The weight of the world

Aside from a gym session Tuesday afternoon, I took a few days completely off.  I felt like I needed to clear my head a bit.  I didn't get back in the boat until Thursday morning.

One of my big challenges is relaxing my body in the boat.  It's not a new challenge.  I've always been sort of a tightly-wound, spasmodic mess.  But I think it's been more of an issue in recent months, and I think it's at least part of the cause of all the muscle soreness and aches and pains I've been dealing with.

Why can't I relax?  Well, I reckon I'm no more immune to all the things that cause stress than anybody else.  I think my own angst might be rooted in the state of our society where it seems more and more people dislike one another and a global oligarchical cabal that's leveraging that animosity to chip away at democratic institutions, all while the planet careens toward uninhabitability... not to get too specific about it or anything.  Oh, and let's not forget this pandemic that's been thrown in just for yuks.

I was tense again during my 60-minute paddle Thursday morning.  Once I'd re-entered the harbor and was heading back to the dock, I made a conscious effort to settle down with a little drill.  Basically, I just started taking ten strokes at a time while keeping my body as relaxed as I could make it.  After a while I bumped that up to fifteen strokes, then twenty; then I was back at the dock.

I stayed home Friday and did another gym session.  Yesterday morning I did some stretching at home, trying to focus on breathing deeply and keeping my muscles relaxed, and then went to the river and did some more relaxation drills while warming up in the boat.  Then I did three 8-stroke sprints and commenced a hard-but-not-too-hard workout: six 5-minute pieces in which I paddled at medium intensity for 3 minutes, harder intensity for 90 seconds, and sub-maximal intensity for 30 seconds.  I kept the stroke rate below 70 strokes per minute during the medium-intensity parts, between 80 and 90 spm during the harder-intensity parts, and above 100 spm during the sub-maximal-intensity parts.

This morning I paddled a steady 80 minutes, going out of the harbor and up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River before returning to where I'd started.  As I paddled I pondered what I might be doing to cause the muscle soreness in my left shoulder/biceps area.  I doubt there are too many kayakers out there who are truly symmetrical in how they paddle, and I paid close attention to how well I was using my larger muscle groups as I stroked on my left side.

Yes, I'm doing a lot of thinking about all this: my physical struggles, my mental struggles... all of it.  And maybe that itself is part of the problem.  This afternoon I read this article in the Memphis newspaper about Memphis Redbirds shortstop Paul DeJong.  DeJong (pronounced "de-young") broke into the major leagues with the Saint Louis Cardinals in 2017 and was one of the team's rising stars; but in the last two seasons his batting prowess has abandoned him and now he's been sent down to the minors, where he's trying to rediscover the magic.  The last part of the article contains some advice that maybe I should heed:

DeJong was a pre-med student who majored in biochemistry at Illinois State. He’s intelligent. Maybe too intelligent. His mind, and the instinct to overthink, became his worst enemy in recent years.

“They say a lot of dumb guys are good at baseball, and that’s very true because you’re not questioning yourself,” DeJong said. “For me, I think when things go wrong, I go searching for video fixes or mechanical issues, and I think that’s just a trap. It’s having that plan and sticking to it, and then letting my natural ability take over. That’s the biggest thing. Getting out of my own way.” 

So when DeJong joined the Redbirds, [manager Ben] Johnson just told him to have fun. He told him this is what you’re supposed to be doing, even though you’re also supposed to be the Cardinals’ shortstop. He told him to find “joy for the game to start” because only then can DeJong find what he’s searching for in Memphis. 

Can I get out of my own way?  I don't know, but I'll try.

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Monday photo feature

Paddling into the shore break is one of the fun little challenges of ocean kayaking.  That's what I'm doing in this picture at Fish Hoek Beach on the Western Cape of South Africa this past January.  Photo by either John or Tamsin of Cape Town Sport Photography.

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It's a struggle these days

This past week has had its share of ups and downs.  That's definitely been true of the weather, as the week started out rather cool, then the temperature rose into the 90s later in the week, then some heavy thunderstorms moved through last night, and now it's unseasonably cool again.

How I'm feeling physically has been sort of a roller coaster ride as well.  My energy level has been up and down, mostly down; and I continue to have aches and pains in my left shoulder/biceps area and, late in the week, in my wrists and forearms.  Meanwhile, my weight continues to be all down: I've been weighing in at 149-152 pounds, some ten pounds lighter than what experience tells me is ideal for athletic performance.

It's in my head that I feel I've been my own worst enemy lately.  Ideally, an athlete should have a training plan, and execute that plan a day at a time, letting each day's challenges be sufficient for that day without worrying too much about what he "should" be achieving at any given moment.  I've had periods when I've done a good job of that, but lately I've let myself become overwhelmed by the task of preparing myself to perform well in the Pacific Northwest in July without any nearby races to do between now and then.  At times like this I should probably focus on the fun aspects of paddling, but instead I've been anxiously wondering how I can get myself sharp for racing and achieve what I think I "should" achieve.

After a gym session Tuesday morning, I got in the boat and did some 100-meter sprints.  Rather than doing them on flatwater I did them while ferrying across the Mississippi.  I decided to do them that way somewhat on a whim, but I guess it was some good balance and control practice at high intensity.  Certainly, it took longer to cover 100 meters that way: on flatwater a good 100 time for me is between 20 and 30 seconds, whereas some of those "ferrying" 100s took me as long as 45 seconds.

The soreness in my arms was pretty bad during a steady 60-minute paddle Thursday, and I had a hard time relaxing my arms as I paddled.  I was tense and just... not relaxed.

I stayed home and did another gym session on Friday, and yesterday I was back in the boat.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I timed myself over 5 kilometers in the harbor.  My plan was to paddle at a medium-hard pace for 700 meters of each kilometer, and then push harder for the last 300.  Doing the piece from the south end of the harbor to the north end, I had a good tailwind the whole time, so my target numbers were 11.5 kilometers per hour for the 700-meter segments and 12.5 kph for the 300-meter ones.

I knew that this would put me at a little over 5 minutes per kilometer.  I feel like I "should" be able to average 5 minutes per kilometer without any trouble for 5 km, but this season that's proven to be too tall an order.  I was hoping that with the tailwind perhaps I could exceed my expectation, but by the 2-km mark I was hurting pretty bad.  For the last several kilometers I struggled to maintain 11.5 kph during the "easier" segments, and I found myself pushing the stroke rate higher than I wanted to (80 per minute) during the 300-meter "hard" segments.

I ended up with a time of 25:45 for the 5 km, and I felt a bit demoralized that that was the best I could do, even with a tailwind.

I know it's not healthy to obsess over what I think I "should" be doing, and it's making me wonder if I shouldn't just forget racing for a while... or even forever.  I mean, it's not like the sport won't survive and thrive without me.  Then again, I do like having a purpose... the experiences I have traveling to races make it all worthwhile.

Today the handbell group I play with had its last performance before we break for the summer, so it seemed like a good time to forget about paddling and think about some other things for a while.  I hope I can use the next couple of days to refocus on the things I should be concerned with while letting go of the things that I shouldn't.

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Monday photo feature

In July of 2008, my nephew Joel and I did some canoeing on the White River.  That's the town of Calico Rock, Arkansas, on the bluff in the distance.

Joel is ten years old in this photo.  He's now an EMT and a firefighter preparing for the wildfire season out West.

