Opening the season on the Gulf Coast

I woke up yesterday feeling stiff in my midsection.  I couldn't really think of an explanation other than maybe having sat in the car for six hours the day before.  I hoped it would loosen up once I was in the boat.

Nick and I made our way to the waterfront by the Gulf Hills Hotel where the race would begin.  A good-sized collection of racers had gathered, though race director Mike Pornovets said registration was down.  The likely reason, he said, was the rainy forecast.  But as the nine-o'clock start time approached there was no rain in sight and the sun was even trying to peek through at times.  The Fahrenheit temperature was in the mid 60s.

We got in our boats and assembled at the starting line in a cove near the east end of the Back Bay of Biloxi.  When the gun went off we all sprinted for several hundred meters toward a point where we would turn left up into Old Fort Bayou.

A couple of team boats were among the fastest starters.  One of them was a tandem kayak paddled by Mike Herbert and his daughter Savanna from Rogers, Arkansas.  Another was a 3-man rig powered by the 16-year-old Pellerin triplets of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana.  And then there were a few solo paddlers vying for the early lead.  Along with yours truly, there was Christian Massow of Cypress, Texas; Bruce Poacher of Isle of Palms, South Carolina; and Andy Capel of Maumelle, Arkansas.

Mike and Savanna opened a lead of several boatlengths once we were headed up the Bayou.  I'd raced this tandem team once before, and in that race they'd jumped out to an early lead as well (you can count on any boat with Mike Herbert in it to have a fast start).  But I was able to reel them in with some help from a couple of other tandem boats, and I was hoping maybe I could do the same yesterday.

Part of the early-race excitement was a series of waves created by motorized boats nearby: they were about as perfect for surfing as I've ever seen in a non-downwind race.  We tried to get whatever we could from them before they petered out and the mid-race pecking order began to take shape.

Bruce Poacher and I found ourselves riding the wake of the triplets' boat.  I was a bit surprised to see all three Pellerins competing yesterday, as Peyton had spent the winter dealing with a wrist injury and his grandfather Ray had told me a few weeks earlier that he wasn't expected to race at all this year.  But there he was manning the stern, with Conrad in the bow and Carson in the "engine room" amidships.  As we navigated the first half of this 8.5-mile out-and-back course the boys were moving their boat with authority and I was having to fight hard at times to hold onto their wake.  It felt as though we were slowly closing the gap on Mike and Savanna and I figured it was about the best place I could be.

The race course wends its way up the bayou for about four miles before it rounds an island and sends racers back to where they'd started.  Bruce and I continued to pursue the triplets, occasionally moving from their stern wake to their side wake or vice-versa.  When we reached the island we had to follow a narrow channel around one side of it, and this channel was shallow due to the low tide.  It was in these tight quarters that the Pellerins faltered: I don't know exactly what happened, but their usual smooth, perfectly-synced paddling rhythm gave way to some confusion and bickering.  I saw my chance and threw in a big surge to open up a gap.

At this point I was feeling good despite the hard paddling I'd had to do so far--a good sign of my early-season fitness level.  The bad news was that I was now on my own in the effort to run down Mike and Savanna, who were looking strong some thirty or forty seconds ahead of me.  I tried to stay relaxed and focus on taking the sort of strokes I'd been practicing all winter, and keeping my stroke rate down like Morgan House had instructed last fall.  As the second half of the race wore on I could tell that Mike and Savanna were extending their lead a bit, and this sign that I might be dropping off the pace made me fret about the boats behind me.  But I stole a couple of glances back there as I rounded the tight turns just above the Washington Avenue drawbridge, and I saw no close pursuers.

When I pass under the drawbridge I feel like I'm almost done, but in fact there's at least a good 2000 meters still to go at that point.  By this time yesterday I was pretty sure catching Mike and Savanna was a lost cause and I just tried to stay as efficient as I could to ensure my strongest possible finish.  As I rounded the turn into the long approach to the finish line I could see Mike and Savanna making their final sprint, and I told myself that anytime I actually see Mike Herbert finish a race, my own performance can't have been too bad.  The Herberts stopped the clock at one hour, 12 minutes; I crossed the line just over a minute later at 1:13:02.

Bruce Poacher claimed third place overall with a time of 1:14:35.  About two and a half minutes later the Pellerins came in; they were understandably less than thrilled with their result, seeing as how they'd looked truly dominant at this same race last year.  I have no doubt they will be back to that kind of form soon enough.

Andy Capel took fifth place overall, just one second ahead of Christian Massow.  I later found out that Andy had flipped just after the start, and he must have done a textbook remount to keep himself in contention.  Christian, whose surname is spelled Maßow in German (the German letter ß is like the English double-s), had been dealing with some injury problems for several years, and it was good to see him back on the water.

Susan Jordan of Lucedale, Mississippi, was the fastest overall female finisher (not counting Savanna Herbert).  Competing in a fast touring kayak, Susan clocked 1:31:40.

In the end, 90 boats completed the race.  That's definitely down from this event's peak participation level of more than two hundred.  The racers who'd stayed away fearing bad weather missed what turned out to be a lovely morning for racing.  The complete results are posted here.

Racers all over the Gulf South region owe much gratitude to Mike Pornovets, Ed Hornsby, Jessica Watters, and all the volunteers who kept this event going for another year.  When the day was done, I knew I couldn't have asked for a better way to get a new race season started.

It's about time to do some RACIN'!

My prediction of how long the Gen. Jackson would continue to sit in Memphis was wrong.  The vessel resumed her voyage upriver early Tuesday morning.  So you see, I am wrong once in a blue moon.

I did the strength routine on Monday and Wednesday this week, and now I'm grateful for a brief break from that with a race coming up tomorrow.

Joe and I did our usual loop of the harbor on Tuesday, and yesterday I got in a 50-minute session in the harbor with another set of six 12-stroke sprints.  The Mississippi remains quite high: the Memphis gauge reading was 38.1 feet when I paddled yesterday morning.  The river is usually very nice when it's dropping slowly from a crest.  It cleans itself out a bit as the debris it had picked up is either flushed downstream or redeposited on the banks.

Today I drove through a lot of rain down to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, site of the Battle On The Bayou canoe and kayak race tomorrow.  I arrived in the late afternoon and did a 40-minute paddle in and around the mouth of Old Fort Bayou.  I did four 12-stroke sprints and otherwise tried to work out the stiffness from the drive.

I'm spending the night at the home of my friend Nick Kinderman, who happens to be the founder of this weekend's event.  He served as race director from 2010 until 2015 before handing that duty off.  Tomorrow he'll be just a racer like me.

Right now I'm sleepy and ready for bed, and not in much of a mood to think about what kind of shape I'm in or how I might do tomorrow.  But I'm glad to be getting another race season started.  As U.S. whitewater slalom Olympian Casey Eichfeld likes to say, "Let's race!!!!"

Monday photo feature

The Gen. Jackson, a river excursion boat based in Nashville, has been docked at Beale Street Landing since March 1, and it's likely to remain there for at least another week.  Why?  Well, to get back to Nashville the vessel must travel up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Ohio River, cruise up the Ohio to the mouth of the Cumberland River, and go a-lumberin' up the Cumberland to the self-proclaimed "Music City."  And apparently there's a bridge on the Ohio leg of the route that the boat can't fit under during this current high-water period.  So the boat and her crew are hanging out in Memphis until the water drops.

To be honest, there's something about this whole scenario that makes me smile.  I mean, this seems like a nineteenth-century sort of problem, and yet here we are in 2018 and a boat still has to cool its heels for many days because of one bridge hundreds of miles upriver.

Time to rest a little

By yesterday morning the Mississippi had dropped almost two tenths of a foot from its crest, but it was still plenty high.  I got in the boat and warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints and headed out of the harbor and up the river.

The flooded portion of the Greenbelt Park is mostly slack and I figured it was a good place to do my workout.  I did ten 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals.  By the time I'd finished the seventh sprint I was at the north end of the Greenbelt Park, so I did the last three coming back down the river.

