Some distance paddling and a tiny bit of surfing

Yesterday was another unseasonably warm one, the temperature topping out around 80 degrees Fahrenheit in the afternoon.  It was also mostly cloudy with storms moving in late in the day.  The wind blew from the south around 20 miles per hour much of the day.

That meant conditions were bumpy out on the river as I paddled out there yesterday morning.  With a 33.9-foot level on the Memphis gauge, there was enough water for some exploring over on the Arkansas side.  I paddled up into the flooded Greenbelt Park and then ferried across to the outflow channel for the Hopefield Chute (aka Dacus Lake).  The water in the channel was plenty deep to provide access to this oxbow, and I paddled up there to see what was going on.  I didn't see another human.  Dacus Lake is a popular fishing spot, but with all the access roads underwater it's hard for any fishermen to get there unless they find some distant spot to launch their boats.

Once I felt I'd seen enough I headed back to the river's main channel.  The wind wasn't blowing quite hard enough to generate good downwind surfing conditions, but there was a huge barge rig moving upriver, and with its wake added to the mix I thought there might be an opportunity.

I waited for the rig to pass and then checked out the conditions in the section of river just below the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  What I found was a "sort-of" downwind situation: there were surfable waves scattered all over the place, but there wasn't really a pattern to them like there is in a true downwind scenario.  I managed to catch a few okay runs, which you can watch here:



Make no mistake: I was not styling it out there.  This video includes only the halfway respectable runs I caught; in between I was doing a lot of flailing around.  One reality I'm coming to terms with is that I'm really not stable enough in my V12 to be as aggressive as I need to be.  I think anytime there's a south wind I need to break out the V10 Sport.

I'd hoped to paddle with Adam Davis again yesterday, but he had to be in his office.  But when I got up this morning I had a message from him asking if I'd like to paddle today.  I replied in the affirmative.

I met Adam in the harbor under a mostly-sunny sky.  We had cooler temperatures and a west-northwest breeze in the wake of those storms.  Adam had never really paddled on Dacus Lake before, so I decided to go back there so he could see where the outflow channel was.  We ended up paddling the farthest north in the lake I'd ever been, and that made for a satisfying wilderness paddle even though we were only two or three miles from the "concrete jungle" of downtown Memphis.  For most of our two hours in the boat we maintained a good strong pace.

Another barge rig was coming upriver as we re-entered the main channel, and once we were below it I tried surfing its non-wind-aided wake.  I got one fairly decent ride.  We went on back to the harbor and I completed a weekend full of paddling variety.


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The distancing intensifies

On Tuesday morning I did a round of the strength routine and then met Joe to paddle a loop of the harbor.

Meanwhile, the mayors of my city and county had handed down a "shelter in place" order.  It took effect at 6 o'clock Tuesday evening.  For the moment it falls short of all-out martial law, relying mostly on the cooperation of the populace instead.  I have heard anecdotes of cops stopping people to ask them why they're out, however, and that's a little unsettling.  The Memphis Police Department is one of the more obtuse organizations I've ever encountered and the idea of giving them one more reason to hassle people doesn't thrill me.

Our daily newspaper provides this summary:

You can

• Go to the grocery, convenience or warehouse store
• Go to the pharmacy to pick up medications and other healthcare necessities
• Go to medical appointments (check with your doctor or provider first)
• Go to a restaurant for take-out, delivery or drive-thru
• Care for child, family member, elderly, or pet
• Take a walk, ride your bike, hike, jog, and be in nature for exercise — just keep at least six feet between you and others. 
• Walk your pets and take them to the veterinarian if necessary
• Help someone to get necessary supplies
• Receive deliveries from any business which delivers

You should not 

• Go to work unless you are providing essential services as defined by the Order
• Visit friends and family if there is no urgent need
• Visit loved ones in the hospital, nursing home, skilled nursing facility or other residential care facility, except for limited exceptions as provided on the facility websites.

"Take a walk, ride your bike, hike, jog, and be in nature for exercise"--I interpret that to include paddling my boat down on the riverfront.  And so I was back there yesterday morning for a 60-minute paddle.  We finally had a warm sunny day yesterday, with the temperature shooting up into the 80s on the Fahrenheit thermometer, and I wore shorts and short sleeves for the first time in the northern hemisphere this year.

I did another round of the strength routine this morning.  It's supposed to stay warm for the next couple of days, but get stormier during the weekend.  Hopefully I can squeeze in some sort of river adventure tomorrow.

How am I feeling?  Great, that's how.  But I'm still trying to act under the assumption that I'm an asymptomatic carrier of the virus, keep my distance from everybody I encounter, and be as responsible as I know how to be.  Really, this new shelter-in-place order is just asking me to do what I'd already been doing for at least a week: staying home aside from trips to the river and the grocery store.


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Monday photo feature

Can you point to the LIGHTHOUSE????  This guy can!!!!!

This photo is a screen-grab from a short video Dawid Mocke shot as we paddled the Miller's Run back on the 4th of February.  Even though that was a mere seven weeks ago, in some ways it feels like a different lifetime.

On a typical day that week we were up at sunrise for an early-morning paddle.  We'd finish at Fish Hoek Beach, put our boats away, stop by the C'est la Vie coffee shop for a cappuccino, and then head back to the B & B just in time for a full breakfast.  A fine way to start a day.  Good times, man.  Good times.

Suddenly saddled with all the solitude I can stand, I guess one good way to use it is to examine my routine here at home, and ponder how I might incorporate some of the elements that I found so satisfying during my time in South Africa.


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Staying busy in the boat

Adam Davis came back down to join me yesterday morning.  We paddled out of the harbor, up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, and up the Wolf to the Danny Thomas Boulevard (U.S. 51) bridge before turning around and heading back to where we'd started.  I've paddled this route many, many times, but thanks to Adam and his G.P.S. device, I finally have a map of it to show everybody:

As you can see, the distance was almost 10 miles for Adam.  Since I started and finished at the marina about a mile farther north in the harbor, my distance came to about 12 miles.  Once I got back to the dock I orbited for several minutes to make a nice, neat 120 minutes.

Yesterday's high temperature was around 55 degrees Fahrenheit, but it was in the mid 40s during the time Adam and I were paddling.  My feet were thoroughly chilled by the time I got back to the dock.

We had a rare few hours of sunshine yesterday afternoon, but by this morning it was overcast once more, with rain in the forecast.  I managed to get about three-quarters of my 60-minute paddle in before raindrops started falling.  I mostly paddled steady but threw in a long, pretty hard surge in the last 15 minutes, just because I felt like it.  Since there's not much to "train" for right now, I'll be doing what I feel like pretty much all the time.


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Trying to keep calm and carry on

I'd hoped that our beloved sport would remain above the fray in this time of distress.  But alas, that was wishful thinking.  I guess this has been the week that the situation "got real" as far as this blog is concerned.

At this moment the environment is such that it's all but impossible to have an event of any kind.  If the directors of the races in South Carolina and Ocean Springs had tried to go forward, they would have faced an onslaught of criticism of the "How can you be so irresponsible?" variety.  And maybe the critics would have been right, for all I know.

Right now I'm hoping the entire race season won't be wiped out, but that's certainly a possibility.  The Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race is near and dear to my heart, and for the moment it's still on for June 13; so is the Gorge Downwind Championships, a trip I really look forward to each July.  But unless things get turned around in the very near future, I'm afraid those events will join the growing list of casualties.

