Racing in Bayou Country

I was up bright and early yesterday morning to make the hour-or-so drive down to Morgan City and then a few miles west to Patterson.  Patterson is a town that has seen some hard times but is working to recapture some of its glory, and it sees its location on the south bank of the lower Atchafalaya River as an integral part of that.  Town officials are hoping that the Lower Atchafalaya Sprint Races will become one of its cherished annual traditions.

The mayor, a couple of town council members, and several other prominent local figures were on hand to wish us racers well.  Whenever I attend an event like this I am struck by the contrast with my own city, where our "leaders" often seem to think they're doing us some great favor by letting us have a race on its riverfront.

After an opening ceremony and some instructions from race director Ray Pellerin and his assistant Tave Lamperez, we got ourselves ready to race.  We had a gorgeous day for racing: sunny and becoming warm, but not too humid.  It appeared that nature would provide a challenge of a different sort, however: the lower Atchafalaya is plagued by an invasive species of floating water hyacinth, and depending on the wind direction and tidal activity, at times the river surface can become choked with clumps of the stuff.  When I first arrived at the race site there were hyacinth patches littering the entire course, but by the time racing was set to begin the wind had moved most of them out.

The Lower Atchafalaya Sprints is a series of three-mile races done in laps on a one-mile loop that's entirely visible to spectators in Morey Park.  The races are separated by both boat class and gender.  Women's single kayak was the first event of the day, so I got to watch the ladies compete while I warmed up for my first event, men's single kayak.  Savanna Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, took the early lead and methodically increased it for the win.  During this race it became clear that the course was longer than the race organizers had intended--closer to four miles than three.  Savanna's time was 35 minutes, 39 seconds; Kim Schulte of Mandeville, Louisiana, finished two and a half minutes back to claim second place.  Susan Jordan of Lucedale, Mississippi, rounded out the top three in 40:10.  The complete results of this class are posted here.

A pretty stiff wind was blowing upriver by the time I was lining up alongside my fellow men's single kayak racers.  We would paddle into this wind to start each lap, round a buoy and have the wind at our backs as we paddled back past Morey Park to another buoy, then turn back into the wind to finish the lap.  The starting official fired the gun, and into the wind we went.  I was not at all surprised when Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, sprinted into the lead with Christian Massow of Cypress, Texas, right on his heels.  I sprinted as hard as I could to position myself on one of the wakes behind these two K1 paddlers.

We reached the first buoy, which was surrounded by clumps of water hyacinth.  We threaded through the weeds as best we could and headed back the other way.  I'd expected Mike and Christian to push the pace and leave me behind early, but as we made our first pass of the start/finish line back at Morey Park I was still hanging in there on their wakes.

As we made the second buoy turn, Christian ran into some bad luck.  This buoy also had some hyacinth in its orbit, and Christian, whose boat lacked a weed deflector, got a clump stuck on his rudder and slowed to a crawl.  At the same moment Mike threw in a hard surge coming out of the turn and opened several boatlengths on us.  Knowing that Christian was in trouble, and that I would not be able to keep up with Mike, I offered to raft up with Christian and help him get the kelp off his rudder.  But Christian insisted that I continue racing.  Lacking the time to consider the situation in depth, I pressed on.

I spent the remainder of the race looking at a familiar sight: Mike Herbert getting smaller and smaller in the distance ahead of me.  But monotony didn't carry the day.  Mike seemed to pause a bit upon his return to the downstream buoy on the second lap.  I discovered why when I got there myself: the wind had moved the water hyacinth so that the buoy was now enclosed in a thick patch of it.  I tried to pick out the clearest path through it I could find, hoping all the while that my weed deflector would do its job.  Fortunately it did, and I proceeded back upriver.  Back at the upstream buoy I found it difficult to turn with the wind blowing against my surf ski's bow; I really had to crank the strokes on my right to get the boat around.

By the time I was approaching the downstream buoy on the last lap, a race volunteer had gone out in a motorboat and moved it out of the weeds.  I made this turn without incident but was feeling the fatigue as the last lap wore on.  I made the last buoy turn back into the wind and labored back to the finish line in 31:29, a minute and 21 seconds after Mike had finished.  David Dupree of Rayville, Louisiana, overtook Christian for third place overall in 35:25.  I later found out that Christian, who clocked 36:56, had dealt with an ailing back on top of the weeds on his rudder.  When Mike had made his breakaway move after that fateful first-lap buoy turn, Christian had tried to give chase despite the overburdened rudder, and tweaked something in his lower back.

The men's single kayak results are posted here.  I should note that Tave Lamperez was paddling an outrigger canoe (OC1) while the rest of us were in kayaks or surf skis.

With the solo racing in the books the racers began to form tandem teams.  While this was going on the race organizers made some modifications to the course in response to the ever-encroaching masses of hyacinth.  The buoys were moved out of their path, and the number of laps was reduced to two, resulting in a course that was closer to an actual three miles.

The ladies' tandem class was up first, and the team of Kim Schulte and Savanna Herbert squared off against Ryan Gillikin and Susan Jordan.  I don't often talk about the types or brands of boats people are racing in because I generally believe the athletes paddling those boats are what count.  But one simply couldn't ignore the unfairness of this fight.  While Kim and Savanna paddled a sleek tandem surf ski, Ryan and Susan lined up in a much wider, much shorter tandem sea kayak--a fine boat for touring, camping, and similar activities, but not designed for racing.  It really wasn't much of a contest as Kim and Savanna cruised to victory by nearly five minutes.  The results can be found here.

By this time the wind had blown the hyacinth patch against the bank at the foot of Morey Park, making it quite difficult to get back to the dock.  Here's a look at what Ryan and Susan had to deal with:

The final class of the day was a combined men's tandem and mixed tandem affair.  I'm guessing that the rationale for lumping men's and mixed together had something to do with a lack of enough women to go around (a common problem in paddlesport around the world).  The class consisted of five boats--four tandem surf skis and the aforementioned short, fat tandem sea kayak.  Which boat was I in?  You guessed it.  Susan Jordan is the owner of the touring craft, and I had accepted her invitation to be her partner.  Our competition consisted of the father-daughter team of Mike and Savanna Herbert; Lynn Buckalew and Wulf Hirschfield of Waynesboro, Mississippi; Kim Schulte and David Dupree; and Wendell and Wyatt Smith of Seguin, Texas.

The moment I got into our boat I realized how long it had been since I'd paddled anything other than a surf ski.  The sea kayak was much wider--some 30 inches or so, compared with 18 to 20 inches for the surf skis.  So I would have to adjust my stroke radically to work around the boat's girth.  Even worse than that was the position of my feet: the foot pedals were spaced along the hull's outer rails, forcing me to spread my legs to a most unnatural degree.  It was my job to work the rudder, and the pedals were designed in such a way that I had to sort of twist my foot forward to make the boat turn.

When the race got started I tried my best to maneuver our boat onto another boat's wake.  Once we'd executed the first buoy turn, the race wasn't a laugher yet: we were still within several boatlengths of Wulf and Lynn.  "Do you think we can close the gap?" Susan asked, and I replied, "Well... they might be beatable."  As if on cue, Wulf and Lynn put on the prettiest little burst of speed you've ever seen, and we were all alone in last place the rest of the way.  The results are posted here.

A while after finishing this final race I realized I was quite sore in my left lower back from paddling in such a weird position.  As soon as the awards ceremony concluded I eased myself into the car for the long drive home.  About eight hours later I gingerly extracted myself from the driver's seat, went into my house, and drifted off to sleep in my lovely bed.  This morning I was just as stiff and sore as I expected I would be.  I went downtown and paddled easy for 60 minutes.  The weather was beautiful as I began the process of healing and looking ahead to my next race in just over a month.


