An annual ritual on the Gulf Coast

On Saturday morning I joined some 70 other athletes for the Battle On The Bayou canoe and kayak race on Old Fort Bayou at Ocean Springs.  This was the thirteenth edition of this event: it started in 2010 and has taken place every year since except the pandemic year 2020.  I have attended every one.

We lined up in the cove down the hill from the Gulf Hills Hotel and were off just as soon as race director Mike Pornovets gave the word.  As we made the turn from the cove up into the bayou, I assessed the cast of characters at the front of the pack.  Up in first place was Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, a longtime friend as well as a three-time Olympian, a three-time world championships medalist, and a Pan Am Games champion.  I found myself in his wake jockeying for position with Alessia Faverio of Erwin, Tennessee, whom I’d last seen just a couple of months ago at our Florida training camp.  Advancing quickly to our right was a tandem surfski paddled by the father-son team of Jeb and Thaison Berry of Gulfport, Mississippi.  Also among the early leaders was Matt Taylor of Brantley, Alabama, with whom I wasn’t so familiar but who was moving his boat nicely in the early going.

Mike was methodically extending his lead by the time we reached the Washington Avenue drawbridge.  Jeb and Thaison had moved into second and put several boatlengths on Alessia and me.  By the 2-kilometer mark she and I had settled into some cooperative wake-riding in the hope of eventually reeling the Berrys in.  But then a bit of luck plopped in our laps: the Berrys took a wrong turn in the sometimes confusing maze of marsh channels, and suddenly Alessia and I went from being several boatlengths back to leading Jeb and Thaison by at least the same margin.

Alessia and I continued working together to try to extend our lead.  But the Berrys weren’t done.  In less than ten minutes they had closed the gap and were advancing on our right side.  Alessia moved onto their side wake while I tried to anticipate the next development.  It was clear that Jeb and Thaison intended to move on in front and pull away.  They opened a boatlength on us, and realizing that their generous wake was about to slip away, I threw down a hard sprint to get back up on their stern.  Though it hadn’t been my primary intention to drop Alessia, that was a result of my move.  The Berrys were moving fast and I concentrated hard on holding their stern wake for as long as I could.  I succeeded for a few minutes, but eventually their speed was more than I could handle and I had to let them get away.

As we approached the big island that represented the turnaround point, Mike was all but out of sight in first place.  Jeb and Thaison continued to pull away from me, leaving me in a place no marathon canoe and kayak racer really wants to be: all by my lonesome.  Alessia wasn’t far behind, and I could hear her chatting with a voice that I recognized as that of Don Walls of Russellville, Arkansas.  A many-time national champion in North American-style marathon canoe racing, Don was paddling a sleek outrigger canoe and doing an admirable job keeping up with us double-bladers.  As fatigue began to grip my body, I pondered my options.  I could back off and let Alessia and Don catch me, and then conserve energy trading wake rides with them in the hopes of sprinting away in the closing meters; or I could continue bearing down and make them work to catch me, and hope I would have just a bit more left than they did at the end.  I opted for the latter tactic, and realized that my sprint to keep up with the Berrys earlier had been a crucial move.  Even though I was getting tired and it was very likely that Alessia and Don would reel me in, I was still in a more desirable position than they were.

The second half of the race had an added challenge: the wind was coming from the southwest and the tide was flowing in, meaning that we had to fight both as we retraced our route from the turnaround point back to the Gulf Hills cove.  I’d averaged around 11.5 kilometers per hour on the way out, and it messed with my brain as I struggled to manage even 10 kph coming back.  I had to keep reminding myself that my competitors were all dealing with it, too.

When the Washington Avenue drawbridge came back into view I knew that I was sort of getting close to the end, but the bridge is about 2 kilometers from the finish, and I was probably another kilo from it when I could first see it, so there was still plenty of room for all kinds of funny things to happen.  Soon, what I knew was inevitable finally happened: one of the boats behind me caught up.  It was Don.  In my peripheral vision I could see another boat just behind him that I assumed was Alessia.  I was actually glad to have some company, not to mention some wakes I could ride.  As we passed beneath the bridge I started to gather myself for a strong finish.  As the two kilometers dwindled to just one, I realized there was another boat in our little pack: a tandem ski paddled by Susan Jordan of Lucedale, Mississippi, and Mike Malone of Fort Walton Beach, Florida.  At this point I was just managing my fatigue and I thought, hey, the more the merrier.

At long last, we rounded the point of the last marshy island and pointed our boats straight toward the finish line about 400 meters in the distance.  I found another gear and moved out in front of my competition--a reminder of why I do all those 1000- and 500-meter pieces back home.  My closest challenger was Susan/Mike, and I gauged their reaction to my surges to save as much as I could for the final 50.  I threw down one last splurge of effort and crossed the finish line in third place overall with a time of one hour, 17 minutes, 57 seconds for the 13.56-kilometer (8.43-mile) course.

Mike, of course, had taken the overall victory long before anybody else was even within sight of the finish line, clocking 1:08:52.  At age 62, the man seems in vintage form.

Jeb and Thaison were next across, nearly eight minutes later (1:16:38).  Behind me, the racers sorted themselves out as Susan and Mike in fourth (1:17:58), Alessia fifth (1:18:08), and Don sixth (1:18:12).  Matt Taylor finished in 1:20:02 to claim third place behind Mike and me in the men’s class for racing kayaks.

The complete results are posted here.

The day had been overcast to begin, but by race’s end the sun had come out and we all gathered on the bank to socialize, eat a barbecue lunch, and enjoy the nice day.  Once the awards had been handed out I returned to my accommodations at my friend Nick Kinderman’s house.  I actually had the place to myself, as Nick had just married the lovely Miss Kelly Platt and moved in with her.  (For the record, those two do have their priorities straight: the wedding and honeymoon weren’t enough to keep them from racing.  Nick clocked 1:31:20 to take first place in the men's K1 "Long" class, while Kelly was the third-fastest in women's K1 "Fast" at 1:46:09.)

I enjoyed a slow morning today, easing away from Nick’s house around 9 o'clock.  I needed a recovery paddle, so I drove back over to Gulf Hills and paddled easy in the Back Bay of Biloxi for an hour.  It felt good to get some blood flowing through my ragged muscles, and I also saw some neat wildlife, most notably some diving pelicans and a briefly-surfacing dolphin.  Such things are a good reminder of why I should leave the good old Memphis riverfront and paddle some other places once in a while.  Another cool thing I saw was on the railroad line that crosses the Back Bay near its entrance from Mississippi Sound: there's a bridge that rotates to allow boat traffic to pass through, and I got to watch it close back up in preparation for an approaching train.  I'm still a little kid when it comes to stuff like that.

I hit the road and was back in Memphis around 5 o'clock.  Thus concluded my first race trip of the year.  When will my next one be?  As I said in my last post, I really don't know.  Once I'm settled back in at home I'll give that some more serious thought.

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Ocean Springs pre-race

My mission for this week has been to get some rest, sharpen up my speed, and address a whole list of chores that needed my attention before I left town.

As far as training goes, I've been doing what are more or less considered "peaking" activities, as if the race tomorrow were some kind of major championship.  For me, it sort of is, frankly.  Race events of any kind within a reasonable drive of my home are an all-but-extinct species these days.  It's possible I'll participate in a race or two farther from home as part of a summer vacation trip, but that's at least three months off, plenty of time for me to ease into a whole new phase of training.

