Monday photo feature

Litter in our waterways is a problem paddlers all over the world put up with.  When I paddle on the Memphis riverfront, there are days when there's no litter in sight and there's no place more beautiful, but there are other days, typically after a period of heavy rain, when the mostly polymer-based flotsam is so thick I have to think about where I put my blade in the water.

From time to time I actually pluck pieces of litter from the water and toss them in the front part of my surf ski's footwell so I can dispose of them properly after I'm done paddling.  Other times the problem seems so impossible for a lone little guy like me to solve that I just throw up my hands and don't bother.

Indeed, I believe the problem won't truly be solved until everybody pitches in.  By "everybody" I do mean everybody--every single citizen of our society.  And by "pitching in" I mean not just putting refuse in the trash can, but ceasing to purchase in the first place all the cheap plastic junk that's being manufactured in this world, as well as all the pseudo-food that comes in low-grade plastic packaging.

During the awards ceremony at Vicksburg a couple of weeks ago, a special award, the "Trash Line Award," was bestowed upon Mr. Kelly McGinnis of suburban Jackson, Mississippi.  I wasn't really in the loop on the exact reason Kelly was selected for this award, but I think it had something to do with his unwavering commitment to the removal of litter from all our waterways.  Photo by Paul Ingram.

Presiding over the ceremony are Laura Callaway and Cliff Geter.  I believe the "M" on Cliff's ball cap stands for "Moratorium," as in "Let's declare a moratorium on the production and purchase of all plastic products that serve mankind in no meaningful way whatsoever and simply wind up polluting the lakes, rivers, and oceans where we paddle."  Once that's happened, and we realize we don't need so much money to buy useless stuff or to pay our medical bills for the maladies caused by consumption of junk food that came in plastic packaging as well as the air pollution that results from polymer manufacturing processes, we can stop working so many hours at jobs we don't like and spend more of our precious lives paddling our boats on our beautiful litter-free waterways.

"Tearin' it up," but not the way I intended

I went to the doctor Friday afternoon.  An x-ray of my pelvis showed nothing wrong, and the doctor said I probably have a muscle tear in my left hip area.  That sounds plausible to me.  I do a lot of rotating at the hip--in the boat, of course, and also in my stretching and warmup routines--and it's entirely possible that I cranked it too hard at some point and tore something.  And I think I made it worse once I discovered something was wrong.  When something hurts, I tend to want to stretch the area in an attempt to alleviate it, and in this case that was the wrong thing to do because it probably exacerbated the tear.

There's not much you can do for a muscle tear except rest and let it heal.  So that's what I'm doing.  My current strength routine (which I'll talk more about when I get a chance) doesn't affect that area, so I'll do that a bit more frequently this coming week since I'll be out of the boat.  I also plan to stay generally active, riding my bike and doing whatever else I might think of that won't aggravate the injury.  And I never have any trouble finding things to do in my non-athletic life.

The doctor thought a week or so out of the boat would be enough time for the muscle to mend.  After that, I need to ease back into paddling for another week or two.  With the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race five weeks away, it's not an ideal situation, but as long as I don't rush things I think I'll have time to recover and be decently ready to go by the 18th of June.

Today's inspiration

Here's an inspiring little video put together by the Nantahala Outdoor Center:




Basically, it celebrates everything that is good about competition, and how a beautiful river and a joyous sport like canoeing and kayaking can bring out all those good things.  Several of my favorite quotes:

"I love racing, and I love the fact that it made me better and more valuable in every role that I had at NOC... to do it right, a little bit better each time, matters."  --Gordon Grant

"Guests want to be surrounded by people who are really at the top of their game--people who are pushing the envelope, doing it gracefully..."  --John Burton

"Once you're been there, it's with you.  Once you've put your toe in the Nantahala River, it's with you forever."  --Lecky Haller


Paddlesports are not immune to the uglier aspects of competition.  Over the years I've encountered a few bloated egos, some behind-the-scenes backbiting, even some underhanded in-race tactics once or twice.  But in general I think the shared love for the beautiful environs promotes unity rather than discord among canoe and kayak racers.

The rivers around the North Carolina summer camp I attended, including the Nantahala, were where I first learned to love paddling.  Like Lecky said, it's with me forever.  As I've gotten older and visited an ever-growing list of rivers, I've learned to see that beauty in them as well, including, significantly, my river here at home, the Mississippi.

Paddles and baseball bats

I've managed to get an appointment with the orthopedist for this afternoon.  My left hip is hurting as much as ever this morning, and I hope I can find out what's going on and get myself on the road to a speedy recovery.

During baseball season I like to listen to Saint Louis Cardinals games on the radio  This week they played a series in Anaheim with the California Angels, whose roster includes former Cardinal Albert Pujols.  In eleven seasons with the Cardinals,  Pujols was their superstar and one of the undisputed stars in all of baseball.  Once his career is over, he should be a lock for induction into the baseball Hall of Fame on the basis of his performance during those years.

Sadly, Pujols has struggled with foot and leg injuries since signing as a free agent with the Angels after the 2011 season.  So far this season his batting average has languished below .200.  As he took an at-bat the other night, Cardinals radio announcers John Rooney and Rick Horton discussed his lower-body ailments and the damper they have put on his swing.  A powerful swing, they explained, is not simply a motion of the arms; it starts in the hips and torso, which in turn are dependent on legs and feet that are firmly planted on the ground.

Much the same is true of an effective paddle stroke.  A kayaker's feet are planted against the footboard, and leg drive generates rotation at the hips.  Most readers of this blog probably know this, but I do encounter people fairly often who are surprised that pain in the hips could have an impact on paddling a boat.  I always enjoy learning examples of similar issues in other sports.

Some racing advice from Mr. Barton

Since I won't be racing myself this weekend, I'll share this bit of racing advice that Greg Barton posted on his Face Book athlete page last week:

Wake Jumping 

One km into today’s Lake Whatcom Classic, I found myself on the stern wake of Brandon & Heather Nelson in a double ski, who were on the stern wake of a 4+ rowing shell. Off to our left was DJ Jacobsen & Kevin Olney drafting a 4x scull.
About 4 km into the race, the 4+ shell starting making a right turn, indicating they were doing the short course while the rest of us were doing the long course. That left the Nelsons and me without our “ride”. By that point, the 4x scull had pulled 60-80m ahead of us.
This brings up a major decision in a distance race – do I attempt to catch the lead pack, team up with the Nelson double ski, or paddle solo? If you are capable of staying with a faster boat or pack, it will give you a noticeably faster time for the race – provided you don’t tire yourself out so much that you completely die off towards the end. Even then, it may be worth it if you can stay with the faster boat for a significant time before falling off.
I opted to chase down the lead pack. There are 2 ways to go about this – 1) Climb up and over a series of wakes from directly behind the leader(s), or move out to the side into clear water and angle up to them just outside of the wakes. Since I was already within the vee of the lead wake at the point, I opted to paddle up the center. Even 80 meters back, there are still wakes – especially if they are from teamboats (which are heavier) or multiple craft.
The strategy is to surf the small wake for a period of time, then put in a hard sprint to move up and over the next wake. Rest for a short period, then sprint again to move another wake closer. The timing and effort is important. You need to sprint hard enough to climb over the next wake in 15-20 seconds. If instead you push forward with a steady grind, you’ll likely tire out before gaining enough speed to jump the wake. Then you need to chose your rest period – not enough rest before jumping the next wave and you’ll be too tired to make it. But resting too long decreases your chance of ever catching the leaders – especially if they are moving faster than you can paddle on your own. A series of sprints and high intensity paddling can only be maintained for a certain period of time. More than 5-10 minutes and you will likely tire before catching the pack.
My sequence was to jump a wake, recover for 30-60 seconds until I felt capable of going again and sprinting over the next wake. This was not a full recovery – I was still tired from the previous sprint before going again. But I knew I had to catch them before my limited energy reserves would be completely depleted. The good news is that each progressive wake becomes slightly larger and an easier ride, until you finally reach the stern wake of the last boat on the pack.
I was dead tired when finally catching up, but then tried to paddle as conservatively as possible while maintaining a position on the stern wake of the double ski. I kept this position until about 1.5 km from the finish. First I moved up to the side wake of the double ski, rested briefly and then pulled up alongside the 4x scull to challenge for the lead – eventually pulling ahead.
Jacobsen & Olney followed me up on my side wake. Then they took the lead for a period while I rode their side wake. I managed to pull ahead for a final time and held them off in a sprint to the finish.
It was an exciting race. Experience definitely pays off. The more times you put yourself in these situations and try different strategies, the more you’ll learn what does and doesn’t work for you!
Here’s the results.

