Thinking about stroke power while doing some surfing and stuff

On Friday morning I took a run around the block and then did a gym session.  I was still fairly sore from my first iteration of the new gym routine, but I got through the exercises okay.  Being sore just means your muscles are responding to the new stress and fortifying themselves accordingly.

At the training camp in Florida that I attended in January, one of the things we worked on a lot was concentrating our power into the early phase of each stroke.  That's one of the main purposes of the workouts with resistance on the boat.  Since then I've tried to practice that a lot, even during otherwise relaxed steady paddles.  Sometimes during such paddles I tend to let the paddle just move through the stroke without much power on it, and I've noticed that my speed goes up several tenths of a kilometer per hour whenever I make a point of applying that early power.

So yesterday I went out to paddle for 90 minutes and put good power on each stroke while keeping the stroke rate under 70 per minute.  I stuck to the plan except for a couple of brief bouts of barge-wake surfing.  There was a rig moving upriver as I paddled out of the harbor and onto the Mississippi; it was moving fast, and the waves weren't very tall, so I really had to sprint hard to get on a wave and the ride was short-lived.  But it was fun to do for a few minutes anyway.  After that I paddled up into the lower reaches of the Loosahatchie Chute, and as I paddled back into the main channel there was a barge rig coming downstream.  It was making some decent waves, but they were wandering all over the place because the pilot was making a large-radius turn to maneuver under the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and get pointed toward the Harahan and Frisco and Memphis-Arkansas Bridges downriver.  The water was like a washing machine at times and several times my footwell and seat bucket got swamped entirely.  Fortunately the water out there is starting to get warmer and I didn't feel like I was sitting in ice like I would have a few weeks ago.

All told, I had a very enjoyable paddle yesterday.  It was a nice mixture of "work" workout (working on stroke power and mechanics) and "play" workout (surfing the waves).  I got back to the dock feeling pleased about the whole state of affairs.

Today was a day off.  That's because the handbell group I play with had its final performance of the season this morning.  With the Blackburn Challenge looming in less than two months I still need to get in some volume, but there's no reason to be obsessed with that.  I'll log the mileage I need soon enough.

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Hard labor on and off the water

Tuesday was a pretty beefy training day.  It started with a run around the block, followed by a new gym routine I'd drawn up.  This one includes lunges with dumbbells and several core exercises.

Then I went down to the river and did some more work on stroke power.  I did 8 x (2 minutes on, 1 min. off) at 60 strokes per minute with small resistance (one golf whiffle ball) on the boat.  Then I took an 8-minute break, during which I removed the resistance from the boat, and then I did 6 x (2 min. on, 1 min. off) at 70 spm.  In the first set the resistance damped the boat's glide, making me put more power into the early phase of each stroke; the idea for the second set was to continue that concentration of power with no resistance.

I didn't do any training stuff yesterday, but it wasn't a rest day.  I spent the morning getting a few logs from a big white oak tree that had been taken down a couple of neighborhoods over, and then back at my place in the afternoon I did some splitting and cutting on them.  My legs were already sore from the lunges I'd done Tuesday, and wrangling those logs made the rest of my body sore as well.

I woke up this morning feeling beat up and sore all over.  I went to the river hoping that some easy paddling would loosen me up a bit.  I think it did me some good.  Once I was warmed up I felt good enough to surf some nice-looking waves behind a downstream-moving barge rig.  I didn't have to work that hard to get on them, so I didn't wear myself out and I returned to the dock in an upbeat mood.

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Monday photo feature

Native Memphian Boyd Ruppelt has been spending some time paddling Canadian big water this spring.  Here he runs a gauntlet of semi-truck-sized holes on the Mistassibi River near Dolbeau, Quebec.  Photo by Heidi Walsh.

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Work continues as we move into late spring

On Friday morning I took another run around the block and then did a gym session.  I backed way off from the bent-over rows I'd been doing for the last few weeks: I mentioned last week that I'd felt a little pop in my left biceps while doing those, and though the muscle had been feeling better this past week, I could feel it threatening to pop again Friday.  So I cut the first set short and skipped the second set.  It's about time for me to come up with a new gym routine anyway.  For the last few weeks I've been doing dips, situps, bent-over rows, and stability ball backups.

