Last Sebago Pool Session of the 2012-13 chlorine season!

Note - lots of fun pictures down below the verbiage!

By Sunday morning, TQ and I were back to our more habitual fun of kayaking! It would've been a bit on the gusty side outside, but guess what, it's always perfect in the pool, and with Sunday being the last session of the 2012-2013 pool season, we didn't want to miss it. That actually had a lot to do with the weird Friday baseball whim, with a good "yoga in a boat" session planned for Sunday I didn't feel like I really had to get out on the water on Saturday.

I'm very glad we made a few more pool sessions this year. We spent plenty of time in the pool during the winter of 2011-2012, but we were actually teaching basics, and between that and the winter being a very mild one, it was a little hard to talk ourselves into Sunday mornings at the pool, too. I'd also done something peculiar to my shoulder during the 2012 New Year's Day frostbite regatta - again, because it was so warm I did about 30 New Year's Day rolls instead of the usual half-dozen or so, which was just stupid - the first 29 were fine but I was getting a little lightheaded by the end (which is generally a good sign that you should stop) and the 30th went wrong, somehow I blew an offside roll, got flustered, went for the on-side without a proper setup and although I came up in one piece I pulled something in the shoulder area in the process. It wasn't bad enough to send me to a doctor but even after the actual soreness went away it didn't feel quite right for a long time. It left feeling a little timid about doing anything much more adventurous than basic sweep rolls (a very simple roll and the one that I actually do when I get knocked over in surf) over the summer. I'm not sure anyone I paddled with during the summer would have noticed that I was being more restrained than usual but I was, and I knew it. I did finally try a hand roll at Orient Point in August - I failed the roll but the shoulder didn't complain at all, which was nice. 

TQ and I had agreed that we didn't want to let another winter go by without some good practice, and the club's getting invited to go do a rolling demo at the Southern Connecticut Small Craft Symposium back in February was of course a BIG motivator in actually following through with that. Sure enough, a few sessions in warm clear water restored the fun factor nicely. I'm still missing a lot of the Greenland rolls I used to be able to do but the basics are re-solidified and guess what, my hand roll came back. Phew.

And of course I couldn't resist taking some pictures as clubmates got in their last hurrahs. A good end to pool season. Now all I have to do is remember to keep practicing once the water warms up in the bay, especially if I can't make it to the Hudson River Greenland Festival, which I suddenly decided on Sunday that I wanted to do but which may already by booked solid - gotta move fast for that one!