My arms and shoulders felt tired during yesterday's paddle.  Even though I've gotten over the soreness of the current strength routine, I think it's a bit more taxing than the average routine I put together.

Now, with my first race of the season coming up next weekend, I'm hoping to get some rest this week.  That means I'll be dialing down the volume a little bit, but I'll be doing a few extra short sprints because I want to be not just rested but also sharp.  Today I paddled for 50 minutes, and did six 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals.  At times like this I lengthen the sprints from eight strokes to twelve with the hope of getting in a few more smooth strokes once the boat is up to speed.

I'll do similar stuff as the coming week moves along.  I plan to do strength work tomorrow and Wednesday but not Friday.

Aside from the high water, it was a generic week

I took my boat home and repaired that broken rudder pedal on Monday.  By Tuesday the boat was back on the water.  Joe had a conflict and couldn't make it, so I paddled by myself for 60 minutes.  I paddled up the Mississippi and into the flooded Greenbelt Park, and attracted no attention from local authorities.

I did another 60-minute paddle yesterday.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I paddled a quick tempo for 30 minutes before cooling down and returning to the dock.

The Mississippi River crested today at 39.44 feet on the Memphis gauge.  It's dropping now, but slowly: it isn't expected to fall below the official "flood stage" of 34 feet until the end of next week.

I did the strength routine this week on Monday, Wednesday, and today.

Monday photo feature

I like some good old-fashioned Go Pro photography.  It had been a long time since I'd taken my camera out, so yesterday I did.  Here I'm paddling the channel that connects Dacus Lake to the main Mississippi River.  Paddling from one body of water to the other becomes possible when the Mississippi rises into the mid 30s on the Memphis gauge.

Training hard but looking hapless anyway

Yesterday I did my annual time trial over one full loop of the harbor.  I discuss this ritual in more detail in this post I wrote last year.

I went into it yesterday not expecting any miracles.  I wasn't feeling particularly rested: I was still quite sore from the new strength routine, and I'd slept poorly for a couple of nights because of a professional problem I'm having to deal with.

Furthermore, I'm almost never in peak racing form at this time of year.  One reason I do this at this point in the season is so I won't be going into my first race completely cold in two weeks.  And I never use my nicest racing gear for this time trial; I use my old beat-up training paddle and an older surf ski that I still use for training but don't take to races anymore.  I guess that's just a way of reminding myself that this is, in fact, a training exercise, and not something I should take any more seriously than that.

The weather was not terrible but not the best either.  It was sunny and beautiful, actually, but there was a swirling wind from the northeast.  On the plus side, the Mississippi was up to 36.9 feet on the Memphis gauge, meaning that I could paddle more direct lines.  (The harbor is quite a bit more sinuous at low water.)

I warmed up paddling from the marina to the harbor's north end, and did three 8-stroke sprints before settling into the usual starting gate between two submerged trees.  I sprinted hard for about 45 seconds before settling into a pace I hoped I could maintain.  As I noted last year, 7.2 miles per hour is about what my average speed would have to be to achieve my sub-50-minute wish-list item.  Because of the squirrelly winds there were moments when I exceeded this speed and moments when I fell well short even though I was maintaining a pretty consistent intensity.

When I reached the turnaround point at a predetermined location next to the Beale Street Landing dock, I was somewhat surprised to see that my time was about 25:15--not far off the pace for a sub-50.  But I knew that a negative split in the second half would be a tall order because of the mostly-north winds as well as my mounting fatigue.  Sure enough, my G.P.S. device was reporting speeds around 6.5 mph a lot more often than speeds at or above the magic 7.2.

I tried to stay relaxed and take the best strokes I could.  One thing I focused on was keeping the stroke rate a bit lower than I'm used to: in the stroke clinic I took last fall, Morgan House emphasized hesitation between strokes to avail oneself of that extra half-second of glide.  I've always been a bit overeager to take that next stroke.

As the finish line came into view I knew a sub-50 wasn't going to happen, but I tried to finish strong.  I crossed the line in 51:47, and that was a bit of a moral victory because it had been several years since I'd last broken 52 minutes.  My G.P.S. device measured the course at 5.92 miles... interestingly, that's a hundredth of a mile more than the measurement I got last year when the water level was 11.3 feet.  Maybe high water doesn't make as much difference as I thought it did.

Glad to have this time trial over for another year, I relished the lovely day as I paddled the mile and a half or so back to the marina.  I ate the apple and drank the water I'd left on the dock and went home and had a nourishing lunch.  Then I took a nap.

I slept better last night and woke up to another lovely morning today.  I headed down to the river with the intention of doing nothing but enjoying the nice weather and the high water on the river, now up to 37.8 feet.

Things didn't quite go according to plan, and in fact one should never count on everything going according to plan when doing things outdoors.  Shortly after I'd paddled out of the harbor and headed up the Mississippi, one of my boat's foot pedals broke.  I wasn't terribly surprised, as my boat is eight years old and the pedal broke in a place that gets a lot of routine wear and tear.  I paddled up into the flooded Greenbelt Park and found a place to get out of my boat to inspect the damage, and I decided that the pedal should still be functional enough for me to continue.

I ferried across the river and did a loop through some of the flooded bottomland on the Arkansas side.  Once I'd had enough of that I ferried back across and re-entered the harbor.  I immediately encountered a boat from the Memphis Police Harbor Patrol.  One of the men on board asked me if I'd seen any other kayakers out on the river.  I said I hadn't.  He told me the Coast Guard had gotten a report of a "kayaker in distress" and passed it on to them.  I repeated that I hadn't seen anything and continued on my way.  Moments later a cop on the bank waved me over and asked me again if I'd seen anybody in trouble.  I replied that I hadn't.  He asked me if I had flipped my boat at any time.  "Not today," I told him.

I continued paddling north, back toward the dock.  I noticed a police helicopter circling overhead.  I had a feeling somebody had seen me out on the river, thought I was in distress, and reported me.  I figured I'd better just get back to the marina and put my boat away before any other law enforcement types ran me down and tried to accuse me of raising a false alarm or setting a poor example for my fellow citizens or something like that.

As I approached the marina, I was hailed by an officer at the Coast Guard station directly across the harbor.  I paddled over to him and was relieved to be greeted in a friendly manner.  It was he who had taken the original report, and he asked me if I had paddled across the river.  I told him I had.  He felt certain that the caller had mistakenly thought I was in some sort of trouble, and that he would call off the search.

It's actually not the first time somebody has mistakenly thought I was in trouble.  And I try so hard to look competent out there.  Oh well.

So. Much. Water.

More heavy rain moved into the greater Memphis area this week, but I managed to schedule my paddling around it.  The deluge hadn't arrived yet when Joe and I met for our loop of the harbor Tuesday morning; as a matter of fact, it was still sunny and beautiful.  It's always satisfying to seize the best part of the day.

It rained and rained and rained on Wednesday to close out an incredibly wet month of February.  I stayed in and started a new strength routine.  That meant I was sore yesterday when I returned to the riverfront.  But at least the rain had stopped.  And the water was way up: it was 34.6 feet on the Memphis gauge when I put in.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints I ferried across the river to avail myself of some of the vast paddleable real estate that high water offers.  On the Arkansas side directly across from downtown Memphis there's an expanse of bottomland that now contains part of the new "Big River Crossing" network of trails.  The trails were established with pedestrians and cyclists in mind, but right now they are the domain of paddlers.

Today it was cool but bright and sunny.  I did the new strength routine again.  It appears that a lovely weekend is in store.

A new strength routine

Here's the set of strength exercises that I'll be doing for the next little while.

