Sort of a death march in the Gorge

The Pacific Northwest is in a somewhat unusual weather pattern this year.  The late spring was wetter than usual, and their normal summer is only just now settling in.  Among other things, that means (a) the Columbia River is at an above-normal flow as the dams at The Dalles and Bonneville work to move the extra moisture in the watershed, and (b) those westerlies that make the Columbia Gorge a destination for wind sports are not yet blowing reliably.

Those factors combined to make for some tough racing in yesterday's Gorge Downwind Championships.

When the race started around noon we had conditions that were not great, but pretty good.  I was actually quite pleased with how I handled them.  I might have even been ecstatic with my performance if I hadn't flipped violently as I was carving down the face of a wave a couple of kilometers in.  The boat banged against my left temple and put a bloody gash there, and it also knocked the left lens out of my cheap sunglasses (a fact I didn't realize until after the race when I took my glasses off).

I quickly remounted and worked to regain my concentration.  Soon I was linking runs once more, just like the Mocke brothers taught me to do in South Africa.  But then the conditions began to peter out.  I kept sprinting hard after what I thought were promising runs, but the runs just didn't blossom like they were supposed to.

A similar thing happened in last year's race: some 10 kilometers in the conditions went away for a while.  But around Viento State Park they began to rebuild and I ended up having huge fun all the way to the finish.  I was hopeful that the same thing might happen today: as I approached Viento (viento just happens to be the Spanish word for "wind," by the way), I could feel the breeze strengthening against my back and for a brief moment it seemed like there were some good runs forming again.  But just as quickly, those conditions vanished.  For the last 10 kilometers of the race I was mired in a flatwater marathon, only worse, because I was fighting the Columbia's stronger-than-normal current and the water surface was bumpy and finding any kind of rhythm was difficult.  At this point in the race I had exhausted myself with all the hard sprinting and didn't have much left.

And then there were the weeds.

The Columbia almost always has some floating weeds, making a weed deflector necessary.  And in fact my rental ski is equipped with a deflector just fore of the rudder.  But this year there are weeds in massive clumps than can overwhelm even the best weed deflector.  I was doing my best to steer around them, but they seemed to become more abundant in the second half of the race.  At one point a fellow racer came over to me and asked me to check his rudder; his rudder turned out to be clear, but he checked mine and found a big wad of weeds.  No wonder I felt like I was working so hard, I thought.

I could see Hood River from at least eight kilometers out, but I paddled and paddled and paddled and it didn't feel like I was getting any closer to the finish.  By now I wasn't particularly even racing anymore; it was obvious I wouldn't be breaking two hours, and I just wanted to get myself to the finish as painlessly as possible.  As I approached Wells Island, which sits near the Oregon side some 2000 meters from the finish, I decided to go between it and the Oregon shore.  In a normal year a racer wouldn't do that because the water is shallow there and there aren't any good downwind runs to catch.  But with the higher river flow I figured it should be deep enough there, and that I wouldn't be fighting the full force of the current.  So I went that way, feeling very smart and expecting to blow by dozens of racers who'd opted for the normal route on the other side of the island.  But then I realized there was one factor I hadn't thought of: weeds.  The place was teeming with mats of them.  I steered around them through most of the channel, but eventually I found myself in a spot where there was no choice but to plow through them and hope for the best.  "The best" is not what I got.  Suddenly it felt as though the water had turned to molasses.  Knowing that my race was pretty well shot, I flipped the boat and swam back to my rudder and cleared off a massive glob of weeds.

With just a couple of kilometers left I found a bit of a second wind and paddled a stronger pace toward the finish.  If there had been any racers within striking distance in front of me I might have laid down the hardest sprint I could manage, but as it was I just surged at a respectable intensity and glided across the finish line.

In all, 494 boats finished the race.  I was the 214th fastest at two hours, 10 minutes, 22 seconds.  I was 16th out of 36 racers in the men's 50-59 age group.  The complete results are posted here.

The overall winner was Kenny Rice of Cape Town, South Africa.  His time was one hour, 31 minutes, 21 seconds--about 10 minutes slower than what his time would likely be in a "normal" year.  Rice has now won four titles in the seven years that the Gorge Downwind Championships has taken place, and it seems more and more like this is "his" race.  Last year's winner, Austin Kieffer of Venice, California, finished third just under a minute behind Kenny Rice.  I was pleased to see that Jasper Mocke, one of my coaches over in South Africa, had landed in the top five: he was fifth in 1:33:23.

On the women's side, the Kiwi Danielle McKenzie clocked 1:39:55 to continue her current dominance of international surfski racing.  Defending champion Ana Swetish of Bellingham, Washington, took second place 59 seconds back.

On the bank at the finish, it seemed to be the consensus among everybody from the elite athletes to the plodders that it had been a thoroughly punishing day both physically and mentally.  I found Adrián and he gave me a ride back to our lodging, where I took a shower and tended to the gash above my left eye.  I biked down to the race site and got a really good (and really big) burrito from the food truck there, socialized with some other racers, and watched the awards.

I slept reasonably well last night, but I remain dead-dog tired this morning.  Any paddling I do today will probably be of the recovery-session variety.

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Well... it's time to race again

Yesterday my arms were tired from my two downwind runs on Wednesday.  I did just one run yesterday and tried to back off the intensity as much as I could.  But that's hard to do on a downwind run: if there's a good run in front of you, just within your grasp, sometimes you just have to sprint!  In any case, I think it was good for me to go out and get some blood flowing.

I'm up early this morning.  Adrián is giving me a ride to the race start at Home Valley Park.  The race doesn't start until 11:15, but we've got to get there several hours before that so Adrian will have time to drive his car to the finish at Hood River and get himself back to the start.

I'm telling myself that today should be fun and to treat this like "just another downwinder," but I can't help getting amped up when a race is on.  We'll see how it goes.  Maybe I'll get a report up this evening, but it'll more likely be tomorrow.  If you're following this blog, thank you.