One of the things I've always admired about Greg is his desire to master every aspect of canoe and kayak racing.  Whether it's "wake-jumping," or starts, or buoy turns, or any other skill, Greg seeks to find the methods that work best for him and be a truly complete racer.  I also like his problem-solving approach to dealing with issues he encounters on the water: I remember reading something he wrote once about arriving at a race in the Pacific Northwest and finding the conditions much colder than he'd expected, and fashioning a makeshift pair of pogies from a couple of plastic bags.

Any time you read something on this blog that you find particularly wise or enlightening, you can be sure that it is full of stuff I learned from Greg and similarly accomplished athletes.

Sigh.

Well, there will be no race for me this weekend.

The plan had been to drive up to the Osage River east of Jefferson City, Missouri, to participate in the Osage Spring 12 race on Saturday.

But on Tuesday I woke up with a sharp pain in my left hip area.  I thought maybe I'd slept on it wrong, or that maybe I'd done something Monday to tweak my back in that area, and that it would hurt for a couple of days but work itself out eventually.  I've had my share of little episodes like that where something is just a little out of joint and putting pressure on a nerve or something like that.

Now here I am two and a half days later and the area hurts as much as ever.  I went downtown this morning and attempted to paddle, but even paddling easy I could manage only 20 painful minutes.  The worst moments were the strokes on my right: as I pulled lightly on the foot strap with my left foot to drive my torso rotation, the pain in my left hip made me wince each time.

So, I'm afraid racing this weekend is out of the question.  Sure, Saturday is still a couple of days off, and if this were a local race I might at least go down there and warm up and see how it feels; but the Osage River is a five- or six-hour drive from here, and I just can't justify going all the way there just to have to withdraw at the last minute.

I'd planned to go to this same race last year, but my shoulder was bothering me and I ended up staying home.  Some higher authority must not want me to paddle on the Osage River.

As for what I'm going to do about this injury, I'm not sure yet.  Typically I give it a few days to see if there's any sign of it healing on its own.  But if I'm going to end up seeing a doctor, I need to do it soon because I have a trip to the beach with my mom and my sister's family planned for week after next, and I want to have any treatments underway by then.  The Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race is just three weeks or so after I get back from that trip.

Monday photo feature

We had gorgeous weather here in the greater Memphis area this past weekend.  And in fact, we've had a long run of pleasant weather this spring.  There's been quite a bit of rain and quite a bit of wind, but temperatures have been in mostly a very comfortable range for weeks.  In many years we go from chilly to hot very abruptly, but that hasn't been the case this year.

Purple martins take up residence all up and down the Memphis riverfront at this time of year.  We've got an active family at the marina where I keep my boat.  I've enjoyed their company while stretching on the dock and readying my boat and gear for paddling.

Good paddling weekend

I have a race up in Missouri this Saturday, and I'd like to do well in that.  But there's a lot of season to come after that, and I'm moving ahead with my eye toward the future as well.  A big date on the calendar is June 18, when the 35th Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race takes place.  It's my hometown race, and that's reason enough to want to do well, but it's also a very competitive race.  In some years there are as many as a half dozen guys right around my ability level, and we're all fighting it out to finish in the medals.  And it's a short race--5000 meters--so I've got to start working on speed and lactic endurance more.  So that will be a theme of the next month or so of training.

On Saturday I paddled for 60 minutes.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did a set of eight one-minute pieces with two minutes recovery.  I had my GPS with me and was shooting for 8 miles per hour during each piece.  When I went too fast--at times I hit as high as 8.7 or 8.8 mph--I tried to back off the intensity ever so slightly while maintaining good solid stroke form.

Yesterday I did a longer session (100 minutes) at a strong tempo.  It was a beautiful day and I paddled up the Mississippi above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and ferried across to paddle several kilometers up the Loosahatchie Chute, much like Ted Burnell and I had done last Monday.  This is one of my favorite outdoor places in the Memphis area; when you're paddling up there with your back to the city, all you see is wilderness populated by birds and fish and turtles and beavers.  Ted likened it to paddling up the Zambezi.  Then when you come back downriver you have arguably the best view of the Memphis skyline there is.

I didn't see any jumping Asian carp yesterday, but the fish sure were active underwater.  Three or four times I hit one with my paddle.  They were probably catfish, though they could have been alligator gar or sea monsters or who knows what.

U.S. Olympic paddling update

There was a U.S. Olympic Team selection event for flatwater sprint paddlers last weekend on Lake Lanier at Gainesville, Georgia.  This weekend the slalom racers were on the water at Oklahoma City's new artificial whitewater venue for the second of their two selection events.

The International Olympic Committee has a pre-set number of athletes it will allow to compete in canoe and kayak events at Rio this summer.  How those berths are distributed among nations is determined by how each nation performs in the previous year's world championships and in the championships for its continent or global region (i.e., Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania, the Americas).

In flatwater, the U.S. athletes did not perform well enough at the 2015 world championships to secure any berths in the Rio Olympics.  That means that any Olympic berths the U.S. gets will be determined at the Pan American Championships on May 19-20 at Lake Lanier.  And so last weekend's trials on Lanier were a competition for the right to race in the Pan Ams.  The following athletes won their classes last weekend and will now attempt to qualify for spots in the Olympics later this month:

Men's 1000-meter single canoe: Ian Ross, Bethesda, Maryland
Men's 1000-meter double canoe: Ian Ross, Bethesda, Maryland, and Gavin Ross, Bethesda, Maryland
Men's 200-meter single canoe: Ben Hefner, Gainesville, Georgia
Women's 500-meter double canoe (non-Olympic event): Lydia Keefe Sampson, Seattle, Washington, and Azusa Murphy, Seattle, Washington
Women's 500-meter double kayak: Farran Smith and Samantha Barlow, San Diego, California
Women's 500-meter single kayak: Maggie Hogan, Huntington Beach, California
Men's 1000-meter single kayak: Chris Miller, Gainesville, Georgia
Men's 1000-meter double kayak: Chris Miller, Gainesville, Georgia, and Stanton Collins, Gainesville, Georgia
Men's 200-meter double kayak: Chris Miller, Gainesville, Georgia, and Stanton Collins, Gainesville, Georgia
Women's 500-meter single canoe (non-Olympic event): Lydia Keefe Sampson, Seattle, Washington
Women's 200-meter single para-kayak: Anja Pierce, Pittsford, New York
Men's 200-meter single para-kayak: Nik Miller, Virginia Beach, Virginia
Men's 200-meter single kayak: Tim Hornsby, Atlanta, Georgia
Women's 200-meter single kayak: Emily Wright, Fairport, New York

Tim Hornsby, who competed in 200-meter single kayak at the 2012 London Games, is the only member of this group who has previous Olympic experience.

In slalom, meanwhile, the U.S. Olympic Team is now complete.  Well, almost.

The U.S. secured Olympic berths in men's kayak and men's single canoe at the 2015 world championships, by virtue of Michal Smolen's third-place finish in K1 and Casey Eichfeld's fourth-place finish in C1.  Smolen and Eichfeld did not actually win the right to fill those berths in Rio at last year's worlds, but they did earn a points advantage over other U.S. athletes, and they closed the deal at the selection event at Charlotte last month.

