Monday photo feature

When I completed my course of instruction with world champion Dawid Mocke last week, I received my doctoral hood.  And just like that, Professor Mocke and I were colleagues, hanging out and talking shop and taking selfies.

I should add that Dawid is one of the stars of my movie that came out last fall.  If you haven't watched it yet, there's no time like right now.


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Wrapping up the trip

I'm trying to relax a little after the hardest week of paddling I've had in quite a while.  I paddled twice a day for most of last week, and much of it was high-intensity effort.  I'm pretty sure I'm coming away a better downwind paddler than I was when I first got here, but even if I'm not, at least I got in a solid block of training for the mostly-flatwater races coming up this spring.

I spent my last full day in South Africa doing the tourist thing in Cape Town.  This morning I took a stroll around the waterfront district.  It's largely a tourist trap but it was nice being by the water.

This afternoon I got a bit more ambitious and took a hike to the top of Table Mountain.  Looking up at it from Cape Town, I could tell it was going to be a bear of a hike, and it didn't disappoint.  It took me close to two hours to get to the top on a rough trail with lots of loose gravel and angular rocks and poor footing.  If I hadn't spent the month of January working my legs hard, I'd probably be in a world of pain right now.

Tomorrow I begin the long journey back to the U.S. of A.  I'm going to miss this nice summer weather, but in most respects I'm eager to be back home.


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Some racing, a guest lecturer, and one more Miller's

This past week wasn't exactly my usual race preparation.  I trained hard, did a lot of things out of my comfort zone, and ended up tired and sore.  But with a race here at Fish Hoek Friday evening, I had to suit up and do my best.

The Sea Dog Race is an event put on every Friday in the spring, summer, and fall by the Fish Hoek Surf Lifesaving Club, and the organizers boast that it is "never canceled."  It's five laps of a triangular buoy course out beyond the impact zone at Fish Hoek Beach.

As we prepared to start the Sea Dog Friday evening, the wind was as fierce as ever and the swells were enormous.  We waded out into thigh-deep water, waited for the command, and hopped on our skis and started racing.  We paddled upwind for the first leg of the triangle, and then rounded a buoy that was anchored some 500 meters from the beach.  Next came a downwind leg of 400 meters or so to another buoy, and then we had to paddle in a beam wind to get back to the first buoy and complete a lap.

After the chaotic start I found myself somewhere in the middle of the pack.  The upwind leg was taxing physically but I handled it okay.  The downwind leg was pretty straightforward but I found the runs deceptive and tricky to catch.  The beam leg was probably the most intimidating because of the big swells passing under us from left to right, but the troughs were so wide and smooth that flipping didn't seem like such a danger.

By the end of the first lap I was paddling along with a group of three or four other racers.  I think I was the strongest in the group in the upwind and beam-wind legs, but they were much more adept at catching downwind runs than I was.  They would build a lead on me in each downwind leg, then I would fight back and take the lead in the other two legs, and then they would get the lead right back in the next downwind leg.  Since the race ended with a downwind leg back to the beach, they all beat me.  I actually had to follow them just to find the two flags on the beach that marked the finish line, because the sun was so bright in the western sky that I couldn't see them.  Somehow I managed to tweak my back while wrestling my boat out of the water and carrying it between the flags.  You can't tell it in this photo that somebody from Cape Town Sport Photography shot of me:

There was some kind of computer glitch that prevented the race organizers from tabulating the results.  Oh well... the things I know for sure are that I did not finish first, I did not finish last, and I did have a lot of fun.  And I can only imagine what doing a race like that every week can do for your ocean-racing skill level.

My back still hurt pretty bad when I woke up this morning, and my arms were so tired they were throbbing a little.  Fortunately I had an easier day on tap.  Oscar Chalupsky, a 12-time winner of the Molokai race in Hawaii and arguably the most famous surfski racer in the world, was in town to teach a class down at the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club.  Apparently his time was limited, and he's also battling cancer and can't do substantial paddling at the moment, so the class consisted of an indoor lecture followed by a brief session on the water.

In his lecture, Oscar stressed the importance of efficiency and conservation of energy in all aspects of surfski racing.  Every racer, he said, should make regular forward stroke practice a priority in his routine.  If you really have to fight hard to catch a run, you're wasting energy; you should let that run go and get the one behind it instead.  Always stay focused on your destination landmark; not doing so means adding extra distance.  You should relax out on a downwind run; being tense costs energy and stops you from executing.  Because the main reason people get tense out in big conditions is that they're afraid of flipping, remounting is a skill that should be practiced to the point that one has no doubt he will be able to do it.

We walked down to the beach and got in our boats and paddled out past the impact zone.  There Oscar demonstrated what he considers the correct remounting technique--it puts a premium on conservation of energy, he said.  We all practiced the technique from both sides of the boat.

My back was feeling somewhat better after this light session.  I did some stretching in the afternoon and turned in early when another round of "load shedding" hit around 8 o'clock.  I woke up this morning feeling the freshest I have all week.

There was supposed to be a race this morning up on the north side of Cape Town, and I'd planned to check out of my B & B in the wee hours and catch a ride with somebody who could carry a boat up there for me to use, and then return it to Fish Hoek.  But the race got called off due to an unfavorable wind forecast over on the Atlantic side of the cape.  So I planned to do one more Miller's Run this morning.

I woke up several times last night and heard the wind blowing hard, and I wondered if I was in for another struggle in enormous conditions.  But when the Miller's Taxi delivered me and a dozen or so other people to Miller's Point at around 7:30 AM, False Bay looked pretty placid.  I paddled out to the rock where Miller's Run officially starts, and found it difficult to get moving on the itty-bitty bumps.