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A 3-minute kilometer

The hot weather relented a bit on Friday.  This weekend the Fahrenheit highs have been in the 80s, with bits of rain here and there.

I did a gym session Friday.  Yesterday morning I was back in the boat looking to up the intensity a bit.  I usually do measured intervals in the harbor, but this time I decided to try something different and do several 1000-meter pieces out on the Mississippi.  Not knowing the exact speed of the river's current (at yesterday's level of 23.5 feet on the Memphis gauge, I'm guessing it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 kilometers per hour), I wasn't sure how fast I could do a kilometer, but I thought I'd see if I could do it in 3 minutes--that's an average speed of 20 kph.

I didn't quite succeed in the first two pieces: I clocked 3:15-3:20 for both.  At times I would go 20.5 kph or faster, but at other times I was slower.  The current on the Mississippi is anything but uniform; there are boils and swirls and little eddies and stuff that can slow the boat down.  For the third piece I managed to maximize the help I got from the river and finished in 3:00 flat.

I started the 1000s at every 6th minute, so my recovery intervals were between 2.5 and 3 minutes.  The workout was as taxing as a 1000-meter workout on flatwater.  If the river was in fact flowing at 8 kph, then I had to generate 12 kph of my own to move at 20 kph.  12 kph on flatwater would get me through a kilometer in 5 minutes, a benchmark I'm always shooting for.  12 kph out on the river is probably more taxing than 12 kph in the harbor because of the extra balance-and-control challenges.

I was very tired in the boat today.  I did a smooth, steady 80 minutes out on the river, and I hope that'll help me recover for the week ahead.

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Feeling the temperature rising

We're getting an early taste of full-on summer here, with the mercury rising above 90 degrees Fahrenheit this week.  I'm not crazy about the hot weather, but I do like it for paddling.  It's nice to wear shorts and short sleeves and have no qualms about getting wet.  It won't be long before I'm taking hose baths on the dock after paddling.

I was feeling lethargic again Tuesday morning as I plodded through my little gym routine, and I worried over my ability to kick it into a higher gear once I was in the boat.  My left deltoid/biceps area bothered me a lot as I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, but eventually these muscles loosened up to the point that they almost didn't bother me at all.

My workout for Tuesday was a set of six 200-meter pieces starting every 5th minute.  In calm conditions my target pace would have been 12 kilometers per hour, but with a tailwind I aimed more for 12.5-13.0 kph.  I think the wind picked up a bit because by the last piece I was exceeding 13.0 kph with no trouble.

I did the whole workout near the mouth of the harbor, doing each piece headed north and then looping back to where I'd started.  There was a barge rig coming upriver as the workout went along, and I kept telling myself that it wasn't a day for wake surfing, but after the fifth piece I gave in to the temptation and paddled out there.  The waves weren't the best I'd seen and no surf lasted long, but I managed to get several good rides before I returned to the harbor.  I did my last 200-meter piece and headed back to the dock.  Having inserted a bit of "play" workout into my "work" workout, I was feeling pretty good.

As I returned to the dock this morning, we were well on our way to another hot day: it was over 80 degrees when I got in the boat just after 9:30.  But out on the river there was a lovely layer of cool, misty air that I usually associate with a mountain stream like the Nantahala.

I'd hoped maybe I could do some more wake surfing today, but there was no barge traffic in sight when I left the harbor.  I did a strong loop out on the river instead.  As I returned to the harbor I saw a barge rig approaching the old bridges downriver, but by that time I felt that I'd done enough.  Maybe I'll get to have some fun with that this weekend.

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Monday photo feature

Today the Mississippi River is flowing at about 18.4 feet on the Memphis gauge.  Recent storms in the Tennessee, Cumberland, Ohio, and Missouri watersheds have fueled a rise toward a high around 25 feet.  That's a pretty good healthy level.

Eleven years ago, the river crested at 48.03 feet on the gauge.  Given that the river spreads out onto a vast floodplain, the actual volume of water at that time, in cubic feet per second or whatever other unit you like to use, was probably many times what it is at 25 feet.

In this photo we see the intersection of Beale Street and Riverside Drive in downtown Memphis.  Riverside Drive, which runs parallel to the river, is high enough that it practically never floods, but this low-lying section of it got submerged in May of 2011.

 

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Stuck in a rut

I haven't mentioned it lately, but I'm still feeling a lot of soreness in my left deltoid/bicep area.  I think it's flared up a bit in the last week or so.  I've also just wrapped up a rather intense project in my woodworking shop that contributed some soreness and achiness to the muscles in both my arms.

That, along with some feelings of sluggishness I've had the last few days, and some cool breezy weather here in the Mid South, has had an impact on my motivation.  It hasn't stopped me from getting out there and going through the motions, but I haven't been excited about it lately.

On Friday I stayed home and did a gym session.  I dragged myself to the river Saturday morning, and after warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did a workout that's a variation on the 30-second sprint workout I've done a lot in recent years.  I did ten 100-meter sprints starting every 4th minute; my goal was to move at over 12 kilometers per hour, but the way the wind was swirling around I either had no trouble exceeding that or really had to fight to achieve it.  In the end it felt good just to lay down some hard efforts, and I was proud of myself for doing it despite my lack of enthusiasm.

Adam was out of town and couldn't join me yesterday, so I was on my own for a longer paddle.  I left the harbor and paddled up the Mississippi, ferried across above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and paddled up into the Loosahatchie Chute before heading back.  My elapsed time was 100 minutes, and it was a decent outing even though I still wasn't feeling much giddy-up.

My next big race is still two months off and there's still plenty of time to get myself ready.  But I wish I could find something to get excited about in the nearer term.

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Pacing out my expectations

Tuesday morning I got in the boat and warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did sort of a variation on the tempo workout I'd done the previous Tuesday.  I did five 1000-meter pieces, starting every 8th minute, and tried to maintain 11.5 kilometers per hour while keeping the stroke rate below 80 strokes per minute and preferably in the low 70s.  I chose 11.5 kph as my target rate because I thought I'd have the wind at my back, but in fact the wind seemed to be swirling around from all directions, so at times I was moving more like 11.0 kph.

Past performances suggest that I really ought to be able to maintain 5 minutes per kilometer in a 5- or 10-kilometer race.  That's an average speed of 12.0 kph.  But wishing something doesn't make it so, and back in February I learned that it was counterproductive to set goals for pace workouts based on what I wish I could do rather than on what I can actually do.  So I'm dialing back the expectations a bit for these pace workouts, hoping that they'll be good solid aerobic sessions and that I can elevate my speed capabilities in shorter, faster workouts.

Actually, with a big downwind race coming up in July, the focus on pace will probably give way to an emphasis on speed and power sooner rather than later.  But at the moment I'm still working on general fitness and saving the more specific stuff for later.

This morning I went out and paddled a steady loop on the Mississippi for 60 minutes.  Some heavy rain was on the way, but it didn't arrive until the afternoon.  After dropping for a couple of weeks, the river is about to start rising again as a result of storms that have moved across the watershed upstream.  The current forecast says it'll get up to 24.6 feet on the Memphis gauge, and I expect that'll be revised upward once this rain we're having here now moves on across the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Ohio basins.

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Monday photo feature

Adam Davis shot this photo as we paddled downriver back toward the harbor yesterday.  You can see me just to the left of the left-most bridge piling.

The stats shown here are Adam's.  Since I put in about a half-mile farther north in the harbor, I covered about a mile more, and my elapsed time came to about 125 minutes.

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Carping on it all

Yesterday morning was warm and a strong wind was blowing from the south.  I paddled out of the harbor onto the Mississippi, where I found some low-grade downwind conditions.  It was mostly like a washing machine out there, but there were definitely some small runs hidden in the chaos and I had fun trying to catch them.  I wasn't exactly styling it out there, but it felt good to throw in some sprints after a whole month of nothing but steady paddling.

An isolated thunderstorm came through town last night, and this morning the sun was back out and conditions were calm and still quite warm.  I went back down to the river, where I had some company: Adam Davis met me for a couple of hours of paddling.  We went up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, and then up the Wolf to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge before turning around and coming back.  We talked about all the stuff we've been up to since we'd last seen each other, but we also got in a good solid aerobic session.  We're hoping to meet again on weekends for the next little while.

The most exciting moment this morning occurred as we were paddling upriver just above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge: a big fish (probably an Asian carp) jumped up and hit me in my right side, causing me to flip.  I've had my share of encounters with those invasive fish, but this was the first time I'd ever been flipped by one.  Actually, a few years went by when I hardly saw any Asian carp, but their abundance seems to be ticking back upward these days, and today they were very active near the bank.  Fortunately, I don't think one of those carp is capable of inflicting the kind of harm on me that that seal almost did back in January.

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Getting slightly more serious (baby steps)

I'm starting to grind the gears back into motion in preparation for summertime racing.  On Tuesday I started up a new gym routine--some arm exercises with rubber bands and some core exercises.  Then I went down to the river and did a simple tempo workout.  I warmed up for 3 kilometers, paddled a strong tempo for 4 km, and cooled down for 3 km.  My target pace for the tempo piece was 11 kilometers per hour; paddling with a tailwind, I had no problem maintaining between 11.5 and 12.0 kph.

Tuesday's weather was cool but bright and sunny.  Since then the Fahrenheit temperature has risen toward the low 80s, and it's gradually gotten a bit cloudier.  It was still very sunny yesterday when I went to the river and did a steady 60-minute paddle.

This morning I did another gym session.  It's supposed to be partly cloudy and warm this weekend and I hope that'll be the backdrop for some good paddling.

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Monday photo feature

It looks like a pretty nasty rash, but it's just a few superficial burns.  On Friday evening I was cooking a swordfish steak in sesame oil in an iron skillet, and I didn't have a shirt on, and when I flipped the steak some hot oil splashed across my torso.  I guess I need to go out and buy an apron.

It actually didn't hurt as much as one might think.  It stung at first, and then sort of smarted for the rest of the evening.  By the next morning I couldn't feel a thing, and with a shirt on all day I forgot all about it.  I noticed how bad the marks looked when I took a shower in the evening.

By yesterday morning the spots had started to blister.  They still didn't really hurt, but at one point when I was scratching an itch I ripped the skin off one of the blisters and that hurt a lot.

Oh well... I guess they'll heal when they heal.  I figured my readers would want to know all about it since my general health is pertinent to my athletic endeavors.

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Keeping it going even though my mind is elsewhere

I've been busy with all kinds of stuff this past week, but I've managed to maintain a general fitness routine.  I paddled for an hour both Tuesday and Friday, just steady sessions in which I tried to take good strokes and not get distracted enough for my form to get sloppy.  While I do keep an eye on speed, I try not to get bent out of shape if I don't go that fast.  All kinds of things out there in nature can slow a boat down.

I did bike rides Thursday and yesterday.  I'm trying to heed the advice that the Mocke brothers offer in their instructional video series--that cross-training activities should feel like a break from training, not training workouts themselves, even though they do have training value.

This morning I did another loop around the Loosahatchie Bar.  With the Mississippi flowing at 22.7 feet on the Memphis gauge, the course measured 19.76 kilometers and I covered it in one hour, 58 minutes, 10 seconds.  I think the fastest I've ever done this course is around an hour 50 minutes, or maybe even a little under that, but once again, I try not to get too obsessed with my time; anything under two hours is a strong effort.  The water at the north end of the Bar was shallow and that slowed me down a little.

In another week or so it'll be time to intensify the training a little, now that my next big race (the Gorge downwind race in the Pacific Northwest) is less than three months off.

The weather has been quite warm for the last few days: the temperature has exceeded 80 degrees Fahrenheit each day since Thursday.  But summer's not here yet.  I think we're supposed to get some rain tomorrow, followed by some highs in the 60s for a couple of days.

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Monday photo feature

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, my film "A Paddler's Journey" is available for viewing for ONE WEEK ONLY!  You can go watch it here.

For this latest cut of the film, I cheated in several shots from my trip to South Africa this past January.  Pictured above is a screen shot from some footage that Dawid Mocke shot on his Go Pro camera.  I'm a little blurred by a drop of water on the lens, but that Roman Rock Lighthouse looks majestic as always.

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Late spring doldrums

This past weekend brought us another stretch of cool, rainy weather that makes me wonder if those warm, sunny, carefree days will ever arrive.

Saturday morning I got to the river and realized I was slightly underdressed.  The temperature was above 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but a north-northwest breeze made things chilly.  Once I was in the boat paddling I felt okay, but not cozy.  I paddled for 100 minutes, venturing up into the Loosahatchie Chute before heading back.  A few raindrops fell on me as I approached the entrance to the harbor.

Yesterday the temperature stayed below 60 with periods of rain.  I stayed in and worked in the shop most of the day.  In the late afternoon I decided to drag myself outside for a bike ride.  I normally prefer to get my athletic stuff done in the morning so I can wind down at the end of the day, but once I was on the bike I found a groove and had a great ride.  I covered 34.5 kilometers in 95 minutes, traveling out the Greenline to Shelby Farms and doing a loop around Patriot Lake before coming back home.  I felt better after the ride than I'd felt all day, and after a good supper and some reading I promptly fell asleep.

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NOW PLAYING! ONE WEEK ONLY!

If you haven't managed to catch my film "A Paddler's Journey" yet, you now have another chance: I've got it posted on Vimeo for one week.  The run will end next Sunday morning.  You can go watch it here.

This is my leanest, meanest cut of the film yet: it comes in at a svelte one hour 45 minutes, nine minutes shorter than the cut I submitted to the festival.  So even if you've seen the film, it's worth checking out again to see what you think.

The film won the Viewers' Choice award at the festival.  If you're one of the people who helped it do so, thank you so much!  And if you haven't seen it yet, go see if you agree with the people who voted for it!

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Wind and water

As I paddled away from the dock Tuesday morning I found myself paddling into a stronger-than-usual south wind.  I felt sure it had to be over 20 knots.  Approaching the mouth of the harbor, I was curious to see what conditions I might find out on the Mississippi.  What I found was some sure-enough downwind.  It wasn't the Miller's Run or anything, but there were definitely some organized swells out there.

Unfortunately, downwind conditions are so rare around here that I'm usually not prepared when they do happen.  On Tuesday I was dressed for the air temperature (72 degrees Fahrenheit and rising) rather than the water temperature (no more than 50 degrees).  I was paddling the least-stable ski I own with a small rudder.  I had no leash.  So I was sort of timid as I attempted to get something going out on the river.  I flailed around out there for maybe a half-hour before heading back in.