Muggy is the word for what the weather has been for most of the past week.  It hasn't been terribly hot--mid 80s Fahrenheit, mostly--but the humidity has been up and there's been a lot of rain in the area.

Sunday is usually when I do a long paddle, but I decided to do it yesterday because of the obligation to take my mother to brunch today.  With the Mississippi flowing around 16.5 feet on the Memphis gauge there was enough water to paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar, though I knew I wouldn't be doing it in record time because there would be a sizable sandbar exposed up at the north end.  I decided to make the circuit in a clockwise direction, the opposite of what I usually do.  It turned out to be a slog, partly because the water was lower than I'm used to, and partly because it was warm and humid out there and I think I was getting a bit dehydrated in the second hour.  I got back to the dock about 126 minutes after I'd started, and I felt completely whipped the rest of the day.

I kept today's paddle much shorter because of the aforementioned brunch appointment.  I also needed some recovery, although once I was paddling I felt surprisingly good in the boat.  When I got out to the river there was an upstream-going barge rig well upriver, and I tried to surf the residual waves.  By now the waves were subtle, but I still got a few tenuous rides.  They carried me only as long as I kept sprinting, but the boost felt good.

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Some mid-week variety

I started Tuesday with an around-the-block run and a gym session, and then I headed down to the riverfront to paddle for 60 minutes.  It was a lovely morning to be out there: it was sunny and the temperature was between 80 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit, and there was just enough of a breeze blowing to keep me cool.  I did a series of power drills: very short efforts with high resistance (all three golf whiffle balls!) on the boat.  I did a rep every five minutes starting at 0:15 and ending at 0:45; for each rep I paddled as hard as I could for six or eight strokes, and then I brought the golf balls up above the waterline and paddled easy until the next rep.

Yesterday I did some relaxed bike riding in the afternoon.  This morning I returned to the river for some unstructured paddling.  There was a fairly strong south wind blowing, and with the help of an upstream-moving barge rig that had passed through a while before I got out to the river, it was generating some small but rideable downwind conditions.  I spent a half hour or so working the waves before I headed back to the dock, and that was fun.  I expect I'll do something a bit more substantial in the boat this weekend, so it was nice to have something not so serious to do today.

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Monday photo feature

It was four years ago today that I delivered a lecture to a small audience at Outdoors, Inc., in Memphis.  And a stern lecture it was!  There's no topic more serious, after all, than the paddling of canoes and kayaks.

The content of the lecture ended up being a big chunk of the material for my film, "A Paddler's Journey," that came out early last year.  I think the film is better than the lecture was, seeing as how I was able to edit out all the "ums" and "uhs" and throat-clearings and digressions.

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Nudging the volume up a bit

I did another run around my block Friday morning.  My body might be getting a bit more used to it.  I don't have any particular running goals other than just a desire to be able to run again, so there's no reason to push it.

The run does make a good warmup for a gym session, and I knocked out a mostly good one after running on Friday.  However, I did irritate my left biceps while doing bent-over rows.  The muscle had been feeling pretty good for quite a while.

Yesterday I went down to the river and paddled for 70 minutes.  After a 10-minute warmup I did some backpaddling-then-forward-paddling drills, and then paddled a strong tempo for the next 50 minutes.  I aimed for a stroke rate of 70 strokes per minute; that's in the neighborhood of what I hope to maintain during the Blackburn Challenge in just over two months.  The left biceps muscle gave me some nuisance pain as I went along.

It was time for a longer paddle today, and I went out this morning intending to go for 120 minutes.  The plan was to paddle at 70 spm from the time I left the harbor to the time I re-entered it.  I paddled down the Mississippi not quite as far as the Harahan Bridge and then did a long upstream paddle along the Arkansas bank.  I felt good for most of the first hour, but by the end of it I knew the second hour would be tough.  I paddled all the way up to the north end of the Loosahatchie Bar before turning back downstream.  I tried my best to take good effective strokes as I paddled into a rather stiff south wind.

