Laura Egerdal

Signing Off

2011-01-10T20:16:00.004-06:00

This blog doesn't get updated anymore.

As you can read in the posts below, I spent a couple years dedicated to whitewater slalom. They were some of the best years of my life. Faced with roaring, powerful rapids, I learned that strength and speed mean nothing if you don't have balance, timing, and precision. A powerful rapid can be brutal you if you hit a line wrong. But nail the line, and you can soar effortlessly across the water. It's the most amazing feeling. I imagine it's like surfing down the face of a monster, thundering wave -- at the end of the day, it's just physics, but it feels like magic.

Unfortunately, training for whitewater slalom from mid-Missouri required great financial and personal sacrifices. They were sacrifices that I knew I could make, but ultimately decided not too. It was not an easy decision, but it was the right one for me.

Several amazing female canoeists are making great sacrafices to fight for C1W inclusion, and they are winning medals on the international stage! Their remarkable efforts deserve our support. For more information on these extraordinary women, check out www.justcanoeit.com. I promise you'll be inspired by their tenacity.

For up-to-date information on canoeing (and kayaking) in Missouri, check out www.missouriwhitewater.org and visit the message board for the latest news.

I'm grateful to everyone who gave me a place to stay, loaned me gear, or shared a tip on how to nail a tough move. I'm especially grateful to those who chased my boat downstream when I swam, and gave me encouragement when I was scared, intimidated or discouraged. The slalom racing community is an incredibly generous group of paddlers, coaches, family and friends. Thank you all.

I still paddle every chance I get -- so I'll SYOTR soon!

All my best,
Laura

Saturday on the Saint

2009-05-09T23:38:00.000-05:00

Amazing day on the Saint Francis. 33 inches. 68 degrees. Best day ever. :)

I hadn't paddled the Saint for a long time, and she welcomed me back with a flip and a swim I probably deserved for my long absence (this was 30 seconds into the run on completely flat water). But the rest of the day was a blast. I found my edges, found my power, and absolutely loved the pushy water. I hope we still have water next weekend.

Cap City Adventure Race

2009-05-04T22:30:00.004-05:00

A great day and a great race. We came in first in the coed division and 8th overall. PDF of results here:

http://www.capcityadventure.com/Results_By_Division.pdf

The race was 80% biking, with trail running, canoeing, and "mystery events" thrown in. Technical mountain biking was definitely the slowest part of the race for me, but the canoeing section was our secret weapon. I'm excited to bike more this summer and build some speed. Next year I think we can take the whole thing!

there's no stress relief like a surf wave

2008-10-26T00:01:00.011-05:00

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)

2008-10-22T19:20:00.006-05:00

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.

2008-10-10T23:27:00.002-05:00

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

2008-10-06T18:25:00.005-05:00

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

2008-03-21T19:32:00.002-05:00

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

2008-03-12T21:52:00.002-05:00

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!

2008-03-09T21:08:00.007-05:00

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

2008-03-07T23:14:00.003-06:00

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

2008-02-27T13:51:00.004-06:00

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

2008-02-26T13:08:00.000-06:00

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.

San Marcos Olympic Qualifier

2008-02-18T13:11:00.001-06:00

3 days in Texas + 3 Missouri Girls = serious fun!

Yesterday was the San Marcos Olympic qualifier. Di and JoJo were wonderful enough to join me on my trip south. After getting the Big Red Van out of the snow and ice in Ironton, we drove all night through Texarkana towards Dallas. We arrived in San Marcos early Friday afternoon with enough time for everyone to get on the water. Di and JoJo explored upriver while I jumped right on the slalom course.

Saturday was rainy and "cold." All the locals were complaining about the temps in the upper 50's. The water temp was a constant 72 degrees, which made steam rise dramatically up from the whitewater. JoJo and Di went on a long paddle (7+ miles) with some Texas friends, while I trained all day in the rain with friends from Colorado and Charlotte. Big storms came through -- went sent them on to Missouri to fill up the Saint Francis.

The course featured a drop with a sizable hole below it. As a righty C1, I was comfortable getting in the hole and ferrying across on my onside, but getting into the hole on my offside (bracing on the cross) freaked my out! My goal for the weekend was to get though that hole on my cross. The first few times I dropped in from river left I immediately got flipped. With some great advice and encouragement (thanks, Chris) I nailed the move a few times.

JoJo in the hole:

Sunday was warm and sunny. I came in 3rd in the C1 class in the race. I still felt slow and sloppy compared to where I want to be, but I am improving each time. Next weekend is Glacier Breaker on the Nantahala, which promises to be a much colder race. The 72 degree water was awesome. It's much easier to push myself when flipping feels like taking a bath!

Thanks so much to Di and Jo for coming with me! They both had their own reasons for going to Texas, but the trip was so much more fun with three.

under construction

2008-02-08T20:05:00.000-06:00

You may have noticed my webpage looks, um, a little out of wack. That's because I am working on an overhaul -- I am going to move from www.blogger.com to start publishing my own feed. This will give me more flexibility to post pictures, video, and other content on my site.

So expect more soon. I have been learning a lot about webpages over the past few weeks, and I still have more to learn a few more bugs to work out before I am ready to switch everything over.

For a recent website overhaul that looks fantastic, visit the new www.missouriwhitewater.org!!!!

Yes, this is a canoe!

2008-02-03T13:30:00.000-06:00

Although most people who paddle the 39-gallon Skip are sitting on their butts, this boat converts easily into a C1 if you install a pedestal instead of a seat. Just like my race boat, I am on my knees and using a single-bladed paddle.

This tiny playboat feels radically different compared to any other canoe I have ever been in! The short, low-volume ends mean I can really throw the boat around. Right now I don't have much control, so in the pool I was playing, flipping end over end with my bow or stern pointing up towards the ceiling and almost always landing upside down. It was easy to roll up, but at least half the time I would propel myself past the balance point and flip over to the other side. Fun stuff.

Another Skip was my first true love as a kayak. I borrowed it from a friend, and I swam out of it repeatedly on my first few river runs. I was quickly drawn to canoes and long, sleek slalom boats -- but the funny, little playboat remained a favorite. My family called it "tiggerfish" because it clearly liked to bounce around (not to mention the bright orange color). I sent it back to my friend once I was able to buy a boat of my own (the EZ). Now, a year later, I discovered another friend had a Skip that wasn't seeing much use. Except this time the hull was set up as a canoe! Excellent! I promised to give it some love an return it better outfitted than it was before, and drove back to St. Louis with it on my roof.

I think this boat will be great for my training. I rarely have access to much whitewater, so a boat this small will test my balance in other ways. Goofing around and learning tricks will teach me rotation and power. And being upside down so often will hopefully lock in my roll as a immediate, reflexive response.

This is going to be fun!

Pool Slalom

2008-01-27T22:30:00.000-06:00

The C1W time to beat was set by Carolyn Peterson in Texas in 2001, 114.2 (open age class). My fastest raw time (w/o penalties) was just over 115 -- although I did touch three gates giving me an overall time of just over 121. Pool slalom records are online here. The C1W record is 132% of the men's record of 86.1 set by Davey Hearn in 1998.

The event was hosted by the Missouri Whitewater Association this morning. In the event, 5 gates are hung over an ordinary pool. Each racer has to do three laps, with a specific pattern of upstream turns, s-turns, and offsets (diagram of the course here). Because it is the one slalom event that has a exact, reproducible course it is also the only event where it is possible to compare times nationally and track records. I raced C1W, C2W, K1W, and OC1W, although I obviously focused my energy on my C1 runs.

It was a good day. I still feel sloppy and slow at times, but my progress has been consistent. Events like this help me to see it. I am looking forward to racing on whitewater next month!

Thank you to all the MWA members who
volunteered to set up and run the event!

canoe women down under

2008-01-27T22:15:00.000-06:00

This is a picture of Rosalyn Lawrence, a kayaker from Australia. Notice anything unusual? That's right! She's in a canoe! Rosalyn threw down a great pair of C1 runs in Australian Nationals at Penrith this past weekend. I was thrilled to see a C1W class. Nationals were held in conjunction with the qualifier heats for the first 2008 Canoe World Series race (www.canoeworldseries.com), where Rosalyn placed 6th in women's K1.

This was the first major race of the 2008 season, and several American athletes were there to see how they would stack up after their winter training. Many are working towards the Beijing Olympics in August -- the US Team Trials will be held in late April in Charlotte, NC to determine who will get to go.

Not surprisingly, Tony Estanguet (FRA), Robin Bell (AUS), and Michal Martikan (SVK) were the top three C1s. Bell performed extremely well on his home course. Estanguet and Martikan continued their battle for the top spot which has been ongoing for years. More than a decade after his Olympic gold in 1996, Martikan remains one of the dominant forces in slalom canoeing. Estanguet won the gold in 2000 and 2004, and his performances are very consistent. So, let's just say Beijing is going to be very interesting. Benn Fraker (USA) was paddling his brand-new canoe designed in partnership with iTomCo. Apparently he is getting used the the new hull with a solid 6th-place finish. Also from the US, Jeff Larimer placed 13th and Eric Amason placed 18th.