This week I've got a lot going on in my non-athletic life, and I'm just trying to maintain a modicum of general fitness until I start ramping the training back up a couple of weeks from now.  My current project in the workshop includes a lot of strenuous labor-- not exactly organized training, but if nothing else I'm burning calories and falling asleep quickly at night.

I worked hard in the shop all day yesterday.  Late in the day a storm front moved through that brought us a huge amount of rain.  As of this writing I haven't seen the total, but my guess is that it was more than three inches.  The storms moved on across the Tennessee and Cumberland and Ohio watersheds, and as a result the Mississippi is expected to rise from yesterday's level of 17.5 feet on the Memphis gauge to 24.7 feet by next Wednesday.

This morning I did a bike ride.  I decided to head out east on the Greenline because I was curious to see what the Wolf River looked like after all that rain.  The Wolf is normally a sleepy little stream that you can't hear flowing, but as I crossed the bridge over it today I heard that ever-so-soothing sound of rushing water.

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Monday photo feature

Once in a while somebody asks me "Why would you want to paddle on that polluted river?"  I think that's the wrong question.  The one I want to hear people asking is "Why have we decided it's acceptable for our river to be polluted?"

The lower Mississippi certainly has its share of pollutants, the majority being of the agricultural variety--fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, stuff like that.  The cities and towns in its watershed discharge treated sewage, and of course "treated" can be an elastic term that depends on everything from weather conditions to mechanical problems to administrative and political issues.  Then again, the lower Mississippi River is not the fetid open sewer that some people seem to think it is.  It's supposed to be muddy: it's carrying the sediment of two-thirds of the continent, continental erosion being part of the never-ending geologic cycle.

The pollutant that's the least possible to ignore is the floating litter.  The photo above popped up as a Face Book "memory" yesterday.  The cartoon ran in our local paper seven years ago, and it reminded me of one of the more mendacious lines I hear tossed about by our gutless city leaders in both the public and private sectors: "We have no control over litter that comes to us from those cities up north."

Having spent thousands of hours paddling my boat on the Memphis riverfront, and I am quite sure that over 95% of the litter in the water originates in the greater Memphis area.  Go down to the river after a heavy thunderstorm and you'll see trash flowing from the Wolf River, the Loosahatchie River, Nonconnah Creek, and Bayou Gayoso--watersheds that cover all of Shelby County, most of Fayette County, and portions of DeSoto, Marshall, and Benton Counties.

Shortly after the Riverfront Development Corporation, the quasi-governmental organization that manages public properties along the riverfront, completed its signature project, the Beale Street Landing docking facility for the riverboat tourism industry, a local newspaper columnist called attention to the mass of litter that had collected in the area of water between the dock and the riverbank, deeming it a civic embarrassment that resembled a miniature version of the great "island of plastic" that's floating in the Pacific Ocean.

The R.D.C. knew it had to respond.  Did it do so by seeking an effective solution to the riverfront litter problem?  Oh, heavens no.  It placed floating booms at each end of that gap between the dock and the bank, assuring that the litter would just float someplace else.  Problem solved.  Hey, it was the Riverfront Development Corporation--their job was to build stuff, not care about the health of the river itself.  (The R.D.C. has since been re-branded as the Memphis River Parks Partnership, or M.R.P.P., or, as I like to call it, Mr. P.P.)

Of course, it's easy to point fingers at the people in charge, but the biggest finger needs to be pointed at us. Me, you, and every other ordinary citizen.  What are we doing to stop litter from escaping into the environment in the first place?

Speaking for nobody but myself, I try to keep my household and workshop garbage contained and pick up as much litter as I can around my neighborhood (I could write many, many paragraphs on nothing but that).  But there are further steps than that: I know I need to look hard at what I consume.  I practically never drink sodas anymore, so I don't consume many of those plastic bottles, and it's good for my health to boot.  I do not buy bottled water; why on Earth would I, when my city happens to have one of the best drinking water sources in the world?  Even if that weren't the case, bottled water is often no better than the local tap water.  (Yes, I know there are exceptions here and there.)  I take my own tote bags to the grocery store so I don't consume the plastic bags they're so eager to give me.

Those are just a few suggestions and I'm under no delusion that I'm superior to anybody else.  There are always areas where I could do better.

And... I'm not sure where to take this rant from here.  I know it's not what my readers expect from a simple Monday photo feature.  I guess I'll wrap it up with this: have some faith that our government institutions can address the problem, demand that they do address the problem, and conduct yourself in a way that doesn't make it any more difficult than it already is for them to do so.

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Blowing in the wind

On Tuesday I paddled for 60 minutes.  The session was utterly unstructured; just a chance to get out and use my muscles for a while.

I spent the rest of the week out of the boat.  Part of the reason was a lot of work to do at home; part of the reason was a lot of not particularly inviting weather; and part of the reason was the desire to take some time off.  The time to fire up the training again will come soon enough, and in the meantime I never seem to lack other things to do.

I did get out on a bike ride Thursday afternoon.  I rode for an hour, covering a little over 20 kilometers.

This is the time of year when I've had it with winter, but the weather isn't quite ready to give me what I want.  Since Thursday the annoyance has been primarily the wind.  Friday was the worst day, when the temperature stayed below 60 degrees Fahrenheit, the skies were overcast, and the wind screamed outside all day long.  No, these conditions are not exactly Arctic, but right now anything shy of blissful sunshine and warmth is unacceptable to me.  I barely even ventured outside Friday, mostly just hunkering down in the shop.

Yesterday was quite a bit nicer: the sun came out and the temperature rose into the 60s.  But the wind persisted.  I got myself out for another bike ride.  I rode downtown and across the river to the Arkansas side, where I did a nice loop on the Big River Trail.  All told I covered between 35 and 40 kilometers.

The wind continued today, this time from the south, and that has brought some warmer temperatures.  I'm still trying to get in a longer paddle each week, and with the river getting a bit too low for paddling around the Loosahatchie Bar (it was 17.1 feet on the Memphis gauge this morning), I decided to paddle up the Mississippi and up the Wolf River to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge and back.I could feel the south wind picking up as I paddled upriver, and I was afraid it would be a monster to paddle against on the trip back down, but it wasn't so bad.  I just relaxed and let the current carry me.  My distanced covered was 19.69 kilometers, and I completed it in two hours.  When I paddled around the Bar last Sunday I covered 20.09 km and did it several minutes faster than two hours.  The difference maker, I'm guessing, is that today's paddle included more flatwater.

The forecast calls for more windy days with some storms this coming week.  Not unusual for this time of year.  Soon enough we'll be having those tranquil hot days that Mid South summers are known for, and I'll be yearning for some cooler, breezier days.

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Monday photo feature

Yesterday I paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar for the third time this year.  Maybe this is a good time to remind readers what this route looks like.  The image above was generated by Adam Davis's G.P.S. device when Adam and I paddled around the Bar a couple of years ago.