Blackberry winter is over and the forecast for the coming week is showing highs up near 90 degrees Fahrenheit.  I wouldn't say the heat was oppressive this morning as I paddled the last two kilometers up the harbor back to the dock, but it might have been high enough to contribute to my fatigue.  It'll probably take me 30 minutes to an hour longer than I paddled today to finish the Blackburn, so I need to put some thought into my in-race hydration and nourishment in addition to the usual endurance training.

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A goal to shoot for

I signed up for the Blackburn Challenge on Monday, so I guess that made Tuesday the official start of training for it.  I started Tuesday morning with another run around the block: I mentioned last week that the distance is somewhere around 800 meters, but right now it feels like 8 kilometers to me.  Baby steps.  Baby steps.

After that I did a gym session, and then headed down to the river for a power session in the boat.  I did 8 x (2 min. on, 1 min. off) at 60 strokes per minute with a light resistance (one golf whiffle ball) on the boat.  Then I took an 8-minute break, during which I stopped by the dock and removed the resistance.  Then I did 6 x (2 min. on, 1 min. off) at 70 spm.

After all that I was thoroughly worn out for the rest of the day.  Maybe a few more such days will have me ready for the big race around Cape Ann.

I've been out of the boat since then.  I might have paddled yesterday if I hadn't been stuck waiting on a contractor who never showed up at my rental property.  I did do some relaxed bike riding Wednesday and yesterday.  With any luck I'll be back in the boat this weekend.

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Monday photo feature

I'm looking forward to summertime, when it's actually fun to get wet.  That's what I'm doing in this photo, shot by my friend Clay Barbee while I tried to pop some enders at Frank Bell's Rapid on the French Broad River near Hot Springs, North Carolina.  It's August of 1994.

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Race schedule update

My big change of plans for the summer means some changes to the race schedule.  As I mentioned in my last post, the venerable Blackburn Challenge north of Boston is scheduled just a week before my woodworking course in Maine begins, so I'm seriously considering entering that event.  And the Ohio River Paddlefest is scheduled for a week after the course's conclusion, making it a potential stop on my way home.

Meanwhile, the Saline River race that was planned for this past weekend has been rescheduled for June 3. Since it's not far from home and I'm already registered, I reckon I'll probably go.

May

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

June

3    Saline River Canoe Race.  Saline River, Benton, Arkansas.  4 miles (6.4 kilometers) down a Class I river from Peeler Bend to Lyle Park.  Register (Warning: the registration site this event uses is extremely clunky.)

July

15    The Blackburn Challenge.  Gloucester, Massachusetts.  A 20-mile (32.2-kilometer) open-water circumnavigation of Cape Ann.  Register

August

5    Ohio River Paddlefest.  Ohio River, Cincinnati, Ohio.  9 miles (14.5 kilometers) down this major drainage artery of the Midwestern United States.  Register

September

16    The Firecracker Race.  Mississippi River, Alton, Illinois.  15 miles (24.1 kilometers) downriver from Grafton to Alton. Register

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Plans can turn on a dime

Well, as if on cue, my plans for this summer have suddenly come into sharper focus.

Last fall I tried to enroll in a woodworking class scheduled for this July at the Maine Coast Craft School in Bristol, Maine, but was informed that the class was full.  They told me I was first on the waiting list, and it's been my experience that cancellations in these classes do in fact happen.  But I knew I shouldn't count on it, and I sort of put it out of my mind and started thinking about what else I might do this summer.  Those of you who have been reading the blog lately know that I was contemplating a trip up to the Great Lakes region.

But just several days ago I got an e-mail from a school official telling me that an enrollee had canceled and I had the opportunity to take his or her place.  I decided to claim the spot.  And so I'm going to Maine this summer!

And that opens up some new possibilities for canoe and kayak racing.  The class runs from the 22nd through the 29th of July; the Blackburn Challenge, one of the oldest and most venerated open-water races in this country, is scheduled for July 15 at Gloucester, Massachussetts.  Its distance (20 miles/32.2 kilometers) is at the outer limit of what I like to do, but the overall adventure aspect, as well as the hallowed history of the race, makes it something I feel like I ought to do.

Meanwhile, long-time readers of this blog, as well as viewers of my film "A Paddler's Journey," know that I want to paddle a boat in every state of the United States.  Maine is one of the states I haven't paddled in yet, as are Delaware and New Jersey.  So this trip offers me the opportunity to pick up three states and raise my total to 47.  Very exciting, indeed.