Full results, including C2 and men's and women's K1, are posted here: http://australianopen.canoeworldseries.com/en/results

Dental Work on a Whale

2008-01-27T20:47:00.000-06:00

I looked the part. It sounded just like a major cavity was being bored out. Heck, it even smelled damp. But I was not doing dental work on a whale! With my head and arms totally inside the boat, the noise and dust from my dremel reverberating around me, it really felt like I was.

I was actually grinding out chunks of foam and old contact cement so I could install carbon hip blocks in my new boat.

The Lizard had been good to me so far. The outfitting installed by its first owner did not need much modification. I raised the pedestal up to 3.5 inches. While still very low for me, having my center of gravity so close to the center of buoyancy really changes how the boat responds to me. It will be an ongoing experiment, I am sure. One thing is certain, this boat is a far better fit for me than the galasport I was in.

More pictures of the Lizard:
the installed mad dog hip blocks
new boat on top of my car
in my one bedroom apartment, boat storage is also part of the decor

Ten Things I Did This Winter

2008-01-25T15:11:00.000-06:00

It has been almost 2 months since my last entry, and so much has changed. The beginning of 2008 is already a stark contrast to my life last year. I have a new job and a new home, both major transitions that have been a long time coming. But I still have the same friends challenging me to dig a little deeper, and the same loving family to laugh with at the end of the day. And I always have my boat and my paddle; my muscles and the water. What more could a girl want?

I honestly had no idea how many people were reading this blog until I stopped posting for a month. Missouri paddlers I hardly knew where asking me when I was going to update. I am both humbled and flattered by the interest. I am deeply passionate about racing, but because almost all of my practices are alone, I feel as though I am by myself in a bubble. The interest of others in my efforts and in whitewater slalom is extremely motivating; thank you.

So here, by popular demand and in no particular order, are ten things that have happened to me since I last posted! Now that the holidays have passed, expect more to be coming soon. The MWA Pool Slalom is this weekend! And qualifier races around the country start in just three weeks!

(click on pictures to enlarge)

1. Paddled the Saint Francis River

Unfortunately, I have only done this once. Last year, I had already been on about 10 times by early-January! That was my first year paddling, and it seems I got spoiled by consistent high water. Long chats with friends over a fire at D-bridge were wonderful times, and I was looking forward to them this winter. The river has been too low so far this season (USGS graph) except briefly in early December. I will keep watching the weather reports for rain and keep my gear ready to go! Perhaps, by a strange stroke of luck, we will have water for the races. Here's hoping.

2. Found the Limits of my "Truck"

My friends know that I call my toyota corolla my little truck. It has survived the Rockies, hauled hundreds of pounds of lumber, and faithfully delivered my boats to race after race. Sometimes, I forget it is only a light weight, 2-wheel-drive sedan. Looking for the put-in of a river, I drove over some iced-over wheel ruts from construction vehicles. Crack! As my wheels broke the ice, I discovered they were deceptively deep! I was stuck. My wheels just spun, shooting a jet of muck into the air. I decided I would have to jack up the car and put large branches under the wheels to move. I was muddy and frustrated. Rather than get angry, I just took my boat and walked the rest of the way to the river. After a fantastic hour on the water, I returned to find a family, out for a walk, examining my car (it looked pretty obviously dumb once the ice melted). They helped push me out and I was on my way!

3. Trained at the USNWC

Christmas Day, around 3pm, I said goodbye to my family and hit the road. After a year watching video of the whitewater center in Charlotte, NC, I would finally have a chance to paddle there. This was by far the biggest water I have tackled in a slalom C1. I absolutely loved it and I cannot wait to return. I am very jealous of my friends who have the opportunity to train on this water regularly.

I struggled with my roll during the week. Not the physical skill -- I had trouble staying calm upside down in water that I was so intimidated by. At the end of the week, I had nailed a few combat rolls and I was running the top half of the competition channel comfortably. I never ran the bottom drop, the largest rapid on the course. I made obvious progress during the week, but not as much as I would like. I am looking forward to returning soon. Below the bridge.

4. Graceland, Graceland

...Memphis, Tennessee! Christmas was spent at my Grandparents' home, surrounded by family. It was a wonderful holiday. When you get all three siblings together (which does not happen often enough) it is guaranteed to be a blast! We made great food, laughed until the late hours of the night, and shared family stories. The chance to spend time with my Grandparents and my mother was priceless.

I also had a chance to workout on the Wolf River in Germantown, Tennessee, which actually had a few eddies. After freeing a trapped basketball, volleyball, and soccer ball from a strainer, I invented a new game called "stern ball" where you race around the balls in a triangle as they float downriver, alternately sinking your stern below them or lifting your bow above them. Good fun.

5. One Bedroom, Second Floor

On January 1st, I officially moved back in to the city of St. Louis! This puts me closer to work, friends, Forest Park, the Mississippi, downtown, and the FPCC pool class. I feel like I am in the center of everything and it is delightful. Here is the first thing I moved in.

I have never lived completely on my own before; I have always had at least one (or as many as 5) roommates. I love having my own space! I can get up when I want, cook what I want, and keep it as clean (or not) as I want, and I am only accountable to myself. I have thought for years that living alone was something I wanted to do at some point in my life and I am grateful for the opportunity to do so. Because I am not in a point in my life where I can have a puppy, I bought a plant and named it Spot. We are still working on "fetch," but it has "sit" totally perfected.

6. Paddled a Torpedo Log

...aka Down River C1. This boat was tippy! I also did not fit in it, and had to crouch in front of the hipblocks and pedestal in order to get in. This boat is designed for speed in whitewater. Racers sprint down a course as quickly as possible, choosing whatever line they think will be the fastest. I think paddling a DR C1 and a sprint (high-kneel) C1 would be great cross-training for me. It was such a strange creature under my knees, twitchy and responsive so differently that my squat little slalom boat. It clearly craved speed, but I never really figured out how to turn it. At least I didn't fall out into the Catawba River.

7. Took a Nap on the Road

Quite literally. On my way back to St. Louis, in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee, traffic suddenly stopped on highway 40. There was light snow falling, and the temperature had dropped significantly that evening. After 20 minutes of not moving at all, trucks began to turn off their lights and park on the highway. I hopped out and knocked on the cab of the nearest 18-wheeler. The driver told me 2 semis had jack-knifed and flipped on the highway a few miles ahead. It might be hours before we moved. So I thanked him, parked my car in the left lane, lay back my seat, and took a long nap. Oh, and I had a whitewater boat in my car. A boat that had been stored outside for months and I was sure was full of spiders waiting to crawl out once I turned off the lights. But suddenly it was an hour later. The rumble of truck engines woke me up, and finally we began to inch forward. Also on the road: a giant peach.

8. Smashed my Stern in the M-Wave

The course in Charlotte recreated the M-Wave in all its shallow nastiness. Before my week there, I had never been really stuck in a hole before. In Charlotte I was - intentionally, unintentionally, right-side up, and upside down. We got all the bases covered. Halfway through the week, I flipped and swam out of the hole at the m-wave. Unlike a paddler earlier that morning, I got out with only scraped knuckles. My boat was not so lucky. The stern got crunched, and the seam tape along 3 feet of the bow blew apart. Ugly. Some good friends helped me repair my boat that evening (thanks, guys!) so I could finish up an important paper I was working on. I was back on the water the next day.

9. Put a Suit Back On

The new year also brought a new job for me, and a return to politics. Now I am one of those people who is actually in the field of their college degree (a small minority among my friends). I am thrilled to be back doing work I care so deeply about. For now, this means focusing on healthcare legislation in Missouri and plenty of drives to Jefferson City, our state capitol, 2.5 hours away from St. Louis. I am working alongside other intelligent, passionate people, and I can already feel the fervent buzz of energy building around the election this fall. This is going to be a lot of hard work, and a lot of fun.

10. Family Visits

So, I show up last Friday, thinking I am going out on a date, and there is my little sister! She lives 9 hours to the north in Minneapolis, and drove down just to surprise me. Thankfully, she coordinated with my friends to pick a weekend that would be open. It worked out perfectly; it was a fantastic few days! Having Jenna around is always a grand adventure. We had a few mis-adventures as well, but what would a weekend with a sister be without them?! I have only grown closer to my sister and brother over the years and it rocks.

My Dad and Tess also visited me the weekend before to bring me some furniture they did not need from Detroit, where they live. The furniture really filled up my empty apartment (I was using boxes and boats as chairs and tables). It was great to have them come stay with me, and they really helped me settle in to my new home. Even if the trailer my Dad borrowed looked like a giant metal robot or something!

morning workouts

2007-11-28T19:17:00.000-06:00

My time in Durango flew by way too quickly, and suddenly Missouri's 45 degree mornings feel balmy compared to the last week in the mountains. I miss the mountains.

I had a lot of big questions I wanted to sort out in Durango. I got a couple of them answered, realized I'm not ready to answer one of them, and may have discovered the answers to a few questions I didn't know I had. But most importantly, I was able to relax and just train. It is something my mind and body both love, to be able to focus so completely on one thing. Now I am back home with 30 things to juggle.

I hope I can translate the momentum I found in Durango back to life in the 'lou.

kansas, the rockies, and on to durango...