1.  Supine extension (demonstrated at 3:29 of this video)

2.  Hindu squats (demonstrated in this video)

3.  Pullups

4.  Kickback (demonstrated at 4:03 of this video)

5.  4-way abdominals

6.  Power plank-ups (demonstrated at 1:09 of this video)

Monday photo feature

It hasn't really sunk in yet, but the start of a new race season is now less than three weeks away.  The ninth annual Battle On The Bayou race is scheduled for March 17 on Old Fort Bayou at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  In this photo racers are preparing for the start of the 2011 edition.  I won the race easily that year, but since then the competition has been solid and wins have been hard to come by.  Some good racers are registered for this year's race and I'll have my work cut out for me once more.  Photo by Robbie Capel.

The fine arts are killing me

When I got up Saturday morning the Fahrenheit temperature was in the high 60s.  It felt warmer out on the back porch than it did inside the house.  When I got down to the riverfront there was a steady breeze from the south but it was nothing too ferocious.

After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did a set of ten 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals.  I've been doing this workout for several years now since learning of research (cited in this post on Ron Lugbill's blog) that suggests that sprints like these are better than long, steady paddles for developing endurance.  I do my share of long, steady paddles, of course, but I've had some good results since I started mixing in some workouts like this one.

I'd spent the previous day doing a bunch of scraping and sanding at the rental property where I've been painting, and my arms felt tired from that.  My lower back is a bit sore from the bending, too.  But I held up just fine through all ten sprints.

My workout took me almost to the north end of the harbor, and it began to rain as I turned around for the 15-minute paddle back to the marina.  I got good and soaked as I paddled along, and the rain picked up even more intensity once I was back at the dock.

Saturday evening we got the heavy thunderstorms the weathermen had been predicting, but we were spared violent weather here in Memphis.  A tornado or two did touch down over in Arkansas.

The handbell group I play with had a gig yesterday morning, so I waited until today to do my weekly "longer" paddle.  And as luck would have it, today is what I would call our first "picture-perfect" day of 2018.  When I got to the river this morning there was not a cloud in the sky, the breeze was light, and the temperature was in the low 50s on its way to a high in the mid 60s.  With the Mississippi River at 30.0 feet on the Memphis gauge, there was plenty of water for a good smooth trip around the Loosahatchie Bar.

As I paddled away from the dock I felt some soreness in my upper left biceps.  I'd noticed it while lying in bed last night too, and I wondered what I'd done yesterday to irritate that area.  Then it hit me: on one of the pieces we played with our handbells yesterday I was ringing the biggest bell our group owns--the third octave G note--and the last page of the music had me ringing some thirty consecutive quarter notes with my left hand.  And I had to ring softly, so I had to use some extra muscle to control that.  As a result, I paddled today with a handbell injury.  Actually I would describe it more as a bit of soreness than a real injury, but it's kind of fun to say you've got a handbell injury.

The area bothered me less once I was all warmed up.  The trip around the Bar went just fine, with no drama of note.  There was some barge traffic out on the river but fortunately it wasn't creating any terribly rough conditions.  I glided back alongside the dock an hour and 58 minutes after I'd started.

Water from the sky and from the higher elevations

It's been a rainy week and it's shaping up to be a very wet month of February here.  Last night the weatherman on the Channel 5 news said we've received over eight inches this month, about twice what's normal.  It rained some more overnight and a little bit this morning.  There's more rain and possibly some severe weather in the weekend forecast.

Rain right here in Memphis doesn't really affect the level of the Mississippi, but usually the rain systems we have here stretch northward and move eastward into watersheds like the Ohio and the Cumberland and the Tennessee, and those rivers feed the Mississippi upstream of here and drive the level upward.  The other day I predicted that the NOAA's crest prediction would rise, and it has: right now the river is predicted to rise to 34.5 feet on the Memphis gauge.  Official "flood stage" is 34 feet; at that level uninhabited bottomland starts to flood.  The core city of Memphis sits on a high bluff, so it would take a flood of truly epochal proportions to threaten the city.  Even the great 2011 flood, which topped out over 48 feet, didn't affect but a few low-lying wards of the city.

When Joe and I paddled on Tuesday, the rain hadn't arrived yet but it was warm (70s Fahrenheit) and incredibly windy.  Our usual relaxed paddle in the harbor was quite tiring.  On Wednesday it poured down rain all day and I was happy to stay in and do the strength routine.  By yesterday morning that rain had moved out but it was still overcast with a temperature in the 40s when I did a 60-minute paddle.

I did the strength routine again today and now I await the meteorological drama that's on the way.

Monday photo feature

At this time two years ago, I was in the Aloha State!  Here I am paddling in Kaneohe Bay on the east (windward) side of Oahu.

Atmospheric unrest and plenty of surface water

The Fahrenheit temperature rose all the way into the 70s on Thursday.  When it gets that warm at this time of year, it's usually accompanied by strong winds, and that was the case Thursday as the wind blew from the south at 15-20 miles per hour.

I started my 60-minute paddle Thursday by heading south, into the wind.  As I reached the Mud Island marina, about a thousand meters south of my own marina, I starting doing my three 8-stroke sprints.  I was starting the third one as I was looping around the marina and heading back north, and a wave moving in from my right upset my balance.  Into the water I went, and I was right next to the marina's store and I'm sure somebody saw my mishap.  How embarrassing.  I remounted in a matter of seconds and continued on my way, hoping that maybe it would look like I'd actually meant to flip.

Now, with the wind at my back, I began the day's workout: ten 30-second sprints at 3-minute intervals.  I tend to want to take as many strokes per minute as possible during short sprints like this, and I had to make myself back off the stroke rate a bit and focus instead on making each stroke as good as it could be.

A front moved through on Friday with a strong north wind that pushed the temperature downward some 20 degrees during the day.  I was happy to stay in and do the strength routine.  By yesterday the wind had died down but there was plenty of rain.  It didn't rain for all of the 60 minutes I paddled, but a heavy shower moved in during the last five minutes and so I was good and soaked when I got back to the dock.

The Mississippi is on a big rise right now.  In the last week the level has come up from below 12 feet on the Memphis gauge to 22.6 feet this morning.  Right now the forecast says it'll go up to 27 feet, but I expect that to be revised upward, as there's apparently been a lot of rainfall in the eastern U.S. lately.  Yesterday's rain moved eastward into the Tennessee and Cumberland and Ohio watersheds, all of which feed the Mississippi upstream of Memphis.  A day or two ago somebody on Face Book posted a picture of high water on the Youghiogheny River at Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, and that, too, will eventually flow by Memphis.

Along with a rising river we got a bit of a surprise here this morning: sunshine.  The weather forecast has been looking overcast, rainy, and bleak, but the sun managed to break through for a while.  I decided today was a good time for a trip around the Loosahatchie Bar.  Starting and finishing at Harbortown Marina, this paddle typically takes me around two hours; I think the fastest I've ever done it is around an hour and 50 minutes, but I never do it as an all-out time trial.  I push the pace during parts of it and back off during other parts of it.  Today I paddled strong from the dock up to the mouth of the Wolf River, and then I eased up for ten minutes or so to gather myself for a fast ferry across the river.  With the east wind at my back during the ferry, sweat ran into my eyes and I had to stop paddling and wipe them off several times--kind of a chore with pogies on.  So I lost some time here because whenever I wasn't paddling I was drifting back downriver.  Once I had "summited" the north end of the Bar I had the current in my favor again as well as a nice breeze to keep my eyes dry.  I paddled pretty hard for the last 50 minutes or so, hoping maybe I could still duck under two hours.  I pushed the pace until about the last 400 meters, and reached the dock at almost exactly the two-hour mark.

I'm always utterly worn out for the rest of the day after paddling around the Bar, and today is no exception.  The distance of this paddle is about 12.6 miles, and it's a fairly wilderness-intensive 12.6 miles with exposure to wind, sun, and strong currents.