(UPDATE: I just found out this afternoon that next month's race on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg is off.)

My motivation took a hit when races started getting canceled this week.  I skipped my strength workout Tuesday morning, and the only reason I went through with paddling is that I'd already promised to meet Joe for that purpose.  Now I'm just looking to keep moving even though serious training might have to be on hold for a bit. I think some good "play" workouts are the best way to keep myself looking forward to being on the river.  Yesterday would have been a perfect example if I'd been better prepared: the wind was blowing from the south at least 20 miles per hour when I got to the dock yesterday morning, and when I paddled from the harbor out onto the river I found some sure-enough downwind conditions there.  They weren't big swells, but I had good rideable swells nevertheless.  Sadly, I wasn't dressed properly--I'd dressed for the 73-degree-Fahrenheit air temperature rather than the still-quite-cold water temperature--and I had to paddle timidly because of that.  There were also a lot of floating logs as a result of recent rains and a rising river level, and I didn't want to have my rudder whacked off.  Still, it was an encouraging reminder that we do occasionally get a taste of downwind here, and I'm going to start paying closer attention to the wind forecast and try to be ready for such opportunities from now on.

I managed to make a strength workout happen this morning.  It's going to be a chilly weekend with highs in the 50s, but I plan to be in my boat seeing what kind of fun I can find out on that big river.


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Race schedule update

As most of you know, a global pandemic has prompted the cancellation of events of all kinds.  Sadly, canoe and kayak racing is not immune.  This Saturday's "Paddle Bender" race in South Carolina, which I had decided not to attend but for which many friends of mine were registered, got canceled yesterday.  The first race of my season, the "Battle On The Bayou" event scheduled for a week from this Saturday down at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, was called off this morning.

I have a feeling there will be more casualties before this crisis has run its course.  As far as I know, the events listed below are still on for now, but I recommend seeking updates frequently.  I will share whatever I know as soon as I know it.


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


June
6  Taylorsville Lake Paddle Battle.  Taylorsville Reservoir, Taylorsville, Kentucky.  A 10-mile flatwater race.

13  Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River, Memphis, Tennessee.  The 39th edition of this classic.  A 5000-meter dash down the largest river in North America.


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

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Monday photo feature

Adam Davis shot this photo during our paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar on Saturday.  We're nearing the end of our trip, paddling across the Mississippi back toward the harbor.  That's me at eleven o'clock off Adam's bow.  Conditions were bumpy because two barge rigs and a bargeless towboat, all heading upriver, had just passed through.

I should note that Adam is one of the stars of my motion picture that came out last fall.  For those of you shunning the crowds in favor of watching movies at home, may I suggest adding this film to your list?  It's available for viewing here.


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Still yearning for sunny days

We're having another run of rainy, cloudy days here in the Mid South.  When I got down to the river yesterday morning it had rained a good bit overnight but had let up for a few hours.

Adam Davis joined me again and we paddled a loop around the Loosahatchie Bar.  We kept a good pace going and got a solid overdistance session.  Adam's G.P.S. device produced this map of what we did:

If it looks like we paddled over some land at the north end of the Bar, that's because the river level (25.6 feet on the Memphis gauge) was higher than whatever it was when this satellite image was made.  Because I put in at the marina about a mile farther north in the harbor than Adam's start/finish point, my total distance was around 12.6 miles.  My elapsed time was about a minute under two hours.

More drenching rains fell last night.  With the temperature in the low 40s Fahrenheit, it was a cold, soggy world I ventured out into this morning.  I went down to the river planning to paddle for 60 minutes and do a crisp workout.  When I say "crisp," I mean high in intensity but short in duration.  Long grinds have their place, but I'm looking to tip the balance in favor of quality more than ever this year.

So, after warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I embarked on eight reps of 45 seconds on, 75 seconds off.  The sprints were tough but my body seemed to handle them just fine--75 seconds seemed to be adequate recovery throughout the workout.

As I walked from the marina back to the parking lot I saw a couple of patches of blue sky.  But I think most of the coming week will be cloudy with chances of rain every day.  I guess that's fairly standard for late winter and early spring.

Regarding my hands and wrists: they've done okay this weekend, though there continue to be moments when they seem to go to sleep on me.  I was right concerned when I woke up yesterday morning because they were throbbing pretty good, but they seemed to get circulating once I was in the boat.  While paddling today they felt fine at times and dead at times.


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Digging deep in more ways than one

On Tuesday I did a round of the strength routine and then headed to the river to paddle for an easy 60 minutes.

The current strength routine is one of my lighter ones, but my body wouldn't know it right now.  I mentioned last weekend that I've been doing some landscaping at my house: to be specific, I'm sprucing up what had been a gravel driveway/parking area in the back.  First came a lot of digging in rocky, rooty soil, busting it up with a pick axe before moving it with a shovel.  Then I poured a couple of concrete drainage channels for the downspouts to flow into.  In all I used thirty 80-pound (36.3-kilogram) bags of concrete.  That's 2400 pounds (1.2 tons!) that I moved from a pallet to a dolly down at the store, moved from the dolly into the back of my truck, and moved from the truck into a wheelbarrow at the work site for mixing and pouring.  Now I'm paving the area over with bricks.

How has my body responded to all this activity?  Certainly with a lot of muscle fatigue, especially in my legs, shoulders, and back.  The heaviest work days left me sacked out and falling asleep my nine o'clock in the evening.  And the work has been murder on my hands.  The skin on my fingers is raw and cracked, and for a couple of days I was having spells of no feeling or poor circulation from my forearms down.  I've had some off-and-on soreness in my right wrist since last summer, and all the digging seems to have exacerbated that.

The upshot of all this is that I wasn't exactly feeling sharp yesterday for what is probably the most dreaded day on my training calendar: the annual harbor time trial.  On top of that, there was a south breeze blowing when I got down to the riverfront just after 9 AM.  It didn't seem too fierce as I stood on the dock, but I knew it was enough to slow me down significantly during the first half (the north-to-south leg) of the trial.  The outlook wasn't good for my long-held desire to break 50 minutes for this lap of the harbor.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints as I paddled from the marina to the harbor's north end.  I settled into the usual starting gate between two submerged tree trunks, started the watch on my G.P.S. device, and was off.

To break 50 minutes for a lap of the harbor, one must maintain an average speed of about 7.2 miles per hour.  There are several stretches in the harbor where wind exposure is at its greatest, and in the first of these I found myself struggling to maintain 6.5 mph.  In the second such stretch, I saw my speed plunge to around 6.1.  Slowly but surely, I began to accept the reality that a sub-50 day was probably not going to happen.  I tried to keep my chin up and produce the best effort I could.

But as I passed the marina a new problem emerged: the pain in my right wrist became excruciating.  I tried to work it out as I paddled, but to no avail.  Just south of the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge I had to stop.

Having to abandon my time trial was disheartening, but that was the least of my concerns.  Suddenly this injury was getting severe enough to disrupt my paddling.  Was this something that could interfere with my race season?

