My First Steps

So I'm not sure where this blog is going to go. Nor how it will evolve over time. But my contribution to it is going to be my journey from where I finished 2008 as barely recovered from my knee injury and horrifically out of shape to the 2009 season and all the twists and turns along the way.

I spent the months from May to September seeing Doctors, going to Physical therapy, getting poked, prodded, and ending up in a general state of disbelief about what had happened to my knee. I was able to get back to play at Sectionals and Regionals and enjoying that moment for what it was. My chance to prove my Doctor's wrong, and show my team that playing with them meant more to me than making sure that I was 100% recovered from my major/minor/freakish knee injury. But the huge downside of rushing back was that I had to play in a big ugly knee brace that wouldn't stay in place and gave me all sorts of weird blisters and sunburns as a result of wearing it.

But after all that, this weekend was huge for me because it was PADA Mosh. I'd been able to give myself another month to let my MCL heal and I decided that I was going to see if I could avoid wearing the big annoying brace for as long as possible while playing at the tournament. The end result was even better than I could have possibly imagined.

I'm definitely still out of shape, but not as horribly so as I anticipated. I'm definitely carrying around about 20 lbs. too much weight which I will be ridding myself of over the coming months. But all that aside, I was able to play at damn near full speed, make athletic leaping, laying out, cutting type plays and do it all without being in serious pain or needing to put the big ugly brace on. We ended up winning the tournament but that's not remotely what this weekend was about for me. It was about testing my knee and seeing just how far the healing had come. And I'd say I passed my test with flying colors.

What this means to me is that I now can push myself into more intense training over the coming weeks and months in preparation for the 2009 season. I'm excited to get started. I missed a whole season of training and I'm dying to rebuild my body back into what it was in '07. And hopefully continue to build it into something even better.

Let's start building some hurtin' bombs