That's something I've noticed about my downwind paddling: I'm not very adept at using the small chop, and when the swells are huge I get nervous and freeze up.  Between those two extremes there's a zone in which the conditions seem to make sense to me and I can catch one good run after another.  It happened in the Gorge Downwind race last summer: the first several kilometers were a slog in which I just couldn't seem to get the boat moving at all, but then the conditions built into that "just right" size and I found a nice groove.

Today, as I approached the lighthouse a little over halfway through the run, it was finally "Goldilocks" time.  The swells were big, but not so big that I felt overwhelmed.  Each time I caught a run, I could sense where the next run was forming up.  I was no longer plodding around 6 miles per hour.  Every time I glanced at the G.P.S. device I was over 8, 9, and occasionally even 10 mph.  I searched for that balance between getting a moment of rest on a run and paddling hard for the next run.

My time for the run was just over 56 minutes.  That wasn't my best time, but I think it wasn't bad considering how small the conditions were in those first several kilometers.  I didn't even break an hour Friday morning when the swells were huge.  I think elite-level racers typically break 40 minutes on a good day.

Whatever the case, it was a satisfying way to go out.  My paddling in the Republic of South Africa is over (for now).

I walked back to the B & B and had a nice breakfast, then went to my room and packed and cleaned up.  Dawid's mother Dorothy had very kindly offered to drive me back to Cape Town.  She picked me up at noon and we had a nice chat during the drive.

I'm now staying in an Air B & B in the Tamboerskloof section of Cape Town for two nights.  I plan to spend tomorrow checking out the sights a little bit, and I'm also looking forward to some down time after a hard week of paddling.  I'm scheduled to fly out of Cape Town Tuesday.


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

Highs and lows on Miller's Run

I woke up yesterday morning with my back still sore.  I did some intentional moving around and some light stretching as I waited for Dawid to pick me up.  We went down to the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club, loaded our boats on the Miller's Taxi, and rode the taxi to Miller's Point.  The southeast wind had returned and conditions looked good for a Miller's Run.

Ed joined Dawid and me again.  Dawid sent Ed off on his run, giving him a two-minute head start.  Then he sent me, telling me to try to run Ed down.

A downwind race is a race, of course, but you have to approach it differently from a race on flatwater.  If a competitor is three swells ahead of you, no amount of harder paddling will help you catch him.  You have to focus on getting as many good runs as you can and hope that by the end you'll have done a little bit better job of it than your competitor.

And so, I didn't even look to see where Ed was.  I just did my best with the runs, trying to apply all the things I've learned in my sessions with Dawid this week.  As I paddled along I looked down at my G.P.S. device, and it seemed that when I wasn't on a run at all my speed was in 6 miles per hour territory.  Small runs would push that up over 7 and 8 mph, and when I managed to link a few runs together I would achieve 9 to 10 mph.

Dawid hung out behind me and coached me as we went along.  I stalled out from time to time but for the most part I kept the boat moving and felt good.  I caught Ed just before we reached the lighthouse.

While Dawid moved over to work with Ed for a bit, I kept going and tried to continue the things I'd been doing right.  Most of the time I seemed to cruise along at 7 or 8 mph, but once in a while I'd put together a good series of runs and go faster.  The most triumphant moment of my trip so far occurred about halfway between the lighthouse and the beach: I caught a small run, and then a bigger one, and some hard paddling had me gliding down the face of the biggest swell I'd seen all morning.  Dawid had moved in behind me again and was yelling "Check your speed!  Check your speed!"  I looked down and saw that I was running just shy of 12 mph.  "It's like a conveyer belt!" Dawid shouted gleefully.

Soon we were on the beach, and Dawid was full of praise for how far I'd come during the week.  This was in fact my eighth and final session with Dawid: we'd doubled up on sessions last weekend so that he could help chaperone his son's water polo team on a trip this coming weekend.  So a sort of "graduation" ceremony was in order.  We went to the C'est la Vie coffee shop to celebrate over a cappuccino.  In lieu of a cap and gown, Dawid gave me this nifty jacket:

It's hard to see here, but it has the "Mocke Downwind Camp" logo on the left breast.

So I was feeling pretty good.  My back aches even seemed to have subsided.  I booked an afternoon spot on the Miller's Taxi and looked forward to having some more fun later.  I might have even dared to think I was getting this whole downwind business figured out.

Meanwhile, the southeast wind kept on blowing, and the swells continued to build.  By the time I got back to Miller's Point around 4:30 in the afternoon, the conditions were big.  BIG.

Once I'd been racing slalom for several years in the late 1990s, I'd mastered the basics well enough that I was quite competitive in races that took place on easier whitewater.  But the big water courses like the Ocoee Olympic course gave me fits.  My struggles were largely mental: amid big waves and holes that could give me a nice beating if I made a mistake, I usually tensed up and paddled timidly.  But I was lacking some physical tools as well: I'd never been an "acrobatic" sort of athlete.  I'd always shied away from activities like gymnastics and diving and even turning simple cartwheels.  I ended up getting good at running because it didn't require any particular balance or agility, but just simple hard work.

When I launched into those huge swells yesterday afternoon, I felt just the way I had on those big slalom courses 20 years ago.  Suddenly my confidence from the morning session was gone.  Whereas in the morning I'd been aggressively pursuing runs and seeking to link one run to the next, now I was tensing up.  Each time I found myself at the crest of a big wave, looking down into the abyss that was the trough in front of me, I couldn't bring myself to lay down the explosive sprint that would get me riding that wave.

One of the lessons I learned during my earliest whitewater canoeing was to keep paddling in a rapid.  I remember one of my camp counselors saying, "If you tense up and stop paddling, you will get creamed."