Court is in session, but not for me

On my first day of jury duty Monday I never made it out of the general pool.  Seven or eight times the commissioner called up groups of forty people to go to courtrooms where they would be narrowed down to actual twelve-member juries, but my name never got called.  The highlight of this mostly-boring day was when I spotted one Dave Wottle among my fellow juror candidates.  Mr. Wottle was the 1972 Olympic champion in the 800-meter run, a moment preserved in this video:



I'm a little too young to remember the 1972 Games, but I've known Mr. Wottle's story for a long time because he lives right here in Memphis, where he's been the dean of admissions at Rhodes College for the last 35 or 40 years.  He came and spoke at my school when I was in the eleventh grade.  I realized he was in the jury pool when his name got called to be a grand jury alternate, and I managed to chat with him for a minute before he was whisked away to his duties.  He seemed very nice and genuinely appreciative of this fan's acknowledgement.

I wasn't required to report until 9:30 yesterday morning, and I got up early enough to get in a quick round of the strength routine.  Having defied the odds on Monday I figured things would trend back toward the mean yesterday, and sure enough my name got called among the first group of forty.  Now I was a little worried that I'd be seated on the jury for a trial that wouldn't start until the afternoon, and I'd be tied up for the rest of the week.  But that worry came to an abrupt end when I didn't survive the peremptory challenges.  One of the lawyers must not have liked the cut of my jib.  Or, as my mother remarked later, one of the lawyers didn't think I would be suitably biased in favor of his client.

The bailiff informed me that I was excused from jury duty for the next ten years, and just like that my time was my own once more.  I was largely relieved, but there was a hint of disappointment: the right to a trial by a jury of one's peers is as precious as any right we enjoy in this nation, and there's a certain satisfaction in serving on a jury now and then.  I suppose I will have more chances.

I went home and had some lunch, and went down to the river a little bit later.  I almost never feel as keen to paddle in the afternoon as I do in the morning, but after a good long warmup I eventually found a groove.  By paddling yesterday I managed to stay on my regular schedule for the week in spite of the jury duty.

Monday photo feature

In observance of my jury duty that starts today, here's a photo I took of my friend Lanier Fogg back in 1994, as he was running El Horrendo on the Russell Fork of the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River near the Virginia-Kentucky state line.  Lanier is a lawyer here in Memphis, and I guess there's a chance I could end up in the same courtroom as he this week.  I wouldn't be empaneled on that jury, of course, 'cause he's my bud.

Wet and cold this weekend

Yesterday morning the rain fell on me for all sixty of the minutes I paddled.  Fortunately, it was not absurdly cold; with the temperature around 54 degrees Fahrenheit, I even decided to ditch the pogies. Y'all know how much I cherish a pogie-less day at this time of year.

The Mississippi was shrouded in a thick fog, and I stayed close to the Tennessee bank to avoid brushes with whatever motorized vessels might be hiding in there.  It was quite beautiful: foul weather gives us some of our prettiest days out on the river.

I had my good long-sleeved paddling shell on, and the rain didn't really bother me at all as I paddled. It was back on the dock that the chill began to set in.  When you're soaking wet out in nature in the wintertime, it's just not easy to be anything other than cold.

When I returned to the river this morning to do a longer paddle, the rain had moved out but the sky was overcast and the temperature had dropped into the 30s.  I paddled to the mouth of the harbor and found heavy commercial traffic out on the Mississippi: there were three barge rigs moving upriver and two more coming down.  I usually like to do my longer paddles out on the river because it's more interesting and fun than staying in the harbor, but today, not wanting to expose myself to a lot of rough water on a cold day, I limited myself to a short time out there.  One of the downstream-bound rigs was producing some sweet surfing waves and I wished it were a hot summer day when I have no excuse not to surf my brains out.

Instead I returned to the harbor and did a couple of long surges.  I pushed the pace heading north for about 15 minutes, then paddled easy until I reached the north end of the harbor.  Then I timed myself paddling from the north end back down to my marina.

Every spring I do a time trial over one lap of the harbor, and for years I've been aiming for the 50-minute barrier.  A few years ago I clocked about 50:30, but more recently I haven't been able to break 52 minutes.  From the north end of the harbor to the marina's southeast corner is a little more than a quarter of a lap, and my time today was 13:55, so at best I was on pace for a time of 52 minutes or so.

As usual, I did my 8-stroke sprints both yesterday and today.  My new and (hopefully) improved stroke is feeling more and more natural at my normal cruising pace, but it's been slower to come at high intensity.

All training activity will likely be on hold for at least the next two or three days.  I am on jury duty in my state's judicial system this coming week.

A matter of degrees

Fairly often I tell somebody that 32 degrees and sunny and calm is a better paddling day than 10 degrees warmer and windy and overcast.  The last two Tuesdays have provided a perfect case in point.  When Joe and I put our boats in the water back on January 30, the temperature was right at the freezing point, but because of the bright sunshine and calm conditions it turned out to be a lovely day to paddle.  On this past Tuesday the temperature was up around 42 degrees, but a stiff north wind and overcast skies gave the day a more hostile winter feel.  But neither day was less satisfying than the other once our boats were put away and we were walking up to the parking lot with dry clothes on and another good paddling session under our belts.

Yesterday I enjoyed the best aspects of each of those Tuesdays.  The temperature was rising into the 40s when I arrived at the river, and the sun was out and the north wind was light.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor and then paddled up the Mississippi a ways before coming back.  As I was heading back toward the marina, on a whim I decided to time myself from the monorail bridge to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, a distance of about 450 meters.  I was paddling not all-out, but maybe at 85% or so intensity, and I was trying to take the best strokes I could as I have been practicing them this winter.  The north wind was strong enough that it was probably slowing me down some.  In any case, my time was right about 2 minutes, 30 seconds--pretty slow considering that last summer I was doing sets of four of these sprints at or below 2 minutes each.  Oh well... there's plenty of time to get faster.

I did the current strength routine on Monday, Wednesday, and today.  For pushups, I'm trying to do all the different kinds I know: regular pushups, Hindu pushups, decline pushups, and so on.

Monday photo feature

For several years in the middle of the last decade, early February was a time for me to escape to the Florida Keys.  Back then there was an event at Key Largo called the Bogey & Bacall, and it consisted of a 13-mile "Bogey" race on Saturday and a 6-mile "Bacall" race on Sunday.  In this photo I'm crossing the finish line in the 2006 "Bogey" race.

A pleasant weekend

It was around 50 degrees Fahrenheit when I got down to the river yesterday.  It seemed delightfully warm after a day in the 30s on Friday. The south breeze was gentle and the river was calm.  I did a 60-minute loop out on the river in front of the downtown Memphis skyline.

Today was another nice day.  I got in my boat and warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor.  Those sprints are back to feeling sloppy this weekend.  So it goes.

This being another Sunday, it was time for a "longer" paddle.  I paddled up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, and continued up the Wolf.  With the Mississippi at 11.5 feet on the Memphis gauge, I paddled against some current for about the last half-mile before my turnaround point at the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge.

This was shaping up to be my longest paddle of the calendar year so far, and I was feeling pretty worn out in the last 20 minutes or so.  I tried to focus as hard as I could on maintaining good form and taking good strokes all the way back to the dock.  The river was a bit choppy from some barge traffic but back in the harbor the water was glassy-smooth and as lovely as could be with the clouds giving way to some sunshine.  I got back to the dock to wrap up a 120-minute session.

Underestimating my multitasking capabilities

Joe and I did a loop of the harbor on Tuesday.  It was cold--mid 30s Fahrenheit--but the bright sunshine and calm conditions made it an otherwise ideal morning for paddling.

Today I was scheduled to meet with an insurance adjuster at 9 AM to look at some damage at my rental property.  I typically tend to consider something like that enough to consume my mental energy for the whole morning, and I thought about waiting until this afternoon or tomorrow to paddle.  But the forecast showed the temperature dropping all afternoon from its morning high in the mid 50s, on its way to an overnight low in the 20s.  It occurred to me that the meeting with the adjuster probably wouldn't last more than an hour or so, and I'd have plenty of time to paddle before lunch.  So I threw my paddling clothes in the car, and as it turned out I was done with the adjuster and on the water by ten o'clock.  I paddled for 60 minutes, doing three 8-stroke sprints and several long surges.