Dejectedly I continued south, thinking I would paddle another couple hundred meters before turning around and calling it quits back at the marina.  But as I moved along my wrist started to feel better and I kept paddling south, toward what would have been my turnaround point next to Beale Street Landing.  I began to entertain thoughts of resuming my time trial there and seeing how I could do for the half of it with the wind at my back.  By the time I got there my enthusiasm for the idea had begun to blossom.  I reset my watch and took off back toward the north end.

What a difference a tailwind makes.  Now I was cruising along at 7.5 mph, occasionally even 7.6.  Energized by this chance to salvage my workout, I followed the tangent line to every curve and kept the intensity as high as I dared.

Fatigue started creeping in as I passed the marina.  I tried to lower the stroke rate while keeping as much power in each stroke as possible.  I reminded myself I was well ahead of the pace and could drop down into the low 7s if I needed to, but for the most part I stayed in 7.4-7.5 territory.

The finish line finally came into view, and I bore down even though I was hurting pretty bad by this time.  I hit 8.0 mph in the last hundred meters and crossed the line with a time of 23 minutes, 33 seconds for the 2.96-mile length of the harbor.

Could I ever put two such efforts together for a 47:06 full lap of the harbor?  Probably not, considering how wind-aided my time was.  But it doesn't seem unreasonable to think I can put together a pair of 24:59.5 halves for a 49:59 whole.  I expect it would take a perfect day with no wind for me to do that.

Utterly spent, I slowly paddled back toward the marina.  I was pleased with myself for squeezing something positive out of a tough morning, and I was relieved that my wrist hadn't been an issue during that second half.  For now I'll just have to keep an eye on it and seek some help if it keeps bothering me.

This morning I did another round of the strength routine and did some lighter chores out back.  Fortunately the heaviest portion of that landscaping job is behind me.


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Monday photo feature

I shot this photo of Joe Royer as we paddled last Tuesday.  Behind him the Kankakee, a channel marker maintenance vessel for the United States Coast Guard, returns to the USCG's Lower Mississippi River station.  The broad fluctuation of Mississippi River levels keeps the Kankakee busy resetting the red and green channel markers throughout the year.


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A nice sunny weekend

Yesterday morning it was sunny and beautiful but quite chilly.  It was about 43 degrees Fahrenheit when I got down to the river.  I put the pogies back on after going pogie-less for the past week.

I headed out for a 120-minute paddle.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then paddled out onto the Mississippi to see what was going on.  I paddled up above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and ferried over to the Arkansas side.  With the river flowing at 28.3 feet on the Memphis gauge I wasn't sure if I'd have access to Dacus Lake: I paddled up the lake's outflow channel and discovered that I did not.  There's a private road that crosses the channel, and it's only when this road is completely underwater that one can paddle from the Mississippi's main channel to the lake.  (At low river levels the Dacus Lake outflow passes through a culvert beneath the road.)  Yesterday the road was several feet above the surface.

So I followed Plan B and paddled up the Loosahatchie Chute.  On these longer paddles I usually do whatever I feel like as far as intensity goes.  Yesterday I threw in a few surges but mostly paddled at a relaxed pace.  About the time I was ready to turn around and head back toward the harbor, my legs started cramping up a bit.  That's not a problem I have very often.  I don't know if it was because of the cold, or a lingering effect of some landscaping work I'd done on Friday that involved lifting a bunch of 80-pound bags of concrete... your guess is as good as mine.  Anyway, it sort of bothered me all the way back to the dock, and once I was out of the boat it took a while for my legs to loosen up so I could walk comfortably.  I'll be happy not to have that kind of discomfort as a frequent companion.

This morning I had some company: Adam Davis came down to the riverfront to join me in a workout.  He put in at the cobblestones near the harbor's mouth, so I paddled down there and did three 8-stroke sprints while waiting for him to get in his boat.

The first thing we did was paddle up the Mississippi to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, do a fast ferry to the bridge's middle piling, and paddle back to the harbor.  There was a pretty stiff wind blowing from the south that made the river choppy and confused.  Windy days are always wet days: by the time we got back to the harbor my clothes were soaked from taking a bunch of splashes and spray.

Back in the harbor we commenced our main workout: a 20-minute paddle consisting of 2-minute cycles in which we paddled medium-hard (over 6.5 miles per hour) for a minute, then increased the pace to 7.0-7.5 mph for 30 seconds, then paddled at sub-maximal intensity for 30 seconds.  The workout went well and I felt pretty good through it all.

Once that was over we continued to the north end of the harbor and then came back south.  I bade Adam goodbye when we reached my marina.  That wind was putting a chill on things, but the sun was out and the temperature was rising.  I found a sunny spot on the dock where I shed my soggy clothes and got dry.  I headed home with the satisfaction of a pretty good weekend in the boat.


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Another week's wrap-up

On Tuesday I did a round of the strength routine and then paddled a loop of the harbor with Joe.

I had a workout planned for yesterday, but with a busy morning I was worried my head wouldn't be in it.  Once I was in the boat paddling, however, the outside concerns fell away and I got down to business.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did eight pieces of 1 minute on, 2 minutes off.  The workout felt taxing while it was going on, but I recovered quickly after the last piece.  With more than 20 minutes left in the 60-minute session I did a couple of long surges in which I kept the stroke rate moderate but pulled hard on each stroke.

I did another round of the strength routine this morning.

We haven't had anywhere near the volume of rain I'd been expecting at the beginning of the week.  We were spared the tornados and violent storms that laid waste to parts of middle Tennessee.  Today was bright and sunny, albeit cool.  It's supposed to warm up gradually this weekend.


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Monday photo feature

It's the 2015 "Battle On The Bayou" race at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  In this picture I'm taking a turn in the lead as we head from the Back Bay of Biloxi up into Old Fort Bayou.  On my tail are Rick Carter of Eutawville, South Carolina; Jeb Berry of Gulfport, Mississippi; and Kata Dismukes of Cordova, Tennessee.  Mary Neil Quave shot the photo from the Washington Avenue drawbridge.

The 2020 edition of this race is less than four weeks away.  If all goes according to plan I'll be starting up a new season there.


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This weekend: not bad

That sore throat I mentioned at the end of my last post has given way to ordinary coughing and sniffles.  The good news is that I otherwise don't really feel that sick.  My energy level might be down a little but my daily life is proceeding as normal.

Yesterday I went out for a 100-minute paddle.  With the Mississippi River flowing around 34.7 feet on the Memphis gauge, there was plenty of water for me to paddle over onto Dacus Lake.  I pushed the pace at times but generally just paddled however I felt like.

This morning I paddled for 60 minutes and did a short workout.  I did two sets of this:

20-second sprint
60-second recovery
20-second sprint
50-second recovery
20-second sprint
40-second recovery
20-second sprint
30-second recovery
20-second sprint
20-second recovery
20-second sprint
10-second recovery
20-second sprint

I held up well for most of the workout.  I started to struggle with my form a bit during the last couple of pieces.

Both yesterday and today, I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor during the first ten minutes.

I see a pattern emerging here: a quick, crisp workout on Thursday; a longer paddle on Saturday; another crisp workout on Sunday; and a recovery paddle on Tuesday.  It seems to suit me all right and we'll see how it goes for the next few weeks.

We've finally had some warmer weather with some sunshine yesterday and today, with the Fahrenheit temperature rising into the 60s.  I think it's supposed to stay warm for a while but rain heavily.


