I've spent the week doing my usual thing in and out of the boat.
I paddled for 60 minutes on Tuesday, Thursday, yesterday, and today. I was starting to feel lethargic in the boat, and I addressed that by doing three 8-stroke sprints at the beginning of each session. My sprinting technique was rusty, but each time out I felt a little bit sharper and more enthusiastic about what I was doing.
I'm also still doing the January strength routine three times a week. Strength work has always been my least favorite part of training, but I'm feeling pretty good about how this month's routine is going. Each time I stretch and warm up thoroughly, and then move quickly from one exercise to the next. I certainly hope this work will enhance my performance in the boat, but I also it helps my general fitness as I inch ever closer to the golden anniversary of my birth. All over town I notice older people, and occasionally even people my age, struggling mightily with everyday movements that I take for granted: climbing stairs or moderate inclines, standing up and sitting down, lifting objects and moving them around... stuff like that. A big goal of mine for the later stages of my life is to continue to do these basic things comfortably, and I think moving my body every day is the key ("use it or lose it," in other words).
For a couple of weeks I've had some fairly intense soreness in my lower back and all around my hip area. I've addressed it with some stretching exercises as well as some sessions of backpaddling in the boat to work opposing muscles. The condition has finally eased up a bit just in the last couple of days.
More worrisome is something that doesn't affect my paddling but definitely affects my overall quality of life: my right foot has been aching right in the arch area for a couple of months, and it seems to be getting worse. So far I've just been living with it, hoping it'll get better, but if this keeps up I might have to give in and see a doctor.
Meanwhile, our sport got a bit of unwanted media attention on Friday. For me, it started in the late morning when a friend called me on the telephone and asked me if I was okay.
"I think so," I replied. "Should I not be?"
It turned out that somebody in an office building overlooking the river downtown had reported an "overturned kayaker," and several emergency response agencies were searching all up and down the riverfront for the hapless victim. All the local TV news outlets, hungry for something sensational, were on the scene covering the brouhaha for their noon broadcasts, and there was also a story on the website of our daily newspaper, The Commercial Appeal. That latter story said something about a "white two-person kayak," and I happen to have a friend with just such a boat, so now I was a bit concerned as I left that friend a voice-mail message to call me back.
A short while later my friend did call me back, and explained that the whole affair was nothing more than a false alarm. He was in fact on the river in his white tandem boat with a friend of his, and for some reason the person up in the office building got the impression that they were in distress even though they were nothing of the sort. A police harbor patrol boat met them as they returned to the harbor from the main river, and once they had reassured the cops that they were fine, they retired to the marina. By late afternoon the story had disappeared from The Commercial Appeal's website, and the TV stations mentioned nothing about it in their six o'clock newscasts.
I have no idea what the person up in the office building thought he saw, and I don't want to sneer at a concerned citizen who was trying to do the right thing. But the incident provides an example of how our general population views the Mississippi River and the idea of getting out on it in a human-powered craft.
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