Monday photo feature

One of my very first slalom races was one of the old "Citizen Race" events they used to have on the Nantahala River in western North Carolina.  I think this photo is from 1992, at which time I was in my mid-20s, a very advanced age to be entering such a sport.  But every time I look at this photo I see myself as a little kid.  Photo by Michael Stout.

Sometimes, winter is not as bad as you think

Before yesterday we'd had a decent run of mild weather, with Fahrenheit temperatures rising into the 50s and even the 60s.  I'd gone several weeks without wearing pogies.  But yesterday morning the pogies were back on.  When I got down to the river the mercury was straining to touch 40 degrees and there was a bitter north breeze blowing.  It felt more like winter again.  But there was a literal "bright" side: the sky was mostly sunny.  Once I was in the boat paddling I got comfortable, and it turned out to be not a bad day to paddle at all.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor; I think the sprints felt a little bit more fluid than they had been.  Then I paddled out onto the Mississippi and spent the rest of the 60 minutes focusing on involving my legs and feet in each stroke.

This morning it was overcast and things seemed sort of a gloomy as I headed downtown to paddle.  Then again, it was a few degrees warmer than yesterday, and there was practically no wind.  The harbor was as smooth as glass.  I warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and again the sprints felt not great but not terrible either.  I paddled out onto the Mississippi, which was also mostly smooth with a minimal amount of motorized traffic.  Conditions were really pretty ideal.  I paddled a good strong pace up and down the river before returning to the harbor and the dock to complete an 80-minute session.

"Neither rain nor sleet nor snow..."

I spent Wednesday driving home and was in the mood to paddle Thursday morning even though there was a bit of inclement weather about.  A check of the Internet radar showed a big mass of rain closing in on the city of Memphis, and with a couple of errands to run on my way downtown, I knew it would be falling on me by the time I was in the boat.  Fortunately the temperature was mild--around 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

I paddled for 60 minutes in a hard drizzle.  A stiff south wind drove the raindrops right into my face as I paddled from the marina to the mouth of the harbor.  But I didn't let it bother me.  When I was a kid at summer camp, anytime a camper complained about having to do something in the rain, the standard glib reply was "Skin is waterproof."

I paddled a brisk pace until the last ten minutes or so, when I eased up and coasted back to the dock.  The rainfall got quite a bit heavier as I was driving home, so at least in that respect my timing was good.

I followed through on the plan I mentioned in my last post, and did the strength routine while visiting family on Monday and Wednesday.  I did it again back here at home today.

Seizing the mild-weather paddling opportunities

This week we had two lovely warmish sunny days, and I paddled on both of them.  On Tuesday Joe and I did a loop of the harbor, and today I paddled for 80 minutes out on the Mississippi.  In between those two days the weather was wet and/or cold and blustery.

I started today's paddle by warming up and doing another rusty-feeling set of three 8-stroke sprints.  Then I paddled out onto the Mississippi, where an upstream-bound barge rig was creating some good-sized swells.  I went out and tried to surf without much success.  Part of the reason is that I tend to be conservative with such activities in the wintertime, but even if my attitude had been a hundred percent "Sydney or the Bush," I still might not have gotten any decent rides because the waves' troughs were a little too broad.  But at least I got in a few decent sprints.  Soon the waves started petering out, so my bit of surf practice didn't last more than maybe five minutes.  We take what we can get here in the Mid South.

I ferried over to the Arkansas side and paddled upriver toward the Loosahatchie Chute before coming back down and returning to the harbor.  During this period the "thing" I decided to work on was pulling hard through each stroke while keeping the stroke rate pretty low.  It was almost like a "hesitation" drill as I had to make myself go slow during each recovery between strokes.  It made for some good balance practice out on the river.

I'll be out of the boat for most of next week due to holiday travel.  I did the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week, and since my Smart Bell is nice and portable I'll be sticking to that aspect of training next week.

Monday photo feature

We've all seen those heartbreaking photos of birds, turtles, and other critters caught up in plastic six-pack rings that have found their way into our world's waterways.  Yesterday while paddling out on the Mississippi I saw this one in a stand of willows over near the Arkansas side.  So I paddled into the willows and grabbed it.  I took it home, used a pair of scissors to cut apart all the rings, and put it in the trash where it belongs.  Goodie goodie for me!!!!