"Keep paddling" has been my credo ever since, and it's served me well.  And it's what I did during yesterday afternoon's run, figuring that at the very least, I'd keep puttering along at 6 miles per hour and get to Fish Hoek Beach eventually.  As time went on I finally began to put together a several good series of runs, getting myself up over 11 mph once or twice.  In the end I arrived at the beach with a run I'd consider fair.  It was several minutes slower than my morning run.

I walked back to my B & B feeling dead tired.  South Africa is beset with rolling blackouts--the people here call it "load shedding"--and when the electricity went off at 8 PM, I decided to go ahead and hit the hay.

I was up early this morning to go another round with Miller's.  Though the wind had backed off slightly, the swells were just as big as yesterday afternoon.  And they were much more confused, with the groundswell-vs.-windswell pattern very difficult to discern.  If anything I felt even worse than I'd felt yesterday afternoon.  I crept along while everybody else who'd ridden the Miller's Taxi with me disappeared from sight.  It seemed that every time I glanced at my G.P.S. device I was stuck in the 6s.  Somehow I managed not to break down in tears, though a whimpering voice inside me did keep saying "I wish Dawid was still here!"  Indeed, this had all seemed so much simpler with him hanging out behind me, helping me make sense of it all.

I sent Dawid a text afterward to let him know how my last two runs had gone.  In reply he commended me for getting myself back out there and experiencing the big conditions, regardless of my degree of success.  "Don't worry if it feels hectic.  Just one at a time," he said.  And he's right.  This is all just part of that big journey I'm on, trying to get a little wiser each day.  Life would be boring if I had it all figured out... right?  At least one thing is certain: I'm a better downwind paddler now than I was a week ago.

There's just a little bit of paddling left for me here in South Africa, but it should be very interesting.  More on that later.


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

Skills, technique, fitness... we're covering it all, with and without the wind

Dawid told me to take Monday morning off.  Part of the reason was the lack of wind on the Miller's Run.  But Dawid also recognized that I'd pushed too hard on Sunday and needed a break.

We got together in the late afternoon on Monday.  The wind forecast hadn't looked good and Dawid had planned to do another wave session at the beach, but as we readied our gear he felt the wind picking up from the southeast and declared that we would paddle out to the Roman Rock lighthouse and do some downwind drills back from there.

The lighthouse sits about 5 kilometers from the beach, and we faced a tiring slog into the wind to get there.  Dawid had a resistor on his boat--a length of bungee cord with several plastic practice golf balls on it to create drag beneath his hull--so that he could paddle hard without leaving me in the dust.  For a while we paddled with me trying to stay right on his stern, and then we played some "leap frog"--I sprint by him, he sprints by me, I sprint by him, and so on.  There was something surreal about sprinting past Dawid.  I don't care if he was letting me pass him, or if he did have that resistor on his boat; the guy is still one of the best paddlesport athletes on this planet.

There was a heavy mist hanging over False Bay, and we had to trust Dawid's sense of direction on his home water to reach the lighthouse.  On and on we went, climbing up and over one swell after another, and I started to worry that I would completely wear myself out, just like the day before.  Finally the lighthouse emerged from the mist.  We'd missed it to the left by quite a lot, so we adjusted course and looped around it, and at last we were headed back downwind.

We now commenced the "official" workout for the afternoon: a set of downwind drills.  There were two of them.  In the first, I was to paddle for five minutes, and was allowed only 100 strokes for that period.  That meant that I had to avoid unnecessary strokes at all costs, and try to prolong each run without paddling as long as I could.

The second drill called for me to paddle for five minutes as well, but this time I had to paddle at a constant cadence the whole time.  I was allowed to take very hard strokes or very easy strokes, but I had to keep the stroke rate the same throughout.

Both drills were intended to improve my downwind efficiency by eliminating unnecessary strokes.  It took a lot of discipline to abide by the rules of each drill, but as we went along I think I made some progress in getting the conditions to work for me.

Monday night I was invited to the Mocke household to have supper with Dawid, his wife Nikki, and their children Sam and Sarah.  They're all active members of this beach community and I enjoyed getting to know them a little more.

While I was there we pored over the wind forecast, and it appeared that the earlier we got on the water Tuesday morning, the better the conditions for a Miller's Run were likely to be.  Dawid said he would pick me up at 5:30 AM.  I winced a little but said, "Okay, let's do it!"  The wind is one of the main reasons I came here, after all.

We were joined by a guy named Ed, a local paddler whom Dawid coaches.  We got to Miller's Point right at dawn and paddled out.  The first step of a Miller's Run is to paddle a kilometer or more offshore, and to me it felt labored because I wasn't entirely awake or warmed up yet.  After we'd turned downwind toward the Roman Rock lighthouse Dawid went back and forth coaching me and coaching Ed.  The first few kilometers were a mixed bag for me, as I caught a couple of decent runs but stalled out a lot.  Dawid had to stop me several times and refocus my attention on certain details.

We took a break next to the lighthouse, and Dawid shot some brief footage of me with his phone.  You can watch it here.

We proceeded on and I continued to paddle well at times and struggle at times.  Dawid shouted, "Let the waves do the work!"  Then I started putting together some really good series of runs.  The conditions were at their biggest for the morning, and I was seeing the runs well in the large, well-defined swells.  I couldn't see or hear Dawid or Ed anymore--I assumed they were working on something somewhere behind me--so I just focused my attention in front of me and tried to keep linking runs together as much as I could.

The swells got smaller and smaller as I approached Fish Hoek Beach, and I tried to keep getting what I could out of the little runs.  At last I arrived on the beach, and when I looked back out over the bay Dawid and Ed were paddling in some 400 meters back.  When Dawid arrived he said, "It looked like something clicked for you!  I tried to go after you but couldn't catch you!"  Keep in mind that Dawid had a resistor on his boat again, and had probably spotted me a generous lead while coaching Ed.  But I was nevertheless feeling good about my run and hearing that praise from him lifted my spirits even higher.