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Racing tomorrow; advice for paddlers from the world of music?

I've made something of a spur-of-the-moment decision: I'm going to enter a race on the lower Atchafalaya River down at Patterson, Louisiana, tomorrow.  It's a set of 3-mile races--one for solo boats, one for tandem boats, and one for bigger team boats.  I'll at least do the solo race and then see if anybody wants me to fill a seat in a team boat.

I attended this event back in 2017, and had considered doing it this year before deciding it was "one thing too many" for this phase of the season.  But then the race at Vicksburg got called off, and so here I am in the Bayou country.  I'm spending tonight in a motel up the road at Donaldson, Louisiana.

Before I left home this morning I did a round of the strength routine--just the leg and core exercises.  My arms feel about the same as they felt yesterday.

On the drive down here I heard something interesting on the radio that I should share before I forget about it.  Brian Eno, who has made a successful career making synthesized music and producing records for other artists, was a guest on the "Fresh Air" program on National Public Radio.  Asked by interviewer Terry Gross if he's worried about being bored because he's "too good" at what he does, Eno replied,

...it's not so much the over-proficiency that's a problem. It's the lack of alertness that goes with knowing how to do something well. Once you know how to do something quite well or you're familiar with doing it, a lot of times you automatically are falling into routines. You know exactly how that works. You switch it on. You do this. You do that. You do that. And all of that is sort of done on automatic. And while you're on automatic, you're not listening any longer. 

One of the reasons that people who don't play instruments well are sometimes able to do surprising things with them is that they're listening at a much more basic level than skilled performers are. They start asking questions like, hey, does this sound interesting? Yeah, it does - at quite a different point from where the professional performer would. He's already been through that. He's already working at a level where he considers all those questions have been answered long ago. They're not interesting to him anymore. 

So I think this is the problem. It's not proficiency. It's the switching off of your alertness that goes with thinking you are proficient on something. So the trick is to think of ways of surprising yourself back into hearing freshly again. And that's something that really requires thinking and techniques of thinking. It's something you can do quite consciously. You can set yourself exercises that trick you into hearing something differently.

Do we paddlers do something like this too--stop paying attention to what we're doing at a basic level once we think we have the basics mastered?  Consider the simple act of getting in the boat: I've done it so many times that I rarely think about it anymore; I just hop in the boat and go.  But when I'm teaching a beginner how to get in the boat, I'm reminded that there are in fact several steps: put your feet in first, put one hand on the back of the cockpit and the other on the dock, slide your rear end into the seat, and so on.  This is as basic an example as there is, but I have a feeling we tend to get complacent about some of the more important things, too.  I get to feeling really good about my forward stroke, but every time I have a more elite-level athlete or coach look at it, he or she always sees something I could be doing better.  I think occasionally breaking your technique down to its component parts, analyzing each one, and putting it all back together is a worthwhile thing to do.


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Soreness persists; race schedule adjustment necessary

I got the bad news Tuesday that the Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race, an event I've been participating in for years on the Mississippi River down at Vicksburg, has been called off due to floodstage river levels there.  It was supposed to take place on May 11 this year, and was going to be my next race.

On Monday I ventured back into strength work, doing just the leg and core exercises in the current routine.  There's still some stubborn soreness in the biceps areas.

On Tuesday Joe and I did a loop of the harbor.  One of the things we talked about is a paddling presentation I'm scheduled to give at one of his Outdoors, Inc., stores two weeks from Wednesday.  More on that later.

Yesterday I did another round of the strength routine.  This time I very gingerly did a few reps of the dips and pullups, just to stimulate those areas and get some blood flowing there.

By this morning the muscle soreness was down to just one spot in my right biceps area.  I went downtown and paddled in the harbor as a strong south wind blew.  I slogged into the wind until I was at the harbor's mouth, then did a set of six 12-stroke sprints back to the north with the wind at my back.  It was the first hard sprinting I'd done in a couple of weeks, and my body seemed to respond pretty well.


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Monday photo feature

I've always liked this photo because it looks like I'm paddling out in the middle of the ocean.  In fact, I'm just a short distance off the beach at Pass Christian, Mississippi.  The main thing I remember about this day is that it was very, very hot.  The year is 2010.

I regret that I can't remember who the photographer was.  Somebody standing on the beach, I'm guessing.


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Still trying to recover my vim

My arm, shoulder, and abdominal muscles felt slightly better yesterday morning, but they were still sore and my range of motion still limited.  I continued to be taken aback by the extent to which Wednesday's activities had done me in.  Soreness is normal anytime I start a new strength routine, but this was ridiculous.  (Again, I think cleaning those gutters did a lot to exacerbate the problem.  The glum truth is that my body doesn't withstand such chores quite like it used to.)  In the back of my mind I wondered if I'd done irreparable damage and will never be free of pain in these areas again.

I tried to push such thoughts aside as I headed down to the river.  The weather was helping to lift my spirits: after miserable rainy days Thursday and Friday, the sun was out at last, albeit with a stiff northwest wind blowing.

I wasn't ready to do a serious workout, but I was determined to paddle with something closer to my usual gusto no matter how my muscles were feeling.  I headed out of the harbor and up the Mississippi.  Progress upriver was slow as I paddled into the teeth of that wind, and I tried to stay relaxed and not fight it.  There was much discomfort in the area around my biceps, and I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't the paddling that was causing it.

This morning, once again, I detected a slight abatement of the soreness, but it was still around.  So it was another day of nursing myself and being patient in the boat.  At this time of year I'm wanting to get in some good workouts, but today I still wasn't ready.  But I did spend a good 70 minutes out on the Mississippi, where aggressive paddling is required just to get around.

It was sunny again today, and warmer and less windy than yesterday.  With the river on another rise from all the recent rain in the watershed, I paddled to the outflow channel from Dacus Lake to see what was going on there.  A road crosses the channel and with the river at 30.7 feet on the Memphis gauge, it was just barely underwater.  So I didn't paddle onto Dacus Lake.  But the water flowing over the road formed a nice riffly little rapid, and I hung out for a minute and savored the sound of the rushing water along with the chatter of birds and the breeze in the trees.  We've got some peaceful outdoor spots within sight of the downtown Memphis skyline.

I guess you could say I've been in a holding pattern this weekend, able to paddle but trying to let all this soreness run its course.  How I feel in the next few days will determine what I'll do in the strength department and in the boat.


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I abuse myself in the darnedest ways

For the most part I kept my promise to myself to go a little easier in the first half of this week.  On Monday my arms and shoulders were still very sore so I only did the leg and core exercises in the strength routine.  On Tuesday I kept the intensity moderate as I paddled for 60 minutes out on the Mississippi.

Then, on Wednesday, I did a full round of the strength routine, and my body did not respond well.  My arms and shoulders were throbbing in protest when it was over.  I probably made matters worse by spending that afternoon on the roof of my rental property cleaning out the gutters.  Maybe that doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's a two-story building whose roof is pitched rather steeply down to each gutter, and I was on my stomach keeping my distance from the edge because I didn't want to fall and be paralyzed the rest of my life, and reaching down into the gutters was an awkward affair.  The gutters were long overdue for cleaning, so it was a long, taxing process.

When I woke up yesterday morning my biceps and deltoids felt like cement, and my range of motion was alarmingly limited.  What I'd planned to be a higher-intensity session in the boat turned out to be another recovery paddle.

I'm a little puzzled by what a number this strength routine has done on me.  Anytime you lift weights you are in fact doing damage to your muscles with the expectation that they will build themselves back stronger than before.  I guess this time I tried to do too much too soon, especially with the pullups.

