Paddling has been minimal since I got home from my trip two weeks ago. I've had a big pile of nuisance chores to deal with, and I've spent what little spare time I've had in the midst of that doing stuff in my woodworking shop, because that's what's been speaking to me lately, to be honest.
But I've gotten in the boat several times in the last two weeks. Last Sunday I went down to the riverfront and paddled for an hour, and felt perfectly awful in the boat. My energy was low and my muscles were aching in all the usual places, and I couldn't wait for those 60 minutes to be over.
On Wednesday I went to the doctor to follow up on the nerve-block injections I had before I left town. I explained to him that I'd experienced very little improvement from that treatment: the neck stiffness and ashiness in my shoulders and biceps areas seemed as bad as ever. He recommended another round of injections, targeting vertebrae the first treatment missed. Seeing as how I'm not in excruciating pain, I think that's reasonable. He wants to perform surgery only as a last resort, and even though this surgery wouldn't be as invasive as, say, open heart surgery, that seems wise to me. So his office is going to call me to schedule another nerve-block injection, and we'll see if it takes this time.
This weekend I paddled both yesterday and today. Though I'm still achy, especially in my left biceps area, I felt quite a bit more energetic in the boat than I did last Sunday. The Mississippi was flowing this morning at 4.7 feet on the Memphis gauge--a low level, but not alarmingly low. A few storm systems have moved across the Missouri and upper Mississippi and Ohio and Tennessee watersheds in the last six weeks, and that's kept the river hanging in there well above the super-drought levels that we saw last fall. Of course, if that region doesn't continue to get some rain in the coming months, then the river will be making the national news once more.
The past week has been quite nice for the month of August. For a few days we had high temperatures below 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and the humidity has been down. By yesterday the temperature had returned to the mid 90s, but the humidity was still low enough that it didn't feel that bad outside. I believe more oppressive heat will be returning this coming week.
I have a feeling my racing might be over for 2023. In addition to the continuing physical woes, I'm feeling tired and preoccupied with a lot of out-of-the-boat stuff. I've been giving some thought to the period of the year in which I focus my more ambitious training. For decades I've always ramped things up in December so I'll be in good form by spring. It almost feels like part of my D.N.A. at this point. It dates back to when I raced slalom, in which the biggest domestic races were in the spring. It continued as I moved more into flatwater/open-water racing because once upon a time the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race was one of my biggest events and it was in the spring. In more recent years I've worked to be in good shape for races like the one at Ocean Springs in March and the one at Vicksburg in April. But now the Vicksburg race is no more, and lately my biggest events have seemed to be in mid-summer.
Meanwhile, many of my best racing friends are focusing their training on the big 32-mile race on the Tennessee River at Chattanooga. I'm really just not interested in doing a race that long, but even if I were, by August I always seem to be exhausted and not up to embarking on another training block. Maybe the dog-day heat is part of the reason, but I think I need to take a hard look at how I periodize my year in the future as well. Maybe I need to be more of a six-months-per-year paddler so I can pay more attention to my woodworking and other interests while delivering a good-quality effort at two or three carefully-selected races.
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