On Monday and Wednesday I went downtown and paddled just long enough to get warmed up, do a few short sprints (eight 12-stroke sprints Monday, six Wednesday), and cool back down.

It was pouring down rain this morning when I left my house and got myself southbound on Interstate 55.  My original plan was to stop and paddle on Arkabutla Reservoir about 20 miles south of Memphis, but it was still raining and the western sky looked ominous.  So I continued some 45 miles farther south to Enid Reservoir in Yalobusha County, where I knew the rain wouldn’t arrive until later in the day.  But the wind sure had arrived: I looked out over the water and saw small but genuine downwind conditions.

There was no point doing my usual 12-stroke sprints in those conditions, so instead I paddled into the wind to the far side of the lake and then did a few sprints by way of catching a few runs as I paddled back.

Now I’m down in Ocean Springs hoping to get a good night’s rest for the race tomorrow.  Where the aches and pains are concerned, I've been been feeling neither great nor terrible.  I'm taking some ibuprofen for a couple of days, hoping that will settle it down for the race.

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Monday photo feature

Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, explodes off the starting line as if shot from a cannon.  The occasion is the Battle On The Bayou canoe and kayak race at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, in 2017.  Over Mike's right shoulder the Pellerin triplets of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana--Conrad, Carson, and Peyton--move their three-man kayak into the lead for the "unlimited" boat class.

The 2023 edition of this event is scheduled for this Saturday, and Mike is signed up to participate.  I doubt the Pellerin boys will be there: they're young adults now and busy with other things.  But I hope we haven't seen the last of them in our sport.

Photo by Doug Heller.

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Heating up the intensity in the late-winter chill

Friday morning I did my last gym session before next weekend's race.  As I've said here many times, gym work is my least favorite part of training, so it's nice to have a break from that this coming week.

This has been a chilly weekend, with Fahrenheit highs not much above 40 degrees.  I think tonight we're supposed to drop into the 20s, and I hope that will be the last time for this season.  Warmer days are supposed to arrive midweek.  My race Saturday is at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where I presume the temperature will be even a few degrees warmer.

It was only just barely above freezing when I got up yesterday morning, but by the time I got down to the river it had warmed up into the 40s.  The sun was out, and the breeze that was blowing wasn't too bad.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did my last tough workout before race day: three sets of 20-second sprints with a decreasing rest interval.  To wit: 20-second sprint/60-second rest/20-second sprint/50-second rest/20-second sprint/40-second rest/20-second sprint/30-second rest/20-second sprint/20-second rest/20-second sprint/10-second rest/20-second sprint.  I did the first set with light resistance (one golf whiffle ball) on the boat, and the second and third sets with no resistance.  I took a 5-minute break between sets.  I was struggling to maintain good form by the last sprint of each set, but in general I felt strong.

This morning it was frigid and stayed that way.  When I got to the river the temperature display in my car said it was a degree below freezing.  There was a north wind blowing that wasn't particularly fierce but managed to penetrate my bones just the same.  The sun was out again, but my marina has a roof on it and my dock is on the west side, meaning that in the morning it's completely in the shade.  That's nice in the summertime but not on days like today.  The worst part of paddling in cold weather is not the paddling itself but the chores on the dock before and after.

Once in the boat I paddled calmly for 50 minutes.  I kept the intensity fairly low but I tried to focus on good precise strokes.  When I returned to the dock it was apparently still below freezing: the water on my boat started to freeze as I hurried to get into dry clothes and store the boat back on its rack.  It's stayed cold the rest of the day, with a high temperature of maybe 39 or 40.  Let's get some warmer weather in here already!  According to the forecast, that's supposed to happen around Wednesday.

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A bit more hard work before I get to race

The cold spell continues, and it looks like it won't be until the middle of next week that the weather takes a turn for the warmer.  Now that Daylight Saving Time starts several weeks earlier than it used to, I tend to think spring should be arriving earlier as well, but the reality is that it's still just mid March.  One ritual I look forward to every spring is giving all my winter gear a good washing and putting it away for the year, but over the years I've learned it's not safe to do that until at least the beginning of May.  So for now I'm trying to put that out of my mind and bundle up for the conditions at hand.

After a gym session Tuesday morning, I headed down to the river.  The presence of some sunshine made it a somewhat nicer day than Sunday had been, but once again there was a north breeze blowing, and it was some ten degrees colder.  Fortunately I could stay in the harbor for my workout.  With a race coming up a week from Saturday, I've got some hard work on tap for this week.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I embarked on a workout I first did with Dawid Mocke in South Africa in February of 2020: 10 hard strokes/10 easy strokes/20 hard strokes/10 easy strokes/30 hard strokes/10 easy strokes... and so on and so on until I'd done 100 hard strokes.  This workout is a tough one and I was feeling it by the 40-hard-strokes piece.  But at 15 minutes or so, it's one of the more "short & sweet" workouts.  Once I'd finished the workout and paddled a 15-minute cool-down and returned to the dock, I'd spent just 50 minutes in the boat.  That's the theme of the week: the intensity is going up, but the volume is going down.

I chilled out yesterday, and this morning I paddled for another 50 minutes.  I wanted it to be not necessarily an easy paddle, but a relaxed one.  But at the same time I wanted to focus on a crisp catch and strong power, and add some speed into the mix.  Midway through my 50 minutes I did four 8-stroke sprints, except I stretched them out to 12 strokes so I could feel the sensation of paddling fast with the boat fully up to speed.

I got back to the dock feeling better than I'd felt when I started.  I've got a bit more hard work planned for the weekend before I prioritize rest.

The aches and pains story hasn't changed too much.  I've still got tight soreness in the right side of my neck and some occasional throbbing pain in my left forearm and biceps.  My chiropractor has suggested it might be time for me to get an MRI, which I'm happy to do except for the likely fight that I'll have to wage with my insurance company.  I shouldn't procrastinate too long, but I might let it wait until after I've got a race under my belt.

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Monday photo feature

In the fall of 2018 I found myself racing in the upper reaches of Lake Cumberland in southern Kentucky.  We're on the Big South Fork arm of the manmade reservoir, skirting the carcasses of some submerged trees.  That's me on the right, followed closely by Ryan Landis of Corwin, Ohio.  In hot pursuit is a tandem boat paddled by Scott Cummins and Elaine Harold of Louisville, Kentucky.  Photo by Greg Davis.

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Feeling roughed up by the elements, the clock, and a time trial

Clearly, winter is not quite done yet.  Between now and the start of spring on the 20th of March, the daily high temperatures are expected to be mostly below 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  At least the sun came out Friday afternoon, but my training activity was indoors.  Just a gym session.

Yesterday morning started sunny, but it was quickly clouding over by the time I was in the boat.  I had a 5-kilometer time trial on tap, and I gauged the wind direction so I could avoid doing it into a headwind.  Looking at the flags at the Coast Guard station across the harbor, I thought it was a north wind, but once I was paddling up toward the harbor's north end, I realized that it was more east than north.