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Searching for some downwind prowess

I'm getting all settled in to my lodging in the Columbia River Gorge.  I'm sharing the house with another paddler in town for the race: Adrián, a native of northwest Spain who now lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

The agenda for Monday morning was to go down to the race site and pick up my rental ski and get checked in at the registration table.  Those processes went smoothly enough.  After that it was time to contemplate paddling, but it didn't appear that the wind was cooperating: it was from the east, blowing in the same direction as the river current, meaning no big swells were likely.  The race organizers did decide to run the shuttle buses in reverse so that racers could do practice runs from Home Valley to Stevenson rather than the other way around.  But that would be more of a downriver run than a true downwind run, and I do that kind of thing all year long at home on the Mississippi.

Instead, I availed myself of the sternwheeler that takes tourists out on the river from its dock at Cascade Locks, across the river from the race site.  Adrián joined me and we paddled over in time to see the vessel heading downriver toward the Bridge of the Gods.  We paddled in that direction while the sternwheeler made its way to its turnaround point at the Bonneville Dam, and then we caught it as it came back upriver to where we were.

The waves behind the sternwheeler are smooth and defined and easy to surf.  It's not a true downwind simulation, but it's ideal for practicing skills like carving turns.  It was also a good chance for me to familiarize myself with my boat, a V9 surfski.  Even though this design is ultimately more stable than the narrower skis (a V10L, a V10 Sport, and a V12) that I have at home, its secondary stability is different, and playing around on the sternwheeler's wake allowed me to test its limits and get good and comfortable in it.

Adrián and I had the sternwheeler all to ourselves as it moved back upriver to its dock at Cascade Locks.  Once there, it sat while one group of passengers disembarked and a new group filed on.  Then it moved out again, this time heading upriver.  Adrián and I hopped on its wake once more, but soon we had a lot of company: a group of paddlers had gathered on the water near the race site to join in the fun.  When there's a larger crown surfing behind the sternwheeler you need to be much more on guard, because when a paddler flips or otherwise slips off the wave in front of you, there's the potential for a nasty collision and damage to one or more boats.  I did see some carnage and I had to make elusive moves a couple of times, but I avoided any particularly close calls.

The sternwheeler eventually turned around near the mouth of the Wind River and headed back toward its dock.  I rode its wake until I was back near the race site, and tore myself away from the fun.  All told, I think I had a pretty good "first paddle" here in the Gorge on Monday.

When I got up yesterday morning the wind was light, but at least it was blowing from the west.  As the morning moved into the early afternoon the breeze continued to build, and in the mid afternoon I decided it was time to try the run from Stevenson to Home Valley.  Once I was out in the deeper water I found conditions that were perhaps not "epic," but plenty good.  And so there I was doing my first downwinder since my trip to South Africa in January.

When I haven't paddled downwind in a long time I always worry about how quickly I'll be able to pick it back up, but I felt comfortable enough with it yesterday.  I was linking some runs together and getting my speed up into 14-15-16 kilometers per hour territory.  But then I would always stall out and have to start all over again building speed.  I have a feeling that the really good downwind athletes don't stall out very often: they get their speed up and they keep it up.  All that re-starting took a toll on me physically, and by the time I reached Home Valley I was worn out.  It's about 10 km from Stevenson to Home Valley, and somehow I must find a way to pace myself on race day, when the course will be 22 km.

The last couple of afternoons have been very hot here, and I think part of my struggle yesterday was the result of dehydration.  The heat wasn't nearly as harsh today; this morning it was almost chilly.  I got down to the race site early so I could do a run in time to catch the first shuttle bus at Home Valley at 11:30.  I did that run, got shuttled back to the race site, and did a second run in quick order.  I definitely felt fresher in the boat and once again had some good moments of linked runs, but I worked plenty hard, too.  Two runs was definitely enough for me today.

The event organizers have announced that Friday will be race day.  So it's time for me to start getting some rest.  It's likely I'll do just one run tomorrow unless I'm feeling particularly good.

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Monday photo feature

The most taxing stretch of my hike up Flattop Mountain on Friday featured hundreds of steps made from railroad ties.

If the railroad had never been invented, perhaps the greatest loss to humankind would be that we wouldn't have railroad ties to use for stuff like this.

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A boy needs nourishment

Today I was reminded how difficult it can be to have some control over your diet while traveling, especially when you're traveling by air, and super-especially when you've elected not to rent a car.  I had to be at the airport at 3 AM Alaska Daylight Time, at which time the airport restaurants were all closed (and I don't like to eat in those places anyway because they're ridiculously expensive).  I couldn't even find myself a cup of coffee until I got served one on the plane well after 5:30.  Meanwhile, the food offerings on domestic flights are as meager as I can ever remember: all they gave me for "breakfast" was a small package of cookies and a bag of pretzels.

I didn't eat anything once I reached Portland because I was in a hurry to catch the light rail to the bus depot, where I got on the Columbia Gorge Express bus.  I got off that bus in Cascade Locks, which sits just across the river from the town of Stevenson where the race event is headquartered and my Air B&B is located, but then I had a hard time making that last hop across the river.  There's supposed to be a bus, but I'm not sure it runs on Sunday, and when I gave up on that and tried to book an Uber, it took a long time for the app to locate a driver who was willing to take that assignment.  If I didn't have my heavy bags with me, I might have given up on the Uber and started walking, hoping to spot somebody with surfskis on the car with whom I could hitch a ride.

Anyway....... when I finally got to my Air B&B I was plenty hungry, but I still had to make a run to the grocery store.  Fortunately, the landlord of my Air B&B has very kindly loaned me a bike to use, and I rode into town and loaded up a backpack with some food.  The ride back was a bit of a bear: the Air B&B is located a good ways up the mountain from town, and I granny-geared it all the way, telling myself to relax and not be in a rush.  I cooked a pretty good supper of red beans and rice and sausage with a side of green beans.  Good stuff.

I think the hardest part of the trip is behind me, and now that I'm here in the Gorge I hope I can settle into a routine and get the practice runs I need and be rested and ready for race day.  But it's taking a lot more planning and thought and focus since I don't have as much autonomy in getting myself around.