Dawid accompanied me back to my B & B and we partook of some breakfast there.  After that he went on to attend to his daily chores, and I decided to take a hike.  Just south of town there's a mountain called Elsie's Peak, and there's a hiking trail to the top where one can take in some stunning views.  Here's the view of Elsie's Peak from my balcony; the left end of the ridge looks out over False Bay:

A rather imposing climb, yes, but I fastened up my sneakers and dug right in.  I was at the top maybe 45 minutes later and admiring this view of Fish Hoek Beach and the town of Fish Hoek:

I could even spot the Atlantic Ocean off to the west.  You can see a piece of it in the center of this photo, between the two peaks:

And then, of course, there's the Miller's Run:

Miller's Point, where the run starts, is marked, and the lighthouse is circled.  The paddler continues toward the lower left corner of the photo, rounds Elsie's Peak, and finishes at Fish Hoek Beach.  By the time I took this photo the wind had died almost completely, and so the water is placid, as perhaps you can see.  That's exactly why we'd gotten ourselves going at 5:30 AM.

I'll just add that the day had grown quite warm and humid by the time I reached the peak.  By the time I got back down to the B & B my clothes were drenched with sweat:

I got to sleep a little later this morning, as Dawid and I weren't scheduled to meet until 8 o'clock.  The plan was to put in at Fish Hoek Beach and paddle a few kilometers up the coast to Muizenberg Beach, the site of reliably good surfing waves.  Here we worked on my wave-catching skills some more.  I started feeling more comfortable with moving right or left across the face of a wave, using my rudder to "counter-steer."  I could use some more practice spotting good waves to catch and knowing when to start accelerating my boat for that purpose.

We didn't spend too much time at Muizenberg because of the lengthy paddle back.  As we made our way back toward Fish Hoek Dawid called for an impromptu workout that went like this:

10 strokes on
10 strokes off
20 strokes on
10 strokes off
30 strokes on
10 strokes off
40 strokes on
10 strokes off
50 strokes on
10 strokes off
60 strokes on
10 strokes off
70 strokes on
10 strokes off
80 strokes on
10 strokes off
90 strokes on
10 strokes off
100 strokes on

By the time we'd gotten up over 40 or 50 strokes on, I was seriously questioning my ability to finish out the workout.  But I bore down and got through it, paddling hard even though I was slowing up a bit toward the end.

I'd been sore in my hips and lower back before today's paddling, and my back was wicked sore afterward.  Dawid said it was probably because of the heavier boat I'm paddling--I've been paddling a Fenn "Blue Fin S" all week; it's one of the shorter, more stable skis, similar to an Epic V8 Pro.  Anyway, it's loosened up some, and I hope it'll be feeling better by tomorrow.  The wind is supposed to return overnight, and our plan is to do another Miller's Run tomorrow morning.


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Monday photo feature

To do the "Miller's Run" downwind run, you have to get yourself and your boat from the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club, where the run finishes, to Miller's Point, where the run starts.  Thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit of a guy named Vinnie Cicatello, that's easy to do: the "Miller's Taxi" shuttle service runs several times a day when the wind is blowing.

This photo shows the Miller's Taxi at the Miller's Point boat ramp.  I lifted it from the Miller's Taxi page on Face Book.  Hopefully I'll get a few good pictures of my own by and by.  How many awesome paddling photos I manage to get remains to be seen now that I'm without a Go Pro camera.


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

Hoeked on paddling in South Africa

My journey across an ocean and across the equator wasn't too bad, all things considered.  The only major problem was that one of my checked bags didn't travel from Johannesburg to Cape Town on the same plane I did, and as a result I had to spend most of my first day here without it.  It made for sort of a rough adjustment, having to deal with that on top of the usual jet lag and the unfamiliarity with the town and the strange currency and the exotic culture and everything else.  But I'm settling in, little by little.  I'm actually quite impressed with South African Airways because in the end they delivered the bag right to my bed & breakfast here in Fish Hoek, some 20 miles from the Cape Town Airport.  I can't in a million years imagine one of the U.S.-based airlines providing such a service.

There was one bad thing, though: I'd packed my Go Pro camera in that bag, and as I unpacked the bag here in my room I realized that it had been stolen.  The camera was almost ten years old--I think it was a Hero 2 or some such old clunker model--so I'm not particularly heartbroken to lose it.  There certainly were other things in that bag that I cared a lot more about than that camera.  But still, it's a bummer not to have it for shooting a vid or two out on the Miller's Run.  I suppose I ought to report the theft to South African Airways, but honestly, I'm so weary of dealing with airlines and airports by now that my heart really isn't into doing so.  For all I know, the thing could have been ripped off back in Atlanta, where I took a United flight to get to DC.

As for paddling, it began on an introductory note yesterday morning.  Dawid had me participate in a beginning surfski class that he teaches on a regular basis down at the Fish Hoek beachfront.  He was apologetic about doing that since I'm not really a beginner, but I didn't mind at all.  I've found that there are always opportunities to learn, no matter the level of instruction.  In this case I benefitted greatly from Dawid's demonstration of his method for launching into the shore break on the beach: it was much simpler and more logical than whatever methods I'd used on my own in the past.  Keep in mind that Memphis is pretty far inland, meaning that I don't paddle at the beach very often, and so in many ways I am a beginner in that environment.

Yesterday afternoon Dawid and I paddled a tandem surfski on the Miller's Run.  Having doubled with Dawid last summer in the Columbia River Gorge, I figured I was in for a physically demanding session.  But I didn't feel too exhausted when it was over.  I definitely was fresher going into today's run, while that run we did last summer was my second of that day.

