So, I’m back from Fantasy Camp. What do I do now? How can I prepare for a sport that only has two places in the U.S. to practice and those two places close down for 5 months every year? Not knowing if I would actually ever slide again, I decided to work on skills that would be good in this sport...or good for me even if I never went any further. I found a friend and sprint coach in Patrick, one of my fellow Fantasy Campers that lives in New York City. He started with a simple question: "Do you know how to sprint?" I replied, "Yeah...you mean running fast?" With a simple chuckle from Patrick, I knew I actually had NO idea how to sprint.
He, being a college track and field star, gave me the basics on sprinting. Those that know me, know that I was never able to play sports in high school because I grew too fast and had extra cartilage in my knees. So, I wasn’t exactly the best sprinter and I owe a lot to Patrick for his patience as he taught a large 30 year old man how to truly sprint.
Also, thanks to the national team athletes in Lake Placid, I met Kim (another national team athlete) and began training at her gym, Velocity Sports Performance (http://www.velocitysp.com/nyc/index.html ) in Manhattan. It’s a unique gym for athletes looking to work on speed, power and agility. They cater to high school and college athletes...and do NOT typically cater to 30 year olds looking to capture any athleticism they have left. Regardless, both Kim and Marco at Velocity were willing to take on the challenge of helping me on my quest to get back to Lake Placid.
So, from March to August, I learned how to technically sprint at Velocity and put those skills into practice with Patrick. Patrick and I would meet once or twice a week on one of the piers along the West Side Highway. It was quite challenging actually...not the sprinting, but trying to sprint around the unique characters that we’d encounter at 6:15am on the piers of Manhattan.
Huge thanks to Patrick, Marco and Kim for their coaching and continued support.
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