Plodding

By the end of the week I was feeling tired, surly, and low on energy.  I think the hot weather is a big part of the reason: this past week was our most oppressive of the year so far.  I also have a project in the workshop that's been consuming a lot of my physical and mental energy.  My shop is not air-conditioned, and though it's well-insulated, sandwiched between the two next-door buildings and below my air-conditioned living space, I've been less than comfortable down there while tackling this project that involves some heavy lifting.

By Friday the temperature was as high as 97 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity was through the roof.  With very little enthusiasm I headed down to the river and got in the boat.  The workout was simple enough: four sets of (6 minutes at 60 strokes per minute/4 min. at 64 spm/3 min. at 68 spm/2 min. at 72 spm).  There was a minute rest between pieces and two minutes between sets.  I actually did just three and a half sets because I took a break to chase a few barge wakes.  The surfing turned out to be fair, not great.

Some thunderstorms came through Friday afternoon, and there was some slightly cooler air behind it.  Yesterday morning the temperature was in the 80s and still pretty humid.  I went out and did six 250-meter pieces, starting every 6th minute.  The main purpose was to focus on taking good forward strokes: Maks said "stay upright, stay strong, anchor well."  The prescribed stroke rate was in the "A3" zone (90 spm or higher), and I tried to keep it in the low 90s.  The workout wasn't too taxing, all told; the first couple of pieces seemed the hardest, maybe because I wasn't completely warmed up for higher-intensity efforts.

Today's assignment was a 2-hour "non-specific" endurance session, so I rode my bike on the Greenline out to Shelby Farms, where I did a loop around Patriot Lake before returning.  My total distance  covered was 36.4 kilometers or about 22.6 miles--not bad for my clunky low-tech mountain bike.  The ride almost didn't happen because when I went to get my bike out of the garage I discovered its rear tire was flat.  I had a spare tube and fixing the problem wasn't really that hard, but with all the other work I've had to do lately it almost felt like one chore too many.

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Riding out the dog days

This week we're having just the sort of sweltering hot weather we expect in August in the Mid South.  Fahrenheit highs are reaching the high 90s, with triple-digit heat indices, and it's dipping just barely below 80 degrees overnight.  It looks like we might get a moment of relief this weekend.

On Tuesday I did two sets of three 8-minute pieces (2 minutes recovery) with stroke rates of 60, 68, and 60 strokes per minute within each set.

Yesterday I did four sets of four (1 minute on/1 min. off), alternating between 60 spm and 80 spm within each set.  I put a small resistance on the boat.  This was a technical workout, intended to put my focus on anchoring each stroke and executing good leg drive and pelvic rotation.

Today was a gym day.  I stayed in and did the same routine I've been doing since my return from the Pacific Northwest: some lat pulls, some military press, some abdominal exercises, some pull-ups, and some dead lifts.

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Monday photo feature

NBC doesn't broadcast canoe and kayak racing on over-the-air TV, but if somebody from the U.S. wins a gold medal they'll let her on The Today Show.  Nevin Harrison, the first U.S. paddler to stand atop the Olympic podium in 29 years, acquitted herself very nicely this morning and eloquently explained why our sport is legitimate.  You can watch her appearance here.

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More strength and technique work

Friday was my gym day, and I did a round of my latest routine involving arm, leg, and abdominal exercises.

The past week had treated us to some cooler-than-normal weather for the month of August, but by yesterday the temperature and humidity were definitely creeping back up into the less-than-comfortable zone.  At least there was a pleasant breeze blowing down on the riverfront.  Yesterday's workout was eight 250-meter pieces at 84 strokes per minute with some added resistance on the boat.  I was to start a piece every fifth minute.

Maks described the session as "not a hard workout at all physically."  I thought, "Eight 250s with resistance?  Not hard physically?  Really?"  I had my doubts, but dutifully I commenced the assignment.  It turned out it wasn't all that bad, though I could definitely feel it in my muscles.  The main point was to focus on the various stroke mechanics and to involve my hips and legs.

This morning I rode my bike to the river and did a 75-minute endurance paddle with a stroke rate in the low 60s.  I felt tired in the boat and was glad to get it done, pedal back home, and head into a day off tomorrow.

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Doing a little each day and feeling good about it

We've enjoyed cooler weather in the Mid South this week.

My assigned workout for Tuesday was "non-specific endurance"--hiking or bike-riding or some such thing.  But Tuesday is also when I paddle with Joe.  So I combined some easy paddling with out-of-the-boat endurance by riding my bike to and from the riverfront.

Yesterday I did a workout that wasn't super-hard, but not exactly easy, either.  It was three sets of four (90 seconds on/90 sec. off), with the first and third sets done at 75 strokes per minute and the second set done at 85 spm.  Maks explained that 90 seconds would be short enough for me to focus hard on all the technical aspects of paddling without too tired.  He was right, but I was feeling pretty tired nevertheless once I got deep into the workout.  I tried my best to do all the right things: sit upright, anchor my stroke well, and have all my muscles firing in unison from my arms and shoulders through my pelvic area and legs.

This morning I did a somewhat unusual endurance session: pieces of 9 minutes/8 min./7 min./6 min./5 min./4 min./3 min./2 min./1 min. at 60-64 spm.  Maks didn't specify a recovery interval between sets, so I made it a minute.  I concentrated once again on all the technical stuff and tried to put solid power into each stroke.

I'm glad I told Maks to give me some workouts for this more laid-back period I'm going through.  I like having something to do and it helps motivate me to get to the river each day.

In other news, an athlete from the United States has won the gold medal in the Olympic flatwater sprint regatta for the first time since 1988.  19-year-old Nevin Harrison of Gig Harbor, Washington, posted the fastest times in the heats, semis, and finals en route to claiming the women's 200-meter single canoe title.  Harrison had come out of nowhere to win this event at the 2019 world championships, and her performance in Tokyo this week erases any doubt that she is for real.  She is also the first female single-blade gold medalist in Olympic flatwater history, as this is the first Olympics in which women are allowed to compete in canoe classes.

Harrison is the only U.S. athlete in this Olympic regatta.  When I was growing up the U.S. always had a large contingent in flatwater sprint, with K2s and K4s and C2s and the whole nine yards.  But in both 2008 and 2012, only two U.S. athletes qualified for the Olympics, and the number has shrunk to one in 2016 and this year.  The U.S. flatwater sprint program has not been strong in recent decades, but I believe the biggest reason for such tiny rosters in the modern-day Games is the increasingly stingy athlete quotas imposed by the I.O.C.  As more and more made-for-TV events are allowed onto the Olympic programme, I can't help but be infuriated by the I.O.C.'s treatment of sports like mine, and I'm feeling less enthusiastic than ever about the Olympic paddling events (through no fault of the athletes).  I'm glad, at least, that my country's lone entrant this year is an extremely good one.

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Monday photo feature

Paul Ingram shot this photo of me in the Blue Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race, on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 2014.

This event last occurred in 2018.  Flooding on the river forced its cancellation in '19, and pandemic worries have scuttled it for the last two years.  I would love to see it come back in '22.

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Easier paddling that's still technical

Friday morning I was feeling some soreness from the previous day's gym routine, but it wasn't too bad.  I went down to the river and paddled a calm 50 minutes.  The smoky haze from the wildfires out West was the thickest I'd seen since getting home a week earlier.

Yesterday morning was sunnier but there was still quite a bit of haze hanging in the air.  I still had some soreness but I could tell it was running its course.  I got in the boat and did a speed session: three sets of four 10-second sprints at 2-minute intervals.  Maks told me to use flying starts and try to reach as high a stroke rate as I could, noting that I might not actually be as fast as I would be with a more controlled stroke rate, but that the point of the workout was "to activate fast muscle tissues and move fast."  I moved as fast as I could and was getting up to around 130 strokes per minute, according to my cadence sensor.  In between sets I gave myself ten minutes of relaxed paddling.

