Monday photo feature

Carol Lee Royer (front left) and a couple of fellow female racers pose with South African surf ski legend Oscar Chalupsky after the 42-mile "Phatwater" race on the Mississippi River at Natchez, Mississippi, in 2012.

One of the stars of my movie, Carol Lee is a mainstay of the paddling scene here in Memphis.  She is also an avid bicycle rider and racer, and holds a couple of age group records for the state of Tennessee.  She can often be found paddling and pedaling with her husband Joe.


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Ready for a break

I struggled with motivation this weekend.  Maybe it was the weather (overcast, Fahrenheit temperatures in the 40s and 50s, rainy today), or maybe it was the winter solstice, or maybe it was the concern over this nagging injury I've got.  Whatever the case, it felt like I had to overcome some extreme inertia just to get myself down to the river and in my boat.

Yesterday I paddled for 60 minutes, and for the most part I maintained a steady pace.  There was a barge rig coming upriver, and while I don't normally surf wakes aggressively in the wintertime for safety reasons (i.e., I don't want to get soaking wet or possibly swim in cold weather), I was curious to see how my chest muscle would respond to a surf attempt, so I waited for the waves to die down to a modest size and then tried to sprint.  The muscle didn't respond well.

Today I did a round of my new strength routine, and then went back downtown and paddled for 70 minutes.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I embarked on a "pyramid" workout--pieces of 1', 2', 3', 4', 5', 4', 3', 2', 1' with two minutes recovery in between.  Here I was paddling pretty hard but not at sub-maximum or maximum intensity, and my sore muscle held up just fine.  So I'm glad I can train at a decently high level.  But I'm going to need to do some high-intensity workouts in the coming month, and that means I need for this ailment to get better.  I'll be out of the boat for the next four days and I hope that will help.  If it's still bothering me after that I'll look into some more treatment.


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A new strength routine

I've changed up the strength routine.  I need something portable because I'm going off on a holiday road trip for a few days.  Also, I'm suspicious of those military presses as a possible cause of this chest-muscle injury I've got.

And so, I give you the Smart Bell workout:





My standard routine is to go through the circuit twice.


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Managing a puzzling injury

This week hasn't gone the way I'd hoped it would.  The plan was to get a couple of good hard workouts in before spending most of next week out of the boat, but this nagging chest-muscle ailment has slowed me down.

Tuesday's weather was positively miserable--overcast, windy, high temperature around 38 degrees Fahrenheit.  Rather than do our usual loop of the harbor, Joe and I did two loops of the northern half of the harbor.  Our local real estate development industry and its flunkies in city and county government have yet to clear-cut the harbor's banks up in the northern half, so there's quite a bit more protection from the wind up there.  Even so, I was chilled to the core by the time we were finished paddling, and spent the rest of the day recovering some body heat.

I wasn't sure whether a chest-muscle strain was something my chiropractor could treat, but my buddy Rob, a chiropractor in New York State, assured me she could.  So I booked an appointment for Wednesday morning, after which I planned to go back to the river and do some kind of medium-intensity workout.  But my chiropractor, after making a few little adjustments that targeted the inflamed area, urged me to avoid activities that require torso rotation (read: paddling) for 48 hours.  So I came back home.  I didn't paddle yesterday either, though I did do a round of the strength routine minus the military press, which I suspect puts stress on muscles like the one that's hurting right now.

By this morning it had been eight days since I'd done a workout in the boat of any substance.  I went back to the river determined to do some kind of higher-intensity effort to see how my sore muscle would respond.  After warming up for ten minutes I did a set of three 8-stroke sprints.  They weren't as hard on the muscle as the Paddle Power drill, but I could still feel some stress.

For my main workout I decided to do four 5-minute tempo pieces during which I aimed to build the pace from 6.5 miles per hour to 7.0 mph.  I took five minutes for recovery in between.  It was not at all an ideal workout for the kind of paddling I'll be doing in South Africa in February, but right now I'm afraid to put any more stress on my injury than that.  The workout went reasonably well, though I was feeling some increased soreness in my muscle by the end of it.  By this evening it's settled back down to about the way it was before I paddled today.

