Trying to keep my edge sharp

I did a run and a gym session on a not-so-hot but extremely humid Friday morning.  That humidity has continued through the weekend, accompanied sometimes by rain and sometimes by bright sunshine.

I've been feeling a bit low on energy, and the humid conditions haven't helped with that.  Yesterday I paddled for 70 minutes and tried to do some varied-pace work that wouldn't grind me down to nothing.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then, starting at the 20-minute mark, I upped the stroke rate for three of every ten minutes.  I paddled at 70 strokes per minute for two minutes and 80 spm for one minute; for the rest of the 10-minute period I kept the rate below 65 spm while trying to apply good power at the beginning of each stroke.  It was nowhere near the toughest workout ever, but I think it's mentally tiring when I focus hard on details like that.

The Blackburn Challenge is just four weeks off now, I'm backing off the volume a bit while trying to keep the quality of each session high.  Sure, the Blackburn course will take me the better part of three hours to finish, but I think lasting that long is more a matter of managing hydration and blood sugar and stuff like that.  Overdistance training has its place, but I think it offers diminishing returns.  Even when I do what I call a "long" paddle I rarely go for more than two hours: in an ultra-long session your stroke form is bound to break down eventually, and then you're just reinforcing poor mechanics.

With all that in mind, I went out for a mere 80 minutes this morning.  I was expecting to be tired again today, but once I got going I felt surprisingly good in the boat.  I think the humidity was down at least a little: a very heavy thunderstorm had passed through early in the morning, and maybe that blew out some of the moisture in the air.  It definitely lowered the temperature.  I didn't pay much attention to stroke rate today, but I did concentrate on good crisp strokes again.

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Time on and time off

It was another burly Tuesday morning, and once again I found myself wondering if I was up for it as I got out of bed.  Would it be so terrible, I asked myself, just to take it easy today, and maybe push the tough stuff back to tomorrow?  But once I'd had some breakfast and woken up completely, my body and brain came around, just like they usually do.  That's largely what being an athlete is about: when it's time to go, you go; but then it's important to give yourself the down time you need so you'll be ready for the next hard effort.

I went for a short run and did a gym session, and then went down to the river.  In the boat I warmed up for 15 minutes, and commenced my workout: two 2000-meter pieces at 80 strokes per minute.  I told myself to focus on the stroke rate, a crisp catch, and good power in the early phase of each stroke, and not worry about my speed or the elapsed time.  But of course it's hard not to peek.  For most of the first piece I moved around 11.5 kilometers per hour, and clocked 10 minutes 27 seconds.  I took a 10-minute break and  began the second piece, and this time my speed was up over 12.0 for much of the time.  The stroke rate crept up into the mid 80s several times, and I had to make myself lower it.  I was definitely feeling fatigue by the halfway mark, and in the last several hundred meters my legs were screaming.  I finished with a time of 10:11, and was pleased with that.

The weather continues to be very nice just a week before the summer solstice.  The daily highs have been not much above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and the extended forecast says they'll be mostly below 90 for quite a few days to come.  It's definitely getting more humid, but I'll accept whatever reprieve from the worst of a Mid South summer I can get.

I was back in the whitewater boat this morning, doing some more drills and getting my muscles used to the idea of doing some river paddling this summer.

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Monday photo feature

Here's a map of the precipitation that was falling in the lower Mississippi River watershed yesterday afternoon.  The heaviest storms in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana are all in the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Ohio River drainages.  Over in Missouri there's some not-so-heavy rain falling in the Merrimack and Missouri River basins.  All that water will, at least in theory, flow by Memphis eventually. (The precipitation in Arkansas and southern Missouri will reach the Mississippi downstream of Memphis.)

And yet, though it looks like a lot of rain, it's created only a small bump in the river stage forecast at Memphis.  Right now the river is about a foot below zero on the Memphis gauge, and that bump is still below zero.  To produce a significant rise in the Mississippi here, we need to have quite a few days when the weather map looks like the one above.  That certainly could happen, but if it doesn't, we could be seeing never-before-recorded low water levels by the late summer and fall.