This morning I went down to the riverfront and did six sets of (2 minutes at 50 spm/1 min. at 80 spm/1 min. at 50 spm/1 min. at 80 spm/2 min. rest).  The objective, as with most of these "contrast" workouts, was to find a good grip on the water at the lower stroke rate and then replicating it at the higher stroke rate.

A front came through overnight and this morning we finally had some relief from the sweltering heat that had gripped the Mid South since I got home from my trip.   It looks like the cooler temperatures will last for most of the coming week.

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Rediscovering some get-up-and-go

I'm slowly getting settled back into life at home.  There have been all kinds of little things to take care of--things that got ignored during my three weeks away--and little by little I'm getting them knocked out.  The heat has been sweltering since my return: the daily Fahrenheit highs have been in the mid 90s with triple-digit heat indices.  Most of my days out West were quite hot, but not this kind of hot.

I paddled sparingly in the week after departing the Columbia Gorge, but now I'm starting to do more of that, too.  Maks and I have agreed that several easy, relaxed weeks are in order, and he asked me if I even wanted him to send me a workout plan; I told him to go ahead and do so, since even during easy periods I like having some structure.  So he's sent me some workouts that put a premium on technique and skill without taxing me too much.

On Tuesday I paddled half a lap of the harbor with Joe and his grandson Jackson.  Once we'd parted company, I was nicely warmed up and commenced that day's workout.  It was supposed to go as follows: eight sets of five consecutive 1-minute pieces, with the stroke rate going from 45 strokes per minute to 65 spm to 55 spm to 65 spm.  But once I was in the boat I couldn't remember the exact stroke rate sequence, and I ended up doing 45 spm/55 spm/65 spm/75 spm.  So I got in a bit more intensity than what was intended, but I don't think I deviated too far from the spirit of the workout.

Yesterday I made sure I'd memorized the workout before heading to the river.  I did three sets of four (30 seconds at 90 spm/90 seconds rest).  I took longer rest periods between the sets.  The long recoveries enabled me to focus on good form and technique during the sprints.

This morning I stayed home and did a gym session.  I hadn't done strength work of any kind since before my trip and I'd like to get a good routine going again.

It's very hot again today and looks to remain that way for the next couple of days.  But the forecast is showing milder temperatures for most of next week, and I'm looking forward to that.

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Monday photo feature

Here's a map of my downwind run in the Dakotas last Wednesday.  I started at West Pollock State Recreation area and finished at the purple star.  The distance is about 16 kilometers or 10 miles.  (Of course, last Wednesday I had to slog all the way back to West Pollock against the wind.  But for those who might want to pursue downwind fun here in the future, I recommend using the roads on this map to run a shuttle.)

The Great Plains just might be unexplored territory for downwind runs.  Anybody who's driven across the Plains with boats on the car knows how relentlessly the wind blows, and now that I've found decent downwind action on two bodies of water there (in western Nebraska on July 3 and in the Dakotas last Wednesday) I believe that there have to be spots where good downwinding is not just possible, but likely.

The problem is that the Great Plains don't offer much in the way of amenities for surfski paddlers looking for a fun vacation.  The towns in the Columbia River Gorge have good restaurants and coffee shops and craft breweries and all that nifty stuff; the Great Plains has... farmland.  I think the Plains as a destination might have to be limited to the super-hardcore paddling junkies who are willing to huddle around a propane stove cooking ramen noodles when they're not in their boats.

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Home sweet home

I had a reasonably stress-free drive to Saint Louis on Thursday, but the drive to Memphis from Saint Louis on Friday was worse than it should have been because the Hernando DeSoto Bridge over the Mississippi River at Memphis remains closed for emergency repairs.  I elected to cross the river via the Caruthersville Bridge 102 river miles upstream, and that added over an hour to the trip.  The going was slow from Dyersburg down to Memphis on U.S. 51, which passes through four towns with lots of traffic lights.

But at long last, I made it.  I was utterly exhausted after one of the tougher trips home I can remember.  The Mid South and the Pacific Northwest certainly haven't gotten any closer to each other since I last made the trip by car in 2018.

Maks and I have been discussing by e-mail what's next for me this year.  The truth is that my season sort of peters out a bit now that the big Columbia Gorge event is behind me.  Two weeks from now there's a pretty good event up at Cincinnati that I attended two years ago, but at the moment I don't even want to think about driving for eight hours to get there.  After that there's not an event I'm aware of until October.

Maks is saying that a few weeks of very relaxed paddling is probably what I need right now, to be followed by some stuff that lays the groundwork for next year.  That sounds good to me.  I can handle some technical stuff for the next little while, along with sessions that are unstructured enough that I'm free to go surf towboat wakes if I see any.

This morning I did a very short, easy paddle in the harbor.  The boat I train in here at home is a bit less stable than the one I took on my trip, and it took me a while to get used to that again.

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Some epic downwind fun and... an epic

It's been a long several days of slogging across the states of Montana and South Dakota since I said goodbye to my nephew in Missoula.

On Monday I was feeling so sleepy in the car that I made it only as far as Billings before checking into a motel.  I'd hoped to get at least a hundred miles farther, but I simply couldn't keep my eyes open.  I didn't have the easiest time finding a reasonably-priced room in Billings, so once I finally did I got on the computer and made reservations for the next three nights.  While removing the uncertainty of where I would be sleeping, it committed me to a set itinerary for the remainder of my trip.

I put in a long day of driving Tuesday.  By the time I was in the Dakotas the wind was really blowing from the south, making driving with a big surfski on the car a bit worrisome.  A couple of times I stopped to check the racks and the tie-downs and experiment with where the boat rode in its saddles.

My plan was to camp in a state recreation area on the Missouri River, and I just barely had enough food to get me through supper and breakfast, so each time I passed through a town I kept an eye out for a grocery store where I could pick up a few essentials.  I didn't see a single one.  Where do the few people in this part of the world get their food?  Do they drive to Rapid City?  Or do they just eat what they can get in fast food joints and convenience stores?

And so I ended up having to make do with some pasta and a half bag of thawed-out frozen peas for supper and an aging bagel and half a bowl of cereal for breakfast.  I'm glad I still had coffee.

My campsite was located near where the Missouri River crosses the state line from North Dakota to South Dakota.  I didn't choose this place by accident: I had never paddled in either of the Dakotas, and yesterday morning I would adding them both to the list.  My campsite, in South Dakota, was the closest river access I could find, and while I didn't know precisely how close it was to the state line, it appeared perfectly doable in an hour and a half or so.

I know.  Famous last words.

I was in my boat just before nine o'clock.  That south wind had abated some overnight, but it was really blowing again as I paddled out of the bay toward the main river channel.  As I approached the turn toward the northwest I was paddling up and over some big swells, and I realized that I was in for a sure-enough downwind run.  I had no complaints about that!

I spent the next hour mostly having big fun.  At times my speed approached 17 kilometers per hour (10.56 mph), as fast as I had managed during my whole time in the Columbia Gorge.  I gleefully moved back and forth on the waves looking for opportunities to link runs.  I never thought I would be riding downwind swells from one Dakota into the other!

That was the one element of concern.  I had brought my phone along in a drybag, and once in a while I had to beach my boat so I could get it out and see where I was on the G.P.S. app.  Two times I got out of my boat thinking surely I had crossed the state line, only to have the G.P.S. tell me I wasn't quite there.

I made one more fun downwind run before checking a third time.  I found a beach below what looked like an RV park up on the bluff.  I got out my phone and checked the app, and this time I learned that I was quite some distance north of the line.

And this is where I had a problem.  By this time I had been paddling for an hour and a half and covered about 16.5 kilometers, and now I faced the prospect of paddling that distance back to my campsite into the teeth of the wind.  I wasn't feeling particularly exhausted yet and I didn't doubt my ability to make it back, but it would stretch my paddling session well past three hours, meaning it would be early- or even mid-afternoon before I began the 7.5-plus-hour drive to the motel room I'd booked in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

I walked up to the RV park to see if perhaps I could offer somebody a few bucks to give me a ride back to my campsite, but there wasn't a soul in sight.  Not a single trailer had a vehicle parked next to it, and I realized that this place served as a permanent residence and the tenants had all gone to work for the day.

