back in the saddle again

It has been just over six months since I have posted here. Six months, wow.

For me, perfect can often be the enemy of good. If I can't give something 110%, I drop it completely and focus on the things in my life which are the priority. For the last six months, slalom has been on the back burner and my blog has grown stale.

My career has become my focus, both for financial and personal reasons. I'm 25. I don't have a trust fund. I want to go places, not just spin my wheels. It was time for me to get serious. The year 2007, my best attempt as a REI-bike-wrench-paddle-bum, was a blast; truly one of the best years of my life. But I had some growing up to do.

So now, I am wearing heels and working 60 hour weeks. I avoided my boat all summer. I really wasn't sure how much I wanted to paddle or what my relationship to the sport should be. I both missed it desperately and contemplated trucking all my gear to GAF and making a couple grand selling my spray skirts, PFDs, paddles and boats. But I couldn't do it. My heart in still in my C1 and I still have a burning, intense desire to train as an athlete.

In Jeff City, I live blocks from the Missouri River. There is a boat ramp less than 5 minutes from my house. I have been getting out every weekend for the past few weeks, feeling her out again. It feels great. I am coming at the sport with a totally different mindset now -- and where before I struggled to know what to do, how to connect my movement, now I am relaxed. I have been more aware of small things like the outfitting changes that could improve my performance -- currently, I seem to be better able to figure this stuff out on my own.

For now, I am just having fun and getting reacquainted. My standard workout is to paddle to a high-paced music mix: steady tempo during the verses, full throttle during the chorus, and a break on the first verse of every new song. If I stick with it, that will get boring fast, and I will need to invent games, hang gates, or explore other local rivers.

If I prioritize this again, it will mean travel. Which I am now better able to afford -- but it means not visiting friends and family on the long weekends and holidays b/c I'd rather be in a training camp somewhere. Last year, as much as I loved the sport, I didn't connect w/ others enough for it to be a total social-life replacement. Can I juggle all these things? Work? Training? Visiting friends and family?

Choices. Lots of choices.

Either way, I feel fortunate that I have the choices in front of me to make.