The end of the offseason is nigh

Joe and I observed the last day of winter by paddling a loop of the harbor on Tuesday.  This may not have been the harshest winter we've ever had, but it sure felt long.  It snowed back in the first half of November, something I don't think had ever happened before in my lifetime.  At any rate, I'm glad to have winter in my rearview.

Yesterday was about the latest I could do a workout that would have a bearing on my performance down in Ocean Springs a week from tomorrow, so I went down to the river with that intention.  I meant to take my G.P.S. device with me but I went off and left it at home.  I was upset at first but then I felt liberated, because I could do the workout out on the Mississippi River where a G.P.S. device isn't as useful anyway.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor before paddling out onto the big river to commence my workout.  I did six 5-minute pieces with three minutes recovery in between.  During each piece I paddled "medium-hard" for two minutes, "hard" for two minutes, and "sub-maximal" for the last minute.

The original plan had been to use my G.P.S. device to regulate these degrees of intensity while paddling on the flatwater of the harbor.  Here's what I did instead in the absence of that technology: for the first two minutes I took good strong strokes while keeping the stroke rate fairly low; for the next two minutes I continued to paddle at a low stroke rate but pulled as hard as I could on each stroke; and for the last minute I allowed the stroke rate to increase while still pulling as hard as I could.  The intensity in that last minute was similar to what it is in one of my bridge-to-bridge sprints--pretty much all-out, in other words.

The workout felt really good and I came away a lot more upbeat than I did from that time trial last Saturday.  I hope such feelings will carry me from now until my race next Saturday.

The Mississippi River is still quite high--it was at 38.1 feet on the Memphis gauge when I paddled yesterday.  I expect it'll be staying high for a while yet, as there's a whole lot of floodwater up on the Missouri and Platte Rivers that has to come our way.

I did the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and today.


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Monday photo feature

A new race season is almost here, and it's making me think about the places I might go this year.  Two summers ago I found myself hanging out alongside the Mississippi River at Dubuque, Iowa.  Photo by Savanna Herbert.


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Surviving an annual flogging

As of yesterday I had just two weeks to go before my first race of the season, and in recent years that has meant one thing: a time trial in the harbor.  For anybody who doesn't know about this annual ritual of mine, I pontificate upon it at length in this post from two years ago.

I talk a lot in this blog about how much I value my paddling routine, how it never feels like a sacrifice to me, how going down to the river is almost always something I look forward to.  But this time trial is an exception.  It's one of the few training sessions I truly dread.  When I think of it, the main thing that comes to mind is pain.  A big reason is the mental stress of racing against the clock.  I've got my G.P.S. device on board and I'm trying to keep the boat moving at or above a minimum speed, and I'm constantly checking the time as I pass landmarks along the course.  Nothing can make 100 meters seem like a mile the way a ticking clock can.

My standing goal is to break 50 minutes for this lap of the harbor.  I clocked around 50:30 five or six years ago, but since then I've found it difficult to come within two minutes of the 50-minute barrier.  That's another reason I dread this workout: that feeling that I've "failed" if I don't achieve my time goal.  The fact that so far I've "failed" every time doesn't seem to lessen my fear of failure in the latest one.

To dip under 50 I'll probably have to have perfect weather, and not too many days in March are like that.  Yesterday morning there was a pretty stiff breeze blowing from the north--not gale-force, but enough to knock a few tenths of a mile per hour off my pace as I paddle against it.

As I paddled from the dock toward the north end of the harbor, I sought solace in the fact that with the Mississippi River registering 38.3 feet on the Memphis gauge, the harbor is wide-open right now, and not as sinuous as it is at low water levels.  But that would make little difference in the hurt I was about to inflict on my body.  As I maneuvered into the starting gate between two submerged trees, I resolved to shoot for a solid sub-50 pace for the southbound half of the course (i.e., faster than 25 minutes) and then just "see how it goes" the rest of the way.

Off I went, and with the wind at my back it wasn't hard to maintain the 7.2 mph that I'd need to average to break 50 minutes for the not-quite-six-mile course.  But I pushed harder, hoping I could make the slog back north into the wind with as much cushion as possible.  I kept the speed at or above 7.3 mph, hitting 7.6 at times.  And it wasn't long before my body was feeling it.  I never cease to be surprised by how much harder you have to paddle to increase the speed by a mere tenth of a mile per hour.