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The Last Frontier

Thursday was a 21-hour air travel marathon, but all flights ran on time and I made it to Anchorage around 8:40 PM Alaska Daylight Time.  I have now visited all fifty of the United States of America.

One of the first things I realized is that it might have been a better idea to rent a car than to rely on Uber: the fare to get from the airport to my Air B&B was ridiculous.  I guess it's not a great surprise, considering the gasoline prices around here seem to be around $5.70 for a gallon of regular unleaded.  But once I had reached my lodging Thursday evening, I resolved to save all such worries for later, because at that moment what I needed most was SLEEP.  I got my bearings in the apartment, grabbed a quick shower, and bedded down.  And I proceeded to sleep very well.  I woke up for a brief while around 3:00 AM (at which time it was no darker than dusk outside--thankfully my bedroom was equipped with blackout curtains), but otherwise got a solid eight hours.

Once I was up Friday morning I went about the business of learning my surroundings a bit.  I was pretty sure that Anchorage would not be a particularly cosmopolitan town, and indeed it is not.  It looks like a place that's frozen solid for quite a bit of the year.  Outside of the small core city, it's spread out and car-centric and not very walkable.  It took me a lengthy walk on a couple of stroads to find a place that served breakfast.  (If you don't know what a "stroad" is, this video explains it.)  But one must look only at the beautiful Chugach Mountains west of town to know that some incredible wilderness is out there, and that would be the biggest challenge of this trip.

I had no delusion that I could truly "do" Alaska in two days.  You need no less than a week for even a modest wilderness adventure around here.  I'd gotten no shortage of advice from everybody I'd talked to--"You gotta get outside of Anchorage if you wanna see what Alaska is really about!"--and all I can say is, yeah, yeah, I get that.  But in the end I decided to stick with stuff in or near town that any old tourist can do.

Yesterday I did a hike to the top of Flattop Mountain just outside of town.  Flattop is both the most-climbed mountain in Alaska and the most popular day hike.  One of the main reasons I decided to do it is I stumbled upon a local bike shop that offers a daily shuttle out to the trailhead and back.  The shop was downtown, not a bad walk from my Air B&B.  I'd looked into taking an Uber from my place to the trailhead and found that a one-way fare would be around $36, but the bike shop's shuttle was a mere 24 bucks for a round trip, complete with a really nice guy named Pete for a driver.  Pete gave us passengers all kinds of pro tips for the hike, not to mention a bit of Anchorage history as we made our way out of town.

The hike itself was doable for any able-bodied person, but strenuous nevertheless.  The heart of it involved walking up hundreds of railroad-tie steps, and as I neared the summit I found myself doing not quite pure rock-climbing, but closer to it than I'd expected on this hike.  In any case, I made it to the top and beheld some gorgeous views:

As you can see, it was not a clear day.  I don't think they see too many crystal-clear blue skies in this part of the world.  And it was chilly and windy atop the mountain.  But I took the time to take it all in.  The water stretching to the horizon in the left half of the photo is the Cook Inlet.  The city of Anchorage occupies sort of a peninsula defined by the Knik Arm coming in from the right and the Turnagain Arm coming in from the left.  The downtown core is over in the right side of the photo.  On the left you can see Fire Island, and it's not to be confused with the one off New York's Long Island: I don't think there's much on it besides a wind farm.  In the foreground you can see the trail system that I hiked to get to this place.

The hike back down was less taxing than the hike up, but it was tough on my toes as they kept getting shoved into the fronts of my shoes.  I had to take it slow to avoid blowing out a knee.  By the end of the day I was feeling the hike's effects in all of my leg muscles.

I slept well again last night.  For two nights in a row I've gotten eight good hours, something I rarely manage at home.  I had breakfast and considered what I might do today.  I explored every possibility for paddling: long-time readers of this blog know that I have a goal of paddling a boat in every state.  But in the end my lack of a car and my short window of time were obstacles too big to scale.  The truth is that I'm going to have to dedicate an entire trip to some kind of longer paddling tour, and there are better places than Anchorage from which to base it--Seward or Whittier, for instance.

I'd had such a good experience with Pete yesterday that I decided to patronize his business, Downtown Bicycle Rentals, again today.  For a very reasonable price I was able to rent a road bike and get lots of good advice on where to ride in the greater Anchorage area.  The main part of my trip took me on the Coastal Trail that runs along the shoreline around the Anchorage airport, affording great views of Cook Inlet and the Knik Arm.  I covered some 40 kilometers in several hours of mildly intense riding.  During that time I managed to take exactly one photo:

That's part of the Alaska Range in the background.  Large mud flats seem to border the entire waterfront here, and I'm not familiar enough with the tides here to know how often they're submerged, or how deep.  One interesting piece of area history is that the bluff I was standing on to take this photo used to extend farther out, but collapsed into the sea during the massive earthquake of March 27, 1964.  Centered near Valdez, this earthquake was the most powerful ever recorded in North America and the second most powerful in recorded world history.

Well, that's all for now from Alaska.  I have to be up in the wee hours of tomorrow morning to catch a 5 AM flight back to the Lower 48.  The next stop is Portland, from which I'll make my way into the Columbia Gorge and resume the main topic of this blog, canoe and kayak racing.  With any luck my sore leg muscles will be ready to go when I pick up my rental boat Monday.

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

Final preparations before I set sail

Yesterday morning I did my last gym session before I race in the Columbia Gorge next week.  The side effects from my COVID-19 shot last week were more or less gone by then.

After the gym session I headed down to the river.  Another spell of oppressive summer heat is upon us: the temperature hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, with heat index values up around 110.  It wasn't that hot yet when I got in the boat, but it was well on its way.  It was definitely a day to go out and do my planned workout without any dilly-dally, and come in out of the heat.

