Monday photo feature

No task is too menial for Joe Royer, the founder and director of the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  Late last week he could be found just down the hill from River Garden Park, in the water up to his armpits at times, pruning brush to provide an easier takeout for the race's finishers.  Such attention to detail helped make Saturday's race as enjoyable as any in the event's 38-year run.


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The OICK race is back

We've had lovely, not-so-humid weather here in the Memphis area for the last couple of days.  The heat and humidity are supposed to be creeping back upward over this weekend, but this morning it was hard to ask for lovelier conditions for a 5000-meter race down the Mississippi River.  There was plenty of sunshine, but a mild west-northwest breeze was keeping things cool.

A couple of hundred registrants assembled at the mouth of the Wolf River for the 38th Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, and after a few instructions from director Joe Royer and a blessing from chaplain Dr. Scott Morris, they got in their boats and positioned themselves in the traditional starting area beneath the power lines.

I was feeling butterflies aplenty as I awaited the starting gun.  I think most athletes feel some version of nervousness in the moments before competition begins, no matter how experienced they are.  There's the anticipation of of the strenuous effort the race will demand, the hope that you will execute all the things well that you've been practicing, even some fear of possibly not performing as well as you think you should.

I didn't have my best start ever.  Four or five boats shot into the lead ahead of me, and the butterflies in my arms that usually disappear once the race is underway persisted for a tense few minutes as I fought my way into some sort of contention.

Three-time Olympian, three-time world championships medalist, and Pan Am Games champion Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, quickly opened a solid gap on the rest of the field.  Nobody was surprised to see that.  A chase pack formed consisting of Christian Massow of Cypress, Texas; Andy Capel of Maumelle, Arkansas; and Adam Davis of Memphis.  I sat a couple of boatlengths behind these guys, trying to settle my nerves and get down to business.  I think I was even talking to myself: "Come on, man.  The race has started.  Stop being such a head case and just paddle!"

We entrants in the race-boat class were all in surf skis except for Christian, a lifelong sprint racer, who'd opted for a flatwater K1.  Even though the Mississippi was about as smooth as it ever gets, I could see that the swirly currents were giving Christian some trouble with his balance.  He'd had a good fast start out of the Wolf, but now he was having to throw down some braces as he dropped back onto Adam's stern wake and did his best to maintain contact with the pack.

I decided to move to the right a bit where the water was undisturbed by the churning paddles.  I began to settle into a fast but comfortable rhythm at last, and over the next few minutes I inched my way up into second place.  I didn't have my G.P.S. device in the boat with me, but with the river registering 28.1 feet on the Memphis gauge, I knew we were getting plenty of help from the current.  I clocked about a 10:22 split at the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, the fastest I can ever remember.

Up front Mike had taken longer than usual to build his lead; for the first third of the race I don't think he was more than maybe 20 seconds ahead of me.  Maybe he was having the same trouble finding his rhythm that I was.  But eventually he began to pull away, and probably had more than a minute on me as he approached the entrance to the harbor.  It certainly was a comfortable enough lead for him to take a safe, conservative line around the southern tip of Mud Island, where there were some patches of very shallow water at the current river level.

By the time I reached the bridge I'd moved far enough ahead of my pursuers that I couldn't see anyone in my peripheral vision.  I told myself to keep paddling hard.  My lousy sprint workouts in recent weeks had shaken my confidence a bit, but I reminded myself that I'd raced well in races of 8 miles or less in March and April and that there was no reason I wouldn't stay strong all the way to the finish today.

I got to the harbor entrance and took a tighter line around the tip of Mud Island than Mike had.  I'd scouted the area yesterday and was confident I'd found a good clear path.  I hit the bottom with my paddle one time but otherwise had no trouble.  As I turned up into the harbor I stole a glance over my left shoulder and saw two boats not far back.  I wondered if one of them was Christian.  Christian is the reigning Masters national champion in the 200-, 500-, and 1000-meter sprints, and if he was anywhere in striking distance he would be able to zoom right past me in the flatwater of the harbor.  And even if Christian wasn't nearby, the boats I'd seen at the turn looked a little too close for comfort.  I would have to lay down the best finishing sprint I could muster to preserve my second-place position.