I had several little setbacks along the way: a couple of times I had to stop and wipe my eyes with my hat because they were stinging with sweat, and then just south of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge I got a stick caught on my rudder, and I had to stop and do a few backstrokes to get it off.  But I pressed on, ever closer to the turnaround point, and as I made the turn around the imaginary buoy at last, my watch read 24 minutes, 4 seconds.  Not bad.

But now I was in the proverbial pain locker as I began to retrace my path against that wind.  The speed reading on my G.P.S. device plummeted.  Now I put on my tactician's hat and pondered how to play it.  I decided to give myself a breather by paddling back to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge at a minimum speed of 6.0 mph, and then see what I could do after that.

Paddling at this pace was certainly easier than what I'd done in the first half, but against the wind it was enough work that I really just didn't have a higher gear to shift into once I reached the HDB.  And so I continued on at around a 6.5-mph clip, knowing that once again the 50-minute barrier would weather my assault.  I plodded along, just wanting the whole grueling, lonely ordeal to be over.  And at last it was, when I crossed the start/finish line 52:23 after I'd started.

I paddled slowly back toward the marina with mixed feelings.  On the one hand, I was pleased with my split at the halfway point.  On the other, I was disheartened by how much it had taken out of me, even with the wind at my back.  And I remained puzzled with my difficulty in breaking 50 minutes for 5.9ish miles.  In the last several summers I've done a full 6-miler on Fontana Reservoir in western North Carolina, and broken 50 minutes each time.

But of course, that race is in August, when I'm in something much closer to peak racing form.  I'm never very sharp in March.  One of the reasons I do this workout in the first place is so I can go to my first "real" race two weeks later with a race-like effort under my belt.

Since even my best racing years in this decade started with a painful, slower-than-50-minute effort in this time trial, there's really no reason to obsess over it.

So... let's move on.

I spent the rest of yesterday dead tired, achy, and sore.  Today has been sunny, a bit warmer than yesterday, and a bit less windy.  I went back to the river this morning for an easy paddle, and I think it was just what the doctor ordered.  Once I was warmed up I felt surprisingly good in the boat.  I tried to take good strokes and let the fresh blood wash through my paddling-related muscles and facilitate recovery.


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A challenging week, physically and otherwise

It's been a whole lot more springlike this week.  The daytime highs have been no lower than 50 degrees Fahrenheit and were up into the 70s for a couple of days.  Of course, in the month of March you can count on some wind to go with those warmer days.

I started up a new strength routine this week.  I eased into it Monday and then did full rounds Wednesday and today.

The conditions were dead calm when Joe and I did our customary loop of the harbor on Tuesday, but it was a much different story Wednesday and yesterday, as the wind raged out of the south.  When I got down to the river yesterday I was feeling tired and also sore from the new strength exercises, and I paddled out into the screaming wind trying to stay as relaxed as I could and letting how I felt dictate what I did in the boat.  The wind actually abated quite a bit during my 60 minutes of paddling and it didn't feel like quite the struggle I'd expected

To use sort of a tired, but in this case apt, phrase, I've spent most of this week with a heavy heart.  My city lost an incredible servant on Tuesday.  The city I live in is the kind of place that needs all the heroes it can get, and when something like this happens all I can do is put my head in my hands and wonder how many more such blows we can take.  I won't go into any greater detail here since this incident is not all that relevant to a canoe and kayak racing blog (although he was, in fact, an athlete--he played basketball for Memphis State University in the 1970s).  But I encourage anybody who's curious to look here, and here, and here, and here, and here.


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A new strength routine

It's time for something new in the strength department.  I expect I'll do this routine from now until my first race at the end of the month.


1.  Pushups with one hand atop a medicine ball

2.  Core exercise demonstrated by Jing Jing Li at 1:39 of her video on this page

3.  Kickback, demonstrated by my friend Lindsey at 4:03 of this video

4.  Butterfly crunches, demonstrated by Michele Ramazza at 3:22 of his video on this page

5.  Squats


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Monday photo feature

I've mentioned here many times how much I love our critters on the Memphis riverfront.  One of my favorite things about the ducks is that they seem utterly disinclined to segregate by breed.  Here we have a muscovy duck, a white domestic duck, and (in the background) a mallard duck. I've been seeing them hanging out together around our marina for most of the winter.  I know I'm probably anthropomorphizing them beyond reason--issues of race are well outside what they are wired to comprehend, I expect--but it makes me happy to see them, just the same.