It was beginning to drizzle as I left the marina and walked back up to my car--the first line of this mass of cold air that's moving in.

I started my new strength routine yesterday and plan to do another round tomorrow.

A new strength routine

It's time for a new routine.  Several of the exercises that follow come from Lindsey's video, and I've listed the time in the video at which each occurs.  The other two are pushups, familiar to everyone, and "wrist rollers," the old exercise involving a weight tied to a dowel that you rotate with your wrists.

Since I do my strength work at home without a lot of equipment, I use rubber bands to do the "rope pull-down" and the "straight-arm pull-down."

1.  Pushups

2.  Ball back extension (seen at 1:15 of the video)

3.  Rope pull-down (0:59)

4.  Wrist rollers

5.  Straight-arm pull-down (3:06)

Monday photo feature

Pete Greene of Beaufort, South Carolina, charges down the Mississippi River with Eric Mims of Isle of Palms, South Carolina, on his wake.  A boatlength back is Chris Hipgrave of Bryson City, North Carolina.  The year is 2012, and the event is the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race at Memphis.  Photo by Roger Cotton Photography.

Plowing through January

I paddled for 60 minutes Thursday morning.  My deltoids and biceps felt tired and a bit sore, and the only cause I could think of was the Hannibal pushups I'm doing as part of the current strength routine.  Then something else occurred to me: for the last week or so I've been doing a lot of painting at a rental property I own.  Now it all made sense.  I have quite a lot of painting yet to do over there, so I guess I'm doing double duty in the arm and shoulder conditioning department.  For those who are wondering: yes, as a matter of fact I am doing my painting mindfully like Daniel LaRusso does in The Karate Kid.  I'm using both arms and doing specific motions.

Yesterday was a rainy day.  We never got any especially heavy rain, but I spent 60 minutes of the morning paddling in a steady drizzle that occasionally escalated into a drenching shower.  The Fahrenheit temperature was in the low 50s--certainly not freezing but not as warm as I'd like it to be when I'm getting rained on.

The sun was back out today and the river was beautiful during my 100-minute paddle.  It was a good way to pass the morning before spending another afternoon with a paint brush in my hand.

I did a set of three 8-stroke sprints on each of the days I paddled.  They felt better than they'd been feeling.  I'm sure they're far from perfect, but they seemed more fluid than they'd been in a long time.

I did the strength routine on Wednesday and Friday, and I think I've had enough of this particular set of exercises.  I'll be drawing up a new routine this coming week.

Mmmm... cake

I let a milestone slip by two days ago.  On January 23, 2012, I put up the very first post on this blog.  That's right: My Training Blog by Elmore is now six years old.  I sincerely appreciate every person who has taken even a few seconds to have a look at it.  I especially appreciate those who have taken the time to tell me what they think.  Do I have another six years of this in me?  Hmm... I dunno.  As the current occupant of our White House might say, "we'll see what happens."

A desire to shed

I found the harbor ice-free when I went down to paddle yesterday morning.  The Fahrenheit temperature was headed for a high in the mid 60s.  I gleefully ditched the wetsuit pants for some lighter-weight tights and removed the pogies from my paddle.  You have no idea how much I prefer paddling without pogies.

And the river was on the rise after sitting below zero on the Memphis gauge for quite some time.  Yesterday's reading was 12.4 feet, opening up a lot more paddleable real estate.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, I decided to ferry over to the Arkansas side of the Mississippi and up into the Loosahatchie Chute.

There was a pretty good breeze blowing from the southwest, and it had picked up considerably by the time I was coming back downriver.  The river was quite choppy and icy water splashed into my cockpit.  Suddenly I didn't feel so smart for not wearing those wetsuit pants.  I went a little bit into self-preservation mode, trying to avoid a flip until I was back in the harbor.  Once there I had the wind at my back, and yet it was blowing hard enough that it still had a chilling effect.  I got back to the dock and put on dry clothes as fast as I could.  I went home shivering and it took several hours for me to get comfortably warm again.  Even with the balmier temperature, it was still January.

Today's high barely made it out of the 40s, and that took the guesswork out of today's attire as I met Joe for a loop of the harbor.  The pogies and the wetsuit pants were back on, along with some better upper-body layering.

Monday photo feature

Having just finished a race at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, I ponder the whole state of affairs.  I think the year is 2015.  Photo by Robert Nykvist.

Landscape thawing; trying to get my attitude to follow suit

It was 13 degrees Fahrenheit outside when I got up Thursday morning, but the high was predicted to be in the high 30s--our first time above freezing since Monday.  So it wasn't a hard decision to wait until the afternoon to paddle.

My car's temperature display said it was 36 degrees when I arrived at the riverfront just after 3 o'clock.  36 degrees feels awfully warm after you've been through at least a 48-hour period when it got no warmer than about 23 degrees.  But when I got down to the dock it appeared that I might not be able to paddle: the harbor was frozen over with a decently-thick sheet of ice all around the marina.  Further investigation revealed an open channel out in the middle of the harbor, however, so I got in the boat and managed to bust through the ice to some paddleable water.

Heading north, I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints.  I continued along until I was about 400 meters shy of the harbor's northern tip, next to the old Cargill plant.  Ice prevented me from going any farther, so I turned around and headed south.

I felt tired in the boat at this hour of the day, and I tried to relax and take good strokes.  As I navigated the narrow channel of open water, the ice floes on either side of me made ethereal sounds as my wakes passed beneath them.  Eventually, just south of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, I had to turn around again because of impassable ice.

As I finished my 60-minute session back at the marina, the sun was setting and I was eager to get into dry clothes.  It was apparently back below freezing at river level because the water on my boat had frozen.  Back in my car the temperature registered at 34 degrees.

Friday's high was around 40 degrees, and yesterday the temperature got all the way up to 60.  By the end of the day yesterday the snow and ice had been reduced to isolated patches in the shady areas.

I went back to the river yesterday morning and was surprised to find quite a bit of ice lingering in the harbor.  I put in from my usual dock, thinking the ice there would surely be thin enough to bust through, but it turned out to be quite thick, and I had to get out of my boat and try putting in from a different dock just so I could get out to the open water.  A harbor-wide sheet of ice between the marina and the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge barricaded my access to the southern half of the harbor, so I did my entire 60-minute paddle in the northern half, which was almost entirely ice-free.

Today's high is supposed to be 63 degrees--surely that will finish off the remaining snow and ice on the ground.  Because of some non-paddling-related commitments today I won't make it back to the river until tomorrow, and maybe I'll find the water completely open by then.  According to The Weather Channel's website the temperature will be mostly in the 40s or warmer for the next ten days--that's much more the sort of winter I was expecting when I signed up to live in this part of the country.

For today, I did a round of the strength routine just like I'd done on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this past week.  I'm still struggling with those rolling squat burpees, and I can't understand how I've gone from being able to do them reasonably well two years ago to barely being able to do them now.  The rest of the routine is going okay.  My back soreness from the previous week has mended and that's helping me feel better about it all.

Another good exercise video

My friend Lindsey, a canoe and kayak racer in the Lake Lanier area of Georgia, has made a video of a bunch of the strength exercises she does.

There's all kinds of good stuff here, including some exercises I've never seen before and some I used to do years ago but had forgotten about.  I expect many of these will show up in future strength routines of my own.

Snow day thoughts: more on whitewater racing

The high temperature yesterday was about 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  Most of the snow and ice that fell last Friday had melted away by the end of the day.  Then, overnight, a new winter storm moved through the Mid South, and we are now blanketed in a new two to three inches of snow.  So far this winter I'd been stiffening my upper lip and paddling on these icy days, but with the high temperature not even making it out of the teens, I raised the white flag today.

