Rainy recovery

This morning I paddled in the harbor for 60 minutes.

I'm sure I've been over this before, but it seems like a good time to mention it again.  When you do a really hard workout like the one I did yesterday, you are in fact inflicting damage on your muscles.  During recovery, your body builds the muscles back stronger than they had been before, and this is where your strength and fitness level improve.  And so the recovery periods are crucial parts of training: without them, you'll just wind up worn out and injured rather than in good shape.

Plenty of rest, full nights of sleep, and good nutrition all play a role in the recovery process.  And then there is active recovery, which is what I was doing on the water this morning.  An easy, relaxed session in the boat gets the blood flowing in your paddling muscles, washing away lactic acid and repairing the damage done by the hard workout.

It was a rainy morning here in Memphis, with a line of heavy thunderstorms moving in around nine o'clock.  The heaviest showers had moved out by the time I got down to the riverfront, but I still found myself paddling in some steady rain.  I don't really consider rain a deterrent from paddling, especially from May through October, but my mind was ill at ease because the building I recently bought has no roof on it at the moment.  Contractors are currently at work replacing the fire-damaged roof with a new one, but as of yesterday afternoon they had gotten no further than the installation of new rafters.  So I expect that when I go by there later today the ground floor will be soaking wet from water that seeped down from the second floor.  It's probably nothing we can't clean up and fix up, but it's left me with a worried mind just the same.

Aside from the rain, the harbor was calm this morning.  So I went another round in the K1.  Getting comfortable in that boat is much like renovating a burned-out building or healing the hurt of a divorce: it is a process.