Muscle memory

This morning was reasonably nice by wintertime standards.  The sky was partly sunny, and with the gentlest of breezes blowing from the south, the water in the harbor was dead calm.  At 50 degrees Fahrenheit it was right on the cusp of being cold enough for pogies, and I opted to go without.  Pogies are a wonderful invention (thanks to whitewater racing pioneers Bill Nutt and Bonnie Losick for the roles they played in their conception and development), but any day I don't have to wear them is a good day in my book.

I started by warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor.  The sprints are still feeling rusty, as my body just doesn't seem to have much turnover right now.  Then I paddled out onto the Mississippi, ferried over to the Arkansas side, and paddled up above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge before coming back downriver and returning to the harbor.

The thing I decided to focus on today was getting my blades fully immersed at the beginning of each stroke.  For some reason I've long had a tendency not to get my right blade all the way in the water; you can see me doing that at times in this video, most of whose footage was shot around 2011-12.  I think I've done a better job of it in more recent years, but I probably ought to charge up the Go Pro camera and shoot some new footage soon so I can see how I'm doing.

Of course, stroke mechanics is something I'm always working on, to one degree or another, every time I paddle.  But today was one of those days when I moved one particular component onto the front burner in my mind, if that makes any sense.  And so I paddled along and tried to plant the blade with precision each time--"speared the fish," as it were--without thrusting my body forward and causing the boat to bob.

I got back to the dock 70 minutes after I'd started.  I can check off another day of practice as a new season looms off in the future.

Milder weather and a variety of activity

The miserable weekend weather finally began to give way to some sunshine Monday, and Tuesday was a gorgeous day with clear skies and an afternoon high around 52 degrees Fahrenheit.  It was a brisk 41 degrees when I arrived at the river to paddle Tuesday morning but it had warmed up to a comfortable 48 degrees by the time I was finished.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor.  It was the first time I had sprinted in any way in a couple of months, and while the energy was there, the form was rusty.  I paddled up the Mississippi to the south end of the Greenbelt Park and then returned to the harbor, where I spent the last 25 minutes of my one-hour session doing a bunch of stroke drills: hesitation drills, one-sided drills, and the "one-two-three-four-FIVE!!!!" drill that Morgan House showed me when I took his clinic last year.  It had been a long time since I'd isolated the various components of my stroke for study, and I'm always struck by how tiring it is to focus that hard on something while I'm paddling.

I'd done a round of my new strength routine on Monday, and I did another round on Wednesday.  I woke up yesterday feeling stiff and sore in my arms and shoulders.  I don't know what might have caused it other than the strength work, but I thought it was odd that the soreness took that long to appear.  Usually it starts up within a day of my doing something new.

Joe hadn't been available for our usual Tuesday paddle, so he joined me yesterday for a loop of the harbor.  The relaxed, "conversational" pace we paddled was helpful as my body worked out the soreness.

I did another round of the strength routine today to close out a decent "business" week here in the early offseason.

Monday photo feature

I'm at a loss for words just after finishing a race on the Pascagoula River on the Mississippi Gulf Coast last year.

A new strength routine

Now that I'm finally feeling better it's time to start thinking about some offseason conditioning again.

I've been doing a "Smart Bell" workout for some 20 years now.  I learned it from a friend named Emerson Wickwire who coached wrestling at the school where I taught back in the late 1990s.  A friend of his, a really good wrestler named Paul Widerman, invented the Smart Bell so he could do a whole variety of dynamic strength exercises.

At long last, I've made a video of the routine I do with the Smart Bell.  I'll be the first to admit it's not the best quality production--I made it all by myself with a camera on a tripod in my house--but hopefully everybody can see what's going on.




(Just in case anybody's curious: I had the radio on while I was making this.  What you're hearing is the "Down In The Alley" program, hosted by Eddie Hankins each Friday morning on WEVL FM 89.9.  It makes about as good a soundtrack as anything I could have come up with.)