Today my muscles have felt slightly better but nowhere near healed.  I hated to do it because at this time of year I want to be hitting full stride in training, but I took today completely off except for some slow, patient stretching.  I'm hoping I'll feel like my normal spry, chipper self this weekend.


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Monday photo feature

That's me on the left, accompanied by Jason Salomon (black & green boat) and Mike Womack.  We got together and paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar in July of 2017.  Photo by Adam Davis.


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Achey and wet

Yesterday was one rainy day.  By the afternoon the Internet radar was showing a mass of yellow parked over the entire greater Memphis area.  At this time I don't know the inch total, but by the late evening we'd had an impressive amount of rain.

When I went to paddle yesterday morning the rain wasn't that heavy yet, but it came down steadily for almost all of the 120 minutes I was in the boat.  It was on the cool side--just under 60 degrees Fahrenheit--and I was dressed for a dry day at that temperature, not a wet one.  I generated enough body heat to stay comfortable most of the time, but I was feeling chilled for the last 20 minutes or so.

While water was coming down from above, the water beneath me was not quite as abundant as it had been before my trip to the coast.  The Mississippi River spent a couple of months at 36 feet or higher on the Memphis gauge, but by yesterday it had dropped to 29.2 feet.  I normally consider that a good high level, but right now it feels lowish.  The Greenbelt Park is not flooded for the first time in weeks, and the grass is coming right back like it always does.  I paddled up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, and paddled up the Wolf to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge.  Just below this bridge there's a railroad trestle, and when the Mississippi was over 40 feet there was no room to paddle under it.  Yesterday there was plenty of room.

I was sore from the new strength routine I'd started on Friday, but it wasn't too bad.  I hoped that the act of paddling might facilitate some healing.  Maybe it did, but this morning I was even more sore, so I guess it's getting worse before getting better.  And on top of that, I've had some tightness in the right side of my neck the last several months, and last night I must have slept on it wrong because it's feeling aggravated today.  It's one of those things that don't affect my paddling directly--I can take my normal strokes in the boat--but affect it indirectly by making it harder to sleep at night and generally making life less pleasant than it ought to be.

So I went down to the river this morning feeling a little beat-up.  But I was determined to get in one more workout before taking it easier for several days.  I warmed up and then did a "pyramid" workout: pieces of 1', 2', 3', 4', 5', 4', 3', 2', and 1' with two minutes recovery in between.  I had my G.P.S. device on board and my target pace for all the pieces was in the 7.2-7.5 mph range.  During the recovery periods I tried to keep the boat moving around 6.0 mph.

The wind wasn't that strong, but it was swirling around in all different directions, and that made it hard to maintain a constant pace.  But I averaged better than 7.2.  The workout felt tough from the first 4-minute piece onward, but I held up well enough and felt good when it was over.  Once I was done paddling I still felt sore and beat-up, but I think getting some blood pumping will pay off in the long run.


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Embracing life back home

It took me several days to get back fully into my routine here at home.  I don't think I was any more tired when I got home from the Pacific Northwest last summer than I was when I got home Sunday night.

When Joe and I met to paddle Tuesday morning, we talked some about how much a road trip can take out of you.  Some road-tripping is obviously necessary during a season of canoe and kayak racing, but I try to keep it to a minimum because I get in my best training during uninterrupted stretches at home.  I guess I sort of made an exception when I went to Apalachicola last weekend, but in general I try to give priority to events within a radius of six hours or so.

I spent the first half of this week taking "baby steps," getting myself caught up on all kinds of little things I'd neglected while out of town.  This morning I finally started up a new strength routine.  I did a cursory round, just to let my muscles know they've got a new job, and plan to settle into the routine next week.

Joe and I did an easy loop of the harbor on Tuesday.  Yesterday I elected to stay in the harbor again because of a strong wind blowing from the south-southeast, and did ten 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals.  I tried to pull hard and fast through each stroke while keeping the stroke rate under control.


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A new strength routine

A new strength routine is always a big step toward getting settled back at home.  Here's what I plan to do several times a week for the next little while.


1.  Hindu squats, demonstrated in this video

2.  Dips

3.  Stability ball exercise demonstrated by Jing Jing Li at 1:50 of her video on this page

4.  Pullups

5.  Static hanging plank, demonstrated by yours truly in this video

Race schedule update

Now that the 2019 season is underway, let's have a look at what's coming up.

The biggest news, for those who haven't heard: the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, normally held on Father's Day weekend each year, will take place on June 1.  Apparently there was a scheduling conflict for the use of Mississippi River Park next to the finish line.  So make plans to be in my fair city on JUNE 1.


April
13  Perche Creek Gutbuster.  Perche Creek, Columbia, Missouri.  10 miles on a Class I river.

27  Lower Atchafalaya Sprint Races.  Atchafalaya River, Patterson, Louisiana.  A series of 3-mile races up and down slowly-moving flatwater.  A racer may compete in both solo and team-boat classes.  Register


May
11  Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River, Vicksburg, Mississippi.  A 22-mile race down the largest river in North America.  Register

18  Almost Heaven Paddle Battle.  Summersville Reservoir near Summersville, West Virginia.  A 12-mile flatwater race.  Register


June
1  Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River, Memphis, Tennessee.  The 38th edition of this classic.  A 5000-meter dash down the largest river in North America.  Register

8  Taylorsville Lake Paddle Battle.  Taylorsville Reservoir, Taylorsville, Kentucky.  A 10-mile flatwater race.  Register


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

18-20  Gorge Downwind Championships.  Columbia River, Hood River, Oregon.  A 14-mile race in the epic downwind conditions of the Columbia River Gorge.


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

3  Ohio River Paddlefest.  Ohio River, Cincinnati, Ohio.  A 9-mile race on this Midwest artery.  Register


September
28  River Rat Paddle Challenge.  Ouachita River, West Monroe, Louisiana.  6.5 miles down a Class I river.


October
5  Big South Fork River Dash.  Big South Fork of the Cumberland River near Whitley City, Kentucky.  A 12-mile mostly-flatwater race.

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Monday photo feature

This image, generated by the G.P.S. device on board Bob Waters and Bruce Poacher's tandem surf ski, shows the path taken by them, Pete Greene, and I during Saturday's race on the Apalachicola River.  It looks like we were doing just fine until we inexplicably veered off to the left ("Lost").  The other note scrawled in red indicates where we were supposed to make our turn up into Scipio Creek.  As you can see, we ended up way, way off course.

The G.P.S. measured our distance traveled at 8.4 miles.  Scott Cummins, who ended up winning the race, went 7.8 miles.  I often can't beat Scott even when we cover an equal distance.

The "most astute racer of the day" award should go to Lee Droppelman of Louisville.  He and Scott and Ted Burnell were in a pack together and could very easily have made the same mistake my pack did.  But Lee had done his homework before the race and knew that the turn up into Scipio Creek should come somewhere around the four-and-a-half-mile mark.  When he saw that distance registering on his G.P.S. device he alerted his fellow racers to start looking for the turn.  "He saved our pack," Scott said later.

I've always been sort of a Luddite in my training, believing that these G.P.S. devices and stuff aren't quite as indispensable as some racers seem to think they are.  But the next time I go racing in a thick fog I think I'll break my device out.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Groping my way to the finish line

I'm trying to get settled in back at home after a long weekend in a place where wifi and cellular telephone service were not so easy to come by.  What follows is a summary of some of the stuff that happened.