I did three 8-stroke sprints, turned to head back south, and was on my way.  The harbor is mostly straight, but it does have some gentle bends to it, and in the early going I found myself fighting a headwind.  Shooting for a stroke rate of 80 strokes per minute, I moved as close as I could to the harbor's east bank in search of some shelter, but it was a struggle just to maintain 11.5 kilometers per hour.  Once in a while I sank below 11.0, and it was clear that the 5-minutes-per-kilometer pace that I covet so much wasn't in the cards on this day.  I tried to relax and take the most precise and powerful strokes I could.  The last two kilometers were definitely tough, but I kept up the cadence and my speed actually nudged up a little because the wind was more in my favor.  I reached the 5-kilometer mark right in the swirly water at the mouth of the harbor, and recorded a time of 26 minutes, 41 seconds.  It was far from my best ever, but I think I gave a good honest effort from start to finish, so I can't really be too hard on myself.

Some rain moved through the area yesterday afternoon, but by this morning all the precipitation appeared to be south of here.  A look at the Internet radar revealed that Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama were getting hammered with rain pretty good.  Around here it was just cloudy, and the mercury was struggling to reach 50 degrees.  Down on the riverfront I found a stiff north wind blowing that made it feel like a brutal winter day even though it wasn't really that cold.  I put the pogies on for the first time in a couple of weeks and set out on my Sunday long paddle.  With the Mississippi River flowing at 27.8 feet on the Memphis gauge I could have paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar again, but instead I opted to stay in the state of Tennessee and paddle up to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge on the Wolf River.

The trip up the Mississippi from the mouth of the harbor to the mouth of the Wolf was a real slog into the teeth of that wind.  Adding insult to injury was the presence of an obstacle in the form of a touring riverboat (the American Countess) moored at the boat ramp just below the mouth of the Wolf.  It looked like I had room to paddle between this vessel and the bank, but just like last week I found that passageway blocked by a floating tree trunk.  I ended up carrying my boat up the ramp and across the parking lot to a spot where I could get back on the water in the Wolf's mouth.

Now that I was in the protected environs of the Wolf I was able to relax and concentrate on taking good strokes.  The trip up to Danny Thomas and back gave me a good 6000 meters of flatwater distance paddling, and once I was back on the Mississippi I had the wind at my back.  Then it was one last leg into the wind from the mouth of the harbor back to the dock.  It was nowhere near my worst-ever winter day paddle, but I was glad to have it over just the same.

This morning was also the first of Daylight Saving Time, and so the dreaded circadian adjustment phase begins. I'm feeling dead-dog tired and am grateful to have a day off coming up tomorrow.

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Balancing hard efforts with rest

Tuesday morning I did a gym session and then went to the river for a 60-minute paddle.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I set about a pace workout: three 1500-meter pieces, starting every 15th minute.  My times were 8:19, 7:36, and 7:27.  The reason the first piece was so slow is that I did half of it into a stiff north wind, and then when I reached the north end of the harbor I had to turn to head back south.  So I didn't think much about my time for the first piece.  My goal for the next two was 7:30, and as you can see I failed once and succeeded once.

It takes an average speed of 12.0 kilometers per hour to produce a 7:30 1500.  I feel like I should be able to maintain 12 kph for at least 5 kilometers, although I've heard many wise people in our sport say that one shouldn't focus on a specific speed or specific times because of all the many variables that impact a paddler's speed, including the wind and even the temperature of the water.  I try not to get too bent out of shape if I don't achieve a certain numeric goal, but it'd be nice if I could get myself in 12-kph form at some point this year.  On Tuesday I managed it just one time, with the help of a tailwind.  Back in June of 2020 I clocked 25:12 for an out-and-back 5K on flatwater (an 11.9-kph average), and I sure would like to believe I haven't slowed down that much in the less-than-three years since then.

I was very tired, both physically and mentally, for the rest of the day Tuesday.  With a race coming up soon I've gone to doing two higher-intensity sessions each week, and I'm needing a bit more rest as a result.  I took a break from training activity yesterday, and this morning I did just an easy 60 minutes in the boat.

Tuesday was the last of a stretch of warm days, and now the forecast features temperatures that are much more March-like, maybe even a bit below normal for March, for the next couple of weeks.  There's a lot of rain in there as well.  When I got to the river this morning it was just barely 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and I got rained on some while I paddled.  All told the conditions weren't bad, and I felt good in the boat, but as I said here a few weeks ago, I'll be glad when the sub-60-degree days are gone for good.

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Monday photo feature

When it's a beautiful day following on the heels of heavy storms, it's a perfect day for some creeking.  On Saturday Memphis father-son duo Sonny and Jason Salomon crossed the Mississippi River and headed northwest up into the Ozark foothills, where Salado Creek flows through the region between Batesville and Bald Knob, Arkansas.  Sonny snapped this photo of a frolicking sluice of water on the Class II+ creek that's hard to catch at a runnable level.

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Hard short pieces and a lovely long paddle

Friday began with heavy rain in the Mid South, followed by strong winds and a falling temperature.  The only training activity I had planned for the day was an indoor gym session, and I was happy about that.

Once again, the storm system moved north and east into higher areas of the Mississippi River watershed, and soon enough all that water will be flowing past the city of Memphis.  The current forecast says that the river will rise above 30 feet on the Memphis gauge around the end of this coming week.  It's hard to believe that we saw our lowest level ever recorded (10.86 feet below zero) less than five months ago.

The weather had calmed down by yesterday morning.  It was cool--a little over 50 degrees Fahrenheit--but the sun was coming out and the afternoon high was expected to be in the low 60s.  I went downtown and got in the boat, and after warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did four bridge-to-bridge sprints starting every 8th minute.  My times were 2:14, 2:13, 2:16, and 2:16--quite a bit slower than my best, but I think the headwind had a lot to do with that.  It wasn't a strong headwind, but I've learned over the years that it doesn't take much of a headwind to slow you down quite a bit.  So I'm not too disappointed in my times.  I aimed for a stroke rate in the 90-95 strokes per minute range, though at times I had to make myself ease up a little just to keep it under 100.  All told, the workout was plenty tough, just as I'd expected.

I went out this morning for my Sunday long paddle, and I had a gorgeous day to do it.  The sun was shining, and the temperature when I got down to the dock was 60 degrees and rising fast.  With the river flowing at 20.2 feet, I had enough water to paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar for the first time in close to a year.  I continued to suffer nagging pain in my left forearm and biceps muscles, but otherwise I felt good in the boat.  As I paddled down the chute on the west side of the Loosahatchie Bar, out of view of any vestiges of civilization, I could have been in the remotest wilderness on Earth for all I knew.

I paddled for just over 122 minutes.  Long-time readers know that I like to break two hours for this circuit, but today I had a reasonable excuse for not doing so: while paddling up the Mississippi along the Tennessee side I had to go between a parked barge and the bank, and found this passage blocked by a big floating tree branch.  I ended up having to portage over it, and that cost me several minutes.  Also, some of the sand bar at the north end of the Loosahatchie Bar was exposed at the 20.2-foot river level, making the course maybe a couple of hundred meters longer than it is at higher water.  As I rounded the north end of the exposed sand I hit the bottom with my paddle several times but didn't drag my rudder.

In any case, today's paddle completed a good substantial weekend of work, and that's a nice feeling with just under three weeks to go before my first race.

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All the many physical challenges

I was up and at 'em Tuesday morning, doing a gym session and then going to the river for a workout in the boat.  After warming up and doing a set of three 8-stroke sprints, I did three 1000-meter pieces, starting each new one 11 minutes after I'd started the last one.  I aimed for a stroke rate of 80 strokes per minute, about what I'd use in a 10-kilometer race.  My times were 5:19, 5:16, and 5:10.  I feel like 5 minutes per kilometer is a reasonable goal for me in a 5- or 10-kilometer race, but this was as good as I could do today.  I'm sure the gym session had taken something out of me.

