April Fool's

Hey Everyone!

Today is a beautiful day in Minnesota. The sun is shinning, birds are chirping and the is a predicted high near 60 degrees! I really hope that the warm weather will stay around.

This Tuesday, April Fool's day, I woke up and stepped outside into a winter wonderland. It was a cruel joke. There was four inches of snow on the ground, and all I could do was shake my head and brush the snow off of my car. The snow didn't last long though. I'm hoping that the last little spots of snow will melt off today.

In other news I have been dealing with a painful left knee that has limited my training. For the past couple of months I have had difficulty squatting and doing plyometics. These are important components to my training program. It has been hard mentally to train as hard as I need to. The pain has been very severe. I went to the Mayo Clinic in my hometown of Rochester, MN to see knee specialist there. I had x-ray's and an MRI to find out what was causing the pain in my knee. The doctors reported to me that I am suffering from tendinopathy in my rectus femoris tendon. This tendon attaches to the patella. I was given a few options for helping alleviate my pain. The first option was an extensive surgery that could possibly end my career as a track and field athlete. Another option is a relatively new surgery procedure that is a possibility for me to have post-season which would involve injecting my blood plasma into the damaged tendon in hopes of producing new and healthy growth. The final option is a training program developed in Scandinavia which involves eccentric single-leg exercises. I have been doing these exercises religiously that were designed to help athletes suffering from patellar tendinitis. I have noticed a little bit of an improvement with the knee pain. My hopes are high that these simple exercise will help me get back to normal with my training program.

Finally, I have set up my travel plans for a series of meets beginning May 7th. I will traveling to California to compete in two meets then I will travel to Maui to compete in another meet series. I'm excited to compete and improve my personal best marks in the discus. More to come on that later...