there's no stress relief like a surf wave

This afternoon, I didn't feel like getting in my boat. My job is intense and demanding right now, and I considered spending the day getting ahead. But I know that balancing my life with time in my boat makes me more focused and productive. Plus it was a gorgeous fall day. Around 5pm, I put my boat on the car and drove to the river.

For a workout that I wasn't super excited about, it was one of the best experiences I've had on the water in a long time. The river was just over 17 feet on the Jeff City gauge -- high enough to top all the wing dikes -- which makes for some strong current and interesting features. Big boils and swirling eddies form in corners of the river that are normally calm. It's fun to play with water that actually plays back.

I normally paddle upstream along the north shore, and then sprint back down the middle of the channel at the end of my workout. With the dikes only a few feet under water, the attainments over them were challenging. After several floods this fall, however, the tops of the dikes are not at all even. The resulting irregular water helps me climb up more easily (there are spots to sneak through).

Paddling on much lower water earlier this week, I watched an Army Corp of Engineers boat rebuilding the third dike up from the Jeff City bridge. Unlike the others, it's now a tall, uniform wall of rocks. When I got up to it tonight, the difference was obvious. There was a clear, uniform horizon line extending out into the main current of the river. With the river dropping an good 2+ feet as it passed over the dike, there was no way I was going to get up over this one. But below it: a perfect surf wave.

Surfing on a river is the same principle as surfing on the ocean -- but with waves that never run into the shore, you can sit on them indefinitely if you get your balance right. In the fast current, it took me a while to find the sweet spot. But once I did - oh, this was the perfect wave for a slalom boat. Long and glassy. Carving back and forth with my hips, paddle relaxed in the air, it felt like I could sit on the wave forever.

There is nothing more relaxing the sitting on the upstream face of a wave with fast current rushing the other direction underneath you, and to be stable and balanced. It is magic. It was heaven. It was just what I needed. I stayed on the wave until sunset. Then I raced back down the main channel, feeling more relaxed and centered than I've been in a long time.

I snapped the picture with my phone as I drove back over the bridge.

Discovered new trails! (and already an injury)

One of my favorite things in Mid Mo so far are 13.5 miles of great trails about 10 minutes from my house. They can be steep, twisting, and rocky. I may not have mountains, but at least I can find some refuge climbing steep hills along pine groves and creeks.

Pavement bores me. Treadmills are just pointless. I lift at my local YMCA, but I don't understand the dozens of folks who are plodding along on the rows of treadmills burning a mere few hundred calories an hour while staring at the cieling-mounted TVs. Better than vegging on the couch, I guess, but seriously. I want to RUN, and collapse into my couch dripping and shaking after an hour pushing for a personal best with the domed sky above me and no one in sight.

Anyway, trails have their disadvantages. Especially in fall, when roots and rocks are disguised by leaves... no match for a weak right ankle. Ouch. Roll & pop.

At least I have a paper shredder under my desk that can double as elevation when I R.I.C.E. I am going to try and stay off the trails for a week.

We'll see if I can take it...

No gates? Time to get creative.

So it looks and feels like I am training again.  I still exist in a perpetual state of no resources, no coaching, and no training partners -- but with good river access I have been getting on the water regularly.  I am getting damn good at going really fast in a straight line.  Yeah, that held my attention span for about 3 workouts.  Now I'm bored.  I need gates.
 
So, until I can find a place to hang gates, I have been playing with tennis balls.  One of my favorite workouts of all time was on the Wolf River in Tennessee, where I freed a basketball, soccer ball, and a red playground ball that were stuck in some tree branches.  I spent the next hour floating down the river with them -- liting my bow over one, sprinting to the next and pivoting my stern underneath it.  Onside, offside.  Rotate to watch my stern go under the ball over my left shoulder.  On to the next.  It was a blast.
 
So I took inspiration from that workout, and packed a mesh bag of old tennis balls with me to my dusk workout on the Missouri.  Throwing them as hard as I could (which is more difficult from a boat, my throws were pretty bad), I set a "course" of tennis balls on the moving river.  (7 may have been over ambitious, I occasionally had to race around to rescue defectors).  I spent the next 30 minutes, until it was too dark to see even the neon yellow, making up courses between the balls and sprinting from one to the next.
 
It was humbling.  My weaknesses are obvious when I have objects to turn around.  Paddling through offset gates, turning back to the right after a tight offside turn, with my paddle on the cross, is difficult for me.  I want to run the boat and keep up my speed.  Something to work on.
 
On a positive note, I have had 5 workouts in the past 48 hours (lifting weights, 4m trail run, 1 hr paddle on river, 4m trail run, 2 hr pool session).  The momentum feels good.
 
 

back in the saddle again

It has been just over six months since I have posted here. Six months, wow.