So I resignedly returned to the beach and got in the boat.  Staying near the shoreline to avoid the worst of the wind, the best speed I could manage was around 8 kph.  At that rate it would take me more than two hours to get back to my site.  Forlornly I plodded along, trying my best to conserve energy while the oncoming waves pitched me about.

Fatigue began to set in and I kept my eye on the shore for any sign of egress.  But for most of this section of the river, the nearest road is far away.  At one point I saw a row of utility poles that I thought might accompany a road, but when I walked up to check I found only a dirt track for farm machinery.

As I approached the final bend before the bay where my campsite was, I was dehydrated and my left lower back was killing me.  And rounding that bend was no easy matter: it had numerous points jutting out, creating a "false summit" effect--that is, each time I thought I'd reached the entrance to the bay, another point revealed itself.  I was eager to be back in the bay because I would have the wind at my back once more, but my progress was painfully slow as the headwind became a beam wind.

At last my campsite came into view.  I had some downwind swells now that became more direct the closer to the campsite I got.  Somehow I conjured up the energy to sprint and get on them.

By the time I reached the boat ramp I had been paddling for just over three and a half hours.  I hoisted the boat up on my shoulder and carried it to the truck, where I guzzled a liter of water and ate an apple.  I loaded up the boat and drove up to the bath house, where I took a quick shower.  I refilled my water bottle and added an electrolyte tablet and drank that down.

It was now about 1:30 in the afternoon, and I still had a long drive ahead.  My G.P.S. app calmly stated that the trip would take precisely 7 hours and 20 minutes, but I knew that with rest stops and such it would easily take me nine hours.

The worst part of the drive was the first several hours: it seemed to take forever to navigate the network of state highways through interminable farmlands to get to Interstate 29, which runs north-south along the eastern edge of South Dakota.  I'd failed to appreciate just how big South Dakota is, and of course I'd been camping and paddling right in the center of its northern border.

The good news is that once I had finally left that state and entered Iowa, there was just an hour and a half or so to my motel in Council Bluffs.  I told myself that it was just like the drive I've made many times from Memphis to Jackson, Tennessee, to visit relatives.  It sure seemed long at the end of an already long day, however.  It was about 10:30 PM when I checked into the motel and had a bed to sleep in at last.

With a mere 6.5 hours to drive today, I'm enjoying a slow morning.  Not that there's any compelling reason to linger: the neighborhood my motel is in is anything but bucolic.  But it's nice not to be in so much of a hurry.  The plan is to spend tonight in Saint Louis and arrive home midday tomorrow.

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Monday photo feature

At the Gorge Downwind Championships race last Thursday, every racer had a number "tent" taped to the stern deck of the boat.  When I arrived at the finish, I discovered that mine was no longer on my boat.

Thanks to the miracle of digital photography, I have pinpointed the precise moment when my number and I parted ways.  The wind had been blowing the thing all over the place and it's a wonder more racers didn't lose theirs.

Fortunately, I also had a number pinned to the front of my P.F.D., so the race officials were able to record a finish for me.

I do feel bad about adding some litter to one of our planet's wonderful rivers.

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Until next year...

Friday was something of a decompression day after the big race, and the wind abated some in keeping with that.  I did two runs from the Skamania County Fairgrounds to Home Valley, and while I caught some decent action out there, the conditions were not nearly as big as they'd been Wednesday and Thursday.

By yesterday morning the wind had died almost entirely.  After checking out of our rental house, Michael and I decided to try some surfing behind the sternwheeler that takes customers on a tour of the river in the vicinity of Cascade Locks.  When we got out there for the 11 o'clock outing, we discovered that many other paddlers had had the same idea.  As the vessel headed upriver toward Home Valley I managed to position myself on the fourth wave back from the paddle wheel, but before long a couple of outriggers slipped off their waves in front of me and took me out with them.  I decided to cool my heels and wait for the big boat to make its return pass, and that's when I really had some fun.  I grabbed the fourth or fifth wave back once more and got a great ride as the sternwheeler's wakes clashed with the very small wind-driven conditions moving up the river.

And with that, my paddling in the Columbia River Gorge came to an end for this year.  I spent last night back at the campground at White Salmon, and this morning I got an early start back east.  I drove across eastern Washington, north-central Idaho, and western Montana before stopping in Missoula for the night.  The skies grew increasingly smoky as I went along, apparently the result of fires in central Idaho.

My nephew currently lives in Missoula and I'm bunking with him for the night.  I hope to make it into eastern Montana or the Dakotas tomorrow.

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Some ups and downs, but ultimately a good race

Michael and Rob and I were up bright and early yesterday morning.  We had some breakfast, got our gear together, and departed from our house in Cascade Locks.  We got a look at the race course on the Columbia River as we drove east on Interstate 84 toward Hood River: the wind was blowing as hard as it had all week, and it looked like some beefy conditions were building out there.

We left Michael's car at Hood River and crammed all three of us into the cab of my pickup truck.  We crossed the Hood River Bridge over to the Washington side and drove along the course once more until we reached the start at Home Valley Park.

Registration was definitely down from past years by several hundred people, but there still seemed to be a healthy crowd of folks readying their boats and gear for competition.  After the pre-race meeting with event director Carter Johnson, we all proceeded down the sandy trail toward the river.

Racers were started in waves.  The small number of stand-up paddleboarders went first, launching from the beach.  Then all female surfski and outrigger canoe racers started, along with all tandem craft.  My fellow men's surfski racers and I were next, to be followed by the male OC1 paddlers.

The wind was screaming in our ears and huge swells were bobbing us up and down like wine corks as we all paddled into the wind for several hundred meters to where the race officials wanted us to start.  I had an added distraction courtesy of my G.P.S. device: I'd pulled up the screen I wanted before getting in the boat, but the thing shuts itself off--"to save power"--if you don't actually start its watch for five minutes.  So I had to sit there and fiddle with it, scrolling through a couple of menus before I found the screen I wanted, as the waves knocked me all over the place.  Maybe one day I'll finally get the hang of this new gadget.

Once I finally had it all squared away I began to move into the pack of starters.  A very short moment later the red flag went up telling us to GO!!!!  There was no turning back now.

I had a lousy start.  I tried to catch a run as soon as I could, but I was still a bit discombobulated from my technological distractions and all the pre-race nerves seemed to tighten their grip on me.  It felt like hundreds of guys were opening a minute-or-more gap on me right there in the first hundred meters.

I told myself to calm down and just do what I'd been doing in practice runs for the last nine days.  If there was something I couldn't do in practice, then I wasn't going to do it here on race day, either.  I needed to go back to Step One and execute the basics.  After all, the best racers are the ones who simply do the basics better than anyone else.

Among those "basics," as I learned them from Dawid Mocke in South Africa last year, are "Take one run at a time" and "Little runs lead to big runs."  I started looking for small bumps I could hop onto and get my boat speed up.  Slowly but surely, I began to link some bigger runs onto my smaller ones and find something of a groove.

The wind continued to be impressive.  What I'd heard is that it was blowing around 30 miles per hour, with gusts of 40 mph or more.  For the first time since my arrival in the Gorge, I could feel it blowing against my back even as I had a good run going.

That continued for maybe five or six miles, and then... the conditions mysteriously disappeared.  I think we'd reached a part of the river where a mountain was blocking the wind.  I was still looking for runs to catch, but suddenly they were barely there.  Once this reality had dawned on me I started to shift into ordinary flatwater-distance-racing mode, and maybe I should have been happy about that since that's the sort of racing I mostly do back home, but all I could think was, "This is not what I drove across the country for!!!!"

The dead period seemed to last an eternity, but it probably wasn't more than ten minutes or so.  Slowly the wind began to return, but it was another while before the conditions had built back up.  By the time I was passing Drano Lake on the Washington side it was starting to look like the Columbia Gorge I've grown to love once more.  This was when I really started to have fun.  I was getting tired, but I was still able to sprint with lots of power, and I thank my coach Maks Frančeškin for helping me get that way this year.