My Tuesday morning giddy-up was quite a contrast to what I'd been feeling Monday evening.  As I wound down after supper Monday, I thought ahead to my training plans for the next morning with a vague sense of dread.  I was tired and sluggish and wondering if I would find the energy to make it happen.  But sure enough I did, and it was a reminder of how much of a mind-body connection being an athlete is.  You would think I would know it by heart at this stage of life, but I'm always having to remind myself that just because I don't feel up to a challenge right at this moment, that doesn't mean I won't be ready for it later.  In the case of Monday night, the best thing I could have done is exactly what I did: get a good night's sleep.  I woke up the next morning feeling rested and ready to go.  It didn't hurt that the weather was gorgeous on Tuesday: sunny, calm, and a high temperature around 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

Tuesday afternoon I tried something new in my ongoing struggle against aches and pains: massage.  I have a friend who's a massage therapist and she said she'd be happy to take a crack at my woes, so I took her up on it.  I didn't expect all my problems to be solved in one session, and they weren't, but the massage gave me about as much relief as anything I've tried, at least in the short term.  She targeted my areas of pain in ways my chiropractor never does.  I get it that pain in one area could have its roots in a different part of the body, and the chiropractor is looking to address those root causes, but I often wish the chiropractor would just put her hand on my pain and heal it like she's Jesus Christ or something.

Anyway, having worked hard on Tuesday, and hoping to do my next big workout this Saturday, I eased up a bit yesterday and today.  I didn't really do anything athletic yesterday, and this morning I did a calm 60-minute paddle.  I think I hit the best possible window this morning: the forecast says we're in for some strong windy storms later on today, but this morning the conditions were as calm as they could be.

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Monday photo feature

Here's an old favorite William Nealy cartoon that laments the maturation of our sport from its "salad days."  It was actually the early 1980s when Nealy drew this cartoon, and the situation hasn't gotten any better since then. 

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Getting comfortable back in the boat

The week had been unseasonably warm, but Friday morning it was 48 degrees Fahrenheit and raining, and I was happy to stay in and do a gym session.

The weather wasn't much different yesterday morning.  But I had an in-the-boat workout to do, so down to the river I went.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did twelve 30-second sprints starting every third minute.  I've done this workout two or three times a year for the last eight or nine years, since I read on Ron Lugbill's old blog that studies had shown that such workouts make a better aerobic session than long, steady paddling.  Sometimes this workout feels hard to me, and other times it's not bad.  Yesterday it was not bad at all: by the time I was done I was ready to be done, but I wasn't falling apart.  Maybe all the cross-training work I've done this winter is helping me that way.  Once again I felt some tenderness in my lat area, but in the end it held up well.

This morning I had a dry-land obligation, so I didn't get down to the river until the late afternoon.  I prefer to paddle in the morning because my energy is typically flagging later in the day, and that was the case today.  I fought through it to paddle for 80 minutes, keeping the stroke rate low but focusing on a good catch and solid power.  The nice thing about this afternoon is that the temperature had risen into the low 60s.  It's supposed to be warm and windy in the coming days.

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Nudging the intensity upward during a warm week

I started Tuesday with a gym session.  Then I went downtown to paddle for 60 minutes.  As I left the harbor and paddled up the Mississippi there was a barge rig moving upstream making some nice waves, and wistfully I looked forward to late spring and summer when I can surf without being doused with frigid water.  For now I would have to settle for daydreaming, because not only is the water too cold but also I'm easing back into paddling from this lat muscle injury and don't need to be throwing down a bunch of hard sprints.

The Mississippi River is on a big rise right now.  Just a few days ago the Memphis gauge reading was around 10 feet, but the heavy rain that we had here last week moved eastward into the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Ohio watersheds, and the current forecast says we'll be up around 22.5 feet by early next week.  With more rain and snow moving across the nation this week, that figure could be revised upward soon.

Yesterday the Fahrenheit temperature rose into the mid 70s... most unusual for late February.  It was also very windy and rain was on its way, but I managed to get out for a relaxed bike ride in the early afternoon before the precipitation arrived.

It was still very warm this morning.  There's a fierce winter storm moving across much of the country right now, but you wouldn't know it here in the Mid South.  There was a layer of fog over the water down on the riverfront this morning.  I warmed up for 15 minutes and then did a set of three 8-stroke sprints for the first time since injuring my lat muscle over two weeks ago.  This time the muscle held up okay even though I could feel a hint of soreness there.  My sprint form felt very rusty, though; in fact I felt generally tired in the boat for some reason, but after doing the sprints I settled into a tempo piece for about 25 minutes.  My stroke rate was between 70 and 75 strokes per minute and I tried to stay relaxed and not wear myself out with the semi-taxing pace.

My first race of the year is four weeks from this Saturday.  Hopefully my body will continue to be healthy enough for some increased intensity in the coming days.

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

Wisdom from a legendary coach

William T. (Bill) Endicott coached the U.S. whitewater team (slalom and wildwater) from the mid 1970s through the early 1990s.  As I mention in my film "A Paddler's Journey," one of the first things I did in an effort to learn more about whitewater racing was buy some books that he'd written about the sport: The River Masters, To Win The Worlds, The Ultimate Run, and The Danger Zone.  (Later, when I started to get interested in flatwater technique, I picked up The Barton Mold, Endicott's case study of world and Olympic champion Greg Barton.)  Because technique and equipment designs are constantly changing, much of the information in the books was already somewhat out of date by the time I got them; but the books contain over-arching ideas that are timeless.  Though I was never coached by Bill directly, his writings have had a profound influence on how I approach the whole business of being an athlete.

In the last couple of decades Bill has written more sparingly on athletic topics, but whenever he does drop an article I make sure to read every word of it.  Recently, he has shared his thoughts on his experiences with the Olympic Games as an athlete, a coach, a team leader and manager, and, especially, a TV commentator.  I don't think the article has actually been published anywhere; I found it as a downloadable document in the "Whitewater Slalom Alumni and Friends" group on Face Book.  It offers fascinating insights on why network television coverage of smaller Olympic sports like canoe and kayak racing is the way it is.

The excerpt shared below is actually sort of a digression from the main point of the article, but I think it contains excellent advice for coaches and athletes of all kinds, and I hope readers of this blog will find it valuable.

Performing right up to your ability: this is another psychological aspect to racing that is fascinating to explore because it’s transferable to other aspects of life.  As a coach I used to tell my athletes that all they had to do on the big day was to perform right up to their level of ability as defined simply “by a good day in practice.”  They didn’t have to do more than that; they didn’t have to perform better than they had ever performed on a good day in practice, which a lot of athletes think they have to do on the big day, and which causes them to blow it.

And if they only performed right up to their level of ability on the day, they would probably do really well.  That’s because most of the other competitors out there would not perform right up to their level of ability because they would be worrying instead about who was going to win the race, which was out of their control.

But performing right up to their level of ability was something my athletes could control, and that made all the psychological difference.  We also reasoned that if they did perform right up to their level of ability and still got beat, it only was because the other guys were just better than they were on that day.

We found that by worrying about just performing up to their level of ability, which we practiced thousands of time in training, was something they could control and that alleviated a great deal of the stress of being in the Olympics.

The secret, of course, was to have a large amount of good days in practice, which we did.