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Sort of a grinding weekend

On Friday I did my usual short run and did a gym session.

The weather has been somewhat unseasonably cool, with Fahrenheit highs in the low to mid 80s.  The wind has shifted to the south, and that's bringing in more humidity.  The haze in the air has lessened some, but is still around.  I now understand that it is indeed caused by the Canadian wildfires.  We've also had some scattered showers in the area, but in recent weeks it has been dry in the watersheds upstream of here, and the Mississippi River is quite low as a result.  By Friday the river had dipped below zero on the Memphis gauge, and that's notable because May and June are typically the high-water season around here, with gauge readings of 30 feet or higher.  I hope we're not in for another record-low period like we had last fall, but that's what will happen if the dry conditions persist in the Missouri and Ohio and upper Mississippi drainages.

Yesterday I paddled for 70 minutes.  During the 50-minute period from 0:10 to 1:00, I maintained a stroke rate of 70 strokes per minute, and that made it a taxing long tempo session.  I think the fatigue was more mental than anything--it's hard to push the pace when you're all by yourself.  It's sort of the in-the-boat version of training on an erg, the way you're constantly looking down at the digital readout making sure you're on the stroke rate.

That's why I was happy to leave the G.P.S. device turned off today, and paddle without worrying about stroke rate or speed or any of that stuff.  I was tired and lethargic in the boat, and it amounted to a long recovery session, though I did pay attention to good stroke mechanics and rotation.  I paddled up the river along the Tennessee bank about as far as the DeWitt Spain Airport, and then came back.  It took me not quite two hours.

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Working out! Fixing my boat! Going to the doctor!

For this current phase of training, Tuesday mornings have been pretty loaded, with some running, a gym session, and a workout in the boat.  I've been waking up each Tuesday wondering if I've got it in me to do it all once again.  The physical intensity is one reason for this anxiety, and another is the time aspect: I do have other things going on in my life, after all, and I feel some pressure to pack all the training activities into the morning so I'll have the afternoon to tackle the non-athletic stuff.

So far, every Tuesday I've managed to get the work done, and it's given me a nice satisfied feeling by lunchtime.  And this week I managed to do it once more.  I started with my usual around-the-block, half-mile-ish run, followed by a gym session, followed by some work in the boat.  I paddled for 60 minutes, and I broke the 40-minute period from 0:10 to 0:50 into 3-minute intervals.  For the first two minutes of each interval I paddled at 60 strokes per minute, and for the third minute I alternated between 70 spm and 80 spm.  With a pretty long race coming up in less than six weeks, I think it's useful to move around among some different cadences and intensities, because while I might not need much top speed in a long grind of a race, I will nevertheless need more than one gear.

The weather continues to be hot here, but not oppressive.  As I paddled on Tuesday I had a nice northwest breeze keeping me cool.  Sooner or later I expect the wind will shift to the south and bring moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and then it'll be that sweltering summer we know so well around here.  It's also been very hazy the last several days; whether it has anything to do with the Canadian wildfires, I'm not sure.  Right now on the news I'm hearing about dangerously poor air quality in the Northeast and upper Midwest.  I hope things get better up there before I travel to Massachusetts and Maine.

I spent Tuesday afternoon doing some repair work on the damage I'd done to my boat and rudder in last Saturday's race.  Of course that included using some epoxy resin that I had to let cure overnight.

Yesterday morning I went to see the surgeon to discuss my options for fixing my nerve woes.  I told the doctor that any surgical procedure I might undergo would have to wait until after my trip to New England next month; the doctor, meanwhile, thought it would be sensible to try medication and nerve-block approaches before making the leap into surgery.  So it was an easy decision to start with those things and see how I'm feeling after I return in August.