But the conditions were impressive indeed, especially around the Roman Rock lighthouse five kilometers from the finish at Fish Hoek Beach.  At one point Dawid said, "A bit bigger than Swell City (the site of the biggest swells on the Columbia Gorge run), isn't it?  Hanging on for dear life behind him in the stern seat, I could say little more than "Yes, I believe you're right."

I turned in before 9 o'clock last night, partly because I'm still getting adjusted to South Africa Time, and partly because Dawid wanted to pick me up at 7 o'clock this morning to go paddling.  That's much earlier than I care to go at home, but hey, when the winner of multiple Molokai titles says we're going at seven, we're going at seven.

The wind was lighter this morning and the swells were smaller out on Miller's Run.  Dawid and I paddled single skis and he coached me on the various technical aspects of downwind paddling.  I felt like a champ at times and like a chump at other times, but overall I think it was a productive session.  One of my goals for this trip is to develop a better "eye" for the conditions, and with Dawid's help I learned to recognize a few things that I'd been oblivious to in the past.

My fuel tank hit rock bottom toward the end of the run.  I guess that's not a huge surprise, seeing as how my ability to train was limited over the previous six weeks.  But it was frustrating, just the same.  Back when I was racing whitewater slalom I learned that one of the most shameful things an athlete can do is "snit"--that is, give up on a run and stop paddling.  I was very tempted to snit as we approached Fish Hoek Beach this morning, but Dawid kept encouraging me to go after the small runs and get as much aid from them as possible, and somehow I found the strength to do that even though my stroke form had fallen apart completely.

Dawid wanted to meet for another session at 2 o'clock this afternoon, so I went back to the bed & breakfast to spend a few hours rehydrating, eating, stretching, and resting.  When 2 o'clock rolled around the wind was not there for us, so we made it a wave session at Fish Hoek Beach.  One of the main things Dawid wanted me to practice was feeling the precise moment when a wave begins to carry me.  It's at this moment, he said, that I should stop paddling and let the wave do the work.  And here I began to realize just why I had gotten so worn out this morning: Dawid had to keep yelling at me to stop paddling each time a wave had me.  I'd been doing the same thing this morning, and all that unnecessary paddling took its toll.  I'd long had a general feeling that I was working twice as hard to go half as fast as the more accomplished downwind racers, and these lessons today brought that issue more into focus for me.  We'll likely do more wave sessions as this coming week goes on, and see if I can improve my sensory skills in this area.

In many ways my whitewater background is an asset during a wave session.  I've punched many a hole on a whitewater river, and so paddling out into the surf wasn't all that intimidating today.  But just like a river hole or wave can occasionally give me a beat-down, so can a big breaking wave at the beach.  Toward the end of our session I smacked hard into an enormous breaker, and it knocked me off my ski and relieved me of the day-glo Outdoors Inc. hat that Joe gave me last summer.  Dawid spotted it and got it back to me.  If I'd been wearing one of my earth-tone lids, it probably would have been lost forever.


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

So it begins

I have completed the first leg of my journey to South Africa: a trip by automobile from Memphis to Atlanta.  I'm staying with a cousin of mine in Atlanta, and tomorrow I will fly from here to Washington, DC; from DC to Johannesburg; and from Johannesburg to Cape Town.  I'm scheduled to depart Atlanta at 2:35 PM EST and arrive in Cape Town at 9:00 PM SAT on Friday.  Lots of things can go wrong during air travel and I have my fingers crossed that none will on this trip.

For me, leaving home is tough.  I'm really very much a homebody.  As I said goodbye to my cats and drove out of my neighborhood this dreary overcast morning, I was overcome with melancholy.  I do believe that ultimately the trip will prove worth it, but I've got several days of long flights and subsequent jet lag to get through first.

Last night I got a text message from Dawid Mocke telling me that the wind forecast looks good this weekend, but calms down for much of next week.  So we're going to double up on my coached sessions Saturday and Sunday to take full advantage of the good conditions out on Miller's Run.  I was sort of hoping I might ease into this program a bit more, but you can't pick the weather.  I've never been very good at sleeping on airplanes, but tomorrow would be a good time to learn how.  I do have a couple of benign sleep aids at my disposal (Melatonin, Tylenol PM).

Yesterday morning I did one last paddle at home: an easy 40 minutes.  I'm feeling some soreness in my right oblique abdominal area, and it's sometimes hard to distinguish that from the rib pain.  That's another reason I hope I can get at least a little rest on the planes and in the airports.

It could be a few days before I manage another post here.  Hopefully the good times will be winning out by then.  Thanks to everybody who's checking!


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Monday photo feature

Jasper (left) and Dawid Mocke paddle the "Miller's Run," an area of South Africa's False Bay that contains some of the world's best downwind action.  They're headed toward their hometown of Fish Hoek, visible beyond the Roman Rock lighthouse.

This photo is another screen shot from the Mockes' online video courses "Masters of Surfski" and "Downwind Pro," which you can learn more about here.

By this weekend, I should be paddling these waters myself.  A lot of energy, both physical and mental, has been spent getting myself ready.  Hopefully it will all pay off, and my body will cooperate, and a truly epic experience will unfold over the next two weeks.


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Wrapping up the pre-travel training

By Friday morning the rain was down to just a stray shower or two.  But it was still grey and cheerless with the temperature not expected to rise much above 40 degrees Fahrenheit all day.  The 5-day forecast isn't promising much improvement through the middle of this coming week.  Have I mentioned how much I'm looking forward to getting in on that South Africa summer?

I hopped on the bike and pedaled over to the park, where I did another five laps of that paved loop through the woods.  Once again I rode hard over the 1.02-mile section that's closed to automobiles and used the remaining 0.39 mile for recovery.  I stopped to do sets of Hindu squats after the second and fourth laps.