This whole business is all very frustrating, but I'm trying not to let it upset me.  I plan to keep living my life and training in whatever way I can, and hope it'll be enough.


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Monday photo feature

Another star of my motion picture that premiered back in October is Alessia Faverio of Asheville, North Carolina.  In addition to doing some surfski racing, Alessia is an avid wildwater racer and a member of the U.S. national team in that discipline.  At this moment she is in China competing in the World Cup series.  In this photo, lifted from the "Alessia Faverio--Wildwater and Surfski Athlete" page on Face Book, she is doing an 18-kilometer "classic" race at Liuku this past Friday.


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"I'm having chest pains..."

I'm still hopeful that this chest muscle strain is something that will run its course in a few days, but right now it sure does hurt.  It hurts when I inhale, hurts when I cough, hurts when I press on it with my fingers.  Very strange.

After doing a round of the strength routine Saturday morning, I went downtown and paddled, and I paid close attention to what did and did not bother the sore muscle.  Paddling at a normal cruising pace, the actual paddling didn't seem to affect it at all; it was the breathing that made it hurt.  But when I did a set of the Paddle Power drill, that made it hurt a lot, and might have even aggravated it a little.  I may have to back off from doing that drill for a while.  I spent the rest of my 70-minute session Saturday just paddling steady at a medium-strong pace.

Since Saturday I've had to modify my schedule a little.  The handbell group I play with had a performance yesterday morning, and while I could have paddled in the afternoon, I decided a break might not be the worst thing considering my injury.  I thought about paddling this morning, but seeing as how it's pouring down rain outside with some occasional lightning moving through, I've decided to give it some more rest.  Once this rain moves out it's supposed to be colder but sunny, and I'm hoping by mid-week maybe I'll be feeling better.  I'd sure like to get some good work in this week because I'll be out of the boat most of next week due to holiday travel.

It just so happens I have a doctor's appointment this afternoon--just a routine thing, getting some bloodwork done.  I'll be sure to ask the doctor what she thinks about this whole chest business.


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Enduring high-intensity efforts

When I got up Tuesday morning another chilly spell had moved into the Mid South.  I did a round of the strength routine and then headed downtown for a loop of the harbor with Joe.  I've paddled in much worse winter weather than what we had Tuesday, but it seemed awfully gloomy and cheerless nevertheless.  The sky was overcast and the temperature hovered around 37 degrees Fahrenheit.  By the last couple of miles my feet were freezing and I was eager to get back to the dock and change into dry socks and shoes.

I was also feeling a little pain in my chest, sort of below my right pec muscle, while I paddled.  At first it almost seemed like a simple stitch or some such thing, but it has persisted since then and I now think I must have pulled or strained something during Tuesday's strength workout.  A quick glance at a Wikipedia diagram leads me to infer that maybe it's one of my intercostal muscles, muscles between the ribs that are involved in the mechanical aspect of breathing.  It hurts when I inhale deeply and especially when I cough, and that supports my suspicion.

Hopefully it's nothing too serious, just a strain that'll be better in a few days.  But I can definitely feel it when I paddle, partly because of the breathing and partly because of the torso rotation.

Today I did another round of the strength routine and then returned to the river.  The sun was out and it was breezy but warmer (around 50 degrees).  I warmed up and did several of those "paddle power" drills, and then commenced my workout.  I mentioned in a recent post that I struggled with the frequency of hard sprints I was having to do on the Columbia River last summer, and today I experimented with a workout that I hope will remedy that.  Basically, I did a series of 20-second sprints while decreasing the length of the recovery interval.  It went like this:

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

I did two sets of this series, with a good long recovery in between sets.  By the end of each set I was gasping for breath.  But it's a start.  I hope to make some version of this workout a regular occurrence between now and the end of January.


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Paddle Power!

Research has indicated that for building power, two or three explosive bursts of effort against high resistance works best.  For example, to build power in the bench press, put something close to the maximum weight you can handle on the bar, and then do two or three explosive reps.  (Use a spotter, of course.)