2007-11-18T19:13:00.000-06:00

Finally, I'm rolling west. Kansas sucks up time, it always does. I slept in Hayes, KS for 8 hours! My back hurts. Here is a self portrait of me and kansas (here!) don't ask. Driving got interesting once there were mountains. Wolf Creek pass was some challenging driving, but I passed through after dark and could not take in the view. But I could sense the mountains, barely silhouetted against the moonlight sky, sliding along side me in the dark, giant and black. But I arrived safely in Durango around 9pm, Saturday the 17th. I will be here for 9 wonderful days of paddling hard, eating, napping, paddling hard, eating, paddling, taking ibuprofen, sleeping, eating, paddling... you get the picture. i am here to work very hard.

a few photos from the US Olympic Training Complex in Colorado Springs:
happy, muscle-bounds statues
Lifting the globe seems easy after winning this gold medal
Mountains on the horizon through the olympic rings

How's paddling? Great. Exhausting. Recovery Hot Chocolate (here) is amazing.

Must sleep now. More soon.

fresh paint

2007-11-18T19:05:00.000-06:00

My deck has a new layer of paint and a fresh gel coat. Stern will be done in a few weeks. It finally feels like my boat; I am so happy with it. More photos:

Taping outlines of the stripes
A nice coat of lime green
View from the stern once it's done

If I even need to attend an 80's themed paddling event, my boat will be ready! Thanks, Caroyln, for letting me use your backyard!

GAF at the Nantahala

2007-10-31T18:14:00.000-05:00

I know! I haven't posted in forever! Well, I finally got my laptop battery fixed so expect a little more from me now. But my training hasn't missed a beat. Here are a few clips from last weekend in North Carolina.

Last Ditch Video

2007-10-04T18:06:00.000-05:00

The quality is poor, but it's something:

Thanks to Gary for the generous use of his video camera, and to Kyle for filming my runs!!!

Ouch

2007-09-25T13:19:00.000-05:00

Looks like I may be out of my boat for a week or so until I can bend my knee again. My mountain bike threw me off, and joint met rock with my whole body weight flying behind it. I am grateful my wrists and shoulders weren't involved. My body heals fast, I just need to give it the time and rest to let it do its thing.

I have a lot of momentum in my training right now. At this point, the 5 month off-season feels like a big window of possibility. I am sure I will be singing a slightly different tune when it is below freezing and my gear is still wet from the night before. Then I will rely on my commitment to my sport, whether or not I am feeling motivated. But right now I am really feeling motivation -- a strong, irresistible drive to get in my boat and feel powerful.

Slalom Worlds wrapped up this weekend in Brazil: http://cbca.org.br/foz2007/english/index.php

I had a fun week following paddlers' blogs and live results online throughout the semifinals and finals. This is a difficult sport to follow in the US -- but live results and finally knowing more about individual athletes has captivated my interest.

I never posted this picture, and I love it. On the way to a workout a few weeks ago, I stopped to fill up with gas. There was a dinosaur. So I put my camera on autotimer and set it on my trunk, and chased the big green lizard down.

Last Ditch Slalom Results

2007-09-16T13:02:00.000-05:00

Look at that posture! I think this is the first picture of me
in a race where I am leaning forward aggressively.

Last race of the year. I have been racing for 5 months now, and I got in a C1 for the first time only 4 months ago. I did 5 races this summer, and trained on the water for over 100 hours. My first season has come to a close.

I came to the Wolf River wanting tangible proof of my progress. I wanted to win, but more importantly, I wanted to feel like I am becoming an athlete again.

The race went well. There were no magic moments -- no runs where suddenly I could access my full potential and nailed every move. But I'm not sure I want that kind of progress. I am getting better, slowly, and there is plenty of room to grow. I can feel potential, buzzing below the surface. I want it, badly. But there aren't any shortcuts.

I won C1W and K1W rec. It felt good to beat women who'd be beating me all summer. I actually raced. And I renewed my drive and motivation for a long fall and winter's worth of training.

Most importantly, I took home a golden cow! This is the Buttercup Slalom Series, after all. I had a great time at all of the races in this series this summer. I met wonderful, supportive, and hilarious people. I borrowed C1s, K1s, C2s, and open canoes to race in. I made great friends who I will miss this winter.

carbon fiber boat repair, take one

2007-09-11T12:31:00.000-05:00

Over labor day weekend, my boat finally got a repair job more permanent than duct tape. I learned how to use resin, carbon fiber, and kevlar cloth to patch the cracks and rebuild the bow and stern.

Check out last 11 pictures in this set:

Boat Damage & Repair

Finally, I can paddle in the Mississippi without worrying that an alligator gar (this one was pulled out of the mighty miss' in 1910) will come rip off my duct tap patch causing my boat to sink in a matter of minutes.

Excitement from the repair work gave me the momentum to redo my outfitting. New knee and ankle pads were put in to give me some more squish and grip. To get my weight forward, I added a back pad. The new foam hip pads are not quite big enough, but provide much better contact with the boat. I used contact cement to anchor this all in. After ambitiously lowering my pedestal another 1", my boat looks ready to go. We'll have to see if my ankles can handle all this.

All done! For now, anyway... I am starting to realize that boat repair is never done when you own a composite boat.

and the skies open up...

2007-09-08T12:30:00.000-05:00

I haven't stared at a gauge this much since last winter, and this time my staring actually seems to be working. It's been bottomed out all summer -- our one local whitewater gem is rain fed and shrinks to a trickle during the dry summer months. But with more ran in the forecast, the Saint may actually hit boatable levels this weekend! Which is killing me. I work all day, every single day, until I leave town on Wednesday night. I want nothing more than to get back on the Saint right now. With all our new hires and training needs this fall, my job is not flexible. Frustrating.

Click here for a live gauge of the Saint's level. Boatable aka "zero inches" is usually around 3 feet on this gauge. Click here for precip tables.

Now you know what I stare at all day.

Of course the Wolf, where I will be next weekend, is staying low. Its gauge is online here. The upper midwest has been getting buckets of rain this month, but it hasn't quite been far north enough to hit the Wolf.

some honesty

2007-08-25T19:07:00.000-05:00

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:

powerhouse

standing at the put-in

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

2007-08-16T19:49:00.000-05:00

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

2007-08-13T02:02:00.000-05:00

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

2007-08-12T17:14:00.000-05:00

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.

http://www.joelmccune.com/node/141

US Slalom Nationals

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

2007-08-12T13:14:00.000-05:00

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

2007-08-12T12:26:00.001-05:00

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

2007-08-10T16:35:00.000-05:00

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

2007-08-06T21:06:00.001-05:00

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!

2007-08-03T21:31:00.000-05:00

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.

Duct Tape Hull Repair, Take 3

2007-07-31T14:26:00.000-05:00

Once dessert was baking in the oven, the C1 was brought up to the living room for its long overdue re-taping. You see, I haven't been in my boat in almost a week. Time to eliminate my excuse and get back on the water.

We pulled the last duct tape job off to thoroughly investigate the damage. I knew where it was leaking, but wanted to know how much of the structure was gone at those spots. The stern and bow are in pretty sorry shape, as is the cockpit rim in several sections. There are also two cracks in the hull, about 3 feet back from the cockpit.

Photos of the damage are online here.

My duct tape technique is improving. Who needs carbon fiber, right? First, I put on a layer of tape to seal off the hole & provide some structure. Plastic knives work wonders for bracing sections of cracked cockpit rim. I then use a plastic bag (Ziploc heavy-duty freezer bags are awesome) cut to size over the damage. They fit snugly over the bow and stern. I then add a second layer of tape over this, rubbing it on to ensure a good bond.

It is a lot of work for something I keep doing over & over again, but it’s worth it. When I took off the Mississippi after an hour session this morning, I didn’t even have a liter of water in the boat (normally I get a liter every 15 minutes). We’ll see how long this try holds up.

Cycling Mis-Adventures

2007-07-28T13:56:00.000-05:00

By car, I live about 20 miles from work. Via bike, it shouldn’t be more than 25 or 27. I woke up this morning thinking about my neglected bianchi. It had been days since I’ve done any intense physical activity, and my body was telling me in no uncertain terms that it needed some. Badly.

I finally found my road shoes while unpacking this weekend, and so decided it was about time I started riding to work. I had ridden home once before – but after an unplanned rugby game on the way home, and the subsequent hanging out – it was dark, late and not much fun. I also discovered that the Dougherty Ferry bridge across 270 is gone. But I digress.

Today I gave myself an hour and a half to get to work. Plenty of time. I don’t have internet at my house (um, or a map) so couldn’t double check my route, but I assumed I would figure it out.

The city is very different than the county. I keep realizing this in different ways the more time I spend in Ballwin. In the city, if I have a cardinal direction, I can get anywhere. The layout of streets makes sense to me. The county is a curvy, windy mess.

So, long story short, I went the wrong way. When the road I thought was clayton dead-ended into a highway and I realized the sun was not in my eyes but rather over my right shoulder, I sheepishly called a friend. She gave me directions and offered a ride, but I was determined to get myself out of this mess. She showed up anyway -- found me sweaty and peddling down Clayton road near Ballas. At least I was heading east. Setting my pride aside for a moment, my quads were happy to see her. Thanks, Michele.

I get to try again as I bike home tonight. Perhaps this time I will look at a map first. I'm frustrated about being late to work, but my body is loving this. Last year I had done close to 5,000 miles on my bike by August, this year I am not even at 1,000. It's good to be back on two wheels.

rough week

2007-07-26T15:27:00.001-05:00

Every thing is going right and yet I still feel awful. One of those times were you have to just keep being productive, and assume your psyche will get itself in gear within a day or two.