After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did basically the same workout I did last Saturday: three sets of 20-second sprints with the recovery intervals decreasing from 60 seconds to 10 seconds.  This time I didn't add any resistance to the boat like I did for the first set on Saturday.  I did the first set out on the Mississippi, and the other two sets in the harbor.  The workout was tough, and this time the heat was the main reason.  The sun beat down relentlessly.  I flipped the boat to cool off after the first and second sets, and after the third set I headed back to the dock and took a cool hose bath and drank lovely cold water from my insulated bottle.  There was a pleasant south breeze blowing, and I was able to cool back down quite a bit in the shade of the marina's roof.  While I exchanged a couple of text messages with my friend Scott in Louisville (he was asking me about my race next week), I ate a nectarine, a protein bar, and a peach.  The peach wasn't fully ripe, but the nectarine was perfect... just one of the reasons I really like summer training in spite of the brutal heat.

It was another hot one today, and I had a list of chores to do before I get out of here in the wee hours of tomorrow morning.  It took me a while this morning to make up my mind whether to paddle at all, but in the end I did go down there and get in the boat for 30 minutes.  I paddled easy, got some blood moving to help my muscles heal from yesterday's workout, did some stroke drills and relaxation drills, and, lacking any firm plans to paddle before next Monday, logged a bit more muscle memory into my brain.

I hope that I will be in Anchorage the next time I check in here.  As I mentioned before, tomorrow's flights must go off on schedule for that to happen.  So... we'll see.

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Monday photo feature

Here we've got a satellite view of the city of Anchorage, Alaska, and environs.

I've been talking a lot about my upcoming trip to the Columbia River Gorge on the Oregon-Washington state line, but what I haven't mentioned until now is that I've got a little side trip planned.  Once my plane has touched down in Portland this Thursday, I'm going to get on another plane and fly to Anchorage by way of Seattle.  I'll spend Friday and Saturday in Anchorage, and then on Sunday morning I'll fly back to Portland and proceed with the regularly-scheduled activities in the Columbia Gorge.  Of course, the fate of my side trip counts heavily on no flight cancellations on my route to Portland this Thursday.  Just about every day as I listen to the news I hear reports of that being an ongoing industry-wide problem this summer.  And there's not a thing I can do about it but hope for the best.  I did purchase trip insurance, but I'd just as soon not have to use it because getting an insurance company to pay up is always a hassle.

Why do I want to make this side trip?  Well, Alaska is the one state in the United States that I have never set foot in.  I figured that since I was going to be "in the neighborhood," globally speaking, I might as well hop up there.

Now, I don't intend for this to be my definitive Alaska experience; two days is hardly enough to explore the largest state in the Union.  But I hope to gain a modicum of familiarity with its largest city, and size it up as a possible staging area for future adventures in Alaska.  And if I should croak before I'm able to make that happen, at least everybody can say that I visited all 50 states.

At the moment the weather forecast says it might be kind of rainy and chilly up there.  With any luck, that won't stop me from doing a bit of paddling and a bit of hiking and a bit of looking around, and making this experiment something more than a fool's errand.

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Peaking the intensity

I spent Thursday afternoon and evening with mild cold symptoms--a faint sore throat and a bit of sinus congestion, and maybe even a touch of fever--as my body reacted to the COVID-19 booster shot I'd gotten on Wednesday.  I always have to use the bathroom frequently when I have a cold or the flu, I guess because I'm processing more of the water in my system as I build up my defenses.  I slept fitfully overnight, having to get up and go to the bathroom three or four times.  I woke up Friday morning thinking I was in for an unpleasant day of lying around and feeling lousy.  But once I'd had some coffee and breakfast and woken up a little more, I realized that I actually wasn't feeling that bad after all.  I decided I had it in me to do a gym session.

I slept a little bit better the next night, and yesterday morning I went down to the river to do what has become a standard workout for me when I'm preparing to go race downwind.  I did three sets of this series of hard sprints: 20 seconds on, 60 seconds off, 20 seconds on, 50 seconds off, 20 seconds on, 40 seconds off, 20 seconds on, 30 seconds off, 20 seconds on, 20 seconds off, 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, 20 seconds on.  I did the first set with light resistance on the boat (one whiffle ball), and the other two sets without resistance.  I paddled easy for about 10 minutes between sets.  The workout was hard, but I held up just fine and never felt like I was falling apart.  I was really starting to feel it in the last half of the third set, though, and I think I probably would have fallen apart in a fourth set.  I felt awfully tired for the rest of the day.

Yesterday's workout is about the best way I can think of to get ready for downwind while I'm here in flatwater country.  It doesn't quite capture the spontaneity of downwind--I think paddling in a downwind environment is the only way to expose yourself to all the stimuli of a downwind environment.  But I'm hoping that workouts like this will have me close to prepared, and then a handful of practice runs once I'm out in the Columbia Gorge will finish the job.

I went back to the river this morning feeling a bit tired from yesterday, but not completely done in.  I decided to paddle for an hour and see what might come my way.  Once I reached the mouth of the harbor and got a look at the river, I saw that it was an upstream-moving barge rig coming my way.  So naturally, I had to go out and surf a bit.  The waves nearest the towboat's stern were steep and hard to catch, and farther back they quickly devolved into clusters of confused bumps.  The rides I managed to get were not long-lasting, and I had to keep paddling to to get what I could from them, but a couple of times I got my speed up over 15 kilometers per hour, something I rarely do against the Mississippi's current.  It got me excited about doing more of that once I've picked up my rental ski in the Columbia Gorge a week from tomorrow.

As a final thought for this weekend, I leave you with a video of distance runner Evan Jager discussing his second-place finish in the 3000-meter steeplechase at the U.S. track and field championships this past month.  Jager has spent the last four years or so struggling to return to competitive form after an injury.  Even though I haven't been injured to the extent that Jager has, I can identify with with many of the things he says here, particularly his thoughts on regaining the confidence to push through pain in workouts and in races:

Many readers of this blog might not know it, but I did some distance running of my own back in high school and college as a member of the track and cross country teams.  For years I followed the sport at the national and international levels, but my interest kind of trailed off in the mid '00s.  Now, just in the last year or so, I've reacquainted myself with the sport through the modern miracle of You Tube, and I've discovered that U.S. distance runners have returned to prominence at the international level after several decades of futility.  Jager, an Illinois native, has been at the forefront of this surge.  African runners had held a virtual monopoly on Olympic and world championships medals in the steeplechase for more than two decades, but Jager started making finals at the biggest meets in the early 2010s and claimed the Olympic silver medal at the 2016 Games in Rio.  Along the way he lowered the American record to 8:00.45; he almost certainly would have broken 8 minutes if he hadn't tripped over the last barrier in that race.  (The current world record is 7:53.63 by Saif Saaeed Shaheen of Qatar.  I can remember pundits opining that a sub-8-minute steeple might be impossible until Moses Kiptanui of Kenya clocked 7:59.18 in 1995.)

