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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