Long sprint pain, COVID shot pain, and chiropractic pain

On Tuesday morning the weather was about as gorgeous as we have any business asking for in the Mid South at the end of June.  When I got down to the river it was sunny with a mild north breeze and a temperature of 79 degrees Fahrenheit.

I did the last long sprint workout I plan to do before heading out West: another set of four bridge-to-bridge sprints.  When I'd done this workout the previous Tuesday I'd had a good tailwind, whereas this time I had more of a headwind, so I knew my times wouldn't be as fast this week.  But that was liberating in a way: I didn't worry about what my times were, and I just tried to produce four good, hard, consistent efforts.

I ended up clocking 2:11, 2:11, 2:09, and 2:09.  I'd say that's pretty consistent.  And while the sprints had me plenty tired and gasping for breath, my muscles weren't throbbing quite like they'd been the previous Tuesday.  Once it was over I paddled easy for some ten minutes and headed back to the dock.  Since it was cooler I didn't take a full hose bath, but I did enjoy a protein bar and a pair of nectarines washed down with some cold water from the Memphis Sands aquifer.

All of that followed a gym session before I left the house Tuesday morning.

My biggest event yesterday was getting a COVID-19 booster shot.  I got it in my right arm.  One of my conjectures about the pain I've had in my left deltoid/biceps area is that it might be the result of three COVID shots and two flu shots there since the fall of 2020.  During the night last night I could feel some very similar soreness in my right arm, so maybe I'm onto something there.

This morning I didn't have a lot of giddy-up as I dragged myself down to the river.  I paddled for 60 minutes and kept the intensity low.  By lunchtime I was feeling even more down in the dumps, and only then did it occur to me that it was probably my immune system kicking into gear.  My three previous COVID shots hadn't really affected me that much, so I wasn't expecting to feel this way.  So far it's not too bad--I know people who had much worse reactions to their shots--but it's made for a bummer of a day.  At least this should be thoroughly over with before I leave town in a week.

Late this afternoon I went for another session with the chiropractor.  I was expecting another scrape massage of my sore area with that butter knife thing, but instead she just adjusted me in a few places and inflicted some pain by digging her knuckles pretty deep in my shoulders.  Oh well... she's the professional.  Hopefully I'll notice some improvement over the weekend.

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Monday photo feature

Adam Davis of Memphis knows how to make the best of a hot day in late June.  In the background is the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and the downtown Memphis skyline.

Oddly enough, we're now getting a break from the heat.  The Fahrenheit highs are supposed to be in the 80s for the next couple of days.  The current extended forecast shows more extreme heat returning about the same time I head for the Pacific Northwest.

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Soon I'll be racing again at last

I did a gym session Friday morning, and rode my bike a bit in the afternoon.  The chiropractor had told me my arm would probably continue to be sore after the massage she did, and she was right.

The Gorge downwind race is now less than three weeks away--it'll be Thursday or Friday or Saturday, the 14th or 15th or 16th of July.  Downwind paddling involves a lot of short, hard sprinting, and you have to be ready to sprint at the drop of a hat, whenever the conditions in front of you present you with an opportunity.  It's hard for me to train ideally for such a thing, living as I do in a mostly non-downwind environment.  But I do the best I can with a lot of hard sprinting with short rest.  That's what I did yesterday: a workout where I paddled 10 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 20 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 30 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 40 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy... all the way up to 100 strokes hard.  I definitely spend some time in "The Pain Cave" during this workout, especially once I'm up over 50 strokes hard.  Once I was finished I paddled easy for a few minutes, then did the workout again, only this time I went up to just 50 strokes hard.  I tried to push the intensity a little harder, and I was pleased with how my body responded after that first round of the workout.

The summer heat is slowly but surely becoming a bit more oppressive after seeming not so bad all last week.  Yesterday's high of 101 degrees Fahrenheit was apparently a record for the date.  When I went back to the river this morning the temperature was rising quickly through the 80s, and as I did some stretching on the dock I could feel more mugginess in the air than we'd had lately.  I went out and paddled for 70 minutes, going mostly steady but throwing in a little surge here and there to break the monotony.  Most of the time I do whatever I feel like doing during these "non-workout" paddles: if my body is in bad need of recovery, I paddle easy, but since I'm a four-times-a-week paddler I usually get enough recovery on my days out of the boat, meaning that I can push the pace on days like today if I feel so inclined.

In any case, I'm feeling encouraged after a pretty good training week.  Down on the Gulf Coast I was feeling tired and sluggish in the boat, but I've felt more pep in my step since then.  Maybe it's because the Gorge race is finally within sight: some part of my subconscious might be signaling to my body that it's time to get ready to go.

