Summer continues its ups and downs

This week we've had some lower temperatures, but not lower humidity.  Between Wednesday and yesterday several inches of rain fell here.  I mentioned two Sundays ago that the Mississippi was about to start dropping fast, and it has done just that: when I paddled this morning, the Memphis gauge reading was a hair under 15 feet.

On Thursday I paddled for 50 minutes, doing several of my backpaddling-then-forward-paddling power drills followed by steady paddling with a couple of long surges. Yesterday I continued to get my body used to the August strength routine.

This weekend we're heading back to some high heat indices, but it wasn't bad at all when I paddled this morning.  A mild north breeze kept things bearable.  I started off my 60-minute session with a warmup and three 8-stroke sprints, and then did eight 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals.  Actually, I took a break after the sixth sprint because a down-bound barge rig was putting out some good waves and I had to surf.  I got several brief rides and then one totally sweet ride before my waves began to mix with the wake of an up-bound rig and the water became too confused for surfing.  Once my frivolity had run its course, I got back down to business and did my last two 30-second sprints.

A new strength routine; races coming soon

I'm easing into a new strength routine for the month of August.  With races coming up later in the month, I'm keeping this one pretty simple and focused on "pre-hab" exercises:

1.  Stability ball drill shown at 1:35 of the Jing Jing Li video
2.  Flies with the rubber bands
3.  Stability ball drill shown at 1:53 of the Jing Jing Li video
4.  A compound exercise with the rubber bands that includes squats and overhead curls

Yesterday I did a "pyramid" workout in the boat: pieces of 1', 2', 3', 4', 3', 2', 1' with two minutes recovery in between.  My objective was to paddle at the maximum pace I'm likely to reach during the two-hour race I have coming up on the 22nd of this month.  I usually top out with a 5-minute piece in this workout, but scaled it back a bit yesterday because of the heat.  Another heat-dodging move was to do most of the workout in the shadow of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.  Even with those precautions, the workout took a lot out of me and I felt worn out the rest of the day.

Monday photo feature

Having just survived the maelstrom that is El Horrendo, I turn my attention downriver during a 1997 trip to the Russell Fork of the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River near Elkhorn City, Kentucky.  Photo by Ward Graham.

Another week, another recap

For about the last six weeks I'd been doing the June-July strength routine on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays, but last Monday I gave myself the day off.  It was the first day in a while that I hadn't either paddled or done strength work.  I've had a lot going on in my non-athletic life lately, and it was nice to have a day to focus on other stuff.  I did do the strength routine on Wednesday and Friday, and now with a new month underway I'll be drawing up a new routine shortly.

Tuesday was a speed day in the boat.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did six sprints of approximately 30 seconds on fixed courses in the harbor.  I sprinted from one set of pilings to the other beneath the Auction Avenue (A.W. Willis) bridge (best time was about 30 seconds), from one set of pilings to the other beneath the Hernando DeSoto Bridge (about 32 seconds), from one piling to the other beneath the Mud Island Monorail bridge (about 28 seconds), and the entire length of the Beale Street Landing floating dock (about 38 seconds).

On Friday and today I did 60-minute sessions in which I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then paddled steady with a couple of strong surges of three minutes or so.

And yesterday I taught my last "Intro to Kayaking" class of the summer.  It was a pleasure meeting and working with the couple dozen or so students who signed up this year.

We finally got a break from the stifling heat in the second half of the week.  The high temperatures were still quite warm--low to mid 90s Fahrenheit--but a mass of drier air moved in from up north, keeping the heat index at a much more bearable level.  I expect we'll be back to sweltering discomfort soon, but at least with July over it feels like we're on the downhill side of summer.

Monday photo feature

Nick Kinderman, a long-time friend of My Training Blog by Elmore, paddles to a second-place finish in the Pink Paddle on the Mississippi Gulf Coast this past weekend.  Photo by Jennie Wetmore.

Summer (cont'd)

It's been another week about which I can't muster a whole lot to say.  I'm getting in all my paddling and other training activities, but it has sort of a going-through-the-motions feel.  There's almost another month before I'll have any races to do, and in the meantime the heat and humidity have been soul-crushing.