From Drano to Hood River I felt like I was doing the best job I've ever done of keeping my boat moving in the downwind conditions.  A couple of times the speed display on my G.P.S. device rose as high as 17 kilometers per hour (about 10.56 miles per hour); other times it was down below 11 kph (6.84 mph).  But practically all the time I was getting some kind of help from the waves and not having to use that much of my own energy.  My main challenge at this point was fighting through the fatigue and staying focused and keeping my boat on whatever runs I could find.

As I moved into the early stages of Swell City, the runs started getting juicier.  Sadly, Swell City develops primarily over toward the Washington side of the river, and our finish line yesterday was hard against the Oregon shore.  I began to angle toward the right as I moved into the course's final kilometers.  The runs were now coming from my five o'clock and I had to be precise to avoid getting spun broadside.  As I progressed from 2000 meters out to 1500 meters out to 1000 meters out, I nudged my nose more and more to the right until I was paddling almost in a beam wind.

When I did this race two years ago, I got out-sprinted to the finish line by a guy from Vancouver.  The man earned it fair and square, but I came away with a slightly bitter taste in my mouth for letting it happen.  This year I wanted to have a finish I could feel good about.  With some 800 meters to go I started paddling harder, keeping an eye out for any help the waves might offer me.  Ahead of me there were two boats, a white surfski over to my left and a red one to my right.  They were far enough ahead that I figured catching them might be a long shot, but I went for it anyway.  The waves were making no more than a 30-degree angle with my boat, but every few seconds I managed to get a little boost from one, and I tried to paddle as efficiently as I could and take every ounce of aid I could.  I nudged a little closer.  And a little closer.  And a little closer still.

There was a row of buoys marking the final approach to the narrow finish chute where the electronic timing equipment was positioned; we were to paddle between these buoys and the bank.  As we moved to within 200 meters of these buoys, we had formed a tight pack with the guy in the white ski first, the guy in the red ski second, and then me.  I called up the last bit of energy I had and began to sprint.  The waves were fully in our favor once more and and I was getting a brief ride, then another, and another.  I moved in front of the red ski, then the white one, and kept the power on until I glided across the finish line with a time of one hour, 51 minutes, 45 seconds.  The guy in the white ski, a man named Bruce Fincher, finished four seconds back at 1:51:49, and the paddler of the red ski, who turned out to be former Memphian Ilia Kolesnikov, clocked in at 1:51:51.

It was my fastest time on this course in three tries.  My first race here in 2018 was more than 10 minutes slower, so I do believe I have made some progress as a downwind racer, and that's satisfying.  My race this year was not perfect, but in the end I settled in and gave it a good strong effort, and I'm happy about that.  I was the 121st fastest among 271 total finishers.

Austin Kieffer, a native of Asheville, North Carolina, who now lives in southern California, took the overall victory in one hour, 23 minutes, 3 seconds.  19-year-old Ana Swetish of Bellingham, Washington, was the top female finisher in 1:31:14.  Other notable finishers include solo outrigger men's champion Triston Kahookele of Hawaii and OC1 women's champ Lindsey Shank, also of Hawaii.  The complete results are posted here.

This morning I'm feeling a bit sore but not too bad.  I have just two days left here in the Columbia Gorge before I begin my journey eastward back toward home, and my plan is to get several more runs in and just have fun.

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

Having some fun and getting ready to race

It's Race Week out here in the Columbia Gorge, and activity is picking up at the Skamania County Fairgrounds where the race is headquartered.  Racers can now do downwind runs from the fairgrounds to the community of Home Valley, and be picked up there by shuttle vans with trailers that bring them and their boats back to where they'd started.  This section of the river is about six miles or 10 kilometers.

I'm settled into the rental house across the river in Cascade Locks along with Michael Meredith of Detroit and Rob Flanagan of Boston.  So far our routine has been to head down to the race site in the mid morning and come back home around suppertime.

On Monday I did one run from the fairgrounds to Home Valley.  I was feeling sharp and the run felt great.  I'd planned to do another run, but we had a setback when a guy who'd asked to join Michael and me on the run flipped and got separated from his boat and had to be rescued.  We ended up standing around in Home Valley for quite a while as Michael talked on the phone with race officials and other rescue personnel to help them locate the guy.  Fortunately everything turned out okay, but much of the day had flown by once we were finally back at the fairgrounds.

So yesterday I was determined to make up for lost time in those beautiful downwind swells.  Michael and Rob and I did a run in the late morning, rode the shuttle back, had a little snack, and set right out on another run.  The second run was a lot harder for me than the first.  I was tired from the first run, and it seemed like I was fighting the water more, and not letting the runs come to me.  My muscles were exhausted and a little sore by the time I was waiting for the shuttle at Home Valley that second time.  I realized that with the race coming right up I needed to start taking my rest a little more seriously.  It's a fine line every racer has to walk at this event, especially somebody like me who has over 30 hours of driving invested: you want to go out and grab every bit of fun you can out there, but you also want to be rested and ready to go on race day.

Yesterday evening we learned exactly when race day will be: race director Carter Johnson sent out an e-mail announcing that we will race on Thursday (tomorrow).  The wind forecast looks strong and conditions could be big out there.

So today has been a rest day.  I took it easy around the house and didn't go down to the race site until noon, and the only paddling I did was a short loop on the river right at Stevenson.  I'm hoping that getting some blood flowing in my muscles will help me feel nice and recovered tomorrow morning.

The race begins around 11 AM local time.  I hope to get out and enjoy the river and produce a result that I can feel good about.

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Monday photo feature

Here's a screen shot from a video made in the Columbia Gorge two years ago: I did a run in a tandem surfski with South African world champion Dawid Mocke.  Dawid apparently made an impression on me because just seven months later I was in South Africa getting more instruction from him in his hometown of Fish Hoek on the Western Cape.

I'm back in the Columbia Gorge now, but I don't believe Dawid or many other international athletes will be present this week because of ongoing travel restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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

An upgrade in accommodations

By yesterday afternoon my terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day was starting to relent a little.

I got some boat-repair materials from a windsurfer who was camping near me, a really nice guy from Seattle named Zach whose wife, Monique, is originally from Nashville and attended Rhodes College in Memphis.  Small world.

There were a couple of deep dings that needed filling, but the rest of the scratches, while ugly, seemed to be mostly cosmetic.  Zach had some epoxy resin that hardens in a minute or so when exposed to ultraviolet light, so I worked quickly to cover the damaged areas.  Several of my patches were still rather lumpy once the resin was hard, so I had quite a bit of sanding to do.  As of this writing a couple of the areas are still works in progress, but at least the boat is now shored up and should make it through the rest of this trip, barring any further mishaps.

Thanks to the fast-hardening resin, I was able to paddle again in the late afternoon.  I drove back to the fish hatchery and paddled a 15-minute warmup into the strong wind.  My assigned workout was a pair of 250-meter pieces at maximum intensity to give my body one last conditioning to produce lactic acid before race day.  I did these two pieces also into the wind, climbing up and over the oncoming swells.  My times were dog-slow--around 90 seconds for each piece--but I certainly went lactic.  Maks told me to recover fully from the first one before starting the second one, so I gave myself five minutes in between.

By the time I finished the pieces I was more than a mile upwind of the fish hatchery, so I had a fun downwind paddle back there.  The conditions were the biggest I'd seen so far on this trip, and my balance was being challenged a bit more.  Several times I had good runs get away from me because I was a little off-balance and was a half-second or so too late taking the necessary stroke.  The boat I'm using out here (V10 Sport) is more stable than the boats I normally use back East, but its secondary stability kicks in kind of late and I need to get a little more used to that to have confidence in it.

This morning I packed everything up at my campsite and headed west on Washington Highway 14.  I stopped at the fish hatchery for a couple more laps in Swell City.  The wind was "nuking" and the river was crowded with windsurfers and kiteboarders.  My laps were fun and I was tempted to do more, but I knew I needed a slightly lighter day and limited myself to two.