In the other two slalom classes, women's kayak and men's double canoe, no athletes finished racing at Charlotte with an insurmountable point total for Olympic selection, and so competition continued in those classes this weekend at Oklahoma City.

Ashley Nee of Darnestown, Maryland, who had earned a K1W Olympic berth for the U.S. at the Pan American Championships at Minden, Ontario, last summer, won at Charlotte for an edge in points coming into Oklahoma City.  Dana Mann took the win this weekend, pulling into a tie with Nee in points, but Nee has been named to the Olympic Team because she was the one who qualified the spot at the Pan Ams.

In men's double canoe, the team of Casey Eichfeld and Devin McEwan beat out Michal Smolen and Zach Lokken this weekend.  Coupled with their win at Charlotte last month, this victory earned them the U.S. Olympic nomination in C2.

Now, this is where I still don't understand what's going on.  As I mentioned in this post several weeks ago, the U.S. has qualified to enter four warm bodies in whitewater slalom at the Games.  What the U.S. would like to do is simply enter the four boats that have emerged from its selection process, given that Casey Eichfeld is in both the winning C1 and the winning C2; but apparently the ICF hasn't made up its mind yet if that's an acceptable way for a nation to use its berths.

How did it even happen that the U.S. has only four qualified athlete berths?  Eichfeld/McEwan won the C2 class at the Pan Ams last summer, so why didn't that qualify an entire boat for the U.S.?  Was it because Casey Eichfeld had already qualified the C1 berth for the U.S.?  If so, why shouldn't his status as a U.S. Olympic nomination in both C1 and C2 be reason enough for the U.S. to send boats in all four classes?

I've pored over the USA Canoe-Kayak website but have not found an answer there.  All I know is that according to this article, there's a chance that either Ashley Nee or Devin McEwan will end up staying home this summer.  I sure hope it doesn't happen that way.

MORE video from Vicksburg

Here's a shorter video that Paul Ingram and Patrick Smith put together.  This one is video footage only--no stills.  Starting at 2:23 there's some nice footage of the Pellerins and Tave Lamperez, then me, then Randy Hargroder and Brad Rex and Rick Carter.

Video from Vicksburg

Paul Ingram has been taking great photos of the Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race for a few years now.  He did so again this year, and he also teamed up with Patrick Smith to make a video.  In it you will see aerial footage, land-based footage, and still photos of this Saturday's race:

Writin' for Surf Ski News

The Surf Ski News website has posted an account of the race at Vicksburg written by yours truly.  It's similar to the race report I posted here, but I tailored it a bit for the S.S.N. audience.  The post features some nice photos that photographer Paul Ingram took on Saturday.  Go check it out here.

Recovering and giving the two-bit tour

Yesterday was definitely a recovery day after the beating I put on my body in Saturday's race.  I did some stretching at home and then went down to the river for a very easy 30-minute paddle.  I spent probably ten of those 30 minutes just sitting in the boat talking to a couple of friends I ran into down there.

I woke up today feeling much better, and that was a good thing because I had an afternoon paddle planned with racing friend Ted Burnell of Chattanooga, who is in town on business for a couple of days.  Ted and I raced twice last year, with me barely winning once and him barely winning once, so I'd say we're pretty evenly matched.  He'd probably be a great training partner for me if we lived in the same city.

We met around 3 o'clock this afternoon and paddled for two hours.  I tried to give him a nice well-rounded experience out on the Mississippi: we paddled out of the harbor and upstream to the Greenbelt Park, then ferried over to paddle up the west side of the Loosahatchie Bar.  With the river at about 13.6 feet and rising on the Memphis gauge, we had to do a couple of slick attainment moves to get up over the Corps of Engineers dikes there.

Then we turned around and came back downriver, admiring the view of the downtown skyline.  I pointed out a few riverfront landmarks before saying goodbye back where Ted's car was parked.  Ted seemed to think it was a worthwhile afternoon spent on the river, and I was glad to have the chance to show him around.  I know I enjoy visiting the places where other people paddle.

Monday photo feature

I mentioned several weeks ago that I was sort of rooting for the C2 team of Casey Eichfeld and Devin McEwan to make the U.S. Olympic Team because Devin is the son of the first U.S. Olympic medalist in whitewater slalom, the late Jamie McEwan.

What I did not mention is that Olympic medal notwithstanding, Jamie was not even the most famous member of his family.  Devin's mother, and Jamie's widow, is none other than cartoonist Sandra Boynton, the creator of those cute hippos and rhinos and similar critters that you see on greeting cards and coffee mugs and stuff.  A couple of years ago I got me this cool Boynton tee shirt that Devin and Casey were selling.

The Olympic selection process for slalom resumes this coming weekend on the new whitewater course at Oklahoma City.  McEwan/Eichfeld are hoping to win an Olympic berth in the C2 class, and the women's kayak (K1W) berth is up for grabs as well.

This past weekend saw a selection event for flatwater sprint racing on Lake Lanier at Gainesville, Georgia.  The field of contenders for spots on the U.S.  Olympic Team has been narrowed down, as explained on the Surf Ski News website, here.  I'll talk more about it once I get up to speed.

Racing on the mighty Mississippi at Vicksburg

I got to Vicksburg Friday afternoon, crossed the river to drop off my boat up at Madison Parish Port, returned to town and went by the race check-in place, and retired to my motel for a good night's sleep.

Yesterday morning there was a line of strong storms over in Louisiana, but it looked as though they might hold off long enough to get the race in.  I joined fellow racers on the shuttle bus up to the start at Madison Parish Port and went about the business of getting my boat and gear ready to go under overcast but not-too-threatening skies.

The Mississippi was a bit low for this year's race: the Vicksburg gauge reading was 26.9 feet and dropping as final race preparations were underway.  Times were likely to be slow, and up at the start we had to navigate some knee-deep mud to get our boats in the water.  As I fought my way from the quagmire near the bank out into open water, my rudder got stuck in the mud and twisted out of alignment, so I had to go back to the bank and stand in the mud again while I got it readjusted.

With that nuisance distraction behind me, I warmed up and moved into position on the starting line.  There were three boats there that I figured would be my main competition.  Rick Carter of Eutawville, South Carolina, had proven himself a sturdy nemesis even though he is a relative newcomer to the sport.  The Pellerin triplets (Carson, Conrad, and Peyton) of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, were joined by Tave Lamperez of Lafayette to form a formidable K4.  Brad Rex (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) and Randy Hargroder (Opelousas, Louisiana) were teamed up in a fast tandem kayak.

The gun went off and I sprinted hard off the line, just like I'd been training to do in recent weeks.  In short order I sensed the familiar presence of Rick Carter on my stern wake, with Rex/Hargroder just behind him.  Rick was paddling a brand new V-10L surf ski with a day-glo orange bow, and Brad and Randy were in a bright yellow boat, so it wasn't hard to make them out in my peripheral vision.

I glanced about expecting to see Tave and the Pellerins nearby, but couldn't find them.  I don't know much about the boat they were paddling, but my guess is that it was a more stable (and therefore slower) craft than what I've been seeing the triplets paddle as a K3 lately.  In any case, I assumed they were somewhere in the hunt back there.

Six weeks earlier I had come away from the race at Ocean Springs feeling as though I'd left some money on the table.  In other words, I'd been content to hang back and ride people's wakes rather than push the pace and take control.  I don't know that the results would have been any different had I behaved differently, but for this race I'd resolved to be more aggressive.  I threw in several strong surges in the first couple of miles and managed to break away from my competitors.

I was fully aware that I was taking a gamble, but I reminded myself of the good training I'd done in the month of April and proceeded with confidence.  I was beginning to feel the first signs of fatigue as I rounded the first sharp bend in the river about eight miles (12 kilometers) in, but I was determined to think only positive thoughts and told myself that as long as I kept the boat moving smoothly it would be difficult for the others to run me down.

