Monday photo feature

The Wolf River originates in northern Mississippi, flows north into Tennessee, and then flows westward across Fayette and Shelby Counties and finally meets the Mississippi River just north of downtown Memphis.

I shot this photo last week while riding my bike on the Greenline, a bike trail that runs through the heart of Memphis atop an old Louisville & Nashville Railroad bed.  The Greenline crosses the Wolf River on the east side of town near the Shelby County Penal Farm.


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Virtually racing

We lucked out with the weather for yesterday's "virtual" Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  The morning was sunny and pleasant, the humidity was down, and the wind was light, giving me hope that I could submit a decent time.  I loaded up my boat and headed down to the historic cobblestones on the Memphis riverfront.

I'd invited people to join me on social media, and I ended up having two takers, as Adam Davis and Scott Andrews arrived with their boats.  We lined up with a pair of utility poles on the cobblestones, from which we would paddle north in the harbor for 2500 meters, make a turn around a concrete structure by the old LaFarge plant, and return to where we'd started to complete the 5000-meter course.

Somebody yelled GO!, and off we went.  Adam and I were neck-and-neck out front, and I settled onto his right-side wake, where I would spend most of the first kilometer.  We moved along at around seven and a half miles per hour.

Once we'd passed beneath the Hernando DeSoto Bridge I moved into the lead and pushed the pace up to around 7.8 or 7.9.  I knew I couldn't sustain that for all of the remaining 4000 meters but I was hoping I could break contact.  By the time we reached Harbortown Marina I had a lead of three or four boatlengths.

The turnaround spot came into view: the concrete structure for loading barges next to the old LaFarge plant.  I made a beeline for it.  The Mississippi River has been dropping this week, but with a level of 22.2 feet on the Memphis gauge there was still ample room to made a high-radius turn and head back south.

As I got the boat back up to speed I hoped to maintain 7.1 or 7.2 mph the rest of the way.  I tried to relax and take the best strokes I could.  I was starting to feel taxed but felt certain I had one more good mile in me.  Once I was back south of the HDB I was hoping I could break 25 minutes.  As I passed beneath the monorail bridge I began my final charge to the finish, nudging the speed up around 8.0 mph.  I eyed my watch as the seconds ticked by, closer and closer to the 25-minute mark... and then past it.  I had to settle for a time of 25:12.

I brought my boat around to watch the other two come in.  Adam completed a respectable effort with a time of 26:28.  Scott was paddling a much slower boat but was undaunted by the challenge as he came in at 36:51.

It felt good to race again, even if it was a rinky-dink affair compared to a real OICK race.

Today I waited until the afternoon to paddle.  It was another sunny day, warmer than yesterday, but still not the blistering heat for which Memphis summers are famous.  I paddled mostly easy for 60 minutes.


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Trying to get stoked for a "virtual" race

In most respects, the Memphis area got treated gently by what was left of Tropical Storm Cristobal.  I watched the Internet radar and the heaviest rain seemed to avoid the city.  By mid-morning Tuesday the rain had moved out and we had a day of warm, muggy weather.  Then on Wednesday some cooler, drier air moved in and the rest of the week has been lovely.

I did a round of the strength routine Tuesday morning, once again without the dips.  I'm still trying to manage the achiness in my biceps/shoulder area.  After that I did a loop of the harbor with Joe.

A somewhat strong west wind blew all day Wednesday as Cristobal's southern portion moved through.  I hadn't planned to paddle on Wednesday, but by lunchtime I was thinking that maybe, just maybe, there were some viable downwind conditions on the westward-flowing section of the Mississippi River below downtown Memphis.  So around 3 o'clock I put my V10 Sport surfski on the car and drove across the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge to where there's access to the river from the Big River Trail.

I put my boat in the water beneath the Harahan Bridge and headed downstream.  As I rounded the big bend to the right I was hoping to find some good swells, but as it turned out there wasn't much more than some chop.  So there would be no sweet rides, and I spent the next hour trying to get the boat moving on small bumps and stuff like that.

