Ok, So I'm Not 'Always' Right

This past Saturday I competed at Western Kentucky University.  Let's just say Saturday morning didn't start out too good.

I'll start with Friday night.  My training partner Gwen Berry and I traveled 3hrs to Owensboro, Kentucky and stayed the night there since we competed at 10:30AM the next morning.  Well, I am not much of a night person, so I of course fell asleep around 8:30PM, leaving Gwen up all by herself with the 12 channels we had at the Days Inn.  At 11:28PM, I know because I looked at the clock, I was woken out of my peaceful sleep by knocking on the door.  Me, being half sleep yelled 'Come In!' as if I were at home, forgetting I was in a hotel.  Gwen of course laughed at me, and I proceeded to get out of bed to see who was at the door.  There was a gentleman whom I have never met before standing there, but hey, I'm not scared, so I opened the door.  He proceeds to ask if my mother is there because he had just had a conversation with her.  I of course responded that there were no mothers here, but he insisted that she was and he had more money for her, I'm assuming soliciting for either sex or drugs.  Now, in my head I am thinking, "If my mother was really in this room, why would I allow some random participate in any of these illegal activities with her with my knowledge".  I told the man that he was again mistaken and to "find some business", in a not so nice tone.  He apologized and I went back to sleep.  10mn later I was awoken again by knocks at the door.  We decided to ignore it hoping he would go away...but of course...he didn't.  This time he starts yelling and cursing outside the door for me to open it up.  Now, call me crazy, but I don't take kindly to people yelling or cursing at me, regardless of the situation or who it is, so I became frustrated and got right back up, but this time didn't open the door but pulled back the curtain and talked to him through the window.  He still was trying to give my supposed "mother" this $200 and was convinced I was lying to him.  Being me, I gave him a stern piece of my mind, which I won't type out exactly what I told him here, but it went along the lines of me telling him to 'kindly' not knock at my door, wake me out of my sleep, yell or curse anymore.  He again apologized and left, and we never heard from him again.

Fast forward to Saturday morning.  It is 730AM, and Gwen and I travel down the road to the good ol' Waffle House for breakfast.  I'm checking my e-mails on my phone and Ashley Duncan (Muffet) sent an e-mail regarding directions to the meet, which I saw the day before but mentally checked it as 'boring' and didn't read it.  I decided to read it just to see what route she would have taken to the meet, and it was quicker than the one we took, and I saw her directions were leading me somewhere completely different than where I was.  In my mind I'm thinking "Silly Ashley, giving me the wrong directions like this...what if I would have taken them?.  So I call her up and say, "Hey Muff...why are you sending me to Bowling Green when the meet is in Owensboro?".  She of course tells me its not and we go back and forth about it (Yes I am arguing with somebody who went to University of Kentucky and is a college coach in Kentucky).  My argument was that the signs said Western Kentucky and the hotel was across the street from the campus.  Finally, I decide she might be right (this is after asking the patrons of Waffle House what school it was down the street and not getting an answer of 'Western Kentucky' and the waitress saying that WKU was in Bowling Green).  By now, it is 8AM and we are 67mi away, which actually isn't too bad since we don't compete for almost 3hrs.  We took our food to go, went back to the hotel, packed up in 3mn, luckily we had washed up before breakfast, and were on the road at 8:09AM.  We made it to Bowling Green at 8:50 (You do the math on how fast we were going), and to our luck, no real bathrooms anywhere near the track, so we had to change in the port-o-potty, fun stuff let me tell you.  Ashley definitely had to rub it in a little once she got to the meet that I'm cocky and can't always be right lol.  I of course don't consider myself cocky at all.  I like to think of it as confidence in whatever my mind decides should come out of my mouth.  It does help that I'm more right than wrong though ;)

Now comes the good stuff.  I had my best competition of the outdoor season thus far.  I threw 68.39m, which still isn't anywhere near far enough, but it felt good to get one over 68m.  It means I am heading in the right direction after my whopping 63m performance last weekend.  Another big plus was Gwen throwing 71.93 on her first throw, getting the 'A' standard out of the ways so congrats to her.  I take full credit for getting her adrenaline pumping by sending us to the wrong city.  But back to me, I threw 68.39 and I probably had 70% power on the release.  I didn't hit the finish like I usually do, so there is definitely more to come in there, especially with still being in the middle of base training.  My body also felt more recovered than I have felt all season.  I knew I had a better chance of recovering since I was competing on Saturday.  6 days after lifting I have found is usually my best competition day.  I got some extra rest this past week also without losing any practice reps which also helped.  It felt good to compete without my body feeling like it needed a nap.  Last week, I remember being in the middle of competition at 4 in the afternoon and yawning and my eyelids being heavy, but that wasn't the case today.

