around four o'clock this afternoon... and got rained on anyway.  Oh well-- "skin is waterproof," they used to tell me at summer camp.

Not a joint-friendly locale

Here we are in the Heart o' Dixie, albeit not the heart o' the Heart o' Dixie.  We're on Dauphin Island on the Gulf Coast of Alabama.

My mother took this photo of my niece Rachel and me a couple of days ago:

For a paddler, there's no mission more sacred than the sharing of the sport with the young ones in his life, that they may grow up to be just as eccentric as he.

This morning Mississippi Sound was as placid as it's likely to be this week, so I got up and out for a good steady hour-long paddle to work out the kinks from yesterday's workout.  I felt tired in the boat and just tried to relax and take good strokes in the sort-of-choppy water.

My shoulder also hurt a bit--I seem to have strained it, but I don't think I did so paddling.  The house we've rented this year has terrible water access for canoes and kayaks: the backyard is some five feet above the water level, requiring paddlers to climb down a vertical concrete retaining wall into their boats.  The process is particularly challenging with my tippy surf ski, and I think I've aggravated my shoulder while lowering myself down into the boat at an awkward angle.

I have a feeling beachfront property developers don't think much about paddlers when they build docks and wharves: the dock we have is perfect for a yacht or houseboat but not for any sort of human-powered craft.  I also expect that low docks aren't common on a barrier island like this because of the fluctuation of tides.  The truth is, I'm a bit spoiled by my situation at home, where I enjoy a nice low dock attached to a floating marina that's always right at water level.  I'll be glad to be back there.

Blustery beach

I think I've been participating in this little family trip to Dauphin Island for four years now, and at least at this time of year the weather seems never to be dead calm.  So far this week it's been breezy with occasional heavy storms moving through.  I'm a fairly regimented guy by nature, but doing an "outdoor" sport has taught me to make some adjustments on the fly when the conditions aren't what I'd like them to be.

Yesterday I paddled with my 11-year-old niece Rachel.  Right now she seems to be the most enthusiastic of my sister's four kids for paddling, and she did very well even though the boat I'd brought for her to paddle was really designed for a heavier-set adult.  The wind pushed her around some but she handled it well.  After we paddled for a half-hour or so I helped her with some deep-water self-rescue technique.

This morning some very strong storms passed through, and outside our window Mississippi Sound looked as violent as the open sea.  I stayed in and did two sets of the May-June strength routine.  By this afternoon things had calmed down and I embarked on a 60-minute session in the sound.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did eight 30-stroke sprints at three-minute intervals.  I still had some waves to deal with that were big enough to make me open my surf ski's drain plug, but I was able to paddle with good power for most of the workout.

After that I stayed in the boat and paddled some more with Rachel and with her 12-year-old brother, Ben.  This additional labor of love finished me off for the day.

Monday photo feature

This article appeared in the Asheville Citizen-Times the day after a 2003 race called The French Broad Paddle Challenge, which has since morphed into a two-day event called the French Broad Classique.

Lecky Haller, a Maryland native who now makes his home in Asheville, North Carolina, is one of the greatest canoe-kayak athletes the U.S. has ever had.  He and his brother Fritz won the 1983 world championship in whitewater slalom double canoe; he teamed up with Jamie McEwan to finish a split-second out of the medals in the 1992 Olympic C2 slalom competition; and he made another Olympic team, in 2000, with Matt Taylor as a C2 slalom partner.

Because of all that and more, I've always been a bit embarrassed by this article because it leads the reader to believe that I am an athlete of the same caliber as Lecky.  It also points out some ways in which our sport is not so easy to understand for people who are not fully immersed in it.

The article fails to mention that Lecky and I were competing in different boat classes, and therefore not really competing against each other: Lecky, ever the die-hard canoeist, was paddling a USCA-style marathon single canoe (C1), and he was in fact the fastest paddler on the river in that class that day.  I, meanwhile, was in a single kayak (K1).  The most obvious difference between these two boats is that a canoeist uses a single-bladed paddle while a kayaker uses a paddle with two blades, and that alone gives the kayaker a significant speed advantage.  Even so, I knew better than to ignore Lecky once the gun went off: I've actually been beaten in my kayak by several top C1 paddlers (I've written on that topic here), and I was not at all certain that an athlete as good as Lecky wouldn't get the better of me.  Even though, as it turned out, he didn't, I was nevertheless one of only three kayakers he didn't beat.

If I had been paddling the same kind of boat Lecky was in, I'm fairly certain he would have beaten me easily.  What's more, paddling a marathon canoe is not even what Lecky does best: his greatest gift, the gift that carried him to a world title and two Olympic teams, is paddling in the stern of a whitewater C2.  So hyping the presence of this particular Olympian in a sixteen-mile race down a mostly-flat section of the French Broad River is like hyping the presence of an Olympic diver in an open-water swim competition.

And so, I sort of cringed when the writer stated that I'd come to take "a shot at Haller's head" when in fact Lecky was easily the best athlete on the river.  For his part, Lecky just laughed about it--on top of everything else, he's an exceptionally nice, down-to-Earth guy.  I saw him a month or so after this article ran and he teasingly called me "Champ."

A broader issue raised by this article is that the casual observer is easily confused by the fact that all vessels in our sport are not created equal.  More than once, regarding a race in which some great canoeist has competed, I've had to answer the question, "If that guy is such a big deal, how come he wasn't the fastest?"  I sometimes wonder whether canoeists like having kayakers in the same races as they, since in most cases it means a canoeist won't be the first across the finish line.

This is probably one of the reasons our sport never has achieved the broader popularity of, say, snow-skiing: in skiing, every athlete competes on two skis, without the confusing division into classes that paddling has.

Doing it well is what's fun

I did the May-June strength routine both Friday and yesterday, and it feels good to be active with that.  I think the rubber band exercises complement nicely the ones I'd already been doing for my shoulder.

On Saturday I paddled for 40 minutes in the harbor and a little bit out on the river.  I did three 8-stroke sprints and paddled a not-too-hard and not-too-easy pace.  Though it was officially a recovery session after the harder paddling I'd done on Thursday, I wasn't completely docile out there.  The only time I really keep the intensity low is when I'm truly exhausted, such as on the day after a race.  When I'm feeling good I'll push the pace a little from time to time, and of course concentrate on good technique... I like paddling with good technique, after all.

I am now out of town once again: each year my mother and I and my sister's family get together down at Dauphin Island on the Alabama Gulf Coast.  I hope to get a couple of good workouts in, but I've also brought a second boat so my nieces and nephews can have some fun with me on the water.  The biggest challenge will be the weather: it looks like there will be storms in the area all week.

Trying to train for real again

Last weekend I traveled to Texas to see my niece graduate from college, and for several days I didn't paddle or do much of anything else.  I hoped that bit of rest might finish off this shoulder ailment.

Alas, when I paddled Tuesday (70 minutes in the harbor), it flared up again, and has done so a couple of more times this week.  But the soreness subsides quickly, and I'm hoping that's a sign of improvement.  I'm continuing to stretch and warm up thoroughly and do several exercises that target the area.

Yesterday I started up a new strength routine to run from now until the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race on June 20 (I'll call it the May-June strength routine).  Because I'll be spending next week on the Alabama Gulf Coast, I wanted this routine to be easily portable; so I went with some body-weight and rubber band exercises.  It goes like this:

1.  Hindu squats (demonstrated in this video)
2.  Rubber band exercises demonstrated at 6:58 & 7:11 of this video by reigning Olympic K1 slalom champion Daniele Molmenti
3.  Four-way abdominal exercises
4.  A couple of rubber band exercises that I can't find any video of
5.  "Superman" plank exercises
6.  Rubber band exercises seen at 8:42 & 9:30 of the Daniele Molmenti video

This was the first time since March that I'd done any sort of leg exercises, and right now my quadriceps muscles are wicked sore as a result.

This morning I went back down to the harbor and did some higher-intensity paddling for the first time since the shoulder started hurting.  After a ten-minute warmup, I did three 8-stroke sprints followed by 40 minutes of ultra-short race pace training.  The shoulder felt fine until about 45 minutes in, when I began to feel some soreness.  I tried to stay relaxed and do the work with my legs and lower torso.

Monday photo feature

This article appeared in The Vicksburg Post the day after the 2011 Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race.  That year I had my fastest time ever--an hour, 56 minutes, 34 seconds--and that time stood for two years as the course record.  In 2013, three-time Olympian Mike Herbert knocked almost five minutes off my mark with a 1:51:43 clocking.

Teaching is learning

Yesterday morning I taught the first of six "Intro to Kayaking" classes that Outdoors, Inc., is offering this summer.  Heavy rain had fallen overnight, but by 8 AM the worst of it had moved out and five students and I braved the lingering showers on Pine Lake out at Shelby Farms.

One of the best woodworking instructors I have worked with once pointed out that "the most highly-skilled people are the ones who simply do the basics better than everyone else."  That's why I think teaching others is the best way to become truly proficient at something: even though I was a math major in college, it wasn't until I had taught it at the high school level for a few years that I gained a comfortable knowledge of mathematics up through first-year calculus.  That's because teaching forced me to revisit the basics and learn things I'd thought I'd known even better.  Paddling is no different.  In these classes out at Pine Lake, I'm covering things I've done a million times--adjusting the life jacket and skirt, holding the paddle, getting in a boat and adjusting the foot pegs and engaging the rudder--but I'm forced to explain why I do each step the way I do, and questions from the beginning students often prompt me to think about the basics in ways I never have before.

One of the best summer camp canoeing programs I have ever seen is the one at Camp Merrie-Woode for girls near Cashiers, North Carolina.  The highest rank a girl can achieve in that program is "Captain," and one of the final hurdles she must clear to earn that rank is to teach some novice person the basics of paddling.  I believe that to call yourself an expert in any field, you must spend time teaching others.