Finally, I told them that no matter what the outcome of the race was, if they performed right up to their level of ability, as defined by how they had done it many times before on a good day in practice, then they were the winner in my book because you couldn’t ask for anything more than that.

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

Monday photo feature

Here'a a map of Arkabutla Lake, where I paddled Saturday morning.  This reservoir, whose main purpose is flood control, was formed in 1940 with the construction of a dam on the Coldwater River.  It's located in northwest Mississippi some 25 miles south of the Tennessee state line.

On Saturday I accessed the lake at Bayou Point and did a big loop in that area.  It was an easy paddle, so I probably didn't cover more than 7 or 8 kilometers.  I mostly just wanted to check out the area.

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

As the healing continues, I pay the Magnolia State a visit

On the aches-and-pains front, my lat muscle injury seems to be doing a lot better, but a couple of other stubborn issues remain.  My left forearm and biceps muscles are better some days and worse some days, and I've got a bad spot in the right side of my neck that came on about a month ago.  My chiropractor has been working on that latter spot, and she has said that it might take several adjustments before we can get the tension to release in that area.  I'm dreaming of the day when we achieve that magic crack! that makes everything better.

Meanwhile, I'm wondering whether that neck pain is somehow related to the recent problems in my right lat muscle.  I've noticed that when I tense that part of my neck I can feel it down into the lat.  Hmm.

Friday morning I dared to get back in the boat for an hour of easy paddling.  It would have been nice of Mother Nature to cooperate, but instead she presented me with a cold north wind and a temperature around 38 degrees Fahrenheit.  The sky was mostly cloudy, but as the hour went by the sun began to take over.  I could feel some mild soreness in the lat muscle--not just the injured part near my armpit, but the whole muscle.  But it never got any worse than that: I wasn't feeling any stabs of pain when I stressed it.  So that was encouraging, and I was hopeful that a couple more days of moderate-intensity paddling would bring me closer to full health.

Yesterday morning I took a rather wild notion.  Here at home I do almost all my paddling on the downtown Memphis riverfront because I keep a boat at a marina down there.  But yesterday I found myself wanting to check out Arkabutla Lake, a reservoir in northwest Mississippi some 25 miles south of Memphis.  I loaded one of the surfskis in my garage onto my truck and headed south.  Having scoped out the lake on the Google map, I chose to access it from the Bayou Point public use area on the western shore.

It was chilly as I carried my boat to the water, but the sun was shining bright and the temperature was rising toward a high in the 50s.  I embarked on another 60-minute paddle, heading out on a loop around the heart of the lake.  Situated in an economically-modest region, Arkabutla has a reputation as a somewhat lower-rent recreational spot than Sardis and Enid reservoirs to the southeast.  But I found it a perfectly pleasant setting for a Saturday morning paddle.  Even though I'm a lifelong Memphian, I had spent almost no time there before yesterday, and I'm glad to have gained a modicum of familiarity with this neighboring body of water.

This morning I returned to my home water on the Memphis riverfront.  It was no more than partly sunny, but the temperature was 50 degrees and rising toward a high in the low 60s.  As usual for this time of year, the warmer temperature was accompanied by a south wind, and that wind seemed to get stronger as I paddled for 90 minutes.  I left the harbor long enough to paddle up to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, but then I went back and spent the rest of my allotted time doing a full lap in the harbor's more sheltered environs.  My lat muscle felt fine, and while I tried to keep the stroke rate low, I put more power into my strokes and got a solid training session out of it.  I'll probably wait until next weekend to do a "real" workout, but it felt good to be paddling strong again.

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

More dry-land activity in unseasonably warm weather

In recent times I've been in the habit of making Monday a day off, but this week my mother needed me to drive her to and from the hospital for a small procedure on Tuesday.  The procedure was the kind of thing that could take anywhere from a couple of hours to all day, so I decided to do some training work on Monday and let Tuesday be my day off.

I did a gym session Monday morning.  Then in the afternoon I rode my bike to the park just west of my house, where there's a paved loop of maybe 2000 meters.  I did the same workout I'd done last Thursday, riding the loop hard three times, stopping in between laps to do a couple of sets of Hindu squats.

Just as I'd anticipated, the trip to the hospital took the better part of the day on Tuesday.  I spent that period sitting in a chair and reading a book, and once I was back home I didn't do much else for what was left of the day.  So by the evening I was feeling as though I'd spent the whole day sitting around like a slug.  But I reminded myself that it was a scheduled day off and I wasn't supposed to be doing any major physical activity.

We've had a warm spell for the last several days, with the daytime temperature exceeding 70 degrees Fahrenheit.  Not surprisingly, it's been accompanied by chances of stormy weather.  Yesterday the news was full of warnings about the possibility of severe storms, but by afternoon it looked like they would hold off until the evening.  I got on my bike and rode the Greater Memphis Greenline out to Shelby Farms.  My intention was to do a loop around Patriot Lake out there, but I was hit with a little digestive-tract emergency, and ended up spending a while in a restroom out there instead.  Once that episode had run its course I just came back home on the Greenline.  So what would have been a 34-kilometer ride was probably more like 29 or 30 kilometers.

The storms arrived after 9 o'clock last night, and the sky was lit up with one of the more impressive lightning displays I've seen.  I think it was pretty windy overnight but I haven't heard of any major damage in the Mid South.

I did another gym session this morning.  Now, as I write this, one last line of thunderstorms is about to move through.  The temperature is supposed to drop the rest of the day, and this weekend will see temperatures in the 40s and 50s.  I'm hoping to get back in the boat tomorrow and see how my right lat muscle responds to some easy paddling.

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

Monday photo feature

It was about this time of year that I made my first trip to South Africa in 2020.  I shot this photo of the penguins at Boulders Beach, down the False Bay coast from Fish Hoek.

Here in February it's hard not to daydream of that warm South African summer.  I'm weary of winter and pining away for the longer, warmer days of spring and summer.

Then again, this winter hasn't been all that bad, really.  Yes, we had an ice storm a couple of weeks ago, and we had that brutal cold spell back around the 24th of December.  But we've also had quite a few days when the Fahrenheit temperature rose into the 50s and even the 60s.  And the forecast for the first half of this week looks downright balmy, including a high of 74 tomorrow.  In fact, according to The Weather Channel's website, all daily highs except two for the next two weeks are above 55 degrees in Memphis, Tennessee.

Still, I'll be glad when the sub-60 days disappear entirely and we're having more and more days in the 70s and low 80s.  Eventually, of course, the temperature will be rising into the 90s and maybe the 100s here in the Mid South, and I guess I'll be complaining about that soon enough.  But for now those days are out of sight and out of mind.

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

Keeping myself busy out of the boat

When I did several sets of Hindu squats on Thursday, it was the first time I'd done so in quite a few months.  So it was no surprise that my quad muscles were sore on Friday.  I stayed home and did a gym session, but skipped the row exercises I'd been doing that I think contributed to my muscle injury.

I was still very sore yesterday.  The weather was not terrible, but not very nice either.  It was mostly cloudy and windy, and the temperature just barely reached 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the afternoon.  I really was not eager to get outside, but I dragged myself out in the afternoon for a 40-minute bike ride.

I could tell as soon as I got up this morning that today would be a much nicer day: I could see bright sunshine dawning in the eastern sky.  I waited until afternoon, when the temperature was reaching its high in the mid 50s, to get on the bike.  It was still cooler than I like to ride in, but when you're out of the boat for a while you have to do what you can.  I felt sort of tired, and my thighs were still sore, but I got in a decent 90-minute ride on my usual course out to Shelby Farms and back via the Greater Memphis Greenline.