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Keeping at it as winter slowly gives way

Yesterday morning I pored over the Internet radar, trying to predict the best "window" for paddling amid waves of severe weather.  In the end I got rained on some but otherwise timed it pretty well: it was pouring down rain as I drove down to the river, and more heavy rain was starting up as I arrived back home.

There was no escaping the wind, however.  It was blowing hard out of the south.  I stayed in the harbor and paddled for just 60 minutes, doing several 8-stroke sprints and then doing a few surges both with and against the wind.

We had a couple of hard thunderstorms, but by late afternoon it had all moved out and the skies began to clear.  At this time of year a front like this usually has some colder air behind it, and this one was no exception.  But this time the "colder" air was not really that cold--it went from the mid 60s Fahrenheit yesterday to the low 50s this morning, nowhere near as bad as the sub-freezing temperatures of a week ago.  So once again I'm feeling optimistic that spring is almost here.

Even though the river crested in the middle of last week, it's still plenty high right now--it was at 40.0 feet on the Memphis gauge this morning.  When the river is dropping slowly like it is now there's a noticeable improvement in the water quality because all the debris has been flushed out or has been redeposited on solid ground as the water recedes.

That plus calmer conditions meant that today I was eager to leave the harbor for the first time in eight days.  I paddled to the harbor's mouth and then went up the Mississippi until I was about halfway up the Greenbelt Park; then I ferried across the main channel and found the narrow passage into Dacus Lake.  I paddled about three-fourths of the way up this oxbow before looping around through some flooded bottomland and rejoining the main Mississippi near the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  I returned to the harbor and the dock to complete a 120-minute session.  Much of this time was spent paddling at a two-hour race pace, and I felt good about my aerobic capacity and overall stamina.


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A week of variety

I got in to see the chiropractor Monday afternoon and it was a worthwhile visit.  I'm still feeling some tightness in my neck, but the pain in my shoulder and lat muscle went away almost immediately as a result of the adjustments she made.

With that part of my body feeling better, I'm back to doing the whole strength routine except for the bent-over rows--I didn't want to push my luck with those.  I did strength work Monday, Wednesday, and today, and I plan to start up a new routine next week.

I didn't get back in the boat this week until yesterday.  I missed paddling Tuesday because I had to meet some contractors to get some work done on my rental property.  I'm not really concerned about missing a day: I've strung together quite a few weeks in a row where I didn't miss a single paddling session, so I figure a little break couldn't hurt.

Yesterday I got back to the river and settled down to business.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did four 5-minute pieces with three minutes recovery in between.  My target pace for each piece was 7.2 miles per hour.  There was a light south breeze blowing, but I did the workout in the north end of the harbor where there's good wind protection, and I was able to trust the accuracy of my G.P.S. device more than I had in previous uses of it this winter.  With the wind at my back my pace was more like 7.4-7.6 mph, and when paddling into the wind I tended more toward 6.9-7.1.  All told, the workout was taxing but I felt a lot better than I did doing the same workout (three pieces rather than four) almost a month ago.

The other interesting thing that happened this week was a little presentation I gave Wednesday morning.  I have a friend who is an elementary school teacher, and she's leading sort of a pre-spring-break "camp" group consisting of first-, second-, and third-graders, and the theme for the week is the Olympic Games.  They're learning about many of the various sports on the Olympic programme, and learning some of the history of the Olympics and the cities that have hosted it.

I happen to be the closest thing to an Olympic athlete this friend of mine knows (which is to say, I have never competed in an Olympic Games but I have participated in the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for whitewater slalom), and so she invited me in to speak to the kids about my experience.  The kids asked all kinds of good questions; some of my favorites were "Why did you want to [try out for the Olympics]?" and "Do you ever get scared of kayaking?" and "Where do you go to kayak?"  I spent most of the half-hour dwelling on the kind of inspirational and motivational stuff that I try to share in this blog--find something you love doing every day, compete hard but always remember good sportsmanship, and so on.

Finally, a Mississippi River update: it crested this week at just under 41.4 feet on the Memphis gauge, and now it's dropping.  As I write this it's still over 40 feet, but it's expected to drop to the low 30s by a week from now.  Of course, that forecast could change if more rain falls in the watershed.


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Monday photo feature

The annual slalom and downriver races took place this past weekend on the Mulberry Fork of the Black Warrior River near Garden City, Alabama.  It's been at least 15 years since I last attended this event, but it was a staple of my schedule back when I was doing a lot of whitewater racing.  I expect the river had a good flow after all the rain we've had in the Southeast.