I'm not unpacked yet, and that isn't helping. No internet at the new house so I'm not posting frequently, sorry. I don't have all that much on my plate, really, but with training and work taking up about 98% of my time, I feel overwhelmed by all the little things that pile up so quickly. And trying to kick the mild caffeine addiction at the same time doesn't help either.

So -- I'm here, I'm still paddling, and more stories are on their way soon.

subido pics

2007-07-16T23:40:00.000-05:00

James Subido has posted his pictures from Colorado here. They are mostly shots of talented kids tearing it up at the Junior Olympic races. There are some really great moments -- definitely worth looking through. Thanks, James!

the search begins

2007-07-16T09:18:00.000-05:00

There has to be a decent training site within 30 minutes of my house. There just has to be. I live near the confluence of three major rivers, a junction of waterways that collectively drain a watershed of over one million square miles. The Mississippi clocks by Saint Louis at a healthy pace of 168,000 cubic feet per second. I'm not asking much -- I don't need whitewater -- I just want a place where I can hang a few dozen gates over some current. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Yesterday I drove and paddled all day, investigating sites on 4 rivers and 2 creeks. I found a small river that looked promising, except it was in a clearly residential area. I thought I would at least stop and chat w/ some of the folks (let them know why I was repeatedly driving down their street at 5mph, staring at the water) and ask if they had any ideas. But, for a Sunday afternoon, there was no one around. One house had small building in front. 8 bar stools circled a small open-air bar, which appeared to be well stocked. The sign read "tiki bar, OPEN" but no one was around. A cat sat on the bartender's stool, watching me expectantly. When I drove by 10 minutes later, he was still there. Clearly, the bar was his territory.

Later in the day, I did find two potential sites. Both of which have major drawbacks.

"Site A" is 5 minutes from my house, a nice bonus. It's extremely coach friendly; there's practically a raised viewing platform. The area is small, only about 30 feet wide and long enough to hang 10 gates. It would be easy to hang gates here. There is no current to speak of. Huge fish. My biggest concern with the site is the water depth. It is just barely deep enough as is, and it has dropped nearly 5 feet since I first investigated a month ago. I worry it will keep getting shallower over the summer.

"Site B" was an adventure. 40 min from my current house, and access is terrible. Deep into mega-industry land, it is impossible to get here without trespassing. I need to see if I can put on the Mississippi upstream and paddle down. The shore is not coach friendly -- my friends will need to invest in big rubber boots and a machete to get through the brush. The size is perfect, long enough to hang 30 gates, and wide enough to set many combinations. The width between the tree lines does mean it will be a huge pain to set gates, but it is do-able. 6+ feet deep right now. I know the level fluctuates, and I have seen it much lower, but I have better hopes for this site than site A.

And now for my biggest concern - the water quality is AWFUL. Unchecked industrial pollution and the outflow from a wastewater treatment plant means I would never want to get splashed by the stuff. The best part through, is the proximity to the Mississippi. I can go play in the waves. That is really good for me - to have something moving the hull around besides myself. Interaction of forces. Good.

So I am going to keep looking; no winners yet. The search resumes today.

twelve days on the front range

2007-07-13T23:45:00.000-05:00

I swear the Rocky Mountains have their own gravitational pull. It's good I-70 is basically downhill all the way to the mississippi river, otherwise I'm not sure I would have made it back.

All the races took place in Golden, just east of the front range. The weather was amazing. Hot, but without St. Louis' you-can-cut-the-air-with-a-knife humidity. The water was snowmelt, and swims were a shock to the system. I swam out of my C1 several times in the first few days.

In US Cup 3, I finished with a DNF after a swim at gate 10. The course was actually a great level for me. Clearly challenging, but not overwhelming. I set my sights on the race the following weekend.

During the week, I had a chance to travel west into the mountains. We ran brown's canyon on the Ark. It was stunning, and was wonderful to just run a river. As usual, it left me hungry for much, much more. I also got a chance to scout a few of the famous class V colorado creeks... I'd never seen whitewater like that before in my life. Incredible. I was able to train on a course in Salida, and on gates hung on the Platte River in downtown Denver. Several Junior Olympic events also took place during the week. A highlight was watching the cadet and junior C1 playboats rock the hole with pirouettes and even a phonics monkey. Okay, I don't really know what that is. But it looked very cool.

By the second weekend, I'd figured a few things out. I was in a different boat, and comfortable on the water. Staying upright was no longer my biggest concern -- I wanted to race! But on my first run, I reverted back to old habits. I waited for stability on my stern; I wasn't really racing.

My second run was better. Much better. My raw time dropped from 231.70 to 198.30. I got on my bow. I drove the boat. I raced. The was a magic moment just before gate 16, three quarters of the way down the course. For just a few seconds, I was in control enough that I could accelerate the way I'd been doing on flatwater all week. My abs, quads, and back all poured power into my stoke. I came into gate 16 tight, turned up through it, and peeled back out with my eyes already on 17. The moment was brief, but it was a glimpse of where I could be heading. I'm hungry for more of that. I believe the word might be autotelic. Addicting. Maybe they are the same thing.

The trip was truly made amazing by the kindness and generosity of the paddling community. I stay in the house of a family I had never met, and was welcomed like an old friend. I received advice from coaches and athletes from all over the country. This is the atmosphere slalom needs to nurture and build off of. I am so glad I decided to travel here.

More colorado photos are here.

Taz mania?

2007-07-13T19:29:00.000-05:00

Who knew that 25 lbs of carbon-kevlar could get a girl this excited?

I am nothing short of ecstatic. The asparagus boat has been very good to me, but I am already outgrowing it. When I paddle this boat, I can feel potential. It has edges that I can't wait to get to know & use.

Of course, it's only new to me. The previous owner paddled it hard, and there is a lot to fix. The bow and stern both need major repair, there are several cracks in the hull, and the seam tape (between the deck and the hull) needs to be replaced. The biggest obstacle, however, was the seat.

Quite honestly, my butt didn't quite fit. And that hurt. After the first day I had some pretty amazing bruises where the hip supports dug into me. The boat felt so much better on the water than the green boat - I was determined to paddle it - but I paid for it. After one particularly rough wet-exit (I ended up with bruises the size of baseballs on both legs), my friend Laura (aka LA) told me we had to do something that night.

So we did. Nic, Joel and I took turns grinding the seat out. After trying a few different powertools and sacrificing a few inches of cockpit rim, we finally got it all. Dust and shavings were everywhere. Some toxic, epoxy cloud had come to snow all over my boat.

With help, I built a foam pedestal. After paddling other C1s during the week (like joel's and tom's, I had a good idea of what I wanted. I reinforced the busted cockpit rim with strips of hard plastic, and put duct tape over the cracks in the hull. It still needs a lot of work, but it was ready to get on the water.

Paddling the Taz post gut-rehab was totally different. Instead of being strapped on top of a boat (thereby balancing "on" it), we were connected. My lower body relaxed. I relaxed.

I realized that this could get dangerously fun.

Click here for the rest of the Taz pictures.

Finally!

2007-07-13T11:31:00.000-05:00

After several hours in city hall, my plates are finally renewed! I spent a fair bit of time here, back in the days when my life revolved around city politics. It was a little strange and bittersweet to be wandering the same halls. I can vividly remember pacing outside the mayor's office, nervously smoothing the front of my suit for the thousandth time, and wondering just how obvious it was that I was only 22. I think I miss that life more than I realize.

video from Colorado

2007-07-12T12:44:00.000-05:00

Joel threw together some footage of me working on a ferry in Salida, CO:

http://www.joelmccune.com/node/118

This was about halfway through the trip. When I show up in the blue C1, it is my first time ever in that boat. Getting our love / hate relationahip off to a great start, I ended up with several bruises from the seat which did not fit.

I have actually written a trip report from colorado (including some great pictures) but my laptop hasn't been connected to the interent since I've returned to St. Louis. Hopefully by the end of the week it will all be posted!

get off your stern and paddle

2007-07-12T11:43:00.000-05:00

When I am racing slalom, my reaction to instability gets me into trouble. When I feel out of control, I tense up and wait for the boat to stabilize before I continue. The problem is, slalom boats aren't happy when they are going slower than the water. My habit only makes things worse; the water grabs the edges and I loose momentum. What I need to do when I feel unstable is paddle aggressively forward. Getting on the bow, building up speed, and driving ahead will stabilize the boat almost instantly. That needs to become my habit, my gut reaction.

I was thinking about this as I waited in the St. Louis County Department of Revenue office today -- studying the other folks in the room, clutching a little slip printed with "247," which told me I only had 6 people in front of me. My friends know that I have a remarkable ability to procrastinate, often on the things that are most important to me. I think here I also "wait and see" -- when I feel out of control or overwhelmed, my habit is to shy away from the action until I feel better. This doesn't mean I won't jump headlong into big challenges, it just means that sometimes I'm caught sitting back on my stern when things get pushy.

And that's not okay. I don't want to be a "wait and see" boater and I certainly don't want to live my life that way. When things get unstable, I need to be on my bow, looking ahead & driving forward.