Saturday morning I did a round of the core exercises and then went down to the river.  Once again it was overcast and about 40 degrees.  I had no agenda besides doing a relaxed 60-minute paddle.  I ventured out onto the Mississippi for the first time in quite a while, and found it somewhat turbulent from an upstream-moving barge rig that had passed through earlier.  I tried to move with the conditions and not put any sudden stress on my ribcage area.

I woke up yesterday with my legs still very fatigued from Friday's workout.  I've been working my legs hard this whole month, and now, on the verge of overtraining in that way, I think it might be time to "call it good."  So I ruled out doing a bike ride or other leg work yesterday.  Meanwhile, my rib felt tender enough to need another day before paddling hard again.

Today I felt fresher, and I did a round of core exercises and then headed for the river.  It's getting a bit warmer outside, but sunny skies are still hard to come by.  When I arrived downtown it was 45 degrees and the sun was trying mightily to peek through, but it wouldn't start winning that battle until my last ten minutes on the water.

I warmed up and then did this workout:

10-second sprint
60-second recovery
10-second sprint
50-second recovery
10-second sprint
40-second recovery
10-second sprint
30-second recovery
10-second sprint
20-second recovery
10-second sprint
10-second recovery
10-second sprint

I went through this sequence twice, with four minutes off in between.  This workout is similar to one I did back on December 12, and at that time my plan was to do such workouts throughout the months of December and January.  But then this rib thing happened, and today was the first time I felt bold enough to try something like that again.  I'm happy to say that my body responded well and I feel no worse now that I did before the workout.  This is the last hard paddling I'll do before traveling to South Africa, and it feels good to go out on a positive note.


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Winter flexes its muscles

Tuesday marked six weeks since I first noticed the pain in my right ribcage area.  The injury has progressed to a state that I would describe as improved, but still tender.  And so continues the standard procedure for coming back from an injury: put a bit of stress on it, let it recover, put a bit more stress on it, let it recover, put even more stress on it, let it recover, and so on.

Having paddled hard on Monday, I intended to spend Tuesday's paddle with Joe paddling as easy as possible while taking good precise strokes.  And for the most part that's what I did, though I'm sure I lapsed into some sloppiness here and there; these Tuesday paddles are always a chance for Joe and me to chit-chat and catch up with each other, and it's easy to get distracted from what I want my body to be doing.  But in general I think it was a good recovery session and I came away with the injury feeling tender, still, but not too bad.

I also did a couple of strength exercises on Tuesday.  I was still feeling deep fatigue in my legs, so I did just the core exercises.  I took Wednesday completely off.  Hoping to get in one more good round of hard workouts, both in and out of the boat, before my departure, I wanted to give my whole body a nice break.

This morning I was back at it with the whole strength routine except for the lunges.  As I spend more time in the boat, I figure I can dial back some of the out-of-the-boat work.  I'm still doing some stair climbs, Hindu squats, and bike riding, so my legs aren't exactly getting off easy right now.

This week began with a frigid spell outside, and I found myself paddling in sub-freezing temperatures.  It's warmed up a little here in the second half of the week, but only a little.  After the strength work this morning I went down to the river, and when I got there it was 39 degrees Fahrenheit and raining.  In South Africa it's summer right now, and you have no idea how much I'm looking forward to enjoying some of that.

But there's still some work to do in the meantime.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did eight 20-second sprints at two-minute intervals.  The sprints felt good and under normal circumstances I might have stretched the workout to ten or twelve of them, but with my still-healing rib I didn't dare push my luck.  I spent the rest of my 50-minute session paddling at a comfortable cruising pace.  There was at least a hard drizzle falling the whole time.

I've been feeling my rib the rest of the day.  I don't think I've made it any worse than it's been lately, but I definitely want to rest it for at least the next day.  I'm a veteran of all kinds of muscle and tendon injuries, but this is the first broken bone of any kind I've ever had, so I'm not entirely sure how it's supposed to feel before it's a hundred percent healed.


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Monday photo feature

Hollie Hall of South Point, Ohio, navigates Flare Rapid on the Allegheny River at Warren, Pennsylvania, last August.  She was there participating in the U.S. Canoe Association's annual national championships event.  Photo by John Foreman.

Hollie is one of the stars of the movie I made last year.  I'm sorry to inform you that this work was snubbed by the Motion Picture Academy when it announced its Oscar nominees last week.  Oh well... it's okay.  My film contains layers of complexity that I wouldn't expect those Hollywood elites to understand.

Perhaps a little box office bump will show those Academy mucketymucks how misguided they were.  Let's all go enjoy the movie here.


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A whole variety of workouts and weather conditions

I got up Saturday morning with the intention of doing another bike workout in the park near my house.  Outside it was pouring down rain with the temperature at a fairly balmy 57 degrees Fahrenheit.  According to the forecast, later in the day the rain would move out with much colder air taking its place.  So I had a choice between doing my workout in the morning while it was warmish and wet and doing it later when would be drier but cold and probably windy.  I opted for the former.  As we used to say at the summer camp I attended, "Skin is waterproof."

I did five laps of that paved loop through the woods, riding the carless section hard and recovering on the other section.  After the second and fourth laps I stopped to do sets of Hindu squats.  Its was a taxing workout, particularly on an uphill part of the loop of around 800 meters.  But I held up just fine.

The rain was just a drizzle as I pedaled away from the house.  But right as I got to the park the heavens unleashed a massive torrent.  Within a couple of minutes I was your basic drowned rat.  The rain had stopped completely by the end of my first lap, so I was able to air-dry somewhat.  The creeks through the park were flowing bank-full, and that always makes the old whitewater paddler in me happy.  After I'd finished the workout and was riding back to the house another stiff shower moved through, but I was singin' in that rain, because I knew I had a some lovely dry clothes waiting for me less than a mile away.