Jager is now 33 years old, and that's pretty old for an elite-level distance runner.  Having missed out on the Tokyo Olympics last year, he decided he wanted to go to at least one more world championships, and his second-place finish at the U.S. championships (you can watch that final here) earned him that chance.  And the world championships are in the U.S. this year: they're scheduled for July 15-24 at Eugene, Oregon, during which I'll be racing just up the road in the Columbia Gorge.

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

Long sprint pain, COVID shot pain, and chiropractic pain

On Tuesday morning the weather was about as gorgeous as we have any business asking for in the Mid South at the end of June.  When I got down to the river it was sunny with a mild north breeze and a temperature of 79 degrees Fahrenheit.

I did the last long sprint workout I plan to do before heading out West: another set of four bridge-to-bridge sprints.  When I'd done this workout the previous Tuesday I'd had a good tailwind, whereas this time I had more of a headwind, so I knew my times wouldn't be as fast this week.  But that was liberating in a way: I didn't worry about what my times were, and I just tried to produce four good, hard, consistent efforts.

I ended up clocking 2:11, 2:11, 2:09, and 2:09.  I'd say that's pretty consistent.  And while the sprints had me plenty tired and gasping for breath, my muscles weren't throbbing quite like they'd been the previous Tuesday.  Once it was over I paddled easy for some ten minutes and headed back to the dock.  Since it was cooler I didn't take a full hose bath, but I did enjoy a protein bar and a pair of nectarines washed down with some cold water from the Memphis Sands aquifer.

All of that followed a gym session before I left the house Tuesday morning.

My biggest event yesterday was getting a COVID-19 booster shot.  I got it in my right arm.  One of my conjectures about the pain I've had in my left deltoid/biceps area is that it might be the result of three COVID shots and two flu shots there since the fall of 2020.  During the night last night I could feel some very similar soreness in my right arm, so maybe I'm onto something there.

This morning I didn't have a lot of giddy-up as I dragged myself down to the river.  I paddled for 60 minutes and kept the intensity low.  By lunchtime I was feeling even more down in the dumps, and only then did it occur to me that it was probably my immune system kicking into gear.  My three previous COVID shots hadn't really affected me that much, so I wasn't expecting to feel this way.  So far it's not too bad--I know people who had much worse reactions to their shots--but it's made for a bummer of a day.  At least this should be thoroughly over with before I leave town in a week.

Late this afternoon I went for another session with the chiropractor.  I was expecting another scrape massage of my sore area with that butter knife thing, but instead she just adjusted me in a few places and inflicted some pain by digging her knuckles pretty deep in my shoulders.  Oh well... she's the professional.  Hopefully I'll notice some improvement over the weekend.

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Monday photo feature

Adam Davis of Memphis knows how to make the best of a hot day in late June.  In the background is the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and the downtown Memphis skyline.

Oddly enough, we're now getting a break from the heat.  The Fahrenheit highs are supposed to be in the 80s for the next couple of days.  The current extended forecast shows more extreme heat returning about the same time I head for the Pacific Northwest.

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Soon I'll be racing again at last

I did a gym session Friday morning, and rode my bike a bit in the afternoon.  The chiropractor had told me my arm would probably continue to be sore after the massage she did, and she was right.

The Gorge downwind race is now less than three weeks away--it'll be Thursday or Friday or Saturday, the 14th or 15th or 16th of July.  Downwind paddling involves a lot of short, hard sprinting, and you have to be ready to sprint at the drop of a hat, whenever the conditions in front of you present you with an opportunity.  It's hard for me to train ideally for such a thing, living as I do in a mostly non-downwind environment.  But I do the best I can with a lot of hard sprinting with short rest.  That's what I did yesterday: a workout where I paddled 10 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 20 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 30 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 40 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy... all the way up to 100 strokes hard.  I definitely spend some time in "The Pain Cave" during this workout, especially once I'm up over 50 strokes hard.  Once I was finished I paddled easy for a few minutes, then did the workout again, only this time I went up to just 50 strokes hard.  I tried to push the intensity a little harder, and I was pleased with how my body responded after that first round of the workout.

The summer heat is slowly but surely becoming a bit more oppressive after seeming not so bad all last week.  Yesterday's high of 101 degrees Fahrenheit was apparently a record for the date.  When I went back to the river this morning the temperature was rising quickly through the 80s, and as I did some stretching on the dock I could feel more mugginess in the air than we'd had lately.  I went out and paddled for 70 minutes, going mostly steady but throwing in a little surge here and there to break the monotony.  Most of the time I do whatever I feel like doing during these "non-workout" paddles: if my body is in bad need of recovery, I paddle easy, but since I'm a four-times-a-week paddler I usually get enough recovery on my days out of the boat, meaning that I can push the pace on days like today if I feel so inclined.

In any case, I'm feeling encouraged after a pretty good training week.  Down on the Gulf Coast I was feeling tired and sluggish in the boat, but I've felt more pep in my step since then.  Maybe it's because the Gorge race is finally within sight: some part of my subconscious might be signaling to my body that it's time to get ready to go.

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A good summer week

My arm was still hurting Tuesday morning, but I would have to wait until this afternoon to see my chiropractor.  Because I haven't been to see her in over a year, I'm required to go through her "new patient" intake process all over again, and this afternoon was the soonest such an appointment was possible.  So on Tuesday I was still grinning and bearing it.  At least I was somewhat eager to get moving again after four days out of the boat.