Where does one get a Smart Bell these days?  I'm not sure.  They're listed on this Amazon page as "currently unavailable."  As you can see there, their look has changed from the first-generation Smart Bell I'm using in the video.  If you want one then I encourage you to poke around the Internet and see what you can find.  There might be some on Ebay.

Improved health and unimproved weather

Well, I had my CT scan Thursday, and the little bit of information I've been able to extract from my doctor's office indicates it wasn't entirely conclusive.  I have an appointment there next Tuesday, so I should know more no later than then.

In the meantime, I've been feeling significantly better.  Monday was the last full day I dealt with that abdominal discomfort.  I wasn't feeling totally better Tuesday morning, but I went ahead and paddled with Joe in the harbor anyway.  By Tuesday evening I knew I was feeling better, and I've felt more or less back to normal ever since.  And believe me, I'm pleased about that.  But I'm still a little puzzled about this mysterious two-week malady.  I really don't get sick that often, and when I do it almost never lasts more than several days.

I'm now trying to get myself back in motion.  The weather has not been helpful.  I don't think it's been warmer than 45 degrees Fahrenheit in the last week or so.  This weekend has been particularly lousy, as the same storm system that has brought snow and ice to much of the Southeast has given us relentless rain for close to 24 hours.  The temperature has not escaped the mid 30s.

Mind you, winters here in the Mid South are nowhere near as harsh as in places like the upper Great Plains or New England or the Great Lakes region, but in a way I wish that if it must be cold at all, it would just go all the way: I have a friend who lives in New Hampshire who posted on Face Book that he cross-country skied ten miles yesterday, and that's the kind of offseason cross-training I could really sink my teeth into.  Instead, the water stays liquid here just about all winter, and I feel obligated to go out and paddle with a stiff upper lip.  I pleaded the "recovering from illness" excuse to stay in this weekend, but soon enough I need to get back in gear.

Of course, winters are funny here, and just because we've had some nasty blasts early, there's no guarantee it'll stay that way until spring.  Last January I paddled a couple of times when the temperature was in the teens, but after that frigid period the rest of the winter turned out to be quite mild.  The best I can do with this winter training thing is what I always do: take it a day at a time.  With any luck it'll add up to a decent amount of work by the time Earth swings around to its vernal equinox.

Body woes

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything on this canoe and kayak training blog.  The main reason for that is that lately very little canoe and kayak training has taken place around here.

Back on the evening of Tuesday, November 20, I started feeling some discomfort in my abdominal area.  The feeling was still there the next morning, and when I tried to do a round of the strength routine I found I had very little energy.  I concluded that I must have some kind of mild stomach bug and my body was fighting it off.

For the next several days I felt not horrible, exactly, but very low in energy.  I didn't do much more than lie around the house during this time.  Then I started to feel better, and thought I was on the mend--pretty typical when you've got a virus, right?  But the moment I began to resume some normal-life activities, the discomfort returned.  I decided it was time to go see the doctor.  I went in last Tuesday morning and they referred me for an ultrasound procedure and also took blood for some lab tests.

By Thursday the tests had come back negative, and my doctor told me the next step was to have a CT scan to see if there was some kind of mass in my insides.

A mass?  As in, a tumor?  Seriously?

I have to get pre-certification from my insurance company before I can have a CT scan, so I'm having to wait until Thursday to get it done.  (Note: if I had just gone to the emergency room they could have done the scan with no pre-certification requirement.  And there I thought I was doing the right thing by going to my primary-care doctor instead of the emergency room.)  I sincerely hope that my thoughts of tumors and cancer are just me blowing things out of proportion.  But in the meantime I'm still not feeling well and I don't know what else to think.  By tomorrow evening it'll be two weeks that this has been going on.

It's hard even to describe how this feels.  Much of the time it's a perpetual feeling of having to use the bathroom (sometimes Number One, sometimes Number Two) even though my digestion and bodily functions have been working just fine throughout this period.

Saturday was a beautiful day and I decided to try paddling--if nothing else, the cabin fever was driving me mad.  I paddled for an hour and felt just fine in the boat.  I didn't do anything bold; I stayed in the harbor because a south wind was making things rough out on the Mississippi, and even though I was feeling good enough to paddle at a healthy clip, I didn't throw in any all-out sprints.  Once I was back on the dock I was happy to have gotten out and done something with my body at last.