After another sharp bend the river flows straight toward the city of Vicksburg for some seven miles or eleven kilometers.  By this time fatigue was settling in for real, and I tried to stay relaxed and paddle as efficiently as possible, using my legs and my torso.  Occasional glances over my shoulder told me that I still had a good lead on those bright-colored boats, but not an insurmountable one if I didn't keep my act together.  I continued to keep my mind occupied with optimistic thoughts: "They're tired too."  "This is the same river I train on all the time, so surely I'm handling this water at least a little bit better than they are."  And so on.  But twinges of doubt were creeping in, too.  About a mile and a half (2.5 kilometers) from the finish the course leaves the Mississippi and heads up the Yazoo River, and here my "big river" advantage would be gone and I would be vulnerable to anybody who'd conserved his energy better than I had.

The wind was picking up and I paddled through a couple of kilometers of increasingly choppy water.  At long last I reached the mouth of the Yazoo, and I approached it on a path that I thought would miss the squirrelly shallow water there.  Once off the roiling Mississippi I found I had a bit more left in the tank than I'd expected, and I added some power to my strokes while keeping the stroke rate low overall.  Maybe, just maybe, I was going to finish this job.  And then...

I saw some day-glo orange over my right shoulder, and at that moment I knew I was in big trouble.  I tried not to overreact, and just keep things steady, but knowing Rick was getting a ride on my stern I threw in a couple of little surges hoping to break free.  That didn't work, so I shifted my priority to keeping him from moving up onto my side wake and a better position from which to sprint for the win.

Rick began to surge with a kilometer to go, and it was pretty clear that he had more left than I did.  I hung in there and paddled as hard as I could, but in the final meters Rick separated himself and beat me by 15 seconds.  According to my GPS we had traveled about 20.7 miles (about 33.4 km), and our times were 2 hours, 18 minutes, 31 seconds for Rick and 2:18:46 for me.  Times were indeed slow with the low water; my personal record on this course is 1:56:34.

Brad Rex and Randy Hargroder were just 93 seconds back in taking third place.  Tave Lamperez and the Pellerin triplets took fourth overall with a time of 2:28:15.  The fastest overall female finisher was Denise D'Abundo of Baton Rouge, who clocked 2:55:18.  The complete results are posted here.

I apparently made a mistake at the mouth of the Yazoo even though I didn't realize it at the time, allowing Rick to close the gap significantly.  After the race Rick and Randy and Brad all asked me why I had "gone so wide."  "Go wide?" I thought; "I didn't go wide!"  But in this sport I've learned that what you see from your boat sometimes looks very different from what people outside your boat see, and maybe at some point I should go back to the mouth of the Yazoo and see if I can figure out why the line I took was so costly.

As usual, Rick deflected the praise he had earned: "You were robbed, man!  You worked twice as hard as I did, and I just hung out back there and stole it from you at the very end!"  But I see it as a perfectly fair-and-square victory for him.  As I pointed out in this post a couple of weeks ago, part of winning is simply being in a position to capitalize when the competition makes a mistake or falters in some way, and that's exactly what Rick did.  Expending your energy wisely is a big part of this game, and it turned out Rick did a better job of that than I did.

In any case, as the rain began to fall while we awaited the awards, I was in a surprisingly upbeat mood even though I'd spent the second half of the race in fear of being caught from behind and then seen that fear become reality.  My goal was to win, but if I had to get beat I'm glad I got beat as a result of being overly aggressive rather than as a result of being overly timid.  I went out and did exactly what I thought I had to do, and it just didn't quite work out.

If I'm counting correctly, this was the 12th edition of the Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race.  The Vicksburgers who organize this event have done an outstanding job year after year, and once again I have returned home in high spirits after a gratifying race experience.

Detective work and race prep

I've spent the week trying to get some rest ahead of the Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race at Vicksburg this Saturday.  The distraction of my stolen boat hasn't helped.  Today I got a follow-up call from a police detective who told me it would be "very helpful" if I could provide the boat's serial number.  I feel like I've got that number written down somewhere, but I've looked all over and so far I haven't been able to find it.  I've moved at least four times in the nineteen years I've owned that boat, so there's no telling where that slip of paper might be.

One thing for certain is that I will know that boat immediately if I spot it somewhere.  It has some custom minicell outfitting glued inside it, it's got a sticker on it that not every Dagger Atom has... I even know the scratches on the boat, for crying out loud.  But of course, in the eyes of our legal system none of that carries the same weight as a serial number.

Oh well.  I'm feeling about ready to race on Saturday.  I did some 12-stroke sprints in the harbor both Tuesday and yesterday, and I'll do a few more tomorrow morning before I throw the boat on the car and head south.  The weather forecast looks sketchy right now--an 80% chance of thunderstorms on Saturday--but I plan to go on down there and hope for the best.  There's nothing I can do about the weather, and I prefer to keep my mind on the things I can control: practice, training, and rest.

I've lost an old friend

I've just achieved a milestone in my paddling career that was long overdue, I guess.  Before Monday I'd never had a boat stolen.  But when I came home around seven o'clock Monday evening, there was a bare spot where my trusty whitewater boat, an old Dagger Atom C1, had been leaning against the firewood pile in the little parking area behind my building.

I've always been fairly nonchalant about securing my boats.  Typically I'm more concerned with protecting them from the sun and similar elements than guarding against theft.  Here in the Memphis area the market for stolen goods runs through the pawn shops, and I've never been able to keep a straight face while imagining a thief carrying a high-performance canoe or kayak into a pawn shop and asking for money.  Making the idea seem even more absurd is that I'm the only active whitewater C1 paddler in Memphis, and I'm pretty sure that Atom was the only boat of its kind in the Mid South.

Unfortunately, I've always neglected one piece of reality: not all thieves are that smart.  Some thieves will grab anything that looks like it might be worth something even if they know nothing about it.  And the likely result--the worst outcome where I am concerned--is that the thief will try to get somebody to pay him for the item, fail, and end up chucking it in a ditch.

So who knows if I'll ever get it back.  I'm watching Craig's List but have seen no sign of it there so far.  I've called a few pawn shops to see if anybody has come in with my boat, but most of the shopkeepers I've talked to say they don't pay for kayaks and canoes, and with many dozens of pawn shops in the greater Memphis area, finding the one with my boat in it would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

These days I don't paddle whitewater anywhere near as often as I used to, but I do go once a year or so.  And even though that boat was old and not particularly special, I liked it.  When Dagger first came out with the Atom I think it was hoping the whitewater rodeo C1 competitors would take it and run with it.  But they were fickle and turned up their noses at it, and the boat was quickly forgotten at the elite level.  But I have found it to be a good, solid river-running craft and have stuck with it even though it looks like an antique today.

The following photos depict just a few of the many great memories that boat and I created together.

Top drop of Four Falls, North Fork of the South Platte River near Bailey, Colorado, 1998.  Photo by a guy named Gage who paddled with me that day.

Whiling away a summer day on the Ocoee River near Ducktown, Tennessee, late 1990s.  Photo by Sonny Salomon.

Popping an ender at Slice and Dice on the Ocoee River, 1999.  Photo by Sonny Salomon.

Surfing the top wave on the Caney Fork River in Rock Island State Park near McMinnville, Tennessee, late 1990s.  Photo by Sonny Salomon.

Losing some altitude on the White Salmon River near Trout Lake, Washington, 1998.  Photo by Wendy Peterson.

Getting what I can on a small wave on White's Creek on Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau, 2001.  Photo by Julie Keller.

More Olympic trials

While I'm focused on racing at Vicksburg this weekend, flatwater sprint athletes in this country will converge on Lake Lanier at Gainesville, Georgia, to try out for spots on the U.S. Olympic Team.  There's a preview article posted on the Surf Ski News website.  Have a look at it here.