After a gym session, I headed down to the river.  The break in the weather we'd had over the weekend was quickly becoming a memory: under bright sunshine, the temperature was rising toward a high in the high 90s Fahrenheit.  I guess it's only fitting that Tuesday was the first day of summer.  I warmed up and did a set of three 8-stroke sprints, and turned my attention to the day's workout: four bridge-to-bridge sprints.  The distance from the monorail bridge to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge in the harbor is very nearly 450 meters; my best time ever for this sprint is somewhere around a minute 52 seconds, but anything around two minutes flat is a very good effort for me.

The best news from Tuesday is that my arm ailment hardly bothered me at all.  I do think it's a threat more to my everyday happiness than to my ability to paddle.  As for the workout, well... it hurt.  My quadriceps muscles throbbed in the second half of each sprint, and my wrists and forearms were really going numb in the last one.  It was tempting to despair, to declare it the latest example of my decline in energy and power of the last couple of years.  But the fact is that this workout has never not hurt.  And the consistency of my times--2:02, 2:03, 2:02, 2:03--suggests that I might actually be more fit than I thought these days.

As to recovery: I started the second sprint 7 minutes after I'd started the first one.  That recovery didn't quite feel adequate, so I gave myself an extra minute before the third and fourth sprints.

The day was definitely becoming a hot one, and as I paddled back toward the dock I flipped a couple of times to cool off.  Once back on the dock I took a bath under the hose, and that's one of those simple pleasures of these hot summer days that I mustn't to forget to savor as I deal with my arm pain and other struggles.

It's continued to be hot this week, but not unbearably so.  I think the humidity is still down a bit.  On the worst summer days here even the lightest outdoor chores have me drenched in sweat, but a couple of times this week I've broken only a mild sweat while riding my bike around the neighborhood.  So I'm actually enjoying this week's summer weather a lot.

This morning I returned to the river and did 60 minutes of unstructured paddling.  I paddled steady out of the harbor, chased some waves out on the Mississippi that a distant barge rig had left behind, and then returned to the harbor and paddled steady back toward the dock, stopping a couple of times to pick up some litter.  Back on the dock I took another hose bath and drank some cold water and ate a protein bar and a peach.  Most of the time after I paddle I eat an apple in the car on the way home, but apples are out of season while peaches are in season, and a peach is too juicy to eat in the car, so I brought it down to the dock.  I don't think anybody will care if I drip some peach juice into the harbor.

I finally got in to see my chiropractor this afternoon, and she seemed to think my arm soreness was something she could treat without too much trouble.  She massaged it with the same butter-knife-lookalike tool that she used on my plantar fasciitis some five years ago.  I'm scheduled to go back next week, and she doesn't think we'll need too many sessions to get this taken care of.  I sure hope she's right.

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Monday photo feature

Back in the 1990s I was driving out to the Rocky Mountains every summer for some whitewater paddling.  A couple of times I caught the elusive Big Sur wave that forms during high-water periods on the Colorado River near Grand Junction.  Photo by Tim Williams.

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A break from the heat, but not from the pain

I did a gym session Friday morning, then got in the car and departed Dauphin Island.  As I mentioned earlier, it was some ten degrees cooler on the Gulf Coast than in the rest of the southeastern U.S., and as I moved north I watched the temperature display in my car rise and rise and rise, topping out at 102 degrees Fahrenheit.  I got home thinking I was in for a miserable 20 days until my departure for the Pacific Northwest.

But then a front came through overnight that brought some drier air into the Mid South.  Yesterday's high temperature was in the mid 90s, but it really didn't feel so bad because we were spared the suffocating humidity.

Last night the temperature dropped into the 60s, and this morning felt just plain delightful.  It was perfect for going down to the river and paddling.  Unfortunately, my left deltoid/biceps area was hurting as bad as it ever has.  I've made up my mind that I need to seek some help with this problem, and I'll start with my chiropractor tomorrow.  I'm not sure this particular ailment is in a chiropractor's wheelhouse, but I've had much better results dealing with the chiropractor than with my local orthopedic community, so I'm going to start there.

Even when my arm hurts pretty bad, I've found that it doesn't render me unable to paddle.  So I feel pretty sure that I'll be able to get through the downwind race in the Columbia Gorge with nothing worse than a lot of discomfort.  Nevertheless, I decided to skip paddling today in favor of a bike ride.  I rode the Greater Memphis Greenline out to where it crosses the Wolf River, and came back.  The total distance was a bit over 20 kilometers.  I treated it not so much as a workout as just a way to savor the lovely weather.  I'd certainly better savor it, because according to the current forecast, the awful sweltering heat is on its way back.

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I've about had my fill of island life

Yesterday morning I did a gym session and then took a light swim down at the beach.

I saved paddling for the afternoon, and the Gulf was much more placid than it had been earlier in the week.  I wouldn't be doing any downwind practice this time.  Somewhat on a whim, I found myself engaged in a longer distance paddle.

There are some natural gas wells out in the Gulf within sight of Dauphin Island.  They look like oil-drilling platforms, and for all the years that we've been visiting this place I've wondered just how far offshore they are.  So yesterday I decided to find out: I pointed my boat at what looked like the closest one, and started paddling.  It had been my guess that this structure was at least 5 kilometers out, because earlier this week I'd been paddling out 2 kilometers to ride the conditions back in, and it hadn't seemed like I was much closer to it than I was on the beach.  Well, yesterday I got 5 kilometers from the beach and still had some distance to cover.  I continued on and finally, 7 kilometers (about 4.35 miles) out, I reached the platform.

I was feeling some fatigue by this time, and I knew the paddle back would be tough because the breeze that had cooled me off going out would now be at my back.  Though the Gulf Coast has been spared the worst of the current heat wave that's gripping the nation, it was still uncomfortably warm, and I was fully exposed to the sun.  The heat started getting to me, and every kilometer or so I stopped and flipped the boat to cool off for a minute.  The problem with that was that once I was back in the boat, the water wasn't evaporating off my skin because of the high humidity here.  I really could have used my camelback out there, but I didn't bring it on the trip because I hadn't planned to do any distance paddling down here.  Not bringing it was dumb, but, well, sometimes I am dumb.