Even though my lodging was 35 miles outside the town of Apalachicola, Florida, I sort of got used to it after a while.  Apalachicola is situated at the mouth of a river by the same name, and my main purpose for the weekend was the 8-mile "Oyster City Challenge" race on this river.  The course map looks like this:

The start, which appears in the upper left-hand corner of this image, would be at a boat ramp a few miles upriver at a place called Old Woman's Bluff, and the finish, in the lower right-hand corner, would be right by the town just below the U.S. 98 bridge.  That much is simple enough.  But near the upper end of town we would make a little detour, turning up into Scipio Creek and paddling a mile and a half or so up to a buoy before coming back down.  On Friday I put my boat in at the finish location and paddled up to the mouth of Scipio Creek to get familiar with this part of the course.  There was a lot of shallow water there, especially at low tide, so later I checked with race director Joe Vinson and he assured me there would be a buoy placed where racers could make the turn safely.

So I was all set for some racing the next day.  I got up good and early Saturday morning--5 AM local time, and since this area is just inside the Eastern Time zone it felt like 4 AM to me.  As I made the long drive into town through pine-forested coastal bottomlands, I found myself in a dense fog that required my windshield wipers on an intermittent setting.

Upon arriving in the "Oyster City," I put my boat on the shuttle trailer and caught a ride to Old Woman's Bluff.  Rick Baker, who'd intended to race but had hurt his right arm in an electrical mishap two nights before, assumed the starter's duties.  We lined up, waited for his command, and took off.

Bruce Poacher had made the trip down from Erwin, Tennessee, to team up in a tandem surf ski with Bob Waters of Sanford, Florida, and these two immediately rocketed into the lead.  I sprinted hard in pursuit along with old friend Pete Greene of Beaufort, South Carolina, and Pete managed to catch the tandem's stern wake with me on his stern.

The fog was so thick that visibility was limited to no more than a hundred feet or so.  But I was so focused on maintaining contact with the lead pack, I wasn't really thinking much about it.  I've paddled my share of foggy days at home on the Mississippi, and never had a problem as long as I kept the bank in sight.  I trusted that Bob and Bruce were keeping us on track up front.

And that turned out to be a fatal mistake.  Somewhere around 35 minutes in I began to sense something wasn't right when the tandem ski made an abrupt turn to the right.  I peered through the fog looking for the river-right bank and any buildings or other evidence of the town.  I realized I didn't have any idea where on the river we were.  Then we passed a couple of red channel markers that typically line the river-left side, and my bosom swelled with a feeling of foreboding.  Then the U.S. 98 bridge appeared through the fog, and we knew we were too far downriver.  We took another hard-right turn and started paddling up toward where the mouth of Scipio Creek should be.

There were plenty of good strong racers in the field who were entirely capable of making us pay for such a blunder, and sure enough we found ourselves well back in the pack once we'd made it up into Scipio Creek.

Going astray on a race course, through my own fault or somebody else's, is something that does occasionally happen.  Whenever it does, there's always a moment of uncertainty about what to do.  Should I keep on racing as if nothing has happened, or should I just put down my paddle and stop?  Should I cry out demanding justice?  Back when I was racing whitewater slalom a racer would sometimes be granted a re-run if his run down the course was impeded in some way, but that's just not possible in the kind of racing I'm doing now.

As these thoughts occupied my mind, Bob and Bruce quietly opened up a lead on Pete and me.  I tried to re-focus and reel them back in, but they were moving fast and the wakes coming off all the other boats made it harder for me to give chase.  I realized that my race was now just a private match with Pete, and I settled into the strongest pace I could with Pete back on my stern.

As the last turning buoy came into view we saw the "new" lead pack coming back at us, and it was full of familiar faces: Scott Cummins and Lee Droppelman of Louisville, Kentucky.  Ted Burnell of Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Elaine Harold of Louisville.  Jason Hjelseth of Chattanooga.  There were also some folks whose names I didn't know until I saw the results later: Joe Hester, Jim Budi, Larry Dixon.  Pete and I rounded the buoy ourselves and I began to feel a slight resurgence of motivation, even though for me it was all about moral victories now.

As the race moved into its final stages, it looked like the battle for the solo crown would be between Ted and Scott.  Meanwhile, Bob and Bruce had moved methodically up through the pack and appeared to have a shot at the overall win even after their foggy misfortune.  In the end Scott held everybody off to take the overall in one hour, 3 minutes, 21 seconds.  Bob and Bruce edged out Ted for second place overall.

About a minute back, I had my hands full with Pete.  I didn't know the exact location of the finish line--I just knew it was down below the U.S. 98 bridge somewhere--but once I was within about a half-mile of it I began to surge hard, not intending to stop until I'd reached the finish.  I could feel myself opening a gap on Pete and that stoked my motivation to keep it up.  Picking off a couple of other boats along the way, I claimed seventh place overall in 1:04:31.

Believe it or not, my effort was good enough to win a medal, because I was the third person in the Masters age group to finish.  Though we didn't know it at the time, Pete and I had been fighting it out for that medal.  Seeing as how victories over Pete have been extremely rare for me in the many years we've been racing each other, my bronze medal has a glimmer of gold to it.

Elaine Harold claimed the overall women's title with a time of 1:05:07.

The complete results are posted here.  You have to click on the line that says "8 Mile Race (38 results)" to see the results of the race I did.

I'd be lying if I said I was not at all bummed out about what happened Saturday.  It looks like I had an excellent chance to win, at least among solo paddlers.  But I've said many times in this blog that I do this sport because I love it, not to win awards, and if I'm going to talk the talk I must be willing to walk the walk when something like this happens.  And the fact is that I do have things to be happy about.  Besides my rare win over Pete, this race told me that my speed-endurance is in a good place right now.  Just like at Ocean Springs the week before, I was able to sustain a high intensity level over the entire eight miles.

Usually after I've finished a race I consider myself done for the day.  But Scott was going to go paddle a new boat of his in the Gulf off Saint George's Island, and my feeling of unfinished business prompted me to join him.  We paddled for an hour or so and that put the finishing touches on my state of utter exhaustion.

The drive home yesterday took me 12 hours.  I could have stopped for the night along the way, but I'm glad I went ahead and knocked it all out.  There's no place like home.


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Dealing with the tourist season

The weather turned not so friendly on Sunday: the high was around 52 degrees Fahrenheit, and strong winds from the southeast made it feel ten degrees colder.  There were periods of rain, too.

I said goodbye to Nick and drove up to the Bristol Boulevard access to Old Fort Bayou for a 40-minute recovery paddle.  Once that chore has been crossed off the list I headed east, crossing into Alabama and getting to the east side of Mobile Bay by way of the George C. Wallace Tunnel.

I was tired from my race weekend, and the crummy weather had put me in a glum mood, and by the early afternoon I was ready to stop.  I found a modest motel in Foley, Alabama, waited for the 3 PM check-in time, got myself inside, and took an afternoon nap.

The day got worse before it got better.  In the evening I went online hoping to find a place to camp in one of the state parks along the Florida Gulf Coast, only to find that they were all booked solid.  I expanded my search farther and farther away from the coast until I finally found a lone vacancy in an RV-park-type campground up near Interstate 10.  I booked it for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights.  It wasn't ideal, but at least I had a place to land for the week.

Monday dawned chilly and breezy, but sunny.  That alone was enough to brighten my mood.  With only a moderate distance to drive and a day off from paddling, I relaxed and headed east at a leisurely pace along U.S. 98.  I encountered some gridlock in places like Pensacola and the forsaken Destin, but I stayed chill and enjoyed the nice day.  In the late afternoon I arrived at the RV park and found that it was rather nice for such a place--not the camping experience I'd have had in one of the state parks, certainly, but my tent site was nice and flat, there were no jerks blasting their lowest-common-denominator music or revving loud engines, and the bath house was clean and well-maintained.  It was about a half-hour drive down to the beach, so day trips were perfectly feasible.