In the boat, my "paddle power" drill is simple: I use a few backstrokes to get the boat up to speed in reverse, and then do a few hard, explosive forward strokes to overcome that inertia.  In a typical paddling session, I'll warm up and then do three of these drills before moving on to the main workout for the day.





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Monday photo feature

Amelia Taylor shot this photo after she and I paddled on the Memphis riverfront yesterday.  Atop the Beatermobile is my old touring boat that I'd brought down for her to paddle.


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A hard day and a day spent guiding a friend

Friday morning was another rainy one, and I spent the first part of it indoors doing another round of the new strength routine.  I went easy on the Hindu squats because my quad muscles were still quite sore.

By the time I got down to the river around 10 AM, the rain had moved out, and I would be paddling under overcast skies with the temperature around 55 degrees Fahrenheit.  I warmed up and did another round of that backpaddling-then-forward-paddling drill, and then moved on to my main workout.  I did eight 4-minute pieces; each piece broke down like this:

(a) 2 minutes paddling at 6.2 miles per hour on my G.P.S. device
(b) 45 seconds at 6.8 mph
(c) 45 seconds at 7.2 mph
(d) 30 seconds at a sub-maximal intensity--worked out to around 7.8 mph

The two minutes at 6.2 mph served as my recovery interval--in other words, I did the 4-minute pieces back-to-back without any additional recovery in between.  The workout was pretty taxing--in particular, my already-sore thighs were protesting loudly during the last several pieces--but not to the point that my form was breaking down.

By lunchtime on Friday, I was one tired guy, but it was a good tired.

Yesterday I got a message from a friend that she was passing through town and would like to paddle with me on the Mississippi today.  Amelia lives in east Tennessee and has been paddling whitewater for a few years, but is less familiar with navigating big rivers like the Mississippi in longer boats; so it was my duty to help her through this rite of passage.  I retrieved my rarely-used plastic touring boat from its storage spot up under my back deck (I found an abandoned bird's nest in the cockpit), scared up a spare paddle and PFD, and took it all down to the river this morning for Amelia to use.

We paddled for about 100 minutes.  We didn't venture far from downtown Memphis, but after climbing up along the Tennessee bank to the foot of the Greenbelt Park we ferried out to the middle of the river for the trip back down, where Amelia could experience the mighty river in all its glory.  She seemed suitably appreciative.


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Getting serious and getting sore

I started up a new strength routine Tuesday morning.  It had been a couple of months since I'd done any kind of leg exercises, and those Hindu squats hit me hard.  My quad muscles throbbed the rest of the day, and yesterday and today they have been wicked sore.  My arms are a bit sore too, from those curls and military presses.  They will, of course, become stronger than before as they repair themselves, but they always protest when given a new job.

After the strength work Tuesday I joined Joe for a loop of the harbor.  I think it's good to follow up weightlifting with some easy paddling.

I returned to the river yesterday and paddled for 60 minutes.  After a 10-minute warmup I did another set of those backpaddling-then-forward-paddling power drills that I talked about last weekend.  After that I just paddled steady.

The week started off sort of cold and bleak.  When Joe and I paddled Tuesday it was in the low 40s Fahrenheit and the sky was much more cloudy than sunny.  By yesterday the sun was out and the temperature was heading up toward the mid 50s.

For the second year in a row, the Mississippi River has been higher than normal in the fall months.  Sub-zero readings on the Memphis gauge are common at this time of year, but this year the river has barely dipped below 10 feet, and right now it's on a big rise in the wake of the heavy rains that have moved through the Tennessee and Ohio drainages in recent weeks.  The current forecast has it cresting near 26 feet.


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A new strength routine

It's time to change up the strength routine.  Here's what I plan to do for the next little while:


1.  Core exercise where I kneel atop a stability ball

2.  Military press with dumbbells

3.  Core exercise demonstrated by Jing Jing Li at 1:35 of this video

4.  Bicep curls

5.  Hindu squats (demonstrated in this video)


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Monday photo feature

In recent weeks I've been highlighting paddlers who star in my movie that remains in its first run internationally.  I think I'll take a break from that and pick it up again later.