I came home from the doctor's office and took a look at my boat-repair work.  I had applied a Kevlar and fiberglass patch to the hull over the hole where the rudder comes out, and then turned the boat over and poured resin into the rudder-shaft housing with the hope that it would seep into the cracks that had allowed water into the boat.  Now that the resin had cured, I had to drill out the blockage in the rudder shaft housing.  I did this with an old-fashioned hand-operated brace and bit to put as little stress as possible on the waterproof seal.  I reopened the tunnel, then used a rasp to gently enlarge it so that the rudder shaft would fit again.  Then I filled the boat with water again to see how successful my repair was, and... not a drop leaked from that area!  Forgive me for my blatant self-congratulation, but I think the repair method I devised was quite clever and elegant, and I am extremely pleased that it seems to have worked.

I also did some cleanup work on the rudder.  Like I said in my previous post, I've ordered a new one, and I'll keep the repaired one for emergency backup purposes.

This morning I went down to the dock and hopped in the whitewater boat.  More drills ensued.  I'm encouraged by how my body has responded and I'm looking forward to getting on a river or two soon.

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Race schedule update

 I'm signed up for the Blackburn race, and I might attend the other two as well.

July

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

August

5    Three Rivers Regatta.  French broad, Holston, and Tennessee Rivers, Knoxville, Tennessee.  Races of 6 miles (9.66 kilometers) and 24 miles (38.6 kilometers) on flatwater.  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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Monday photo feature

A photographer for The Daily Memphian shot this photo from an airplane some time ago.  It shows a nice broad swath of where I paddle on the Memphis riverfront.  The main channel of the Mississippi River is on the right, flowing southward (away from us).  That's the harbor on the left.  If you squint really hard, you might be able to see my boat sitting on its rack at the marina.

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Racing on an abrasive river

I went to the race on the Saline River at Benton, Arkansas, yesterday.  There were two noteworthy items about my experience there.  One, I had no competition whatsoever: nobody else showed up with anything remotely resembling a race boat.  The next-fastest boat in the field was probably one of the many ABS plastic tandem canoes people had entered.  I learned a long time ago not to be cocky as an athlete, but as we lined up yesterday, I was some ninety-nine-and-a-half-percent sure I was going to win (and in fact I did).  And two, my boat was all wrong for that river.  The section of the Saline we raced on features long deep pools alternating with shallow, gravelly shoals, and with its understern rudder, my boat was unfit to handle the shoals.  I ended up hopping out and portaging every time I came to one (with no competition, I had plenty of time to do that).  I even started the race on my feet because there was a shoals in the first 30 meters of the course.  But those efforts weren't enough to save the rudder from some damage.

In the early part of the race I tried to maintain a stroke rate in the mid 70s, but the frequent disruptions to portage quickly made that seem pointless.  I did the first couple of portages at a run; the footing wasn't too bad over the pebbly bars next to the shoals.  But as my lead grew I sort of lost my motivation to do that.  On the water I had to work hard to move at even 11 kilometers per hour.  There wasn't much current helping me, and the pools were often shallow enough to create bottom drag.  And by the late stages of the race my rudder was damaged enough that it was creating some drag, too.  It felt like I had one golf whiffle ball of resistance on the boat.

When I reached the finish line, my G.P.S. device told me the course was about 6.2 kilometers (3.85 miles) long.  My time was 46 minutes, 34 seconds, and that means little to me given all the portages and stuff.

The river did indeed do a number on my rudder:

I'll accept the blame, seeing as how I didn't do my due diligence regarding the sort of river I'd be racing on.  I can fix it, but I think I may go ahead and order a new one and relegate this one to emergency-spare duty.

More troubling to me is that as I carried the boat up to the car, I realized there was a lot of water sloshing around inside.  I let it all flow into the bow, opened the drain plug, and tipped the boat so it would drain, and at least a half-gallon of water came gushing out.  How had it gotten in there?  I couldn't remember the hull taking any bad impacts, and when I looked it over carefully, I could see no damage.