The Loosahatchie Bar is the big island in the Mississippi River.  Paddling around the Bar involves leaving the harbor, paddling upriver along the Tennessee bank for a while, ferrying across the main shipping channel, rounding the north end of the Bar, coming down the channel on the west side (the Loosahatchie Chute), and then returning to the harbor.  The numbers on this picture are mile markers: Adam started and finished at the big red marker next to the word "Memphis," so he traveled about 10.5 miles in all.  I started and finished at the marina where I keep my boat: it looks like a little "equals" sign below where it says "Harbor Town."  The marina is about a mile up the harbor from where Adam put in and took out, and so my total distance was about 12.5 miles.

Paddling around the Bar is a good distance session, and it's a beefy one, too.  You've got a five-mile upstream climb with a hard ferry across the main channel thrown in.  And more often than not this time of year you've got a south wind to deal with on the paddle back down.  Things can get particularly turbulent between the south end of the Bar and the entrance to the harbor.

My favorite stretch of this paddle is the Loosahatchie Chute.  Between the 5-mile and 7-mile marks, all signs of civilization are out of view and you feel like you're in a remote wilderness even though downtown Memphis isn't far away.

I mostly do this paddle in the spring, and that's because you need a certain amount of water.  Many tons of sand have been deposited in the Loosahatchie Chute, and if the level isn't at least 16 or 17 feet on the Memphis gauge, it's hard to find a navigable channel of water through there.  As I mentioned yesterday, I encountered some shallow water at the north end of the Bar with a level of 19.8 feet.  The course is at its best in the mid 20s and higher.

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Cooling the agenda back down for a while

I was out of the boat all week until Friday.  I had an overabundance of nuisance matters to deal with, and trips to the river moved to the back burner for a while.

I was sort of ready for a break anyway.  The fact is that I'd been working pretty hard since late November.  First there was the effort to be fit for my trip to South Africa, and then there was the training block I did for the race at Ocean Springs last weekend.

And there's just not much in the way of racing events anytime soon--not within a reasonable drive of Memphis, anyway.  Sadly, many events that used to be staples of my schedule have faded away: the Outdoors race here at Memphis, the race on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, even the Little Rock race. These days there seem to be no events within five hours of here.  It's a six-hour drive down to Ocean Springs, and I just don't have the energy or desire to do that too many times in a year.  The current high price of gasoline doesn't help.

So I'm sort of hitting the reset button.  After a few days off from athletic stuff I'm settling back into some base training for a while.  On Friday I did just an easy 40-minute paddle.  Wanting to incorporate some more bike riding into the mix, yesterday I rode about 24 kilometers (15 miles) out the Greater Memphis Greenline and back.

This morning the weather was cool but lovely, and I decided to paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar.  I think my stamina is definitely up these days--I felt really good during the entire upriver leg, and didn't start feeling some fatigue until I was leaving the Loosahatchie Chute and heading back toward the harbor.  A good bit of the sandy northern end of the Bar was exposed at this morning's level of 19.8 feet on the Memphis gauge, so my course was about 400 meters longer than it was when I paddled around the Bar back on March 6 when the level was 30.3 feet.  My total distance today was 20.09 km (12.5 mi.), and I completed it in one hour, 56 minutes, 50 seconds.

I've been tired the rest of the day, but it's generally a good tired.  I'm looking forward to some fun relaxed activity for the next little while.

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Monday photo feature

At the Ocean Springs race on Saturday, the overall winner of each boat class was awarded a First-World-War-style combat helmet.  Just how authentic these helmets are is a thing of which I'm not entirely certain: they're made of plastic, and I'm pretty sure plastics weren't developed until the Second World War.  I think I'd want to be wearing something sturdier in an attack of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades and stuff like that.

But it was nice to be recognized just the same.  From left to right, the overall class winners are Laurence Cohen of New Orleans, Louisiana (single canoe); Tave Lamperez of New Iberia, Louisiana, and Joey Sturm of Youngsville, Louisiana (double canoe); Tristan Gregory of Gulf Breeze, Florida (standup paddleboard); yours truly (single kayak); and Savanna Wright and Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas (double kayak).  Photo by Mike Pornovets.

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Post-race adventures

The weather on the Gulf Coast was gorgeous, and I savored it after the race on Saturday.  Once the awards had been handed out, I went back to Nick's house and spent a leisurely afternoon.  When suppertime rolled around, I joined Nick and his girlfriend Kelly at a surf-and-turf joint in downtown Ocean Springs, where I had a big fried fish po-boy sandwich accompanied by a generous helping of french fries.

Later on I woke up in the middle of the night feeling rather queasy from all that fried food.  By yesterday morning I felt slightly better, but not completely in the pink.  I had a slow breakfast and let my bodily processes do their thing.

By eight thirty I felt ready to get out for some easy paddling.  On advice from Nick and Kelly, I drove over to Biloxi and put in from the public boat ramp next to the Schooner Pier Complex.  It was another beautiful day, and I decided to do a lap of Deer Island.  I wasn't sure exactly how long it would take, but I hoped I could do it in 70-90 minutes.

I wasn't terribly sore from Saturday's race, but there was definitely some stiffness in my midsection.  I tried to keep the stroke rate low and just relax and let the blood flow.  I rounded the western end of Deer Island and headed out into Mississippi Sound.  Not being a local I didn't have the clearest idea of just how big Deer Island is, but for quite a while its eastern end was nowhere in sight.  I had no particular objection to doing a long paddle other than my desire to get on the road and be home by a reasonable hour.  On and on I went, and when the end of the island finally came into view it was clear that I'd be on the water more than an hour and a half.  I rounded the point and saw my destination a good three or four miles in the distance.  I tried to stay relaxed and let the boat get there when it got there.  Finally it did get there, about 110 minutes after I'd started.  I'd be getting home a little bit later than I would have liked, but... that's okay.  Now I can tell people I've paddled around Deer Island, and that's always fun.  I didn't have my G.P.S. device turned on, so I don't know what distance I paddled yesterday, but I think I remember Nick saying it's around ten miles.

It was a warm day on the coast, but in Memphis yesterday's high was barely 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  Even as far north as Jackson the temperature was in the mid 80s, but I watched it gradually drop on my dashboard display as I continued north from there.  It was 60 degrees in DeSoto County just south of Memphis.

Anyway... it's good to be home.  What's next for me?  In terms of racing, I'm not sure.  The next race I know I'm doing is the Gorge Downwind Championships out in the Pacific Northwest, but that's not until mid July.  Right now, events within a reasonable drive of Memphis are looking scarce.  I expect I'll be settling back into some base training for a while before I ramp up the intensity again.

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A March tradition: racing in Ocean Springs

For the twelfth time in the last 13 years, racers got in their boats and assembled in the cove near the Gulf Hills Hotel this morning for the Battle On The Bayou canoe and kayak race at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  I was pretty sure my most formidable competition would come from a pair of familiar faces in a tandem kayak.  Mike Herbert and his daughter Savanna, residents of Rogers, Arkansas, have been racing tandem for five or six seasons now, and have improved steadily.  I knew beating them would be a tall order, and as we lined up to start my plan was simply to get on their stern wake and see how long I could stay there.

A few seconds after the start I had my answer: not at all.  Mike and Savanna rocketed into the lead and had a couple of boatlengths on me before I could even sidle into position behind them.  As we turned left up into Old Fort Bayou they were steadily pulling away.

I resigned myself to a lonely morning on the race course--if I could hold off my nearest challengers, that is.  In the corner of my eye I could see the bow of a tandem surfski, and I figured it was probably the father-son team of Jeb and Thaison Berry of Gulfport, Mississippi.