At the 1997 Mulberry Fork race I ended up not racing because of some acute inflammation in my triceps area.  Instead I stood on the bank and shot some photos, and the picture above comes from that set.  Joe Jacobi of Copperhill, Tennessee, peels out from an upstream gate and heads for the big surf wave known as Hawaii Five-O.


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The flood continues, and it's cold, too

For all the optimism I was oozing in my last post, winter is still not over.  This weekend has been overcast, chilly, and wet, and the temperature is supposed to plummet tonight and stay below freezing for another day or two.

On the other hand, we have a harbinger of spring that's as certain as any: baseball is back.  I've been streaming radio broadcasts of the Cardinals' spring training games in Florida for a week now.

The Mississippi River continues its climb toward a midweek crest of 41.5 feet on the Memphis gauge.  When I paddled yesterday it was at 40.8 feet.  During 100 minutes in the boat I made a loop through the bottomland on the Arkansas side.  In the last several years the Big River Trail, a bike-pedestrian path, has been established there, but right now the Big River is so big that not much riding or walking is taking place:

The river is definitely flowing faster at this high level.  I don't know the miles-per-hour figures, but I do know that I have to paddle a lot harder to make progress going upstream, and it's more difficult to ferry across without getting swept downriver.

With rain falling and the temperature at 40 degrees Fahrenheit this morning, I was very tempted to stay home.  But I've got some stuff in my non-athletic life that may prevent me from paddling in the first half of this week, so I stiffened my upper lip and went downtown.

The river had inched up to 41.1 feet and I was hoping to do some more exploring, but an icy north wind was blowing pretty hard and I decided it would be wiser to stay in the harbor.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then the rain intensified and I realized it was one of those days where I just wanted to get something in the books and return to the warmth and safety of home.  For the rest of my 60 minutes in the boat I paddled a mostly-strong tempo with several hard surges.

I got back to the dock, and as I changed into dry clothes the rain turned to sleet--I could hear it on the marina's metal roof.  I was actually okay with it because during the walk up to the car it would bounce off me rather than soak into my clothes.

My car's temperature display told me it had dropped to 35 degrees.  Some forecasts show it dropping below 20 degrees overnight tonight.

My right lat muscle isn't completely healed, but it's been hurting less the last couple of days.  I'm still having that tightness on the right side of my neck/shoulder area, and I'm thinking the lat pain is some inflammation that sprouted from that.  I'm hoping to swing by the chiropractor's place sometime this week.


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Paddling hurt

The discomfort in my right lat muscle continues.  It was at its worst on Sunday and Monday, when it hurt to take deep breaths and the simple act of existing was less than pleasant.  Since then the condition has eased but not gone away.  I've backed off on the strength work, taking Monday off and doing only the core exercises Wednesday and today.  In my experience injuries are more likely to occur in the weight room than in the boat, and I'm suspicious of the bent-over rows and maybe the front and lat raises as possible culprits.  But that's just an educated guess.  Meanwhile the injury doesn't really bother me much in the boat, and I was even so bold as to do a workout yesterday.  I mentioned in a previous post that even before the lat muscle started hurting I was having tightness in the right side of my neck, as if something's out of whack in the chiropractic sense.  It's been months since I've visited a chiropractor but maybe it's time.

On a happier note, I do believe spring is near.  I say this in spite of the frigid weather we're set to have over the next week.  When Joe and I did our loop of the harbor on Tuesday it was simply lovely: calm, warming toward a high in the 60s, and becoming sunny.  Wednesday was delightfully warm as well.  As we move through the next few weeks I expect such spells will grow longer and more frequent.  And in nine days we'll be back on Daylight Savings Time.

My first race of the season is now just four weeks away, and I'm trying to train through my ailment as carefully as I can.  Yesterday I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints and then commenced a pace workout.  I did five 5-minute pieces with two minutes recovery in between.  In each piece I did two minutes at a target pace of 6.5 miles per hour, two minutes at 7.0 mph, and one minute at 7.2-7.3 mph.  The north wind was blowing hard enough that when paddling into it I struggled to meet these pace goals and when paddling with it at my back I comfortably exceeded them.  In the end I had to do each intensity level by feel rather than rely on my G.P.S. device to do my thinking for me.