I now turn my attention to the "virtual" Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  As I mentioned last week, I've laid out a 5000-meter course in the harbor:

The course starts and finishes at the magenta line in the bottom left corner, and the turnaround spot is marked in the upper right corner.

This morning I paddled in the harbor and did five 12-stroke sprints, and I also spray-painted a marker on my turnaround landmark so that anybody who wants to join me can recognize it.


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Monday photo feature

Twelve years ago I took a trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  In this photo, I strive to find my way.


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Hot weather I can live with

It's been a hot weekend in the Mid South, with Fahrenheit temperatures rising into the low 90s.  But gentle breezes have made the heat quite bearable, and it's been especially lovely on the river.  Would that all above-90-degree days in Memphis could be like this.

Adam Davis joined me yesterday, and we paddled up the Mississippi about as far as the DeWitt Spain Airport before coming back down.  Coming downriver we followed a barge rig that was producing some somewhat-surfable waves.  The waves weren't much good for long, sweet rides, but we got some worthwhile practice working them.

This morning I paddled out of the harbor and up the Mississippi about halfway up the Greenbelt Park.  Coming back downriver I did six 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals.

The remnants of Tropical Storm Cristobal should be moving up here sometime tomorrow.  Tomorrow and Tuesday are looking somewhat stormy, but the forecast is showing a string of nice days after that.


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Hard work in the boat, ailments out of it

On Tuesday morning I did a round of my new strength routine and then met Joe downtown for a loop of the harbor.

By Tuesday afternoon I was having some pretty bad pain in my right arm.  The new strength routine includes dips, and I think they aggravated the ongoing problem I've been having up in the biceps/shoulder area.  That area, along with my right wrist, has bothered me the rest of the week, continuing a now-yearlong trend of trouble.  I think it's about time to seek advice from the chiropractor I occasionally go to... I need to find out if she's even seeing anybody in her office right now.

If there's any good news, I guess it's that the affected muscles don't seem to be directly involved in paddling.  I've been able to paddle pretty comfortably through all this.

I mentioned in this week's photo feature that there's going to be a "virtual" event in place of the usual Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  People can time themselves on their own 5000-meter courses and submit their times here on the Internet.  It's strictly a "just for fun" sort of thing, it's free to enter, and anybody in the world may participate.  Registration is here.

I plan to do this "virtual" race myself sometime in the next ten days.  I hope I can get at least a couple of locals to join me so it won't be the sort of solitary time trial that's usually an exercise in pain.  I believe the best way to make it fair to participants around the globe is to do it on an out-and-back flatwater course, so I've drawn this one up in the harbor:

The course starts and finishes at the magenta line in the bottom left corner of this image.  The line is defined by a pair of utility poles on the cobblestones.  2500 meters to the north is the turnaround point, marked in the top right corner of the image above.  The actual object is a concrete tower that was used for loading barges at the old LaFarge plant.  If you want to get a better look at it, go to Google Maps and type in the coordinates 35°10'00.5"N 90°02'55.3"W.

I think overall I'm in really good shape; I've been paddling hard and enthusiastically and frequently all spring.  But I don't know if I'm in the best racing shape, with that keen edge to my speed and power.  In the last couple of weeks I've done several workouts in preparation for this "virtual" race.  I went to the river yesterday intending to do some long sprints.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, then paddled out of the harbor and up the Mississippi to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  I did my first sprint from the bridge back to the mouth of the harbor.  I didn't time myself, and it's hard to target a particular pace out in the big river's current, but I went for an intensity level comparable to a 500-meter sprint.

Back in the harbor I did sprints over three sections of the course mapped above.  The first went from the start line to the southernmost bridge; I clocked 1 minute, 43 seconds over this distance of about 370 meters (that's an average speed of 3.59 meters per second).  After paddling easy for a few minutes, I sprinted from the southernmost bridge to the middle bridge; this distance is about 450 meters, and my time was 2:02 (3.69 m/s).  I then paddled easy up to the northeast corner of Harbortown Marina (the two greenish rectangles in the photo above), and timed myself from there to the turnaround point.  That's about 770 meters, and my time was 3:43 (3.45 m/s).

