Back in the saddle!

Sooo it’s been a while since my last post! Lots of fun and exciting things have happened!

After the competition in Warsaw and the official end of my season I took a working vacation in Europe for a few weeks, since you know I was already there haha. I stayed in Poland for a few more days and my friend from the US flew out and met me there. We went and saw old town Warsaw and some of the new downtown areas. Warsaw is really turning into a great city! The prices are good and the people are nice and it’s well designed and easy to get around on the bus. It has a hard language barrier if you’ve never studied Polish, and English coverage is a little hit or miss. Otherwise it was a fun time :).

After that we headed to Vienna and wow! Vienna is amazing. It’s beautiful with lots of history and things to do. I will definitely go back. We walked around and did a stair climb work out by going up hundreds of stairs in a cathedral as fast as possible. The view was worth it :). I would do that every day if I could. We ate schnitzel and saw Mozart’s house. It was very nice. After that we went to Prague for a few days by train. Prague was similar, lots of historical buildings and cool bridges and statues. It was definitely busier than Vienna and more touristy. I liked it and it’s definitely worth a trip.

After that we went to Split, Croatia to the beach for a few days. Our trips were basically decided by what city had cheap and easy ways to get to it haha. It was beautiful but hooooot. Like upper 90s low 100s and you’re outside walking in the sun all day. We took it easy there and enjoyed the scenery and finally started to get a tan haha. After 3 days there we went to Barcelona for a week. I love Barcelona, there was a 3 week training camp there earlier in the season and I will go back whenever I can. It was much cooler than Split and this time we were in the city center so we could walk everywhere. Paella is now one of my favorite foods haha! We saw The Sangre De Familia and the other famous landmarks, went to the beach some more, and explored a lot. We averaged 8-10 miles a day on foot. It was after this I finally started to feel recharged from the season. I also realized how much high intensity stuff I had been doing for the last 6 months to qualify and peak and the need to rebuild my base cardio and conditioning that had been depleted from constant travel and competition.

So feeling a bit recharged it was time to start adventuring again! We went to Casablanca, Morocco. It was another hot one and Casablanca is an industrial and administrative city so there’s not a lot of touristy stuff to do. A significant amount of the old city was in ruins from the big earthquake they had a year ago, and there was a lot of poverty. The Hassan II mosque is very impressive, it can hold 20,000 people inside and 80,000 people outside. And it’s right on the water. We got in at night and only spent one full day here then went to Tangier the next day. Tangier was awesome! It is very beautiful and has the you never know what’s around the next corner feeling you go to Morocco for :). I will definitely go back to Tangier.

So after about 3 weeks of exploring it was time to part ways. My friend Scotty went back to Barcelona for a little while longer then back to the US. I had to go to Bologna, Italy because by sheer luck an order for para fencing frames I had placed almost a year ago was actually complete at the factory in Bologna, and I needed to go inspect them and deal with customs etc to import them to the US. The Italian frames are the best in the world, they are highly durable and easy to use and very stable. They also look very sleek :). The import process was difficult, it is very paperwork heavy and slow with a lot of hoops and regulations. But now that I’ve done it once I can add international import / export to my resume haha. I was in Bologna for a few days then flew back to the US and it felt great to be home.

I got back around August 1 and since then I have been resting a lot, working a lot, and training a lot. I started with a new saber coach named Nick Dinu who is great! I feel that a few months with him will ladder jump me from the start of the midpack to the top of the midpack and even into the top 8. We shall see what happens at the next competition in Pisa, Italy in November. Additionally I started rebuilding my conditioning doing kettlebells and abs, and am ramping up to adding ocean swims and finger/hand/forearm exercises. For now the plan is 4 days a week of saber and 3 days a week of kettlebells and abs and soon I will add an easy ocean swim and yoga a few days a week.

All in all it was a great 2 months and I can’t wait to see what will happen next!