I settled in and tried to keep the stroke rate at or below 80 strokes per minute.  Most of the time I was moving along at 12 kilometers per hour, and was pleasantly surprised considering the tough time I'd had in workouts maintaining that speed in pieces of 500 and 1000 meters.  The race had started at low tide, however, and I wondered how much help I was getting from rising water flowing up into the bayou.

We would be paddling up the bayou some six and a half kilometers before rounding an island and heading back down to finish where we'd started.  Up near the island there's an area where the bayou becomes braided and it's easy to make a wrong turn if you're not intimately familiar with the place.  By now Mike and Savanna were just barely in view up ahead, and I saw them follow a chute to the left.  As I got closer I realized that this looked like a place where I'd almost made a wrong turn myself in last year's race.  The only thing that saved me from that gaffe was the presence of local paddlers Jeb Berry and Nick Kinderman right behind me.

This time there were no locals nearby to set us straight, and I followed Mike and Savanna's route with no small amount of concern that we might be going the wrong way.  I rounded a tight bend to the right and discovered that I was right to be concerned: the Herberts were paddling back toward me.

Disconsolately we retraced our steps to get back on the right course.  By this time at least a half-dozen boats, mostly tandems, had caught up to us.  Mike and Savanna wasted no time sprinting back into the lead, but I found myself stuck back in seventh or eighth place, fighting to make my boat move through water churned up by no fewer than 20 paddle blades.  I was overcome with waves of anguish that my race had been ruined.

A short time later we reached the turnaround island, and I told myself to relax as we followed the narrow, shallow channel to the right of it.  There was plenty of race left to work my way past all these boats, though I wondered whether I would be able to reel in the Berrys, who were now in second place a good eight boatlengths ahead.

The channel was wider on the other side of the island where we headed back toward the start.  I found some clean water and started to move past all the many boats.  Before I knew it I was in third place and not so far behind the Berrys.  I noticed that my speed had dropped down below 11 kph, confirming my suspicion that some tidal current was at work.

I threw in a couple of surges and managed to bridge up to Jeb and Thaison.  I resolved to hang with them and conserve energy, gathering myself for what I hoped would be a strong finish in the closing kilometers. By this time the Herberts were nowhere to be seen.

We moved along patiently with me leading some and the Berrys leading some until the Washington Avenue drawbridge was in view.  The bridge is almost exactly 2000 meters from the finish.  I didn't want the race to come down to a sprint between our two boats: in that situation all bets are off with a powerful athlete like Jeb in the mix.  I decided to start pushing the pace once we were past the bridge.  But then I got a little gift: a fishing boat came zooming past to our left, sending steep waves our way.  As we dealt with the turbulent conditions I realized that Jeb and Thaison were no longer on my wake, and I knew I had to press the advantage.  I began to surge and I opened a gap.  I could still see the tandem over my right shoulder and I knew I had to keep the power on.  Memories of those painful 1000-meter pieces a few weeks ago took over my mind.  I willed myself to keep pushing a little longer as 900 meters became 800 meters and 800 meters became 700 meters.  Once I'd turned back into the cove where the finish line lay, I pushed the intensity even a little higher, the finish buoys sitting there taunting me as my thigh muscles began to throb.  Stealing a couple of glances over my shoulder, I realized that I'd widened the gap on Jeb and Thaison and with fifty meters left I let up ever so slightly to the finish.

Mike and Savanna had taken the overall title convincingly with a time of one hour, 15 minutes flat, more than four and a half minutes ahead of yours truly.  My time was 1:19:41, and the Berrys clocked 1:20:20.

Salli O'Donnell of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, was the fastest solo female finisher.  Her time of 1:22:01 was good enough for fifth place overall.  The complete results are posted here.

My G.P.S. device measured the distance at about 14.3 kilometers.  If the advertised course length of 8.5 miles (13.7 km) is accurate, then I added some 600 meters to my race with my wrong turn.  Mike and Savanna probably added an entire kilometer.  Fortunately, the final finish order was about what it would have been anyway, I think.

I'm generally pleased with how my body held up, and with the grit I showed in the last few hundred meters.  I wasn't thrilled about the spanking that Mike and Savanna laid on me, but the truth is that they're getting better and better, especially young Savanna.  Whether I'm back in vintage form is hard to say, seeing as how I didn't have much direct competition with other solo paddlers today.  One thing I know is that great racing form isn't something you can just wish yourself into; a variety of mental and physiological factors have to fall into place.  The best thing I can do is be happy with how I did today, and keep paddling and having fun with it.

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Time to do some racing again

Winter is trying its best to hang around.  The middle portion of this week was chilly and wet.  It poured down rain for much of Tuesday, so I stayed in and only did a gym session.

By Wednesday morning the rain had moved out, but it was overcast and blustery.  As I headed down to the river I was glad that this week's sessions in the boat aren't long--just 40 minutes or so.  I warmed up and did eight 12-stroke sprints at maximum intensity, starting every other minute.  I tried to start each sprint from rest so I could get some start practice, but it was hard to get the boat completely stopped the way the wind was blowing.

It stayed cool all day Thursday and into this morning.  I packed up my gear and prepared to head south.  Often when I travel down through Mississippi I stop at a river or reservoir and do a light pre-race paddle there; for a guy who paddles so exclusively on the Memphis riverfront, it's a nice change of pace.  But today I wanted to get that out of the way early rather than interrupt the drive.  I went downtown and paddled for 30 minutes in the harbor, doing six 12-stroke sprints.

I had some business to take care of in the town of Sumner, Mississippi, and from downtown Memphis it was easy to get on that old 61 Highway, a slightly more direct route to Sumner than Interstate 55.  Once I'd completed that errand I got on down to Ocean Springs as fast as I could.  It's about 10 degrees warmer down here on the Gulf Coast than it is in Memphis right now.

My friend Nick Kinderman and I had supper at an Italian restaurant and then retired to his house.  The race starts at 9 AM, so we'll be up bright and early tomorrow.  I've had a mostly-good several months of training, so we'll see how my body and brain respond.

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Monday photo feature

The year is 2010, and it's the first Battle On The Bayou canoe and kayak Race on Old Fort Bayou at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  I'm racing alongside the team of Keith Benoist and Melissa Morrison of Natchez, Mississippi, as we approach the Washington Avenue drawbridge about two kilometers in.

The pandemic forced the cancelation of the event in 2020, but it's otherwise occurred every year since 2010, and I've made it down there every time.  Driving down to the Gulf Coast just feels like the thing to do at this time each year.  I intend to be back there for the 2022 edition this Saturday.

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An ache here, a pain there, and a race in a week

I did a gym session Friday morning.  My left deltoid is still quite sore and I have no idea where the strain came from.  I doesn't really interfere with paddling, but it's an unpleasant thing to walk around with.

Meanwhile, it's been a few years now since I suffered from plantar fasciitis in my right foot.  I think it was around 2018 that I went through a treatment protocol at my chiropractor's office that cleared it up very nicely.  But in the last day or so I've had a hint of pain down there again.  I sure hope I'm not headed for another ordeal like that.

Yesterday morning wasn't too cold--it was around 50 degrees Fahrenheit--but it was mostly cloudy and breezy when I got down to the river.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did a set of twelve 30-second sprints starting every 3rd minute.  It took me a while to get fully warmed up to the task, and the first few sprints felt hard.  But I started finding a groove by the sixth or seventh one, and liked how I was moving the boat a week before my next race.