By Saturday evening, as if on cue, I was back to that mild lousy feeling.  It continued all through yesterday and I'm still not feeling so hot this morning.

It's still early in the offseason, so if I have to go through a forced layoff, I guess this is about as good a time as any.  But not knowing how much longer this is going to go on is frustrating.  Right now there's nothing I can do but see what the CT scan reveals this Thursday.

My resolve gets an early test

Winter has decided to come early to the Mid South.  When I got down to the river to paddle on Tuesday it was 36 degrees Fahrenheit, overcast, and windy.  As I mentioned in my new stretching video, it was definitely a day to do my stretching before leaving home.  I broke out the heavy winter gear for the first time: wetsuit pants, pogies, fleece shirt, long-sleeve shell.  Once I was actually in the boat paddling I didn't feel too bad: going against the north wind wasn't fun but it wasn't anything I haven't endured many times before.  I stayed in the harbor and paddled on the quick side of medium for 60 minutes.  The worst moments were standing on the dock before and after paddling.

Every year around this time I ask myself if I have it in me to put myself through another round of winter training.  It would appear that the answer is... yeah.  At least once more, I guess I do.

Winters here in the Mid South are never really that bad.  In a typical winter we might have two or three blasts of Arctic air, plunging temperatures down into the 20s or teens for several days at a time, but we have a lot of stretches in the 40s and 50s as well.  Portions of the harbor might occasionally freeze over, sometimes bad enough to make me skip a day of paddling, but that's just once every three or four years, maybe.  Some snow and ice isn't uncommon, but it doesn't happen every year.

But I'm pretty sure this is the earliest round of winter weather in my lifetime, especially one that includes snow.  Yes, yesterday afternoon enough frozen precipitation moved into the area to force the cancellation of evening activities and close some rural school systems today.  Weird.

I'm in the mood to hunker down for a long cold winter, but actually this is quite temporary: the current weather forecast says it'll be sunny and in the 60s this weekend, and the highs will be above 50 for the next nine days.  It wouldn't surprise me that much if the rest of this winter isn't as cold as it is now.

I did the strength routine Monday and yesterday and plan to do it again tomorrow.

Update: Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame

The Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame has announced its latest induction class.  The group of nine includes two football players, two football coaches, one football administrator, two basketball players, one tennis player, and one bull rider.  Eight of the inductees are male, and one female.

I'm sad to say that our canoe and kayak racing friend Mike Herbert did not make the cut.  Neither did any of the other people I voted for on my ballot.

Nevertheless, I thank everybody who took the trouble to buy an ASHOF membership and vote on Mike's behalf.  Just getting Mike's name on the ballot took close to a decade of effort, and I hope there will be opportunities to try again in the future.

Monday photo feature

It's been a long time since I've been on a good old-fashioned paddling tour.  But that's what I've just done in this photograph.  Back in 2009 I joined a group of folks to run a 22-mile section of the Mississippi River from Ashport to Randolph.  Here I'm helping Heather Havens and Alicia Huettel carry their big old kevlar canoe up the hill to the parking area at Randolph, located on the Tennessee side some 40 miles upstream of downtown Memphis.

Stretching my body and my tech skills

Joe and I did our customary paddle on Tuesday, and I did rounds of the strength routine on Monday, Wednesday, and today.  Right now the strength work isn't ending there: those oak planks I'm dealing with in the workshop are still pretty heavy even though I've got them milled down close to their final dimensions.

The weather was gorgeous when Joe and I paddled Tuesday: sunny and calm with a temperature in the mid 60s Fahrenheit.  That now seems a lifetime ago.  We've had periods of rain the last couple of days, and for the next week we're looking at highs in the 40s and 30s.  Meanwhile, the Mississippi River continues to be unseasonably high as a result of heavy rain in the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Ohio watersheds.  It's supposed to crest around 25 feet on the Memphis gauge in the middle of next week.

I try my best to make my training activities as understandable as possible, whether you've been reading this blog for years or you're looking at it for the first time.  For instance, I've been building up a reservoir of pages I can refer the reader back to, like the one about the harbor, or my 8-stroke sprints, or my bridge-to-bridge sprint, or strength routines like the one I linked to above.