Further investigation would have to wait until later.  I enjoyed the catfish lunch that the organizers fed us, socialized a bit with fellow participants, and received my award.  Trophies and medals aren't the reason I do my sport, but I have to say these race organizers went all-out with their hardware:

If they want to say I'm a champion, who am I to argue?  Well, anyway... all told, I don't regret going over there yesterday; it's always nice to get out of town and paddle in a different place.  But if I'd known a little more about the venue I probably would have skipped it.  What I really should have done once I was there yesterday was leave my boat on the car and offer myself up for anybody looking for a canoe partner.

Yesterday also happened to be my mom's birthday.  I'm not sure I should say how old she is, so I'll just say that she's age-appropriate to be my mother.  I came back home and took her to supper at our favorite Indian restaurant.  With some Indian cuisine on top of that catfish lunch, I got all the calories I needed yesterday.

This morning I went down to the riverfront for a 100-minute paddle.  The heat is rising here in the Mid South: as I drove home on Interstate 40 yesterday afternoon, the temperature display on my dashboard rose as high as 96 degrees Fahrenheit.  And yet, it's really not so oppressive.  The humidity has been low and a nice north breeze has been blowing.  I felt quite good out on the river this morning as I paddled a strong but not murderous pace.

This afternoon I took a closer look at the boat I raced in yesterday (I keep a different boat down at the dock for training here at home, in case you're wondering).  I filled the shell with water and looked for leaks.  It turns out that during the beating the rudder took yesterday, the seal got broken where the tube that holds the rudder's shaft meets the bottom of the hull.  I'll have to think about the best way to try to fix that, but I'll get it done one way or another.

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Time for some racing again

That race that was originally scheduled for April 29 is tomorrow.  I'm talking about the four-mile (6.4-kilometer) race down the Saline River at Benton, Arkansas.  I'm basically winging it: other than skipping the gym routine this morning, I'm just training through it.  We'll see how it goes.  I have no idea who else will attend.  I plan to get up early in the morning to drive over there; I expect the trip to be a little under three hours.

Yesterday morning I was back in the whitewater boat doing some more drills: forward paddling, backpaddling, spins, Eskimo rolls, side-slips, stuff like that.  My left side has always been my better paddling side in a canoe, but I did the drills on both sides in the interest of muscle balance.  I need to tweak the boat's outfitting a bit; I'd forgotten how quickly a paddler's ankles can fall asleep in a C1.

I've spent today getting all my race gear ready while otherwise doing non-athletic stuff.  We'll see how things go tomorrow.  I know a lot more now about what's going on in my body than I did the last time I raced, but if I can I'm just going to pretend like everything is normal.

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Answers! ANSWERS!!!!

I had another fairly intense Tuesday morning.  Following a run and a gym session at home, I went down to the river and did a threshold workout: two sets of three (3 minutes on, 3 minutes off) with small resistance (one golf whiffle ball) on the boat.  Each "on" piece was done at 80 strokes per minute.  It was a tough one, but my stamina held up for the duration of the workout.  The worst part was that my left biceps and forearm were hurting a lot.

Tuesday afternoon I went to the orthopedist's office to get the news from my M.R.I., and at last I got some answers regarding all the aches and pains and struggles of the last couple of years.  It seems that in several vertebrae, I have "severe neural foraminal narrowing" on my left side and the beginnings of the same problem on my right side.  What that means, as far as I can understand it, is this: as nerves branch off from the spinal column and extend out into my shoulders and arms, they pass through holes in the bony material of the vertebrae, and these holes have shrunk and are putting pressure on ("impinging") those nerves.  That's what's been causing so much pain and discomfort in the muscles of my left arm, and if left untreated I'll have the same issues in my right arm soon enough.

