Real-world goings on

Since my return home from Florida last Sunday, training activities have been largely on pause.  The main reason is a big pile of nuisance chores that were waiting for me, a couple of which got drawn out longer than expected and caused me more than a little bit of grief and anger.

I'll spare you the grisly details of all that, but I will mention that one of the week's chores was to visit my doctor's office for my annual physical, and it seems that I'm in pretty good health these days (bloodwork results are still pending and I should hear about them sometime after this holiday weekend).  I'm still coughing a lot, but I think the frequency of my fits is decreasing ever so gradually.  The doctor thinks it's one of those "hundred-day coughs."

I finally got back in the boat on Friday, and again yesterday.  Frigid weather is now descending on the Mid South, and I wanted to get some paddling in before it arrived.  The sessions were generally calm, steady paddling, but I paid a lot of attention to stroke mechanics.

As for my plans for the immediate future, they're a little uncertain because starting two weeks from tomorrow I have jury duty in federal court, and at least according to the letter I received, it could last the entire month of February.  I hope that won't actually be the case, but the main thing I don't know yet is how "on call" the court will want me to be.

Part of me is frustrated because I feel like I ought to be building on what I got started down in Florida, but another part of me is aware that I might not have any sort of competitions in the foreseeable future.  The race at Ocean Springs that I have attended each March for many years is not going to happen this year.  Right now the earliest race that I might attend is one over in Chattanooga in May that Terry Smith told me about last week.  At the moment I don't know whether it will conflict with the college graduation of my niece and nephew, who both attend the same school over in Texas.

Anyway, for now I think my best bet is to re-start some kind of general fitness routine like I was doing back in the late fall--some paddling combined with some indoor and outdoor dry-land work that I can schedule around the weather forecast.  The very latest information will be available right here.

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