Instead, I spent part of the day dreaming up something to post here on the blog.  Here's a little followup to yesterday's "photo feature" post.  The U.S. team trials for wildwater took place this past weekend, and Jamie McEwan's son Devin has made the team for 2018.  Devin has extensive slalom racing experience and raced C2 at the 2016 Olympics at Rio de Janiero.  But just like his dad, he's doing some wildwater, too.  Here is this year's U.S. wildwater team as reported by Jeff Owen of the USA Wildwater Committee:

Selected to represent the USA at the World Championships in Muotathal, Switzerland, on the Muota River:

~C1 Man - Devin McEwan
~K1 Man - Chris Hipgrave
~K1 Man - Cameron Thacker
~K1 Woman - Alessia Faverio
~K1 Woman - Marin Millar

All of these athletes were also selected to represent the USA at the World Cups in Banja Luka and Celje, with the following additions:

K1 Woman - Joslin Coggan
K1 Woman - Lili Brandon

Additionally we thank Chris Norbury for volunteering to be the USA Team Manager.

Long-time readers of this blog might also recognize the name Chris Hipgrave, a visitor to Memphis for many Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Races over the years.

What exactly is wildwater, you ask?  "Wildwater" is downriver racing through whitewater rapids.  Like I mentioned yesterday, it was partnered with whitewater slalom for decades much like downhill skiing is partnered with the various forms of slalom skiing.  But now that slalom is an Olympic sport and wildwater isn't, wildwater is laboring to get by on its own.  Few athletes compete in both disciplines these days.

That's a shame, because I believe slalom and wildwater are a lot more similar than many people realize.  Sure, the boats are very different: wildwater boats put a premium on forward speed while slalom boats sacrifice forward speed for greater turning ability.  But one skill is absolutely crucial for success in either discipline: boat positioning.

When you're trying to get down a slalom or wildwater course as quickly as possible, you want as many of your strokes as possible to be forward strokes, or at least strokes that propel the boat forward in some way while also effecting some necessary change in direction.  You want to avoid strokes that slow the boat down, like stern rudders and (especially!) back strokes.  A so-called "perfect run" would be one in which you do nothing but forward strokes, using the river's features (waves, holes, eddies, oblique currents) in combination with leans and body English to do all the steering.

To make sure you're doing mostly forward strokes, it's very important that, at every instant during your race run, your boat is in the right place and pointed the right way to allow you to take a good, solid, maximum-blade-pressure forward stroke.  This is what whitewater racers mean when they talk about "boat positioning," and no, it is not easy.  It requires not only a considerable degree of skill, boat control, body control, and balance, but also an intimate familiarity with every aspect of the course.  Accomplished racers spend hours studying the course from their boats and from the riverbank, and going over the course in their minds away from the river.  This is quite a commitment of time in the case of wildwater racers, who have as much as several miles of river to learn.

During the years I spent trying to race slalom in the 1990s, I struggled mightily with boat positioning.  Just gaining an appreciable intellectual understanding of it took me a few years (and I probably didn't help myself by living hundreds of miles from other racers and coaches).  By the early 2000s I had definitely improved and was even winning some club-level races, whose courses are typically pretty easy and take place on non-threatening whitewater.  But the big national-level races like the team trials always required more difficult moves on bigger water, and there my lack of athletic ability was laid bare for the world to see.  I remember sneaking in a lot of rudder strokes and doing a lot of braces while my more gifted competitors powered through all the moves as if they were on flatwater.

Throughout that period, friends of mine would sometimes tell me "You ought to race wildwater!  With your endurance background (I'd been a runner in high school and college) and your river-running experience you'd be a natural!"

Eventually I did enter some wildwater races, and I was not a natural.  Endurance was never a problem, but just because I'd done plenty of river running didn't mean I was ready to get down a river fast.  The main thing I struggled with was exactly the thing that had given me so much trouble in slalom: boat positioning.

One wildwater race I did was the 2000 nationals on the Kern River out in California.  The course had several long flatwater sections, and those were no problem: I paddled through them as hard as I could, just like I do in the races I'm doing these days.  It was in the rapids that I lost an absurd amount of time.  The biggest rapid was a circuitous route through a jumble of rocks, and all I remember now, nearly two decades later, is all the big, fat, ugly back strokes I was doing to get myself through the rapid without wrecking my boat.  Meanwhile, I guarantee you that the top racers were forward-paddling through that rapid as if they were on a lake.  At every instant, their boats were positioned just right so that they didn't have to do any corrective strokes.

Nowadays I'm doing a different type of racing, and while I'm not world-class in it either, at least I'm demonstrating a bit more competence.  Not coincidentally, boat positioning is not really a part of this type of racing.  I've even got a rudder to do almost all the steering.  There are technical challenges, to be sure: I keep working to make my next stroke the perfect forward stroke.  But these challenges seem to fit my particular set of athletic gifts better.

Still, I think a lot about all that whitewater racing I did, and there's a lot I miss about it.  I wasn't winning much--more often, I was fighting to avoid last place.  But in a weird way, that was part of the allure.  Over many years, toiling to get good at something that did not come naturally to me built profound self-confidence and a sense of who I am in this world.  It reminds me of a slogan that was painted on the wall of the basketball locker room at a school where I once taught.  It was a trite slogan, but hey, it didn't become overused by not having any truth to it: "Most players practice what they do best.  Good players practice what they do worst."

I'll leave you with an example of good boat positioning in wildwater racing.  Vladi Panato of Italy was perhaps the greatest wildwater C1 racer ever.  The video below presents a retrospective of his career.  Except on one very technical boulder-strewn course that required some extreme turns, you will not see Mr. Panato switch paddling sides or take any strokes across the bow.  He does all his steering by leaning the boat and by positioning it so that the whitewater features turn the boat for him.  I am in awe every time I watch this footage.

Vladi Panato: Il Mito (The Legend) from WildWater TV Italia www.wwtv.it on Vimeo.

Monday photo feature

Cathy Summers has posted more photos on Face Book since last Monday.  If you use Face Book I encourage you to visit the pages "Catherine Summers' Photography" and "Whitewater Slalom Alumni and Friends" to check them out.

Her latest albums contain photos from the 1989 season.  1979 had been a special year because U.S. athletes won multiple world championships medals for the first time ever, and 1989 was just as special because the world championships took place in the U.S. for the first time ever.  The best whitewater paddlers in the world put their boats on the Savage River in Maryland to compete for the sport's most prestigious titles, and Cathy Summers was there with her camera once more.

Paddling here are the late Jamie McEwan in the bow and Lecky Haller in the stern.  These two need no introduction to anybody familiar with whitewater slalom racing in the U.S.  Jamie had won the first-ever Olympic medal for the U.S. when he took the C1 bronze in 1972, and Lecky had been a C2 world champion with his brother Fritz in 1983.  After joining forces in the mid 1980s, Jamie and Lecky quickly became one of the top slalom C2s in the world: they were silver medalists at the 1987 world championships, won the overall World Cup title in 1988, took fourth at the 1989 worlds, and finished fourth at the 1992 Olympics.

What fewer people are aware of is that Jamie and Lecky did some wildwater racing as well.  Nowadays the non-Olympic wildwater discipline is sort of the unfortunate stepsister while slalom basks in the Olympic spotlight, but once upon a time the two were considered equal and many athletes, like Davey Hearn and Ron Lugbill in last week's photo feature, participated in both, just as skiers commonly race both the slalom and downhill events.  Slalom's re-inclusion on the Olympic programme in 1992, along with wildwater's non-inclusion, brought that relationship to an end.  1993 was the last year in which the slalom and wildwater world championships took place together on a regular basis.

Because of that, Ms. Summers's photo sets contain many relics of a bygone era.  In this photo Jamie and Lecky switch over to the wildwater boat for a run down the Savage River at the 1989 worlds.

Back in the deep freeze

I paddled without pogies Thursday morning.  The Fahrenheit temperature was in the low 60s.  As I drove home I saw people out in their yards in short sleeves.