Today was rough. I tend to function well when my life is very full, but not *this* full. My to-do list has about 30 pretty urgent things on it. I can get some done online, but no internet at my new house yet. Plus, my laptop needs a new battery, and won't function without the powercord, which is in my car, which is in the shop. Just after fixing the left headlight and blinker, the right goes out, getting me pulled over so the cop can also see my plates are expired. So I spent hours and hours today getting sent from office to office because apparently moving from the county to the city and back while trying to pay personal property taxes is a very dumb idea. And everything I own is still packed in boxes, making the search for my car’s title a small archeological expedition. And my boat leaks. And my shoulders hurt and this really scares me because I’m putting other parts of my life on hold for a sport in which my butt is still getting whooped by 14 year-olds.

Okay, done whining. I needed to vent, and more importantly, crush my blog's image as a "upbeat school newsletter" (Hi, Dave!). Life is actually quite fabulous. Once I am unpacked and get a few nights with a full 8 hours of sleep, constantly-optimistic Laura should be back in full force.

it just doesn't get any better than this

2007-07-04T09:34:00.000-05:00

too much to do to spend time typing!

colorado

2007-06-29T00:21:00.000-05:00

I made it! Seeing mountains again is incredible.

The course will be challenging for me (two swims today) but a great place to push myself this week.

I'm exhausted & need sleep. But I will have daily internet access, so hopefully race updates won't take to long to post.

Photos from Age Group Nationals!

2007-06-22T21:59:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Joel Ness, my clean lines, mistakes, and swims are all well-documented:

Focusing in on gate 11
A young C2 team digs together
Scott and his new Loco head down the course
and I'm out of the boat
Hailey launches into 210 drop
Ready with a right brace
Hailey plants a graceful bow draw
My green boat gets a rescue
the C2 women fire it up
power through the up
ready to punch 210 drop
a good line down tongue drop

View all the photos from the weekend

got those Corolla blues

2007-06-20T19:35:00.000-05:00

So my car is well overdue for a new belt and tensioner. Therefore, of course, the part is on back-order nationwide. There is one in Ohio; that's about it.

It should get here and be installed just in time for my drive west, but until then I won't have a car. But I am supposed to be moving to a new house this weekend! And training on the lake out in west county. And helping with sales set-up at REI.

This is not going to be a fun week.

now we're rollin'

2007-06-19T19:20:00.000-05:00

Jojo waded into the Carlton reservoir to hold my paddle as I practiced my hipsnaps. About 15 minutes later, I was coming up on my own. I think my brain had reverted back to a kayak roll torso movement, and the c1 is totally different.

While I can get myself up in a lake, trying the roll in whitewater wasn't successful. I think I fight the water too much as I try to set up for the roll -- pushing my paddle and the boat through the current in order to get into the position I am used to starting in. Hopefully I can tune this up over the next week before I head to Colorado.

Here's some video a friend took of me this morning. This one was pretty smooth:

But this try wasn't as successful. You can see how much my boat moves on the water as I set up. When my rolling motion isn't strong and clean, I end up bracing my paddle very deep to get enough leverage to get up:

Age Group Nationals

2007-06-18T20:16:00.000-05:00

1st place - C1W (I was the only one in the class)
2nd place - K1W overall (1st in my age group)

On Thursday and Friday, I only trained in my kayak. I never quite got comfortable on the larger drops, and I assumed I'd swim out of my C1 at least once. I thought I would put it off until the milder Buttercup race on Sunday.

Then, Friday night, I had a thought. I was paddling way out on the reservoir, chilling out with the loons and watching the sunset. Registration was closed, and no other women had registered for C1! If I could just make it down the course, I would win the event. I had nothing to loose. If I swam, so be it.

The next morning, I spoke with the race director, Randy, and added C1 to my registration. I am so glad that I did. This felt like my first "real" slalom race. Big, pushy water, really amazing athletes, sexy new composite boats. I am so glad that I pushed myself -- it means I will be one step father along when I get to Golden in a couple of weeks.

Everyday got better -- over the weekend, the water somehow morphed from terrifying to exhilarating; the gates went from impossible to wonderfully challenging. At the Buttercup race on Sunday, Hailey (an amazing 13 year-old from Wisconsin) had a great run in her glass C1, and in our excitement we decided to run C2. We borrowed Pete and Susan's glass C2 and headed back up to the top. We splashed, laughed, and dug deep all the way down the course. Again, I find myself more focused when I am in a boat with another paddler than when I am alone. We cleaned the final drop easily (something I was never able to do in my glass C1) and paddled backwards across the finish line after blowing the last upstream gate. It was a fun run, and we were the only C2W all weekend!

I am inspired. I want this.

A few pictures:

My blue helmet cleans gate 20
Hailey heads towards an upstream gate
The Saint Louis River is a stunning place to paddle
The blue C2 was a little fiesty
The bruising on my right foot showed up again
The UMD training site was a great resource and made me quite jealous
My sleek's toothy grin launched down the river

saint louis, the river

2007-06-13T23:12:00.000-05:00

Today was a fun, invigorating, and humbling day.

I ran the upper St. Louis River with three friends in my sleek. It is that north shore, ice-tea colored water. Several big class II wave trains (200 feet of 4 foot waves). Fun to punch through. I played, flipped, and rolled comfortably and consistently. I finally feel like I have the skill base in a kayak to really push myself & have fun (instead of using 90% of my brain to worry about staying right-side up). If only I was at this point in a C1. In someways, I feel like I am starting from the beginning again.

After we took out, Ryan and I hiked down to the put-in for the lower (below the dam) to run the race course. The release was only 600 cfs today; the race will be run at 850-950 cfs. I wonder how much that will change the river features.

I did fine. I leaned forward, paddled hard and blasted cleanly through the hydraulic... and, of course, right by most of the gates. This water is fast and getting to these gates will be a challenge for me in a kayak, much less in my C1. I still don't have my C1 roll, by the way.

Video of the first drop:

I've been watching a lot of C1 slalom video recently. It excites me and I am learning from it -- I can identify good moves and bad moves and explain why some line choices work better than others. Watching these guys (some video here) move through the course with precision and strength almost makes it seem easy. I can visualize myself making those same moves.

And then I get on the lower St. Louis - fast current, deep holes, big waves - and suddenly I am amazed that anyone can do a clean run through these gates. I feel uncoordinated, weak, and overwhelmed. I have so much work to do.

But I know what is possible, even if I am a long way off from it. I may not make all of the gates in my C1 this week, but I have four days to try hard. And I will leave this race as a better paddler. One more step towards where I want to be.

No internet access over the weekend, I'll post race reports on tuesday!

the sticky stuff

2007-06-13T09:23:00.001-05:00

Last night, I recruited my siblings to patch my C1. We used an epoxy putty to fill the many gaps between the hull and the deck. We also used globs of it to attach a new grab loop to the stern to make my boat race legal. The process was simple: mix the two compounds together and it will cure in 60 minutes. You are supposed to wet your fingers before kneeding it, which works quite well. The moment your fingers start to dry you are suddenly holding a seriously sticky mess. Doing anything with my siblings is guaranteed to involve some goofy fun. My sister happily exclaimed, it's like "playdough for adults!" Except the toxic bit, of course.

The big white patches don't make the already beat-up boat look any nicer -- but if it no longer leaks, I will be one happy girl. We also tried to move the seat forward in my kayak. This is long overdue; in videos of my first races my bow bobs up out of the water. But in the end, it was too complicated -- corroded and inaccessible bolts, in a system not meant to be altered. This project may take some penetrating fluid and a power drill later on.

Today I head up to run the St. Louis river and check out the race site!

opening doors, connecting dots

2007-06-12T18:53:00.000-05:00

many REI stores use ice axes, encased in clear plastic, as door handles

This weekend was a conference with the leadership teams from all of the Midwest district stores, making sure everyone is on the same page with the new training programs we are rolling out.

Once again, I am so glad I decided to continue to work for REI. My new position has thrust me behind the scenes of the company, and I am getting a whirlwind education on how a large business is managed - from the buyers, to merchandising, to product assortment, and the gear & apparel testing labs. Perhaps most importantly, I am getting to watch and participate in the self-assessment process of a rapidly growing company -- what are our values? ok, what practices do those values translate to? how can our growth strengthen our commitment to our values? The training programs I will be facilitating in St. Louis are part of the answer to that question: we invest in our people.

If my passion boils up with challenge, it's overflowing now. I've been handed some pretty big responsibility, we've identified some large goals, and my notebook for brainstorming ideas is completely full. I can't wait to actually see these training programs live & breathe in St. Louis.

Press release on 2006 growth
More about REI

Going up?

2007-06-11T21:23:00.000-05:00

While I had a very productive weekend at work, staying in a hotel and being out of town killed my routine. Besides a short run tonight, I haven't trained at all for about 4 days. That doesn't feel very good.

Riding in the hotel elevator last night, I was struck by a thought. I am not very good at self-discipline. It has always been a weak point for me. But I have been a very productive person in my life... so how does that work?

I do possess a lot of passion - it flows easily and quickly for me, bubbles up forcefully whenever I meet a challenge. Over the years, I have become very effective at leveraging my passion - whether for work, school, or sport - as a tool to combat any lapse in self-discipline. Passion keeps me focused and committed; it provides the drive to get through the tedious, boring parts. And it works quite well.