The doctor asked me if I also have felt weak in those muscles, and as a matter of fact, I have.  I've noticed it just in the past week while moving those logs around in my shop, especially when I had to lift something over my head.  I also have noticed in the last year or so that it's harder to do certain exercises than it used to be: for instance, I used to be able to do 30 pushups without a second thought, but lately I've found it hard to do even 20.  Pullups seem harder, too.

As the doctor put it, with a condition like mine the muscles can stop responding to what the nerves are telling them to do.  It had never occurred to me that muscular weakness could be related to all this impinged-nerve business.  It's hard to know for sure, but maybe my condition is even responsible for the decline in some of my race performances in the last several years.

Whatever the finer points may or may not be, I'm elated to know that all my woes are not just my imagination.  And while I'm sure I'm no more immune to the impacts of aging than anyone else, I'm pleased to know that maybe I'm not all done yet as an athlete.

As for what happens next, I'll be seeing a surgeon to determine my options.  Basically, there are two: I could have surgery to enlarge those holes that the nerves pass through; or I could have a "nerve block," in which I'd be injected with some stuff that would make the nerves shrink so they wouldn't be getting pinched where they pass through the holes.

I didn't do any specific training today, but I was back in the shop dealing with those logs some more, and the arm pain was a nuisance.  My appointment with the surgeon is next Wednesday, and I hope to move a step closer toward some kind of relief.

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Monday photo feature

Here she is: the new (to me) whitewater boat I acquired last week.  Thanks again to William Ashton of Whittier, North Carolina, for helping me make this big step toward being a whitewater paddler again.

It's the same make and model as the boat that was stolen from behind my building in 2016.  The design originated in 1996 or '97, so that makes it an antique, and I suppose if I did a more serious search I could find a more modern design and look like a 21st-century paddler out on the river.  But I always liked that old boat I had--to me it felt like the perfect all-purpose river-running craft, doing well on everything from small creeks to big water.  And I found this one in very good condition at a reasonable price.  And, I really don't have lofty ambitions for my whitewater boating at this time.  I'm still quite invested in open-water paddling in surfskis, and for now I think I'll be happy if I can just hop on a Class III stream now and then.

I was worried that my paddling had become too one-dimensional.  I've been paddling a surfski almost exclusively for the last seven years or so.  I think it's good to have some variety and give different muscle groups some work once in a while.  My whitewater boat is a C1 (one-person decked canoe--note the single-bladed paddle in the photo), so that will definitely hit my shoulders, lats, abs, and legs in a different way.

This post contains some of the best photos I have of me paddling my last whitewater boat.  Will I be able to re-create some of that magic in this new one?  Keep on tuning in to this blog, and maybe we'll find out together.

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Sore but still in motion

I woke up sore Friday morning, definitely from the logging work I'd done Thursday afternoon, and probably also from the unfamiliar movements I'd done in my new whitewater boat Thursday morning.  But as the morning went on I loosened up a bit, and before lunch I did a run and a gym session that felt good.

I did some more logging work Friday afternoon, and as a result I was very sore again yesterday morning.  My lower back was killing me.  When I got down to the river I spent a long time stretching on the dock and did a long, relaxed warmup in the boat, and that helped a lot.  I paddled for 70 minutes, and for the 40 minutes from 0:15 to 0:55 I aimed for a stroke rate of 70 strokes per minute and tried to put good power into each stroke.  I'm wondering whether 75 spm might be on the high side for my more-than-two-hour race coming up in July, but I figure adjusting downward will be easier than adjusting upward.  In any case, it was a pretty good session and my back felt a lot better afterward than it had felt before.

This morning I paddled for 120 minutes.  I didn't go for a particular stroke rate or intensity level, but I did try to take good precise strokes the whole time.  In the first half hour I surfed some waves behind an upstream-moving barge rig; the rig was going pretty fast and the waves were hard to catch, but I did get a couple of decent rides.  So there were a few hard sprints included in my otherwise steady paddle.  I was definitely feeling some fatigue in the second hour and was tired the rest of the day.