From there I continued west to the town of Stevenson, where the Gorge Downwind Championships event will be headquartered this week.  Some other paddlers had started to arrive but I didn't spot anybody I knew.

I crossed the Bridge of the Gods to the town of Cascade Locks, Oregon, and located the house I've rented with a couple of friends for the week.  It feels good to have a bed to sleep in and some of the other amenities that camping lacks.  Camping in this hot, dry, windy climate drains a lot of energy and I think renting this house is a wise move for the week of a race.

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Aaaargh.

The place I'm camping near the town of White Salmon has been mostly adequate for my needs this week: it has nice flat tent sites and a bathroom with showers.  It even has wifi.  What it doesn't have is electrical outlets that the tent campers can use, and I've been having problems keeping all my electronics (laptop, phone, Go Pro camera, G.P.S. device) charged.  I'm also getting tired of having to buy ice to keep my perishable food cold in my ice chest--I don't think I've ever seen ice melt as fast as it's doing on this trip.  Tomorrow afternoon is when I can move into the rental house I'm sharing with Rob Flanagan and Michael Meredith, and I'll be very glad to have a kitchen with a refrigerator and some electrical outlets to use.

On Thursday afternoon I heard about a group doing a downwind run from Drano Lake to the fish hatchery, and I decided to join in.  The conditions weren't huge, but they were big enough to be a lot of fun.  So far I've been feeling really good out there.  I think my trip to South Africa is paying off even though it was almost a year and a half ago: I feel like I'm seeing paths forward through the swells that I used not to see.  I also am having success sprinting onto runs that used to get away from me, and I can probably credit all the power-building workouts that Maks has put me through for that.

These downwind runs are sort of encroaching on what should probably be recovery time for me.  My assignment from Maks for Thursday afternoon was "one hour unspecific activity active regeneration."  Not exactly the same as a vigorous downwind session.

Yesterday the wind was light, and I decided to give myself a day off to recover from the previous several days.  I also had some chores to do.  When I paddled on Bear Lake on Sunday, some water got under the crystal of my G.P.S. device; for the next couple of days it was fogged up so badly that the device was barely useable.  When I paddled with Greg on Tuesday afternoon, I asked him if he could suggest a remedy (Greg is known for being very good at fixing things on the fly).  He told me there's not really a fix for that: once water gets inside the device like that, it might work for another week or so but then it'll just die.

So getting a new G.P.S. device was on my list of chores.  Being out on vacation like this, I ought to be relaxing, with not a care in the world, but for some reason it seems like I have a lot of things I want to do and not enough time to do them all, and I was annoyed to have this addition.  If I were at home I'd probably just find a reasonably-priced device on Ebay or some such place, but since I want to have one to use while I'm here in the Gorge, I had to go to a store in the upscale (read: overly pricey) town of Hood River and pay full retail for one.

This morning the wind was starting to pick back up.  Maks had assigned me a hard aerobic/anaerobic workout to do: five 5-minute pieces with 1 minute rest in between, at a stroke rate of over 70 spm.  He said it "will help you immensely at the long race."  I decided to drive several miles upriver to the town of Bingen, thinking maybe the water might not be so rough out on the Columbia there.

I pulled into the parking area for the public boat ramp.  I unstrapped my boat and left it sitting atop the car while I turned on my brand-new G.P.S. device.  I had played with the settings yesterday afternoon and I thought I had saved the screen with all the data fields I like to use, but when I turned it on this morning it had reset itself to the original factory settings.  One thing I am not is tech-inclined, and I grasped at straws trying to figure out how to get the thing into some state where I could use it.  As I fiddled with the device, a gust of wind blew my boat off the rack and it came crashing down onto the gravelly-asphalt parking lot.  I watched in horror as the boat rolled three times before coming to rest.

The stern end had taken the worst of the impact.  Fortunately this was little more than a cosmetic problem, as the ends of a boat are just plugs of resin.  But there were other spots on the hull that raised concern.  The gelcoat was scratched through in a half-dozen places, and several spots felt soft as I pressed on them.  The rudder had a small bit of abrasion but fortunately no major damage.

I decided my best immediate action would be to go ahead and paddle: at least I'd get the workout in, and I would get some idea of how badly the boat leaked.

Needless to say, I was absolutely furious.  Furious at everything and everybody.  Furious with myself for unstrapping the boat before I was fully ready to take it off the rack.  Furious at my old G.P.S. device for giving out on me while I was out on the road.  Furious at my new G.P.S. device for distracting me from looking after my boat.  Furious at Maks for giving me these stupid workouts to do when all I really want to do is go out on downwind runs.  Furious at all the hassles of charging devices and keeping food cold and everything else.  Furious at having to add yet another item (boat repair) to my to-do list.

At least the workout didn't feel all that taxing as I took out all my frustration.  I did the five pieces into the wind, and then rode the small swells back to the Bingen boat ramp.  Once I was out of the boat I did an inspection to see how much water I'd shipped, and was pleased to find that there was hardly any.  But the boat definitely needs some repair work to shore it up, and I expect that's what I'm going to spend the rest of the day doing.  Maks has given me an afternoon workout--a couple of hard 250-meter pieces--but it looks somewhat doubtful whether I'll get that done.

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A long journey complete

By Monday evening I was almost to the Columbia River Gorge: I checked into a motel in Boardman, Oregon, a town on the Columbia an hour and a half or so shy of my destination.

Tuesday morning I paddled on the Columbia at Boardman.  I did one of Maks's variable-pace workouts: three sets of (5 minutes at 60 strokes per minute/4 min. at 64 spm/3 min. at 68 spm/2 min. at 72 spm/1 min. at 76 spm).  I took a minute rest between pieces and three minutes between sets.  The top stroke rates took me up around anaerobic threshold.

I continued west from there and arrived in the Gorge around lunchtime.  My accommodations until Sunday morning are in a campground on the Washington side near the Hood River Bridge, and I got myself settled in.  Then, after some textual communication, I met up with Chris Hipgrave of Bryson City, North Carolina, and Greg Barton of Seattle, Washington, for some downwind laps near the Spring Creek Fish Hatchery, where there's an area of the river known as Swell City--not because the place is really swell (it is) but because the wind generates particularly juicy swells there.

The wind was somewhat mild on Tuesday and the conditions were on the small side, but that was okay with me--I'm a dip-your-toes-in-gingerly kind of guy.  I paddled aggressively and chased every run that seemed remotely within reach.  It felt great to be doing what I had driven such a long way to do.

My lower abdominals were sore Tuesday evening and yesterday morning.  I did some full-body stretching after breakfast to try to get those muscles relaxed.  Yesterday morning's session was supposed to be pretty hard and I worried a bit over whether I could find calm enough water to do the workout justice (see my discussion of this issue in my last post).  Eventually I decided to put at the fish hatchery and then paddle over to the Oregon side of the river, where the water isn't as raucous as in Swell City, especially on the lee side of Wells Island.

Chris had told me that the wind forecast indicated that the conditions would be "nuking" yesterday, and as I did my warmup paddle over toward the Oregon side, I could tell that they were on their way toward that state.  I let the swells carry me whenever they would, but didn't pursue them hard because my priority was to do the workout that Maks had assigned.

The workout was three sets of (4 minutes on/6 minutes off) at a high stroke rate (90 spm or thereabouts).  Maks described it as an "anaerobic VO2 Max" workout, with long hard pieces and just enough rest in between to do three of them at a high intensity.  I did them into the wind over along the Oregon side; there was a lot of chop but I was able to put nearly all my energy into forward propulsion.  In the end, I think I'd gotten what I was supposed to get from the session.

By the time I was finished I was some distance upwind of where I'd parked, so once I'd worked my way back to the Washington side I allowed myself a short downwind run back to the parking area.  The swells were definitely bigger than they'd been the previous afternoon.