Monday photo feature

The rapids are a thrill, of course, but part of the fun of any mountain stream is wandering through those "house-sized" boulders.  That's me in 1994 on the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River near Oneida, Tennessee.  I think that's Tony Hickey over my right shoulder.  Photo by Sonny Salomon.

Relishing the season as my next race approaches

This is shaping up to be as lovely a spring as I can remember.  We've had a good bit of wind and a good bit of rain, but the temperature has been in the "comfortable" zone for weeks.  We've just enjoyed some truly spectacular days Friday, Saturday, and yesterday: calm, sunny, and warm.

My next competition, the Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race on the Mississippi River down at Vicksburg, is less than a week away now.  Any training that might benefit me in this event has now been done.  I've spent the last few days trying to do good-quality paddling in shorter-duration sessions.  I want to be rested when I get to Vicksburg, but I also want to keep doing some work for the races that follow.

Basically, my sessions Thursday, Saturday, and yesterday ran about an hour each, and included a few short sprints or power drills followed by some unstructured up-tempo stuff.  For example, yesterday I did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, then paddled up the Mississippi for a mile or so.  There was a barge rig coming downriver, and I fell in behind it and caught a few good rides on its stern wake.  I had to do some hard sprinting in some turbulent water but I was having fun and it didn't last more than ten minutes or so, so it didn't feel like a crushing workout.

Another pretty good workout

This morning I got in my boat, warmed up for ten minutes, and did three 8-stroke sprints.  They felt somewhat smoother today than yesterday.

Then I left the harbor and paddled up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River.  At today's river level (15.7 feet on the Memphis gauge) there was little or no current in the bottom mile or so of the Wolf, and that's where I embarked on today's workout: eight two-minute pieces with two minutes recovery in between.  I did the first three of them on the flatwater of the Wolf, with a target pace of 7 miles per hour, just like in Saturday's workout.

By the fourth piece I was heading out onto the Mississippi, and once I was in the main flow I shot for a pace of 12 mph.  Conditions were calm today and it wasn't too hard to stay between 11.5 and 12 mph.  The Mississippi is a squirrelly river, though, and there were moments when my speed dipped below 10 mph.

I did pieces 5, 6, and 7 out on the river.  The eighth and final one took place in that sluggish eddy water as I moved from the river back into the harbor.  All told, today's session was pretty similar to what I did on Saturday, and yet I didn't feel nearly as exhausted when I got back to the dock today.  Was I better rested today?  Better nourished?  Better hydrated?

I paddled in some rain this morning.  There were intermittent showers through lunchtime, and then they moved out.  The weatherman says we're in for a lot more rain overnight and tomorrow.

Sprinting

I paddled for 60 minutes this morning, warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints first.  Regular readers know that I do these sprints often at the start of a workout.  Paddling fast is a skill that takes practice just like any other skill, and by doing a small number of short sprints regularly I can get in some practice without wearing myself out.

Sometimes all my muscle groups fire in unison and my whole body seems to "flow" as I do these sprints; other times, like this morning, everything feels off a bit and the sprints seem labored.  But either way, I think the sprints set a good tone for whatever I'm doing for the rest of my time in the boat.  They get me thinking about the roles of all my body parts as I paddle.

Monday photo feature

Charles Thompson blasts through the foam of Stairsteps rapid on Big Laurel Creek near Hot Springs, North Carolina.  I shot this photo on a chilly day in March of 1994.

More pace work on the big river

I put my boat in the water amid mild temperatures but a pesky southeast wind.  As I paddled southward toward the mouth of the harbor my bow kept getting blown to the right.  But it didn't stop me from doing three of my backpaddling-then-forward-paddling "power" drills.

Once out of the harbor I paddled up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, and began the main part of today's workout, a "pyramid": pieces of 1', 2', 3', 4', 5', 4', 3', 2', 1' with two minutes recovery in between.  I did the first half of this workout on the flatwater in the bottom mile or so of the Wolf, where I tried to maintain about 7 miles per hour on my GPS during each piece.  This part of the Wolf was pretty well protected from the wind and I didn't have much trouble keeping the pace steady.

I was almost exactly halfway through the five-minute piece when I paddled out of the Wolf and onto the Mississippi.  Out here I'd hoped to maintain a pace near 12 mph, but the wind kept me closer to 11 mph.  By this time it was almost a direct beam wind, and I tried to relax and resist the urge to lean into the wind for stability.  Under the circumstances I was pleased with how well I managed to keep the boat moving.

I did that last one-minute piece back in the harbor, where again my target pace was 7 mph.

Incidental data: the river level was 15.0 feet on the Memphis gauge, and I was in the boat for 100 minutes total.

It's an Olympic year

The Games of the 31st Olympiad will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, later this year.  Canoe and kayak racing will be included.

Mind you, not all canoe and kayak racing will be included.  There will be no surf ski or outrigger racing; no wildwater; no flatwater marathon; no extreme creek racing.  Just one discipline for whitewater (slalom) and one for flatwater (sprint).

But anytime I'm tempted to get my undies in a bunch over that, I just remind myself that the same is true for most other sports.  For instance, the bicycle disciplines of mountain biking, road racing, and velodrome events are all in the Olympics, but not cyclocross.  Wrestlers, weightlifters, and martial artists can probably all give you their lists of disciplines within their sports that are not on the Olympic programme.  And many believe that's not the worst thing: 1992 whitewater slalom Olympian Eric Jackson makes some interesting points about that in this interview.

But the Olympics are a big deal, if nothing else because they're on TV all over the world and give the broader public a brief glimpse at sports like ours that carry on in total obscurity most of the time.  Here in the U.S., the process of selecting the athletes that will paddle in Rio has moved into high gear.  Over the weekend there was a slalom competition in Charlotte at which two people were named to the U.S. Team.

Michal Smolen of Gastonia, North Carolina, claimed the U.S. Olympic Team spot in men's kayak (K1).  Michal is a native of Poland but has lived most of his life in the U.S.: his dad, Rafal Smolen, moved here to begin a career in coaching the sport in the late 1990s.  Michal has been a member of the U.S. national team for the last few years and just recently got his U.S. citizenship in order to make himself eligible for Olympic competition.

Casey Eichfeld of Mount Holly, North Carolina, punched his ticket to Rio in the men's single canoe (C1) class.  Casey grew up in Pennsylvania and was just starting to show up at races in the 1990s as my own slalom career was winding down, and I remember watching the nine- or ten-year-old kid and thinking that if he stuck with it he might be very good.  That, of course, was a big "if"--many fabulously talented kids have come and gone in this sport without going "the distance" to international prominence.  But lo and behold, Casey has stuck with it, and it seems that especially in these last few years he's really stepped up his game and made himself one of the top racers in the world in slalom C1.

Yet to be determined are the U.S. Olympians in the women's kayak class (K1W) and the men's double canoe class (C2).  The selection process will continue on May 7-8 with a competition on the new course at Oklahoma City.

I believe two questions are obvious at this point: Why have Olympic Team berths been decided in two classes, but not all four? and, Why are there no canoe classes for women?

I'll field the second question first: I can't say I know the origin of this issue.  Maybe there were very few women racing slalom in canoes when the world championships debuted in 1949; maybe the cigar smoking good ol' boys in the International Canoe Federation considered women too "dainty" for the manly business of canoeing... I don't really know.  But that's how things were for the first six decades of the ICF world championships, and plenty of people were unhappy about it and lobbied for change.  I think it finally took an ultimatum for greater gender equity from the International Olympic Committee to get the ICF to do something about it.  A women's single canoe class (C1W) was added to the world championships in about 2010 with the intention of adding it to the Olympics a quadrennium or two later.  Plans are now set for C1W to make its Olympic debut in the 2020 Games at Tokyo.  Women's canoe classes also will debut in flatwater sprint racing, where they also had been absent.