But, I think if I want to really achieve all that I am capable of (I'm thinking about paddling right now, but I'm sure this applies to anything) I need to get better at the self-discipline part. Passion is incredible, and perhaps harder to cultivate, but passion alone ain't going to cut it if I am going to reach my goals.

2007-06-10T17:58:00.001-05:00

to the left, to the left

2007-06-10T16:45:00.000-05:00

photo from mnorri.

I figured something out!

In track cycling, you are supposed to just keep turning left. It's joked about on bumper stickers and in friendly advice. No brakes & left left left. But in slalom kayaking, turning repeatedly to the left is, well, dumb.

But I seem to do just that on flatwater. My forward stroke pushes my nose a bit left, and my crossbow strokes don't do much to straighten me out.

When I do my off-side forward strokes, I am less stable than on my on-side. To compensate, I end up transferring weight to my left knee rather than keeping the weight even on both legs. This means I drop my left edge -- of course I am going to carve left!

After I realized this, I tried some off-side strokes focusing on keeping the boat level. Much more control & no more drifting off to the left! I'm also developing the habit of doing a mini j-stroke on each onside -- it is nice to have that control on a lake, but I wonder if it is the best habit for whitewater.

I need to work on separating my edge control from whatever my upper body is doing. Ideally, they can function totally independently. I'm nowhere close to that in a C1 yet.

Looed by the water

2007-06-10T15:39:00.000-05:00

It's funny where you find your flow.

I crashed in Iowa last night, just south of Cedar Rapids. I didn't sleep well. My hip was aching from 4 hours sitting in the car. I kept tossing and turning, waking and looking out the window, waiting for the sky to lighten. Finally, at 8 am I got back on the road north.

Then I got lost in Waterloo. Not oh-crap-where-am-I lost, but simply misdirected. As I looped around to get back on the highway, I passed a sign for "public recreation area." This was followed by little icons of a snowmobile, ATV, dirt bike, and someone fishing. Fishing! That means water! Next thing you know I am on a gravel road, passing junk yards on my left and right, in search of any spot to get in my boat.

The pond wasn't much but I was thrilled. The dozen folks out drinking (aka fishing) already eyed my boat with skepticism but nodded back to a pleasant "good morning." The water was bordered by a small dirt levee on one side, apparently separating it from a wastewater treatment facility. But I figured the locals eat the fish so it couldn't be that bad. At least a dozen ATVs and dirt bikes were ripping it in circles around the small park. Good morning, Waterloo.

I felt flexible and powerful in my boat. My sprints were controlled and my hips and shoulders in sync. I just messed around for 30 minutes, but it made my day. That was the best I've felt in my boat in over a week.

Dropped off two slalom boats with Max in Cedar Falls, now there are just three riding above me. Onward!

All Iowa rest stops now have free wireless internet, by the way.

bear paw disaster

2007-06-10T01:20:00.000-05:00

The Bear Paw whitewater resort, store & restaurant in northern wisconsin was leveled by a tornado a Thursday night. Everything is gone; thankfully no one was hurt. The buildings are just rubble, and a kayak ended up in a tree. I never made it up there, but I was looking forward to taking a clinic or racing there at somepoint. I hope their insurance is generous and they are able to completely rebuild, if that is what the owners decide to do.

News stories from Google

on the road again

2007-06-09T16:52:00.000-05:00

In 595 miles I'll be in the twin cities! I'm looking forward to a productive district meeting for work, and anxious get on some moving water. Age group nationals are coming up in one short week.

Trying to practice in Missouri has been frustrating. The only spot with eddies and wavetrains also has a few healthy clumps of rebar in the water. On sunny afternoons, jet skis blast up and down the Meramec. Last week, I drove out to Creve Coeur, but the lake was closed to the public for dragon boat races. This week, I made the haul again, only to find the lake closed for drag boat races. Seriously. I'm ready for some whitewater again.

gross

2007-06-07T23:48:00.000-05:00

Nothing tops off a frustrating workout like finding your can of DAP contact cement has exploded in your truck. When it rains it pours, I guess.

Fortunatly, paddlers don't mind rain so much.

supra... what?

2007-06-07T12:31:00.000-05:00

supraspinatus. Sounds pretty cool, huh? Well, guess what – you’ve got two of those little tendons. As do I. And like any cool thing, you’d think I’d take care of them.

But if you know me at all, you're already thinking how notoriously hard I am on my gear. Favorite things don’t get taken care of, they get used hard & regularly until they fall apart. Then I get another one.

But I can’t do that with a tendon.

My right shoulder is protesting today; the joint grinds and pops when I roll my arm around. There is some daily swelling, but I don’t like taking advil each morning. I was told back in 1998 that I might need shoulder surgery if I wanted to keep swimming seriously. At the time, I moved on to other priorities, but now that shoulder-heavy athletics are back in my life, surgery may be back on the table. We'll have to see what my tendons did on their own over the last 8 years.

And then there is my lower half. A knee surgeon and a back surgeon, when asked about my right leg’s circulation issues in my C1, thought I may have inflicted some minor damage to my sciatic nerve. “While the nerve should recover fully, they seemed to think it would take on the order of 3-6 months, and of course they thought you shouldn't spend much time in the slalom boat.” Yeah, right.

I am not going to stop paddling. Even if my bursa sac bursts open, my teres major gets a major tear, and my scapula needs the scalpel. I am going to work with my body to get through this. Which means not ignoring my shoulder pain (the standard practice) but listening to it. Responding to it. And finally using my great health coverage for the first time and seeing a doc & PT.

Another anatomical drawing of a shoulder here
More rotator cuff tendonitis info here

Southeast Trip photos

2007-06-05T18:57:00.001-05:00

A few of me:

Taking a screaming right turn on the Cumberland
Concentrating on a ferry
Nope, that's not right
Taking a picture of grumpy's ferry on the Ocoee

Photos of the whole gang are here.

I don’t exist in a complete vacuum!

2007-06-05T15:05:00.000-05:00

Few and far between as we may be, it was wonderful to stumble across other women in C-boats online: http://www.whitewaterracing.org/weblog/coloradocboatexpansion.htm

I’m now heading to Colorado in July, instead of Wausau in June, for racing and training! Intimidating and exciting – my first experience with events where you cannot do practice runs on the course before your race. I’m very disappointed that I won’t be able to spend a week in Wisconsin, but I will still be at Age Group Nationals & the Whitewater Rendezvous in Carlton.

This is a big challenge, sitting 3 weeks away on the horizon, staring me in the face. I have many goals, but first of all, there is no way I am swimming off the course in Golden. Which means I have to find that missing roll, tune it up and lock it down. Fast.

have you seen this roll?

2007-06-04T23:17:00.000-05:00

time on the meramec

2007-06-01T17:18:00.000-05:00

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

Last night was one of those practices where you feel like you accidentally brought the wrong body. Everything was disconnected and out of sync. My rhythm was sporadic at best, and I had to focus on holding a straight line upstream.

I had added foam ankle bumps to my outfitting to try and stop the complete circulation loss to my right foot. Instead, they made it worse and I ripped them out after a few loops. I have no problem ignoring leg pain – I assumed this would be part of getting used to the C1 – but my legs won’t let me ignore them. After 20 minutes in the boat, they cramp up pretty violently and I have to walk it off. I still have faith that time acclimating to the boat and actually outfitting it (I am simply kneeling on foam right now) will solve this. It simply has to.

I got pretty frustrated. My Tuesday night workout was magic – even after 4 days on a paddling trip, my shoulders and back were filled with explosive power. I didn’t have to look for my rhythm; it found me. I thought “I am finally getting good at this!” … Rivers, it would seem, are good at dishing out a humbling experience as soon as you think you have mastered something.

I wasn’t going to let myself go home like this; I stayed an extra half an hour. Finally, after some sprints, things fell into place. A workout like this, once I am done being pissy and blaming the water, leaves me even more motivated for the next day.

duct tape hull repair

2007-05-31T23:35:00.000-05:00

Mr. asparagus boat and I are having a few relationship difficulties. When I strap it to my car it creaks and protests as the hull bends slightly. By the time I take off the river, it has taken on a few cups of water.

Mainly, it needs a new deck. Oh, and a new hull.

The seam between them is actually the real offender. It looks repairable -- but the hull is also covered in small cracks. It has been patched and repatched and slathered in excessive amounts of epoxy – I don't think one more layer would fix it. It needs to be sanded way down, then patched everywhere and re-epoxied. And I'm not sure I have it in me to spend so much time on a boat I hope to outgrow in a couple of months.

So it’s duct tape for now.

But I do love this boat! It is my first slalom boat and my daily companion on the Meramec. Way lighter than anything I've paddled before. But I can't help wondering... What’s it going to take to get me in a used short C1 this fall? Does such a thing exist yet?

Ocoee!

2007-05-29T17:34:00.000-05:00

On Monday we ran the Ocoee, a river in Tennessee I've been looking forward to for a long time. The stories in the MWA had me pretty intimidated. At the put in, the water looked pushy and squirrely. I can make that ferry, I can catch that eddy... my slalomized mind broke it all down into little pieces.

It was a great day -- challenging but not intimidating. The big water was really a blast and I found myself thinking "so this is what whitewater is supposed to be like!" I took off itching to do it again, and fantasizing about running it in a C1. In the not-to-distant future, I hope.

