Just in case anyone was wondering... yes, I'm still here. Posting stalled out for a few days. It was partly because of a little existential crisis and partly because I've been just plain busy.
By the middle of last week I was starting to ask myself why, exactly, I was putting myself through rigorous workouts with no significant competitions on the horizon. Even though I'd more or less decided to attend tomorrow's race on the Saline River over in Arkansas, the small amount of intel I was able to gather on that event indicated that it would be a rinky-dink affair with little or no real competition. And then just yesterday I learned that the event has been called off due to high water. While I know almost nothing about the Saline River, I'd been thinking high water would be a good thing: the current images of the river on Google Maps were apparently taken during a dry period and it looks like you could practically walk down the race course, so as a paddler of a boat with an understern rudder, I was hoping for lots of rain over in central Arkansas. But it seems the race organizers see things differently.
So I won't be racing anytime soon. And frankly, I've been wondering lately if I even should be racing. I mean, I'm 55 years old, and I probably got as good as I'm ever going to get in this sport a long time ago. And though racing does have a social aspect to it, there's not much of that where I live. While cities like Chattanooga and Knoxville seem to have developed robust scenes for training and racing, here I'm paddling by myself day after day, week after week. There are, of course, a handful of other Memphians with racing backgrounds, but it's been years since we've put together any sort of group-training activities. Yes, I could take the lead in getting something going again, but that's not something I'm particularly good at. Part of the problem is that I have pretty rigid ideas about the kind of training I want to be doing, while other paddlers have other ideas.
It is, of course, possible to paddle without any racing involved. But the branches of the sport I enjoy most--downwind paddling and whitewater paddling--require that I travel quite a way from home. Maybe I should move someplace else, but my roots here are pretty deep. My family is from here, I own property here, and the fact is that in most respects I like it here. I've developed some strong friendships and enjoy a nice community.
Of course, I do enjoy paddling my boat here on local waters. I get to the end of some days thinking that going down to the river was the only good thing I did all day. General fitness is important to me--not being trained up for racing, but just the kind of fitness that will help me stay active and feeling good into old age. "Self care" seems to be the modern-day term for it. But I have a hard time keeping that from morphing into more serious training, and if there's not a specific purpose for that training (i.e., an upcoming race or a trip for downwind or whitewater paddling) I just end up exhausted and frustrated.
On top of all the angst described above, I've become quite busy in my woodworking shop lately. After a slow start to the year, suddenly I've found myself working on projects for at least four different clients. And I'm enjoying the work, too: each day I've been waking up more excited about my shop work than about going to the river. Last weekend, after a halfhearted session in the boat on Saturday, I skipped paddling altogether on Sunday and spent the whole day in the shop, getting lots and lots of work done and feeling good about it.
Tuesday and yesterday I did some short, hard sprints in the harbor, thinking that I had a race tomorrow and I needed to sharpen up the speed a little. And as the week went on I found myself looking forward to tomorrow: even rinky-dink races can be fun, and maybe another good paddler or two would show up. But now the race is off, and so... here we are.
I think for at least a little while I'll lay off the focused training and just keep up a general fitness routine while I continue my work in the shop. I need to get some firm plans on the books for this summer and find something to do that will make me want to paddle with gusto again.
This morning I did a gym session since there's no race tomorrow. I also decided to try some running again. When I tried to run last winter I arbitrarily picked 20 minutes as a reasonable duration for a run, but my body (especially my calves and Achilles tendons) protested loudly once I was 10 minutes in. So this time I'm really taking baby steps. Before my gym session I went out and ran around my block, covering maybe 800 meters. It was little more than a warmup for the gym work. But such a warmup is good, and I think I'll keep on doing very short runs two or three times a week, and increase the distance very gradually.
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