It's been nearly three weeks since I've posted something here. In the early part of that three-week period I was slow to recover from the trip home from South Africa: when I flew over there I had activities right from the get-go, and that helped me get over the jet lag quickly, but when I got back home I had nothing pressing to engage my attention, and so I sort of just sat around the house and had trouble re-adjusting to Central Standard Time here in North America. On top of that, I found myself dealing with some health struggles. On Monday the 9th of February, I went and got the second of two shingles vaccine shots, and just like the first one last November, it triggered a severe reaction from my immune system. I spent all day Tuesday feeling pretty sick--headaches, body aches, and intense chills. I was mostly feeling better by Wednesday morning, but there was lingering pain and tightness in the muscles on the right side of my neck. It's a condition I'd had numerous times before, and I figured it would loosen up and work itself out over the next several days, but it didn't. I suffered with it for the next couple of weeks, and eventually accepted that it wasn't going to go away on its own. I scheduled my first appointment with my chiropractor since before an MRI revealed my impinged nerves back in 2023.
The chiropractor saw me this past Tuesday, and while she didn't have any miracle cures, she did make an adjustment that I'm hopeful has put me on a road to relief. As of this writing there's still a fair amount of pain in the area, but it's somewhat less severe than it had been. I'm scheduled to be back in the chiropractor's office Monday morning, and I'm hoping for another positive step.
Meanwhile, there's a race coming up in three weeks down at Ocean Springs, Mississippi--it's the annual Battle On The Bayou canoe and kayak race. I missed it last year, but before that I'd participated in every installment of it since its inception in 2010. Amid all the discomfort I've been dealing with in the last several weeks, I've been trying to do some decent training in the boat. This has included a lot of work on stroke mechanics, tempo sessions near aerobic maximum, and some interval work. This past Thursday I revisited a workout I did several times before my trip to South Africa: bridge-to-bridge sprints. I did a set of four, starting every 8th minute, and clocked 2:11, 2:11, 2:11, and 2:17. As you can see, I sort of fell apart on the last one after three very consistent efforts. The weather was sunny with very little wind, and the water was almost dead flat.
I was back in the boat yesterday morning, paddling a loop out on the Mississippi in unseasonably warm weather. The current forecast indicates a continuation of warmer weather than we're used to in the first week of March.
Ordinarily I'd have paddled again this morning, but today I had to go perform with the handbell group I play with. I'll make it up later.
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