Dog days

It's been hard finding much inspiration to write here this past week.  Blame it on the withering heat of the last ten days or so.

But it was in fact a fairly standard week of training.  In the boat I worked on technique like I always do, and I did several rounds of the June-July strength routine as well.

On Wednesday I managed to throw my back out while doing some work on the deck at the rear of my building.  I was up on a ladder using my cordless drill, which is a rather heavy tool--I think it's four or five pounds, and that's a lot when I'm reaching up and out and boring a hole in either a leftward or a rightward direction, as I was doing Wednesday.  The next thing I knew, I was feeling some acute discomfort in my right hip, as though it had come out of joint a bit.  The condition gradually eased over the next couple of days.  I also felt some soreness in the shoulder that had been injured a couple of months earlier.  It has not bothered me while paddling, and that supports my belief that I'm a lot more likely to get injured doing some mundane task on dry land than I am while paddling my boat.

Yesterday I taught my next-to-last class of the summer on Pine Lake out at Shelby Farms.  The final class will be on August 1, so go here if you or somebody you love wants a bit of instruction from yours truly.

Today I paddled for 100 minutes, a slightly shorter session than I did the last two Sundays but still a long time to be out in this heat.  It wore me out thoroughly, but I managed to enjoy it.  The river is still quite high--31.8 feet on the Memphis gauge, just three tenths of a foot lower than last Sunday--and I took the opportunity to paddle over onto Dacus Lake again.  The water was beautiful, especially in the narrow channel that connects Dacus Lake with the main river.  The channel runs through a piece of densely forested bottomland, and I enjoyed this rare moment of shade.  I'm sure there were plenty of snakes about, though I didn't see any.  By the time I was paddling back across the river toward the mouth of the harbor the heat was taking its toll on me.  I drank from my camel back frequently and tried to keep my form together.  Back at the dock I enjoyed some cold water from an insulated bottle I had left there, and took a little bath with the hose.

There's not much relief from this oppressive summer heat in sight.  Right now it appears we might get a brief break on Tuesday, when some thunderstorms are expected to keep the high temperature down at 90 degrees Fahrenheit, but the rest of the ten-day forecast calls for highs of 97 or higher.  Oh well... I've survived my share of Memphis summers, and I reckon I'll make it through one more.