In any case, I never doubted that I would make it back to the beach, but it was a slog just the same.  Back at the island at last, I carried my boat onto the sand and walked back and sat in the water for a while.  Then I lugged my boat back to our rental house and drank several glasses of cold water and ate some snacks and slowly started to feel human again.

One highlight of yesterday's paddle was seeing a couple of dolphins while heading out.  It was the second time this week I'd seen dolphins; I saw at least one Monday as well.

This morning I felt reasonably recovered from yesterday's activity, but was slow to wake up and had to sort of force myself down to the water with my boat.  I hoped that once I warmed up and got some blood flowing I would muster some enthusiasm for paddling, but the heat and the beating sun made it feel like a chore for the 50 minutes I was out there.

And, I hate to say it, but when the conditions are calm like they were again this morning, paddling in the Gulf of Mexico is just... boring.  I'm ready to be back on the Memphis riverfront, where there are trees and bridges and river flow and barge traffic and occasionally some people on the banks nearby.  I'm reminded of people who do crossings of open ocean, and I just don't know how they do it.  With nothing in sight but vast expanses of sea in every direction, I think I would lose my mind pretty quickly.

So, it's a good thing this is my last full day down here at the beach.  Vacation time is great, but deep down I'm a homebody.  I'm glad to be headed home tomorrow even though I've been hearing how much worse the heat is there.

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Away from home and finding my way

Even though I'm not doing anything super-organized, I do hope this will be a good training week down here at Dauphin Island.  Even in calm weather, the beach and the ocean throw all kinds of little things at me that I just don't quite get at home on the Mississippi.

Back home in Memphis it's very hot, with daytime highs pushing 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  I'm pleased to say that it's a good ten degrees cooler here on the coast.  It's plenty humid, though, and the sun beats down... it's certainly as warm as it needs to be.  It appears that the oppressive heat is going to be around for the foreseeable future at home, so I should savor what we've got here.

I started yesterday morning with a gym session.  As I said last week, I'm doing my Smart Bell workout now, and I skipped the pushups because I think that's what aggravated my shoulder/biceps pain last weekend.  Meanwhile, I'm hoping the workout's other movements might have some therapeutic value: one thing I've learned over many years of nursing ailments is that strengthening the supporting muscles around an injured one can be helpful.

As soon as I was done with the Smart Bell I grabbed my boat and carried it several hundred meters to the beach.  Once I was paddling I realized how tired I was from the lifting.  Even though the wind was light, there were some ridable-looking swells coming in from the south-southwest--ground swell, I guess.  After paddling a couple of kilometers out I worked on riding the swells coming back, and I definitely didn't have my top gear for the short, hard sprints.  I was gasping for breath at times and having to stop and rest.  The breeze was blowing in, so I was comfortable paddling out from the beach but felt very hot while coming back in with the wind at my back.  After 50 minutes in the boat, I'd had enough.

I'm my own harshest critic, of course, and I felt a bit disheartened that I didn't have the energy for more, but the fact is that those conditions out in the gulf were small, and therefore required a lot of work even for brief rides.  The whole time I was paddling I could hear the voice of Coach Dawid Mocke saying "Little ones lead to big ones," but the fact is that the "big ones" just weren't there.  I was out there trying to get what I could from little bumps, and in fact that's something I need to get better at.

I'd originally planned to paddle yesterday afternoon, but the morning's activities had taken so much out of me that I decided that some extra recovery would help me have a more productive week overall.  So I just did some light swimming instead.

This morning I launched into the shore break and paddled easy until I was a couple of kilometers offshore.  I definitely felt fresher since I hadn't done a gym like I had yesterday, and this time I was determined to relax and take what the conditions gave me and not force anything and enjoy whatever I did get and just be more zen about it all.  I caught little runs here and there, even managed link a few together once or twice, sprinted hard and got my heart rate up, and generally enjoyed being out on the water.  Once 60 minutes was up I took out and returned to our rental house for some lunch and rest.

I was back in the boat in the mid afternoon, once again paddling a couple of kilometers offshore and seeing what I could get from the conditions coming back in.  I felt really tired in the boat, and this time I think the reason was that I hadn't had enough to eat.  I'm pretty set in my eating routine back home, but tear me away from home and I have a hard time treating my body the way it likes to be treated.

So I was running on fumes this afternoon.  I went out and back twice, and I think I got my best runs coming back the second time.  I was dead tired and loath to paddle any harder than I had to, so I focused on efficiency and reading the conditions as well as an inland dweller can do.  And I found myself having some actual success.  So I finished in higher spirits than I might have otherwise.

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Monday photo feature

When you see a house up on stilts, you know you must be in some coastal area where a big old tidal surge can happen.  Here on Dauphin Island on the Alabama Gulf Coast, the weather forecast isn't calling for any such surges this week.  I was hoping for at least a small bit of downwind action, but the wind forecast appears mild.  Oh well... I'll be paddling my boat, regardless.  It's just what I do.

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It's almost beach time

I did another gym session yesterday morning.  Last night and this morning my left deltoid/biceps area was hurting worse than ever, and I think the gym session must have aggravated it a bit.  I suspect the pushups are the culprit, and depending on how my arm feels in a couple of days I might skip the pushups in next week's gym sessions.

This morning I went out and did a mostly-easy 60 minutes in the boat.  I did spend a few minutes chasing some so-so waves behind a barge rig, but otherwise I paddled at low intensity and tried to relax my body as much as I could.

Since this morning's paddle my arm has felt better, and that's encouraging.  It supports what I've believed all along, that paddling is the least harmful thing I'm doing for it.  Meanwhile, I'm still having some soreness in my left lower back (maybe some sciatic nerve inflammation?), and I think maybe it's time to pay my chiropractor a visit.  I feel pretty sure she'll know what to do for the back problem, and maybe she'll have some advice for the arm muscles as well.

