some honesty

It’s been a long, hard week. I tend to update here when I am energized by training. Positive experiences get posted quickly. When I am frustrated, tired and unmotivated, the last thing I want to do is write about it.

I have been in my boat several times this week, but the last time I really felt on my game was over 10 days ago. It seems like it’s been much longer than that. I am disconnected. My shoulder muscles feel like bricks and not rubberbands. Try as I might, I haven’t been able to get loose. I can get on the water, and go through the motions, but my head is not in the game. Not even close.

I’ve figured out what’s going on in my head – and I know how to start sorting it out. I have some decisions to make. And I am very grateful to the friends who have helped me talk through this.




My Ocoee trip was incredible. Simply because, in the middle of tablesaw, for a split second -- nothing existed beside me and the boat, my paddle and the wave. Absolutely nothing in the world. I am getting more comfortable in that environment, and more prepared to push myself. If I have the right boat, I’ll be in a C1 next time. I felt ready.

And on the Pigeon, I was positively itching for my C1. It would have been a fun challenge. I don’t want to miss opportunities like that. Some pictures:

The powerhouse at the put-in of the Pigeon.
An older picture, me standing at the put-in of the Ocoee.

I also got my new paddle last weekend. It is light, sexy, and 2 inches longer – which makes my left shoulder very happy. I am thrilled, and have been constantly holding it and fidgeting with it (in the car, at work) since I got it. But it’s funny, unless I am really focusing on how the catch (etc.) feels, I am even not aware that it’s a different paddle when I am on the water. Just like I’m not conscious of my cool new pfd. My mind is filled with sensations instead.



New gear doesn’t make me a better paddler. Off the water, pieces of new gear are symbols of my passion, tangible proof that I am becoming a slalom racer. But on the water, I don’t give a crap what my gear looks like. I care how my trap feels when it fires, how quickly my abs snap back after I wind them up. I care about feeling glide. If I'm lucky, I flow.

It’s a feeling I miss. I have some hard thinking to do this week. Writing about it is good for me, and I’ll try to not completely ignore this website as I work through all this.

As I’m typing, my shoulders are hunched up. My right rotator cuff is sending off little bursts of pain; some strange signal fire.

Still Tripping to the Pigeon

It should be a good weekend. Finally, a chance to get on some whitewater after 6 weeks of Missouri flatwater! Pigeon & Ocoee. In my kayak. I'll miss my C1, and it will be strange to be in a short boat again. But I can't wait to fire it up.

My tent needed some serious repair -- one aluminum pole had bent and the segments had frozen together. I was simply going to try and separate the pieces. But when you work at REI & have a gear problem, you better be ready for some creative solutions. Before I knew what was happening, Jake had my tent poles completely disassembled. We got out the pliers, vice, and PG2000. With in 10 minutes, my busted pole was replaced with a shiny new red segment. Excellent. Time to go sleep in a tent.

I also get my new paddle this weekend! Trip report to come on Tuesday.

168,000 cubic feet per second

I've spent the last two weeks in flatwater gates. They are good for me. I am learning things. And I am already sick of them.

Okay, not really. I love my gates. I am just thirsty for current. To me, paddling is fundamentally an interaction of forces -- my body and the water both interact with my boat. That's where the fun is. That's when the magic happens. And on flat, glassy water it is only me. It feels like I'm paddling through peanut butter.

The Mississippi scares me. It's not that I think paddling out in the channel is inherently dangerous - it isn't - but that much water has a certain power. She surges and subsides; 4 foot waves will break out in the middle only to suddenly calm, as if holding her breath for a moment. The quarter-mile wide river undulates. And the current is deceptively strong.

So, of course I love it. Full of adrenaline, I put on this evening after work. One tugboat powered northward, its 5,600 horsepower engines pushing a load three barges wide by six barges long. Its wake lifted me and dropped my C1 several feet as I tried to attach my new skirt to the cockpit. I hurried out to play. The tug left a wavetrain behind it, with at least a dozen 8-foot high waves.