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Trying to stay healthy while doing good work

On Tuesday I did a round of my new strength routine, and then headed downtown to do a loop of the harbor with Joe.  Joe informed me that the 39th Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race will in fact take place here at Memphis on June 13 this year.  It had taken a while to get the permits ironed out for that date, but it is now a done deal.  I'll share more information here as it becomes available.

February is almost over, and I'm eager to get it in the rearview mirror.  The weather this week has been cold at times and not so cold at other times, but never particularly inviting after my pampered experience in South Africa.  I've been back for 15 days now, and I think we've had measurable sunshine for maybe two of those days.

Yesterday was one of those sunny days, but it was a chilly one--I think the high temperature was around 48 degrees Fahrenheit.  I went down to the river ready to do a crisp workout.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did the same workout that Dawid Mocke had me do back on the 5th of this month:

10 strokes on
10 strokes off
20 strokes on
10 strokes off
30 strokes on
10 strokes off
40 strokes on
10 strokes off
50 strokes on
10 strokes off
60 strokes on
10 strokes off
70 strokes on
10 strokes off
80 strokes on
10 strokes off
90 strokes on
10 strokes off
100 strokes on

The whole workout took only 15 minutes, but it was a tough 15 minutes.  It's a real mental challenge once you get up over 50 strokes on, and I tried to take it a stroke at a time and not be overwhelmed by the mountains of strokes still to go.

Today started cloudy but the sun is gradually coming out.  It's windy and cool, with a high in the 50s expected.  I did another round of the strength routine this morning and plan to take it easy the rest of the day.  My throat has been somewhat sore and scratchy since Tuesday, and it seems to have gotten worse since last night.  I hope this is nothing worse than a common cold.  I sure don't want it to be that Corona Virus that everybody is so worked up about right now.


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A new strength routine

This routine features exercises culled from two of the videos catalogued on this page: the video with Daniele Molmenti and the video with Michele Ramazza.


1.  Hand-paddling exercise (forward stroke and back stroke) with rubber bands.  Molmenti demonstrates these starting at 6:55 in his video.

2.  Leg kicks and leg kicks swim (demonstrated at 3:33 of the Ramazza video)

3.  Rubber band exercises demonstrated at 5:42 of the Molmenti video

4.  Plank crunches (demonstrated at 4:04 of the Ramazza video)

5.  Pre-hab exercises (both inside and outside moves) demonstrated at 8:38 of the Molmenti video


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Monday photo feature

I wasn't the only North American spending part of February in the southern hemisphere.  Brandi Baksic of San Clemente, California, took a trip to the north shore of New Zealand to participate in the Takapuna Beach Cup outrigger races.  That's her in the middle starboard seat.  I think the photo was shot by Jane Hall.

Brandi is one of the stars of my 2019 movie, whose triumphant first run continues here.


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The long and the short of it

Yesterday started with sub-freezing temperatures, but the sun was shining bright, and it's remarkable how much more motivated that makes me feel.  I was in the mood to do a longer paddle, and with the Mississippi River flowing at just under 35 feet on the Memphis gauge, I had plenty of liquid canvas to paint with my boat.

It had warmed up to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit by the time I got to the river.  I got in the boat, warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, paddled up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, continued up the Wolf to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge, and then re-traced that route back to the dock.

I did a couple of impromptu long surges along the way.  While paddling up the Mississippi I surged from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the mouth of the Wolf, and on the Wolf I surged from the Second Street bridge up to the Danny Thomas bridge and then back to the Second Street bridge.  By the end of that latter surge I was getting pretty tired.  It had been quite a few months since I'd done a hard two-hour paddle--the last one was probably late last summer.  Yesterday I was reminded how these longer grinds wear me down.  I felt like a slug for the rest of the day.

I wanted to paddle hard again today, but this time it would be something short and sweet.  I warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and then did twelve 30-second sprints at 3-minute intervals.  I was lethargic at first but it didn't take my body long to warm up to the task.  The sprints felt good and strong and by the end of my 60 minutes in the boat I felt better than I'd felt going in.

My two weekend paddles provide an interesting contrast.  A few years ago I read a post on Ron Lugbill's blog in which he cited research that suggests that workouts like the one I did today are actually better for improving aerobic fitness than long slogs like yesterday's.  In recent years I've been making my paddling sessions shorter--typically an hour rather than the 90 or 100 minutes that had previously been my staple--with more speed work.  I can't say I've noticed any decline in my overall endurance.  Certainly, shorter sessions work better for an ordinary person with a lot of other things to do, as well as for an older person who doesn't need the kind of volume he did when he was younger.  I do still incorporate a few longer-distance paddles each year, just to hedge my bets, I suppose.  But if I can get some effective training from less time in the boat, I'm happy to do so.  And as we've seen this weekend, I sure feel a lot better after the shorter workouts.


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How I miss that warm weather

On Tuesday we had some showers and thunderstorms moving through the area with a mass of colder air behind them.  When I got down to the river that morning it was quite balmy, but by the end of my 60-minute paddle the north wind had picked up and I could tell the temperature was dropping.

Nope, winter's not done yet here in the northern hemisphere.  When I woke up this morning I could hear precipitation drumming against the window and I could tell it wasn't entirely liquid.  By the time I went outside there was a slushy mess falling from the sky and covering the ground.

It sure seems like February gives us some of our most miserable weather.  I guess I ought to look up the historical data to see if that's really how it is or just how I think it is.  By February I'm always weary of winter and I'm sure that skews my perception some.  Right now it seems that Old Man Winter is rubbing it in that I'm no longer on the beach in sunny South Africa.

Whatever the case, there's not much I can do but keep moving.  I went on down to the river later this morning, by which time it was 37 degrees Fahrenheit and the slush had melted into puddles of cold water.  Once I was in the boat paddling, the cold was all but forgotten.  I did three 8-stroke sprints and then paddled at anaerobic threshold for most of the rest of my 60-minute session.

Since my return from South Africa I've been taking some time just to get my sleep schedule readjusted to this time zone and ease back into training here.  So far the paddling has been pretty unstructured.  But there'll be some racing to do in just over a month, so I'm kicking around some ideas about how to get more serious in the coming weeks.  I guess I'll get a new strength routine going soon, too.


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2020 Race Schedule (first draft)

My mind was so consumed with my trip to South Africa that I'm a little late getting my 2020 race schedule started.  But here's the first draft.

Please be aware that this is not a comprehensive schedule of all the races happening in the U.S. or the Mid South or whatever.  It's simply a list of races that I am likely to attend this year.  If you live in the same approximate part of the country as I and are interested in a more complete list of races scheduled for this year, I encourage you to look in places like the Waterman Series website, the Midwest Paddle Racing website, and the Tour du Teche website, as well as online registration sites like Web Scorer and Paddle Guru.

You might notice that this schedule looks awfully brief.  That's partly because I don't yet know the dates of some events and will fill them in later.  But it's also because I'm thinking about racing less this year.  Last year I did nine races, and for me that's a lot.  If I lived in a part of the country with many events within a 2- or 3-hour radius, then I might plan to do more.  But with the obvious exception of the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, my closest race of the ones listed here is the Vicksburg race, and it's a four-hour drive (not counting the fact that you have to shuttle your boat yourself the day before).  Last year I found myself doing a lot of 5-, 6-, and 7-hour drives, and that really wore on me after a while.