The sun came out while I was on the water and by yesterday afternoon the weather was quite nice.  This morning it was bright and sunny and warming up toward a high in the mid 70s.  It felt good to get back in the boat and paddle steady and calm, and smooth everything back out after yesterday's sprints.  This coming week I plan to do a few short sprints but otherwise get plenty of rest.

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The hardest race prep is over for now

My first North American race of the year is fast approaching: it's a week from this Saturday at Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  Several weeks ago, when I hit a low point in my energy level and quality of training, I questioned whether I should stick with my plan to go; but I've been feeling much better since then and I think I will.

On Tuesday I did a gym session and then headed down to the river for my last hard pace workout before the race.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I commenced with twelve 250-meter pieces, starting every 4th minute.  My target pace was a little over 12 kilometers per hour (7.5 miles per hour), and I tried to keep the stroke rate under 90 strokes per minute.  The wind was uncharacteristically calm for this time of year, meaning I could get some reliable data from my G.P.S. device.  The workout was tough but never seemed insurmountable.  I had a nice endorphin high going by the time I was back on the dock.

We had a rainy afternoon on Tuesday, but the sun started coming out yesterday, and today was mostly sunny with a Fahrenheit high in the 70s.  I was very happy to go down to the river and paddle a relaxing 60 minutes during which I just enjoyed the nice day and got some blood flowing through my muscles.

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Monday photo feature

I took this picture of my boat on a snowy dock in December of 2012.  The scene was quite similar this past weekend.  The snow fell Friday night and I stayed in on Saturday, and then when I paddled yesterday there was about this amount of snow still on the dock.

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Another winter blast (I hope it's the last)

It was lovely outside Friday morning: sunny skies with a temperature around 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  But the weather was expected to make an abrupt turn for the worse from lunchtime on, so I wasted no time doing a gym session and getting myself down to the river.  The north wind was already picking up by the time I was on the water.  I warmed up paddling to the north end of the harbor, doing a set of three 8-stroke sprints along the way, and then commenced my workout: ten 30-second sprints starting every third minute.  I was straining a bit in the last several reps but I otherwise held up well.

The sky had clouded over by the time I returned to the dock, and the temperature was dropping.  That continued through the afternoon, and in the early evening the precipitation began.  I'd been expecting mostly rain that would turn into some kind of frozen mess once the temperature dropped below freezing, but instead it was a sure-enough blanket of snow.

I knew the snow wouldn't be sticking around long: yesterday was bright and sunny and a little above freezing, and today's forecast called for a temperature well over 50 degrees.  But I was glad just the same to stick around home and busy myself with indoor activities yesterday.  I patted myself on the back for getting my paddling in on Friday.

It was still below 40 degrees when I got in the boat this morning, but with the sun shining I knew the temperature would rise fast.  What I didn't expect was just how windy it would be: it was blowing hard out of the south.  My original plan was to paddle up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, and continue up the Wolf to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge before coming back.  But out on the Mississippi the conditions were choppy and confused, and I found myself getting much wetter than I care to be on a chilly morning.  About halfway up the Greenbelt Park I decided to turn around and do the rest of the session in the harbor.  Back in the harbor boredom became my main nemesis.  At least I had the wind at my back from the mouth to the north end, and I tried to keep my speed over 10 kilometers per hour while taking less than 70 strokes per minute.  Once I reached the north end and turned back south it became a slog into the wind, and I just tried to keep my stroke rate the same.  I labored on until I'd been in the boat for two hours, and called it a morning.

By this time it had warmed up over 50 degrees, but the wind chill was acute as I changed into dry clothes. I felt just as worn out as I do when I paddle to Danny Thomas and back or around the Loosahatchie Bar.  I was chilled to the core and would spend the rest of the day warming back up.

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Internal chemistry seems okay

I've received my lab results from the doctor's office and it appears that my testosterone, thyroid, and P.S.A. (prostate specific antigen) levels are normal.  That's good news, of course, but I remain puzzled as to why I've had less giddy-up in the boat in the last year or so.  Maybe the training I did under Maks last year just wasn't right for me.  Or maybe I'm just getting old and slowing down.

I will note that for the last week I've been feeling a bit better.  I felt strong while paddling last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  And Tuesday I had my most encouraging workout in quite a while.  I did eight 500-meter pieces, starting every 6th minute, with a target pace of 12.0 kilometers per hour (about 7.5 miles per hour).  While I may have been biting off too much with those 1000-meter pieces I did several weeks in a row last month, Tuesday's workout was good and taxing but I never doubted that I would finish out the session as strong as I'd begun it.

I also did a gym session Tuesday morning.  I skipped the pull-ups again because my left deltoid is still sore.  I don't know what I might have done to make it that way.

This morning I paddled steady for 60 minutes.  The weather was beautiful, but that won't last: Saturday is supposed to be bitter cold.  I may move Saturday's paddling session up to tomorrow.

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Monday photo feature

In the 2006 Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, I had a pretty good lead on Eric Mims of Hermitage, Tennessee, as we entered the harbor.  But Eric outsprinted me over the last 600 meters to the finish line.  This was the first time I had seen Eric paddling a surfski--he had previously paddled outrigger canoes--and it was the first indication that he was going to be pretty good at it.

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Some over-distance and some stroke work

Yesterday morning the Fahrenheit temperature was in the mid 60s, rising toward a high in the high 70s.  I decided it was a good day for a lap around the Loosahatchie Bar.  In general, completing this course (starting and finishing at Harbortown Marina) in less than two hours is a solid effort.  I did it yesterday in one hour, 55 minutes, 37 seconds.  That includes a couple of lost minutes right at the beginning when I got a stick caught in my rudder and had to return to the dock to remove it.  With the river flowing at 30.3 feet on the Memphis gauge, the course was a bit shorter than it was three weeks ago when I made the circumnavigation at 19.1 feet: the distance averages around 20.4 kilometers (12.65 miles), but yesterday I measured it at 19.7 km (12.24 mi.).  So that could be the reason for my faster time, but an offsetting factor was a strong south wind that slowed me down as I paddled downriver.  The Mississippi's water is cold this time of year, and I paddled defensively in the bumpy conditions to avoid icy splashes and especially a swim.

It was warm and windy again this morning, and after taking a lot of tense, choppy strokes yesterday I elected to stay mostly in the harbor today and concentrate on paddling smooth and relaxed for 60 minutes.  This weekend I've continued to feel a bit more pep in my step than I had earlier in the week.

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Hoping to find some answers

Longtime readers of this blog know that in the last year and a half or so I've dealt with a general feeling of sluggishness: not much power, not much energy, not much giddy-up... I've felt listless in the boat, and in the flatwater distance races that make up my schedule in this part of the country, athletes I'd always been competitive with have been leaving me in the dust.

This issue has re-asserted itself in recent weeks.  Last week I chalked it up to the miserable weather, but on a beautiful Tuesday morning this week, I felt as impotent as ever.  As I labored through a gym session and then tried to do a set of ten 30-second sprints in the boat (I stopped after five), my physical ennui combined with thoughts of "Why am I even doing this?"  That might be the worst part of phases like this: I can't tell how much of it is a genuine physical problem and how much of it is just in my head.