There's no doubt that gender equity is important and necessary.  But I'm saddened by the cost of adding C1W to the Olympics.  The IOC is very stingy when it comes to the overall number of "fringe sport" athletes like paddlers that it will allow to participate in the Games, and to make room for C1W the ICF has had to remove C2, arguably the most interesting and beautiful class, from Olympic competition.

As for that first question above: athletes vie for selection to the U.S. Olympic Team by earning points in several events in the year prior to the Games.  One such event was the 2015 world championships at the Lee Valley White Water Centre outside London, and Michal Smolen and Casey Eichfeld were the only two U.S. athletes to earn points there.  Their performances were in fact quite magnificent: Smolen claimed the bronze medal in K1, while Eichfeld appeared on the verge of winning the C1 class until a tiny but devastating time error knocked him back to fourth place.

In any case, if Smolen finished third or better in Charlotte this past weekend, he would amass a point total that no other athlete would be able to surpass, and therefore clinch a spot on the Olympic Team. He won.  Eichfeld came to Charlotte needing to finish second or better; he also won.  No paddler in the other two classes has yet accumulated such an insurmountable lead in points, and so their competition will continue in Oklahoma City next month.

If you're still reading this post, then you know that Olympic selection is not the simplest thing to talk about, and I apologize for being so long-winded.  But there's one more part of the story I'll address, and it's a process that to me seems truly byzantine: how a nation qualifies spots in the Olympics.  As I mentioned above, the IOC allows only so many paddlers on the water in the Games, and each nation must demonstrate, in competitions like the world championships, that it has paddlers who can compete at the world-class level in order to be awarded berths in the competition.  A further complication is that the IOC wants the berths to be as evenly distributed as possible among the different regions of the world--Europe, Asia, the Americas, Oceania, Africa, and so on.

A nation can have at most one boat entered in each class.  That means that in slalom, each nation may have at most five Olympians: a female kayaker, a male kayaker, a male single canoeist, and a pair of male tandem canoeists.  That brings me to the part I haven't figured out yet: according to an article I read in Canoe and Kayak magazine the other day, the IOC and/or the ICF have determined that the U.S. is limited to four warm bodies on its slalom team.  That means that at least one member of the U.S. C2 must be somebody who's already on the Olympic team as a single-boat racer.  It just so happens that both Casey Eichfeld and Michal Smolen are racing in C2s as well as their single boats, so that shouldn't be a problem, but it's nevertheless weird.  I'm sure there's a full explanation somewhere in the bowels of either the ICF or the USA Canoe-Kayak website, but as both those organizations are notorious for releasing information in the form of long, excruciating legalese-laced PDF documents, I just don't have the will to unearth the answer.  I invite anybody who can provide us a readable explanation to do so in the "Comments" section.

I'll just add this: I'm sort of rooting for Casey Eichfeld's C2 to make the Olympic Team because his partner is Devin McEwan, son of the first U.S. Olympic medalist in whitewater slalom.  Devin's dad Jamie took the C1 bronze medal in the 1972 Games at Augsburg, West Germany.  We just lost Jamie to cancer two years ago, and I know he would be thrilled to see another McEwan running the gates in the Olympics.

Once again, thanks for reading down this far.  I'll post updates here about both the flatwater and the whitewater selection processes as they develop.

What makes a winner?

I don't really follow golf, but I've always regarded it with the respect it deserves as a test of skill, athletic ability, and composure.  While browsing Face Book this morning this quote from Jack Nicklaus regarding this past weekend's Masters tournament caught my attention:

I’ve watched Danny Willett play on television a few times and when I’ve seen him swing the golf club, I have thought, “Well, this young man looks like he’s a pretty darn good player.” He had moved himself up to 12th in the world, so he’s obviously done something right and was playing very good golf coming into Augusta. What impressed me so much is that when he realized he was in a position to win, he finished it—and that’s the mark of a champion: To finish a good round; give yourself an opportunity to win; and when the other fellow doesn’t finish, you’ve got to be there. Danny Willett was and kudos to him.

At the world class level it is very, very rare to see an athlete so exceptionally dominant that he or she wins every competition in a rout.  More often, winning is a matter of putting yourself in a position to capitalize when other competitors falter, and then grabbing that opportunity.  We've seen it in the Super Bowl, the Masters, the Indianapolis 500, Wimbledon, and just about any other high-profile sporting event you can name.  And we see it with regularity in canoe and kayak racing.  Most of time there's not one dominant athlete, but a group of top athletes, in any given paddling discipline; and the one who wins a world or Olympic title is the one who had the most things fall into place that year or that month or that day.

Monday photo feature

Ride 'em cowboy!  That's ME out there on the Ocoee River during the 2000 whitewater slalom U.S. Olympic Team Trials!  My mom, perhaps the only person who cared to point a camera my way that weekend, snapped the photo.  Even though I had worse than a Slurpee's chance in Hell of actually going to the Olympics, it was an experience I'll never forget.

The selection process for the 2016 whitewater slalom Olympic team began in earnest this past weekend with a competition at Charlotte.  It'll continue next month at Oklahoma City.  A couple of spots on the team actually got filled this past weekend, and I'll write more about that when I get a chance.

The other Olympic canoe and kayak discipline, flatwater sprint, has its U.S. Olympic Team Trials on April 29-30 at Gainesville, Georgia.

Beat to the socks

As I said in my last post, I did four one-mile pieces yesterday, preceded by a long paddle up the Mississippi and followed by a paddle back down the Mississippi and back up the harbor to the dock.  For recovery in between the pieces, I paddled easy for several tenths of a mile.  My overall time in the boat was 140 minutes, and in contrast to Thursday's workout, I was thoroughly worn out when it was over.  I don't think a workout like yesterday's is what Ernie Banks had in mind when he exclaimed "Let's play two!" on beautiful summer days at Wrigley Field.

With tomorrow and Tuesday reserved for recovery, I wanted to get another good-quality session in today.  Strong south winds were in today's forecast, but it wasn't that bad yet when I put my boat in the water this morning.  I paddled out of the harbor and up the Mississippi just above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and then paddled a brisk pace back downriver to get a bit of practice on the sort of water I'll be racing on at the end of the month.

Back in the harbor I started easy but built up into a strong pace all the way to the north end.  Aided by a tailwind, I was occasionally hitting 8 mph on the GPS.

I backed off the pace and paddled easy from the north end of the harbor back to the dock, though it didn't feel so easy because I was fighting a headwind that was becoming stronger by the minute.

Today's 90-minute session completed what turned out to be a bear of a weekend.  Now I get to relax for a couple of days and let my body build itself back up and get ready for greater challenges.

I have been globally positioned

This past week I finally gave in and bought a GPS device.  So far I'm having some fun playing around with it in training, but I'm quite aware of its limitations.

I've always been something of a Luddite when it comes to the gadgets being marketed to athletes.  I really think that anybody with an appreciable amount of training under his belt should be able to determine intensity and pace by feel.  With a bit of practice and familiarity with your body it's not that hard to tell when you're in the "aerobic zone" or when you're "going lactic."  And if you tell a decent high school runner to run a lap of the 400-meter track in 75 seconds, he'll probably hit it within a second or so because he's become familiar with what 75-second pace feels like.

I doubt I will use my GPS during a race, especially one on anything rougher than dead-calm flatwater.  If I do take it in the boat with me, it'll be with the miles-per-hour display turned off.  When the objective is simply to compete with the other racers, knowing how fast or not-fast I'm going seems like an unwanted distraction.