I'd hoped to get back in the boat yesterday, but my injured rib was still feeling a little tender, so I decided to give it another rest day.  It's killing me to have to be this careful with the South Africa trip looming, but I keep reminding myself that I'd rather be paddling there in less-than-ideal physical condition than go there with pain that could jeopardize my ability to paddle at all.

Anyway, I did another round of the strength routine.  There was some pretty deep fatigue in my legs, so I did just one set each of the stair-climbs and lunges while doing the usual two sets of each core exercise.

I wasn't too sorry not to be paddling yesterday because the temperature didn't rise much above 40 degrees and the wind was blowing relentlessly.  By this morning the temperature had plummeted into the mid 20s but the north breeze was relatively light.  I've said many times that I'd rather paddle when it's 25 degrees and calm than when it's 40 degrees and windy, and today I would be putting my money where my mouth is on that.  I got out my fleece-lined pogies for I think only the second time this mostly-mild winter, and headed for the river.

After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I got right to it.  I did eight 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals, half of them at a moderate stroke rate and the other half at the highest stroke rate I could do while still maintaining control.  My rib felt mostly okay and I'm now waiting to see how it feels the rest of the day.


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Getting a little more serious back in the boat

Sunday evening and all day Monday I felt just awful.  I wasn't sick, but my whole body ached and my eyes were tired and watery.  It was all sort of puzzling because I'd had a decent night of sleep, my diet hadn't been any worse than normal, and I'd been attentive to hydration like I usually am.  Whatever the case, I took it easy on Monday.

I was feeling fresher by Tuesday morning, and I did a round of the strength routine I've been doing lately and then headed downtown to paddle a loop of the harbor with Joe.  Once again I felt some light pain in my injured rib area but nothing I didn't feel I could paddle through.

On Wednesday I got the bike out and rode back to Overton Park near my house.  The fallen trees and other debris had been cleaned up from the loop in the woods.  I expect there are some volunteers to thank for that service.  Like so many modern-day city governments, my city's has decided that providing parks and green spaces for its citizens shouldn't be part of its job and has farmed the upkeep of several of our biggest parks out to nonprofit conservancies.  The conservancy that runs Overton Park has limited funds at its disposal and relies on volunteers for "emergency" tasks like cleaning up after a severe storm.

Anyway, the volunteers' efforts allowed me to do another set of laps on the loop.  I did four laps, once again doing the carless section "on" and the other section "off."  After the first and third laps I stopped to do sets of Hindu squats.  I felt pretty good throughout the whole workout... my legs must actually be getting in shape.

I had a full day of non-athletic activities yesterday, but I managed to get in another round of the strength routine.  The core exercises on the stability ball and the lunges might be the most taxing things I'm doing these days.

This morning I was back in the boat in chilly, blustery conditions.  I warmed up and then did a drill I learned watching the Mocke brothers' "Masters of Surfski" video that involves paddling at varying cadences (stroke rates).  I did twenty strokes at a fairly slow rate, then twenty strokes at a medium-fast rate, then eight strokes at the fastest rate I could manage.  I did three five-minute periods of this drill, with five minutes recovery in between.

It was the hardest I'd paddled in a month.  I've definitely lost some in-the-boat fitness, but I'm hoping the hard out-of-the-boat workouts I've done, on top of the good workouts I'd done before I injured my rib, will help me get it back quickly.  I could feel some slight pain in my rib toward the end of the 60-minute session, and for the rest of the day there's been some very slight discomfort, so I need to be careful to give it the recovery it needs before I paddle hard again.


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Monday photo feature

Three weeks from now I'm scheduled to be in Fish Hoek, South Africa, studying the art of downwind surfski paddling.  One of my tutors will be the man pictured above, Dawid Mocke.  Could I ever look this studly on the water?  Hey, you never know.  Right now I just hope I will have my body ready for what should be eight very intense days of paddling.

This photo is a screen shot from one of a couple of instructional videos that Dawid and his brother Jasper have produced.  The videos are titled "Masters of Surfski" and "Downwind Pro," and for 20 bucks each you can have unlimited access to them.  Go here for more information.


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Dodging violent weather

Some strong storms hit Memphis and the Mid South in the pre-dawn hours yesterday.  I was among the fortunate residents: my electricity was out for only several hours, and the strongest winds seemed to miss my block.  Later in the morning when I headed for the river, I saw trees down on several houses and other moderate to severe damage in neighborhoods adjacent to mine.

The wind had calmed down and the rain had just about stopped when I got downtown just before 10 o'clock.  My boat and everything else on the dock seemed to have weathered the storm just fine.  The temperature would be dropping throughout the day, but it was still warm enough to paddle without pogies.

During my 60 minutes in the boat I got rained on some but endured nothing too oppressive.  I stayed in the harbor and paddled at my normal cruising pace, a little harder at times and a little easier at times.  There were moments when I could feel a bit of pain in my rib, but overall it held up well.  It felt okay for the rest of the day, and that was an encouraging sign.  I plan to keep easing back into paddling and carefully increasing the stress on my ribcage area.

It turned out that I'd hit the day's best window for paddling.  By the early afternoon it was drizzling hard and the wind was back up as the front came through that sent temperatures downward.

Today the violent weather is all gone.  It's just gloomy and rather cheerless: overcast with the temperature not rising much above 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  This morning I did the same strength routine I described in my last post, with the stair-climbs and lunges and core exercises.  Then I took my bike out for a workout.  There was a tree down on my loop in the woods, so I ended up doing some shorter sprints up a gradual incline.