The first ten minutes or so of yesterday's paddle was done in a heavy downpour.  Then the rain moved out and by the end of the hour there were patches of blue sky here and there.  The perfect weather of last weekend already feels like a distant memory, with the humidity now back to oppressive levels and the temperature pushing 90 on the Fahrenheit thermometer.

I did another round of the strength routine this morning, but skipped the dips out of concern for my ailing right arm.  I think dips are a great body-weight exercise and this feeling that I can't or shouldn't do them is frustrating.


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A new strength routine

Time to change up the strength routine again.  Here's what I'll be doing for the next several weeks:


1.  Pendulum planks (demonstrated at 3:38 of this video)

2.  Dips

3.  Ball back extension (demonstrated by Lindsey at 1:16 of this video)

4.  Wrist rollers (the old exercise where you raise a weight by rolling a dowel with your wrists)



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Monday photo feature

Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, breathes deeply after winning the 2001 edition of the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race on the Mississippi River at Memphis.  Photo by Emerson Wickwire.

The 2020 OICK race was supposed to be June 13--a week from this Saturday--but had to be called off due to Coronavirus concerns.  The organizers are offering a "virtual" event instead.  It's a "just for fun" sort of thing; one can enter for free and participate on any body of water.  Look here for more information.


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Picture-perfect weather

By Friday afternoon some truly delightful weather had settled into the Mid South: sunshine with a pleasant breeze and low humidity.  The kind of weather that prompts me to turn off the central air conditioning and open the windows at my house.  When I got to the river yesterday morning there were already folks out all over town walking, running, riding bikes, and generally enjoying the outdoors.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then paddled a steady relaxed pace out on the river.  At 27.9 feet on the Memphis gauge, the Mississippi was at a good level for watching the people in Greenbelt Park and for paddling through some wooded bottomland over on the Arkansas side.

Another perfect day was shaping up when I went down to paddle this morning.  I warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and headed up the river.  It had risen to 28.2 feet, about as high as it can get before it starts flooding the Greenbelt Park.  Once again quite a few people were in the park enjoying the gorgeous weather.

Once I reached the park I started the workout I'd planned for the day: twelve 30-second sprints at 3-minute intervals.  I did the first five sprints going upstream before heading back downriver.  Going downstream I did two more sprints, then took a break because a barge rig was coming upriver producing some nice-looking waves.  They really were about as perfect as the ones I surfed back on May 16, but they were moving a bit faster and I had trouble catching them.  Several times I surfed for 5-10 seconds right at a wave's crest before the wave passed under me.  I sprinted hard but in the end managed just one pretty good ride of maybe 20 seconds.

After all that I considered calling my workout complete, but then I thought, nah... one enjoys the fun stuff on top of, not instead of, the prescribed workout.  So I did two more of my 30-second sprints heading downriver toward the mouth of the harbor, and did the last three in the harbor.  I got back to the dock feeling good about the amount of speed I'd packed into my 80 minutes in the boat.

The extended forecast shows some Fahrenheit highs in the 90s starting around the middle of this coming week, so I'd better enjoy the rest of this lovely weather while we've got it.  Summer is just about here.


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Spring volatility

That sore forearm muscle that was bothering me last week has gotten better, and I'm pleased about that.  My right wrist continues to hurt, pretty badly at times and not so badly at other times.

I did a round of the strength routine Tuesday morning.  I was running on a tight schedule and had to knock it out quickly.  This is a big reason that I try to keep my strength routines short and simple: if it weren't short and simple then I might just skip it on a busy morning like Tuesday's.  Instead, I knew it was doable, and I got it done.

I had several errands to run around town, but I managed to make it to my usual Tuesday morning appointment with Joe.  We did a nice relaxed loop of the harbor.