I spent Tuesday checking out the beachfront communities of Grayton Beach and Seaside.  Seaside in particular was a little too wealthy for my taste, but it was good for a couple of hours of people-watching.  It must be spring break somewhere because there were a lot of teenagers running around.

Yesterday it was time to get back in the boat.  I drove back down to Grayton Beach and carried my boat about a half-mile from the closest public parking space I could find to the water.  Out in the Gulf the wind was blowing from the southeast at around 10 miles per hour, and while the conditions were not that big, I thought they were ideal for practicing some of the basics of downwind paddling: keeping my boat moving, watching the waves in front of me for opportunities to advance, knowing when to paddle hard and when to just hang out... stuff like that.  I spent 90 minutes on the water paddling a couple of miles into the wind, then downwinding back, and repeating.  The conditions got a little bigger as time went on, and by the last lap I was getting some sweet rides.  It was tempting to stay out there another half-hour or more, but I was getting tired and I didn't want to ruin myself completely for this Saturday's race, so I tore myself away.

I broke camp this morning and headed east on Florida 20.  I was feeling stiff and sore from yesterday's paddle and I wanted to do an easy 40 minutes or so to facilitate recovery.  Where the highway crosses the Choctawhatchee River I saw a good public access area, so I stopped and paddled there.  Going upstream from the bridge, I paddled up a couple of tributary creeks that quickly disappeared into dense groves of cypress, and I had to turn around.  I didn't spot any gators but figured there had to be some around.  Whatever the case, it was the sort of paddle that was hard to make myself do because of my achy body, but I think I'll feel a lot better by tomorrow because of it.

I'm now staying in an Air B & B that's some 35 miles away from the town of Apalachicola, where my race is this Saturday.  Finding an affordable vacancy was no easy matter on this part of the coast either, and at the time I was happy to get booked into this place, but now I'm having my doubts.  The race involves a shuttle, so I may be getting up super-early Saturday morning...


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Monday photo feature

The "Battle On The Bayou" race at Ocean Springs celebrated its tenth year this past weekend.  I am one of nine people who have participated in all ten races.  When I decided to attend the first one in 2010, it was because it wasn't too bad a drive from Memphis, the course distance suited me okay, and I needed a race to do at that time of year.  I never set any grand goal to make ten of these in a row; it just sort of became a habit, driving down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast each March to open my race season.  Now I have yet another reminder of the relentless march of time.

First row, left to right: Yours truly, Carol Dearing, David Waters, Wayne Berry; Second row, left to right: Nate Payne, Nick Kinderman, John Collins, Doug Heller, Jeb Berry.

Yes, I know I stick out like a sore thumb in this photo.  They gave each of us a special orange shirt to wear, but I'd left mine back at the house.  And to think I'm usually so good at blending into the wallpaper...

Photo by Donna Collins.


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Opening up once more at Ocean Springs

Partly cloudy skies and a temperature around 65 degrees Fahrenheit provided the setting in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, for the tenth annual "Battle On The Bayou" canoe and kayak race yesterday morning.  Racers gathered down the hill from the Gulf Hills Hotel, and after a few words from event director Mike Pornovets we were in our boats and lining up for the start of the 8.4-mile contest.  The starting gun fired, and just like that my 2019 race season had begun.

The opening seconds were anything but smooth for me, as I got hemmed in between a female surf ski paddler on my left and a tandem canoe on my right.  I got shoved flush against the surf ski and was lucky not to flip as I wrested my left blade from the slot between us and tried to get back up to speed.  I probably didn't lose more than a couple of seconds, but that was plenty to allow the fastest racers to open a huge gap.  I would spend the next several minutes throwing in one mad sprint after another to make contact with the lead pack as we headed up into Old Fort Bayou.  I eventually succeeded, but wondered if I would have anything left for the remaining seven and a half miles or so.

This lead pack consisted of Jeb Berry of Gulfport, Mississippi; Christian Massow of Cypress, Texas; and Andy Capel of Maumelle, Arkansas.  I managed to settle onto a wake behind Christian's boat, and once I'd recovered from the set of sprints I'd done I began to relax a little.  I'd have been happy to sit there until at least the halfway point before making my bid for the win.

But Christian didn't want to wait that long.  He surged into the lead maybe two and a half miles in.  I'd pegged Christian as the pre-race favorite and I didn't want to let him get away, so I stuck with him as we moved in front of Jeb and Andy.  For the next several miles I could see Jeb's white boat out of the corner of my eye; I was less sure about Andy, who was paddling a black boat, but I had to assume he was still nearby.

Christian is a former member of the German national team who now makes his home on the northwest side of Houston.  My experience with him goes back seven years.  I first met him when he raced here at Ocean Springs in 2012, and that race wasn't even close: he pulled away from me early and was nearly four minutes ahead of me at the finish.  The following year he beat me again, but I was more competitive with him.  Then in 2014 I threw in surge after surge and finally dropped him and won by a two-and-a-half-minute margin.

After that Christian disappeared for several years, and I wasn't sure I'd ever see him again.  But he resurfaced at Ocean Springs last year.  It turned out he'd had to overcome some health woes, and now he was ready to get back in the game.  I beat him fairly easily last year, but he must have gotten in some really good training in the ensuing months, because in August he showed up at the flatwater sprint nationals at Oklahoma City and won Masters titles at the 200-, 500-, and 1000-meter distances, beating out a guy named Mike Herbert each time.  There could be no doubt: Christian was back.

I moved into the lead as we rounded the big island at Bristol Boulevard and headed back down the bayou, with Christian sitting on my starboard wake.  The two of us began to open some distance on the other racers, and I contemplated what was going on.  I figured it was one of two things: either Christian was getting tired and was just hanging on, or he was conserving energy so he could use his sprinting ability to take the victory at the end.  Deep down I knew it was the latter, and Christian confirmed it by covering every move I made to break away from him.  At one point I had to stop and wipe my eyes because sweat was stinging them, and I hoped Christian might retake the lead, but he wasn't having it.  I knew my best hope was to keep throwing in surges to try to wear down his finishing sprint.

By the time we passed under the Washington Avenue drawbridge some 2000 meters out from the finish, I didn't have a whole lot left.  I continued pushing the pace as much as I could, but I was pretty sure I knew what was coming.  We rounded the last turn and the finish buoys came into view, and I started to sprint, but Christian turned on the speed and within seconds he had two boat lengths on me.  I continued paddling as hard as I could, but I was beat.  Christian crossed the line in one hour, 11 minutes, 40 seconds, and I clocked in 11 seconds back.

About a minute later Jeb and Andy moved into the home stretch.  I understand Andy had led Jeb for quite a bit of the second half, but Jeb came back strong to take third place in 1:13:00, 13 seconds ahead of Andy.

Gulfport residents Penny and Lynn Sanburn were the first female paddlers to finish, propelling their tandem outrigger canoe to a time of 1:25:44.  The first solo female was Kim Schulte of Mandeville, Louisiana, who clocked 1:27:44.

The complete results are posted here.  They're listed by class, not overall finish order.  I was in the "K1 Race (M)" class.