I've been frustrated lately. Just a little bit. Expectant; anxious. I haven't felt powerful. I haven't felt like my boat and I were on the same team. I've been faithfully waiting for this sensation to comeback to me.

Sunday nights, the barge traffic on the Mighty Miss slows down. Except for that first mammoth load, I was the only moving vessel on the river. I got right into the meat of the current and charged against it. It took 25 minutes, paddling literally as hard as I could, to reach a shipping channel buoy, 1500 feet upstream. The large waves would lift me and I would accelerate down their face. The first few times it happened I let out a whoop of surprise, stopped paddling, and my bow buried a couple of feet into the trough. Soon I had learned to carve down them and use that momentum to carry me up the next wave.

I felt powerful. When my arms started to fatigue, I began to really paddle with my torso. I locked my eyes on the buoy. I was not going to give up.

It was a good night. I needed time alone. I needed to immerse myself in something much bigger and more powerful than myself. I needed to be scared, and paddle through it.

It's a step in the right direction. One more step.

One step at a time.

Video and Pictures from Nationals

Finally enjoying a few days off from work, I found time to watch the video and dig through the pictures from Nationals. The more I paddle and work on my own technique, the more I see while watching video of others. My eye is now quick to pick out where people put their weight as they make small correction strokes and how much extraneous movement is created in the boat during forward strokes.

Nationals Video: http://www.joelmccune.com/node/141
Photos 1: US Slalom Nationals
Photos 2: US Nationals 2007

There is one moment from the nationals video that keeps playing itself over and over in my mind. After leaving gate 11 (a river-left up) one of the better C1s (a right-side paddler) peels back into the current paddling cross-bow. The next gate is a river-right down. Many other righty’s here do one or two cross-bow strokes, and then return to their on-side for a few strokes, regaining stability. But this paddler was just as stable paddling cross-bow. He stays there through the next gate, building glide, leaning aggressively forward and digging super deep. On about the third stroke, the boat just takes off. Serious acceleration. I smiled and let out a yelp (while having lunch in Panera Bread), and watched that one stroke several times over. I want that kind of stability and power. Force. Acceleration. Running the boat. Things for my waterlogged brain to chew on.

On a few sections of the ASCI course, the differences between paddlers’ boat control and choice of line was significant. One of these was gate 10, a flush/upstream below a drop. Many boaters ended up spinning out above the gate (such as at 9:17 on the first video) and floundering to get back through it. I don’t know who pink helmet is, but his line (at 18:00 in the first video) seems to work very well. Pictures from the race make it obvious just how strong the water was at that point. A boater from Maryland posted these photos of the last three C1s approaching the gate.



That drop definitely would have worked me over a few times. As another racer said, “the hard part about that 10 jump was trusting your right edge while throwing your body up and then down and trying to get back on the power…” I need to learn to trust my edges in whitewater – which means time practicing in whitewater. Something I don’t have much access to in Missouri. Oh, Saint Francis, please come up fast this season! But I can start doing edge work now. Fall pool sessions begin next week, and I am excited to really get to know my C1 on a whole different level. We are going to spend plenty of time on edge and upside down.

N=kg•m/s2

What is a Newton?

It is a unit of force. Precisely, the amount of force needed to accelerate a 1 kilogram mass at a rate of 1 m/s². Which is cool, because I am all about acceleration. But to me, it's also a piece of much needed gear made by Astral Buoyancy. Astral is a relatively small company making PFDs for paddlers and sailors. They have incredible customer service (after I pointed out you couldn’t see a certain feature on a product, they posted new pictures on their website within a day), and they have stayed creative (integrating hydration, highly flexible designs, breathable foam). They are also the leading company in producing less toxic, easily recyclable foams. So, I was pretty excited to tear open the cardboard box that came in the mail and pull out my new Newton.