The weather has been weird this week.  There have been showers scattered all over the central U.S. and they've been moving in a glacially-slow rotating pattern rather than the usual west-to-east.  Though parts of the Mid South have had some heavy rain, here in my town there was barely a drop until a shower passed through yesterday afternoon.  The temperature has been lower than last weekend but the humidity is still up, and there's that unsettled feeling in the air, as if a severe storm could appear any minute, even though none has.

It was mostly cloudy, but a lot of sun was shining through, when I paddled yesterday morning.  I was in the mood for a workout, and I did one on a 5000-meter course I've laid out in the harbor.  It's an out-and-back course that starts and finishes next to where the Memphis Queen boats are anchored.  The turnaround point is a concrete tower at the barge-loading facility by the old LaFarge plant.  I varied the pace on the first half of the course, alternating between sections at 6.5 miles per hour and sections at 7.5 miles per hour.  My overall time for this first half was 12 minutes, 56 seconds.  Coming back south I tried to maintain a steady pace of 7.1 or 7.2 mph for the whole 2500 meters, but there was just enough of a headwind blowing to make that hard to do.  I ended up clocking 13:15, meaning that my pace was just a hair over 7.0 mph.

This morning I did another round of the strength routine.


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Monday photo feature

Many kayaks and canoes head down the Mississippi River toward a finish in the harbor at downtown Memphis.  This is the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, circa 2014.


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Weekend mileage

I paddled for 90 minutes yesterday, doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor and then paddling downriver past the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge and back up the Arkansas bank.  I mostly paddled relaxed but did throw in several good surges.

This morning I paddled for 110 minutes, and enjoyed the company of Adam Davis.  We paddled down toward President's Island before coming back up the Arkansas side and looping above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  We took turns pushing the pace and I was suitably worn out by the end of it.

As usual, Adam's G.P.S. device was tracking our every move:

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The days drift by, and the ailments come and go

On Tuesday morning I did a round of the strength routine and then joined Joe for a loop of the harbor.  The weather was mostly cloudy but the air was pleasantly cool after a few muggy days.

Yesterday I did a 60-minute paddle in the harbor and on the river, warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints and then paddling relaxed with a couple of surges.

My right wrist has continued to hurt this week.  And since yesterday my right forearm has been sore. I don't know if I did something during yesterday's paddle to irritate it, or if maybe it happened while I was swinging a machete around Wednesday afternoon, trimming some brush behind my building.  Whatever the case, I hope it's a temporary soreness rather than a real injury.  I looked at some anatomy diagrams on Wikipedia in an attempt to identify the muscle, but they weren't clear enough to be helpful.  I think it might be part of the extensor group.

I'd feared the sore muscle would be a major impediment to doing another round of the strength routine this morning, but it turned out not to be so bad.  I felt it the most during the front and lat raises.


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Monday photo feature

One thing I've been trying to do during this pandemic is take some walks and get to know my part of town a little better.  Several days ago I took my camera with me and shot a few photos, including the one above.

One thing every landscape has is some creeks to drain water.  In some places they're impossible not to notice; mountainous areas that have a lot of precipitation are a good example.  But in other places, including the heart of cities like mine, they're easy to overlook.  More often than not they've been channelized and lined with concrete, or even buried underground.  Street gutters and stormwater tunnels are simply substitutes for the creeks that drained the countryside before the city was built.

Pictured above is Cypress Creek, a tributary of the Wolf River.  Cypress Creek originates south of a neighborhood known as Chickasaw Gardens, flows in a northwesterly direction, and enters the Wolf in North Memphis not far from the old Firestone plant.  It drains a pretty good swath of the northern half of Memphis, including my neighborhood.


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Some unexpected sweetness

I might as well retire from paddling right now.

