Teva Life Agent Mike Dawson checks in.
The last few weeks have been somewhat unusual for me. Instead of being on the water, I've been sitting on the bank of the river watching everyone else doing their thing, racing training and having good times on the water.
During training for the Teva Extreme Outdoor Games in Italy las month I landed pretty hard on the top drop, of the "king of the falls" section. It's a burly and unforgiving 12 meter slide into a shallow hard pool. It clean knocked the wind out of me but I wasn't to worried. It happens all the time.... A week later, I was in Spain for the ICF Canoe Slalom World cup. During training I was pushed into an unusal position, and I just stopped working. I couldn't move to good for a day, and it turned out that I had proliferated 2 discs in my lumbar. It's not a big deal-because apparently they're pushing into the middle and not going to cut the nerve, which is sweet. A lot sweeter, than them putting pressure on the nerve.
In Spain I raced after some/a lot of physio which made it possible to get on the startline. massage, compex, pain killers and anti-flammes.
I headed to Augsburg, Germany for the second world cup and stopped taking pain killers to see how it was and it got worse. The German doctors x-ray'd it, and then decided to go onto the MRI to check for a fracture. No fracture. Happy days.... Well happy days in 4 more days when they reckon I can paddle again.
In the mean-time I am going on holiday..... I've watched enough kayaking for a life time... ;) I love the river but not being able to get on it sent me on a new mission-Italy. Checking out the sites and sounds of a country so old- a lot of history to take in for a kiwi boy.... It's something I don't usually get a chance to check out on my travels. But now I've spent a bit of time being another kind of traveler- The tourist.
Check out www.mikekayak.blogspot.com for updates
Location: SinglePost
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