I'm pleased to say that my injured lat muscle (or whatever it is) under my right armpit is feeling a lot better.  I've been babying it, heating it up in the bathtub and then icing it, stuff like that.  I probably won't try to paddle again until late this coming week, at the earliest.  The worst thing you can do with an injury is try to come back too soon, and with my first race still six weeks off, there's no reason at all to rush it.  I feel good about my cross-training work and I can keep that up for a few more days.

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

Setback

Last weekend I noticed some soreness in my right lat muscle.  It wasn't terrible, and I figured it was just a mild strain that would work itself out in a few days.  By the end of the weekend I'd forgotten about it, but then on Tuesday morning I did a gym session, and as I did a set of dumbbell rows chest-down on the stability ball, I felt discomfort in that area again.

After the gym session I went down to the river and got in the boat.  After a 10-minute warmup I intended to do three 8-stroke sprints, but on the very first stroke of the very first sprint I felt something pop right under my right armpit.  I think it's part of my lat muscle, and I either pulled it or tore it, I'm not sure which.  I knew right then that I couldn't do any more sprints, and the spot continued to hurt as I paddled easy back to the dock.

Whatever this injury is, it's clear that it's going to keep me out of the boat for a few days.  I'm not happy about it, but I'm trying my best to take it in stride and do some alternative workouts while I nurse it back to health.  Tuesday was a lovely warm day, so I wasted no time: that afternoon I rode my bike for about 90 minutes, doing the 34-kilometer course I often do.  Today isn't quite so nice--it's around 50 degrees Fahrenheit with a stiff west-southwest wind--but I got back out and did sort of an interval workout on the bike.  I did three hard laps of a paved loop in Overton Park just west of my house, stopping to do some Hindu squats in between laps.

It's frustrating to have something like this happen, seeing as how just in my last post I was talking about how well things seemed to be going.  But this gives me a chance to incorporate some leg work that I hadn't been doing much of lately, and strong legs are an asset both for paddling and for good general fitness.  And hopefully this ailing muscle won't take too long to heal and I'll be able to paddle again soon.

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

Monday photo feature

These photos show what I think is beautiful about ice storms.  There's something mesmerizing about the glistening ice-coated tree branches here in my forested city.

Of course, ice storms are known primarily for the headaches they cause: that beautiful ice can sometimes accumulate to a greater weight than many trees can support.  Fortunately, the one we had here this past week was not all that bad in terms of tree damage and power outages.  Just last year we had one that was quite a bit worse: somehow I was spared a loss of electricity at my house, but the neighborhood where my rental property is lost power for close to a week.

And then there was the truly catastrophic storm in February of 1994.  I remember waking up thinking my neighborhood was being shelled as the branches of large trees cracked off and crashed onto roofs everywhere.  I think it took the better part of a month for our local utility to get power fully restored to its customers.  I was a high school teacher at the time, and school was out for a week.  That might have been nice at the moment, but we paid a steep price later: the school board, in its profound wisdom, decided to make up the missed time by extending the school day an hour for the entire month of April.  Each class period was lengthened from 55 minutes to 65, and considering that I could barely hold those students' attention for even 20 minutes, it's little surprise that that was the most painful month of my teaching career.

We also had a very bad storm back in the early 1970s.  I remember considerable tree damage and long power outages, but I don't remember caring all that much about it.  I think my main source of anguish was that the ice wasn't as much fun to play in as snow.  Meanwhile, school was out, and I didn't really mind the heat going off in our house because we got to have fires in the fireplace along with hot chocolate and all that stuff.

Oh, to be a kid again, with no particular worldly worries.

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

Starting to feel like a player again

My first race of the year is seven weeks away.  Right now I'm concentrating mainly on strength and power and endurance, doing a lot of workouts like the resistance session I did Friday.  Over the next few weeks I'll move gradually into doing more speed work.

Regular readers of this blog know that in the last couple of years I've struggled with energy, motivation, and desire.  I'm happy to say that I'm doing a lot better in those respects these days.  I'm excited about the race that's coming up next month, and I'm having some fun getting out there and putting more and more good work in the bank.

Of course, I'm hoping that this work will result in my racing well this year, and it remains to be seen how that will go and how it will affect my attitude toward the sport.  Two or three times in the last several years I was very disappointed in my performance at a race, and that dealt a huge blow to my enjoyment of this whole business.  And that's something I'm going to have to reckon with.  As I get older I can only expect to get slower, not faster, and I have to remember the things about this sport that are rewarding beyond just beating this person or that person.

When it comes to competing while aging, the main person I've looked at as my "ideal" is Greg Barton, a winner of four Olympic medals (two of them gold) in the 1980s and 90s.  Now, Greg might not be the best person to model myself after--at age 63 he's still faster than I ever was at my athletic peak.  But I admire his attitude toward his athletic decline.  There are a couple of current U.S. flatwater team members in western Washington where Greg lives, and Greg seems to savor the challenge every time he races them.  They're beating him, but not without a good fight.  Greg also seems genuinely happy whenever he ends up on the podium for his age group at the Columbia Gorge race.

For now, I'm just happy to be feeling some "giddy-up" each day as I go out and paddle or do some gym here at home.  It wasn't that long ago that the idea of simply getting out and paddling hard felt very intimidating; the hard sprinting that a downwind run requires seemed all but impossible.  Now I'm beginning to look forward to that kind of thing again.  Even though my left arm woes continue, I'm even feeling better about that: when I was in my funk my aches and pains gave me all the more reason for pessimism, but now I'm more inclined to believe I will work through them.

Yesterday morning started sunny, but a thin layer of clouds had moved in by the time I got down to the river.  Even after a sunny, above-freezing day on Friday, there was still quite a bit of ice at the marina, so I had to move around gingerly.  Once on the water I did a steady 60-minute paddle, focusing on the same catch and early-phase-power aspects of my stroke that Friday's workout had been intended to address.

Even though Friday had been a hard day, I woke up this morning feeling more tired and beat-up than I'd felt yesterday.  I went down to the river hoping more steady paddling would help.  The sun was out, and the forecast said today would be our warmest in a long time.  It was already about 50 degrees when I got in the boat.  Not surprisingly, the warmer air was accompanied by a fairly strong south wind, and since I try to be cautious in the wintertime, I didn't venture far from the harbor.  I paddled on the big river long enough to go up to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and back, and did the rest in the harbor's sheltered environs.  I paddled for 90 minutes, and while I've certainly had more grueling sessions, this one felt tough.  I was tired, like I said, but I again tried to focus on taking effective powerful strokes as opposed to letting the whole thing be just an easy jog.

So I've now had several days in a row of rather tedious, grinding work.  It's definitely not the most fun part of training, but I'm glad to have it in the bank, and I'm hoping that after a day off tomorrow I'll be feeling strong again.

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

Ice is... nice?

The biggest news of this past week is the ice storm that hit the southern United States from Texas to Virginia.  Here in Memphis it was nowhere near the worst ice storm I've seen, and I'm grateful for that.  But it still managed to cause me some grief.

I've paddled in sub-freezing weather many, many times over the years.  I think I've paddled when the temperature was as low as 16 or 17 degrees Fahrenheit.  But at age 55 I've decided that those days are over.  When forecasters announced an imminent ice storm at the beginning of the week, I planned to ride it out with perhaps some extra gym work but otherwise a bit of a training break.