One more picture: Me at the put-in
Below: Tablesaw quickly flipped me. I'm anxious to run this again and punch through it all.

Back to the Nanty

2007-05-27T17:29:00.000-05:00

7 months ago at GAF, the Nantahala River was my first whitewater run in a kayak. Today it was my first whitewater run in a C1 (not counting the Apple River race).

I was incredibly comfortable on this water! The wave trains that freaked me out last fall were simply fun. I focused on paddling through them aggressively instead of riding them out. I worked on catching every possible eddy tight & peeling out high.

Slalom has made me a better boater, period. I now break rivers down very analytically. Where do I want to be next? That eddy. What do I need to do to get there? Surf that wave over, and start my turn high. Nanty falls used to be a big slush of white to try and power through. Now, within the rapid, I can see different lines and feature to use.

I flipped my first time through the falls. I was off-line and slid into the bottom hole sideways. The next time, I picked a rock on the horizon to aim for, carefully set my angle after passing the first hole, and paddled hard… my first clean run of the falls.

Fantastic day. I can’t wait to get in the C1 on the Saint Francis.

the land of bluegrass

2007-05-26T17:25:00.000-05:00

It was 4am when we finally pulled into the Kentucky campground. Around 30 boaters were fast asleep -- in bivies, tents, trunk beds, and snoring away on top of the picnic tables. I picked my way through the crowd, looking for two trees to hang my hammock from. Most of the good ones already had clotheslines of drying neoprene strung between them. Finally, I found a spot and settled in for my 3 hour nap.

The Cumberland was a perfect choice for our first day. Several pushy, class III rapids were spread out in between large pools – a small cave and a huge 360 wave made the day perfect. The landscape is so different that Missouri. Giant boulders the size of houses turn parts of the river into a maze. I had never paddled around undercut rocks before, and it was a very safe river to eyeball them for the first time. Undercuts are scary stuff.

I paddled my EZ. In retrospect, I would have been fine in the C1. The hour and a half flatwater paddle to the take out would have killed me, though.

One more photo: me at the falls

Here it is again…

2007-05-24T17:32:00.000-05:00

Why am I paddling anyway?
I could just save the money I’m spending on gas this weekend.
I could stay home and get so much done!
Why am I doing something that scares me?
I am going to die in a freak accident in an undercut on a class III rapid.
This isn’t that important to me anyway.

Yeah right, kiddo. Nice try. Rob Horn calls these thoughts “the demons.” And the best way to get rid of them is to fire it up, paddle like crazy, and get addicted all over again.

My friend Scott mused (referring to life in general): how does someone know what it is they want? For me, there are moments of magnetic clarity when my gut takes the wheel – when I watch a C1 stern pivot turn and my neurons fire in one big, collective “YES!!! *that* is what I want to be doing!” Reason and logic don’t have much say in it.

But these are just moments. Then there is the in-between… packing for the trips and driving all night, icing sore shoulders and gluing foam with contact cement, flat water drills and bruised legs. I get through all this gladly because I know that the next time I get a paddle in my hands, and usually within about 10 seconds, my gut will remind me what it is that I want.

It's my birthday and I'll philosophize if I want to

2007-05-22T01:49:00.000-05:00

"At the heart of the mountaineering experience lies an optimistic expectation, a belief that tomorrow will be better than today -- the ice pillars a little less rotten, the wind a little less bracing, and that you will be able to go further that you have before."

Peter Metcalf looked out at the room of 100 REI employees, all on the edge of their seats. His address returned again and again about how fundamental this gut attitude of "optimistic expectation" is to climbing mountains (and, of course, running a business). You have to wake up believing that today can & will be easier than the day before. Of course mountains don't care about your expectations. No matter how many routes you've flashed, one misstep or change in weather and your life may be out of your hands. But people who are true mountaineers, he said, just have this attitude in their blood. "The best years are still to come," he said as he left the podium, "of course, they always are."

I regularly have a strong feeling that my real life is beginning tomorrow: from now on, I will really be living my values. For the first time, I have found the balance in my life I have been searching for. Finally, I will set & follow clear priorities. The feeling is one of excitement and positive anticipation, but I am really hard on myself about this attitude. I have always thought it means I am not being present in my life; that I am doing a disservice to my daily adventures by always thinking "that wasn't as good as it could be, next time I'll do much better."

Metcalf's speech planted a little seed in my brain that maybe, just maybe, my "life actually begins tomorrow" outlook may not be such a bad thing. In fact, it may be an incredible tool that I can use to succeed in difficult situations, even when the ice pillars are rotten.

The 8,760th day of my life ended with fantastic sashimi, a petite caramel flan with candles in it, and meeting a giant troll that lives under a Fremont bridge. Then my new friend from Kennewick and I walked along the shore of the dark, wide Puget Sound - soaked through, in the pouring rain, the seattle skyline in the distance. 24 is going to be a good year.

Tomorrow I come home! I am thrilled to have a really productive day at work, one night in my own bed, and then it's off to North Carolina!

we put the SPE back in "special"

2007-05-19T23:07:00.000-05:00

The SPE conference has me totally jazzed about the outdoor industry and working for such an amazing organization as the REI cooperative. Our CEO often says that our biggest competitors are not other outdoor outfitters - they are TV and video games; the american trend towards a sedentary lifestyle. I couldn't agree more.

I've taken over 70 pages of notes - some specifics about my new position, but mostly wild brainstorms, ideas for the future of our company, thoughts on the american economy, sustainability, and promoting outdoor stewardship & exploration. The juices are flowing and I want to get every ounce of this down on paper before it fades, i.e. before I leave the mountains & the sea to head back to the land of planísimo.

I spent the day touring our headquarters, including finding the failure load of a carabiner in the test lab. The engineer who is still living within me was like a kid in a candy shop, and I busted out all sorts of technical lingo and questions for the lab staff.

I have never felt as invested in by an employer as I do this week. The SPE position will present huge challenges for me, and my role could have a huge impact if I am successful. Even if I end up in a totally different field in the future, this job will give me whole new skill sets to carry with me. Right now, the optimistic expectation is boiling over.

sticks, snow, and a standpipe

2007-05-17T23:58:00.000-05:00

I had been eyeballing the snow covered peaks in the distance with a lusty craving ever since my plane landed. Scott and I decided that we absolutely had to touch snow today, and drove toward Mount Rainier. After 30 minutes in the car (and a pit-stop for sandwiches), the road began to curve up and up. I was pressed to the window once again, amazed at the size of the evergreens and the spunky class II wave trains so close to the city. We also passed a produce market with a sign for "Yakima Asparagus" - in my corner of the globe Yamika is not a town but a car rack company. Mmm, roof rack asparagus. The road finally ended in a parking lot, and so we continued on foot.

Today I learned that Keen sandals are not optimal for hiking steep ascents in snow. Especially when you're not wearing socks. Snow gets in the holes and ends up in hard packed lumps under your feet. But despite the totally inappropriate footwear, quads burning, we made it well above the snowline and proceeded to have a snowball fight. In Saint Louis the humid summer is already building, so to be here later the same day felt like I had hiked into a different world. And to top it all off, I fell through a well-camouflaged snow bridge into a creek!

The whirlwind Seattle tour concluded with a visit to the Space Needle, fresh raw fish and wasabi, and bouldering on the standpipe water tower in Volunteer Park. I also got an early birthday present today - a pair of drumsticks. No, I'm not a drummer. Two years ago, while sporadically banging on a giant hollow sculpture in Laumeier, Scott told me I had no rhythm. No rhythm!! Anyone who knows me has seen me break it down on a dance floor. But Scott is right, my left wrist can't seem to handle a 16th note. Anyway, I'm now learning patterns and starting to get faster. Scott and I drove all over Seattle, each with our own pair of drumsticks, beating away at the dashboard in his car. It was goofy, giddy fun that made me feel like a kid again. Great birthday present.

Four more pictures from Volunteer Park:
Saint Louis statues are missing this sign
Buying a subaru? This one comes with 4 bags of leopard clothing! pic1 pic2 pic3

Mount Rainier is Huge.

2007-05-16T15:26:00.000-05:00

I've never seen a mountain this big before. The woman next to me on the plane (who owns a llama farm in St. Charles County, incidentally, and she says llamas are like potato chips, you can't have just one and pretty soon you've got a whole damn bag. She and her boeing-engineer husband are retiring to seattle but having trouble finding property that will allow their herd of llamas. Apparently the anti-llama regulations in Seattle are pretty strict.) Anyway, we were looking on the right side of the plane for Rainier, peering down at distant peeks of white speckled with black. The peaks looked like a heard of very pointy cows. I was searching for a mountain perhaps twice as big as the rest, but, I assumed, comparably the size of a large dairy barn.

Then, the captain came on and said "Now, if you'll look to your left..." And across the isle, there it was. As high as our plane!!! A wall of white & jagged rocks moving past the left windows like a mural on a subway line.

I was like a three year old, squirming in my seat, trying to get a better look. But half of the people on the left side of the plane weren't even looking. Miss too-much-hairspray was so buried in last month's Reader's Digest to even glance up and was blocking my view with all her hair twirling. I don't understand; I will never loose interest in gluing my nose to the plane window.