I kid, of course.  But I very well may never again have as good a session of surfing on towboat wakes as I had yesterday.  And if I do, it might not happen when I have my Go Pro camera with me.  Here's the video of what happened yesterday:



Trying to surf towboat wakes is usually an exercise in frustration.  Typically, the waves are moving a little too fast, or their amplitude is not quite right, or they're wandering right and left all over the place rather than moving in an organized train.  And then, of course, there's the fact that I'm not the most gifted athlete in the world.  Over the years it's been rare for me to get anything more than a couple of ten-second rides on towboat wakes.

Yesterday, as I was paddling out of the harbor, there was a barge rig moving upriver just above the Harahan Bridge, and as usual I was inclined to go check it out.  What I found was the most perfect set of surfing waves I've ever seen produced by one of those big commercial vessels.  From 0:17 until 7:47 in the video above, it's uncut raw footage.  My first ride starts at 0:23, and I keep it going until 5:05; I then quickly get established on the next wave back and have another good long ride.  I was actually starting to feel sort of lazy just sitting there on the wave... I think I burn more calories sitting on my sofa.

I felt like I was flying as I surfed along.  But the speed on my G.P.S. device rarely exceeded 4.5 miles per hour or so.  That's because I was moving up the Mississippi River, whose current flows around 4 mph.

Eventually the towboat put more distance on me, the waves began to diminish, and the rides got shorter and shorter.  So in the later stages of the video there's more splicing to cut out the non-surfing footage.  And, just to be honest... this video is probably a bit boring unless you're an absolute nerd for this kind of stuff.  I even say that out loud at 16:35.  I do make a few other remarks that contain all the wisdom and wit you've come to expect from My Training Blog by Elmore.  I also throw in a few of those obligatory "woo-hoos," and even cough up a catcall at 2:00.  That's some real effort for a not-very-emotive person such as I.

Anyway, I had myself some big fun yesterday and I spent the rest of the day with a little smile on my face.  For all the misery inflicted upon humanity by this pandemic, I'm having some moments I can look back on fondly later, and I'm grateful for that.

This morning I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then paddled back out on the river.  There was no barge traffic in sight, but a pretty stiff south wind was blowing and creating an "infant" stage of downwind conditions.  I worked on getting my boat moving on the little bumps for a while before taking it back in to the dock.


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The present and the future

The same weather pattern that delivered a late snowstorm to the northeastern U.S. brought some cool temperatures to my part of the country.  For a few days the Fahrenheit temperature didn't rise above the low 60s, and when Joe and I paddled on Tuesday we did so in a steady rain and a temperature in the low 50s.

Now, I'm thinking such wet chilly days must surely be behind us now.   On Wednesday the temperature reached the high 70s, and when I paddled yesterday morning it was mostly sunny and warming up toward a high in the mid 80s.  I did a tidy 60 minutes with three 8-stroke sprints and a few relaxed surges.  The highlight might have occurred just as I was leaving the harbor and ferrying across the Mississippi: there was a skinny bright-green thing drifting downriver that at first I thought was a piece of gift-wrap ribbon, but turned out to be a little snake.  It was probably some variety of garter snake.  It's memorable because I almost never see snakes of any kind out in the main flow of the Mississippi.

This week I did rounds of the strength routine Tuesday and today.  For some reason I've been feeling weak in my arms lately... I'm not sure if it's my imagination or a real thing.  I'm definitely getting sore in my arms doing things that used not to bother me.  That biceps soreness I mentioned several weeks ago is better, but not entirely gone.  Like that wrist pain I've been having, this biceps pain seems to have taken up long-term residence.

In other news, the outlook has become somewhat clearer for my one race that hasn't been canceled yet, the Gorge Downwind Championships scheduled for July out in the Columbia River Gorge.  The state of Oregon has nullified all permits for such events through September, meaning that for the race to go forward it must be based entirely on the Washington side of the river.  The organizers sent out an e-mail this week stating that the event, should it happen, will most likely feature a much smaller field of mostly-local participants.  In the message they add, "If you are planning travel, are international, have complex arrangements, or have rented skis, it may be in your interest to pull the plug."