For me, perfect can often be the enemy of good. If I can't give something 110%, I drop it completely and focus on the things in my life which are the priority. For the last six months, slalom has been on the back burner and my blog has grown stale.

My career has become my focus, both for financial and personal reasons. I'm 25. I don't have a trust fund. I want to go places, not just spin my wheels. It was time for me to get serious. The year 2007, my best attempt as a REI-bike-wrench-paddle-bum, was a blast; truly one of the best years of my life. But I had some growing up to do.

So now, I am wearing heels and working 60 hour weeks. I avoided my boat all summer. I really wasn't sure how much I wanted to paddle or what my relationship to the sport should be. I both missed it desperately and contemplated trucking all my gear to GAF and making a couple grand selling my spray skirts, PFDs, paddles and boats. But I couldn't do it. My heart in still in my C1 and I still have a burning, intense desire to train as an athlete.

In Jeff City, I live blocks from the Missouri River. There is a boat ramp less than 5 minutes from my house. I have been getting out every weekend for the past few weeks, feeling her out again. It feels great. I am coming at the sport with a totally different mindset now -- and where before I struggled to know what to do, how to connect my movement, now I am relaxed. I have been more aware of small things like the outfitting changes that could improve my performance -- currently, I seem to be better able to figure this stuff out on my own.

For now, I am just having fun and getting reacquainted. My standard workout is to paddle to a high-paced music mix: steady tempo during the verses, full throttle during the chorus, and a break on the first verse of every new song. If I stick with it, that will get boring fast, and I will need to invent games, hang gates, or explore other local rivers.

If I prioritize this again, it will mean travel. Which I am now better able to afford -- but it means not visiting friends and family on the long weekends and holidays b/c I'd rather be in a training camp somewhere. Last year, as much as I loved the sport, I didn't connect w/ others enough for it to be a total social-life replacement. Can I juggle all these things? Work? Training? Visiting friends and family?

Choices. Lots of choices.

Either way, I feel fortunate that I have the choices in front of me to make.

Missouri Whitewater Championships

The Saint had water! With the gauge reading 6" on Saturday morning, a good crowd turned out despite the grey skies and threats of rain. We even had a full C1W class: Hailey drove down with her family from Wisconsin, and Colleen drove in from North Carolina.

I felt very relaxed at this race. I have been getting nervous before races on larger water, but the Saint feels like my home. I was calm and focused. My first run was wonderful... until I flipped and broke my paddle on a rock!

Although light, carbon fiber paddles are normally able to withstand serious rock abuse. I checked my paddle on a flight to Charlotte earlier this month, however, and I worry it got a little banged up. Either way, I went to do a lightening-quick roll, and suddenly I had two pieces in my hands. I swam out of my boat, laughing.

Fortunately, the MWA takes your best run as your final score, as opposed to combining your times. This meant I was able to borrow a paddle from a friend (thanks, Brian!) and race again with a chance to place. I had a good second run, and ended up with 2nd.



Tomorrow and Sunday, the US Open will be on the Nantahala River. I am excited, but also feeling out of shape as I haven't been in my boat all week! I was in DC for work. This is a very tight course on fast moving water, and will be a huge challenge for me.

Glacier Breaker Video

Video of my most recent race is now posted on my video page.

On this run, I miss several gates and flip over a few times! Fun! Video review is a good tool for me because it shows me what I actually look like on the water. I don't like watching it; I get frustrated because I feel more technically competent than I actually look. But it shows me my obvious weak points. It also shows me where I have improved. Even though I end up upside down on this run, my rolls are fast. There are subtle moments of boat control that I was not able to do last fall -- holding ferry angles with my knees as I rotate, etc.

The US Open is on this same river in just over a week! I have been training hard, and hopefully I will be posting a video with no missed gates and no flipping upside down.

I did this today!

No, this is not a picture of me -- I walked down and snapped it later in the afternoon. But it is a C1 on the same line that I followed successfully through this hole. By the end of the day, I'd run the bottom half of the Charlotte course 6 times. And some of those times I was even in my boat at the end of the channel!

The thing that intimidated me about the bottom drop was not the drop itself, but the random, surging waves and piles above it. I was terrified of flipping here and then scraping over the shallow drop upside down. And so, of course, I did just that. And it wasn't that bad. I bumped, scraped, and banged against concrete, but my helmet and other gear took the blows. I have found that accidentally doing the thing I am most afraid of can be productive. Whether flipping in Tablesaw on the Ocoee, or swimming the Z-route of Cat's Paw on the Saint Francis, I end up thinking "oh, okay, that actually wasn't so bad." Once I get the fear out of my system, I can relax and start learning.

I ended up swimming on 4 out of my 6 runs today. I had trouble hanging on to my paddle in the surging, powerful water. I need to fight for it! I also had trouble waiting. Knowing that I was going to hit the big hole upside down, the self-preservation part of my brain would immediately send my hands to unbuckle my thigh straps. In bigger water, I need to learn to wait.