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A good summer week

My arm was still hurting Tuesday morning, but I would have to wait until this afternoon to see my chiropractor.  Because I haven't been to see her in over a year, I'm required to go through her "new patient" intake process all over again, and this afternoon was the soonest such an appointment was possible.  So on Tuesday I was still grinning and bearing it.  At least I was somewhat eager to get moving again after four days out of the boat.

After a gym session, I headed down to the river.  The break in the weather we'd had over the weekend was quickly becoming a memory: under bright sunshine, the temperature was rising toward a high in the high 90s Fahrenheit.  I guess it's only fitting that Tuesday was the first day of summer.  I warmed up and did a set of three 8-stroke sprints, and turned my attention to the day's workout: four bridge-to-bridge sprints.  The distance from the monorail bridge to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge in the harbor is very nearly 450 meters; my best time ever for this sprint is somewhere around a minute 52 seconds, but anything around two minutes flat is a very good effort for me.

The best news from Tuesday is that my arm ailment hardly bothered me at all.  I do think it's a threat more to my everyday happiness than to my ability to paddle.  As for the workout, well... it hurt.  My quadriceps muscles throbbed in the second half of each sprint, and my wrists and forearms were really going numb in the last one.  It was tempting to despair, to declare it the latest example of my decline in energy and power of the last couple of years.  But the fact is that this workout has never not hurt.  And the consistency of my times--2:02, 2:03, 2:02, 2:03--suggests that I might actually be more fit than I thought these days.

As to recovery: I started the second sprint 7 minutes after I'd started the first one.  That recovery didn't quite feel adequate, so I gave myself an extra minute before the third and fourth sprints.

The day was definitely becoming a hot one, and as I paddled back toward the dock I flipped a couple of times to cool off.  Once back on the dock I took a bath under the hose, and that's one of those simple pleasures of these hot summer days that I mustn't to forget to savor as I deal with my arm pain and other struggles.

It's continued to be hot this week, but not unbearably so.  I think the humidity is still down a bit.  On the worst summer days here even the lightest outdoor chores have me drenched in sweat, but a couple of times this week I've broken only a mild sweat while riding my bike around the neighborhood.  So I'm actually enjoying this week's summer weather a lot.

This morning I returned to the river and did 60 minutes of unstructured paddling.  I paddled steady out of the harbor, chased some waves out on the Mississippi that a distant barge rig had left behind, and then returned to the harbor and paddled steady back toward the dock, stopping a couple of times to pick up some litter.  Back on the dock I took another hose bath and drank some cold water and ate a protein bar and a peach.  Most of the time after I paddle I eat an apple in the car on the way home, but apples are out of season while peaches are in season, and a peach is too juicy to eat in the car, so I brought it down to the dock.  I don't think anybody will care if I drip some peach juice into the harbor.

I finally got in to see my chiropractor this afternoon, and she seemed to think my arm soreness was something she could treat without too much trouble.  She massaged it with the same butter-knife-lookalike tool that she used on my plantar fasciitis some five years ago.  I'm scheduled to go back next week, and she doesn't think we'll need too many sessions to get this taken care of.  I sure hope she's right.

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Monday photo feature

Back in the 1990s I was driving out to the Rocky Mountains every summer for some whitewater paddling.  A couple of times I caught the elusive Big Sur wave that forms during high-water periods on the Colorado River near Grand Junction.  Photo by Tim Williams.

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A break from the heat, but not from the pain

I did a gym session Friday morning, then got in the car and departed Dauphin Island.  As I mentioned earlier, it was some ten degrees cooler on the Gulf Coast than in the rest of the southeastern U.S., and as I moved north I watched the temperature display in my car rise and rise and rise, topping out at 102 degrees Fahrenheit.  I got home thinking I was in for a miserable 20 days until my departure for the Pacific Northwest.

But then a front came through overnight that brought some drier air into the Mid South.  Yesterday's high temperature was in the mid 90s, but it really didn't feel so bad because we were spared the suffocating humidity.

Last night the temperature dropped into the 60s, and this morning felt just plain delightful.  It was perfect for going down to the river and paddling.  Unfortunately, my left deltoid/biceps area was hurting as bad as it ever has.  I've made up my mind that I need to seek some help with this problem, and I'll start with my chiropractor tomorrow.  I'm not sure this particular ailment is in a chiropractor's wheelhouse, but I've had much better results dealing with the chiropractor than with my local orthopedic community, so I'm going to start there.

Even when my arm hurts pretty bad, I've found that it doesn't render me unable to paddle.  So I feel pretty sure that I'll be able to get through the downwind race in the Columbia Gorge with nothing worse than a lot of discomfort.  Nevertheless, I decided to skip paddling today in favor of a bike ride.  I rode the Greater Memphis Greenline out to where it crosses the Wolf River, and came back.  The total distance was a bit over 20 kilometers.  I treated it not so much as a workout as just a way to savor the lovely weather.  I'd certainly better savor it, because according to the current forecast, the awful sweltering heat is on its way back.

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I've about had my fill of island life

Yesterday morning I did a gym session and then took a light swim down at the beach.

I saved paddling for the afternoon, and the Gulf was much more placid than it had been earlier in the week.  I wouldn't be doing any downwind practice this time.  Somewhat on a whim, I found myself engaged in a longer distance paddle.

There are some natural gas wells out in the Gulf within sight of Dauphin Island.  They look like oil-drilling platforms, and for all the years that we've been visiting this place I've wondered just how far offshore they are.  So yesterday I decided to find out: I pointed my boat at what looked like the closest one, and started paddling.  It had been my guess that this structure was at least 5 kilometers out, because earlier this week I'd been paddling out 2 kilometers to ride the conditions back in, and it hadn't seemed like I was much closer to it than I was on the beach.  Well, yesterday I got 5 kilometers from the beach and still had some distance to cover.  I continued on and finally, 7 kilometers (about 4.35 miles) out, I reached the platform.

I was feeling some fatigue by this time, and I knew the paddle back would be tough because the breeze that had cooled me off going out would now be at my back.  Though the Gulf Coast has been spared the worst of the current heat wave that's gripping the nation, it was still uncomfortably warm, and I was fully exposed to the sun.  The heat started getting to me, and every kilometer or so I stopped and flipped the boat to cool off for a minute.  The problem with that was that once I was back in the boat, the water wasn't evaporating off my skin because of the high humidity here.  I really could have used my camelback out there, but I didn't bring it on the trip because I hadn't planned to do any distance paddling down here.  Not bringing it was dumb, but, well, sometimes I am dumb.

In any case, I never doubted that I would make it back to the beach, but it was a slog just the same.  Back at the island at last, I carried my boat onto the sand and walked back and sat in the water for a while.  Then I lugged my boat back to our rental house and drank several glasses of cold water and ate some snacks and slowly started to feel human again.

One highlight of yesterday's paddle was seeing a couple of dolphins while heading out.  It was the second time this week I'd seen dolphins; I saw at least one Monday as well.

This morning I felt reasonably recovered from yesterday's activity, but was slow to wake up and had to sort of force myself down to the water with my boat.  I hoped that once I warmed up and got some blood flowing I would muster some enthusiasm for paddling, but the heat and the beating sun made it feel like a chore for the 50 minutes I was out there.

And, I hate to say it, but when the conditions are calm like they were again this morning, paddling in the Gulf of Mexico is just... boring.  I'm ready to be back on the Memphis riverfront, where there are trees and bridges and river flow and barge traffic and occasionally some people on the banks nearby.  I'm reminded of people who do crossings of open ocean, and I just don't know how they do it.  With nothing in sight but vast expanses of sea in every direction, I think I would lose my mind pretty quickly.

So, it's a good thing this is my last full day down here at the beach.  Vacation time is great, but deep down I'm a homebody.  I'm glad to be headed home tomorrow even though I've been hearing how much worse the heat is there.

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Away from home and finding my way

Even though I'm not doing anything super-organized, I do hope this will be a good training week down here at Dauphin Island.  Even in calm weather, the beach and the ocean throw all kinds of little things at me that I just don't quite get at home on the Mississippi.

Back home in Memphis it's very hot, with daytime highs pushing 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  I'm pleased to say that it's a good ten degrees cooler here on the coast.  It's plenty humid, though, and the sun beats down... it's certainly as warm as it needs to be.  It appears that the oppressive heat is going to be around for the foreseeable future at home, so I should savor what we've got here.

I started yesterday morning with a gym session.  As I said last week, I'm doing my Smart Bell workout now, and I skipped the pushups because I think that's what aggravated my shoulder/biceps pain last weekend.  Meanwhile, I'm hoping the workout's other movements might have some therapeutic value: one thing I've learned over many years of nursing ailments is that strengthening the supporting muscles around an injured one can be helpful.

As soon as I was done with the Smart Bell I grabbed my boat and carried it several hundred meters to the beach.  Once I was paddling I realized how tired I was from the lifting.  Even though the wind was light, there were some ridable-looking swells coming in from the south-southwest--ground swell, I guess.  After paddling a couple of kilometers out I worked on riding the swells coming back, and I definitely didn't have my top gear for the short, hard sprints.  I was gasping for breath at times and having to stop and rest.  The breeze was blowing in, so I was comfortable paddling out from the beach but felt very hot while coming back in with the wind at my back.  After 50 minutes in the boat, I'd had enough.