The Mississippi River has been sitting above 31 feet on the Memphis gauge for several weeks now, but the forecast on the NOAA website indicates it's about to start dropping fast.  Today I paddled up onto Dacus Lake one last time before the water will be too low to do so.  It was actually my best of these Sunday "long" paddles as far as dealing with the oppressive weather: I paced myself a bit better and also took full advantage of what little shade exists out there, and I think that was surprisingly effective in helping me conserve energy.  I even did the ferry across the river in the shadow of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.

Monday photo feature

Sometimes unfortunate things happen to one's paddling equipment.  A Rocky Mountain river landed a direct hit on this paddle back in the summer of 1997.

Dog days

It's been hard finding much inspiration to write here this past week.  Blame it on the withering heat of the last ten days or so.

But it was in fact a fairly standard week of training.  In the boat I worked on technique like I always do, and I did several rounds of the June-July strength routine as well.

On Wednesday I managed to throw my back out while doing some work on the deck at the rear of my building.  I was up on a ladder using my cordless drill, which is a rather heavy tool--I think it's four or five pounds, and that's a lot when I'm reaching up and out and boring a hole in either a leftward or a rightward direction, as I was doing Wednesday.  The next thing I knew, I was feeling some acute discomfort in my right hip, as though it had come out of joint a bit.  The condition gradually eased over the next couple of days.  I also felt some soreness in the shoulder that had been injured a couple of months earlier.  It has not bothered me while paddling, and that supports my belief that I'm a lot more likely to get injured doing some mundane task on dry land than I am while paddling my boat.

Yesterday I taught my next-to-last class of the summer on Pine Lake out at Shelby Farms.  The final class will be on August 1, so go here if you or somebody you love wants a bit of instruction from yours truly.

Today I paddled for 100 minutes, a slightly shorter session than I did the last two Sundays but still a long time to be out in this heat.  It wore me out thoroughly, but I managed to enjoy it.  The river is still quite high--31.8 feet on the Memphis gauge, just three tenths of a foot lower than last Sunday--and I took the opportunity to paddle over onto Dacus Lake again.  The water was beautiful, especially in the narrow channel that connects Dacus Lake with the main river.  The channel runs through a piece of densely forested bottomland, and I enjoyed this rare moment of shade.  I'm sure there were plenty of snakes about, though I didn't see any.  By the time I was paddling back across the river toward the mouth of the harbor the heat was taking its toll on me.  I drank from my camel back frequently and tried to keep my form together.  Back at the dock I enjoyed some cold water from an insulated bottle I had left there, and took a little bath with the hose.

There's not much relief from this oppressive summer heat in sight.  Right now it appears we might get a brief break on Tuesday, when some thunderstorms are expected to keep the high temperature down at 90 degrees Fahrenheit, but the rest of the ten-day forecast calls for highs of 97 or higher.  Oh well... I've survived my share of Memphis summers, and I reckon I'll make it through one more.

Monday photo feature

One of my favorite sets of photos from the Mississippi River is one from a high-water period in April of 2008, when I paddled down around the old bridges that span the river just below downtown Memphis.  In the foreground here, we see the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge that carries Interstate 55 over the river.  The next bridge back is the oldest span, the Frisco Bridge; and beyond it is the Harahan Bridge.

The river is quite high right now, with a Memphis gauge reading this morning of 32.1 feet.  The water in this photo is at least several feet higher than that: I paddled down by the old bridges yesterday, and the landscape pictured here was still dry.

A weekend at the height of summer

This morning I paddled for 110 minutes, going down to the Frisco and Harahan and Memphis-Arkansas bridges, then back upriver above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, up onto Dacus Lake, and then back into the harbor and to the dock.

Dacus Lake is an oxbow lake, which is to say that it occupies an old meander that has been abandoned by the Mississippi River.  When the water is high like it is right now (32 feet on the Memphis gauge this morning), Dacus Lake and the Mississippi become united once more, and the intrepid guy or girl can paddle his or her boat freely from one to the other and back again.  I didn't stay on Dacus Lake for long today, but it was nice to have that little change in scenery from what I have most of the year.