Slowly, I am beginning to replace my gear. I just can’t afford much right now. My slalom boat is still in need of major composite work, and my most recent duct tape patches are already useless. Loading up the boats for practice yesterday, my C1 was sandwiched next to my roommate’s K1; the beautiful carbon-kevlar repair work on her stern was quite a contrast next to my taped bow. My booties serve as paddling for my ankles, but are entirely ridiculous as footwear. One piece at a time, I guess.

a team effort

After over 12 hours of work, my friends and I finally have 30 lengths of 3/4” PVC pipe hanging from electrical fence wire. It is a huge victory. After searching all over the metro area – bushwhacking through crops of evil plants, battling 100+ degree heat, facing dead ends and no trespassing signs, shallow and polluted water, and horseflies the size of hummingbirds – we finally found a site. There is no current, but it is a definite start. I called every farm supply store in town to find a bargain on quarter mile spools of 14 guage wire and bailing twine. We hung wires once by hand, and then had to hike back in to raise them with ladders. I used the thigh straps from my boat to turn my ladder into LadderPack! a cunning invention that I decided I could sell for 2 easy payments of 9.99, and one extremely difficult payment of 3.83. You see, anything is funny after 4 hours in the St. Louis August sun.

I never could have done this without my friends. I have remarkable people in my life who paddled twine across the canal to pull wires with, loaned gear and a video camera for technique sessions, stood in bushes of scratchy, rash-inducing weed to film workouts, and tromped through thick mud on the banks of the Mississippi to watch me try and attain around barges. I am incredibly fortunate to have friends who are excited about what I am trying to do; they keep me positive instead of frustrated and overwhelmed. Thank you so much.

Each morning, I paddle out, portage a small dam, and back into the wooded area where our wires are. I pull the gates out over the stagnant water and set a course. I do a few rolls to remind my hips they need to be involved in my workout. And I get to work. I have so much work to do, but I finally have a flatwater course to help me get there.

the O-word

The Beijing Olympics begin in exactly one year, with the whitewater slalom competition taking place August 11th through the 14th, 2008. I’m already excited. Worlds is arguably a better event for actually establishing who is the best, but “the O-word” does hold a unique prestige. When I was swimming, I dreamed of competing in the lanes at Barcelona (my favorite t-shirt read "No Pain, No Spain") or Atlanta (another shirt, "No Pain, No Peaches").

US paddlers are in China right now preparing for the whitewater test event next week. Some pictures of the course are posted on Cathy Hearn's website:

http://www.cathyhearn.com/?q=gallery&g2_itemId=1295

Operation Hydration

Keeping a food long can be a little intimadating. I just finished two weeks of writing down every single thing I put in my mouth. I am not an unhealthy eater, but little things add up -- especially when certian coworkers like to feed you junk food on an hourly basis. Stressed? Eat chocolate. Trying to solve a problem? Have some cheez-its. Had a good day? Let's eat ice cream. It's 11am? Where are the cookies? I think our bike shop runs on suger and salt.

What I eat is actually all pretty healthy stuff, but there were holes I wouldn't have discovered without writing all this down. Even if I get enough water every day, for example, I tend to get dehydrated and then drink tons of water to catch up. To get me in the habit of hydrating more regularly, I wore my Camelback at work for a week. It made a huge difference. Easier to fall asleep at night, even. The footwear staff now calls me "water girl" but as far as nicknames go, I'm sure they could have come up with much worse. After all, water has a rather central role in my life.



We also learned I am not getting enough protien. Need lots of cheap protien? COSTO has 6lb bags. Hopefully all of this will help w/ muscle recovery as I ramp up the intensity of my training.

Slalom Nationals are Today!

Today, the country's best slalom athletes are all in Maryland. I am in Missouri. I am sitting at my desk at work, not even out in the sun, in my boat. It's driving me crazy.

Their webcam resolution is not very good, but I can still make out C1s and C2s warming up at the course. The racing begins today at 3pm EST.

The ASCI course is new this summer, the latest artifical course to be built in the US since the course in Charlotte opened just in time for Nationals last year. There are other possible courses on the table for many cities -- and the success, struggles, and management choices of these newer courses are being watched carefully by athletes and developers alike.

Some photos of course:
The four adjustable features
Racers practice on the course

Next year, I will be there.