The weather has been quite nice the last few days: partly to mostly sunny and not too warm or humid.  I'm trying to savor it as we move ever closer to another Mid South summer.

As I mentioned in my last post, I got my M.R.I. done on Tuesday.  I have an appointment with the doctor this coming Tuesday to find out what it tells us.

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The devil finds work for idle hands, I suppose

The first half of this week has been crazy, with all kinds of things to deal with in both my athletic and non-athletic lives.

I spent most of Monday putting out a (figurative) fire that a tenant of one of my rental properties was experiencing.  At the same time, I found myself with a couple of new woodworking projects to do for clients.  And, the opportunity opened up for me to have that M.R.I. done on Tuesday afternoon.  Remember that?  I haven't talked much about it lately.  If you were thinking that all my ailments had magically disappeared, don't worry.  They haven't.

With all these things suddenly heaped on my plate, I could have been forgiven for putting the canoe & kayak training on the back burner for a while.  But Tuesday morning I knew I needed some time to myself amid all the other stuff going on.  I remember my high school cross country coach urging my teammates and me to put the schoolwork and other teenage worries aside for the 90 minutes or so we spent in practice, and now, decades later, athletic pursuits continue to be my time to do that.

I started with a short run and a gym session at home.  Then I went down to the river and got in the boat.  With all the other stuff going on I hadn't really planned what I would do, and I had to make it up on the fly.  I ended up doing ten 30-second sprints starting every 3rd minute.  This is a good aerobic workout while also providing some practice at a higher stroke rate.  It was fairly taxing, and I thought of another thing my high school coach used to say.  Whenever we did an interval workout he urged us to focus hard on the next-to-last interval because mentally it was the toughest; the last interval was always easier to push hard on, he said, because of the knowledge that the workout would be over when it was finished.

I left the river feeling good about what I had done.  Just doing some hard physical work relieved a lot of the stress I'd built up in the previous day.  In the afternoon I went and had my M.R.I. done, and while I didn't enjoy the mild claustrophobia in that tube, I was glad to be making this step toward what I hope will be some relief.

Yesterday was a day off from training but was plenty busy nevertheless.  I spent the day tying up the last loose end of the rental property emergency and picking up some logs for one of those woodworking projects.

There's one other thing that happened on Monday that I haven't mentioned yet.  As I announced in this post seven years ago, my good old go-to whitewater boat got stolen from behind my building, and for a long time I lacked the motivation to replace it and simply didn't do much whitewater in the years since.  But just several months ago I came across a Mr. William Ashton on social media who was selling that same model of boat at a reasonable price.  I'd always liked that boat of mine that was stolen, so I got in touch with William and we worked out a deal.  William lives in western North Carolina and I didn't know when I could make it over there, but he told me that if I could wait until late May he would be passing through Memphis on his way out to the Rockies, and he would bring it to me.  And it turned out Monday was that day.  He came through in the early afternoon, and I now have a whitewater boat again!

That brings me to this morning's session on the water, in which I took the new whitewater boat out in the harbor and did some stroke drills to see how my body would respond.  I was pleasantly surprised by how well my arm muscles handled the open-blade draws and compound reverse strokes and stuff like that.  My plan for the coming weeks is to paddle this boat once a week, and I hope that by the time I head out on my trip up the East Coast I'll be ready to paddle some easy whitewater along the way.

I'll just add that I spent the afternoon splitting those logs I picked up yesterday.  If you're looking for back-breaking labor, you can't go wrong with some logging.

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Monday photo feature

It was January of last year when I made my second trip to South Africa to attend a downwind paddling camp hosted by surfski legends Dawid and Jasper Mocke.  One afternoon I partnered up with Jasper to paddle a double ski on the Miller's Run.  In this photo it appears that Jasper is absolutely thrilled to get to paddle with the likes of me while for me it's just another day at the office.  Photo by either John or Tamsin of Cape Town Sport Photography.

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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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