Having said all that, I'm having fun using the GPS in practice.  One of my favorite things to do with it is measure distances.  In the harbor I have several courses defined by permanent objects that I've been timing myself on for years, and it's nice to know at last what the exact distances are.  I'm also experimenting with using the device in pace workouts, though it's important not to accept the feedback at face value.  The workout I did yesterday is a perfect example: I paddled from the marina out of the harbor and up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River; then, paddling on the Wolf, I timed myself over four one-mile pieces (note to my international readers: my GPS seems to deal only in British units).  My times were 9:24, 9:11, 8:16, and 8:07, and the rather large differences had everything to do with atmospheric and surface conditions.  I did the first two pieces going up the Wolf, but I should note that current wasn't much of a factor because at yesterday's Mississippi River stage (16.7 feet on the Memphis gauge) the big river backs pretty far up into the Wolf.  However, there was a stiff northeast wind blowing, and on the first piece in particular I was paddling right into the teeth of that wind.  For the second piece I was in a more protected section of the river, but by the end of it I was far enough up that I was running into some current.  I did the third and fourth pieces coming back down the Wolf, with the conditions opposite what they'd been going up, and that's the reason for the faster times.

Now that I think about it, I probably haven't said anything that profound in this post.  The athletes I race with are smart guys and gals and have probably figured these things out for themselves: I'm sure that when their GPSs tell them they're going really slow they can deduce the reason from the conditions they're paddling in.  I guess the main point I'm trying to make here is that I hope to have some fun with this new toy but I don't expect it to bring about any dramatic changes in my training.

Sometimes the strokes just flow

My next race is down at Vicksburg three weeks from tomorrow.  The next ten days or so are an important window for doing some work that my body can internalize by that date.

With my weekends filled with long, hard stuff right now, I was looking for shorter-duration intensity when I got in my boat yesterday.  I paddled for 60 minutes overall.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did a set of eight 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals.  I did all but the last one out on the river, in the same kind of water I'll be racing on at the end of the month.  I tried to stay relaxed and take good strokes with full rotation on that somewhat squirrelly playing field.

After that, as I headed up the harbor back toward the dock, I paddled at or slightly above the pace I hope to maintain in the Vicksburg race for ten minutes or so.

I felt particularly good in the boat yesterday.  Maybe it was because I was good and rested; maybe it was because my diet has been good and my energy was up; hopefully it was also because I'm reaping some fitness benefit from the workouts I've done in the last several weeks.  Whatever the case, it was one of those days when I felt more invigorated after paddling than I'd felt before.  Sometimes that 30-second-sprint workout is really tiring, but yesterday I finished those eight sprints feeling like I could do eight more.

I did the April strength routine Wednesday and plan to do it again today.

What I'm doing these days

For this period leading up to the longish races awaiting me in late April and May, I seem to be settling into a pattern of paddling long and hard over the weekend, recovering on Monday and Tuesday, and doing strength work and some shorter, faster paddling on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

This past Saturday I paddled for 80 minutes overall, doing four pieces of varying lengths and intensities.  I started the first piece out on the Mississippi at the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and finished it at the mouth of the harbor.  It was quite windy and I had to back off the intensity a bit, focusing mainly on keeping the boat moving over the waves and chop.  Once back in the harbor I recovered for several minutes and did one of the pieces I did last Sunday, starting next to Beale Street Landing and finishing at the H.D. Bridge.

I recovered from that by paddling back south to the monorail bridge, and then I sprinted from there to the H.D. Bridge.  I recently used a GPS to measure this distance and it's about 450 meters.  My time Saturday was about 2 minutes 20 seconds--not a performance that's likely to take me to the Games at Rio this summer.

Finally, after another few minutes of recovery, I sprinted from the H.D. Bridge to the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge.  This distance is around 660 meters, and my time was 3:20ish.

On Sunday the weather was calmer and warmer, and I went back down to the river for a 120-minute paddle.  Going around the Loosahatchie Bar like I did the previous weekend was not an option this time, as the river was too low (16.9 feet on the Memphis gauge Sunday morning).  I decided to paddle downriver from downtown, something I hadn't done in quite a while.  Going downstream I paddled close to the pace I hope to maintain in the Mississippi River race down at Vicksburg at the end of the month.  After 45 minutes, I decided I should start heading back upriver to make it back to the dock in my allotted two hours.  I paddled along the Arkansas bank, using the eddy/slackwater on the inside of the big bend to the west the river makes below the old Frisco Bridge.

Overall, this past weekend felt less taxing than the weekend before.  I wonder whether that's partly psychological: the timed-pieces workout I did on Saturday was less structured than the workout I'd done the previous Sunday.  When I go out and do six or eight pieces at regular intervals it's hard to avoid that "time to make it hurt" mindset, whereas doing a variety of distances with whatever recovery I feel like feels more like play.

My strength routine (I guess I'll call it the April strength routine even though I started it right after my trip to Ocean Springs last month) is my Smart Bell workout.  One day--I promise--I'm going to teach myself to shoot, edit, and post video of me doing this workout and other exercises so readers of this blog can see what they look like.  In the meantime, have a look at this post from last year in which I describe what a Smart Bell is and how I work out with it.  Right now Wednesdays and Fridays are dedicated to strength work.

Monday photo feature

The weather was simply gorgeous over the weekend, and I believe spring is beginning to assert itself.     I expect I'll be seeing some new duck families down at the harbor soon.        

What's next?

Now that one race is in the books for 2016, I realize that I haven't said much about my plans for the rest of the year.  Here are the events I hope to participate in:

April 30: 13th annual Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race.  Starts at Madison Parish (La.) Port on the Mississippi River and finishes 22 miles downriver at the Vicksburg Front.

May 14: Osage Spring 12.  A 12-mile race down the Osage River at Osage City, Missouri.

June 18: 35th Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  A 5000-meter race down the Mississippi River at downtown Memphis, Tennessee.

June 25: The Great Chickasawhay Race.  At 21-nautical-mile (that's what it says on the website) race down the Chickasawhay River from Shubuta, Mississippi, to Waynesboro, Mississippi.

July 30: USCA National Championship for downriver kayak.  A race for boats that meet ICF wildwater specs.  Held in conjunction with the Aluminum Canoe Nationals.  White River at Batesville, Arkansas.

August 6: The Paddle Grapple.  A 6-mile race on Lake Fontana near Bryson City, North Carolina.

August 12-14: USCA Marathon National Championships.  A 13-mile course up and down the Connecticut River at Northfield, Massachusetts.

September 17: Gator Bait Canoe and Kayak Race.  A 5.5-mile race on Barnett Reservoir outside Jackson, Mississippi.

Of course, I might not make it to all the races on this list, and I could end up doing something that's not on this list.  But this is a pretty good outline of what's to come.

Last weekend's race gave me some idea of what things I need to work on, and with the next race a whole five weeks away, I'm heading back to the drawing board.  I spent most of the race in Ocean Springs afraid to push the pace, and it cost me at the end; so some pace work is in order.  Also, at least four of the races on this schedule are what I consider "long" (and I'll just point out here that I do not do ultra-distance events).  So some training of commensurate distance is in order.

Saturday's Loosahatchie Bar circumnavigation is part of that plan.  Yesterday's workout is another.  Yesterday I paddled to the south end of the harbor and did six repeats of a course between the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and Beale Street Landing.  Paddling at about a 10-kilometer race pace, I aimed for a time of about seven minutes.  I rested for 2-3 minutes in between pieces.  There was a pretty good south wind blowing, and it made about a 20-second difference in either direction--that is, my time was around 6:40 with a tailwind and about 7:20 with a headwind.  This was a tough workout.  Already tired from Saturday's long paddle, I was feeling it by the end of the first piece and I just had to grin and bear it through the next five.

And now I'm ready for some recovery time.  I'm taking today off and I'll do an easier paddle tomorrow.

A trip around The Bar in pictures

I don't do as much "overdistance" training as I used to, but with several sort-of-long races coming up I want to get a few longer paddles in.  This morning I paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar.  This is something I've done at least once or twice a year for many years now.  The Loosahatchie Bar is the big island in the Mississippi River shown on this map here:



Starting and finishing at my marina in Wolf River Harbor, a trip around The Bar typically takes me a little over two hours--it took me two hours and five minutes today.  I think I once did it in an hour and 55 minutes or so.