I returned to the hatchery in the late afternoon for a few more laps (the locals call them "hatch laps").  The conditions might have been "nuking" during the day, but as I paddled from the bank I sensed that they were coming down from their peak.  I had sort of an "empty arms" feeling from the morning workout and decided to do just a couple of laps.  I caught a couple of decent runs on the first lap, but nothing to write home about.  The highlight of the afternoon came on the second lap: I linked five or six good runs together and was flying.  I'm not sure I can write anything here to convey the excitement I felt at that moment, but suffice it to say that I was super stoked.  All I have to do is put together a couple hundred such moments on race day, and I'll be in the medals.

This morning I struck out to the east on Washington Highway 14.  After a few miles I came upon Rowland Lake, which I think originally was a cove of the Columbia River but now is separated from the main channel by the roadbeds for Highway 14 and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad.  The lake has maybe a quarter of the acreage of the harbor back home, but it was perfectly adequate for this morning's assigned workout.  It was my last lactic capacity session before race day: four sets of (30 seconds on/15 seconds off/30 seconds on), with a "long break" between sets (I made it 5 minutes).  The pieces were to be done "all-out" and I had to dig deep on the last couple, but it was over quickly.

It was still rather hot when I arrived in the Gorge Tuesday--the last vestiges of the big heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, I guess.  Yesterday morning it was chilly with a few raindrops; then the sun came out and it was noticeably cooler than Tuesday had been.  This morning was downright brisk and now it's blossoming into a delightful day.  I harbor no delusions of this area being perfect, but on a good day it's as beautiful as anyplace I've been.  The forecast for the next week is looking good, and it feels great to be back here doing some great paddling and soaking it all in.

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Monday photo feature

When I was growing up my family went to Hardy, Arkansas, for an occasional getaway.  One of my favorite things about the place was the old steel bridge that spanned the Spring River there.  I was heartbroken when I heard that the bridge had been washed out in a flood in December of 1980.

As I headed west from Memphis this past Thursday, I stopped and did a short paddle at Hardy.  Here's a shot of the utterly unremarkable concrete bridge that replaced the old steel bridge:

I guess the lesson here is to savor the little things, because they almost all go by the wayside eventually.

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The trip pushes on; windy and hot in the Wild West

My body was still very much on Central Time Saturday morning, so I woke up at 5 AM Mountain Time in Ogallala, Nebraska.  I had some breakfast and packed up and drove north to McConaughy Reservoir, created by the construction of a dam on the North Platte River.  I was on the water just after 8 o'clock local time.

I had a pretty hard lactic session: two sets of (60 seconds on/60 sec. off, 50 sec. on/50 sec. off, 40 sec. on/40 sec. off, 30 sec. on/30 sec.off, 20 sec. on/20 sec. off, 10 sec. on/10 sec. off).  I went out and put everything I had into it, and was quite tired, but not as much so as in other lactic workouts.  This time I think the main reason was rough water on the lake driven by a strong south wind.  There were in fact some small downwind runs out there, and once the workout was over I did surf a little bit, but during the workout I was having to paddle up and over the waves.

When I paddle on flatwater I can put every ounce of my energy into propelling the boat forward.  But on rougher water I have to divert some of that energy into my muscles whose job is balance and control.  My conjecture is that that's the reason the workout wasn't quite as exhausting as it was supposed to be.  I guess the bright side is that I'm on my way to a big downwind event, and Saturday's session gave me some specific training.

A strong south wind is nothing unusual for the North American Great Plains.  As you drive any highway across the Plains, you'll see a lot of trees and shrubs leaning toward the north because they're constantly being hammered by the south wind.

One more factoid about Saturday: it was my first time ever to paddle in the state of Nebraska.  Long-time readers of this blog might remember posts like this one in which I talk about my goal of paddling a boat in every state of the United States.

I continued west and made it as far as Little America, Wyoming.  Yesterday morning I drove about an hour and a half to Bear Lake, a huge naturally-formed lake that straddles the Utah-Idaho state line.  Many people were out sunning and bathing in celebration of Independence Day, but for me it was just a break from another long drive.  I did a calm 80 minutes.

I continued on across the high desert landscapes of northern Utah and southern Idaho.  By the time I stopped for supper in Boise, it was hot.  My guess is it was pushing 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  The Pacific Northwest has been in the news for the heat wave it’s been experiencing, and while I think the worst of it is over, some significant heat lingers.  I drove about another hour to my stopping place for the night, a campsite in Farewell Bend State Park just inside eastern Oregon.  It stayed hot well after dark and even though it was a “dry” heat, I was sweating a bit as I lay in the tent.

By this morning it had cooled off to a very pleasant temperature—maybe 70 degrees or so.  But once the sun comes up over the ridge just to the east, I expect it’ll be another hot one.  The good news is that I’m almost to the Columbia Gorge.  Today is a day off from paddling, and I plan to spend it moving at a leisurely pace to within a couple of hours of the Gorge, and then roll in there tomorrow.

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Training and driving and training some more

This new training week started with a calm 60-minute paddle.  Maks thought I needed another day to work out the fatigue and stiffness from that brutal lactic workout I'd done last Saturday.  I had no argument against that.  I tried to take the best strokes I could and otherwise enjoyed the pleasant (albeit hot) morning out on the river.

It was hot and humid again Wednesday morning, and I went out and did an anaerobic threshold workout.  It was two sets of three (2 min. on/2 min. off), where within each set I paddled the pieces at 80 strokes per minute, 86 spm, and 80 spm.  Part of the idea was to practice good technique at these higher stroke rates.  I thought the session was fairly taxing, and I was breathing hard by the end of each piece.

Yesterday morning I hit the road!  I spent some eight hours driving from Memphis to Harry S. Truman State Park near Warsaw, Missouri, during which I stopped at Hardy, Arkansas, to do a light gym session in Loberg Park and an easy paddle on the Spring River.  The day was warm and muggy, and I drove through quite a bit of rain.

I slept quite well last night in the state park campground.  The place was surprisingly quiet and uncrowded for the Thursday evening leading into the Independence Day weekend.  Maybe the onslaught is arriving there this evening.

The rain had moved out by the time I made camp last night, and this morning the air was cooler and pleasant.  My campsite was just up the hill from an access to Harry S. Truman Reservoir (this Truman fellow must have been awfully important to have all this stuff named after him).  So I had no trouble getting in today's workout.  I did a variable-pace session: four sets of (6 min. at 55 spm/3 min. at 65 spm/1 min. at 75 spm), with a minute break between pieces within each set and 2 minutes between sets.  It felt good to do a relaxing paddle before embarking on my longest day of driving on the trip out West.

And a long drive it was.  I made it all the way to the town of Ogallala in western Nebraska.  Google told me the trip would take 8 hours 45 minutes, but it took me more than ten hours.  Google must think I drive a lot faster than I do.

I'm staying in motels tonight and tomorrow night, and it'll be nice to sleep in a bed.  Tomorrow's workout, which I think I'll be doing on the North Platte River just north of Ogallala, looks like a tough one.  Tomorrow's drive shouldn't be quite as long as today's, but there's a long way still to go before I arrive in the Columbia River Gorge.

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Monday photo feature

The Columbia River Gorge on the Oregon-Washington state line will play host to the Gorge Downwind Championships next month.  Meanwhile, the "Vortex Series" has provided some warmup races out there in May and June.  The third of these three races took place weekend before last.

The conditions were uncharacteristically flat, but that didn't stop the athletes from creating plenty of excitement.  Aaron Small of Gig Harbor, Washington, edged out Austin Kieffer of Los Angeles, California, for the overall win.  Greg Barton of Seattle, Washington, racing with stitches in his hand after slamming it in a car door, took third place just a few seconds back.

Pictured above is the race for fourth place.  Andrew McEwan of White Salmon, Washington, had to fend off a charge from 19-year-old phenomenon Ana Swetish of Bellingham, Washington.

My arrival in the Columbia Gorge is drawing ever closer.  I plan to drive out of Memphis this Thursday and be in the Gorge by the 6th of July.

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The weekend didn't kill me, so it should make me stronger

I did some gym work before heading down to the river Friday morning.  As I paddled a 15-minute warmup into a stiff headwind, I could tell that my muscles were tired from the gym.