The finish buoys taunted me as I strove to reduce the distance between them and me to zero.  Those agonizing sprint workouts were on my mind as I pressed on, but no other boats appeared to my left or right and I became ever more confident that second place--my best finish ever in this race--was all mine.  Mike had claimed first place with a time of 15 minutes, 57 seconds, and I pushed myself across the line just 40 seconds later--the closest to Mike I've ever finished in this race.  My tighter line at the harbor entrance paid off, at least in a moral-victory sort of way.

I maneuvered my boat around and learned the identities of the two paddlers I'd seen back at the harbor entrance.  Andy Capel took third place in 16:54, and Adam Davis gave us a second Memphian in the top four with a time of 17:09.  Joseph DiChiacchio of Rising Fawn, Georgia, rounded out the top five in 17:23.  Christian Massow had indeed struggled out on the big river and had to settle for sixth place in 17:46.  If this had been entirely a flatwater race I think Christian would have made a good run at Mike.

Mike's daughter Savanna Herbert was the top female finisher, clocking 18:58.  She'd emerged from a thrilling duel with the race's top tandem kayak paddled by Carol Lee and Joe Royer.  Myrlene Marsa of Rising Fawn, Georgia, was Savanna's nearest solo female competitor, finishing 54 seconds back.  The complete results are posted as follows:

Solo kayak results
Tandem kayak results
Solo canoe results
Tandem canoe results
Standup paddleboard results

We all congratulated one another and made our way up the grassy bank to the post-race festivities in River Garden Park.  It was great to have canoe and kayak racing back here in Memphis, Tennessee.


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Almost time to RACE at Memphis!

On Tuesday morning I put my boat in the water behind our rented house overlooking Mississippi Sound, and paddled for 40 minutes.  In the middle of it I did eight 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals.  The sprints felt pretty nice and fluid.

I spent the rest of Tuesday driving back to Memphis, and now I'm making final preparations for tomorrow's Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.

Yesterday I paddled in the harbor for 40 minutes, doing six 12-stroke sprints.  The achiness in my upper arms has been somewhat better lately, but not entirely gone.

Today I had some company on the water: Mike and Savanna Herbert arrived from their home in Rogers, Arkansas, in the early afternoon, and the three of us paddled together and checked out the course.  The river is high, as it has been all winter and spring, but not outrageously so.  The level at race time tomorrow should be around 28.3 feet on the Memphis gauge.  It looks like the weather will be warm but beautiful.


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Monday photo feature

Here I am charging down the Mississippi River in April of 2014.  That's Rick Carter of Eutawville, South Carolina, just a boatlength or two back.  The occasion was the Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race, a 22-miler from Madison Parish Port, Louisiana, to Vicksburg, Mississippi.  Photo by Paul Ingram.

This coming weekend I'll be racing on a different section of the mighty Mississippi: the one that flows right by my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee.  The 38th Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race is set for Saturday morning, and if you're reading this, you're invited to be there.  Online registration is available here.  The registration deadline is Friday evening at 6 PM CDT.


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Grabbing a bit of practice on the Gulf Coast

I've had a mostly-lovely couple of days at Dauphin Island.  The warm, muggy, sunny weather is conducive to a whole lot of lazing around.

Yesterday I didn't get in the boat until mid-afternoon.  I felt pretty tired and paddled in Mississippi Sound for less than an hour at moderate intensity.  The weather was calm, but there were plenty of motorboat wakes generated by people here for the holiday weekend.

When I woke up today there was a bit more of a breeze blowing.  The online forecast I checked listed a wind velocity of around 11 miles per hour.  I decided to drive my boat over to the Gulf side of the island and see what kind of downwind action I could find.  There was quite a bit, as it turned out.  With the wind blowing in from the south I had to paddle out from the beach for five minutes or so, ride the surf back in, and repeat.