Some freezing rain fell in the early hours of Tuesday, and much of the outdoors was coated in ice.  I planned to stay in for the day.  I fully intended to do a good, vigorous gym session that morning.  But then one of the tenants of my rental property called and told me the central heat wasn't working over there.  And just like that my plans were foiled as I ended up spending most of the day at the rental property while a repairman groped around trying to get the system running right again.  The infuriating thing was that there was nothing wrong with the actual heating machinery; the problem was with the electronic components that make the machinery respond to whatever instructions the user types in at the thermostat.  That's pretty much how all modern machinery works.

The repairman installed a new control board (at no small expense to the author), and I expected the problem to be fixed right then and there.  But my optimism was short-lived.  One hour after another slipped away while the repairman fussed and fussed, trying to get the electronic components synchronized so the system would click on and off when it was supposed to.  One thing I'd discovered on the drive over there was that the streets weren't bad, but more precipitation was on its way, and my mood became increasingly sullen as the repairman labored away with no apparent success.  I'd thought about running to the grocery store for a few key items while the streets were still clear, but I eventually realized that was not going to happen.

By the early afternoon the freezing rain had arrived, and I could see the streets worsening by the minute.  My tenant got home from work in the mid afternoon, and since I'd already paid the repairman I took my leave so I could get home before the conditions got any more dangerous than they already were.  Slipping and sliding the couple of miles home, I felt as though my entire day had been wasted.  I had accomplished exactly zero of the things I'd hoped to do, and I went to bed that night thoroughly defeated.

By Wednesday morning the streets were covered in new ice.  This time I did manage to stay in all day.  I did that gym session I'd been so keen to do on Tuesday.  Yesterday the temperature eclipsed the freezing point ever so slightly--I think the high for the day was 33 degrees--and the ice began to melt.  By the end of the day the streets were mostly clear.

The sun finally came out this morning, and the temperature was predicted to rise into the high 30s.  I did another gym session and then headed for the river.  It was still slightly below freezing when I got down there, and though quite a bit of melting had taken place yesterday, a lot of ice remained, and the ramp down to the marina looked like this:

I walked on the ground next to the ramp until I reached the water, where the ramp becomes level.  Then I climbed up onto the ramp and navigated its icy surface the rest of the way.  The ropes that I use to tie my boat to its rack were still coated in ice, and it took much effort to get the knots out so I could get my boat down.

At last I was on the water, and I beheld a lovely view of ice-coated trees along the banks glistening in the sun.  After a 10-minute warmup, I commenced my workout: 10 x (4 minutes on, 1 min. off) with a light resistance (just a rope) on the boat.  I did each piece at no greater than 60 strokes per minute.  Like all these resistance workouts I've been doing lately, the objective was to get a good catch on the water and apply strong power.

In a normal week I'd have done this workout on Saturday.  But since I'd already done a gym session this morning, I decided to make this an ultra-strength day so I can do more relaxed paddling tomorrow and Sunday.

The thaw continues outside as I write this in the afternoon.  There's still a lot of ice in the trees, but with tomorrow's forecast calling for a high in the 40s, I expect it'll be just about gone by the end of the day.

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

Monday photo feature

This is an image of my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee.  It's the basic satellite photo composite offered on Google Maps.

I live in the Binghampton neighborhood, labeled left of center in the image, between "Memphis Zoo" and "Lowe's Home Improvement."

If you move to the west-northwest you can see the word "Uptown," and just left of there is the marina where I keep my boat.  The harbor is somewhat obscured here, but it's the dark ribbon to the right of the main channel of the Mississippi River.

The harbor and the segment of the Mississippi shown here make up the Memphis riverfront, and of course that's where I paddle most of the time.  I'm grateful to have a place like this to paddle my boat.

Four bridges cross the Mississippi River at Memphis.  The northernmost one, near where I keep my boat, is the Hernando DeSoto Bridge that carries Interstate 40 across the river.  Farther south, next to where it says "Metal Museum," there is a trio of bridges.  One of them is the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge that carries Interstate 55 across the river.

The latter bridge made the national news over the weekend when protesters shut it down for several hours Friday evening.  The group was demanding reforms to the city police department following the release of video footage that showed police officers brutally beating a 29-year-old man they had pulled over.  The man had to be hospitalized and later died from his injuries.

That incident took place on January 7 at a location in the lower right corner of this image, just above where it says "Walmart Neighborhood Market."

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

A good weekend of work

Friday was a bright sunny day with a Fahrenheit high in the 50s.  I did a gym session that morning, and in the afternoon I rode my bike for about 70 minutes.  If it had been a miserable wintry day I would have done the gym and nothing else, but instead it was a lovely day, and you gotta "let the weather be your coach"-- remember?

It was sunny again yesterday morning, but clouds started moving in not long after I got up, and the forecast said rain would be moving in later.  It was mostly cloudy and mid 40s when I got to the river.  I did a workout that we had done back on my first day of the training camp: three sets of (3 min. on, 3 min. off) at 80 strokes per minute with moderate resistance (one golf whiffle ball) on the boat.  I took a 5-minute break between sets.  It was another muscle-burning kind of session, but I held up pretty well.  My form didn't start falling apart until the last minute of the last piece, and that's just what you want in any kind of interval workout.

We got a good bit of rain overnight.  By this morning it had just about moved out, but overcast skies remained.  The temperature was a balmy 55 degrees, so I didn't have to wear pogies when I paddled, and that's always nice this time of year.  I paddled a course I hadn't done in a long time: up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River and back.  I tried to keep the stroke rate low and put good power into each stroke, and that was a lot easier on flatwater in the harbor and in the mouth of the Wolf than out on the Mississippi, where some barge traffic had churned up the water.  All told I was in the boat for 90 minutes.

It sounds like some colder weather is on its way here, so we'll see what I manage to do in the coming week.

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

2023 Race Schedule (first draft)

Well, here's something I haven't done since before Pandemic Times: posted a race schedule.

As always, this schedule is a work in progress.  These are the events that are simply on my radar at the moment.  Maybe I'll end up going to every one, and maybe I'll end up skipping them all.  It's too soon to tell.  I am feeling pretty certain about attending the Ocean Springs race in late March.  It's also possible that more events will be added to this list as I find out about them.

As I've mentioned before, races in my part of the country have become scarce in the last few years.  The closest event to Memphis on this list is the one at Monroe, Louisiana; that's a four-and-a-half- or five-hour drive for me.

I've decided not to return to the downwind race in the Columbia River Gorge this summer.  I'm mulling a trip up to the Great Lakes instead, and that's why the Michigan events are on this list.

March

25    Battle On The Bayou.  Old Fort Bayou, Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  8.5 miles (13.7 kilometers) on flatwater.  Register

April

1    Top of the Teche.  Bayou Teche, Leonville, Louisiana.  7.7 miles (12.4 kilometers) down a Class I stream.  Register

15    Ouachita River 4-mile Sprint.  Riverton Lake, Monroe, Louisiana.  4 miles (6.4 kilometers) on flatwater.  This race is described as a "sprint" because it's offered as a companion to a 49-mile (78.9-kilometer) ultra-distance race.  Register

29    Mississippi State Games.  Bonita Lake, Meridian, Mississippi.  Races of 5 kilometers and 10 kilometers on flatwater.  Rumor has it this event is limited to residents of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana; I will post an update once this has been either confirmed or debunked.

