Friday, April 25, 2008

Still Waiting

I'm writing this post today as I sit inside my apartment waiting for a break in the rain on this cold (42 degrees), wet, end of April day. This weather is getting ridiculous. The forecast is calling for rain mixed with snow this weekend! We had mid 70 weather earlier this week, but it appears those days are gone, at least for the next week.

All that aside things are alright. I got a solid week of throwing in outside, at a little bit of a disadvantage to most of my competitors in the south and west who get to throw outside throughout the year. I feel ready to compete though. This has been the latest I've ever gone without competing, and it is difficult to stay patient. I actually had a competition/practice on Wednesday at Hamline University here in Minneapolis. I originally was not going to compete but as I went out to practice that day I thought it would have been silly to pass up the opportunity to throw in good weather. I had planned on throwing at the Drake Relays this weekend but I entered myself to late and apparently the meet was based on first come first serve. So, I used the meet on Wednesday to make up for a missed opportunity. I have one more meet next week in Iowa before heading west to compete and chase some marks.

Friday, April 4, 2008

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...