My intellectual understanding of ocean waves and how to use them in a downwind race is fair, not great.  But the biggest obstacle between me and downwind proficiency is the same one I've encountered in every other paddling discipline I've tried: confidence in my balance.  Fitness and stamina have always been right up my alley, but acrobatic agility has never been a reliable part of my skill set.  It was hard for me even when I was a little kid: I couldn't turn cartwheels or dive off the diving board.  And when I start competing with paddlers who are comfortable with that sort of thing, I run right smack into the ceiling of what I'm able to achieve.

For much of my downwind session this morning, I watched good surfing opportunities slip away because I was sitting on a brace or otherwise off balance when I should have been paddling.  I had my G.P.S. device on board and watched with dismay as my speed plummeted.  Finally, on my last trip in to the beach, I managed to link together some good rides and my velocity got up over 10 miles per hour for a measurable length of time.

I made myself stop after about 40 minutes.  I don't need to be wearing myself out with the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race coming up this Saturday, and with the beach starting to get crowded, I also didn't want to take some little kid's head off.  But with the Gorge Downwind race less than two months away, it was nice to have hopped on this small practice opportunity.

I plan to head back to Memphis tomorrow.  I hope to do an easy paddle in the sound before I go.


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Still not doing great at high intensity

The beat goes on with my arm woes.  I'm managing them the best I can.  I don't think my achy biceps are as bad as they were before my trip to Virginia, but the tennis elbow in my left arm has returned with a vengeance.

I spent the first half of this week doing stuff of moderate intensity--paddling with Joe in the harbor on Tuesday and doing rounds of the strength routine Monday and Wednesday.

Then yesterday I went back downtown to do another set of four bridge-to-bridge sprints.  I've been frustrated by my lack of stamina in this workout so far this year, and was hoping maybe this time I could crank out four fairly consistent times.  For this latest go-round I tried a different boat: a V10 Sport surf ski of Joe's that he told me I could paddle if I wanted to.  The V10 Sport is slightly wider and more stable (and therefore slower, at least on paper) than the V12 that I normally train in.  But Joe's V10 Sport is a lighter layup than my V12--it's what Epic Kayaks calls the "ultra" layup, while my boat is the heavier "performance" layup.  And Joe's boat feels light even by "ultra" layup standards.  So my spirits were buoyed just knowing I had a bit less weight to push around.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then lined up under the monorail bridge.  The first piece got off to a good start--I hit that roof edge right at the one-minute mark.  I stroked as hard as I could and finished the piece in 2:02.  It still wasn't the sub-two-minute time that I shoot for, but it was my fastest time so far this year.

I took a 5-minute rest interval, during which I paddled back to the monorail bridge.  My goal now was to produce three more times in the neighborhood of 2:02.  The second piece seemed much like the first, but this time I could only manage 2:05, and I was starting to hurt by the end of it.  I gave myself an extra recovery minute, but in the third piece I was really starting to fall apart.  I limped across the finish in 2:11.

Feeling defeated, I did just a half-piece for the fourth sprint (from the monorail bridge to the roof edge).  I sprinted as hard as I could and did it in 63 seconds.

Once again, I'm trying not to obsess over it too much.  Fortunately, few races demand a lot of time in the lactic zone.  But I am a bit puzzled with my inability to get through this workout like I did last year and the year before.

This morning I did another round of the strength routine, and then went back to the river for a steady paddle at medium intensity.  I paddled to the mouth of the harbor and then up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, where next Saturday's Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race will start.  Today's river level was about 31.2 feet on the Memphis gauge, and one bright side of this fairly high level is that racers won't have to carry their boats down any steep grades to get to the water.  The forecast says the river will be at 29.2 feet on race day.

Tomorrow morning I'm heading down to the beach!  My mother and my sister's family and I typically get together at Dauphin Island on the Alabama Gulf Coast around this time each year.  I'd been wavering on whether to make the trip at all this year--the idea of yet another long drive isn't something I'm thrilled about--but I've decided I shouldn't pass up several days of relaxing beach time.  The paddling I do there will be whatever I feel like doing.  Any hard paddling I do will be in the service of FUN (i.e., downwind surfing).  Let us never forget that paddling is always fun, whether I'm in top racing form or not.

I plan to return home Tuesday and get myself rested and ready for the big race.


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Monday photo feature

Here's another photo from the 2012 Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, taken by Roger Cotton Photography.  Linda Weghorst charges toward the finish line as the sun beats down.  This was Linda's last OICK race, as she moved away from Memphis later that year.

We miss Linda terribly.  But maybe we'll discover that we love YOU just as much!  All you have to do is come to this year's race and let us get to know you!  The 2019 OICK race is set for June 1--a week from this Saturday.  Online registration is available here.


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Back in training mode, no thanks to Delta Airlines

I saw my nephew get his degree on Thursday, and my mother and I began the journey home on Friday.  And what a horrible journey it turned out to be. We were booked to fly on Delta Airlines from Roanoke to Memphis by way of Atlanta, with a scheduled arrival time in Memphis of around 9 PM.

As it turned out, we didn't land in Memphis until around 8 o'clock yesterday morning.

Our flight from Roanoke to Atlanta was delayed more than seven hours--something to do with a flight crew that had used up the number of duty hours allowed by the FAA.  Landing in Atlanta after midnight, we'd missed the last flight to Memphis and were forced to sleep on the floor of the airport even though the Delta agent in Roanoke had assured us the airline would put us up in a hotel.  The agent we dealt with in Atlanta was, to put it mildly, rude.  I doubt I got more than a half-hour of sleep the whole night.

As air-travel horror stories go, our ordeal was probably fairly average.  But the Delta Airlines personnel could not have handled the situation more poorly, and I will be avoiding Delta at all costs for the foreseeable future.

Once home I slept for several hours, had a small lunch, and headed down to the river to paddle.  It took some willpower to drag myself down there, but once I was in the boat I felt surprisingly good.  I paddled for 50 minutes, going fairly easy aside from three 8-stroke sprints.

I got a much-needed full night of sleep last night, and went back to the river today intending to get refocused on my preparation for the OICK race.  After warming up and doing another three 8-strokers, I did a set of eight hard sprints at 75 seconds on, 30 seconds off.  The short recovery interval makes this a lactic tolerance workout, and by about the sixth piece I was really feeling the pain.  In the late stages of the workout I tried my best to keep taking good strokes even though I was slowing down a bit.

I'm still feeling some soreness in both biceps, as well as the deltoid area of my right arm and shoulder.  But it doesn't seem quite as bad out of the boat, as I go about my non-athletic business each day.  I've got a couple more hard workouts scheduled between now and race day, and I need to be extra-conscientious about letting myself recover fully from each one.


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Downtime report

I'm staying with my mother and my sister's family in a rented house in a rural area outside Lexington, Virginia, where my nephew is graduating from college.  As I mentioned in my last post, these few days include no paddling for me.  So far they haven't included much else, either: I've felt sleepy and completely devoid of energy, my digestion is out of whack because of the deviation from my normal diet, and I have a hint of a sore throat as though I've got a cold coming on.  I am most definitely not feeling like the guy who's supposed to go out and kill it in the Outdoors race and the summertime competitions that follow.

I was hoping I'd reach the end of this little break feeling reinvigorated and ready to go get 'em.  But it seems that my body has taken this opportunity to crash much harder than I'd expected.  Now I'll have to put the pieces back together when I get home.

At the moment it's hard to tell if there's any improvement in the way my arms are feeling.  Some soreness is still present.  So far I've done a very light round of the strength routine, just to get some blood flowing in those areas.

For now, I'm trying to enjoy the family celebration and not worry about the physical challenges to come.  I'll be home tomorrow night and I'll see what I'm capable of doing this weekend.


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Monday photo feature

This photo, taken by Roger Cotton Photography moments after I'd finished the 2012 edition of the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, says it all in terms of what the conditions were like that day.

It was blazing hot--the high for the day was around 95 degrees Fahrenheit.  And the Mississippi River was flowing at the lowest race-day level ever (1.7 feet below zero on the Memphis gauge), making the course slower and longer than usual.  And the field was deep, demanding my best effort for a respectable finish.  The result was an exhausted but generally satisfied paddler once the race was over.  You can go back here to read my report on that race.  There's also this You Tube video in which Greg Barton talks about the race and the low water.

The OICK race is now in its 38th year, scheduled to take place June 1--that's just two weeks from this Saturday.  I don't know what the weather will be like but I can assure you the Mississippi will not be as low as it was in 2012.  All canoe and kayak racers are invited to register here and come on down to the Memphis riverfront to partake in this classic event.


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Trying to paddle and heal simultaneously

My plan for the weekend was to do easy- to medium-intensity paddles to get the blood flowing in the relevant muscles and, as always, practice my strokes.

I didn't get out until the afternoon on Saturday.  I paddled mostly easy for 50 minutes.  Yesterday I went slightly harder, doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor before paddling up the Mississippi to the lower end of the Greenbelt Park and back.  The tennis elbow in my left arm seems to be getting better, but both biceps are still achy and sore, especially the right one.

I went back to the riverfront today wanting to do some good fast sprinting, but not the sort of sufferfest the bridge-to-bridge sprints have been for me lately.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I started a 30-minute workout in which I threw in a 12-stroke sprint every two minutes and otherwise tried to keep the speed at 6.5 miles per hour on my G.P.S. device.

This afternoon I fly to Virginia to see my sweet little nephew become a college graduate.  His school spreads its commencement exercises over three days, so I won't be home until Friday.  I hope my arms will avail themselves of a few days out of the boat to start feeling better.


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The struggle continues

I had a good paddle with Joe on Tuesday, and on Wednesday evening I delivered my talk on being a lifetime paddlesports athlete.  I'm grateful to all the people who showed up.

Yesterday I went back downtown with the intention of doing four bridge-to-bridge sprints.  After last Saturday's painful slog through this workout I wasn't expecting any miracles in the time department, but I was hoping I could at least be more consistent and not just get slower and slower like I did Saturday.

After a good long warmup and three 8-stroke sprints, I drifted into starting position beneath the monorail bridge.  Once the first sprint was underway it was clear that I still didn't have much turnover; I guess my achy arms are part of the reason for that.  I tried to explode through each stroke as hard as I could while keeping the stroke rate fairly low.  Once more my split was slow at the edge of the marina roof--around 64 seconds.  I did my best to keep it together and ended up with a time of 2:04.

The second sprint was similar; my time was 2:05.  By the third sprint I was really feeling some agony as I struggled to a time of 2:09.

I'd been giving myself 5 minutes for recovery, during which I paddled back to the start at the monorail bridge.  After three sprints I could tell my form was falling apart and didn't see the point of beating a dead horse any longer.  So I gave myself an extra minute of recovery before the last sprint, and then did just half the distance (i.e., to the edge of the marina roof).  I dug in and hoped maybe I could break a minute, but about 63-64 seconds was the best I could manage.

I'm trying my best not to get all alarmed by my difficulties in these workouts; after all, my upcoming races will proceed at a much lower level of intensity.  But it sure would be nice to go into the races with maximum confidence, and I'm just not feeling that at the moment.

I plan to do a couple of steady paddles over the weekend and then some sort of not-quite-as-grueling workout Monday morning.  On Monday afternoon I fly to Virginia for my nephew's college graduation; I won't be back until Friday, and I'm hoping a few days out of the boat will give my body a chance to heal up and reap some benefits from the hard paddling.


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A new strength routine

I will be out of town Monday through Friday of next week to attend my nephew's college graduation. Because of that, I want a strength routine whose exercises are all entirely portable.  I've picked out a few of the rubber-band exercises demonstrated by world and Olympic champion slalom kayaker Daniele Molmenti in his video on this page.

Still suffering from muscle soreness in my arms, I'm hoping that strengthening the muscle groups in that general area will be helpful.

In addition to these rubber-band exercises, I'm doing "4-way abdominal" exercises.


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VENUE CHANGE!!

My lecture this Wednesday evening has been moved to a different location.

The original plan was for me to speak at the Midtown location of Outdoors, Inc.  However, a burst water pipe has caused extensive damage there, forcing us to move the event to the Cordova location.  The address is listed in red in the above photo.  I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and I hope to see an enthusiastic audience out in Cordova.


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Monday photo feature

I've had this yard sign for eight or nine years now.  I don't really have a yard to put it in, so it's become an annual tradition to stick it in the front door window of my shop.

In case you can't read my writing, this year's race date is June 1.  That's a mere three weeks from this Saturday!  So don't delay: go here to get yourself signed up.


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Not at my best right now

By yesterday morning the pain in my left lower back had eased considerably, but the arm woes seemed about the same.  I headed down to the river to put them to the test.

The plan was to do a set of four sprints in the harbor from the monorail bridge to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  Here's a video I made last year of one of these sprints:



The distance is very nearly 450 meters.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then got to work.  I knew almost immediately that I was slow.  I just didn't seem to have the top gear I have when I'm breaking two minutes for this sprint.  When I'm fast I can reach the roof with the "No Wake Area" sign in less than a minute, but yesterday my splits were more like 65 to 70 seconds.

After struggling in the first two sprints I spent the next two just taking the best strokes I could and maintaining a respectable, if not blazing fast, pace.  The times sort of say it all: 2:05, 2:12, 2:13, 2:17.  It's never good when you're getting slower and slower as a workout goes along.  (In case anybody's curious, the corresponding times for a full 500 meters are 2:18, 2:27, 2:28, and 2:32.)

I was a little bummed out because with the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race (5000 meters down the Mississippi at Memphis) less than a month away, I'm wanting to get as fast as I can.  But there's still time to work on it.  And even if my top speed isn't there, it doesn't mean I can't still race well.  Nevertheless, I'd like to be sharp, with all cylinders firing in perfect unison.

On a positive note, my arm ailments didn't seem any worse the rest of the day than they'd been before the workout.  And even though the sprints were painful, I seemed to recover quickly--the workout didn't ruin me for the rest of the day.

I woke up this morning with the arm pain no worse than before, but no better either.  I went downtown and paddled for 60 minutes, doing three 8-stroke sprints and then paddling on the quick side of medium for a half-hour or so before cooling down.

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Proceeding with pain

I'm starting to feel like a broken record, talking about how beat-up I've been feeling in the last several weeks.  I didn't do myself any favors by pushing that pig of a boat around the lower Atchafalaya River last Saturday.  My left lower back area has remained sore this week, and I have "tennis elbow" in my left arm that I think also resulted from that ordeal.   Meanwhile, I still have pain in my right biceps area from my overzealous strength work a while back.  I'm finally acknowledging that it's not routine soreness, but that I did in fact injure myself.

These ailments provide some discomfort in the boat, but they don't seem to impede my paddle stroke directly.  So I'm hoping I can nurse them along while following a more or less normal training plan.  My plan for tomorrow is to do a set of 450-meter bridge-to-bridge sprints, and that will be a big test of what my body can handle.

As for the last few days, I paddled with Joe in the harbor on Tuesday, and yesterday I did a slightly more intense paddle that included three 8-stroke sprints.  I did the leg and core exercises of the current strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and today.


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Lecture time

A week from today I will be giving a presentation at the Midtown location of Outdoors, Inc., here in Memphis.  I would love to see you there.

What am I going to talk about?  Well, I'm still working on that.  But you can expect me to share some insights developed over nearly four decades as a paddler, explain what I think it means to be a lifetime athlete, and offer advice for people of any age wanting to try a sport like mine.  And there will be snacks available.


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Monday photo feature

I've been to many canoe and kayak racing events, and have seen the full array of "extras" race organizers try to offer for the racers' enjoyment.  Such things include live music, a free beer or two, a post-race meal, and, of course, the old reliable swag bag.

The Lower Atchafalaya Sprint Races that I attended this past weekend had something no other event has: the one and only Lower Atchafalaya Queen.  As the awards ceremony concluded, race director Ray Pellerin announced that the Queen (I think her actual name was Mallory) would be available to take photographs with her adoring subjects.  How could I pass up an opportunity like that?  Mallory's mother was handling the photography duties, so I handed her my phone and took up my position alongside Her Majesty.


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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.


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

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.

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

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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