Suddenly I have renewed motivation to do some training.  Because Blackburn is a longer, more endurance-oriented event than what I've trained for in recent years, I'll be shifting the focus a bit.  In the coming weeks the emphasis will be on base, base, base.  Some more work on stroke power (i.e., distance per stroke) is in order as well.

Fortunately, it's not like I'm starting from zero here.  I've been doing plenty of base work since last November or December.  So I've got some time to get my mind fully into a new phase of training.  For the last week we've had a stretch of very cool weather--"Blackberry Winter" is what my mom tells me it's called--and it hasn't made me especially eager to be in the boat.  I also continue to have lots of work to do in the woodworking shop.  After taking yesterday off, I got myself out on the river today on a sunny but cool and breezy morning.  I paddled for 90 minutes, neither really hard nor really easy.  I felt sort of sluggish the whole time and it was one of those days when it was nice just to get something in the books.

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It's all just so... complicated

Just in case anyone was wondering... yes, I'm still here.  Posting stalled out for a few days.  It was partly because of a little existential crisis and partly because I've been just plain busy.

By the middle of last week I was starting to ask myself why, exactly, I was putting myself through rigorous workouts with no significant competitions on the horizon.  Even though I'd more or less decided to attend tomorrow's race on the Saline River over in Arkansas, the small amount of intel I was able to gather on that event indicated that it would be a rinky-dink affair with little or no real competition.  And then just yesterday I learned that the event has been called off due to high water.  While I know almost nothing about the Saline River, I'd been thinking high water would be a good thing: the current images of the river on Google Maps were apparently taken during a dry period and it looks like you could practically walk down the race course, so as a paddler of a boat with an understern rudder, I was hoping for lots of rain over in central Arkansas.  But it seems the race organizers see things differently.

So I won't be racing anytime soon.  And frankly, I've been wondering lately if I even should be racing.  I mean, I'm 55 years old, and I probably got as good as I'm ever going to get in this sport a long time ago.  And though racing does have a social aspect to it, there's not much of that where I live.  While cities like Chattanooga and Knoxville seem to have developed robust scenes for training and racing, here I'm paddling by myself day after day, week after week.  There are, of course, a handful of other Memphians with racing backgrounds, but it's been years since we've put together any sort of group-training activities.  Yes, I could take the lead in getting something going again, but that's not something I'm particularly good at.  Part of the problem is that I have pretty rigid ideas about the kind of training I want to be doing, while other paddlers have other ideas.

It is, of course, possible to paddle without any racing involved.  But the branches of the sport I enjoy most--downwind paddling and whitewater paddling--require that I travel quite a way from home.  Maybe I should move someplace else, but my roots here are pretty deep.  My family is from here, I own property here, and the fact is that in most respects I like it here.  I've developed some strong friendships and enjoy a nice community.

Of course, I do enjoy paddling my boat here on local waters.  I get to the end of some days thinking that going down to the river was the only good thing I did all day.  General fitness is important to me--not being trained up for racing, but just the kind of fitness that will help me stay active and feeling good into old age.  "Self care" seems to be the modern-day term for it.  But I have a hard time keeping that from morphing into more serious training, and if there's not a specific purpose for that training (i.e., an upcoming race or a trip for downwind or whitewater paddling) I just end up exhausted and frustrated.

On top of all the angst described above, I've become quite busy in my woodworking shop lately.  After a slow start to the year, suddenly I've found myself working on projects for at least four different clients.  And I'm enjoying the work, too: each day I've been waking up more excited about my shop work than about going to the river.  Last weekend, after a halfhearted session in the boat on Saturday, I skipped paddling altogether on Sunday and spent the whole day in the shop, getting lots and lots of work done and feeling good about it.

Tuesday and yesterday I did some short, hard sprints in the harbor, thinking that I had a race tomorrow and I needed to sharpen up the speed a little.  And as the week went on I found myself looking forward to tomorrow: even rinky-dink races can be fun, and maybe another good paddler or two would show up.  But now the race is off, and so... here we are.

I think for at least a little while I'll lay off the focused training and just keep up a general fitness routine while I continue my work in the shop.  I need to get some firm plans on the books for this summer and find something to do that will make me want to paddle with gusto again.

