What A Pain!

As you may recall I initiated a back tweaking on Saturday the 15th by trying to paddle at too high a stroke rate. Saturday's Sound Rower's race didn't help matters any. I was working pretty hard and I should have taken it a bit easier, ok, a lot easier. After the race a few friends were kind enough to help me empty and properly repack my 5'x15' storage unit. I had enough wits about me to realize it was a project better undertaken with assistance and it should be noted that this is a big evolutionary step for me! Anyhoo, the combination of 10 days ago tweaking, working too hard during the race, and repacking a storage unit, my back is feeling rather fried. I spent 1.5 hours on Carmen's massage table this afternoon. She found all the spots that were unhappy. And then she started working on my feet. On the bright side my right foot is feeling better. On the down side, I suspect I should take a pass on this Saturday's race down in Portland. I'm going to gauge the situation day by day and see how the back is doing. I'd really wanted to participate in all 7 of the winter series races. But better to pass on one race than be a whiny, cripple for weeks afterwards, 'cause you know I'll whine about it, in between icing and liberally applying narcotics, of course!

Goin' to Portland

I emailed anyone I could think of that might be headed down for the race and might be interested in carpooling, nothing, no reply, nada, ziltch, zippo. Well, ok, got an email from Doug saying he was going to ride with someone else. It was going to be just me and Scotty, might as well bring the dogs along, too. Then I get a call from Scotty, decided that he wanted to be an active participant in our democracy and go to the caucus tomorrow, the nerve. As we were wrapping up our conversation, mind you this was around 5 pm this afternoon, I sat down at the computer and lo and behold there was a new message from Doug! If there is still room and I'm ok with it could he carpool with me, the other ride just fell through! Huzzah! I get to have conversation during the ride down! And no dog farts! I can subject myself to that but not so much other people I'd like to call friends.

We are meeting at 6:30 am Saturday morning down at SSP to load his boat onto my car. I loaded the boat I'll use this afternoon. And then off we go. Doug has raced this course before, said it has the potential for being as gnarly as the race up at Jericho. There is a long upriver leg before the turn and down river run and ending with a much shorter upriver leg. Again, hoping to meet my three goals and then some: 1) don't huli 2) finish 3) don't finish last! You can bet I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow.