I woke up and decided that I would break out my old longboard and clean it up to use it on base at that Del Mar Jetty break. My surfing ability is lousy; I can stand up in about a two-foot wave on the longboard, but it gives me a big thrill. My board is 9 feet, 2 inch, I think. I got out my wife's hair dryer and a new paint stirrer. I layed the board on the grass in the backyard and heated the layers of old, nasty, dirty wax and then easily scraped it off with the wooden paint stirrer.
I didn't go surf today; instead I went to the Oceanside Pier and swam around that. The tide was very low so the swim wasn't that far. The water was cold. I had purchased an extra swim cap and I wore two swim caps today. It was a great idea. I was warmer and my ears were covered much better, which, as an ocean swimmer knows, is important.
I swam the crawl, even though my neck was hurting, because it just makes me feel good!
I've been trying to improve my arm stroke-the reach, catch, pull, and recover-when I crawl out there. I try to keep my elbows at a ninety-degree angle when I arm-pull. Now that has caused my right shoulder ball-and-socket joint to give me problems. Maybe I just need to arm stroke like I used to-that was painless.
Oceanside Pier was beautiful. The water out there was flat and great for swimming. I jogged back to my car and my butt was kicked jogging through some fifty yards or so of soft sand at the end. That soft sand is a killer-that's why a trainee runs all over the soft sand up and down the beach at the Navy's Special Warfare Training Center. Heck, they even have a bulldozer that piles up the soft sand so the trainees can run up and down the mounds. Now, that's a leg and lung killer.
No comments:
Post a Comment