Summer of Rehab!

Summer living.

It has been a while since I have posted anything up here. The NZ summer seems to have raced by pretty dam fast.

Since the Australian Open in Jan I have spent a lot of time out of the boat and off the river. In October I got a tendonitis that was pretty bad in my wrist. A side effect of paddling a lot for the last 14 years. With some great treatment and some injections into it I was able to race selection in January and secure 1st boat on the NZ team, thankfully, as there isn’t a Pre-Selection basis on medical grounds. While the wrist was improving this paddling at this point definitely aggravated as it was on the bubble of the recovery time from the initial treatment. Following NZ selection I returned to Australia to train for 3 weeks on the whitewater course in Penrith to test if it would continue to recover. After two days my wrist was so bad I had to return back to NZ as I couldn’t even last 5 minutes on the whitewater.

I booked in to see Andy Stokes an Orthopeadic surgeon based in TGA, and the same person that looked me when I broke my back at the end of 2012. Together with the advice of my physio and doctor we decided to cut it open and check out what was going on, as the problem was worsening and had been there for over 3 months. He found that there was massive inflammation of the tendon and it needed to be operated and the sheath loosened so my tendons could pass freely in the arm. A pretty simple process with the operation only taking around 60minutes.

It was a bummer to miss so many rad times that went down on the water’s of Okere Falls this summer, but I am stoked to have committed to getting the surgery done and my arm recovered! I’ve just started to get back onto the water and testing it out mostly on the flat water & it’s already 100 times better than previous I’m excited to be heading away pretty soon to the European summer.

Next stop – ICF Race Solkan.