This morning I did a gym session since there's no race tomorrow.  I also decided to try some running again.  When I tried to run last winter I arbitrarily picked 20 minutes as a reasonable duration for a run, but my body (especially my calves and Achilles tendons) protested loudly once I was 10 minutes in.  So this time I'm really taking baby steps.  Before my gym session I went out and ran around my block, covering maybe 800 meters.  It was little more than a warmup for the gym work.  But such a warmup is good, and I think I'll keep on doing very short runs two or three times a week, and increase the distance very gradually.

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Keeping it moving in unremarkable fashion

On Tuesday morning I did a gym session and then headed for the river to paddle.  My arms were achey and tired as I warmed up in the boat, partly because of the gym session and partly because of some work I'd done in my woodworking shop Monday afternoon: I'd done some aggressive planing on some tough oak boards.

After the warmup and a set of three 8-stroke sprints, I commenced a workout of eight 200-meter pieces starting every 4th minute.  I kept the stroke rate around 80 strokes per minute--very controlled for 200 meters.  I aimed for my goal pace of 12 kilometers per hour (that would be one minute for 200 meters), but with a tailwind my speed was more like 12.5-13.0 kph, and so my time for each piece was a little under a minute.

I stayed busy yesterday with out-of-the-boat things.  This morning I went out for an unstructured 60-minute paddle.  There was a strong wind blowing from the south, and when I reached the mouth of the harbor I saw some small but workable downwind conditions out on the Mississippi.  I played around just off the tip of Mud Island for a little while, and couldn't really relax because the water was still quite cold and I wasn't really dressed for a swim.  It didn't help that I was paddling my least-stable surfski with a short rudder.  I much prefer mid-summer for my downwinding.  But at least I got some paddling in.  I used the trip back to the dock to relax and take good strokes.

We've had Fahrenheit highs in the low 80s this week, but it looks like later today a line of storms will move through that might have some strong winds with it.  Then it's supposed to get quite a bit cooler.  The current forecast shows high temperatures in the 60s all next week.

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Monday photo feature

Amelia Taylor of Cosby, Tennessee, admires the wildflowers on the Loosahatchie Bar last Thursday.  Regular readers of this blog know that I sometimes go out and paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar, but it's much less common for me to get out of the boat and walk on it.  Amelia's visit gave me a reason to check it out.  We saw wildflowers, deer footprints, piles of driftwood, beaver tooth marks... all kinds of stuff.

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Plodding along through motivational doldrums

I mentioned in my last post that the weather was quite lovely when I paddled with Amelia Thursday afternoon even though there were scattered showers in the area.  Amelia took a photo that captured the beauty very nicely:

It just goes to show that not all nice days involve clear blue skies and abundant sunshine.

On Friday I stayed home and did a gym session.  I woke up yesterday feeling unusually sluggish, apathetic, and uninterested in doing anything serious in the boat.  Saturday is usually a workout day for me, but yesterday I just did a calm 60-minute paddle.  I actually felt good in the boat once I got going, but I needed a mental break from intense training.

Some strong thunderstorms moved through the area last night, and this morning it was sunny, cooler, and quite breezy.  I was feeling somewhat sluggish again, but I was determined to do the workout I couldn't find the gumption to do yesterday.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did two 1500-meter pieces and one 1000-meter piece, starting every 15th minute.  As I've said before, I like the idea of being able to average 5 minutes per kilometer (7:30 for 1500 meters; that's a 12-kilometer-per-hour pace), but the wind, though supposedly from the west, was the kind that swirls all over the place, so I knew I shouldn't have my heart set on any particular speed.  I tried to focus on good stokes and stroke cadence (80-85 strokes per minute for the 1500s, closer to 90 for the 1000).  I clocked 7:48 and 7:55 for the two 1500s, and 5:10 for the 1000.  The workout felt hard every stroke of the way, and I was fading badly in the closing meters of the last piece.  Not exactly my finest hour.  But as I returned to the dock I felt good about myself for overcoming the lethargy and getting some decent work in.