Before exiting the harbor I did several backstrokes-then-forward-strokes power-building drills.  After paddling down to the old bridges, I did eight 30-second sprints, starting at three-minute intervals, as I paddled up the Arkansas bank.

It was very hot here today.  I don't normally carry water in the boat with me during training sessions, choosing instead to hydrate thoroughly beforehand and have water waiting on the dock when I finish, but on these days of triple-digit heat indices I break out the camel back.  Even though I had loaded it up with ice before leaving the house, the water was getting warm before I had been paddling for an hour.

On the last leg of today's paddle, in the harbor heading back to the dock, I practiced flipping and remounting my surf ski.  It's a good idea to practice this self-rescue skill from time to time, and a broiling hot day like today feels like the perfect time to do it.

Yesterday I taught another class out at Shelby Farms.  Only two such classes remain this summer--one next Saturday and one on August 1.  Go here for more information if you or somebody you know would like to sign up.

Be sure to recover

Hard workouts are not what get your body in shape.  It's the recovery from these workouts that brings improvement.

I know I've pointed this out in the past, and the idea is simple enough.  But I competed in sports like running and canoe and kayak racing for quite a few years before I really had a good understanding of it.  So I bring it up again--to remind myself, if nothing else.

Several factors contribute to a good recovery.  Good nutrition is one; a regular good night's sleep is another.  And, of course, resting your muscles is another, but this means more than just lying around.  Easy movement of the muscles gets blood flowing and facilitates recovery.  For a canoe/kayak racer, easy paddling will accomplish this, but there are also things you can do out of the boat, such as stretching and simple movement exercises.  One of the positive results of the shoulder ailment I had for a couple of months is that it renewed my commitment to thorough stretching and warmup exercises, even on days when I don't paddle.

Ron Lugbill, in this post on his blog, discusses the use of "active" rest to help the muscles recover and come back stronger.

Yesterday I paddled with Joe for 80 minutes in the harbor.  Some hot weather is beginning to move back in here, but we had a delightful breeze yesterday that made our session not just bearable, but delightful.

I'll be paddling with Joe again tomorrow morning.  Monday and today I did two sets of the June-July strength routine.

Monday photo feature

For years now, the North Fork Canoe Race and Show-Me State Championships has taken place each Fourth of July weekend on the North Fork of the White River at Tecumseh, Missouri.  Paddlers race their USCA-spec craft on an out-and-back course on Norfork Reservoir, and their aluminum canoes on a Class II+ section of the North Fork from Sunburst Ranch to Dawt Mill.  Here, Mike Herbert and his daughter Savanna claim the mixed tandem title in that latter event.  Photo by Christel Herbert.

The week that was

With my next race a while off now, I'm trying to settle back into a good-quality routine.

On Thursday I paddled for 60 minutes in very windy conditions on the Memphis riverfront.  I did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then spent some time trying to surf some medium-sized waves out on the river near the southern tip of Mud Island.  I wasn't achieving much sweetness in the surfing department, so when I got tired of trying I returned to the harbor and did some balance drills in the beam waves.  All told, I got a pretty good practice session in, and because I was having fun with it I didn't feel like I was working that hard.

On Saturday I paddled for another 60 minutes, and this time the conditions were mostly calm, but quite wet.  We had just had an enormous amount of rain on Friday--3.41 inches between 6 PM Thursday and 6 PM Friday--and there were a few remnants of that system lurking around the river Saturday morning.  As I paddled from the mouth of the harbor up toward the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, I could see heavy rain falling on the Loosahatchie Bar, less than a mile away.  About ten minutes later that rain was drenching me.  But I forged ahead, having learned at camp years ago that "skin is waterproof."

My plan is to do a longer paddle on Sunday for the next several weeks.  Today I paddled for 120 minutes, going up to the mouth of the Wolf River and then a couple of miles up the Wolf.  The Mississippi, at a pretty high level of 30.1 feet on the Memphis gauge this morning, was backed up the Wolf for quite a few miles, so the couple of miles I paddled between the mouth of the Wolf and the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge consisted basically of flatwater.  On this section of the morning's route I pushed the tempo for three minutes out of every ten minutes.  I was getting very tired by the time I was heading back down the Mississippi, and I tried to paddle with good form even though the intensity was dropping.

