Shoulder post first surf 04/23/11

It's been 5.5 weeks since surgery and I was determined to get out and surf around 6 weeks. I'd been vacillating back and forth since Friday but certain fears kept me from pulling the trigger. On Saturday I decided on testing it out in a short feeler surf session.

When I walked up to the beach in the morning it was super-crowded like ants from Lowers to Cottons and there were throngs of people on the beach too. I just resigned to not surfing that morning until a week-day when I wouldn't have to be watching over my injury as well as being frustrated in trying to catch waves.

Around 2PM I began to get restless watching the Rip Curl Pro at Bells and said I probably have 1-2 hours before Kelly Slater's quarterfinal heat. I grabbed the board, packed up my suit and headed down to the beach. When I came over the trail tracks I was surprised to see that the crowds had emptied out and the conditions were excellent with clean glassy (a lil high tide) 2-3" with overhead sets. I chose to surf the peaky Cottons.

I got suited and didn't notice any problems with my shoulder. When I got down to the water I could see more clearly how thick the swell was on this tide. It definitely looked more meaty. As I entered the water there was no signs of problems with paddling out and thought Wow this may be a great session. As soon as I made it out I paddled into a 2" wedge did 2 roundhouse cutbacks. The first I banked back into the whitewater which felt good and the second I decided to be more aggressive with and slid the tail but my forward foot slipped on the weak old wax job I had...

I caught a few more before a bomb set caught me a lil inside. The biggest of the sets broke right in front of me and that's when I began to notice that my shoulder was becoming sore and tired. I was not able to push down deep enough and got knocked off my board. As soon as the turbulence had passed I started swimming toward the surface. I noticed that my shoulder had been flung all around when I was caught in the rinse cycle and the soreness was really beginning to become noticeable.

After about 2 more waves I decided to throw in the towel and call it a day. I realized that my shoulder was still not ready and that hopefully this soreness wouldn't set me back in the recovery process. I caught a bomb set about 4" came cleanly off the bottom went straight back up into a nice backhand cuttie against the whitewater.

When I got back home around 4PM, I immediately applied a cold pack and watched Slater surf an out-of-sync quarterfinal heat. After 20 minutes I changed out to a hot pack and felt a lil better.

This morning I woke up and can feel the soreness and strain from the Saturday surf. Well at least I now know where my shoulder needs to be before I try that again.