They'd be getting more tired during my in-the-boat workout.  I did two sets of three (3 minutes on/3 min. off) at 76 strokes per minute.  I did all of the first set, and the first two pieces of the second set, with light resistance on the boat, and my muscles were feeling pretty rubbery by the end of that.  For the last piece, Maks told me to remove the resistance: "See how it feels when you anchor well without the resistance on the boat--the boat will absolutely fly :)."  I guess the boat did fly--it moved about a half-mile per hour faster than it had with the resistance on--but my arms were too tired for me to enjoy it as much as Maks's colon-and-parenthesis smiley face suggests I should have.  Oh well.

Yesterday morning I did a calm 40-minute paddle.  That was just a warmup for the Saturday afternoon lactic session, and it was a bear.  Maks called it "a lactic hell."  It was four sets of two (40 seconds all-out/20 seconds rest/40 seconds all-out).  Maks said to take long breaks between the sets, so I made that 5 minutes 20 seconds; he didn't specify how long to take between the two reps that made up each set, so I made that 1 minute 20 seconds.  That way I'd be starting each rep at the top of a minute.  If I thought I was giving myself too much rest, I was relieved of that concern once the second set was underway.  Somehow I found it in me to put everything I had into every 40-second sprint, and every sprint hurt bad.  I don't think I've ever felt more grateful to reach the end of a workout.

This morning it was time to calm everything back down with an easy endurance workout.  I did three sets of (6 min. at 56 spm/4 min. at 60 spm/3 min. at 64 spm/2 min. at 68 spm), with a minute break between pieces and 2 minutes between sets.  I made a loop out on the Mississippi, where conditions were choppy because of a healthy south wind, and that added some balance drill to the session.

And so, my last full training week at home has come to a close.  I'm glad to have a day off tomorrow, as I've got a long list of chores to knock out before I depart for the Pacific Northwest on Thursday.

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More intensity

These days my training plan has shifted its focus more in favor of speed and lactic fitness.  That means somewhat shorter, more intense workouts and not so much grinding resistance training.

Maks started me off pretty easy on Tuesday: I did four sets of (3 minutes at 60 strokes per minute/2 min. at 66 spm/1 min. at 72 spm), with a minute break between the pieces and 2 minutes between sets.  It was a chance to concentrate on good stroke mechanics.

Yesterday I had a "speed endurance" workout.  It was three sets of eight times (10 seconds on/50 sec. off). Maks told me to paddle at about 85-90% of my top stroke rate (for me, around 110 spm) and take long breaks between the sets.  He said "the exhaustion will start to creep on you" as I got deep into each set, but I'm not sure it really did.  I think I was doing the sprints the way I was supposed to, but "exhaustion" isn't the word I would use to describe what I was feeling at any point.  By the end of it I was certainly ready for the workout to be over, but then I just shrugged and said "Okay... I guess that's it!"  Oh well.  There's nothing I can do but move on to the next day.

And that would be today, when I went out for a "high aerobic" workout: ten times (4 min. on, 1 min. off) at a strong 66-70 spm.  Per Maks's instructions, I stayed focused in the late stages of the session, when it's easy not to stay strong.  I felt good throughout and came home happy.

The coming weekend is my last in Memphis before I head for the Pacific Northwest.  Once again the training schedule looks like a challenge.

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Monday photo feature

If the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race had happened this year, it would have been this past Saturday.

Back in 2005, the race field included Greg Barton, who'd won gold medals at the 1988 Olympic Games, and Jeff Smoke, who'd just been a member of the 2004 U.S. Olympic Team.  Jeff was accompanied to Memphis by his mother, Marcia Smoke, a member of the 1964, 1968, and 1972 U.S. Olympic Teams and winner of a bronze medal at the 1964 Games.

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Paddling easy and hard and everything in between

I started Friday morning with some gym work, and then went to the river and did three sets of four (1 minute on/1 min. off) at 80 strokes per minute.  I did the second set with resistance on the boat, the first and third sets without.  Maks described it as more of a "feeling" workout than anything else--"feel the glide of the boat and embrace the grip/anchoring," he said.  After feeling sort of sluggish in the boat the previous several days, I felt better on Friday.  Maybe being back home consuming my normal diet and sleeping in my own bed is helping.

Yesterday was a normal "two-a-day" Saturday.  The morning session was easy: two sets of (2 times 2 min. on/1 min. off at 50 spm and 2 times 3 min. on/1 min. off at 64 spm).  The heavy duty stuff came in the afternoon with a long, hard lactic session: four times (1 min. on/1 min. off), two sets of four (45 sec. on/45 sec. off), and four times (30 sec. on/30 sec. off), all at an "A3+" stroke rate or all-out.  Maks told me to take long breaks between the sets so I could do each set at close to all-out intensity.  Said he, "This is supposed to burn and hurt!"  I can handle some burn, and I can handle some hurt... but BOTH???  Lord help me.

Finding the right stroke rate was a challenge in this workout.  While doing the 1-minute pieces, I started off around 110 spm but in the last 15 seconds I was struggling to keep it above 100 spm.  By the 45-second pieces I was paddling around 106-108 spm and maintaining that throughout each effort.  For the 30-second pieces I paddled at about the highest rate of which I'm physically capable--something over 120 spm--and was able to maintain it, but when I was able to glance at my G.P.S. device's speed readout I saw that I wasn't moving the boat as fast as I had in the longer pieces.

I had some company yesterday afternoon: longtime racing friend Chris Hipgrave was passing through town on his way out West from his home in western North Carolina.  He paddled with me on my warmup and then did a loop out on the Mississippi while I stayed in the harbor and did my lactic workout.  Afterward he continued on toward the Colorado Rockies, where he hopes to do some whitewater paddling before moving on up to the Pacific Northwest, where I'll see him in the Columbia River Gorge next month.

This morning I enjoyed a calm 75-minute paddle in the A1 (below 75 spm) stroke rate zone.  Besides savoring the lovely morning, I worked on all the technical stuff that's occupied me this spring: stroke mechanics as well as sitting up straight in the boat and not slumping my head forward and stuff like that.

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Honest work in the sunshine

I paddled on Tuesday morning in bright sunshine.  The day was expected to get over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, but a north breeze made things quite pleasant.  I did two sets of four (2 minutes at 60 strokes per minute/2 min. at 80 spm/2 min. at 60 spm/2 min. rest).  The idea was to get up near anaerobic threshold during the 80-spm pieces, then train my body to reap some recovery while paddling back at 60 spm.

The weather was similar yesterday as I went through an endurance session: eight sets of (6 min. on/2 min. off) at 68 spm with some extra weight in the boat.  The pieces were hard enough that I was ready for each 2-minute rest period.

Today I observed yet another lovely morning with a sprint session.  I did four 25-second sprints at 4-minute intervals and six 15-second sprints at 3-minute intervals.  I started the longer sprints from rest while using flying starts for the shorter ones.

Three days of solid, but not too painful, workouts... the harder stuff appears to be looming this weekend.

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Monday photo feature

Zach Lokken of Durango, Colorado, competes at the whitewater slalom world cup event at Prague this past weekend.  By finishing eighth in the men's C1 class, Lokken edged out three-time Olympian Casey Eichfeld for a berth in the Olympic Games at Tokyo next month.  Photo by Jean Folger.

Michal Smolen of Bryson City, North Carolina, clinched the U.S. Olympic men's kayak berth with a fifth-place finish at Prague.  And so, the U.S. Olympic Canoe and Kayak Team is now set.  As I mentioned in this post back on the 19th of April, Evy Leibfarth of Bryson City will compete in the women's slalom C1 and K1 classes, while female C1 paddler Nevin Harrison of Gig Harbor, Washington, will race in the flatwater sprint regatta.

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From the coast back inland

On Friday morning I returned to the protected area at the northeast end of Dauphin Island.  I had a "maximum power" session to do: four sets of four 15-second sprints at 2-minute intervals, with "big resistance" on the boat.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: workouts like this might look scary on paper--Maks described it as "big resistance, high stroke rate emptying all your power reserves by the end of the session"--but it didn't feel anywhere near as brutal to me as, say, the power-building workout I'd done on Wednesday.  My power reserves were emptied by the end of the session, but at that point the session was... over.  I felt better after doing it than I'd felt before.