I was thoroughly worn out but generally satisfied with how I'd done.  After the awards I returned to the home of my friend Nick Kinderman, who'd finished a distinguished sixth place overall.  Nick and I had a restful afternoon and then went out for supper in the evening.  At supper Nick asked me if there was anything I wished I'd done differently in the race.  I thought about it for a few seconds but I really couldn't think of a thing.  I'd fought hard early to catch the lead pack; I'd recovered from that effort fairly quickly, a sign of good early-season fitness; I'd given chase when Christian tried to break away, and I'd done what I could to make him work when he was on my wake.  As for what happened at the finish, it's just a simple fact that I can't outsprint a guy who can beat Mike Herbert in a race of 1000 meters or less.  Meanwhile, I'd beaten my previous best time on the course by 71 seconds.  I'm always happier after a good fast race than I am after a race where everybody plods along waiting for somebody to make a move.

So, all told, I can declare it a good season opener.  I hope it was just the first of many good races.


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Almost time to race

I'm trying to get some rest going into the race this weekend, but I'm not tapering.  Early in the season I generally train through the races; I'm nowhere near peak racing form, and I doubt many other racers are, either.  That's why I went ahead and did the usual long paddle on Sunday, and did the strength routine Monday and yesterday.  On the side of getting a little extra rest, I'm paddling relatively easy with a few extra short sprints this week, and I'll skip the strength work tomorrow.  Meanwhile, I'm trying to be extra-conscientious in the areas of diet, hydration, stretching, and getting a good night's sleep.

On Tuesday I paddled in the harbor for 60 minutes.  In the middle of that period I did a set of eight 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals.  I went back downtown yesterday afternoon with the intention of doing the same thing, but I was interrupted by a bout with diarrhea, and had to get out of the boat and run to the bathroom in the grocery store up the hill from the marina.  Sorry if that's T.M.I., but such things do occasionally happen.  Anyway, I did paddle for about 50 minutes and got in six 12-strokers.

I plan to leave tomorrow morning on my trip to the Gulf Coast.  I hope to have time to do a quick paddle once I arrive in Ocean Springs, just to work out the kinks from sitting in the car for six hours.  My friend Nick is very kindly putting me up in his guest bedroom even though his skittish Australian shepherd Sierra might not be so thrilled.  I feel like I've been through a long, lonely winter and I'm eager to reunite with some friends and enjoy some good racing.


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Monday photo feature

Lacking any brilliant ideas for this week's photo feature, I typed "canoe and kayak racing" into Google Images to see what would come up.  Some of what came up is displayed above.  I was pleased to see a photo from my hometown race, the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  It's in the bottom left corner.


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Taking care of the riverfront and myself

There's now less than a week to go before I make a little road trip to open the season.  The plan is to race at Ocean Springs on Saturday, spend the following week working my way eastward along the Gulf Coast, and then race at Apalachicola, Florida, on April 6.

But until then, there's plenty to do here at home.  Yesterday I paddled easy while participating in a litter-pickup event in the harbor.  Crews of volunteers lined the banks filling big bags with the litter deposited there by the recent flood-level waters.  I collected flotsam out on the water and also maneuvered my boat into the flooded woodlands to get the trash that the people on the bank couldn't reach.  My tippy surf ski is definitely not the best vessel for such duty, but as one of the most avid recreational users of the Memphis riverfront I thought it was important to be out there letting the other volunteers know they were making the place better for people like me.  In the past I've typically been the lone paddler taking part in these litter pickups, and always sort of felt like "that guy," but yesterday I saw at least four or five other canoes and kayaks collecting litter on the water, and I dared to entertain the notion that I'd created a movement.

Bright sunshine bathed us as we went about our chores yesterday, but it was pouring down rain when I got up this morning.  The radar showed that the rain was on its way out, but I went down to the river expecting to paddle under cloudy skies.  Then the clouds broke and the sun came out, and I regretted leaving my sunglasses at home.

As I paddled toward the mouth of the harbor, I warmed up and did three 12-stroke sprints.  Why twelve strokes instead of the usual eight?  In the week leading up to a race I like to stretch the sprints out a little and get a few more strokes in once the boat is up to speed.

I headed up the Mississippi with the intention of crossing to the other side and paddling on Dacus Lake.  There was quite a bit of barge traffic in both directions, and I waited for what looked like a safe gap to start my ferry across.  I got about halfway across the river before I realized that the upstream-bound rig was moving much faster than I'd thought--I was even a little astonished at the progress it was making against the river's current at high water.  I knew I would have to hoof it to complete the ferry, and I paddled as hard as I could.  The pilot blew his horn at me, and that told me that he wasn't so comfortable with the situation either.  I suppose we could argue all day about how close a call it was; once I was finally out of its path there was still a good quarter-mile of space between us.  But I prefer to have a bit more margin for error than that.

I was happy to paddle on over into Dacus Lake, where no commercial vessels dare go.  With the Mississippi flowing at 37.5 feet on the Memphis gauge there's some fairly strong current over there, and I stayed close to the inside of the bend to avoid as much of it as I could.  I paddled maybe two miles up the lake before turning around and heading back toward the city.  By this time the south wind was picking up and the water was quite choppy, the waves occasionally splashing into my seat bucket.  Once I was back into the river's main channel most of the barge traffic had moved out, but the wind prolonged the rough water it had left behind.  By the time I was back in the harbor I felt like I'd had a little of everything thrown at me, and that's the Mississippi River at its best.  Even the harbor was choppy as I cruised with the wind at my back to complete a 120-minute paddle.


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The end of the offseason is nigh

Joe and I observed the last day of winter by paddling a loop of the harbor on Tuesday.  This may not have been the harshest winter we've ever had, but it sure felt long.  It snowed back in the first half of November, something I don't think had ever happened before in my lifetime.  At any rate, I'm glad to have winter in my rearview.

Yesterday was about the latest I could do a workout that would have a bearing on my performance down in Ocean Springs a week from tomorrow, so I went down to the river with that intention.  I meant to take my G.P.S. device with me but I went off and left it at home.  I was upset at first but then I felt liberated, because I could do the workout out on the Mississippi River where a G.P.S. device isn't as useful anyway.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor before paddling out onto the big river to commence my workout.  I did six 5-minute pieces with three minutes recovery in between.  During each piece I paddled "medium-hard" for two minutes, "hard" for two minutes, and "sub-maximal" for the last minute.

The original plan had been to use my G.P.S. device to regulate these degrees of intensity while paddling on the flatwater of the harbor.  Here's what I did instead in the absence of that technology: for the first two minutes I took good strong strokes while keeping the stroke rate fairly low; for the next two minutes I continued to paddle at a low stroke rate but pulled as hard as I could on each stroke; and for the last minute I allowed the stroke rate to increase while still pulling as hard as I could.  The intensity in that last minute was similar to what it is in one of my bridge-to-bridge sprints--pretty much all-out, in other words.

The workout felt really good and I came away a lot more upbeat than I did from that time trial last Saturday.  I hope such feelings will carry me from now until my race next Saturday.

The Mississippi River is still quite high--it was at 38.1 feet on the Memphis gauge when I paddled yesterday.  I expect it'll be staying high for a while yet, as there's a whole lot of floodwater up on the Missouri and Platte Rivers that has to come our way.

I did the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and today.


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Monday photo feature

A new race season is almost here, and it's making me think about the places I might go this year.  Two summers ago I found myself hanging out alongside the Mississippi River at Dubuque, Iowa.  Photo by Savanna Herbert.


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Surviving an annual flogging

As of yesterday I had just two weeks to go before my first race of the season, and in recent years that has meant one thing: a time trial in the harbor.  For anybody who doesn't know about this annual ritual of mine, I pontificate upon it at length in this post from two years ago.

