Well, it's been just about a month since my last post here.
Lately the weather has been a challenge: this past week has given us mostly cloudy skies, Fahrenheit temperatures mostly in the 30s, and bitter north winds.
What's more, my right biceps area has continued to bother me. The bright side is that I do seem able to paddle with it: in recent days I've gingerly pushed the intensity, and it has responded well. But it rears its head in my out-of-the-boat life at random times, when I move my arm just the wrong way. A couple of times I've gotten a sharp stab of pain while putting a shirt on, for example.
Maybe I should be seeking some medical attention for this ailment, but besides my general dislike of dealing with modern-day corporate doctors' offices, I'm skeptical that I can do so quickly enough to initiate an effective physical therapy regimen before I leave for South Africa in about six weeks. Maybe I'll change my mind in another day or two, but for now I'm following the example of that baseball player who plays through a nagging ailment for the last couple of months of the season before getting it fixed more permanently in the offseason.
In any case, I've been working out both in and out of the boat, albeit at a very modest volume. To view the situation in the most positive light possible, I've been reflecting on my best assets as an athlete:
1. I've always been good at showing up, even when my heart is not a hundred percent into the idea of training and it would be very easy to skip a session. When a day arrives and I have a session planned, and the weather is sort of lousy like it's been this past week, I almost always make myself go get in the boat (or do whatever else I've got planned) anyway, and "put something on the board," as it were. More often than not, once my workout is underway, I embrace the task and put in a good honest effort.
2. I'm consistent with everything I do. Nothing I do is a one-off. Sometimes I might rearrange my schedule of workouts based on the weather forecast, but I never, say, do an indoor jump-rope session because it's raining outside and then never do any jump-roping again. When I choose a particular exercise, I make it a regular part of my routine for an extended period so that my body can adapt to it fully. My body needs to know that each exercise is part of "its job" for as long as that exercise is part of my routine.
3. My sessions are always good quality. I make them count. Like I said above, my training volume has been fairly low lately, partly because of my muscular woes and partly because I've had a lot going on in my non-athletic life. In November most of my paddling sessions were just 40 minutes, and my gym work and other dry-land workouts haven't been particularly daunting. But every time I do something, I do it well. In the boat I don't just drift around; I pay close attention to my stroke mechanics and my cadence and my intensity. The same goes for all the other work: I give a good honest effort with a lot of attention to technique.
4. I set goals for myself. In the last several years I haven't been racing as seriously, and so my goals have been perhaps not so clearly defined; but they're there nevertheless. For much of this past year, my goal was simply to achieve a good solid fitness level for my trip through the Grand Canyon. I'm now seeking the same for my trip to South Africa, albeit with a few more intense workouts thrown in. As I move inexorably into old age, my focus will be more and more on general fitness with the hope that I can keep feeling good and performing mundane tasks.
So... there you go. I wish I could tell you I'm putting myself through rigorous workouts and feeling "in the zone" and all that, but at the moment that's not really the case. I'm doing the best I can, however, and I hope that sticking with it will lead me to some good things down the road.
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