October

Is here already. Jeez. Well, I've been home since Sunday night and I have not put my skates on which is a good thing. A lot of people don't really believe in taking breaks and stuff but I believe in just listening to your body, and mine is telling me to take it easy. Today was the first day where muscles in my body were not sore which is a good start but unfortunately I might have strep throat (when to the doctor's today and find out the results tomorrow). One reason that I believe in taking it down a few notches is because of your immune system. It seems odd that athletes can be more likely to catch sickness then a normal person but it's kind of true. When an athlete endures long periods of intense training their immune system is weakened slightly due to the training. So if I take it easy for a little while then my immune system should strengthen back up and I will hopefully avoid sickness. Another reason is I'd like to give my muscles and tendons and body time to have a little less stress on it because when I start skating a lot again it will be 100% technical and that means a lot of stress.

There's the final ESS race Sunday and if I feel decent I'll skate. It won't be a terribly difficult race so I should be okay even if I'm not at 100%. Then I will start skating twice a week just technique stuff. Drills that won't even require my skates to be tied.

Alright here's some new stuff: a few goals and part of a plan.
-Okay my goals are really like this, I want to improve myself technically because if I can manage to do that then all of my training come spring will be even more beneficial.
-I want to skate good at the NSC races (at least the ladder 4), I want to skate great at trials, and I want to skate awesome at worlds. Other then those three places the rest of my races are going to be used as training, I will not try and peak for other races and will not stray from my training for them.
-I want a medal in a race longer then 1000m at trials (two fourths last year, 1 pt off in both pts races)
-Lastly I want to take the next step and I'm going to leave that one up for one's own interpretation.

Alright then finally I'm going to start skating light but technical. Then I'm going to add things that I've done little by little but I'm going to bring them all together. I've debated a lot whether or not I want to do a lot of dryland this year because I've come the conclusion that it helps with the motion of the push but not with where the power comes from. I believe that everything starts from the hips and dryland is just motion and I don't want to get in the habit of just going through the motions. I think I'm also going to slideboard by not in a traditional sense, when I slide board it will be more objective based so that I'm again not just going through the motions. Another thing that I'm doing this year that I've toyed with but never taken seriously is a little notebook. I have a notebook small enough to fit in my pocket and it's purpose will be for me to track my nutrition. I've found it's much easier to eat healthy when you know you are writing it down.