This week I post a photo related to the annual Gorge Downwind Championships on the Columbia River at Hood River, Oregon.  Registration for next summer's race went live this past Saturday evening, and I wasted no time getting myself signed up.

My Go Pro camera captured this photo in July, 2018, as I had all the fun I could stand on the mighty Columbia.  I'm in an area of the river known as Swell City, and I'm most definitely having a swell time.


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Heading into some crucial weeks

Two months from now--if the good Lord's willing and the creeks don't rise, of course--I'll be in the South Africa town of Fish Hoek for some instruction in the ways of downwind paddling from a couple of legends in the sport, the Mocke brothers.

Downwind paddling requires a unique skill set and an intimate knowledge of the behavior of ocean swells, and I hope I can make some gains in these areas during my eight-day seminar with the Mockes.

Meanwhile, downwinding is perhaps the most physically demanding paddling discipline I've ever pursued.  Catching a run requires a short but very hard sprint, and you can expect to do a lot of such sprints over a downwind session.  I've always been a generally fit, strong person, but "downwind" fitness is different from anything I've ever really needed before.  This became clear to me as I was training and racing out in the Columbia River Gorge last summer: often, when a good run presented itself, I just wasn't quite ready to throw in another hard sprint yet and I had to let the opportunity go and wait for the next one.

Of course, the more skilled you are at riding the swells and linking one run to the next, the longer your recovery period between sprints will be.  But opportunities to practice such skills aren't so frequent here in the Mid South.  What I can do is train hard, and I hope to spend these next two months fine-tuning my engine so it'll be the least of my worries on the South African waters.

I began the day yesterday with a round of the strength routine while the rain poured down outside.  By the time I was headed down to the river, the rain had moved out at least for a while.  There was a steady south breeze blowing, creating small but tricky chop out on the Mississippi.  I went out there and did a lot of short surges while trying to keep the boat gliding over that stuff.

When I returned to the river this morning the temperature had dropped some 15 degrees, and the wind was stronger and gusting in such a way that it was hard to determine its direction.  West-southwest was my best guess.  I stayed in the harbor and began December with some harder, faster paddling than I've done in a while.  First I did a power-building drill: I backpaddled for a few strokes and then did some hard forward strokes.  I did this three times.  It had been a long time since I'd done this drill; a couple of winters ago I started shying away from it because it almost always gets me wet, and that's not fun in the wintertime.  But power is what I need, so I'm going to do it at least when it's warmer than 40 degrees Fahrenheit or so.

I followed this work with a set of twelve 30-second sprints at three-minute intervals.  The last four or five of these sprints were tough: I was feeling it in my biceps and my stroke form started to break down a little.  I lowered the stroke rate and focused on taking the cleanest, most precise strokes I could.  The encouraging thing was that even late in the workout, my breathing and heart rate were recovering quickly from each sprint.

So here we go.  Serious training for the South Africa trip has begun.


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Making these short days count

I did a round of the strength routine on Monday, and on Tuesday I paddled a loop of the harbor with Joe.  On Wednesday it was another round of strength work followed by a spirited 60-minute session out on the river.

As we near the end of the month I'm mostly happy with how it's gone.  At the start of the month I was hurting in much of the upper half of my body and not feeling much like an athlete at all.  Now I'm back into a training routine and, while not entirely free of the occasional ache or pain, ready to get into some more serious workouts.  Like I said earlier, the key is to keep moving.  The hardest part always seems to be fighting out of the state of inertia--getting up out of my chair and starting a strength workout, getting myself out of the house and down to the river.  Once I'm actually in motion my productivity seems to flow with little effort.  It sounds like simple physics, really.

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Monday photo feature

Of all the athletes interviewed for my movie that premiered last month, I doubt anybody has a brighter-shining star right now than Teneale Hatton.  She's pictured here racing the 1000-meter final at the 2014 world championships in Moscow, in which her winning time of 3 minutes, 49.42 seconds was (and currently remains) the fastest ever by a female kayaker.  She also won the 5000-meter race at that championships.