Nothing is set in stone yet, of course, but it's not outrageous to think the Gorge Downwind race will be my last of the season, and after that I'll just go out and surf barge wakes on the Mississippi and fun stuff like that.  We'll see.  In any case, here you go--my first draft:

March
21  The Paddle Bender.  Murray Reservoir, Prosperity, South Carolina.  An 8-mile race on flatwater.  Register

28  Battle On The Bayou.  Old Fort Bayou, Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  An 8.5-mile race on flatwater.  Register


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


June
6  Taylorsville Lake Paddle Battle.  Taylorsville Reservoir, Taylorsville, Kentucky.  A 10-mile flatwater race.

13  Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River, Memphis, Tennessee.  The 39th edition of this classic.  A 5000-meter dash down the largest river in North America.


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

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Monday photo feature

Oscar Chalupsky of Durban, South Africa, holds forth on Fish Hoek Beach nine days ago.  Best known as the winner of twelve Molokai titles, the 56-year-old Chalupsky was the featured speaker during the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club's bi-monthly "Master Class."  Photo by Murray Kilgour.

Getting re-settled

On Tuesday afternoon I embarked on another unbelievably long airborne journey.  The the total trip took around 28 hours, but thanks to flying westward across seven time zones I arrived in Atlanta in the mid-morning on Wednesday.  I rode a MARTA train from the airport to my cousin's neighborhood, and my cousin picked me up and very kindly let me crash at her house the rest of the day.  I drove back to Memphis Thursday, moving westward yet another time zone and arriving home around 3:30 PM Central Time.  I spent the next few hours unpacking and making some supper while my body, thinking it was after midnight, wanted to collapse into a deep sleep.  I finally gave it its wish around 8 o'clock local time.

Since then I've been slowly getting readjusted to the rhythms of middle America.  I still can't stay awake much past 8:30 PM or so, and I'm still wanting to wake up around 4 o'clock in the morning.  With the return of Daylight Savings Time just three weeks away, I might as well try to keep myself on a slightly early sleep schedule so I won't have to make another adjustment then.

I'm missing that South African summer.  On Friday the temperature peaked in the mid 30s Fahrenheit.  It's been warmer since then, but not tee-shirt-and-shorts warm.  When I got down to the river yesterday morning it was warming up into the low 40s--not cold enough for the heavy clothing, but cold enough for pogies.

I quickly realized I would have to re-learn some balance.  The boat I keep down at the dock is an old V12 surfski, and it felt awfully tippy after the much more stable ski I'd paddled in South Africa.  I managed to keep it upright for the entire 60-minute session, during which I did three 8-stroke sprints and otherwise paddled a mostly-steady pace.

I paddled for another 60 minutes this morning, cruising across the Mississippi and back.  The river is quite high right now due to recent heavy rains across the Tennessee and Ohio drainages: it's forecast to crest at about 35 feet on the Memphis gauge late this week.  For most of the 25 years or so that I've been paddling out on the big river, levels over 30 feet have been a once-per-couple-of-years sort of phenomenon, usually happening in May or June.  But the river exceeded 30 and even 35 feet for quite a few months last year, and it's now getting an early start toward doing so again this year.  Maybe this is just the new normal.

Whatever the case, I'm glad to be home.  No matter how awesome and exciting my travels may be, and no matter how beautiful the places I go, it always feels good to be back on my home water.


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Monday photo feature

When I completed my course of instruction with world champion Dawid Mocke last week, I received my doctoral hood.  And just like that, Professor Mocke and I were colleagues, hanging out and talking shop and taking selfies.

I should add that Dawid is one of the stars of my movie that came out last fall.  If you haven't watched it yet, there's no time like right now.


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Wrapping up the trip

I'm trying to relax a little after the hardest week of paddling I've had in quite a while.  I paddled twice a day for most of last week, and much of it was high-intensity effort.  I'm pretty sure I'm coming away a better downwind paddler than I was when I first got here, but even if I'm not, at least I got in a solid block of training for the mostly-flatwater races coming up this spring.

I spent my last full day in South Africa doing the tourist thing in Cape Town.  This morning I took a stroll around the waterfront district.  It's largely a tourist trap but it was nice being by the water.

This afternoon I got a bit more ambitious and took a hike to the top of Table Mountain.  Looking up at it from Cape Town, I could tell it was going to be a bear of a hike, and it didn't disappoint.  It took me close to two hours to get to the top on a rough trail with lots of loose gravel and angular rocks and poor footing.  If I hadn't spent the month of January working my legs hard, I'd probably be in a world of pain right now.

Tomorrow I begin the long journey back to the U.S. of A.  I'm going to miss this nice summer weather, but in most respects I'm eager to be back home.


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Some racing, a guest lecturer, and one more Miller's

This past week wasn't exactly my usual race preparation.  I trained hard, did a lot of things out of my comfort zone, and ended up tired and sore.  But with a race here at Fish Hoek Friday evening, I had to suit up and do my best.

The Sea Dog Race is an event put on every Friday in the spring, summer, and fall by the Fish Hoek Surf Lifesaving Club, and the organizers boast that it is "never canceled."  It's five laps of a triangular buoy course out beyond the impact zone at Fish Hoek Beach.

As we prepared to start the Sea Dog Friday evening, the wind was as fierce as ever and the swells were enormous.  We waded out into thigh-deep water, waited for the command, and hopped on our skis and started racing.  We paddled upwind for the first leg of the triangle, and then rounded a buoy that was anchored some 500 meters from the beach.  Next came a downwind leg of 400 meters or so to another buoy, and then we had to paddle in a beam wind to get back to the first buoy and complete a lap.

After the chaotic start I found myself somewhere in the middle of the pack.  The upwind leg was taxing physically but I handled it okay.  The downwind leg was pretty straightforward but I found the runs deceptive and tricky to catch.  The beam leg was probably the most intimidating because of the big swells passing under us from left to right, but the troughs were so wide and smooth that flipping didn't seem like such a danger.

By the end of the first lap I was paddling along with a group of three or four other racers.  I think I was the strongest in the group in the upwind and beam-wind legs, but they were much more adept at catching downwind runs than I was.  They would build a lead on me in each downwind leg, then I would fight back and take the lead in the other two legs, and then they would get the lead right back in the next downwind leg.  Since the race ended with a downwind leg back to the beach, they all beat me.  I actually had to follow them just to find the two flags on the beach that marked the finish line, because the sun was so bright in the western sky that I couldn't see them.  Somehow I managed to tweak my back while wrestling my boat out of the water and carrying it between the flags.  You can't tell it in this photo that somebody from Cape Town Sport Photography shot of me:

There was some kind of computer glitch that prevented the race organizers from tabulating the results.  Oh well... the things I know for sure are that I did not finish first, I did not finish last, and I did have a lot of fun.  And I can only imagine what doing a race like that every week can do for your ocean-racing skill level.

My back still hurt pretty bad when I woke up this morning, and my arms were so tired they were throbbing a little.  Fortunately I had an easier day on tap.  Oscar Chalupsky, a 12-time winner of the Molokai race in Hawaii and arguably the most famous surfski racer in the world, was in town to teach a class down at the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club.  Apparently his time was limited, and he's also battling cancer and can't do substantial paddling at the moment, so the class consisted of an indoor lecture followed by a brief session on the water.