I had a decent lifting workout yesterday, my power is slowly coming back, 125kg hang clean, 333kg box squat.  I wanted to go for 342kg but coach wouldn't let me.  I feel a little sore today so I am curious how my throwing will go today, but I'm a little excited for practice today.  I think its because my job gave me some good news that I won't have to come into the office this week and I can work from Carbondale instead with the possibility of even better news coming tomorrow.

Ok, I think I typed enough for today.  I will update again soon.

Thanks for reading,

Wrong Direction

I competed this past weekend at SEMO since it is less than an hour away from Carbondale where I train.  I didn't throw very well needless to say.  I think what messed me up for this weekend was the fact that on that Monday, Ashley Duncan (Muffet) came down to throw shot with coach and Jeneva as she does every Monday, and we ended up having a discus duel.  Let's just say that I was confident I could compete, after not throwing discus in 4yrs, and I lost by about 20ft (170 to 150).  This I feel broke my confidence to the point that I didn't have anything left for the hammer this past Friday.  And thats a true story.

In all seriousness, coach and I feel like my body is getting a little fatigued and worn down from my lack of sleep where I'm not recovering in time to compete.  For those wondering, here is a run down of my weekly schedule so that you can see what I'm talking about.

Sunday:
550AM - Wake Up
6AM - 3PM Work from Carbondale
315PM - 530PM Lift

Monday:
3:50AM - Wake Up
4AM - 1230PM - Work from Carbondale
1245PM - 3PM - Throw
4PM - 9PM - Take train to Chicago
9:15PM - 10PM Start my laundry, unpack, shower

Tuesday:
315AM - Wake Up
330AM - Drive 45mn to work
4:30AM - 430PM - Work in the office
430PM - 515PM - Drive to CSU to practice
530PM - 730PM - Throw
8PM-9PM Eat and Shower

Wednesday:
315AM - Wake Up
330AM - Drive 45mn to work
430AM - 1130AM - Work in the office
1130AM - 12:15PM - Drive to CSU to practice
1230PM - 2PM Throw
230PM - 315PM - Eat & Shower
330PM - Pack
445PM - 930PM - Take train to Carbondale

Thursday:
420AM - Wake Up
430AM - 10AM - Work from Carbondale
1030AM - 1PM - Throw

Friday:
9AM - 930AM - Lift
Travel and/or Compete

Saturday:
Travel and/or Compete, or 2-a-day practice

So basically during the week I don't get to sleep much and on top of that I have to travel twice a week.  I will need to figure something out soon in order to make sure im rested enough for trials.

In the mean time.  I hope Ashley is ready for a rematch in a few weeks after I've got some practice throws in.

Outdoor Season Has Begun

I haven't posted in a while since I haven't had much to talk about.  I figure I will post so Ashley can stop bugging me about it =).  I competed this past weekend at Ole Miss, I was a little disappointed in how I threw.  I threw 66.52 or 218'3 in my first hammer competition in almost 4yrs.  Coach is telling me it wasn't bad, but I felt that for as tired as my legs felt I could have still gone 68m this past weekend because I didn't hit one single throw.  I kept running into trouble on my entry the entire meet where I couldn't get it moving fast enough to do much of anything.  Their ring was a little slow which was some of the reason why I couldn't get my entry moving, but the main thing is my legs, mainly my hips, felt really tired.  I suppose it was from doing my heaviest squat workout I've done since I've started training again that Sunday and I didn't recover out in enough time.  Right now we are still in base in the weight room and on the throwing field but the high reps should start to taper down in the next few weeks. But that's enough excuses...

My best year as a collegian I threw 63m when I opened and 5 weeks later threw over 72m, so I am not too worried about where I am right now.  We are going to tweak some things in my weekly routine for this week and see if that helps when I compete this Friday.  Coach has had me doing similar training to Jeneva but I will be going back to my old training routine from my collegiate days with some minor changes by yours truly and see if I will recover on time for meet day.  Practice has been going pretty decent though.  My practice marks are pretty close to what they were in college and a lot of them are even farther so that is promising.  The only area in my mind that I am down training wise is my squats, but I had a 600lb squat today that wasn't too hard so the power is coming back slowly.

So far in my weight loss I've lost 20lbs since March 1st, so I am still about 30-40lbs from where I want to be this year for hammer, but if my performance starts dropping I will have to stop losing and stay where I am.  So far I have been getting stronger and throwing farther in practice so I will keep at where I'm at.

Anyway, I am running off of 3hrs of sleep so I am going to get off of the computer and go ahead and relax for the rest of the day.  I will try and update again soon.

Thanks for reading.