The water level needs to be over 16 feet on the Memphis gauge, or else you'll end up hiking over some sandbars up at the north end of The Bar.  Today's level was 20.3 feet, and I hit the bottom with my paddle several times up there.  The big flood of 2011 deposited a bunch of sand in that area.

As I prepared to leave the dock I set my Go Pro camera to take a still photo every 60 seconds.  The resulting pictures might not be the best quality, but I hope they'll give you some idea of what I saw and did today.

Heading south toward the mouth of the harbor.

Paddling out of the harbor and up the Mississippi River toward the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.

Still paddling upriver, just above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  You can sort of see the Loosahatchie Bar off to the left of my bow.

Still heading upstream; now I'm just north of the Maynard C. Stiles sewage treatment plant.  The barge rig in the left side of the photo is one of only two I saw while I was out.

Not long after the last photo got shot, I started ferrying across the river.  The northern end of the Loosahatchie Bar lies ahead.

Approaching "the summit" of the bar.  It's some tough paddling here because this area is fully exposed to the Mississippi's current.

Now I'm headed back downstream through the chute between The Bar and the Arkansas bank.  This piece of the river is one of my favorite places in the whole Mid South: just a couple of miles from downtown Memphis, it has the look and feel of remote wilderness.  Of course, by the time I get here I'm always really tired from all the upstream paddling and the ferry across the river.

Eventually, the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and the Memphis skyline come back into view.

I think my city on the river is just lovely.

Heading back up into the harbor.

And at last, I'm back on the dock.  Yippee!

Saturday's results

The results from the 7th annual Battle On The Bayou race are now posted here.

I should point out an unfortunate error in my post yesterday: I mis-identified the sixth-place overall finisher.  It was Muril Robertson of Huntsville, Alabama (the man pictured in this week's "photo feature"), who clocked one hour, 29 minutes, 36 seconds.  Muril also happened to be the first non-race-boat finisher.

The top female finisher Saturday was Wyndy Amerson of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.  Her time was 2:04:38.


UPDATE: It turns out I was right the first time: Randy Hargroder was in fact the sixth-place overall finisher.  Muril has informed me that his time was 1:47, not 1:27, and that it was mis-printed in the race results.  So much for everything I read on the Internet being true.

Monday photo feature

Muril Robertson of Huntsville, Alabama, approaches the Washington Street Bridge about a mile into Saturday's Battle On The Bayou race at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  Some 140 racers competed in all types of canoes, kayaks, and paddleboards.  Photo by Kay Taylor.

A Gulf Coast dog fight

I arrived in Ocean Springs Friday evening amid grave concerns of stormy weather and strong winds on race day.  Particularly troubling was the possibility of lightning, the standard deal-breaker for a water-borne event like a canoe and kayak race.  But when Saturday dawned, the storms had just about moved out, and the heavier winds wouldn't arrive until late afternoon--in other words, we lucked out.

We lined up in the little cove of the Back Bay of Biloxi next to the Gulf Hills Hotel, and the starting gun went off promptly at 10:15 AM CDT.  As expected, three-time Olympian Mike Herbert sprinted into the lead and was already beginning to pull away as we made the turn up into Old Fort Bayou just a couple hundred meters in.

I had my hands full from the start.  I'd hoped to get a better start than I did, and maybe make my competitors do some work to pull even with me; but the Pellerin triplets (Carson, Conrad, and Peyton) of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, got a very good start and I had to settle for a spot on their wake immediately.  Rick Carter of Eutawville, South Carolina, grabbed my stern wake.  Before long we were joined by the tandem of Phil Capel (Sherwood, Arkansas) and Brad Rex (Baton Rouge, Louisiana), and our four boats would keep each other company for the next eighty minutes or so.

One thing I've learned in this business is that unless you have the speed of Mike Herbert and everybody else in the race has my degree of ability or worse, the race does not always go to the speediest.  When you're racing in a pack of people who are all about as good as you are, you have to do more than just be the fittest or the strongest or the fastest to assure yourself of victory.  In other words, you're not assured of victory, and I guess that's part of the beauty.  In a situation like I was in yesterday morning, you have to know what your own strengths are, and assess how good a job you've done of racing efficiently and conserving energy, and make an educated guess of how well the other racers have conserved their energy, and make your move when the time is right, and hope for the best.  And even if you do all those things beautifully, you still might not win.

I spent a huge chunk of the race just sitting on the wake of the triplets, who were paddling as a K3 in one of those hybrid boats you see in races like the Texas Water Safari.  Rick, in turn, sat on my wake for most of that time.  A little over halfway through Phil and Brad moved up front and started pushing the pace, and once they'd done that for a while I finally made a move of my own, hoping maybe they were getting tired.  But they held me off and I dropped back, and with maybe 2000 meters left I had one of those mental lapses that was all the two team boats needed to open a couple of boat lengths on me.  I still had something in the tank and I threw in a hard surge, but though I was able to open some distance on Rick, I couldn't quite regain a wake-ride on the triplets or Capel/Rex.

Mike Herbert had tucked his victory away by the time we were anywhere near the finish line.  His time was a course-record one hour, 17 minutes, 57 seconds.  Phil and Brad finished strong to take second place, with the triplets taking third just several seconds back.  I held my lead over Rick to claim fourth, and a short while after Rick crossed the line Randy Hargroder of Opelousas, Louisiana, finished in a respectable sixth place overall.

Due to some software problems the results are not yet posted online.  At the moment I don't even know what my own time was; I think I heard that our four-boat pack finished some eight minutes after Mike.  The race organizers were hopeful they could get the results up by tomorrow, and I will post a link to them whenever they do.

Dana and Nick Kinderman very kindly hosted me during my stay on the Gulf Coast this weekend.  Nick raced on the Bayou as well, while Dana spent the morning running a 10K over in Mobile, Alabama.  As a result we were three tired people by late yesterday afternoon and we spent a quiet evening at their house in Ocean Springs.  We ate some takeout Japanese hibachi and watched the movie Pee Wee's Big Holiday, which I thought was sublimely hilarious.

This morning I woke up feeling quite good for the day after a race.  After a lovely breakfast of "protein pancakes" prepared by Chef Nick, I pondered my paddling options.  Typically I have gone out on the Back Bay of Biloxi the day after racing at Ocean Springs, but a cold front had moved in yesterday evening, and it was chilly and very windy outside, and I wanted something more protected.  On Nick's advice I drove up just north of Interstate 10 and put my boat on the Tchoutacabouffa (pronounced Chu-ta-ca-BUFF) River a few miles above where it empties into the Back Bay.  I paddled comfortably, pushing the pace at times, for 80 minutes.

When I'd finished observing that ritual I got back in the car and made the six-hour trip home.  Now it's time to recover a bit, and start up a new strength routine, and basically just see what I can do to get ready for the next race.

Pre-race tuning

I've spent the week getting some rest and trying to get sharp for Saturday's race.  Tomorrow I plan to do a short paddle in the harbor before loading the boat and heading for the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

On Tuesday I paddled for 60 minutes and did six 12-stroke sprints.  This morning I was feeling lethargic and spent a long time on the dock stretching and doing some rubber band exercises ("pre-hab" for my shoulder) before I finally got in my boat to paddle.  Once on the water I paddled for 40 minutes and did another six 12-stroke sprints.

I should have plenty of competition on Saturday and I hope to paddle up to the starting line as prepared as I can be.

Monday photo feature

As I prepare to travel to Ocean Springs at the end of the week, I share this memento of trips past: the rotating railroad bridge at the passage from Mississippi Sound into the Back Bay of Biloxi.  I like trains and train tracks and train trestles, and one of the great things about being a paddler is I often get up close and personal with such things.