Friday morning's workout was actually scheduled for Saturday afternoon, but I had to do some shuffling because Saturday was a travel day for me (not Maks's fault at all--I hadn't really told him I'd be vacationing at the beach this week).  So I did the workout Friday morning and reserved Friday afternoon for one more possible downwind session.

The wind had shifted to the west-southwest and I wasn't sure what to expect out on the Gulf, but when I paddled out from the beach Friday afternoon I found more good swells coming at me.  The Gulf just keeps on giving.  I paddled into the wind until my G.P.S. device told me I'd gone 1600 meters (1 mile), and then I rode the swells almost back to the beach.  Then I did two more laps of that.  I felt really good in the boat--the most confident I'd felt all week in downwind conditions.

Mind you, I was far from perfect.  Lots of runs got away from me.  One useful thing about this trip is that it's helped me make up my mind what boat to take out to the Columbia Gorge with me next month.  On this trip I had the V10L surfski that I use for the mostly-flatwater races I do in this part of the country, including the one in Kentucky last weekend.  In terms of stability it's an elite-level ski, and while I didn't feel in over my head using it for downwind, there were many moments when I was within one good stroke of catching a good run, but was too off-balance to take that stroke.  I have a more stable V10 Sport model at home, and I will be taking that out West.

But aside from that, I had a great afternoon of paddling.  I think by Friday my body had adapted to the frequent hard sprints that downwind requires: earlier in the week I was having to stop and catch my breath a lot more.  The hard workout in the morning and the fun downwind session in the afternoon made Friday my best paddling day since before I left home on the 4th of this month.

We had an early checkout deadline at our condo, and I wanted to follow my mother back home to Memphis, so that was my only plan for yesterday.  The trip went smoothly enough and we're now safely back in good old Memphis, Tennessee.

It was good to be back on my home water this morning.  I went out and did a simple endurance workout: four sets of (6 min./4 min./3 min./2 min.) at 60-64 spm, with a minute rest between pieces and 2 minutes between sets.  I made a big loop out on the Mississippi during the course of the session.  The temperature was on its way above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, so I cooled off by doing some remount practice during those 2-minute breaks between sets.  I took a hose bath back at the dock.  Yep, it's good to be home.

Looking back on the past week, I'm pleased with how it went.  It took me several days to find my groove, but in the end I got some good downwind practice while still executing the meat of Maks's plan.  I plan to leave for the Pacific Northwest on July 1--18 days from now--and hopefully Maks has good ideas for helping me get as fast as I can be on flatwater during that period.  Once I'm out in the Columbia Gorge I'll have eight or nine days to get myself "downwind fit" for the big race out there.  Exciting days indeed, these are.

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Balancing my training plan with some Dixie downwind

It's been nice spending time with my family at Dauphin Island on the Alabama Gulf Coast this week.  But it's not without a few challenges.  The biggest is my energy level: I've felt really tired since I got here.  I'd had a tough weekend with the hard race and the long drive down here, but even a very inactive day on Monday didn't leave me feeling all that rested.  I think my diet is part of the issue: I just don't have as much control over what I eat when I'm away from home like this.  It's messed up my digestion, and that in turn has messed up my hemorrhoids, and that's not the most pleasant condition when you're sitting in a boat in salt water.

(Yes, you can count on My Training Blog by Elmore to make a beach vacation sound awful.  Don't worry--I'm managing to have some fun, too.)

Another challenge is my paddling priorities.  As usual, my coach has sent me a workout plan for the week.  Last Saturday's race notwithstanding, I like the direction I'm headed under Maks's guidance and I'm doing my best to get everything I can out of his workouts.  What's more, I'm paying for his advice, so it would be dumb of me to ignore it.  But I've also discovered some nice downwind conditions here on the coast this week.  The wind isn't fierce--it hasn't been more than 13 or 15 knots, maybe--but it's been blowing steadily for days and the conditions have had a chance to build.

Here's a map of Dauphin Island; the wind direction is noted in pink at the bottom:

Our condo is right on the beach on the Gulf side of the island.  On Tuesday morning I carried my boat out there, launched into the surf, and paddled out past the impact zone hoping to find placid-enough water to do my prescribed workout.  But the water wasn't placid.  What I found instead were good-sized downwind swells.  So I decided to play hooky from my coach's schedule and catch some runs.

An ideal downwind run is approximately parallel to the shoreline, and the thing to do is shuttle a vehicle a few miles downwind of where you plan to launch so you can ride the swells without any of that pesky upwind paddling.  But here at Dauphin Island the wind is blowing in from the south, so you have to paddle into the wind (away from shore) for a while before turning around and surfing back in.  So my Tuesday morning session amounted to some little downwind intervals.  I would paddle upwind far enough to have maybe five minutes of downwind to do before I had to paddle upwind again.

I'd forgotten what hard work downwind paddling is.  After a couple of minutes of sprinting hard after runs, I was gasping for breath.  So the "interval" model worked well for me.  Paddling back upwind was my recovery interval: the conditions were small enough that I was able to paddle pretty easy and still make progress up and over the oncoming swells.

I'm plenty fit from all the training I've done this spring, but I realize that I'm not "downwind fit" at this moment, so that's something I hope to work on between now and my arrival out in the Columbia River Gorge less than a month from now.

Yesterday I drove to a public access on the Mississippi Sound side of the island so I could find some quieter water for my coach's workout.  I put in at the east end of the island, near the mouth of Mobile Bay, and I could see more great downwind swells moving up into the mouth from the Gulf.  I put that out of my mind and paddled into the network of canals that serve the residential areas on Dauphin's north side (marked with a red asterisk on the map above).  I did three sets of (four times (2 minutes on/1 minute off) at 60 strokes per minute and four times (1 minute on/2 minutes off) at 80 spm).  Maks told me to bring the power to these pieces: "find the catch early on and do the required leg/hip work."  The workout hadn't seemed all that bad on paper, but it was tough.  By the time I was starting the third set my muscles were throbbing and all I wanted was for it to be over.

Once it was over, I paddled back to where my truck was parked and took a few minutes to rest and drink some water.  I was very tired, but those downwind swells sure looked inviting, so I decided to go back out for a quick run.  I paddled into the wind for about a kilometer, then chased the runs back up toward Mobile Bay.  I worked on the basics, trying to put my "nose in the hole" and keep the boat running downhill for as long as possible.  Once I was back at the parking area, I tore myself away and took out.  I was dead-dog tired and I spent the rest of the day mostly lying around.

This morning it seemed that the wind had abated.  I wondered if maybe the downwind opportunities were over for this trip.  But I'd already made up my mind to find quieter water for another of my coach's assignments, so it was nice not to have that distraction.  I had an errand to run on the mainland a few miles north of the island, so I decided to paddle on the Fowl River near its confluence with Mobile Bay.  I did a fairly easy contrast workout: six sets of (3 min. at 60 spm/2 min. at 48 spm/1 min. at 68 spm/1 min. rest).  It was a chance for me to focus on posture and stroke mechanics.  I thought the Fowl River was a pretty place in spite of the occasional gaudy McMansion that marred its banks.  It reminded me of other streams I've visited along the Gulf Coast, like Old Fort Bayou over at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

By this afternoon the wind seemed to have picked back up a bit, and shifted a little to the southwest.  I decided to carry my boat down to the beach and see what kind of downwind action might be had.  It turned out the conditions were good, though I had a hard time catching and prolonging runs.  I paddled into the wind until I was about 2000 meters offshore, and did several laps back in and back out.  Downwind is hard to do well, but man, it's fun when you succeed.

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Monday photo feature

Behold, the top two female finishers in this past weekend's race on Taylorsville Reservoir in Kentucky!  Elaine Harold of Louisville and Hollie Hall of South Point, Ohio, must find shelf space for their fancy new hardware.  Photo by George Hall.

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