The crest prediction for the Mississippi River keeps getting pushed back and revised upward.  The current forecast says it will crest at 41.5 feet on the Memphis gauge around next Wednesday.  I hope the weather and my body will allow me to get out and explore some more.


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Monday photo feature

Here's a picture from last year of me paddling the channel from the main Mississippi River to Dacus Lake.  I was back paddling in this area yesterday with the river at 38.3 feet on the Memphis gauge.

Motivation is a challenge every athlete must deal with.  I think every canoe and kayak racer should look for the beauty wherever he or she trains, because it's a whole lot easier to get yourself out paddling when you love the place you paddle.  The current high flows on the Mississippi are making me eager to get out there and explore places that aren't always accessible to a paddler.


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High water (cont'd)

Soggy is the word for what most of this past week has been.  Back on Monday the TV weatherman said we'd be getting a month's worth of rain this week, and he wasn't kidding.  Paddlers I know in the more mountainous areas of the southeastern U.S. are enjoying some epic whitewater right now, and there's definitely a part of me that wants to go join them.  But I have yet to replace the boat that was stolen almost three years ago.  Until I find the will to do that, I guess my whitewater paddling career will remain on hiatus.

We got a dose of heavy rain from Friday night into Saturday morning.  There was a threat of severe storms Saturday, but when I got down to the river around 10 o'clock in the morning I found the conditions quite manageable: there was some intermittent light rain with a moderate east wind, and the temperature was a balmy 61 degrees Fahrenheit.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then paddled up the Mississippi River.  Several hundred meters above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge I reached the southern end of the Greenbelt Park.  This park is normally the domain of joggers, dog-walkers, picnickers, frisbee throwers, and the like; but with the Mississippi flowing at 37.4 feet on the Memphis gauge, today the park was best enjoyed in kayaks and canoes.  I paddled about halfway up the park, getting drenched in a brief downpour along the way, before turning around and heading back to the harbor and the dock.

A few more heavy showers moved through, but the severe weather never really materialized here in the Memphis area (at least one Mid South community was not so fortunate).  By early evening the rain was gone at last, and today we're drying out.  When I got to the river it was cooler--around 46 degrees--and breezy.  But the sun was out, and that always covers a multitude of Mother Nature's meteorological sins.

With the river up to 38.3 feet, I was keen to check out the flooded bottomland over on the Arkansas side.  I spent most of my 120 minutes in the boat paddling across the area between Interstates 40 and 55 and up north of I-40 as well.

Out of the boat I've been dealing with some discomfort in my right neck and upper back area, and I woke up this morning with some fairly intense aching in my lower right lat muscle.  It didn't really bother me in the boat once I'd gotten warmed up, but the rest of the day it's been unpleasant.  I've had this sort of thing several times before and it's always seemed to run its course over several days, and I hope that'll be the case once more.  The worst thing about it is it hurts to take deep breaths.


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Race schedule update

A few more event directors have announced their dates, so I figure it's a good time to refresh the working document that is my 2019 race schedule.  I certainly won't make it to every race on this list, seeing as how there are several dates with more than one going on.  But it's a good outline.  I hope to see some of this blog's readers along the way.



March
30  Battle On The Bayou.  Old Fort Bayou, Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  An 8.5-mile flatwater race.  Register


April
6  Oyster City Challenge.  Apalachicola River, Apalachicola, Florida.  8 miles down a coastal river.  Register

6  Top of the Teche.  Bayou Teche, Leonville to Arnaudville, Louisiana.  7.7 miles on a Class I river.  Register

13  Perche Creek Gutbuster.  Perche Creek, Columbia, Missouri.  10 miles on a Class I river.

27  Lake Cumberland Regatta.  Lake Cumberland near Columbia, Kentucky.  A 12- to 15-mile flatwater race.

27  Lower Atchafalaya Sprint Races.  Atchafalaya River, Patterson, Louisiana.  A series of 3-mile races up and down slowly-moving flatwater.  A racer may compete in both solo and team-boat classes.  Register


May
11  Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River, Vicksburg, Mississippi.  A 22-mile race down the largest river in North America.  Register

18  Almost Heaven Paddle Battle.  Summersville Reservoir near Summersville, West Virginia.  A 12-mile flatwater race.  Register


June
1  Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River, Memphis, Tennessee.  The 37th edition of this classic.  A 5000-meter dash down the largest river in North America.  Register

8  Taylorsville Lake Paddle Battle.  Taylorsville Reservoir, Taylorsville, Kentucky.  A 10-mile flatwater race.


July
6  The Lovely Laurel River Lake Paddle Blast.  Laurel River Lake, Corbin, Kentucky.  A 10-mile flatwater race.

