September 20-26th, 2015
Things got off to an inauspicious start. I’ve injured both legs in two separate incidents earlier in the previous week and I started feeling like i’m recovering. Then, on the evening of the 19th, a freak accident while doing some housework ended up with 1.5 inches of my utility knife puncturing my left hand. A quick trip to the ER later, i’m left with a hand that I can’t really use for a week. It wasn’t the best experience and I wouldn’t recommend it.
This made any sort of grappling training impossible. I went to the gym to try and do some weight training but all I could really do was some half-assed squats. Turns out, it’s hard to pick up and lift stuff when you’re missing a hand to do so.
With nothing else that I could do, I decided to go back to the basics and work on my cardio. I’ve just recently gotten back from Burning Man and while I was there, I wasn’t able to run much. The altitude made it difficult to do so and all the alcohol gifts didn’t help either. It was late in the burn before I started feeling comfortable running in Black Rock Desert and when I got back, I felt like I was out of shape.
One thing I like to do two or three times a year is to go on a free run where I pack some water and some cliff bars, put some good tunes on, and run until I can’t anymore. Since I didn’t have anything else that was going to tire me out all week, it felt like the right time to do one of them now. I knew that I wasn’t in any shape to do so, and my legs were still not feeling up to it, so I had to prepare for it with some smaller runs. In Tuesday evening, I went on a small 3 mile run in my Vibram fivefingers and man did that hurt; it’s been so long since i’ve ran in them that i’ve forgotten the proper way to do so. On Thursday morning, I ran from my gym to my old workplace over at Seaport and back and that totaled 7.5 miles. I felt surprisingly good considering how shitty Tuesday felt and that gave me the needed confidence boost to proceed. Finally, on Saturday afternoon, I packed up my gear and headed out the door for my free run. It wasn’t the best run i’ve ever had, but I was pretty happy with it all things considered.
For those who don’t know, i’m going to be competing in the BJJ US Open. I have a bounty that you can find here that’ll give money to charity if I can submit someone in it. Go check it out!