"What a difference a day makes," the tired old saying goes.  I woke up before dawn Friday and heard sleet beating against my bedroom window.  By the time I was out of bed a while later the streets were thoroughly iced over.  The sleet changed into plump snowflakes around nine o'clock, and by the time "Winter Storm Hunter," as I later found out it was named, had moved out, our fair city was all but shut down.  Bear in mind that we're one of those Southern cities without much in the way of snow removal equipment.

Ordinarily I'd have done another round of the strength routine Friday, but the beat-up state of my body, combined with the "holiday" feel of a snow day, made me decide to take a break from that.  Instead I did a full-body stretching session and soaked in the bathtub.

It was snowing again yesterday as I headed down to the river, but it didn't seem to be sticking to the streets where the previous day's traffic had blazed some decent trails.  It was 23 degrees when I arrived at the marina, and the scene down at the dock looked like this:

It was definitely a day for the fleece-lined pogies.

The rudder system was all frozen up, of course.  The pedals came free after about five minutes, but the rudder itself remained stuck.  Fortunately it was stuck in an almost perfect straight-ahead position, so I was able to paddle toward the south end of the harbor with virtually no corrective strokes.  When I did have to alter my course with some one-sided paddling, I treated it as a stroke drill and used good precise strokes.  The rudder finally came loose about 20 minutes in, and from then on it was a pretty typical, if cold, 60-minute session.

Yesterday afternoon the sun came out, and that aided the clearing of the streets even though the high temperature was only about 28 degrees.  This morning I headed back down to the riverfront in driving conditions that were about as good as we could ask for two days after a heavy-by-Memphis-standards winter storm.  Down at the marina, where the temperature was 24 degrees, the banks were slightly less snow-covered but the dock seemed just as snowy:

Knowing my rudder would be frozen, I took a hammer with me today so I could tap the rudder-post hatch cover loose and then free the rudder by hand.  The cover shattered:

I'm not really surprised: it was made of a pretty low-grade plastic and had been exposed to years worth of ultraviolet radiation, and the cold temperature just made it that much more brittle.  Fortunately a rudder post hatch cover is not an especially essential piece of equipment.

On my way out of the harbor I did three 8-stroke sprints.  Out on the Mississippi I paddled up along the Tennessee side to the mouth of the Wolf River.  As I came back down there was some turbulence in the water from a couple of barge rigs, and my main priority was staying upright--I did not want to go swimming on a day like today.

Once back in the harbor's safe haven I tried to take the most perfect strokes I could to make up for the de-tuning out on the river.  In his clinic back in October, Morgan House had urged his pupils to focus on one aspect of the stroke at a time, and that's what I did here.  I'd concentrate on exiting close to the boat for a couple dozen strokes, then I'd concentrate on having the shaft as close to vertical as possible at the catch for the next little while, and then I'd concentrate on rotating my body... there's never an end of things to think about.

(1) Warm, wet paddling. (2) Ow!!!! (3) Strength routine struggles.

This week has been significantly warmer than last, the Fahrenheit thermometer hitting 60 degrees by yesterday.  It's also been overcast and rainy and gloomy.  Picture-perfect days are rare in January.  And the forecast calls for the return of sub-freezing temperatures overnight tonight, possibly accompanied by sleet and freezing rain.

Joe and I paddled a loop of the harbor on Tuesday, and today I went back to the river with the intention of paddling for 60 minutes.  I discovered upon arrival that I'd forgotten my watch, so I paddled a loop that usually takes me about an hour to do.  I warmed up, did three 8-stroke sprints, and then practiced my stroke at a variety of speeds.  I got back to the dock about 65 minutes after I'd left--typical of me, I erred toward excess.

I paddled with a bit of discomfort today because as I was leaving the house this morning I slipped on the stairs out back.  I'm glad no one was around to see it because it was one of those spectacular feet-out-from-under-me moves, like when a cartoon character slips on a banana peel.  It had been raining in the early hours of the morning and my back stairs can get very slippery when wet.  My back slammed down hard on a stair just below the shoulder blades.  I don't think I hurt myself seriously--just a deep bruise--but now I'll be living with that soreness for several days.

On Monday and yesterday I did rounds of the current strength routine.  Like I've mentioned before, these exercises are Hard with a capital H.  I'm a little perplexed by the trouble I'm having with the rolling squat burpees: I remember them being difficult when I last did them two years ago, but I'm pretty sure I got the hang of them after just a few days of trying.  But right now I'm struggling to do even one rep.  I realize there's no reason to get too upset: I'm a paddler, after all, not a burpee master.  But I'm feeling discouraged anyway.  The truth is, I don't want to believe that my athletic ability has declined that much between age 48 and age 50.

Wintertime tips

Go back and read this post from two and a half years ago.  I'd forgotten all about it but I think it's quite timely for those of us in the northern hemisphere for whom the new race season is still just a glimmer on the horizon.

Monday photo feature

A lady named Cathy Summers has posted some really neat photos of the 1979 whitewater racing season on Face Book.  Apparently she has had them in the form of slides all these years, and she is now scanning them and sharing them.  Face Book users can view her albums on the page "Whitewater Slalom Alumni and Friends."

1979 is the season covered in the movie Fast and Clean, a documentary of whitewater slalom racing in the United States and U.S. racers' quests for medals at the world championships.  Having spent most of the 1990s trying my hand at slalom, I've watched Fast and Clean many, many times.  Seeing these photos now makes me feel like I'm learning "The Rest Of The Story."  The photos include all the athletes and events we see in Fast and Clean, plus many other athletes and many other events.

Pictured above are Davey Hearn and Ron Lugbill.  Davey and Ron both appear in Fast and Clean competing in slalom single canoe (C1), the discipline for which they are best known.  But the fact is that they were also on the wildwater national team during the early part of their careers, and in this photo they are paddling a wildwater C2 on Rivière Saguenay at Jonquière, Quebec, the site of the '79 world championships.  I'm guessing this is a practice run since Ron is not wearing a number bib.  (A whitewater racer usually gets a bib to wear rather than a number to tape on the boat's deck.)

It just so happens that Davey and his wife Jennifer have DVD copies of Fast and Clean for sale through their company Sweet Composites.  Anybody reading this who hasn't seen the film should order a copy right away and experience the magic for himself or herself.  Though I don't see this product actually listed on the site, Jennifer has confirmed that they do in fact have it.  25 bucks apiece... money you will not regret spending.  Get busy and call them up, and tell them My Training Blog by Elmore sent you.

Race schedule update

More race directors are beginning to announce their dates for 2018, and online registration is now live for a number of events.  Here is an updated edition of my 2018 schedule.  I'd appreciate a heads-up from anybody who knows of other events within a reasonable drive of Memphis, Tennessee.


March
18  Battle On The Bayou.  Old Fort Bayou, Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  8.5 miles on flatwater.  Register


April
7  Top Of The Teche.  Bayou Teche, Leonville, Louisiana, to Arnaudville, Louisiana.  7.7 miles down a Class I river.  Register

7 Kayak Trader Oyster City Challenge.  Apalachicola River, Apalachicola, Florida.  15 miles down a coastal river.  Register

21  Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River from Madison Parish Port, Louisiana, to Vicksburg, Mississippi.  21 miles down the largest river in North America.  Register


May
12  Osage Spring 12.  Osage River near Osage City, Missouri.  12 miles total (10 miles downriver and then 2 miles back up) on a Class I river.  Register

12  Bluegrass River Run.  Kentucky River near Richmond, Kentucky.  19 miles down a Class I river. Register


June
9  Taylorsville Lake Paddle Battle.  Taylorsville Lake, Taylorsville, Kentucky.  A flatwater race of "TBD" distance.

16  Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River, Memphis, Tennessee.  The 37th edition of this classic.  5000 meters down the largest river in North America.  Register


July
7  The Lovely Laurel River Lake Paddle Blast.  Laurel River Lake, Corbin, Kentucky.  A 10-mile flatwater race.  Register

16-21  Gorge Downwind Championships.  Columbia River, Hood River, Oregon.  A race for surf skis and outrigger canoes in the legendary downwind conditions of the Columbia River Gorge.


August
4  The Paddle Grapple.  Fontana Reservoir near Bryson City, North Carolina.  A 6-mile flatwater race.  Register

9-12  U.S. Canoe Association National Championships.  Onondaga Lake and Erie Canal, Syracuse, New York.  Marathon races in a variety of boat classes sanctioned by the USCA.


September
1  Big River Regional.  Mississippi River, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  13 miles down the largest river in North America.

8  Lower Atchafalaya Sprints.  Atchafalaya River, Patterson, Louisiana.  A series of 3-mile races on flatwater.

22  Gator Bait Race.  Barnett Reservoir outside Jackson, Mississippi.  A 5.5-mile flatwater race.  Register

29  River Rat Paddle Challenge.  Ouachita River at Monroe, Louisiana.  6.5 miles on a Class I river.

Winter backs off a little

It was 16 degrees Fahrenheit when I got out of bed Friday morning.  The temperature was forecast to go all the way up to 39 by the afternoon, so, weary of fighting with a frozen rudder and having icicles all over my clothes, I waited until the afternoon to paddle.  The high for the day was in fact 42 degrees, and when I arrived down at the riverfront it was amazing how warm it felt after a whole week of almost constant subfreezing temperatures.  It helped a lot that the sun was out and there was very little wind.

I happily swapped out my fleece-lined pogies for the unlined ones and set out on a 60-minute paddle. I did three 8-stroke sprints, during which it wasn't easy to use my "new and (I hope) improved" stroke.  I'll just keep practicing, I guess.  I paddled steady for the rest of the hour.  During the last ten minutes or so, as I headed back toward the dock, some soft ice started forming on my deck.  I'm curious to know how that was happening, seeing as how the air temperature was still well above freezing at that moment.

Yesterday I did another round of the new strength routine.  I'd started it by doing sort of a cursory round Thursday, and yesterday I did it the usual two times through.  As I mentioned before, most of the exercises I'm doing come from this video; I'd last done them about two years ago, and I'm now being reminded of just how much more technically difficult they are than they look in the vid.  The Hannibal pushups, rolling squat burpees, and 180 depth-tuck jumps are particularly tricky, and right now I'm struggling to do just a few reps of each even close to respectably.  Two years ago I did manage to get reasonably proficient, so now I just need to have faith that I will again with continued practice.

Today's weather is pretty emblematic of winter as I have come to know it on this particular parcel of our planet's surface: not bone-jarring cold, but cold nevertheless, and overcast and gloomy as well.  The temperature was in the high 30s when I got down to the riverfront this morning, and it was quite breezy as well.  The wind was from the southeast, and that's not as bad as a north wind, but it was still a wind and it was not exactly warm.

In recent years Sunday has been my day for a long paddle.  To me, "long" is two hours or more.  Since I'm building back toward a full training load for the new race season, I settled for a mere 90 minutes today.  After doing another three 8-stroke sprints I paddled out of the harbor and up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River.  As I came back down the river there were two barge rigs coming up and they created somewhat turbulent conditions.  I de-tuned my stroke and focused on staying upright until I was safely back in the harbor.  The temperature may have been above freezing but I still didn't want to go for a swim.

A new strength routine

It's a new month!  Time to get going with a new strength routine.

It's been a long time since I've done any of the exercises in the video that appears at the bottom of my last post--in fact, I'd almost forgotten about that video, to be honest.  So five of the six exercises in this new routine are covered in that video.  These exercises involve near-constant motion, and I figure that's a good thing to focus on during these cold days we've been having in which getting moving at all takes a bit of willpower.

1.  Hannibal pushups

2.  Pendulum planks

3.  Bent-over rows with a dumbbell

4.  Rolling squat burped

5.  Glute/ham single-leg plyo bridge

6.  180 depth-tuck jumps

Reposting some good exercise videos

This is something I repost about once a year.  Below are several videos from which I have drawn exercises for my strength routines in the last few years.  While I believe traditional "pumping iron" has its place, I'm always on the lookout for exercises that emphasize precise movements and full ranges of motion.  Not only are these things important for paddlers, but also I think they promote "later-life" general fitness and wellness.  I, for one, am not getting any younger.

Core strength is an asset for paddlers of all disciplines.  Here's Chinese slalom racer Jing Jing Li demonstrating some simple core exercises one can do with a stability ball:




I love exercises that require little or no equipment.  In this video, slalom kayak world and Olympic champion Daniele Molmenti of Italy shows us some "backpacker" exercises, so named because they're easy to do anyplace on the planet you might find yourself:




The guy in this video, Michele Ramazza, has excelled in "extreme" or "freeride" racing--downriver kayaking in pretty gnarly whitewater:

  


Finally, here are some exercises that focus on explosive power.  They are technically quite tricky, and I typically have to spend the first several sessions of a strength routine just learning them: I watch an exercise in the video, then I get down on the floor and try it myself, I see where I'm having difficulty, and I watch the video footage again to see how this athlete handles it.

F-f-f-frigid wa-wa-wa-water

I understand that yesterday was among the coldest New Year's Days on record for the greater Memphis area.  When I got down to the river yesterday afternoon the temperature display in my car said it was 22 degrees Fahrenheit.  That was about as warm as it got the entire day.  My boat's rudder and its cables were frozen in place, and the best remedy I've found is to put the boat in the water and start paddling and hope that the slightly-above-freezing water, along with any sunlight there might be, will help free them up.  This time it took between five and ten minutes for me to have steering.  After that I paddled steady to complete a 60-minute session.  The north wind had some bite to it and I think it picked up while I was out there: the last 20 minutes or so, during which I paddled from the south end of the harbor back to the marina, was particularly uncomfortable.  By the time I'd changed into dry clothes and put my boat away back at the dock, I was chilled to the core.

Ever the glutton for punishment, I returned to the riverfront this morning for another round.  The temperature as I parked in the lot up the hill from the marina: 15 degrees.  I realized I'd forgotten the shell I usually wear in such weather, so I decided to keep today's session short: 40 minutes.  I put the boat in the water and began the usual effort to free the rudder.  I mentioned in my last post that I don't usually do drills and stuff when it's this cold, but with no steering I found myself doing many one-sided strokes just to get the boat to go where I wanted.  I paid the same attention to stroke mechanics as I always do when doing stroke drills.

After 15 minutes the rudder was showing no signs of coming unfrozen.  I stopped at the dock to try to work it free by hand, but to no avail.  I finally gave up and resolved to paddle as well as I could under the circumstances.  As it turned out, the rudder was positioned in such a way that I was able to do smooth clockwise laps of the marina with only a little bit of one-sided paddling or backpaddling to adjust the boat's direction.  In the end, I achieved what I thought was a good-quality training session, and I was pleased to have done something good in such less-than-ideal conditions.

The paddling itself is generally the least-unpleasant part of paddling on a frigid day: once I get going I generate plenty of body heat.  The chores back on the dock are what's tough, changing into dry clothes and putting the boat away.  Today I just put the boat away and skipped the change of clothes, dashing back up the hill to the car.  I drove home and peeled off the paddling gear and hopped in the shower to warm myself back up.

I guess one obvious question is, Why wasn't the harbor iced over?  And I don't really know the answer.  I've seen the harbor freeze over a few times over the years, but yesterday and today it was as liquid as could be even though the temperature has been well below freezing for a good three days running now.  All I can think of is that there must be certain atmospheric conditions required for ice to form.

The last time I'd paddled in this kind of cold was almost exactly a year ago.  Last winter went on to be quite mild after that cold snap.  So I guess there's some hope that we won't be subjected to too much more of this deep freeze.  But you never know.  I'll just keep taking it a day at a time.

Monday photo feature