18-20  Gorge Downwind Championships.  Columbia River, Hood River, Oregon.  A 14-mile race in the epic downwind conditions of the Columbia River Gorge.


August
3  Ohio River Paddlefest.  Ohio River, Cincinnati, Ohio.  A 9-mile race on this Midwest artery.


September
28  River Rat Paddle Challenge.  Ouachita River, West Monroe, Louisiana.  6.5 miles down a Class I river.


October
5  Big South Fork River Dash.  Big South Fork of the Cumberland River near Whitley City, Kentucky.  A 12-mile mostly-flatwater race.

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Water from the sky and all over the landscape

Some serious rain was supposed to move in here before lunchtime on Tuesday, so I tried to get down to the river as early as I could so I could get my paddling in ahead of it.  With the temperature at 37 degrees Fahrenheit, getting soaking wet was not an appealing idea.

Even without the rain, it was the sort of day where I wanted to get my session in the books and get back to the land of central heat as quickly as possible.  A bone-chilling north wind was blowing under overcast skies.  I stayed mostly in the northern half of the harbor, where protection from the wind is greatest.  I did several 8-stroke sprints, threw in a few surges, and basically just went through my paces.  By the time I was back in the car heading home it had warmed up all the way to 38 degrees.

The rest of Tuesday was indeed very rainy.  The rain had just about moved out when I woke up Wednesday morning, and yesterday began with sunny skies.  But the clouds were taking over by the time I got down to the river, and more rain was in the forecast.

The Mississippi River's big rise continues.  The crest, predicted for the middle of next week, has been revised upward to 39.5 feet on the Memphis gauge.  Clearly rain is falling higher up in the watershed as well as here.

I started yesterday's 60-minute paddle by warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints.  Then I ferried across the Mississippi to check the flooding in the area between the Hernando DeSoto and Harahan Bridges.  It was mostly underwater with the river up to 35.9 feet, but I paddled carefully over just a small part of it, not wanting to break my boat or knock off my rudder on some object just below the surface.  I paddled by the tall mound of earth that's pictured in last week's photo feature, and it appeared that the picnic table is no longer there.

The rain was back by yesterday afternoon and is expected to continue through tomorrow.  Today my schedule consists of predominately indoor activities, including strength work.  I did the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and today.


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Monday photo feature

I offer up this week's photo feature just in case anybody's curious to know more about where I paddled yesterday.  The ribbon of water in the right portion of this image is the harbor.  The marina where I keep my boat looks like a little equal sign just north of the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge.  Yesterday's destination was a body of water known locally as Dacus Lake, although here it's labeled as the Hopefield Chute.  There it is in the left half of the photo.

I paddled south to the mouth of the harbor, then paddled up the main Mississippi almost to the Hernando DeSoto (Interstate 40) Bridge, then ferried across the river, then paddled up to the little channel through the woods connecting Dacus Lake (Hopefield Chute) to the main river.  I paddled up this channel until--voila!--I was on Dacus Lake (Hopefield Chute).

It's only possible to paddle from the main Mississippi onto Dacus Lake at high river levels.  That's because there's a private road crossing the connector channel, with only a small culvert for the water to flow through beneath it.  The river needs to rise to around 30 feet on the Memphis gauge before this road is deep enough underwater for a paddler to get over it.  Yesterday's level was about 33.0 feet, and I was able to paddle through with no trouble at all.

There's one other detail on this map that strikes me as interesting: although I always think of myself as being in Arkansas whenever I paddle over to the far side of the river, Dacus Lake (Hopefield Chute) is actually in the state of Tennessee.  While the Mississippi River is the official boundary between Tennessee and Arkansas, the state line was demarcated at a time when the river's main channel was to the west of where it is now.  I guess that means that when I do a loop around the Loosahatchie Bar (the big island in the middle of the main river), I never actually leave Tennessee.  So very peculiar...


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Cold but beautiful

The motivation to get myself down to the river was hard to find yesterday morning.  The skies were overcast, a frigid north wind was blowing, and the air temperature was 34 degrees Fahrenheit.  It took some searching--under sofa cushions, behind kitchen appliances, in the back corners of closets--but I did finally find it.