I'm my own harshest critic, of course, and I felt a bit disheartened that I didn't have the energy for more, but the fact is that those conditions out in the gulf were small, and therefore required a lot of work even for brief rides.  The whole time I was paddling I could hear the voice of Coach Dawid Mocke saying "Little ones lead to big ones," but the fact is that the "big ones" just weren't there.  I was out there trying to get what I could from little bumps, and in fact that's something I need to get better at.

I'd originally planned to paddle yesterday afternoon, but the morning's activities had taken so much out of me that I decided that some extra recovery would help me have a more productive week overall.  So I just did some light swimming instead.

This morning I launched into the shore break and paddled easy until I was a couple of kilometers offshore.  I definitely felt fresher since I hadn't done a gym like I had yesterday, and this time I was determined to relax and take what the conditions gave me and not force anything and enjoy whatever I did get and just be more zen about it all.  I caught little runs here and there, even managed link a few together once or twice, sprinted hard and got my heart rate up, and generally enjoyed being out on the water.  Once 60 minutes was up I took out and returned to our rental house for some lunch and rest.

I was back in the boat in the mid afternoon, once again paddling a couple of kilometers offshore and seeing what I could get from the conditions coming back in.  I felt really tired in the boat, and this time I think the reason was that I hadn't had enough to eat.  I'm pretty set in my eating routine back home, but tear me away from home and I have a hard time treating my body the way it likes to be treated.

So I was running on fumes this afternoon.  I went out and back twice, and I think I got my best runs coming back the second time.  I was dead tired and loath to paddle any harder than I had to, so I focused on efficiency and reading the conditions as well as an inland dweller can do.  And I found myself having some actual success.  So I finished in higher spirits than I might have otherwise.

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Monday photo feature

When you see a house up on stilts, you know you must be in some coastal area where a big old tidal surge can happen.  Here on Dauphin Island on the Alabama Gulf Coast, the weather forecast isn't calling for any such surges this week.  I was hoping for at least a small bit of downwind action, but the wind forecast appears mild.  Oh well... I'll be paddling my boat, regardless.  It's just what I do.

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It's almost beach time

I did another gym session yesterday morning.  Last night and this morning my left deltoid/biceps area was hurting worse than ever, and I think the gym session must have aggravated it a bit.  I suspect the pushups are the culprit, and depending on how my arm feels in a couple of days I might skip the pushups in next week's gym sessions.

This morning I went out and did a mostly-easy 60 minutes in the boat.  I did spend a few minutes chasing some so-so waves behind a barge rig, but otherwise I paddled at low intensity and tried to relax my body as much as I could.

Since this morning's paddle my arm has felt better, and that's encouraging.  It supports what I've believed all along, that paddling is the least harmful thing I'm doing for it.  Meanwhile, I'm still having some soreness in my left lower back (maybe some sciatic nerve inflammation?), and I think maybe it's time to pay my chiropractor a visit.  I feel pretty sure she'll know what to do for the back problem, and maybe she'll have some advice for the arm muscles as well.

That, of course, will have to wait a week, because tomorrow morning I'm heading down to the Gulf Coast.  My plan for the beach is to paddle as intensely as my body will allow, but it'll be all "play"--no timed pieces or anything like that.  Out of the boat I intend to relax and enjoy myself.  Some hot weather is about to move into the Memphis area, and I expect it'll be at least as hot farther south.

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Keeping it moving despite aches and pains

I started a new gym routine Tuesday morning.  It's the Smart Bell workout I've done for years, and you can see what it looks like here.

After that I went to the river and did a moderate-intensity 60-minute paddle.  The soreness in my left deltoid/biceps area continued, and I was also having a bit of lower back pain that I'd first noticed during the weekend.  Lower back pain usually works itself out in two or three days, but this feels a bit more concentrated, like it could be a sciatic nerve issue or something like that.

I felt sluggish and sore yesterday, and I think a lot of that might have been soreness from the new gym routine.

Tuesday and yesterday were sort of rainy and gross, but this morning the weather was sunny and beautiful.  I went down to the river to do something more intense.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, I paddled out onto the Mississippi and did some 500-meter pieces downriver, similar to the 1000s I did last Saturday.  Once again my target pace was 20.0 kilometers per hour, but I wasn't quite able to reach that because an approaching barge rig coming from upriver forced me to paddle close to the Arkansas side where the current is slower.  Even so, I did each 500 faster than a minute 40 seconds.

