Here's a picture I poached from the social media of my friend Nancy McDonald. She and her husband Chris have been traveling the Southwest, and she took some pretty stunning photos during their time in Grand Canyon National Park. Five months from now I'll be paddling my boat somewhere down in the bottom of that canyon.
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I did a bike ride Friday morning. The rides I've been doing in recent weeks have been a little over an hour, and not terribly intense. I've always thought of riding a bike as a fairly relaxing activity. And yet... it seems like I've felt awful the day after a bike ride lately. That was definitely the case yesterday: I woke up feeling tight and vaguely sore from head to toe. I did some full-body stretching, and that was an utter ordeal. I felt about as flexible as a kiln-dried 8/4 persimmon plank. Then I went down to the river and paddled pretty easy for 60 minutes. Once I got warmed up I felt reasonably okay in the boat, but had some soreness in my midsection.
I woke up feeling a good bit better this morning, though I was still tired and a bit sluggish. One development of late is that my weight has been down in the last several months--closer to 150 pounds than 160. Long-time readers might recall that I had a period of weight decline back in 2021-22, and that seemed to correspond with some low energy and listlessness. My doctor's office tested things like thyroid and testosterone levels and found nothing conclusive. Back around 2016-19, when I was racing especially well, my weight was up closer to 160 pounds.
I paddled for another 60 minutes this morning, and felt better than yesterday, but still lacked power and enthusiasm. A strong south wind was blowing down on the riverfront and I mostly just played around in the chop out on the Mississippi before returning to the harbor where I worked on paddling relaxed in beam conditions. Once I'd put in my time I went back to the dock and changed into dry clothes and drove home where some of my favorite non-athletic activities awaited.
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Well, a month has passed since my last post here. I'd like to say that I've just been busy, but over the years I've almost always managed to get something posted even when I'm busy.
Since my last post it's sort of felt as though training activities have slowed to a crawl. That's not entirely true, but some little pitfalls have dampened my mood about it all. After some injury-free months during which I felt energetic and enthusiastic about the things I was doing, some aches and pains have now set in. They started with a lot of soreness in my hips and pelvic area, and then I started feeling a lot of tightness in my left hamstring muscle that got really bad about two weeks ago. I rode my bike for the first time in a long time, and then the next day I was driving my pickup truck, which, unlike my little sedan that I drive most of the time, has a manual transmission. At one point I had just shifted gears and let up on the clutch with my left foot, and a wave of pain shot through my hamstring that was so bad that I thought I was going to have to pull over and get out and walk it off. Fortunately the pain eased after a few seconds, and since then the muscle has just kept on feeling tight.
So, yes, my body hasn't been entirely cooperative lately. And then there's the fact that I never really know anymore what I'm training for. As I've been noting here for the last several years, the racing scene in my part of the country has almost completely disappeared. The earliest event I might attend is over in Chattanooga, some five and a half hours away, on May 3; but I haven't yet decided just how badly I want to make that trip. Like so many events nowadays, this one features two different races--a 6.7-miler and a 10.9-miler--and I've long considered that an utterly dumb idea. Our sport is simply not big enough to be splitting its participants up into more than one category, and there always seems to be this unspoken expectation that the most accomplished racers are supposed to do the longer race, whatever the distances might be. If I do find the gumption to drive over to Chattanooga and enter this event, I will do the 6.7-mile race, because decades of experience tell me that I am better suited to that kind of distance than one of ten miles or more. But I think it's a safe bet that almost all the athletes who are at or above my competitive level will be racing 10.9 miles. So I'll probably have little competition in the 6.7-mile race, and that's why I'm lukewarm about making the trip in the first place.
Meanwhile, my biggest event of the year, the one I'm most excited about, has nothing to do with competition. My expedition through the Grand Canyon, scheduled to launch August 27, is slowly taking shape. Having that on the calendar is good motivation to be fit, but I don't really need to be more than fit--it's not like I have to average 5 minutes per kilometer or anything like that. I just need some solid stamina to negotiate the rapids and withstand the long days in the elements of the desert Southwest.
So... that's what's going through my head these days. I'm doing very little racing, and honestly, I'm not feeling all that motivated to do a lot of racing. My priorities have changed, I guess. It's not that I'm not enjoying paddling as much as ever, but after being a gung-ho racer for decades, I'm now inclined to ease up a bit and enjoy the "adventure" side of the sport a bit more. That includes my Grand Canyon trip, and I hope to get back to South Africa sooner or later, and I want to go paddle in Alaska one day... there's plenty to do. And strength and fitness will still be required, especially for downwinding in South Africa and stuff like that.
We've crossed the vernal equinox and the weather is getting ever more friendly for paddling. There's still a chilly day here and there, but the balance is tipping in favor of warmer ones. That means I'm getting in the boat more and doing less dry-land stuff. Since I might go to that race on May 3, I'm working in some formal workouts along with the usual mileage and work on stroke mechanics. So while I may or may not bring home any race hardware this year, I'm moving a boat around with a paddle as always.
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