Meanwhile, I'm still doing the June-July strength routine on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Monday photo feature

The oldest whitewater canoe and kayak race in the U.S. is the FIBArk Downriver Race, a 25.7-mile race down the Arkansas River from Salida, Colorado, to Cotopaxi, Colorado.  It started in 1949; in this photo, I am participating in the 2005 edition.  "FIBArk" stands for "First In Boating on the Arkansas."

The 2015 FIBArk Downriver Race took place yesterday on very high water that almost produced a course record.  You can read the account of it in The Mountain Mail here.

Circumnavigation! Circumspection!

A front came through the Mid South overnight Friday night and Saturday morning, and we've enjoyed a weekend of lower temperatures and lower humidity.  The Fahrenheit highs have been in the mid 80s under partly cloudy skies.

Yesterday I taught another good introductory kayaking class out at Shelby Farms.  There are three more such classes scheduled for this summer; go here for more information if you'd like to give this paddling thing a try.

This morning I paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar.  Starting and finishing at Harbortown Marina, I made the trip in about two hours, four minutes.  I've done this circumnavigation quite a few times over the years, and every time it has exhausted me thoroughly.  There's a long upriver leg from the mouth of Wolf River Harbor up to the sand-and-gravel operation next to DeWitt Spain Airport, and then there's a long ferry across the river at a spot where it is quite wide.  By the time I'm finally paddling down the chute over on the west side of the Loosahatchie Bar, fatigue is really setting in.  I've spent the rest of today just lounging around the house feeling thoroughly spent.  Hopefully a good night's sleep will have me feeling good as new tomorrow morning.

The Mississippi was at 28.1 feet on the Memphis gauge, and this high level made the trip a little bit quicker: there were bigger eddies along the Tennessee side for the trip upriver, and as I rounded the north end of the Bar I was able to paddle over some sandbars that are exposed at lower water.

Moving into the next phase

Teresa Faulk took this photo as racers charged out of the Wolf River and onto the mighty Mississippi last Saturday.  That's Mike Herbert in the lead, followed by Waylon Willis in the orange shirt.  I'm in third place, over to Willis's right, with Kata Dismukes in between us in fourth.  Rick Carter holds fifth place on Willis's stern wake.

The day after race there was a boat demo event out at Shelby Farms, and I used that for some recovery paddling while trying out several different boat designs.

This week has seen some oppressive summer weather move into the Mid South.  On Tuesday and today I did some easy paddling in the harbor with Joe, and I've been pondering my goals for the next few months.  There are several races I'm considering, the soonest being on the Fourth of July up at Alton, Illinois.  Rumor has it this race will be in the afternoon, and if the forecast calls for the sort of hot weather we've had here this week, I may pass.

Right now my arms and abdominal muscles are sore from starting up a new strength routine.  For a couple of exercises, I've turned once again to this video featuring Chinese slalom Olympian Jing Jing Li.  The other exercises are classics that need no introduction:

1.  Pushups (variety of styles)
2.  Stability ball drill shown at 2:56 of the Jing Jing Li video
3.  Pullups
4.  Lunges while holding a pair of dumbbells down at my sides
5.  Stability ball drill shown at 3:10 of the Jing Jing Li video

Monday photo feature

It's time for a change of pace from all the newspaper clippings and all the race talk and so on.  With hot, steamy weather moving into the Mid South this week, I think I'll share this photo from a chilly early-spring day on the Hailstone River in the high Ozark Mountains of Arkansas.  I'm not sure of the year, but I believe it was early in the last decade.  Photo by Sonny Salomon.

The race is in the books

Race Day arrived yesterday, and the storms had indeed moved out.  Racers went down to the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi Rivers to find a warm sunny day with a pleasant southwest breeze.  The one annoyance left in the storm’s wake was a lot of floating logs and woody debris out in the main channel.

