SUP enters the picture

I lost a lot of weight in the latter half of 2017 and the first few months of 2018. I did it with walking as my primary exercise. I figured I would add paddling my little kayak into the mix as it got warmer. Kayaking has become more difficult, though. I have some shoulder and lower back problems. The motion made paddling a kayak exacerbates the shoulder pain and sitting in a kayak for very long gives me a lot of low back pain.

I was given an Amazon gift card for something I did at work and decided to take a chance on one of the cheap iSUPs. It's Amazon, right? If it proves to be junk, I will send it back and get something else. So as soon as the box sowed up, I inflated it and tested it.

Slight deflection, but it didn't pop or fold up like a taco, so I left it inflated a few days to see if it lost any pressure.

It held up fine, so after a few days I deflated it and took it to a nearby lake pumped it back up and took it out for a trial run.

look at that great form. 😏 I paddled around in a large cove that had a boat ramp. There were plenty of people around and the entire cove is a no wake zone, so it was a good place to learn. Paddling didn't bother my shoulders and still doesn't after learning better paddling form. I could move around pretty freely and it didn't bother my back.

I started paddling more and more. As an example, here is about a month of late Summer paddling:

Over 80 miles of paddling with 6 paddles of over 8.5 miles. I really enjoy paddling.

I also met a lot of people and paddled with groups, so it was a nice social outlet. I even had someone offer to introduce me to whitewater SUP, loaned me a proper board for it and guided me down a river.

I was hooked.

One group I paddled with had a lot of members who had been paddling a long time and were pretty serious about it. They would trade off and let me try all manner of boards, told me the pros and cons of different types and taught me better technique. I also augmented that training with online videos and forums.

The end result of all of this is that SUP paddling became very important to me and I decided to start making plans to upgrade equipment and skills to move up to another level.