As for upcoming races, I'm still thinking about attending the event on the Saline River at Benton, Arkansas, in two weeks.  But I'm not sure what the competition will be like.  I've already heard that one person I'd hoped would be there will not be.  So I'm sort of playing it by ear.

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Taking care of business while savoring what matters

I woke up Tuesday morning feeling a bit swamped with things to deal with.  In addition to the ongoing haggle with doctors and insurance flunkies over my M.R.I. plans, I had a water heater that was acting up and in possible need of replacement, and I had a couple of new jobs in my woodworking shop that had just come my way Monday.  I considered taking a break from training activities and devoting the whole day to attacking the pile of stuff. But once I'd had a chance to drink some coffee and eat some breakfast and think things over, I decided the to-do would keep and I would feel better after some physical activity.

I did a gym session and then headed down to the river.  In the boat I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did twelve 30-second sprints starting every 3rd minute.  One thing I like about this workout is how taut it is: along with the warm-up and cool-down periods, it fits nicely into 60 minutes.  By the time I was back on the dock I was feeling a nice endorphin rush and looking forward to knocking out some chores for the rest of the day.  And I was feeling proud of myself for making the time for some physical self-care.

Yesterday was spent doing out-of-the-boat tasks, and I figured this morning I'd be doing what I do most Thursdays: some kind of calm, steady paddle.  But last night I got a message from my friend Amelia, a whitewater paddler from east Tennessee, telling me she was passing through town and wanted to paddle on the Mississippi River today.  So I got out a touring boat and some gear for her to use, and met her when she arrived in town this afternoon.  We spent some two and a half hours paddling at a leisurely pace, hiking through the underbrush on the Loosahatchie Bar, and checking out the scale model of the lower Mississippi on Mud Island.  We got rained on a bit, but the mixture of clouds and sunshine made the sky pretty and even gave us a rainbow as we were collecting our gear after the paddling was finished.  I might have gotten a bit more work done or some more specific training in if Amelia hadn't shown up, but I don't regret that even a little bit.  It's important to pause and savor moments sometimes.

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Monday photo feature

It started raining in Memphis last Wednesday evening, and it rained and rained and rained, and didn't stop for good until sometime after lunch on Thursday.  I, of course, was down on the riverfront to paddle Thursday morning, and I tried my best to let a smile be my umbrella.

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Our health care finance machinery is a mess, but I can still wear myself out in the boat

Friday morning I did a gym session.  Then, after lunch, I went to have my M.R.I. done.  And when I got to the place, I was informed that my insurance company had rejected the procedure.  I was supposed to get a phone call in advance, but apparently somebody in the office had written down my phone number incorrectly.

So I came back home.  There's a process by which my doctor can persuade the insurance meisters to reconsider, but that won't happen until a new business week is underway.  And so, thanks to an industry whose overlords have dedicated their lives to making the world a worse place to live, I'll have to grin and bear my discomfort a little longer.

Yesterday I went down to the river to paddle on a cool, overcast morning.  I wanted to do some long-ish sprints for pace work, and I decided to do several 1000-meter pieces downstream out on the Mississippi, starting a new one every 10th minute.  My goal was to do each one in 3 minutes flat (a 20-kilometers-per-hour average pace).  As it turned out, my times were 2:57, 3:34, and 3:13.

There was a good reason for that broad variation in times.  At 24.2 feet on the Memphis gauge, the river had a strong flow; and a brisk north breeze was helpful for speedy times as well.  But there was another variable: the topography of the water surface.  During the first piece the surface was glassy smooth, and my speed rose as high as 21 kph a couple of times.  But during the recovery interval before the second piece, a big barge rig driven by two towboats came charging upriver, churning the river into a sloppy mess.  That slowed my hull speed during the second piece and disrupted my rhythm, but more significant than that, it wrecked my concentration and tensed my muscles.  The water is still very cold at this time of year, and my desire not to swim made it impossible for me to relax.  And so the second piece was a full 37 seconds slower than the first.  The water had calmed down some by the start of the third piece, but not enough for me to get locked back in.  I finished the workout frustrated, but I knew there was no reason to write it all off as a failure.  Unexpected disruptions are just a fact of life for any outdoor wilderness sport.  My arms and shoulders were aching from the de-tuned half-stroke-half-brace strokes I'd done in the second and third pieces, and once I was back in the protected waters of the harbor I tried to calm down and get back to good solid strokes.