There was another barge rig coming upstream, and after doing four 500s I tried my hand at surfing its wake.  The waves were steep and turbulent and I was very tired from the 500s, so I didn't achieve any sweet rides, but it felt good to paddle hard in conditions somewhat similar to what I'll be navigating in the Columbia Gorge next month.

I eventually returned to the harbor feeling upbeat after a good work/play hybrid workout.  I have one more session here at home before I change the scenery for a while: next week my mother and my sister's family and I are taking our annual beach vacation at Dauphin Island on the Alabama Gulf Coast.

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Monday photo feature

Danish athlete Emma Broberg prepares to compete in the 2020 edition of the Amager Rundt, a 45-kilometer race at Copenhagen that includes downwind conditions on the open ocean and heavy boat traffic in the inner harbor.

Like many Scandinavians, Broberg got her start on flatwater.  She's now embraced the ocean swells, and before the pandemic hit, she was a world traveler: I saw her at the Gorge Downwind race in the Pacific Northwest in 2018.

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An intense weekend

Down at the riverfront yesterday morning I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor.  The soreness continued in my left biceps area, but the discomfort abated some as I got warmed up.

I paddled up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, and then commenced my workout.  My plan was to do three or four 1000-meter pieces down the Mississippi, depending on how many I could fit in between the mouth of the Wolf and the entrance to the harbor.  Then I would do either one or two 500-meter pieces in the harbor (two if I did three 1000s on the river, one if I did four).

I would start a new piece every 7th minute.  For recovery I would paddle easy against the current in the hope of fitting in four 1000s.  My target pace for the 1000s was 20.0 kilometers per hour, good for a time of 3 minutes flat.  Of course, I knew there was a good chance I would fall short of that goal because of the whims of those river currents, but I would be happy if I could get close each time.

And I did: I got in four 1000s and my times were 3:04, 3:06, 3:02, and 3:08.  I was feeling some pain by the third piece, and the fourth one was the biggest struggle of them all, but I was able to paddle at a consistent intensity level throughout.  I tried to keep the stroke rate around 90 per minute, though at times I creeped up toward 100.

Back in the harbor I had one 500-meter piece to do.  Without any current helping me, I aimed to maintain 12.0 kph for a time of 2 minutes, 30 seconds.  For the first half of the piece I was up around 12.5 kph, but then the wind, which had been swirly all morning, shifted into my face and slowed me down below 12.0 kph.  In the end I finished right at 2:30, so I guess it worked out just fine.  It was the first time in quite a while that I'd done a workout that was really tough but not also demoralizing, and I paddled back to the dock feeling good about that.

My body felt good and tired and ready for a recovery paddle this morning.  I got in the boat and paddled easy toward the south, trying to stay as relaxed as I could.  When I reached the harbor's mouth I saw a barge rig heading upstream toward the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and I decided I had just enough energy for some surfing.  By the time I'd ferried out there the rig was at least a quarter-mile upriver and the waves were small where I was, but with some patience I was able to ride some bumps here and there.  The sprinting took a lot out of me, though, and once I'd reached the HDB myself I turned back toward the harbor and headed for the dock.

And so this afternoon I'm really tired.  But with a complete day off scheduled for tomorrow, I think I'll get myself recovered.

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Doing my best to keep moving

The temperature rose above 90 degrees Fahrenheit for a couple of days this week.  As summer weather settles in more and more I'm doing what I always do, and immersing myself.

On Tuesday morning I did a gym session and then headed down to the river.  As I paddled toward the mouth of the harbor I saw an enormous barge rig coming upriver from below the Frisco Bridge, and I proceeded downstream hoping to do some surfing.  But it turned out the towboat was at nowhere near full throttle, and it wasn't generating any surfable waves that I could see.

I started paddling back upriver along the Tennessee bank.  I threw in a strong surge for some 1600 meters, starting midway up Tom Lee Park and finishing at the monorail bridge back in the harbor.  Maybe the heat was to blame, but that surge left me feeling worn out for the rest of the day.

It stayed hot Wednesday, but then some storms moved through with a mass of cooler air behind them.  Yesterday's high was in the low 80s, and this morning has been pleasantly cool.

The soreness in my left shoulder/biceps area seems to be worse some days and better other days.  When I woke up yesterday I could tell it was a "worse" day.  I stretched and warmed up as best I could, and did a gym session.  Then I went down to the river and paddled for 60 minutes.  I tried to be mindful of my stroke mechanics, getting the power from my trunk muscles as much as possible and not from my arms.

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