I can't really blame you if you haven't noticed, but lately I've been trying to make My Training Blog by Elmore a sure-enough multimedia experience.  In the last several months I've been developing a modicum of video-production skill.  I do mean a modicum: I don't expect anybody to be impressed by what I can do.  But as a guy who's still stuck in the 20th century when it comes to technological know-how, I'm impressed with myself, and that's good enough for me.

Here's my latest creation: a video about my pre-exercise stretch routine.  Just like this blog in general, I offer it not as the last word on the subject, but simply as an example of what one guy does.  I hope at least a few people might gain some useful ideas and even a bit of inspiration from it.

Monday photo feature

Joe pulled out his iPhone and snapped this picture as he and I paddled a loop of the harbor a couple of Tuesdays ago.  These Tuesday sessions are all the paddling I've been doing lately, and the rest of my life has expanded to fill the extra time.

Oaken muscle

All my paddling in the last several weeks has taken place on Tuesdays.  My friend Joe joins me most Tuesdays to paddle a loop of the harbor, but this past Tuesday he was busy setting up for the annual Outdoors, Inc., Cyclocross Race ("OICX" for short), so I paddled alone.  It was the warmest day of the week with a pretty good south breeze blowing, so I ventured out onto the Mississippi for a short while.  There was a barge rig coming downriver and I attempted to surf behind it, but there were practically no surfable waves.  A south wind tends to knock the waves flat behind downstream-moving rigs.

I mentioned a while back that my arm muscles are getting plenty of work from my current project in the woodworking shop.  The project itself is simple enough--a small cabinet--but processing the material has been a bear.  The client brought me several 9'-long-by-20"-wide-by-3"-thick planks that he'd had milled from a willow oak tree that stood on his property.  The stock includes a high content of early-growth wood:

The wide portion of each growth ring is the early-growth wood, and such material is dense, hard, and heavy.  Moving each plank from the client's truck into my workshop was quite a chore for the two of us woking together.  Once I'd cut up the lumber into rough-sized parts for the cabinet, I had some hefty hunks of wood to run over the jointer and through the planer:

The rough-sawn lumber was not very true, so it took quite a few passes over the jointer to establish a flat face on each piece.  And the client wanted me to get the thickness of each piece down to two inches, so that required quite a few more passes through the planer.

If you can picture me picking up each piece, running it through a machine, then repeating that process many times, then you can imagine that I'm getting quite a workout.  Each time I do a round of jointing and planing, my arms end up throbbing for the rest of the day.  The fine-milling of lumber is best done over a period of days rather than all in one day, so I've done a few of these workouts over the last couple of weeks.

But of course, exertion in the woodworking shop is not official canoe and kayak training.  I said in a previous post that I'd resume "official" strength work come November.  It's now November, so it's time to keep my word.  I began doing this strength routine this morning.  The road to 2019 racing begins here.

A new strength routine

It's time to get some offseason conditioning in motion.  I plan to do the following strength exercises for the next little while:

1.  Pushups

2.  Hindu squats (demonstrated in this video)

3.  Bicep curls

4.  Hanging planks (demonstrated by yours truly in this video)

5.  Cleans

Monday photo feature

Last week I filled out my ballot for the latest induction class at the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

There were 43 names on the list.  37 of the nominees were male, and six were female.  The sports or categories represented broke down like this: football 17; basketball 9; coaching 4 (all four were football coaches); baseball 2; golf 2; track and field 2; tennis 1; officiating 1; broadcasting 1; football administration 1; multiple sports 1; canoe and kayak racing 1.

It should go without saying that my top vote went to the lone paddler on the list, Mr. Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas.  Deciding who would get my remaining four votes took some thought.  In the end I voted for a pair of runners, a distance runner (Leah Thorvilson) and a sprinter (Veronica Campbell Brown). I voted for a basketball player with strong Memphis connections: Keith Lee grew up across the river in West Memphis, Arkansas; starred at Memphis State University in the 1980s; and lives in Memphis today.  My final vote went to baseball player Johnny Ray, because baseball is the one big pro sport I like.