But on two of my runs, I pulled into the eddy below the drop hooting and hollering. The second time I absolutely nailed the line, and the hole actually gave me free speed as it spat me out. It was an addicting feeling, a taste of what is accessible when you really groove and flow with water.

Even though I swam at the bottom drop, I nailed probably 2 dozen combat rolls this weekend on other parts of the course. Once I even got sucked down and had to fight to get my paddle in the set-up position before I could roll up. A month ago, I would have swam. I know I have many more swims in my future, but my combat roll has become reliable enough that I am willing to start trying risky moves. Until now, I have been in survival mode on the Charlotte course. Now I am ready to start playing.

With Pan Ams and Team Trials only 7 weeks away, I know I will not be totally comfortable on this course by then. I will not be able to make all the eddies they will hang gates in, and running the bottom drop will still feel like rolling the dice. But this weekend it was clear that I can get down the course in one piece.

I paddled with Nic and Colleen today -- two wonderful training partners and peer coaches. They walked alongside the water with me and talked about my plan, and chased my gear when I bailed. I took a gamble randomly showing up in Charlotte with a rental car and a paddle, and it was wonderful to feel welcomed and part of the group. This is a difficult sport to get into, and I really hope that I can give as much to others as they have shared with me.

Video of the approach to the bottom drop is online here.

A kayak just above the bottom drop

The hole below the bottom drop

Looking upstream from the drop

The room of doom! Crazy "eddy"

The comp channel and main building

paddle check

I touched down in foggy Charlotte at 10pm. I ended up checking my paddle. Although the consensus seemed to be paddles were simply carried on before 9/11, I assumed there was no way they would let it through security in the current climate. I wrapped it carefully in three layers of cardboard and handed it over to the ticket agent, fingers crossed that I would see it on the other side.

It made it though just fine. I was so happy to see it slide onto the baggage claim! Both my boat and my paddle are like extensions of my body -- and since I won't be training in my regular boat this weekend, I really wanted to have my own paddle here.

I am excited and nervous about training tomorrow. Whitewater always energizes me, and it will be fun to watch members of the US team practice in the morning before I put on mid-day. But I also need to decide soon if I will be ready to race on the Charlotte course at the end of April (olympic team trials and pan ams). I still have not run the bottom drop, the biggest rapid on the course. I am a little worried I've been building it up to much in my head -- psyching myself out. But I don't really feel afraid of it. Not fear. Just nervous anticipation.

It's very good to be here.

cold weather workouts

If I ever decide to quit this sport, I need to make that decision on the river. Not back in home in the flat, dry midwest. I forget too easily. Before every time-consuming, expensive trip I wonder if this should really be a priority. With family, work, and everything else on my plate, can I really afford to be traveling across the country to get in my boat? The hours I spend training in Missouri are rewarding and satisfying, but they certainly aren't exhilarating.

For the past year, I have been waiting for one ultimate "ah ha" moment where my commitment to the sport would solidify. I think I've finally accepted that this will not happen. Instead, I will continue to have this realization over and over again each time I put on whitewater, and during the days and weeks between sessions I must constantly weigh my dedication against doubt. Delayed gratification, I believe it's called.

And learning to do that may just be the most important thing this sport will teach me.

Glacier Breaker and the USNWC

photo by Michele Baskin

This past weekend was the Glacier Breaker race on the Nantahala, traditionally the first race of the year. It was not as cold as the name had me thinking -- sun and temps in the 50's cut the shock of the famously chilly water.

The top slalom paddlers from the east coast were there. Ben Fraker, Tad Dennis, and Jeff Larmier -- the top three US canoes -- were all racing. I have never been on the same course as such high-level paddlers before. While their times were much much faster than mine, watching their runs on the same course was incredibly educational. Even though I never made all of the gates (tight offsets!) I was happy with my runs over all. The second one even had two combat rolls, one in gate 8 above nanty falls, and one in gate 12 below the falls. Colleen Hickey was the only other C1W there, and she beat me by a large margin. Colleen's paddling is looking great and I hear she will be making an appearance at the MWA championships!

Sunday I drove into Charlotte to train. The day was productive, and showed me that I have improved since my time there over the christmas holidays. I did loose the skin off of 4 knuckles, hanging onto a deep low brace below the M-wave. I was proud I hung onto it and recovered! I made all my rolls and I am starting to build the confidence I need to paddle on that water. It still scares the pants off me.

The next race on the Nantahala is the US Open, March 22-23: http://www.nrcrhinos.com/
Team Trails will be held at the Charlotte course, April 25-27: http://web.mac.com/slalom2008/Slalom/Welcome.html

Thanks again to everyone for their support.