On a positive note, when all the REI SPEs sent back their flight and meal preferences for this conference, a large percentage of them requested window seats. That is a good sign.

good to be home, at least for a night

2007-05-15T01:24:00.000-05:00

There's nothing like finally turning into your garage after a long weekend alone on the road. Now I have one night to rest and pack, then it's off to Seattle for a week. After that, I will get one night to rest and pack before I leave for 4 days of paddling in the southeast. Not much time to get anything done around the house, but a girl's gotta have her priorities.

And apparently those priorities are boating & more boating. From the looks of my garage, it's hard to believe I wasn't even paddling a year ago. The little orange Skip is feeling neglected with all this slalom fever! Maybe I'll take it down Nanty falls for old times sake. Perhaps even in the boat and right side up this time. We tried every other combination (my boat alone, me in my boat upside down, etc) last October.

C1W - a class of our own

2007-05-13T21:10:00.000-05:00

That's right folks, we had enough women in not only C1 plastic, but also C1 race boats and C2 race boats to make each an actual, legit class. Awesome! Here it comes!

This was great water for me. The Apple is very mild, but yesterday was my first day in actual whitewater in a C1 -- ever. It's just been flatwater and more flatwater until now. The wave trains and tight eddy turns were challenging, but a challenge I was able to rise to by the end of the weekend. After today, I feel ready to take a C1 on some runs on the Memorial Day southeast trip.

4th place, C1W plastic - I missed at least one gate on each C1 run, but I feel good about my performance. It was my first weekend in whitewater, geez.

3rd place, C1W - So I found the guts to race the green glass boat! So glad I did. And I know what I need to fix - I think I can win this class later in the summer. (Many things, one of which is setting my angle earlier, and then punching across the eddy line to turn up. Trying to cut gate 4 close I was turning on it and it would really slow me down.)

4th place K1W - I had my first 100% clean run ever! Wow! My mom told me she wanted a clean run for mother's day, so I had to deliver. My best times were about 10 seconds behind the winner of the class. Hailey, the speedy 13 year old, placed 2nd. She really knows where to place her boat's edges.

3rd place C2W - Susan and I missed a few gates but had a great time. We were both pretty exhausted by this run!

2nd place OC2 Mixed - Dave and I had a great run. I had so much fun in the OC2. I just let him call the turning strokes and I paddled my guts out. Mary (and Dave) took first and we beat out Jean (and Dave). I guess when you bring an OC2 you become a popular guy!

A few more pictures:
Three of the C1W class, right after our runs
A tricky set of gates, including the random gate 24
Susan and I power to the finish line
If you're going to hit a gate, hit it with style!

It's long and it ain't pretty.... but it's glass!

2007-05-13T18:27:00.000-05:00

Until I can get in my very own short slalom boat, I have been loaned a glass C1. It's held together by patches and is missing the tip of its stern, and I love it! I am so excited to hit the water with this! Finally, a boat that can at least do the sort of maneuvering I want to do. Apparently it is also "really heavy" - but after hauling around the barge that is the cascade, this boat seems LIGHT. Wow. It should also be a good lesson in how to patch, paint, and outfit a slalom boat, because this tank needs all three.

Everyone that loans gear to newbies deserves a huge pat on the back. I never could have gotten started in this sport without several different people supplying me with gear as I learned the ropes. Thank you all so very much. I've been lending out my gear and boats whenever I can, and I plan to keep it up. Passing on the good boatin' karma.

I am so excited about this C1!

An Apple a day...

2007-05-12T19:05:00.000-05:00

Day one of the slalom race on the Apple River (Buttercup series #1):

Set-up was fun. Just a few of us came out but we worked quickly. Poison Ivy EVERYWHERE! For those of you who don't know, I am very very allergic to the stuff. Have to get shots every time I touch it. I washed in the river repeatedly (thanks for the soap, Mary) and no signs of it yet.

Anyway, I helped set up both here and at the MWC races - a great learning experience. At these smaller races, you get to chat with the race director / course designer as they discuss which gates go where and why, what moves they want people to make, and how they want to challenge the boaters as you fine tune the gates. Not a bad deal for just crawling out of bed a couple of hours early. For a newbie like me, it's a guided tour of the course though much more experienced eyes.

This race was a junior olympic qualifier so half the competitors were juniors or cadets. Amazing kids, many who will be making the US or Canadian national teams in a few years, no doubt. Hailey, 13, from Wisconsin was a delight. Such a positive & determined girl. We ran our K1 and C1 practice runs together, and took a practice run in the C2. I later raced C2 with Susan and OC2 with Dave.

C2 and OC2 rocked my world. Seriously. Until today, I thought I would hate having another person controlling the boat with me - the thing that is supposed to be just an extension of my hips, moving easily with my body - but I loved racing tandem. It was like figuring out a puzzle with another person, having a supplemental engine on your boat. The power of two paddles was awesome. We had so much fun every run. And, interestingly, I raced harder on both of my C2 & OC2 runs than I did solo. Something about being instantly accountable to another person made me bring it, pure and simple.

That scares me a little. Where is that extra drive when I am solo? I think this might mean two things: 1) I need to figure out how to harness it when I'm alone in a C1. How can I become as accountable to myself as I am to other people? I do think that I can develop this. 2) This might just mean I would rock the C2 someday.

land of 11,842 lakes

2007-05-11T08:41:00.000-05:00

Okay, the creek that runs across the street from my mom's new house is not only boatable, it has wavetrains. In the middle of the city! Granted they probably vanish during parts of the year... but I would kill for this. You can walk 500 ft, hop on and boat upstream (1/2 mile?) to the lake. Haven't tried it yet, but it seems possible. It seems damn ideal.

It's 7:30 am and already over 100 cyclists, stroller mamas, and pooch walkers have passed by my Mom's front window. At least. We're averaging about 4 a minute. More than I'd see in Saint Louis in a week.

Minneapolis is not good for my "I'm going to be excited about the 'lou for one more year!" plan. It'll happen, but being here reminds me strongly what Saint Louis is missing. If I go out tonight, I have about 4 great live shows to choose from. There are at least 6 or 7 local artists who I follow. My mpls restaurants-I-really-want-to-try list is limited only by my budget. There is breathtaking and accessible architecture. The greenways seem endless. And everywhere cute, interesting people in their mid-20's seem to ooze out of the sidewalks.

Downsides to the city of lakes? The demographics are heavily white - it's a little surreal after spending so much time recently in STL, Memphis, and Atlanta. But I love and am very comfortable in the city's neighborhoods with larger immigrant and african american populations -- I think they're communities I'll seek out no matter where I end up. It also gets really frikkin' cold from october through march! Obviously I'd just have to take up ice climbing.

Saint Louis has sponsored many fabulous laura-adventures, but Minneapolis is yet another reminder that the STL is not where I want to settle down. Seeing the northwest for the first time next week will be an interesting contrast.

Ok, only 8 hours to knock off my MPLS must-do list!

who needs kayak stackers?

2007-05-10T23:39:00.000-05:00

I'm picking up a friend's slalom boat in Iowa, and so I'll need to fit 3 big boats on my car. Yakima or Thule kayak stackers would be perfect, but it seems stupid to pay for something so mechanically simple. Boats flying off my car at 70mph is bad news, though, so my makeshift stackers need to be bombproof.

My solution? Two decommissioned forks from crashed / imperfect bicycles, mounted to V2 tray heads. Without the boats on it kinda looks like someone sawed the forks off to steal my bikes. With the boats on the set up looks sweet. I really laid into the straps and it is extremely sturdy.

On a side note, Yak is now selling most of their rack components as "carbon free". Looks like this means both working to shrink their carbon usage and then offsetting the rest with credits. Awesome. Thule still rocks my world, hopefully they'll be on the bandwagon soon.

last night in the shop

2007-05-09T23:40:00.000-05:00

Tonight was my last shift as Laura the Bike Mechanic. It was a classic bike shop night - Rage in the CD player and Rob supplying the ice cream. Casey and I wrapped up the night by building an Electra tandem. It was fun to build - we had to pull two repair stands together to support it. It was even more crazy to test ride! Fits of laughter and a few wobbley starts in the parting lot before we got the hang of it. I guess when you put two aggressive, competitive cyclists on a bike it's hard for one person (read: me) to sit back and not be in control.

Even though I will miss the shop, I'm pumped to start my new position. I head to Seattle next week to train. On the to-do list: inspired brainstorming sessions with other SPE's from around the country, eat sushi, and go paddling. And, of course, go see the troll under the bridge.

new job, new year... new blog?

2007-05-07T22:03:00.000-05:00

let the mad blogging begin.

Although my to-do list has grown extremely overwhelming, these days feel like they are brimming with possibility. I have a birthday just around the corner, a new job, and some new priorities on the table. Everyone has been complaining about the constant rain in the forecast, but to me the storms are dramatically signaling the start of the hot season - and giving us paddlers one last bridge-level spike in the Saint Francis.

I told REI I would commit to one year in my new position, which means I have a solid, definite block of time to plot my eventual escape from Saint Louis. One year to figure out where I want to be next. One year to chill, relax a little deeper into my groove, ride my bike along the Mississippi, paddle the Saint Francis, go to free concerts, run sprints down alleys lined by crumbling red brick, drop it to some STL hiphop, and eat Ted Drewes.

Summer, we're ready for ya.