How good a chance Mike has of being inducted remains to be seen.  Last year's induction class consisted of nine people, and I'm assuming this year's class will be similar in size.  My heart sank a little when I got my ballot in the mail and saw that his name was but a tiny speck in a sea of 43.  All I can do is cast my vote and hope enough other people feel the same way.

The week, and the season, in review

No paddling took place last weekend, as I was fulfilling my annual commitment to demonstrate wooden bowl carving at the Pink Palace Crafts Fair here in Memphis.  All in all it wasn't a bad weekend, even though I was using muscles I hadn't used in quite a while since I've spent this year toiling at my rental property a lot more than working in my shop.  I also had to be careful moving heavy logs around, given my recent back woes.  The biggest bummer was the weather: for the first couple of hours on Friday we had true "chamber of commerce" conditions of sunshine and blue skies, but then it abruptly clouded over and the rest of the weekend was chilly and rainy.

We got more rain on Monday, and then a cold front moved in with a steep drop in temperatures.  When I finally made it back to the river Tuesday morning for my weekly loop of the harbor with Joe, it was gray and drizzly and the temperature barely exceeded 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  For the first time I wore long pants and long sleeves in the boat.  I stubbornly refused to break out the pogies so soon.  Standing on the dock was chilly indeed, but once I was in the boat paddling I felt just fine, even when paddling into the north wind.  I reminded myself that by February I'll be savoring this kind of weather.

I plan to paddle just once or twice a week for the next little while, to give myself a mental break and catch up on some things I've been neglecting lately.  I've been slacking off on the strength work, and I'll probably give myself until the start of next month before I get that going again.  Actually, my latest project in the shop involves milling some massive oak planks the client provided, so it's not like my muscles are lying around unused.

Yes, for me the offseason has begun, and I guess this is where I'm supposed to offer some kind of profound observation in summary of the season that's just concluded.  Certainly the big event that distinguished this season from previous ones was the long trip out to the Pacific Northwest in July for the Gorge Downwind race.  In terms of how I finished it was by far my worst race of the year: according to the posted results (which were initially, and may still be, full of errors), I was 332nd out of 489 racers.  But there are many other metrics for evaluation.  Fitness was not the problem: I felt fresh as a daisy within a half-hour after the finish.  Where I found myself struggling was with the technical aspects, many of which I was experiencing for the first time even though I've been paddling all kinds of water for more than three and a half decades.  I'm now pondering ways to be better prepared for next year's race even though true downwind conditions are hard to come by where I live.  It feels like when I was training for whitewater slalom in a part of the country with no whitewater.

Elsewhere in my season, I was reminded that I'm a shorter-distance athlete.  When I was dealing with two-hour-plus distances, I had some trouble.  I bonked in both the 19-mile Kentucky River race in May and the 14-mile Big South Fork race two weeks ago (in the latter race there was less than a mile to go when I bonked, but I was limping across the finish line just the same).  I was the overall winner in another two-hour race, on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg in April, but the competition there was less formidable and I had the luxury of pacing myself on my own terms.

I think my single best performance of the year was at the six-mile race on Fontana Reservoir over in western North Carolina.  Sadly, my hometown event, a delightful sub-20-minute dash down the Mississippi River at Memphis, had to be canceled this year.  And the races I'd planned to attend in September, all of which were in the less-than-one-hour category, were called off as well.  So I had few opportunities to race over distances to which I'm best suited.  Not coincidentally, the season was lacking in moments where I crossed the finish line feeling like I could pump my fist and say "Yes!  I nailed it!!"

But that's no reason to write the season off as a disappointment.  On the contrary, I achieved a high level of fitness and ventured pretty far outside my comfort zone.  I participated in three events for the first time and encountered athletes I'd never raced before.  And as always, even during moments when my non-athletic life seemed barely under control, my boat was waiting for me down at the dock, my regular paddling routine insuring that there was at least one thing going on that I could feel good about.

So there you go.  The season might not have been something nice and neat and tied up with a bow, but it sure wasn't boring.  I'm grateful for all the readers who took the journey with me.  All I can do now is see about doing it all over again in 2019.