This morning it was time to do something longer, and I elected to leave the harbor, paddle up the Mississippi, paddle up to the Wolf River to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge, and turn and come back.  The wind was light, and there was very little barge traffic to interfere with the proceedings.  Just like I like to break two hours when I paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar, I like to break 110 minutes when I do what I did today.  Such is the way my regimented, obsessive-compulsive brain works.  As I came back down from my turnaround point I reached the mouth of the Wolf at the 81-minute mark, meaning I would have to hoof it to be back at my dock by 110.  I pushed the pace down the Mississippi and when I re-entered the harbor with 12 and a half minutes to go, I knew I would make it but not without keeping the power on for a few more minutes.  Once I was north of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge I finally let myself back off the intensity so that my heart rate could settle down the rest of the way.  I was back at the dock about 20 seconds shy of 110 minutes.  I'm now spending the rest of the day thoroughly tired as a reward for my effort.

Tomorrow will be a rest day, and I'll be spending some of it seeing what I can find out about my chances of an affordable magnetic resonance image.

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A taste of all weather for those of us who are active outdoors

I woke up Tuesday wondering if I didn't have some kind of mild bug.  I had almost a sore throat, and my energy level seemed low.  Still, I found the energy to start the rudiments of a new gym routine (a couple of sets of dips and bent-over rows) and go down to the river to paddle for 60 minutes.  There was a strong south wind blowing and I kept the intensity moderate.

Tuesday was a freakishly warm day, with a Fahrenheit high in the mid 80s.  Though I generally like a day in the 80s, I don't think I like it in April.  I really don't like the idea of turning on the central air conditioning in my house in April.

Of course, in April you can count on some weather volatility.  Yesterday another big storm system moved in that brought violent weather to places like southeast Missouri and Louisville, Kentucky.  Here in Memphis it was mostly just a lot of rain.  The electricity went off in my neighborhood for five or six hours last night, but I don't know what could have caused that.  I ended up going to bed a half hour earlier than I'd planned, because when there's no light to read by and no Internet access, what is there to do but sleep?

Now, today, it's cooler: I don't think it got much over 50 degrees all day.  This morning it was in the high 40s, and I had to layer up a little more to paddle.  And as it turned out, the rain wasn't gone yet.  I paddled in intermittent light showers, and then the rainfall intensified as I was returning to the dock.  I got pretty soaked putting my boat away and walking back up to the parking lot.

The extended forecast shows high temperatures mostly in the 70s, and that's about what I expect in April.  There are several days in the 80s, however.  I just hope we can have a nice spring before the sultry heat of summer settles in.

Meanwhile, my M.R.I. is scheduled for tomorrow, pending insurance company approval.  So far nobody has called to tell me the cretins have decided to reject the claim, so my fingers are crossed that we can get this done and move me a step closer to finding some true relief from my discomforts.

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Monday photo feature

Greg Barton of Seattle, Washington, a longtime friend of My Training Blog by Elmore, is pictured on the right here as he works to keep pace with current U.S. flatwater sprint team members Jonas Ecker and Aaron Small.  The three are participating in an 8-mile race on Lake Washington at Sand Point this past weekend.  Ecker won with a time of one hour, 1 minute, 19 seconds; Small took second in 1:02:38; and the 63-year-old Barton was third in 1:03:09.  Photo by Drea Park.

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March went out like a lion

For the second Friday in a row, a violent weather system passed through the Mid South.  The state of Arkansas suffered extensive damage from tornados, specifically in the capital city of Little Rock, the town of Wynne just west of Crowley's Ridge, and the delta town of Earle.  Here on this side of the Mississippi River the town of Covington got hit hard, as did a chunk of McNairy County.

Here in Memphis the mood was tense as the sirens blared several times throughout the evening.  I'd taken a few precautions such as charging up my phone, making sure the batteries in my flashlight were good, and even grinding some coffee in case I had no electricity the next morning.  But in the end, we were spared.