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Doing the legwork

I got in the boat Tuesday and paddled very easy in the harbor for 80 minutes.  I could definitely feel some pain in my right ribcage area.  It wasn't really a surprise, seeing as how the injury is still healing; the challenge now is not to come back too fast.  Since Tuesday I've avoided stressing the area, and I plan to try paddling again tomorrow.

I've spent the rest of the week working my legs hard along with a couple of core exercises.  In Overton Park just west of my house there's a paved loop in a heavily-wooded area, and I've been riding my bike a lot there because of the wind protection.  According to my G.P.S. device, the loop is 1.41 miles (2.27 kilometers) long, and 1.02 miles (1.64 km) of the loop is closed to motorized traffic.  So I've been doing laps where I go hard over the carless part and use the remaining 0.39 mile (0.63 km) for recovery.  On Monday I did four of these laps; after the first and third laps I stopped to do sets of 60 Hindu squats.

On other days I do a strength routine at the house.  I do several versions of running up stairs, a static core exercise with the stability ball (demonstrated at 1:56 of this video), lunges while holding a couple of dumbbells down at my sides, and the core exercise demonstrated at 3:52 of this video.  I did this routine Tuesday morning before I went to the river.

By Wednesday I was feeling considerable fatigue in my legs and sensed the need to back off a little.  I did another four laps in Overton Park but this time I paced them out more evenly.  My legs didn't exactly get off light, as I did another two sets of 60 Hindu squats.

I was again feeling strain in the legs yesterday, and when I did that strength routine I did just one set each of the stair runs and lunges while doing two sets of the core exercises.  Then I rode my bike to the bank and back, maybe a 5-mile (8-kilometer) round trip.

I'm taking today completely off and hoping to paddle tomorrow feeling fresher.


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Monday photo feature

Anybody who owns a Go Pro camera might appreciate this collage of photos.  Anytime I mount my camera on my boat to shoot video of a paddling session, the very first thing I see in the resulting raw footage is my face as I switch the camera on, and the very last thing I see is my face as I switch it back off.  I don't know what the newer models are like, but my old "Hero 2" model has the LCD mode display on its front, so I'm always looking right at it to be sure the camera is in the mode I want.


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Pedaling for all I'm worth

Since last Tuesday, I've been centering my training around some hard bike rides.

Like so many, I learned to ride a bike when I was a kid, and I've owned some kind of bike ever since. But I've never pursued riding seriously.  I decided a long time ago that I have the time and money to devote to only one sport, and that sport would always be paddling.

My current ride is a low-tech mountain bike that I bought for a couple hundred bucks in a silent auction at a slalom race I attended 23 years ago.  For me, riding a bike is a way to get around the neighborhood, mostly during the warmer times of year.  I rarely mention the riding I do on this blog because I've never really counted it as "serious" training, even though I'm sure it doesn't hurt.

But now here I am relying on my bike to maintain some fitness until I can get back in the boat.  On Tuesday, Friday, and yesterday I did rides between 30 minutes and an hour that included some hard surges.  On Tuesday and Friday I took breaks during the rides to do sets of Hindu squats.  Thursday and yesterday I did strength workouts at the house that included running up stairs, lunges with dumbbells, and core exercises.

For much of today I was involved in some activities with the handbell group I play with, so today was a scheduled rest day.  It's still important to allow my body some recovery time--maybe even more so than normal, because I've been going at these workouts extra-hard to compensate for the fact that I'm not able to do any "real" (in-the-boat) training.

Like I said in my last post, I hope to start easing back into paddling on Tuesday.  My rib still hurts some, but hopefully this rest has set it on a solid course toward healing.


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A broken rib, but no broken dreams

It's been eleven days since I last posted something here.  I haven't paddled a stroke during that period.

I'm now convinced that this pain in the right half of my ribcage is in fact a fractured rib.  My buddy Rob is a chiropractor up in New York, and during a lengthy e-mail chat last week he asked me a bunch of questions and put me through a battery of tests, and that was his conclusion.

I'd always thought that to break a rib you had to be whacked across the chest with a pool cue or something like that.  But Rob said that stressful movements can sometimes cause hairline fractures.  I told him how the area had started hurting after I'd done a set of military presses, and he confirmed that that could have been the cause.

And so, just a month before I'm scheduled to be doing some intense paddling in South Africa, I'm out of the boat for what will probably be at least two weeks.  A typical rib fracture can take around a month to heal, and stressing it prolongs the healing time, so I'm giving it the rest it needs in the hope that it'll get all better and I'll still have some decent training time before I depart.

One paddler I know who recently dealt with a broken rib is none other than Greg Barton, who hurt his rib last fall a few weeks before traveling to Australia for some racing.  I don't know how he hurt it or how severe the injury was, but he wrote in a social media post that when he did get back in the boat, he was careful not to come back too fast: he'd paddle one day, then take several days off, then paddle again, then take a slightly shorter break, and so on.

So that's my plan.  I'm hoping I can do my usual loop of the harbor with Joe next Tuesday.  Then I'll wait until maybe next Saturday before I paddle again, and ease back into it like so.

For the non-paddling days I'm putting together some cross-training routines that stay away from stressing my ribcage area.  Effective kayak technique actually relies heavily on the legs, so I'm taking this opportunity to work my legs hard with some bike riding, squats, and lunges.  I'll also do some core work--primarily static drills on the stability ball.

That's how I'm dealing with this most untimely injury.  Yes, I've experienced feelings of denial ("This can't be happening!  No!  NO!!") and anguish ("Why must this happen to me now?  Why?  WHY???").  Now I've reached the acceptance stage and am doing what I can to make this work.  And I will make it work.  It's not ideal, but "it is what it is," as people like to say.  One way or another I'll be fine.


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