In his lecture, Oscar stressed the importance of efficiency and conservation of energy in all aspects of surfski racing.  Every racer, he said, should make regular forward stroke practice a priority in his routine.  If you really have to fight hard to catch a run, you're wasting energy; you should let that run go and get the one behind it instead.  Always stay focused on your destination landmark; not doing so means adding extra distance.  You should relax out on a downwind run; being tense costs energy and stops you from executing.  Because the main reason people get tense out in big conditions is that they're afraid of flipping, remounting is a skill that should be practiced to the point that one has no doubt he will be able to do it.

We walked down to the beach and got in our boats and paddled out past the impact zone.  There Oscar demonstrated what he considers the correct remounting technique--it puts a premium on conservation of energy, he said.  We all practiced the technique from both sides of the boat.

My back was feeling somewhat better after this light session.  I did some stretching in the afternoon and turned in early when another round of "load shedding" hit around 8 o'clock.  I woke up this morning feeling the freshest I have all week.

There was supposed to be a race this morning up on the north side of Cape Town, and I'd planned to check out of my B & B in the wee hours and catch a ride with somebody who could carry a boat up there for me to use, and then return it to Fish Hoek.  But the race got called off due to an unfavorable wind forecast over on the Atlantic side of the cape.  So I planned to do one more Miller's Run this morning.

I woke up several times last night and heard the wind blowing hard, and I wondered if I was in for another struggle in enormous conditions.  But when the Miller's Taxi delivered me and a dozen or so other people to Miller's Point at around 7:30 AM, False Bay looked pretty placid.  I paddled out to the rock where Miller's Run officially starts, and found it difficult to get moving on the itty-bitty bumps.

That's something I've noticed about my downwind paddling: I'm not very adept at using the small chop, and when the swells are huge I get nervous and freeze up.  Between those two extremes there's a zone in which the conditions seem to make sense to me and I can catch one good run after another.  It happened in the Gorge Downwind race last summer: the first several kilometers were a slog in which I just couldn't seem to get the boat moving at all, but then the conditions built into that "just right" size and I found a nice groove.

Today, as I approached the lighthouse a little over halfway through the run, it was finally "Goldilocks" time.  The swells were big, but not so big that I felt overwhelmed.  Each time I caught a run, I could sense where the next run was forming up.  I was no longer plodding around 6 miles per hour.  Every time I glanced at the G.P.S. device I was over 8, 9, and occasionally even 10 mph.  I searched for that balance between getting a moment of rest on a run and paddling hard for the next run.

My time for the run was just over 56 minutes.  That wasn't my best time, but I think it wasn't bad considering how small the conditions were in those first several kilometers.  I didn't even break an hour Friday morning when the swells were huge.  I think elite-level racers typically break 40 minutes on a good day.

Whatever the case, it was a satisfying way to go out.  My paddling in the Republic of South Africa is over (for now).

I walked back to the B & B and had a nice breakfast, then went to my room and packed and cleaned up.  Dawid's mother Dorothy had very kindly offered to drive me back to Cape Town.  She picked me up at noon and we had a nice chat during the drive.

I'm now staying in an Air B & B in the Tamboerskloof section of Cape Town for two nights.  I plan to spend tomorrow checking out the sights a little bit, and I'm also looking forward to some down time after a hard week of paddling.  I'm scheduled to fly out of Cape Town Tuesday.


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Highs and lows on Miller's Run

I woke up yesterday morning with my back still sore.  I did some intentional moving around and some light stretching as I waited for Dawid to pick me up.  We went down to the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club, loaded our boats on the Miller's Taxi, and rode the taxi to Miller's Point.  The southeast wind had returned and conditions looked good for a Miller's Run.

Ed joined Dawid and me again.  Dawid sent Ed off on his run, giving him a two-minute head start.  Then he sent me, telling me to try to run Ed down.

A downwind race is a race, of course, but you have to approach it differently from a race on flatwater.  If a competitor is three swells ahead of you, no amount of harder paddling will help you catch him.  You have to focus on getting as many good runs as you can and hope that by the end you'll have done a little bit better job of it than your competitor.

And so, I didn't even look to see where Ed was.  I just did my best with the runs, trying to apply all the things I've learned in my sessions with Dawid this week.  As I paddled along I looked down at my G.P.S. device, and it seemed that when I wasn't on a run at all my speed was in 6 miles per hour territory.  Small runs would push that up over 7 and 8 mph, and when I managed to link a few runs together I would achieve 9 to 10 mph.

Dawid hung out behind me and coached me as we went along.  I stalled out from time to time but for the most part I kept the boat moving and felt good.  I caught Ed just before we reached the lighthouse.

While Dawid moved over to work with Ed for a bit, I kept going and tried to continue the things I'd been doing right.  Most of the time I seemed to cruise along at 7 or 8 mph, but once in a while I'd put together a good series of runs and go faster.  The most triumphant moment of my trip so far occurred about halfway between the lighthouse and the beach: I caught a small run, and then a bigger one, and some hard paddling had me gliding down the face of the biggest swell I'd seen all morning.  Dawid had moved in behind me again and was yelling "Check your speed!  Check your speed!"  I looked down and saw that I was running just shy of 12 mph.  "It's like a conveyer belt!" Dawid shouted gleefully.

Soon we were on the beach, and Dawid was full of praise for how far I'd come during the week.  This was in fact my eighth and final session with Dawid: we'd doubled up on sessions last weekend so that he could help chaperone his son's water polo team on a trip this coming weekend.  So a sort of "graduation" ceremony was in order.  We went to the C'est la Vie coffee shop to celebrate over a cappuccino.  In lieu of a cap and gown, Dawid gave me this nifty jacket:

It's hard to see here, but it has the "Mocke Downwind Camp" logo on the left breast.

So I was feeling pretty good.  My back aches even seemed to have subsided.  I booked an afternoon spot on the Miller's Taxi and looked forward to having some more fun later.  I might have even dared to think I was getting this whole downwind business figured out.

Meanwhile, the southeast wind kept on blowing, and the swells continued to build.  By the time I got back to Miller's Point around 4:30 in the afternoon, the conditions were big.  BIG.

Once I'd been racing slalom for several years in the late 1990s, I'd mastered the basics well enough that I was quite competitive in races that took place on easier whitewater.  But the big water courses like the Ocoee Olympic course gave me fits.  My struggles were largely mental: amid big waves and holes that could give me a nice beating if I made a mistake, I usually tensed up and paddled timidly.  But I was lacking some physical tools as well: I'd never been an "acrobatic" sort of athlete.  I'd always shied away from activities like gymnastics and diving and even turning simple cartwheels.  I ended up getting good at running because it didn't require any particular balance or agility, but just simple hard work.

When I launched into those huge swells yesterday afternoon, I felt just the way I had on those big slalom courses 20 years ago.  Suddenly my confidence from the morning session was gone.  Whereas in the morning I'd been aggressively pursuing runs and seeking to link one run to the next, now I was tensing up.  Each time I found myself at the crest of a big wave, looking down into the abyss that was the trough in front of me, I couldn't bring myself to lay down the explosive sprint that would get me riding that wave.