Lots of heavy rain higher up in the watershed is causing a big rise on the Mississippi River right now.  The forecast calls for a crest of 36 feet on the Memphis gauge about a week from now.  It was at 32.2 feet as I paddled away from the dock yesterday.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, I ferried across the river to the Arkansas side to inspect the flooding of the bottomland there.  The lowest-lying expanses south of Interstate 40 were underwater but it didn't appear deep enough to paddle yet.

This morning was gloomy and grey once again, but it was a touch warmer--43 degrees when I arrived at the river.  In the wake of some rainfall there was a mist shrouding the riverfront in ethereal beauty.  I had a workout in mind for today, and with the river lapping at the 33-foot mark, I was keen to check out the expanded paddleable real estate over on the Arkansas side.  Just north of I-40 there's an oxbow known as Dacus Lake that one can paddle onto from the main Mississippi during high-water periods.

I paddled out of the harbor, ferried across the river, and worked my way upstream to the channel that connects the present-day river to the oxbow lake that carried the flows of centuries past.  When I emerged on Dacus Lake I found myself paddling against some current--an oxbow lake is a river channel at high water, after all--but the water was smooth and a good place for my workout.  I did ten 30-second sprints at 3-minute intervals.  I consider this an aerobic workout, as the long recoveries prevent my body from going lactic.  But it also gives me the chance to paddle hard and fast, something I believe is a skill that must be practiced.  If you only train slow, you're going to race slow.

The last several sprints were starting to hurt a little, but overall I felt much better than I did during the workout last Sunday.  Once I'd finished I headed back to where the lake flows out into the main river.  Backwater areas like Dacus Lake are really quite lovely and I always savor the chance to paddle there.

I paddled a good solid pace back to the harbor and back to the dock to complete 100 minutes in the boat.  I could spend the rest of the day feeling good about my morning's work and sightseeing.


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The Wicked Winds of the West and South

When Joe and I met Tuesday morning for a lap of the harbor, the conditions were classically blustery.  The Fahrenheit temperature was in the high 40s and falling, and the northwest wind was howling more from the west than from the north.  Most of the time the wind here blows from the north or the south, and since the harbor runs north-south, you've got the wind at your back at least half the time.  But an east or west wind is harder to get a break from.  Joe and I stuck close to the harbor's west bank, hoping to get whatever protection we could there.

It was about ten degrees warmer when I went down to paddle yesterday, and it was windy again--more of a traditional south wind this time.  But what a wind!  I mentioned that last Thursday was an extremely windy day down on the riverfront, but I'm pretty sure it was even more fierce yesterday.  This time I was better dressed for getting wet, and I paddled to the mouth of the harbor hoping to avail myself of some downwind action out on the Mississippi.

But once I was out there I had the bravery drained right out of me.  I didn't have a shuttle car waiting for me upriver, and I realized that returning to the harbor, paddling into the teeth of that wind, was not a simple matter.  Also, just like last Thursday, I lacked a "buddy," and I didn't have a leash connecting myself to my ski, either.  Since downwind conditions are not so common here, I'm just not in the habit of going to the river with things like that.

So, I retraced the hundred meters or so back to the harbor (even that was surprisingly tricky).  Whether I was being smart, or just a wuss, I'll let the reader decide.  But back in the harbor the consolation prize wasn't bad, at least.  As I paddled into the constricted area between the monorail bridge and the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, I found some surfable waves.  This confirmed my suspicion that the wind speed was toward the high end of what I've ever experienced on the Memphis riverfront: waves you can surf in the harbor are rare indeed.  I spent a half-hour or so working on some of the downwind fundamentals I learned out on the Columbia River last summer, and then returned to the dock soaking wet and mildly satisfied with how my session had gone.

In other news, I started up a new strength routine this week.  I did a cursory round on Monday, just to give my muscles a heads-up that their job description had changed.  I did full rounds (i.e., two trips through the circuit) on Wednesday and today.


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A new strength routine

Here are the strength exercises I plan to do for the next several weeks:

1.  Front and lat raises

2.  Torso twists with medicine ball (demonstrated by yours truly in this video)

3.  Cleans

4.  Stability ball exercise (demonstrated by Jing Jing Li at 2:55 of her video on this page)

5.  Bent-over rows





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Monday photo feature

It's hard to beat a good picnic on a sunny spring day.  The Mississippi River was up in April of 2008, and on a patch of high ground surrounded by the floodwaters, darn if there wasn't a picnic table!  Meghan Carr and I paddled over there to spend our lunch hour.


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