On the aches-and-pains front, my lat muscle injury seems to be doing a lot better, but a couple of other stubborn issues remain. My left forearm and biceps muscles are better some days and worse some days, and I've got a bad spot in the right side of my neck that came on about a month ago. My chiropractor has been working on that latter spot, and she has said that it might take several adjustments before we can get the tension to release in that area. I'm dreaming of the day when we achieve that magic crack! that makes everything better.
Meanwhile, I'm wondering whether that neck pain is somehow related to the recent problems in my right lat muscle. I've noticed that when I tense that part of my neck I can feel it down into the lat. Hmm.
Friday morning I dared to get back in the boat for an hour of easy paddling. It would have been nice of Mother Nature to cooperate, but instead she presented me with a cold north wind and a temperature around 38 degrees Fahrenheit. The sky was mostly cloudy, but as the hour went by the sun began to take over. I could feel some mild soreness in the lat muscle--not just the injured part near my armpit, but the whole muscle. But it never got any worse than that: I wasn't feeling any stabs of pain when I stressed it. So that was encouraging, and I was hopeful that a couple more days of moderate-intensity paddling would bring me closer to full health.
Yesterday morning I took a rather wild notion. Here at home I do almost all my paddling on the downtown Memphis riverfront because I keep a boat at a marina down there. But yesterday I found myself wanting to check out Arkabutla Lake, a reservoir in northwest Mississippi some 25 miles south of Memphis. I loaded one of the surfskis in my garage onto my truck and headed south. Having scoped out the lake on the Google map, I chose to access it from the Bayou Point public use area on the western shore.
It was chilly as I carried my boat to the water, but the sun was shining bright and the temperature was rising toward a high in the 50s. I embarked on another 60-minute paddle, heading out on a loop around the heart of the lake. Situated in an economically-modest region, Arkabutla has a reputation as a somewhat lower-rent recreational spot than Sardis and Enid reservoirs to the southeast. But I found it a perfectly pleasant setting for a Saturday morning paddle. Even though I'm a lifelong Memphian, I had spent almost no time there before yesterday, and I'm glad to have gained a modicum of familiarity with this neighboring body of water.
This morning I returned to my home water on the Memphis riverfront. It was no more than partly sunny, but the temperature was 50 degrees and rising toward a high in the low 60s. As usual for this time of year, the warmer temperature was accompanied by a south wind, and that wind seemed to get stronger as I paddled for 90 minutes. I left the harbor long enough to paddle up to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, but then I went back and spent the rest of my allotted time doing a full lap in the harbor's more sheltered environs. My lat muscle felt fine, and while I tried to keep the stroke rate low, I put more power into my strokes and got a solid training session out of it. I'll probably wait until next weekend to do a "real" workout, but it felt good to be paddling strong again.
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