That, of course, will have to wait a week, because tomorrow morning I'm heading down to the Gulf Coast.  My plan for the beach is to paddle as intensely as my body will allow, but it'll be all "play"--no timed pieces or anything like that.  Out of the boat I intend to relax and enjoy myself.  Some hot weather is about to move into the Memphis area, and I expect it'll be at least as hot farther south.

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Keeping it moving despite aches and pains

I started a new gym routine Tuesday morning.  It's the Smart Bell workout I've done for years, and you can see what it looks like here.

After that I went to the river and did a moderate-intensity 60-minute paddle.  The soreness in my left deltoid/biceps area continued, and I was also having a bit of lower back pain that I'd first noticed during the weekend.  Lower back pain usually works itself out in two or three days, but this feels a bit more concentrated, like it could be a sciatic nerve issue or something like that.

I felt sluggish and sore yesterday, and I think a lot of that might have been soreness from the new gym routine.

Tuesday and yesterday were sort of rainy and gross, but this morning the weather was sunny and beautiful.  I went down to the river to do something more intense.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, I paddled out onto the Mississippi and did some 500-meter pieces downriver, similar to the 1000s I did last Saturday.  Once again my target pace was 20.0 kilometers per hour, but I wasn't quite able to reach that because an approaching barge rig coming from upriver forced me to paddle close to the Arkansas side where the current is slower.  Even so, I did each 500 faster than a minute 40 seconds.

There was another barge rig coming upstream, and after doing four 500s I tried my hand at surfing its wake.  The waves were steep and turbulent and I was very tired from the 500s, so I didn't achieve any sweet rides, but it felt good to paddle hard in conditions somewhat similar to what I'll be navigating in the Columbia Gorge next month.

I eventually returned to the harbor feeling upbeat after a good work/play hybrid workout.  I have one more session here at home before I change the scenery for a while: next week my mother and my sister's family and I are taking our annual beach vacation at Dauphin Island on the Alabama Gulf Coast.

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Monday photo feature

Danish athlete Emma Broberg prepares to compete in the 2020 edition of the Amager Rundt, a 45-kilometer race at Copenhagen that includes downwind conditions on the open ocean and heavy boat traffic in the inner harbor.

Like many Scandinavians, Broberg got her start on flatwater.  She's now embraced the ocean swells, and before the pandemic hit, she was a world traveler: I saw her at the Gorge Downwind race in the Pacific Northwest in 2018.

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An intense weekend

Down at the riverfront yesterday morning I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor.  The soreness continued in my left biceps area, but the discomfort abated some as I got warmed up.

I paddled up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, and then commenced my workout.  My plan was to do three or four 1000-meter pieces down the Mississippi, depending on how many I could fit in between the mouth of the Wolf and the entrance to the harbor.  Then I would do either one or two 500-meter pieces in the harbor (two if I did three 1000s on the river, one if I did four).

I would start a new piece every 7th minute.  For recovery I would paddle easy against the current in the hope of fitting in four 1000s.  My target pace for the 1000s was 20.0 kilometers per hour, good for a time of 3 minutes flat.  Of course, I knew there was a good chance I would fall short of that goal because of the whims of those river currents, but I would be happy if I could get close each time.

And I did: I got in four 1000s and my times were 3:04, 3:06, 3:02, and 3:08.  I was feeling some pain by the third piece, and the fourth one was the biggest struggle of them all, but I was able to paddle at a consistent intensity level throughout.  I tried to keep the stroke rate around 90 per minute, though at times I creeped up toward 100.

Back in the harbor I had one 500-meter piece to do.  Without any current helping me, I aimed to maintain 12.0 kph for a time of 2 minutes, 30 seconds.  For the first half of the piece I was up around 12.5 kph, but then the wind, which had been swirly all morning, shifted into my face and slowed me down below 12.0 kph.  In the end I finished right at 2:30, so I guess it worked out just fine.  It was the first time in quite a while that I'd done a workout that was really tough but not also demoralizing, and I paddled back to the dock feeling good about that.

My body felt good and tired and ready for a recovery paddle this morning.  I got in the boat and paddled easy toward the south, trying to stay as relaxed as I could.  When I reached the harbor's mouth I saw a barge rig heading upstream toward the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and I decided I had just enough energy for some surfing.  By the time I'd ferried out there the rig was at least a quarter-mile upriver and the waves were small where I was, but with some patience I was able to ride some bumps here and there.  The sprinting took a lot out of me, though, and once I'd reached the HDB myself I turned back toward the harbor and headed for the dock.

And so this afternoon I'm really tired.  But with a complete day off scheduled for tomorrow, I think I'll get myself recovered.

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Doing my best to keep moving

The temperature rose above 90 degrees Fahrenheit for a couple of days this week.  As summer weather settles in more and more I'm doing what I always do, and immersing myself.

On Tuesday morning I did a gym session and then headed down to the river.  As I paddled toward the mouth of the harbor I saw an enormous barge rig coming upriver from below the Frisco Bridge, and I proceeded downstream hoping to do some surfing.  But it turned out the towboat was at nowhere near full throttle, and it wasn't generating any surfable waves that I could see.

I started paddling back upriver along the Tennessee bank.  I threw in a strong surge for some 1600 meters, starting midway up Tom Lee Park and finishing at the monorail bridge back in the harbor.  Maybe the heat was to blame, but that surge left me feeling worn out for the rest of the day.

It stayed hot Wednesday, but then some storms moved through with a mass of cooler air behind them.  Yesterday's high was in the low 80s, and this morning has been pleasantly cool.

The soreness in my left shoulder/biceps area seems to be worse some days and better other days.  When I woke up yesterday I could tell it was a "worse" day.  I stretched and warmed up as best I could, and did a gym session.  Then I went down to the river and paddled for 60 minutes.  I tried to be mindful of my stroke mechanics, getting the power from my trunk muscles as much as possible and not from my arms.

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Monday photo feature

The Loosahatchie Chute, located on the far side of the Mississippi River from downtown Memphis, is a beautiful place to paddle, but it's possible to do so only when the water is pretty high.  If the river isn't flowing much above 20 feet on the Memphis gauge, expect to find some ankle-deep water there.  Adam Davis shot this photo of me in July of 2020.

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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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