Spring's first paddle

We were back on  the water today! Now I should point out it was 3 degrees Celsius at noon in Halifax, so who knows how cold it was out on Lake Banook! All I know is at one point during our practice Albert said we'd be doing a five minute piece, two minutes hard, one minute active rest and another two minutes hard. All I could think was "dude, I don't know that I have 5 STROKES in me, let alone 5 minutes!!!" Yes, I was paying for not doing any winter training, but the biggest problem I had was I honestly couldn't feel my bottom arm for most of the practice. It took me at least 30 minutes standing in the shower to begin to warm up. All that aside, the first day on the water is always awesome. Now I hope I can follow through with my plans for the summer (it's all about finding a job so I can afford it!).

Sugs out.

Dealing with pain and injury

As I've said, in previous posts, I've been remiss in working out on a regular basis for a very long time. In addition to sheer laziness and loss of motivation since moving here, I struggled last year with hip/lower-back pain that nobody could figure out. I went to my GP, physio, massage, all to no avail. There was speculation that maybe I had a torn labrum for a while, nobody really knew. Paddling was a painful mess all summer. My doctor sent me to a sports medicine guy who ordered an MRI. In the meantime, I started to see the pain in my hip as just part of the joys of getting out of shape and being so much heavier. I knew I needed to train, but... We dismantled the bed and moved to the floor, which seemed to help with the pain and stiffness first thing every morning - I know, early morning aches and pains, maybe I'm just getting old!!!

Fast forward TEN MONTHS, and there I was this morning, on a stretcher in the hospital awaiting said diagnostic test. Of course, being me, I had long since forgotten about the fact that I was awaiting the test (I mean come on, 10 months?!) and of course when I remembered at 3am (with the test scheduled for 8:30 on the same day) I didn't give thought to the fun and invasive part where they injected the dye into my hip. Something tells me they'll find nothing. After all, I barely have pain anymore, although sometime in the next few weeks we'll be back on the water and then I'll know for certain. In the meantime I can only hope - finding something means we'll have something to fix rather than me still guessing.  I will not get into any kind of discussion about the state of our healthcare system and why wait times have become so absolutely ridiculous!