More paddling and biking and running

I did a gym session Tuesday morning, and then went downtown and got in the boat to paddle a mostly-easy 60 minutes.  My left biceps area bothered me again, but maybe not quite as much as it had Saturday.  After cresting at 1.48 feet above zero on the Memphis gauge over the weekend, the Mississippi had dropped back to an even zero when I was there Tuesday.  Right now the forecast has it continuing to drop for the foreseeable future, but I hope maybe some rain will fall in the watershed and change that prediction.

I left the river and went and got both a flu shot and a Covid-19 booster shot.  So far I've been lucky enough not to get too sick from the shots, and yesterday morning I had nothing worse than mild head congestion and a swollen gland in my right armpit (I got the shots in my right shoulder because of all the muscle woes I've had in the left).

It was nothing that was going to put me out of action.  My left calf was feeling much better and I considered trying another short run.  But a look at the weather forecast revealed that yesterday afternoon was going to be quite warm (about 65 degrees Fahrenheit) while today was going to be cooler with chances of rain.  I'd rather ride my bike in warmer weather and run in cooler weather, so I "let the weather be my coach," as Greg Barton had suggested, and went out for a bike ride yesterday afternoon.  I did the usual 34-kilometer loop out to Shelby Farms and back.  I'd love to have a couple of other courses to incorporate into my riding routine, but this is the only one easily accessible from my house on which I can get in some good distance with a minimum of motorized traffic to deal with.

It was indeed cooler and sort of rainy this morning.  I set out with the intention of doing a 20-minute run, but a short distance in I realized that my calf muscle wasn't as healed as I'd thought.  I tried my best to go easy on it, stopping a several times to do some light stretching on it or just let it rest for a minute.  In the end I probably didn't spend more than 12 or 13 of my 20 minutes actually running, and the running I did do was tiring--I just don't have the cardiovascular infrastructure I once did for that purpose.

My calf muscle didn't "pop" on me like it did last week, but it's very sore now.  I'm not panicked over it--it is normal, after all, to be sore when you start running again after a long layoff, and the calf muscles are where I've always had a lot of soreness as a runner.  But I'm going to have to proceed with caution.  I think getting back into some running is going to have to be a very slow, gradual process.

I'll just add that my left arm is really hurting these days, mainly in the biceps and forearm areas.  I'm sort of at a loss what to do about it.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.