The wheels continue to turn

I did another loop of the harbor (70 minutes) with Joe yesterday morning.  The shoulder was sore Wednesday evening and yesterday morning, but it didn't bother me in the boat.

I've kept up my April-May strength routine through all this; I plan to switch over to a May-June routine by next week.

Hopeful signs

These days I seem to be alternating between feeling that the shoulder problem is all gone and feeling just a hint of pain there.  I've been through both states today.  This morning I felt no pain at all; then, while paddling a full loop of the harbor with Joe, I had several moments where I felt that hint of pain.  Now, sitting here writing this post in the evening, I'm back to feeling no pain at all.

All told, I'm encouraged by what's going on, and there's no question the shoulder is doing better on average.  I'm reading these occasional hints of pain as caution signs, telling me not to push too hard too soon.  The plan for this week is to do another easy lap of the harbor on Thursday, and then on Saturday teach the first of six "Intro to Kayaking" classes for Outdoors, Inc., that I've got scheduled for this summer.  Maybe by next week I'll be ready to do some real workouts again.

Monday photo feature

While doing some cleaning last week I found a few paddling- or river-related newspaper clippings that I'd decided were worth keeping for whatever reason.  I think I'll share them here over the next few Mondays.

Each summer when I was little, my family would join my parents' best friends' family at the cabin they owned on the Spring River at the resort town of Hardy, Arkansas, a couple of hours from Memphis.  These trips felt magical to me for many reasons--I think I've mentioned in the past that I first got in a canoe at Hardy--but there was nothing I loved more than the old steel bridge, dubbed "the broken-down bridge" by my sister and me because of its rusty, rickety appearance.

This article appeared in Memphis's daily newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, after floodwaters swept the bridge away in December of 1982.

I was no longer a little kid in 1982--I turned 15 that year--but I was still naive enough to believe that I could count on beloved traditions and routines to go on forever.  The demise of the "broken-down bridge" was one of two major blows to that belief I took in '82 (the other being the sale of the beautiful property my summer camp had occupied since 1924; thankfully, the camp's director was able to arrange a partnership that bought the camp and moved it to a lovely location nearby).  Today, a generic concrete bridge spans the Spring River where the old one had stood.

In search of good muscular health

I've spent the week nursing my shoulder along and engaging cautiously in activities.

By Tuesday the cortisone shot and anti-inflammatory medication seemed to be taking effect, and the pain in my right shoulder had subsided.  I did a very short, very easy paddle Tuesday morning, going from the marina down to the mouth of the harbor and back.

After many years of dealing, as both a distance runner and a paddler, with a variety of aches and pains and muscle strains, I'm still no great expert, but I have learned a few things.  One of them is to resist the urge to return to training too quickly.  Another is that the injury was probably caused by a flaw in technique or by a muscle imbalance, and that I should look for some kind of corrective measure.

Correcting a muscle imbalance is a relatively simple matter.  I've found a couple of very simple exercises that I hope will address muscle weaknesses in the rotator cuff area in the coming weeks.  Determining whether there's a problem in my stroke is a trickier challenge for a self-coached athlete with no expert eyes on him every day.  At times like this I feel like my own worst enemy, trying to "protect" the injured area with each stroke rather than just paddling in a normal, relaxed way.

I paddled again on Friday--again, I just went down to the mouth of the harbor and back--and felt a bit more confident.  I hope to increase the distance a little bit next week and see how higher intensity feels the week after that.

Monday photo feature

Jimmy Guidry of Lafayette, Louisiana, was all set to race at Vicksburg several weeks ago, but a live oak branch in the yard of the bed-and-breakfast where he was staying forced him to rethink that plan. There was not a scratch on his truck.

Mostly good news, I guess

I saw the orthopedic doctor Friday and though I didn't have an MRI done (that would have bumped us up into a higher level of insurance company red tape), he was very confident that my injury was merely some inflammation rather than a tear.  I first noticed the pain in the shoulder as I did a recovery paddle the morning after the race at Bayou Teche two weeks ago, and the doctor said that if I had torn something in the race I would have known it immediately.

And that was my main purpose for going to the doctor: making sure this isn't something serious that would require surgery or some other aggressive treatment.  It turns out it's most likely not, and that's a good thing.  I'm always a little disheartened, however, at how little understanding of athletes the typical orthopedist seems to have.  This doctor, while no doubt an expert in the human skeletomuscular system, didn't seem all that interested in sharing insight on how my injury might have developed, how I might get back to full strength as soon as possible, or how I might prevent the injury from reoccurring.  He gave me a cortisone shot and prescribed an oral anti-inflammatory, and told me to take a few days off from paddling until I felt better.

And in fact I am spending a few days out of the boat.  With seven weeks before my next race, some rest won't hurt.  And I'm still doing my strength routine in the interim.  But I'm going to look for ways to rehabilitate this ailment so I can paddle again soon without recurrence.