One of the lessons I learned during my earliest whitewater canoeing was to keep paddling in a rapid.  I remember one of my camp counselors saying, "If you tense up and stop paddling, you will get creamed."

"Keep paddling" has been my credo ever since, and it's served me well.  And it's what I did during yesterday afternoon's run, figuring that at the very least, I'd keep puttering along at 6 miles per hour and get to Fish Hoek Beach eventually.  As time went on I finally began to put together a several good series of runs, getting myself up over 11 mph once or twice.  In the end I arrived at the beach with a run I'd consider fair.  It was several minutes slower than my morning run.

I walked back to my B & B feeling dead tired.  South Africa is beset with rolling blackouts--the people here call it "load shedding"--and when the electricity went off at 8 PM, I decided to go ahead and hit the hay.

I was up early this morning to go another round with Miller's.  Though the wind had backed off slightly, the swells were just as big as yesterday afternoon.  And they were much more confused, with the groundswell-vs.-windswell pattern very difficult to discern.  If anything I felt even worse than I'd felt yesterday afternoon.  I crept along while everybody else who'd ridden the Miller's Taxi with me disappeared from sight.  It seemed that every time I glanced at my G.P.S. device I was stuck in the 6s.  Somehow I managed not to break down in tears, though a whimpering voice inside me did keep saying "I wish Dawid was still here!"  Indeed, this had all seemed so much simpler with him hanging out behind me, helping me make sense of it all.

I sent Dawid a text afterward to let him know how my last two runs had gone.  In reply he commended me for getting myself back out there and experiencing the big conditions, regardless of my degree of success.  "Don't worry if it feels hectic.  Just one at a time," he said.  And he's right.  This is all just part of that big journey I'm on, trying to get a little wiser each day.  Life would be boring if I had it all figured out... right?  At least one thing is certain: I'm a better downwind paddler now than I was a week ago.

There's just a little bit of paddling left for me here in South Africa, but it should be very interesting.  More on that later.


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Skills, technique, fitness... we're covering it all, with and without the wind

Dawid told me to take Monday morning off.  Part of the reason was the lack of wind on the Miller's Run.  But Dawid also recognized that I'd pushed too hard on Sunday and needed a break.

We got together in the late afternoon on Monday.  The wind forecast hadn't looked good and Dawid had planned to do another wave session at the beach, but as we readied our gear he felt the wind picking up from the southeast and declared that we would paddle out to the Roman Rock lighthouse and do some downwind drills back from there.

The lighthouse sits about 5 kilometers from the beach, and we faced a tiring slog into the wind to get there.  Dawid had a resistor on his boat--a length of bungee cord with several plastic practice golf balls on it to create drag beneath his hull--so that he could paddle hard without leaving me in the dust.  For a while we paddled with me trying to stay right on his stern, and then we played some "leap frog"--I sprint by him, he sprints by me, I sprint by him, and so on.  There was something surreal about sprinting past Dawid.  I don't care if he was letting me pass him, or if he did have that resistor on his boat; the guy is still one of the best paddlesport athletes on this planet.

There was a heavy mist hanging over False Bay, and we had to trust Dawid's sense of direction on his home water to reach the lighthouse.  On and on we went, climbing up and over one swell after another, and I started to worry that I would completely wear myself out, just like the day before.  Finally the lighthouse emerged from the mist.  We'd missed it to the left by quite a lot, so we adjusted course and looped around it, and at last we were headed back downwind.

We now commenced the "official" workout for the afternoon: a set of downwind drills.  There were two of them.  In the first, I was to paddle for five minutes, and was allowed only 100 strokes for that period.  That meant that I had to avoid unnecessary strokes at all costs, and try to prolong each run without paddling as long as I could.

The second drill called for me to paddle for five minutes as well, but this time I had to paddle at a constant cadence the whole time.  I was allowed to take very hard strokes or very easy strokes, but I had to keep the stroke rate the same throughout.

Both drills were intended to improve my downwind efficiency by eliminating unnecessary strokes.  It took a lot of discipline to abide by the rules of each drill, but as we went along I think I made some progress in getting the conditions to work for me.

Monday night I was invited to the Mocke household to have supper with Dawid, his wife Nikki, and their children Sam and Sarah.  They're all active members of this beach community and I enjoyed getting to know them a little more.

While I was there we pored over the wind forecast, and it appeared that the earlier we got on the water Tuesday morning, the better the conditions for a Miller's Run were likely to be.  Dawid said he would pick me up at 5:30 AM.  I winced a little but said, "Okay, let's do it!"  The wind is one of the main reasons I came here, after all.

We were joined by a guy named Ed, a local paddler whom Dawid coaches.  We got to Miller's Point right at dawn and paddled out.  The first step of a Miller's Run is to paddle a kilometer or more offshore, and to me it felt labored because I wasn't entirely awake or warmed up yet.  After we'd turned downwind toward the Roman Rock lighthouse Dawid went back and forth coaching me and coaching Ed.  The first few kilometers were a mixed bag for me, as I caught a couple of decent runs but stalled out a lot.  Dawid had to stop me several times and refocus my attention on certain details.

We took a break next to the lighthouse, and Dawid shot some brief footage of me with his phone.  You can watch it here.

We proceeded on and I continued to paddle well at times and struggle at times.  Dawid shouted, "Let the waves do the work!"  Then I started putting together some really good series of runs.  The conditions were at their biggest for the morning, and I was seeing the runs well in the large, well-defined swells.  I couldn't see or hear Dawid or Ed anymore--I assumed they were working on something somewhere behind me--so I just focused my attention in front of me and tried to keep linking runs together as much as I could.

The swells got smaller and smaller as I approached Fish Hoek Beach, and I tried to keep getting what I could out of the little runs.  At last I arrived on the beach, and when I looked back out over the bay Dawid and Ed were paddling in some 400 meters back.  When Dawid arrived he said, "It looked like something clicked for you!  I tried to go after you but couldn't catch you!"  Keep in mind that Dawid had a resistor on his boat again, and had probably spotted me a generous lead while coaching Ed.  But I was nevertheless feeling good about my run and hearing that praise from him lifted my spirits even higher.

Dawid accompanied me back to my B & B and we partook of some breakfast there.  After that he went on to attend to his daily chores, and I decided to take a hike.  Just south of town there's a mountain called Elsie's Peak, and there's a hiking trail to the top where one can take in some stunning views.  Here's the view of Elsie's Peak from my balcony; the left end of the ridge looks out over False Bay:

A rather imposing climb, yes, but I fastened up my sneakers and dug right in.  I was at the top maybe 45 minutes later and admiring this view of Fish Hoek Beach and the town of Fish Hoek:

I could even spot the Atlantic Ocean off to the west.  You can see a piece of it in the center of this photo, between the two peaks:

And then, of course, there's the Miller's Run:

Miller's Point, where the run starts, is marked, and the lighthouse is circled.  The paddler continues toward the lower left corner of the photo, rounds Elsie's Peak, and finishes at Fish Hoek Beach.  By the time I took this photo the wind had died almost completely, and so the water is placid, as perhaps you can see.  That's exactly why we'd gotten ourselves going at 5:30 AM.

I'll just add that the day had grown quite warm and humid by the time I reached the peak.  By the time I got back down to the B & B my clothes were drenched with sweat:

I got to sleep a little later this morning, as Dawid and I weren't scheduled to meet until 8 o'clock.  The plan was to put in at Fish Hoek Beach and paddle a few kilometers up the coast to Muizenberg Beach, the site of reliably good surfing waves.  Here we worked on my wave-catching skills some more.  I started feeling more comfortable with moving right or left across the face of a wave, using my rudder to "counter-steer."  I could use some more practice spotting good waves to catch and knowing when to start accelerating my boat for that purpose.

We didn't spend too much time at Muizenberg because of the lengthy paddle back.  As we made our way back toward Fish Hoek Dawid called for an impromptu workout that went like this:

10 strokes on
10 strokes off
20 strokes on
10 strokes off
30 strokes on
10 strokes off
40 strokes on
10 strokes off
50 strokes on
10 strokes off
60 strokes on
10 strokes off
70 strokes on
10 strokes off
80 strokes on
10 strokes off
90 strokes on
10 strokes off
100 strokes on

By the time we'd gotten up over 40 or 50 strokes on, I was seriously questioning my ability to finish out the workout.  But I bore down and got through it, paddling hard even though I was slowing up a bit toward the end.

I'd been sore in my hips and lower back before today's paddling, and my back was wicked sore afterward.  Dawid said it was probably because of the heavier boat I'm paddling--I've been paddling a Fenn "Blue Fin S" all week; it's one of the shorter, more stable skis, similar to an Epic V8 Pro.  Anyway, it's loosened up some, and I hope it'll be feeling better by tomorrow.  The wind is supposed to return overnight, and our plan is to do another Miller's Run tomorrow morning.


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Monday photo feature

To do the "Miller's Run" downwind run, you have to get yourself and your boat from the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club, where the run finishes, to Miller's Point, where the run starts.  Thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit of a guy named Vinnie Cicatello, that's easy to do: the "Miller's Taxi" shuttle service runs several times a day when the wind is blowing.

This photo shows the Miller's Taxi at the Miller's Point boat ramp.  I lifted it from the Miller's Taxi page on Face Book.  Hopefully I'll get a few good pictures of my own by and by.  How many awesome paddling photos I manage to get remains to be seen now that I'm without a Go Pro camera.


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Hoeked on paddling in South Africa

My journey across an ocean and across the equator wasn't too bad, all things considered.  The only major problem was that one of my checked bags didn't travel from Johannesburg to Cape Town on the same plane I did, and as a result I had to spend most of my first day here without it.  It made for sort of a rough adjustment, having to deal with that on top of the usual jet lag and the unfamiliarity with the town and the strange currency and the exotic culture and everything else.  But I'm settling in, little by little.  I'm actually quite impressed with South African Airways because in the end they delivered the bag right to my bed & breakfast here in Fish Hoek, some 20 miles from the Cape Town Airport.  I can't in a million years imagine one of the U.S.-based airlines providing such a service.

There was one bad thing, though: I'd packed my Go Pro camera in that bag, and as I unpacked the bag here in my room I realized that it had been stolen.  The camera was almost ten years old--I think it was a Hero 2 or some such old clunker model--so I'm not particularly heartbroken to lose it.  There certainly were other things in that bag that I cared a lot more about than that camera.  But still, it's a bummer not to have it for shooting a vid or two out on the Miller's Run.  I suppose I ought to report the theft to South African Airways, but honestly, I'm so weary of dealing with airlines and airports by now that my heart really isn't into doing so.  For all I know, the thing could have been ripped off back in Atlanta, where I took a United flight to get to DC.

As for paddling, it began on an introductory note yesterday morning.  Dawid had me participate in a beginning surfski class that he teaches on a regular basis down at the Fish Hoek beachfront.  He was apologetic about doing that since I'm not really a beginner, but I didn't mind at all.  I've found that there are always opportunities to learn, no matter the level of instruction.  In this case I benefitted greatly from Dawid's demonstration of his method for launching into the shore break on the beach: it was much simpler and more logical than whatever methods I'd used on my own in the past.  Keep in mind that Memphis is pretty far inland, meaning that I don't paddle at the beach very often, and so in many ways I am a beginner in that environment.

Yesterday afternoon Dawid and I paddled a tandem surfski on the Miller's Run.  Having doubled with Dawid last summer in the Columbia River Gorge, I figured I was in for a physically demanding session.  But I didn't feel too exhausted when it was over.  I definitely was fresher going into today's run, while that run we did last summer was my second of that day.

But the conditions were impressive indeed, especially around the Roman Rock lighthouse five kilometers from the finish at Fish Hoek Beach.  At one point Dawid said, "A bit bigger than Swell City (the site of the biggest swells on the Columbia Gorge run), isn't it?  Hanging on for dear life behind him in the stern seat, I could say little more than "Yes, I believe you're right."

I turned in before 9 o'clock last night, partly because I'm still getting adjusted to South Africa Time, and partly because Dawid wanted to pick me up at 7 o'clock this morning to go paddling.  That's much earlier than I care to go at home, but hey, when the winner of multiple Molokai titles says we're going at seven, we're going at seven.

The wind was lighter this morning and the swells were smaller out on Miller's Run.  Dawid and I paddled single skis and he coached me on the various technical aspects of downwind paddling.  I felt like a champ at times and like a chump at other times, but overall I think it was a productive session.  One of my goals for this trip is to develop a better "eye" for the conditions, and with Dawid's help I learned to recognize a few things that I'd been oblivious to in the past.

My fuel tank hit rock bottom toward the end of the run.  I guess that's not a huge surprise, seeing as how my ability to train was limited over the previous six weeks.  But it was frustrating, just the same.  Back when I was racing whitewater slalom I learned that one of the most shameful things an athlete can do is "snit"--that is, give up on a run and stop paddling.  I was very tempted to snit as we approached Fish Hoek Beach this morning, but Dawid kept encouraging me to go after the small runs and get as much aid from them as possible, and somehow I found the strength to do that even though my stroke form had fallen apart completely.

Dawid wanted to meet for another session at 2 o'clock this afternoon, so I went back to the bed & breakfast to spend a few hours rehydrating, eating, stretching, and resting.  When 2 o'clock rolled around the wind was not there for us, so we made it a wave session at Fish Hoek Beach.  One of the main things Dawid wanted me to practice was feeling the precise moment when a wave begins to carry me.  It's at this moment, he said, that I should stop paddling and let the wave do the work.  And here I began to realize just why I had gotten so worn out this morning: Dawid had to keep yelling at me to stop paddling each time a wave had me.  I'd been doing the same thing this morning, and all that unnecessary paddling took its toll.  I'd long had a general feeling that I was working twice as hard to go half as fast as the more accomplished downwind racers, and these lessons today brought that issue more into focus for me.  We'll likely do more wave sessions as this coming week goes on, and see if I can improve my sensory skills in this area.

In many ways my whitewater background is an asset during a wave session.  I've punched many a hole on a whitewater river, and so paddling out into the surf wasn't all that intimidating today.  But just like a river hole or wave can occasionally give me a beat-down, so can a big breaking wave at the beach.  Toward the end of our session I smacked hard into an enormous breaker, and it knocked me off my ski and relieved me of the day-glo Outdoors Inc. hat that Joe gave me last summer.  Dawid spotted it and got it back to me.  If I'd been wearing one of my earth-tone lids, it probably would have been lost forever.


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