Training Update for July

 Last week had not been great for me. This month has on a whole been not great either. I’ve not handled stress well compared to last year this same time. There are changes besides my age from then with work stuff. The power outage thing at the beginning of the month messed with me quite a bit. The sleeping with no air potentially had me recalling a similar unpleasant time almost exactly 6yrs ago. But I had to take a step back from something last week and figure out what I’m doing. Last week had been the first time where I’d truly felt old and not just in a jokey way. Couldn’t really stop work (already took off two days from the power stuff and then a 6 day for trip) with another trip coming up (assuming I was still going) so training stopped, at least what was programmed. I spent the week catching up on work and sleep and researching to see if there were things I could do to get my knee feeling better. I was saving the weekend to really sit down and figure out what I was going to do going forward. Some of the things I worked on before the weekend was figuring out the knee issue and it potentially is nerve issues with back besides joint issues as nerve glides for sciatica increased my ROM with ankle dorsiflexion. That week had been doing protocols from the Knees Over Toes guy. I’m also having issues with my strength in my right calf that I noticed while on vacation at the beach and I’m not sure if that is something I can fully fix by competition time, I’m doing what I can and will try to figure that out in off season. Speaking of competition, I also reached out to the organizers for World’s to see if I could do Master’s instead of Open’s. With how things were going, I wasn’t progressing well enough I was potentially looking at zeroing 3 of the 7 events at the pace I was at. Dropping training for one or two wasn’t going to realistically give me a shot to move that energy to the one and have it be there 100%. I’ve essentially hit the weights on everything minus a few things for Master’s while I’ve only done part of one event to Open’s standard. I didn’t think I’d be going Master’s route like this but it is the only way I can see this competition being a viable one for me, assuming that training goes well enough that I can compete. I did get approved but the issue is that Master’s compete a day earlier so essentially I’m arriving in Scotland Thursday and compete Friday doing 5 events and then 2 events the next day. It will be rough but plan in place to try and make the best of that. The main one is trying to fall asleep on the first 6hrs of flight time so not being where I’m up for almost 2 days non stop then competing. Another thing is seeing if increasing fish oil intake back to what I was taking before (I had cut in half a few months back) would help with the joint issues and it does seem like it is helping in some regard but not sure if that is just placebo here. The meat of Saturday and Sunday was figuring out training. It was causing me a ton of stress as of late and has not been great in July. I’ve learned a ton working with Ms. Funk but I’ve felt like there are times where things were feeling too much for me to recover. I want to do the work but I was just not holding up. The switch to alternating sessions seemed to get me feeling energized and spry again but then kind of reverted back to heavy everything with contest getting closer and having to kind of take 2 steps back and then a step forward approach with things. So I needed to determine if I could put together something to finish out this prep that wouldn’t cause me to spiral and feel like nothing would work. If I could do that and feel comfortable with that decision, I’d forgo further coaching and do my own thing. The task wasn’t certainly going to be more manageable once it was clear I could go Master’s instead of Open with rotating stuff with overlap and hopefully getting things feeling right for me. If only to find out where I am and stop backsliding and figure out how to progress and go forward from here.