Sure, that was five years ago, but the 29-year-old New Zealander has hardly slowed down since then.  Flatwater sprint racing is actually just a small part of Hatton's overall paddling life.  She grew up primarily in ocean-based paddlesports like surf lifesaving and surfski racing, and continues to excel on the sea.  She took the title at the 2015 ICF world championships for ocean racing and claimed the bronze medal at that event this year.

Her appearance in my movie was shot just after she'd won the women's surfski class at the Gorge Downwind Championships at Hood River, Oregon, this past July.  If you look closely, you'll see that she's holding one of those oversize novelty checks that star athletes get to hold up on the podium.


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A weekend to feel good about

It rained all day Friday.  By yesterday morning the Internet radar showed that it had mostly moved out, but a stubborn drizzle lingered for most of the day.  When I got to the river yesterday morning it was overcast with a temperature in the mid 40s Fahrenheit.

My plan was to paddle for 60 minutes and push the intensity during the half-hour from 0:15 to 0:45.  But I wanted it to be more than just a steady-state, metronomic tempo paddle.  So I varied the cadence, sometimes paddling at an unnaturally low stroke rate while exploding through each stroke.  I did the same sort of thing while one-sided paddling, focusing hard on making all the involved muscle groups fire as a single unit.  And then I did some ordinary surges, too.  It all added up to a pretty hard 30 minutes.  I was really feeling it in the last 10 minutes of this period, and my "explosive" strokes seemed to get less and less explosive.  I tried to keep paddling as precisely as possible and not get sloppy.

It was about 34 degrees when I got up this morning, but I was pleased to see clear skies.  By the time I got down to the river around 10 AM, it had warmed up into the mid 40s.  Having done a little workout yesterday, I was looking forward to paddling a relaxed pace and savoring the nice day.  I paddled for 80 minutes, and though it was mostly a fun relaxed session, I did push the pace at times.  What can I say?  I like paddling hard, especially when I'm feeling good, and I'm happy to say that I am feeling good right now.


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I've had better weeks

It's been a week spent dealing with life's minutiae.  My clothes dryer went out, a bureaucrat in the medical practice conglomerate that employs my doctor botched an appointment I was supposed to have, my state's department of revenue notified me of a back-tax amount I owed and promised grisly consequences if I didn't pay up at once... yep, a lovely week.  Getting together with Joe to paddle a loop of the harbor on Tuesday was probably the highlight of the week by far.

I did rounds of the strength routine Tuesday and yesterday.  Hopefully I'll be back into some regular paddling over the weekend.  After a few days of really nice weather we're headed back into some chillier, windier, rainier stuff.


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Monday photo feature

The parade of stars continues as we celebrate the worldwide release of my motion picture.

Terry Smith comes from a whitewater background.  A resident of the greater Chattanooga, Tennessee, area, Terry has done his share of steep-creeking in the Walden's Ridge area of the Cumberland Escarpment.  He even was among the featured boaters in the 1994 Wayne Gentry film Vertical Addiction.

But Terry is also drawn to the adrenaline rush of competitive paddling.  He is pictured above competing in the selection trials for the U.S. wildwater team last month on the Nantahala River at Wesser, North Carolina.  Photo by Chris Hipgrave.


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Feeling better and settling in

The cold I came down with early in the week persisted into the weekend, but the symptoms have been subdued, I guess because of that shot I got at the doctor's office.  Most significant is that I've remained my usual energetic self for the most part.  Those illnesses I had in June and October had stretches where I didn't feel like doing much besides lying in bed.

And I'm pleased to report that my back and obliques have been feeling a lot better in recent days.  I'm not sure I'm ready to pronounce myself completely healed, but I'm encouraged by the way things are going.

As I said before, through all this I'm just trying to keep moving.  It sounds pretty simple, but that attitude has served me well in the past and I hope it will once more.

Yesterday morning I did a round of the strength routine and then headed down to the river.  It was sunny and breezy with a temperature in the mid 40s Fahrenheit.  I went out and paddled a somewhat strong tempo for 60 minutes.

This morning I was back in the boat on a warmer but not quite as sunny day.  Once again I paddled for 60 minutes, pushing the pace maybe even a little higher than yesterday.


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