I’m sooooo tired

I think I overdid it a bit. I went kayaking, and because I left it so late, the parking lot at Bay Creek was full, forcing me to launch from the public park across the street. No dock, just a lot of very horrible sucky mud.

The creek was utterly full of people splashing around in boats of all sorts, and 90% of them didn’t know what they were doing (there was a greenland kayaking class practicing rolls, they looked like they knew what they were doing). And unfortunately, because of my natural urge to show off, and because of the way I got injured a few years ago by these “sub-prime boaters” (you know, they go from bank to bank with no interest), my usual solution to crowds like this is to sprint like hell to get around them before they have a chance to injure me instead of picking my through slowly and politely like we do when Vicki is with me. So I sprinted at faster than my “race day” pace for the first mile. At the end of it, my arms were killing me. Evidently I wasn’t paddling with very good technique during the sprint, either. However, the fact that my arms were so tired meant that for the rest of the day, I really had no choice in the matter – if I didn’t use my torso, I wasn’t going anywhere.

I tried to keep up a decent but not killing pace for the rest of the day. According to Google Maps Pedometer, I did a hair over 9 miles. Most of the time I was lurching from bank to bank, trying to find deep water to paddle in – the boat definitely feels like it’s being sucked down when I get into shallow water, and paddling from deep to shallow feels like going up a very steep hill. When it’s especially bad, you can hear your wake breaking as it catches up with you. Against a bit of a current, it took me 1:18 to get to the turn-around point (the put-in point for the Shuttle), and almost exactly an hour to get back. I timed the last half mile, from the turn-around point of the Wednesday night race to the finish line at Bay Creek, and in spite of the mobile obstacles, it only took me 6 minutes, which wouldn’t be a bad time to do it at the end of a 2 mile race, never mind after 9 miles of paddling.

I need a shower, and I need some Aleve, and then I need to lie down and watch some TV and try not to move my arms or shoulders for a few hours. I guess getting Vicki to spoon feed me would be out of the question. Too bad.