I talk a lot in this blog about how much I value my paddling routine, how it never feels like a sacrifice to me, how going down to the river is almost always something I look forward to.  But this time trial is an exception.  It's one of the few training sessions I truly dread.  When I think of it, the main thing that comes to mind is pain.  A big reason is the mental stress of racing against the clock.  I've got my G.P.S. device on board and I'm trying to keep the boat moving at or above a minimum speed, and I'm constantly checking the time as I pass landmarks along the course.  Nothing can make 100 meters seem like a mile the way a ticking clock can.

My standing goal is to break 50 minutes for this lap of the harbor.  I clocked around 50:30 five or six years ago, but since then I've found it difficult to come within two minutes of the 50-minute barrier.  That's another reason I dread this workout: that feeling that I've "failed" if I don't achieve my time goal.  The fact that so far I've "failed" every time doesn't seem to lessen my fear of failure in the latest one.

To dip under 50 I'll probably have to have perfect weather, and not too many days in March are like that.  Yesterday morning there was a pretty stiff breeze blowing from the north--not gale-force, but enough to knock a few tenths of a mile per hour off my pace as I paddle against it.

As I paddled from the dock toward the north end of the harbor, I sought solace in the fact that with the Mississippi River registering 38.3 feet on the Memphis gauge, the harbor is wide-open right now, and not as sinuous as it is at low water levels.  But that would make little difference in the hurt I was about to inflict on my body.  As I maneuvered into the starting gate between two submerged trees, I resolved to shoot for a solid sub-50 pace for the southbound half of the course (i.e., faster than 25 minutes) and then just "see how it goes" the rest of the way.

Off I went, and with the wind at my back it wasn't hard to maintain the 7.2 mph that I'd need to average to break 50 minutes for the not-quite-six-mile course.  But I pushed harder, hoping I could make the slog back north into the wind with as much cushion as possible.  I kept the speed at or above 7.3 mph, hitting 7.6 at times.  And it wasn't long before my body was feeling it.  I never cease to be surprised by how much harder you have to paddle to increase the speed by a mere tenth of a mile per hour.

I had several little setbacks along the way: a couple of times I had to stop and wipe my eyes with my hat because they were stinging with sweat, and then just south of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge I got a stick caught on my rudder, and I had to stop and do a few backstrokes to get it off.  But I pressed on, ever closer to the turnaround point, and as I made the turn around the imaginary buoy at last, my watch read 24 minutes, 4 seconds.  Not bad.

But now I was in the proverbial pain locker as I began to retrace my path against that wind.  The speed reading on my G.P.S. device plummeted.  Now I put on my tactician's hat and pondered how to play it.  I decided to give myself a breather by paddling back to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge at a minimum speed of 6.0 mph, and then see what I could do after that.

Paddling at this pace was certainly easier than what I'd done in the first half, but against the wind it was enough work that I really just didn't have a higher gear to shift into once I reached the HDB.  And so I continued on at around a 6.5-mph clip, knowing that once again the 50-minute barrier would weather my assault.  I plodded along, just wanting the whole grueling, lonely ordeal to be over.  And at last it was, when I crossed the start/finish line 52:23 after I'd started.

I paddled slowly back toward the marina with mixed feelings.  On the one hand, I was pleased with my split at the halfway point.  On the other, I was disheartened by how much it had taken out of me, even with the wind at my back.  And I remained puzzled with my difficulty in breaking 50 minutes for 5.9ish miles.  In the last several summers I've done a full 6-miler on Fontana Reservoir in western North Carolina, and broken 50 minutes each time.

But of course, that race is in August, when I'm in something much closer to peak racing form.  I'm never very sharp in March.  One of the reasons I do this workout in the first place is so I can go to my first "real" race two weeks later with a race-like effort under my belt.

Since even my best racing years in this decade started with a painful, slower-than-50-minute effort in this time trial, there's really no reason to obsess over it.

So... let's move on.

I spent the rest of yesterday dead tired, achy, and sore.  Today has been sunny, a bit warmer than yesterday, and a bit less windy.  I went back to the river this morning for an easy paddle, and I think it was just what the doctor ordered.  Once I was warmed up I felt surprisingly good in the boat.  I tried to take good strokes and let the fresh blood wash through my paddling-related muscles and facilitate recovery.


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A challenging week, physically and otherwise

It's been a whole lot more springlike this week.  The daytime highs have been no lower than 50 degrees Fahrenheit and were up into the 70s for a couple of days.  Of course, in the month of March you can count on some wind to go with those warmer days.

I started up a new strength routine this week.  I eased into it Monday and then did full rounds Wednesday and today.

The conditions were dead calm when Joe and I did our customary loop of the harbor on Tuesday, but it was a much different story Wednesday and yesterday, as the wind raged out of the south.  When I got down to the river yesterday I was feeling tired and also sore from the new strength exercises, and I paddled out into the screaming wind trying to stay as relaxed as I could and letting how I felt dictate what I did in the boat.  The wind actually abated quite a bit during my 60 minutes of paddling and it didn't feel like quite the struggle I'd expected

To use sort of a tired, but in this case apt, phrase, I've spent most of this week with a heavy heart.  My city lost an incredible servant on Tuesday.  The city I live in is the kind of place that needs all the heroes it can get, and when something like this happens all I can do is put my head in my hands and wonder how many more such blows we can take.  I won't go into any greater detail here since this incident is not all that relevant to a canoe and kayak racing blog (although he was, in fact, an athlete--he played basketball for Memphis State University in the 1970s).  But I encourage anybody who's curious to look here, and here, and here, and here, and here.


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A new strength routine

It's time for something new in the strength department.  I expect I'll do this routine from now until my first race at the end of the month.


1.  Pushups with one hand atop a medicine ball

2.  Core exercise demonstrated by Jing Jing Li at 1:39 of her video on this page

3.  Kickback, demonstrated by my friend Lindsey at 4:03 of this video

4.  Butterfly crunches, demonstrated by Michele Ramazza at 3:22 of his video on this page

5.  Squats


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Monday photo feature

I've mentioned here many times how much I love our critters on the Memphis riverfront.  One of my favorite things about the ducks is that they seem utterly disinclined to segregate by breed.  Here we have a muscovy duck, a white domestic duck, and (in the background) a mallard duck. I've been seeing them hanging out together around our marina for most of the winter.  I know I'm probably anthropomorphizing them beyond reason--issues of race are well outside what they are wired to comprehend, I expect--but it makes me happy to see them, just the same.


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Keeping at it as winter slowly gives way

Yesterday morning I pored over the Internet radar, trying to predict the best "window" for paddling amid waves of severe weather.  In the end I got rained on some but otherwise timed it pretty well: it was pouring down rain as I drove down to the river, and more heavy rain was starting up as I arrived back home.

There was no escaping the wind, however.  It was blowing hard out of the south.  I stayed in the harbor and paddled for just 60 minutes, doing several 8-stroke sprints and then doing a few surges both with and against the wind.

We had a couple of hard thunderstorms, but by late afternoon it had all moved out and the skies began to clear.  At this time of year a front like this usually has some colder air behind it, and this one was no exception.  But this time the "colder" air was not really that cold--it went from the mid 60s Fahrenheit yesterday to the low 50s this morning, nowhere near as bad as the sub-freezing temperatures of a week ago.  So once again I'm feeling optimistic that spring is almost here.

Even though the river crested in the middle of last week, it's still plenty high right now--it was at 40.0 feet on the Memphis gauge this morning.  When the river is dropping slowly like it is now there's a noticeable improvement in the water quality because all the debris has been flushed out or has been redeposited on solid ground as the water recedes.

