Hobbled

In my last post I should have mentioned another contributor to my weary mood these days: the return of my plantar fasciitis.  My right foot is hurting as bad as ever.  I'm back to making frequent visits to the chiropractor and I hope I'll start to get some relief soon, but it's disheartening because it feels like we're back to square one treating a problem I'd thought I'd licked.

I guess there's a bright side: while this injury puts a damper on my daily existence, at least it doesn't stop me from paddling.  The river is about the nicest place to be during these steamy, muggy days because there's usually more of a nice breeze there than in the middle of town.  Yesterday I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, then headed out onto the Mississippi hoping to find some barge traffic for a "play" workout.  But the river was quiet and I ended up doing a steady up-tempo loop around the Harahan Bridge to the south and the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the north.  As I headed back toward the harbor I ran into a couple of other surf ski paddlers, Adam Davis and Mike Womack.  They'd put in about 18 miles upriver at Shelby Forest and were paddling down to the Memphis riverfront.

Today I did a set of eight 12-stroke sprints at two-minute intervals.  I typically do stuff like this in the harbor, but today I did them out on the river.  The conditions were calm, but on the river the water is always squirrelly enough to add a balance aspect to the workout.