The gun went off, and I executed a good start, though maybe not a great one.  Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, rocketed into the lead, to no one’s surprise; I found myself alongside fellow Memphian Kata Dismukes in pursuit of South Carolinians Waylon Willis and Eric Mims.  Mims would normally be a factor in the fight for medals here, but this time he was “taking one for the team” as a rep for Epic Kayaks, paddling the company’s new V7 surf ski, a short, wide, polyethylene plastic model intended for novice ski enthusiasts.  He fell off the pace not long after we had entered the big river from the mouth of the Wolf.

After a few hundred meters I overtook Willis as well, and the competition began to take shape as I found Tony Short of Traverse City, Michigan, on my stern wake.  Over to our left Rick Carter of Eutawville, South Carolina, was opening a gap on Kata Dismukes, and knowing that he would be one of my main adversaries, I sidled over to get on his stern wake.

Rick and I and Tony paddled in single file, in that order, for the rest of the river leg, dodging plenty of flotsam along the way.  As we rounded the southern tip of Mud Island to enter the harbor, Rick took a tight line—too tight, I thought.  I tried to give the point a wider berth, but doing so required me to go around a floating log; Tony followed my lead.  Rick’s gamble paid off, and just like that he had a couple of boat lengths on us.  I had a feeling Rick had me beat: the only way I was going to overtake him was if he faded badly, and in my experience racing with him, he’s always been too strong to do that.  I put the hammer down anyway.  Tony was an unknown quantity to me, but I had to assume that he would have a fast finishing surge up his sleeve.  As it turned out, Rick and I and Tony would get a bit more strung out but otherwise finish in the same order we’d been in all along.

Mike Herbert finished first in 16 minutes, 58 seconds.  Recovering from a bout of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Mike was not at his best; but he didn’t need his best effort to win this one.  Kata Dismukes finished nine seconds behind Tony Short for fifth place overall and first place among the women.

My time was 18:32.  That’s quite a bit slower than I was last year and the year before, but I think it’s kind of a fool’s game to try to compare one year’s race with another.  Even though the river was slightly higher this year than last—18.8 feet on the Memphis gauge, compared with 18.5 feet last year—the debris in the river was a hindrance, and it seemed as though the times were a bit slower across the board.  The exception was Kata, who bettered last year’s time by six seconds.  I consider that a testament to the training she’s done this season.

As for Rick Carter, he’s now beaten me in two of our three meetings so far this year, and there’s no question the man is an improved racer.  Fellow South Carolinian Eric Mims told me he’s been working very hard on his stroke mechanics, and I think we’re seeing the results of that.  It sounds as though Rick is doing a lot of the things I try to advocate here in this blog.

Nearly two hundred boats participated in the race.  People in racing kayaks took the first nine places; the first non-race-boat finisher was Phil Capel of Sherwood, Arkansas, who paddled his “fast touring boat” to a time of 19:32.  Dale Burris and Don Walls, residents of the Lake Dardanelle area in Arkansas, added to their long list of tandem canoe titles in this race with a time of 19:58.

The results of the 34th Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race are posted here.  The second-place finisher, a Mr. "Spartacus Rabinowitz," is in fact Rick Carter.  Sometimes he likes to register under a fake name.  Be sure to note his "club name" over on the right.  He's an odd one, that Rick...

Looks like the weather may work out about right

This morning I paddled for 40 minutes, doing four 12-stroke sprints.  I paddled through several brief but heavy showers, and it was quite windy: according to the weather reports, it was blowing from the south at 15 to 20 miles per hour, with gusts up to 30 mph.

The good news is that it's looking more and more likely that the worst weather will be long gone by race time tomorrow morning.  The current forecast calls for partly cloudy skies with a 10% chance of precipitation and a southwest wind at 7 mph. Wind would probably be our main concern--there has been virtually no lightning even during the most severe moments of today's storms--but 7 mph from the southwest is just enough to cool us off.  Until we make the turn up into the harbor, that is; then, the wind will be at our backs and we'll be withering in 90-degree-Fahrenheit heat.  Oh well, I've survived that before, and I reckon I'll survive it one more time.

One more from the Memphis media juggernaut

Our weekly newspaper, The Memphis Flyer, has a cover story this week on the Mississippi River in general and the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race in particular.  Read it here.