I mentioned last week how much it bothered me to let a gorgeous day come and go on Wednesday without getting out and doing anything athletic. So when another warm day presented itself on Monday, I was determined to take advantage of it. It actually was nowhere near as nice as Wednesday had been: we had some rain in the morning, and the temperature was just barely touching 60 degrees Fahrenheit. But it was better than one can ask for in January, and in the afternoon I got out and rode my bike over my usual 34-kilometer course, taking the Greater Memphis Greenline out to Shelby Farms, doing a loop around Patriot Lake, and returning home on the Greenline.
I've been slow to get back into a gym routine, but I began part of one Tuesday morning when I did a couple of abdominal exercises. Then I went downtown and paddled for 60 minutes. The temperature had risen well into the 60s overnight, with some heavy rain. It was foggy yesterday morning, but the voices on my radio were saying it would gradually become sunny; when I got to the dock there was a thin layer of fog over the water, but there were patches of blue sky overhead, and I figured it wouldn't be long before the fog burned off entirely. But as I paddled south toward the mouth of the harbor, the fog actually got so thick that I couldn't see much more than 20 feet. I left the harbor and did a surge from the tip of Mud Island to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, staying close to the bank where I knew no barges would be lurking. I didn't have my cadence sensor with me, but I aimed for a stroke rate somewhere around 80 strokes per minute.
After reaching the bridge I came back downstream and returned to the harbor. Paddling north, I eventually moved into an area of lighter fog. I did another surge from the HDB to the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge, and then paddled calm until my 60 minutes had expired.
Yesterday I was busy with a lot of things but in the morning I found time to do a leisurely bike ride of less than an hour. It was quite warm all day, and in the evening some heavy rain moved in.
By this morning the rain was all gone and the sun was out. The temperature was in the mid 50s but was expected to drop in the afternoon, so I got out as quickly as I could this morning. I did a steady 60-minute paddle and focused on the same thing I've focused on a lot lately: getting a good precise solid catch and putting power into the early phase of the stroke. There was a pretty good south breeze blowing, and I also did some balance drills by paddling across the harbor in the beam waves.
My left arm felt quite a bit better for a couple of days this week and I wondered whether perhaps I'd turned a corner. But by last night the pain had returned, and it bothered me today. I'm still doing rehab exercises and I guess I need to get back in to consult with my chiropractor, whom I haven't seen since before the holidays.
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