A couple of friends--most notably my buddy Rob in New York, a chiropractor who specializes in nutrition and general wellness--have suggested that my testosterone level might be low.  A quick Google query tells me that common symptoms of low testosterone include fatigue, loss of muscular strength, moodiness and irritability, depressed mood, and decreased sense of well-being.  I can check all those boxes at least some of the time lately.  I've mentioned that my weight has been below normal, and maybe decreased muscle mass is accountable for that.

Whatever the case, on Tuesday I decided it was time to confront whatever is going on with me physically.  I hate dealing with doctors' offices, and of course it seems like I've been to mine a lot lately because of my annual physical in November and a PCR test for travel to South Africa in January, but I went ahead and made an appointment.  They got me in yesterday morning.  The doctor wasn't entirely convinced that low testosterone is to blame--she said men with that condition typically gain weight.  She said a couple of other things worth checking are my thyroid level and my P.S.A. (prostate specific antigen).  I bled out some blood so the lab techs can check all those things.

It'll take about a week to get the results, so all I can do now is try to keep on moving.  This morning I did another gym session, though I skipped the second set of pull-ups because they were putting a lot of stress on my left deltoid that's been sore for at least the last month (I've had too many other worries to mention it here before now).  Then I went to the river.  The gorgeous weather has continued all week, and I felt a lot better in the boat today than I did on Tuesday.  Maybe taking a couple of days completely off helped, or maybe I'm feeling more upbeat mentally now that I've taken steps to find out what's going on in my body.  I did a pretty strong 60-minute paddle and enjoyed the nice morning.

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Monday photo feature

Well, I'm thrilled, because this morning I learned that my film "A Paddler's Journey" has claimed the "Viewer's Choice" award at the National Paddling Film Festival.

Granted, this particular competition is sort of like a race for county clerk in which there are 18 candidates and the election might be won with as little as 15 percent of the overall vote.

Nevertheless, my family and friends showed up for me, and for that I'm humbly grateful.  And I realize that I'm fortunate in a much more general way, too, because these people will likely be there for me when the stakes are much higher than just a homemade film in an obscure film festival.

And so, if you're one of the people who paid 20 bucks to watch and vote, please savor this award with me!  Even if you did nothing more than say something nice, I appreciate that, too, because I'm the world's worst self-promoter and gestures like that gave me the confidence to go out and ask people to watch.

Oh, and of course thanks to those who made contributions to the film: the people who appeared in it and spoke on camera like Ana Swetish, Greg Barton, Austin Kieffer, Chris Hipgrave, Michael Meredith, Jules Gismondi, Carter Johnson, and Rob Flanagan all did, and the guy who made some exceptionally good music for the soundtrack, Jason Freeman.

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Plodding along

After not doing any gym since just before my trip to South Africa, I finally started up a new routine on Friday.  It includes some Hindu squats, some pushups, some power pendulum planks, some pull-ups, and some "superman" back-ups.

February is easily my least favorite month of the year, and the last few days have epitomized just what a drag this time of year can be.  It could be worse, of course--just look at this post from a year ago to see how bad February can be around here--but it's been overcast, rainy, and icy, with the temperature not getting much above the freezing point in recent days.

Saturday is a day I normally paddle, but with cloudy skies the temperature not expected to rise above 38 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, I chose to skip it.  Yeah, yeah, I know there's a race coming up in a few weeks and all that, but I don't do this sport to make myself miserable, and I just didn't see much hope of anything but misery out on the water yesterday.  So I stayed home.  What I did instead was get started on a new project in my woodworking shop.  The early stages of a project typically involve moving heavy planks of lumber or other big hunks of wood around.  As I did so yesterday, I realized how sore I was from Friday's gym.

The weather remained not so appealing this morning.  But it was supposed to be warmer: the afternoon high was forecast to be up near 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  And I felt a bit fresher after yesterday's day off even though my muscles were still sore.  I went down to the river for the usual Sunday over-distance session.  The wind wasn't bad, but a north breeze was blowing just hard enough to make paddling up the Mississippi feel like a chore.  It took me some five minutes longer than usual to reach the mouth of the Wolf River.  I'd considered doing another loop around the Loosahatchie Bar, but I decided to let that wait for a warmer, sunnier day.  Instead I continued up the Wolf to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge, and then came back down the Wolf, back down the Mississippi, and back up the harbor to the dock.  My elapsed time was right at two hours.

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Soggy and tired

Tuesday was a very rainy day here in Memphis and the Mid South.  If you look back over my posts of the last few months you'll see a few tales of paddling in a bit of rain, but none of those episodes involved paddling in a torrential downpour from first stroke to last.

Well, that changed on Tuesday morning.  I drove down to the river in a steady rain.  Then I sat in my car in the parking lot until it slacked off enough for me to run down to the marina without getting thoroughly soaked.  More heavy rain moved in as I readied my gear under the marina's roof.  While doing that I discovered that I'd forgotten the shoes that I wear while paddling.  A lot of paddlers prefer to go barefoot, but I don't like to at all.  I need a bit of friction between my feet and the footboard, and even when I adjust my footstrap as tight as it will go, my bare feet aren't big enough to fit snugly between footboard and strap, meaning that I can't utilize foot pressure against the strap as much as I'd like.

And so, when I realized I didn't have my shoes, it felt almost like a deal-breaker.  I strongly considered forgetting the whole paddling-in-the-rain business and running back up to the car.  But then I thought about how important it is for an athlete to adapt when unexpected things happen, especially an athlete in an outdoor/wilderness sport like kayaking and canoeing.  The Mocke brothers mention it in their online video courses, and I used to hear whitewater slalom athletes and coaches talk about it.  I remember a time years ago when I traveled to a race and forgot my shoes, and raced barefoot and didn't perform terribly.

So, I decided I would paddle barefoot.  Fortunately it was not cold: the Fahrenheit temperature was hovering in the high 60s.  I waited for another lull in the rain to run out on the dock and get my boat off the rack and put it in the water.  The rain intensified once more as I paddled on my way, and was pretty heavy for a good 50 of the 60 minutes I paddled.  When it was over I threw my boat back on the rack, got into dry clothes as fast as I could, made a dash for the car during the next slackening of rain, and repaired to my nice dry home.

The rain continued through most of Tuesday afternoon.  By yesterday morning the temperature had plummeted to the low 30s; rain returned in the late afternoon, and when I woke up this morning it was raining just as hard as it had on Tuesday.  And this time it was cold, hovering just over the freezing point.  By the time I got down to the river my car's temperature display said it was 35 degrees, but at least the rain had moved out for a spell, and the wind wasn't bad.  And I remembered my shoes this time.

Once I'd warmed up and done three 8-stroke sprints, it was time for me to go another round in the pain locker: yes, six more 1000-meter pieces starting every 8th minute.  I'd hoped to maintain close to 12 kilometers per hour through the session, and I felt okay in the first piece, but it sort of went downhill from there.  By the second half of the workout I was slowing down noticeably.  I tried to keep taking consistent strokes at the slower pace and not fall apart.  I'm beginning to think that it might not be the best idea to have specific speed goals, seeing as how speed is affected by atmospheric conditions and even the water temperature, not to mention the fact that I do most of my training in a heavy, beat-up old boat.  For years I was a Luddite, relying very little if at all on a G.P.S. device, and maybe I need to go back to that.

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