May

13    Chitimacha Nation Race.  Bayou Teche, Jeanerette, Louisiana.  10 miles (16 kilometers) down a Class I stream.  Register

June

25    45 North Solstice Paddle Festival.  Lake Michigan (Suttons Bay), Suttons Bay, Michigan.  5-kilometer, 10-kilometer, and sprint races.  Register

July

8    Belle Isle Classic.  Detroit River, Detroit, Michigan.  7 miles (11.3 kilometers) around Belle Isle in the Detroit River that flows from Lake Saint Clair into Lake Erie.  Register

September

16    The Firecracker Race.  Mississippi River, Alton, Illinois.  15 miles downriver from Grafton to Alton. Register

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Keeping it going in nice and not-so-nice weather

The arm pain hasn't been so bad this week, probably because of the ibuprofen I've been taking.  I'm trying to stay on top of the stretching and rehab work.  Meanwhile, I've got some bad soreness in the right side of my neck: this has been a problem just in the last month, and it doesn't seem to want to go away.

I started Tuesday morning with some gym, and then went down to the river to paddle for 60 minutes.  I warmed up and then, for the first time in what seemed like forever, I did a set of three 8-stroke sprints.  After that I paddled steady with one surge of 3-4 minutes.

It was cool but sunny and lovely Tuesday morning.  Clouds were moving in by the time I got home from the river, however, and it rained a good bit Tuesday night.  Yesterday was just the sort of raw, blustery day that makes a person despise winter.

I was hoping that today would be better, but it really wasn't, at least not this morning.  It was several degrees colder than yesterday, and it was still overcast and the west-northwest breeze was just strong enough to be unpleasant.  As usual, though, I didn't feel so bad once I was in the boat doing my thing.  I warmed up and did another three 8-stroke sprints, then paddled strong while keeping the stroke rate below 70 for the rest of the 60 minutes.  By the time I was back on the dock the sun was starting to peek through the clouds a bit.  It looks like we're in for some slightly nicer weather this weekend.

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Monday photo feature

The sport of whitewater slalom lost one of its legends this past week: Austrian kayaker Norbert Sattler passed away Thursday at age 71.  Sattler won the gold medal in team competition at the 1971 world championships at Merano, Italy, and claimed the individual gold two years later at Muotathal, Switzerland, where this photo was taken.  The world championships was a biennial event in that era.

He also was the K1 silver medalist at the 1972 Olympics at Augsburg, West Germany.

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Strength, power, and endurance

I've mentioned my general feeling of lethargy since my return from Florida.  A new gym routine is one thing I've had to drag myself into kicking and screaming.  Friday morning I made my most serious effort yet to get something going, doing a couple of core exercises along with bench press with dumbbells on the stability ball and dumbbell rows chest-down on the stability ball.  One can always expect to get sore after new gym work, and by late Friday I was feeling it in my upper back and lats and triceps.

It was chilly Friday, but bright and sunny.  It dropped slightly below freezing overnight, but by the time I got to the river yesterday morning it had warmed up to around 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  I did a workout similar to one I did in Florida back on the 6th of this month: 8 x (2 minutes on, 1 min. off) at 60 strokes per minute with moderate resistance (one golf whiffle ball) on the boat followed by 6 x (2 min. on, 1 min. off) at 70 spm with no resistance.  I took an 8-minute break between those two sets, during which I paddled back to the dock and removed the resistance.  Once again, the objective was to concentrate as much power as possible in the catch and the early phase of each stroke.

It stayed sunny for much of yesterday before gradually clouding over.  We got some rain overnight, and this morning it was overcast and 43 degrees.  I went back to the river intending to paddle for 80 minutes.  I left the harbor and paddled up the Mississippi to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, then went back to the harbor where I figured paddling up to the north end and back down to the dock would just about fill up my allotted time.  But as I approached the area where the Memphis Queen Line boats are parked I saw another surfski paddler coming the other way.  It turned out to be Adam Davis, and he was planning to paddle down the Mississippi to the old bridges, up along the Arkansas bank to the HDB, and then back to the harbor.  I asked if I could join him and he said yes, and what might have been a rather dull, cheerless solitary paddle for me turned out to be very enjoyable.  I hadn't seen Adam in a long time and it was nice to have some company on the water as well as some motivation to paddle at a decent pace.  I figured paddling together would be safer for both of us as well: in the wintertime I tend to stick close to the harbor to lessen the likelihood of a swim in the frigid water.

Today's paddle ended up being more like 100 minutes for me.  I do hope to work in a few more longer paddles in the coming weeks: my first race in Ocean Springs is just over two months away, and it will be good to have some distance under my belt.

My arm muscles continue to have their ups and downs.  My friend Rob, the chiropractor up in New York, recommended a couple of stretch exercises to add to the ones I'd been doing.  I've also started taking a modest dose of ibuprofen, something I really don't want to do for any long period of time, but I've decided is worth a try to see if it makes any difference.

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Availing myself of good weather

I mentioned last week how much it bothered me to let a gorgeous day come and go on Wednesday without getting out and doing anything athletic.  So when another warm day presented itself on Monday, I was determined to take advantage of it.  It actually was nowhere near as nice as Wednesday had been: we had some rain in the morning, and the temperature was just barely touching 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  But it was better than one can ask for in January, and in the afternoon I got out and rode my bike over my usual 34-kilometer course, taking the Greater Memphis Greenline out to Shelby Farms, doing a loop around Patriot Lake, and returning home on the Greenline.

I've been slow to get back into a gym routine, but I began part of one Tuesday morning when I did a couple of abdominal exercises.  Then I went downtown and paddled for 60 minutes.  The temperature had risen well into the 60s overnight, with some heavy rain.  It was foggy yesterday morning, but the voices on my radio were saying it would gradually become sunny; when I got to the dock there was a thin layer of fog over the water, but there were patches of blue sky overhead, and I figured it wouldn't be long before the fog burned off entirely.  But as I paddled south toward the mouth of the harbor, the fog actually got so thick that I couldn't see much more than 20 feet.  I left the harbor and did a surge from the tip of Mud Island to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, staying close to the bank where I knew no barges would be lurking.  I didn't have my cadence sensor with me, but I aimed for a stroke rate somewhere around 80 strokes per minute.

After reaching the bridge I came back downstream and returned to the harbor.  Paddling north, I eventually moved into an area of lighter fog.  I did another surge from the HDB to the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge, and then paddled calm until my 60 minutes had expired.

Yesterday I was busy with a lot of things but in the morning I found time to do a leisurely bike ride of less than an hour.  It was quite warm all day, and in the evening some heavy rain moved in.

By this morning the rain was all gone and the sun was out.  The temperature was in the mid 50s but was expected to drop in the afternoon, so I got out as quickly as I could this morning.  I did a steady 60-minute paddle and focused on the same thing I've focused on a lot lately: getting a good precise solid catch and putting power into the early phase of the stroke.  There was a pretty good south breeze blowing, and I also did some balance drills by paddling across the harbor in the beam waves.

My left arm felt quite a bit better for a couple of days this week and I wondered whether perhaps I'd turned a corner.  But by last night the pain had returned, and it bothered me today.  I'm still doing rehab exercises and I guess I need to get back in to consult with my chiropractor, whom I haven't seen since before the holidays.

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