A more definitive decision about whether the race will occur at all is supposed to come on June 1.  But regardless of that decision, it's looking less likely than ever that I'll be out in the Columbia Gorge to race this July.  I haven't completely ruled out the option of driving out there with my own boat, but I doubt that will be a realistic thing to do, considering that the industry I would count on for food and lodging will not be functioning at full strength.

Certainly, I'm disappointed.  My trips out there the last two summers have been immensely enjoyable.  But at the same time it's nice not to have to go about my paddling routine without knowing for sure whether I'm supposed to be training for an event like that.  I plan to continue paddling about four times a week, working on skills and, most importantly, having fun with it.  I have a couple of ideas for a trip I could take in lieu of going to the Columbia Gorge, but again, I'll have to see what the conditions are for interstate travel a couple of months from now.


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Monday photo feature

It's around this time each year that my mother and my sister's family and I get together for a little beach vacation at Dauphin Island on the Alabama Gulf Coast.  That event, like almost all others, has been scuttled by the Coronavirus pandemic this year.

This photo is from two years ago.  That's my nephew Ben off to the left.  We're paddling in Mississippi Sound as some rain begins to fall.


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A decent training weekend

Yesterday morning I did a round of the strength routine and then went down to the river.  I paddled for 70 minutes in the harbor, doing a set of three 8-stroke sprints and then paddling at varying intensities the rest of the time.  The weather was nice and sunny, albeit cool.

Adam Davis met me this morning and we paddled up the Mississippi for four miles before coming back down.  We pushed the pace for quite a bit of the time; coming back downriver felt a bit like a race.  Adam has improved a lot the last couple of years and he's been pushing me during our paddles together this spring.  I'm curious to see how he does whenever we finally have some races to do again.  Today is another nice sunny day, and warmer.  There was a southwest wind blowing on the river.


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Pain and ennui

I hurt my right wrist on Monday.  Or, rather, I aggravated an injury that's been nagging at me for the last year or so.  Mondays are when I've been doing that fence-rebuilding project over at my rental property, and during this week's work session I managed to wrench my wrist some wrong way while pulling nails out of the old fence.

The bum wrist has never really affected my paddling, and when I met Joe for a loop of the harbor Tuesday morning, it held up just fine.  But for a good 36 hours or so it hurt pretty bad anytime I was just sitting around and was unpleasant to live with.  By now the pain has ebbed back to the vague level it's been at for most of the last year.

The pain killed my motivation to start up my new strength routine Tuesday.  Instead, I waited and did it Wednesday.

This latest motivational challenge highlights the holding pattern we racers are all in these days.  With all races canceled at least through June, serious training doesn't seem like a pressing matter.  I'm still waiting to hear whether the Gorge Downwind race will go ahead in July; some announcement about that is supposed to come at the first of next month.  In the meantime, I'm trying to stay in some baseline-level of shape so I can ramp the training up if in fact I will be racing on the Columbia River in July.

At the same time, all this uncertainty is a reminder of how important it is to enjoy every time out paddling for its own sake.  Every session doesn't have to be an obligation to cross off the to-do list.  Indeed, I'm fortunate to be paddling at all these days.  I think there are parts of the world where even that is forbidden right now.

That's what I was telling myself as I went down to the river this morning.  Earlier in the week the wind forecast looked promising for some downwind action, but by last night the outlook had been revised to almost nothing.  A period of heavy rain had just concluded and conditions were as calm as could be as I walked down to the dock.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and paddled out onto a river that was quite placid save for some chop left over from a couple of barge rigs that had passed through.  I worked for a while on keeping the boat gliding in those conditions, and then back in the harbor I threw in a long surge back to the dock.


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A new strength routine

It's time for something new in the strengthening-activities department.  Here's what I plan to do for the next little while.

1.  Front and lat raises

2.  Hindu Squats (demonstrated in this video)

3.  Torso twists with medicine ball (demonstrated in this video)

4.  Pushups

5.  Stability ball exercise demonstrated at 2:55 of this video



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