That plus calmer conditions meant that today I was eager to leave the harbor for the first time in eight days.  I paddled to the harbor's mouth and then went up the Mississippi until I was about halfway up the Greenbelt Park; then I ferried across the main channel and found the narrow passage into Dacus Lake.  I paddled about three-fourths of the way up this oxbow before looping around through some flooded bottomland and rejoining the main Mississippi near the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  I returned to the harbor and the dock to complete a 120-minute session.  Much of this time was spent paddling at a two-hour race pace, and I felt good about my aerobic capacity and overall stamina.


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A week of variety

I got in to see the chiropractor Monday afternoon and it was a worthwhile visit.  I'm still feeling some tightness in my neck, but the pain in my shoulder and lat muscle went away almost immediately as a result of the adjustments she made.

With that part of my body feeling better, I'm back to doing the whole strength routine except for the bent-over rows--I didn't want to push my luck with those.  I did strength work Monday, Wednesday, and today, and I plan to start up a new routine next week.

I didn't get back in the boat this week until yesterday.  I missed paddling Tuesday because I had to meet some contractors to get some work done on my rental property.  I'm not really concerned about missing a day: I've strung together quite a few weeks in a row where I didn't miss a single paddling session, so I figure a little break couldn't hurt.

Yesterday I got back to the river and settled down to business.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did four 5-minute pieces with three minutes recovery in between.  My target pace for each piece was 7.2 miles per hour.  There was a light south breeze blowing, but I did the workout in the north end of the harbor where there's good wind protection, and I was able to trust the accuracy of my G.P.S. device more than I had in previous uses of it this winter.  With the wind at my back my pace was more like 7.4-7.6 mph, and when paddling into the wind I tended more toward 6.9-7.1.  All told, the workout was taxing but I felt a lot better than I did doing the same workout (three pieces rather than four) almost a month ago.

The other interesting thing that happened this week was a little presentation I gave Wednesday morning.  I have a friend who is an elementary school teacher, and she's leading sort of a pre-spring-break "camp" group consisting of first-, second-, and third-graders, and the theme for the week is the Olympic Games.  They're learning about many of the various sports on the Olympic programme, and learning some of the history of the Olympics and the cities that have hosted it.

I happen to be the closest thing to an Olympic athlete this friend of mine knows (which is to say, I have never competed in an Olympic Games but I have participated in the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for whitewater slalom), and so she invited me in to speak to the kids about my experience.  The kids asked all kinds of good questions; some of my favorites were "Why did you want to [try out for the Olympics]?" and "Do you ever get scared of kayaking?" and "Where do you go to kayak?"  I spent most of the half-hour dwelling on the kind of inspirational and motivational stuff that I try to share in this blog--find something you love doing every day, compete hard but always remember good sportsmanship, and so on.

Finally, a Mississippi River update: it crested this week at just under 41.4 feet on the Memphis gauge, and now it's dropping.  As I write this it's still over 40 feet, but it's expected to drop to the low 30s by a week from now.  Of course, that forecast could change if more rain falls in the watershed.


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Monday photo feature

The annual slalom and downriver races took place this past weekend on the Mulberry Fork of the Black Warrior River near Garden City, Alabama.  It's been at least 15 years since I last attended this event, but it was a staple of my schedule back when I was doing a lot of whitewater racing.  I expect the river had a good flow after all the rain we've had in the Southeast.

At the 1997 Mulberry Fork race I ended up not racing because of some acute inflammation in my triceps area.  Instead I stood on the bank and shot some photos, and the picture above comes from that set.  Joe Jacobi of Copperhill, Tennessee, peels out from an upstream gate and heads for the big surf wave known as Hawaii Five-O.


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The flood continues, and it's cold, too

For all the optimism I was oozing in my last post, winter is still not over.  This weekend has been overcast, chilly, and wet, and the temperature is supposed to plummet tonight and stay below freezing for another day or two.

On the other hand, we have a harbinger of spring that's as certain as any: baseball is back.  I've been streaming radio broadcasts of the Cardinals' spring training games in Florida for a week now.

The Mississippi River continues its climb toward a midweek crest of 41.5 feet on the Memphis gauge.  When I paddled yesterday it was at 40.8 feet.  During 100 minutes in the boat I made a loop through the bottomland on the Arkansas side.  In the last several years the Big River Trail, a bike-pedestrian path, has been established there, but right now the Big River is so big that not much riding or walking is taking place:

The river is definitely flowing faster at this high level.  I don't know the miles-per-hour figures, but I do know that I have to paddle a lot harder to make progress going upstream, and it's more difficult to ferry across without getting swept downriver.

With rain falling and the temperature at 40 degrees Fahrenheit this morning, I was very tempted to stay home.  But I've got some stuff in my non-athletic life that may prevent me from paddling in the first half of this week, so I stiffened my upper lip and went downtown.

The river had inched up to 41.1 feet and I was hoping to do some more exploring, but an icy north wind was blowing pretty hard and I decided it would be wiser to stay in the harbor.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then the rain intensified and I realized it was one of those days where I just wanted to get something in the books and return to the warmth and safety of home.  For the rest of my 60 minutes in the boat I paddled a mostly-strong tempo with several hard surges.

I got back to the dock, and as I changed into dry clothes the rain turned to sleet--I could hear it on the marina's metal roof.  I was actually okay with it because during the walk up to the car it would bounce off me rather than soak into my clothes.

My car's temperature display told me it had dropped to 35 degrees.  Some forecasts show it dropping below 20 degrees overnight tonight.

My right lat muscle isn't completely healed, but it's been hurting less the last couple of days.  I'm still having that tightness on the right side of my neck/shoulder area, and I'm thinking the lat pain is some inflammation that sprouted from that.  I'm hoping to swing by the chiropractor's place sometime this week.


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Paddling hurt

The discomfort in my right lat muscle continues.  It was at its worst on Sunday and Monday, when it hurt to take deep breaths and the simple act of existing was less than pleasant.  Since then the condition has eased but not gone away.  I've backed off on the strength work, taking Monday off and doing only the core exercises Wednesday and today.  In my experience injuries are more likely to occur in the weight room than in the boat, and I'm suspicious of the bent-over rows and maybe the front and lat raises as possible culprits.  But that's just an educated guess.  Meanwhile the injury doesn't really bother me much in the boat, and I was even so bold as to do a workout yesterday.  I mentioned in a previous post that even before the lat muscle started hurting I was having tightness in the right side of my neck, as if something's out of whack in the chiropractic sense.  It's been months since I've visited a chiropractor but maybe it's time.

On a happier note, I do believe spring is near.  I say this in spite of the frigid weather we're set to have over the next week.  When Joe and I did our loop of the harbor on Tuesday it was simply lovely: calm, warming toward a high in the 60s, and becoming sunny.  Wednesday was delightfully warm as well.  As we move through the next few weeks I expect such spells will grow longer and more frequent.  And in nine days we'll be back on Daylight Savings Time.

My first race of the season is now just four weeks away, and I'm trying to train through my ailment as carefully as I can.  Yesterday I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints and then commenced a pace workout.  I did five 5-minute pieces with two minutes recovery in between.  In each piece I did two minutes at a target pace of 6.5 miles per hour, two minutes at 7.0 mph, and one minute at 7.2-7.3 mph.  The north wind was blowing hard enough that when paddling into it I struggled to meet these pace goals and when paddling with it at my back I comfortably exceeded them.  In the end I had to do each intensity level by feel rather than rely on my G.P.S. device to do my thinking for me.

The crest prediction for the Mississippi River keeps getting pushed back and revised upward.  The current forecast says it will crest at 41.5 feet on the Memphis gauge around next Wednesday.  I hope the weather and my body will allow me to get out and explore some more.


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