Epic Beginnings

So, I've decided that since I am no longer seeing most of my loyal followers on a weekly basis, I needed to create a blog to chronicle my training and adventures. I hope to stay fairly regular with my posts, but seeing as how I won't be competing for a few months, chances are that there won't be much to write about for a while. What I will be writing about is my meet results, training, and of course any occasional funny encounters I have while living here in Kansas. I welcome any feedback my readers have for me, I want this blog to be as inclusive as possible.

Really, I just sort of plunged into this move. I knew it was the right move for my career at this point. It was certainly one of the harder things I've ever had to do seeing as how I absolutely love Boston and my AMAZING friends and family that all live nearby. However, in order to improve I needed a new training environment with training partners, structure, and fewer distractions. After talking to just about every heptathlete I know, all signs pointed to K-State.

I suppose I should start at the beginning of my journey. I left Vermont on December 31st and after a string of goodbyes all the way down the east coast I finally arrived in Manhattan a week later. In an attempt to combat boredom I roadtriped with a squash my friend Erica and I made and named Carlos - I must say it worked. Just having an excuse to take breaks along the way and take pictures made the 28hour trip much more bearable. If you want to see all the pictures of my trip checkout my facebook page, or contact me and I'll email them out to you.

When I first arrived in Manhattan, it was bigger than I expected. It is a college town with tons of school spirit. After about a week, I realized that the town is not a big as I originally thought; it has every chain store you've ever heard of (and a few you haven't; Conoco? Old Chicago?), but you can drive from one side of town to the other in less than ten minutes. I am living with a fellow heptathlete, Bettie Wade, who has been awesome so far. We deffinitely have a similar sense of humor, which should make for an interesting and fun season.

My first order of business (after stocking the kitchen with chicken and peanut butter of course) was to visit the track. I had an idea of what to expect since I've seen athletes who train at K-State doing out-of-the-ordinary warm ups with stacks of paper in their hands at competitions before, but this was entirely different. The track was packed with student athletes doing exercises ranging from crawling along the track on all fours to climbing and twisting on metal contraptions to rain dancing, but each and everyone of them was toting a binder complete with about 200 different warmups and workouts. I was immediately intrigued and excited to start training. Coach said I could start on the following Monday, in the meantime I discovered the town and bonded with my roommate's pet rat Mousey.

Thanks for reading, more to come soon...