It's a bittersweet symphony, this life...

I'm sick.

Not "sick" like I enjoy creepy activities or exhibit creepy behaviors, but sick like my throat is all closed up and raw and I have some serious fatigue.  PERFECT timing with my meet coming up this weekend (hey, sarcasm).

Why did my immune system take a dump on me now?  I've got an idea or two:

Idea one:
I had to prepare to coach against a group of kids who I had spent the last 2 years training and coaching and generating quality coach-athlete relationships with with a group of no-heart, no-personality soft-bread punks.  You can imagine how that went. I put a lot of emotional energy into preparing my kids for this game, and they just kinda laughed it off all week like "You're just saying they're good because you coached them for two years, we will totally (magically) be able to beat them with our nonchalant attitude and complete absence of any physical training base or technical soundness".  And then during the game, it was hard watching former players of mine pretty much embarrassing current players of mine, who just don't want to be coached, apparently.  I was able to have a nice little reunion with the 5 or 6 kids from Novato who I really worked with a lot, but it put into really, painfully sharp contrast that even though I'm geographically where I want to be, coaching wise, there is a massive gulf between where I am this season as a coach and where I feel I should be as a coach.  Cognitive dissonance at it's most simple and frustrating core.  This took a LOT out of me.

Idea two:
I judged and coached all Sunday at the TJs Games.  I would not do this any differently at all, but WOW, this just flat broke me.  I was welling up with tears of inspiration not 5 minutes into the 1st event, and then spent the rest of the day (roughly 9 hours) on my feet cheering, counting, judging, coaching, and strategizing with clients of all skill levels from my gym (you can peep the workouts and placing HERE).  It was an absolutely amazing day, and by the end of it I knew my immune system's goose was cooked.  I was asleep on my coach by 6:30.  I missed Sergio Romo blasting a fastball down the pipe past Miggy Cabrera to shut up the east coast media.  I flat conked out.  And now, I am hurting for sure.

These two things combined much like the frightening confluence of meteorological phenomena over on the east coast right now to just completely put me on my ass.

Now I know what all 3 of you, my readers, are wondering: What does this do to my training this week, leading up to my meet?

Well, dear Cranes and my Mom, I used today as an opportunity to train in less-than-ideal conditions.  I've called in sick from work for the week, so I decided to get in the gym today and bust out my final prep day of squats and bench, and hopefully I will dead lift tomorrow or Wednesday and use Thursday and Friday to rest like crazy.

And even though I felt like absolute trash, the funniest thing happened: I posted 5RM PR's in both my squat AND bench.  The squatting was NOT pretty, but I did it (You can see just how fatigued my back is from everything I mentioned previously on reps 3-5).  The benching was pretty awesome, but I had my doppelganger Bob there to spot me to greatness.

So, Even though it hurt and I questioned myself all the way through, I'm glad I trained today just in case I have to go into my competition feeling gross and sick: I now know I will be fine even though I feel like trash.

Ups and downs were in abundance this week but I suppose that's just part of the rhythm of life.

Here is my video:

As always, thanks for reading.  I'll update you 3 on wednesday about how I'm feeling and any new developments.