By yesterday morning the sky was clear, and I looked forward to a pleasant sunny paddle.  It was still quite breezy, however, and that prompted me to stay in the harbor for all but a few of my 60 minutes in the boat.  The wind was swirling all over the place but seemed to be primarily from the west-southwest.  I stayed in the shelter of the trees along the bank of Mud Island and paddled a pretty good strong tempo.

The wind got even stronger as the day went on yesterday, and by mid afternoon it was screaming.  It finally abated overnight and had shifted to the south-southeast by this morning.  It was time for my Sunday long paddle, and conditions were ideal for a trip around the Loosahatchie Bar, with plenty of sunshine and a river level of 26.7 feet on the Memphis gauge.  I paddled out of the harbor and enjoyed a nice tailwind during the long paddle upriver.  There were no barges or riverboats moored along the bank, so I had no interruptions like I did the last time I paddled around the Bar.  Conditions were a bit bumpy during the paddle back downriver because a barge rig had just moved through heading north, but I kept the boat moving and completed the 12.6-mile (20.3-kilometer) circuit in about one hour, 55 and a half minutes.

I'm now thoroughly worn out and ready for a break tomorrow.  I'm still waiting for the orthopaedic clinic to call me to schedule my M.R.I., and I hope maybe they'll do so tomorrow.

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Race schedule update

Here's an updated list of races I might attend this year.  The near-future event I've added is one on the Saline River a little ways southwest of Little Rock.  That should be no more than a three-hour drive for me, and I hope maybe some familiar faces from Arkansas and Louisiana and that part of the world will be in attendance.

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, the reason I'm listing the Michigan events in June and July is that I'm pondering a trip to the Great Lakes region around that period of the summer.  I haven't made any real plans yet, but now that we're moving within three months of those dates, I guess I should give it some more serious thought.

April

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    Saline River Canoe Race.  Saline River from Peeler Bend to Lyle Park, Benton, Arkansas.  4 miles (6.4 kilometers) down a Class I river.  Register (Warning: the registration site this event uses is extremely clunky.)

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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Looking ahead and, I hope, inward

I've spent this week getting settled back at home and figuring out what's next in terms of canoe and kayak racing.  I'm not feeling particularly anxious or in a hurry about it.  For a couple of weeks I think I'll be paddling without a whole lot of structure--whatever I feel like, basically.  Sometime soon I need to ease into another gym routine, too.

On Tuesday I paddled for 60 minutes.  It was sunny but cool with a chilly north breeze, and I was rather underdressed.  I was used to the warm weather I'd had down on the coast last weekend, and I guess I was trying to will it to continue back here.

Yesterday morning it was a few degrees warmer, and I was better-layered.  I paddled for 60 minutes again.  The river has been rising this week as a result of last week's storms that moved across the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Ohio watersheds.

Maybe the biggest news of the week was my visit to an orthopedist's office yesterday afternoon.  My chiropractor had told me that after all the physical therapy and chiropractic therapy and massage therapy I've been through in the last couple of years, it might be time to have an M.R.I. to find out what the problem really is and why none of that stuff has helped.  Though I agreed with her, I'd been putting off seeking such a procedure because I dreaded the fight I would surely get from my insurance company.  But yesterday the doctor, with no real prodding from me, said he thought it was time for an M.R.I.  So now I'm in line to get one, and while I have no delusions of my insurance company respecting a doctor's medical opinion, I hope maybe it'll go along.

The doctor did take X-rays, and while X-rays can't see through bone, the doctor said they help him make an educated guess at what the M.R.I. might reveal.  He pointed out some compression of the vertebrae near the right side of my neck as well as a couple of small bone spurs.

In any case, I'm feeling upbeat at the moment because after months of having these problems worked on with no success, I'm now trying something that should shed some light on what's really going on.

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Monday photo feature

Two kilometers down, about eleven and a half to go.

Standing on the Washington Avenue drawbridge, Phattira Berry captured a bunch of racers heading up Old Fort Bayou at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, on Saturday.  In the foreground is the tandem surfski paddled by Phattira's husband Jeb and son Thaison.  Several boatlengths back we see Alessia Faverio on the left and yours truly on the right.  I can only guess the identities of the racers farther back, but I'm pretty sure that's Matt Taylor directly behind Alessia, and I think I see Don Walls over to the right near the marsh grass.

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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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