Wow/ Football camp/ I don't have a life anymore

I have been meaning to update this for a while... obviously, since I haven't updated since the beginning of this month and a lot has happened in a short amount of time. In the past two weeks, I have seen my life become completely disjointed, knocked out of alignment, and rearranged extensively.

I no longer have a true perception of time. Before camp started, I ran almost every day, and all that mattered were minutes and seconds and miles. Now if I keep track of the minutes, I go mad. My days are too long, and they stretch into weeks. I ran the Full Moon 5k on the 6th of August and it was fantastic. I ran around 20:11 for a 5k, which was great. What was not great was that that week I started feeling like I was getting a stress fracture in my right tibia where I used to get them all the time (is it a Junior year curse?). Either way, I had just finished Physics (I somehow pulled off a B, I think mostly due to Jim's help more than anything, since I really do suck at Physics), had just done a race and was about to start something possibly insane, so I decided to take a week off training.

I didn't take a full week off I couldn't do it. I ran a day early, and in the middle of that time off I did a stair workout in my old apartment, 12 flights of stairs twice.

I haven't been able to even run much and I haven't been forcing it even though I am itching to go for a run almost every day. I've been taking it easy but my leg's still throbbing sometimes. I don't know what's up but I'm going to run through cross season till my leg breaks if need be, I don't care.

So. football. My life is now, eat, football, eat, football, sleep, eat, football. I'm not up for recapping life as it was when I first started so for now I'm going to post what I wrote to Brittany Farrell after the first two days and then I'll add on new stuff afterwards:

"I know john moffitt now he's nice. he and i both had a fight with the serving stands in the cafeteria, because they have these extremely low glass barrier things on the tops of the carts... and it makes it impossible to reach the other side.. it was pretty funny actually.. but yeah, we eat lunch and dinner (and breakfast if we want to come that early) with the team.. its interesting.

Yesterday I wanted to drop dead. every day, get up at 7:30, get there by 9, do random treatments and stuff and then set up for the day, filling a million water bottles and stuff and watching "walk through". then we clean out the water bottles, go get lunch finally (we have to wait till most of the players already get their food) and then after lunch we re-do preparations for the regular practices. sometimes we do different stations, like taping or pre-practice treatments or random other things.... today i was with taping and basically we only practice 2-3 things, taping ankles and taping wrists, thumbs. and we expect to not do ankles because all the players except rooks know that the athletic training students aren't very good at it so they avoid us even for most wrist tapings (they sit there and tape themselves!!!! ridiculous!)

So anyways today i was with taping and we were just expecting a few wrists, and i am not that sharp on the wrists but i have been doing decent ankles when we practice that.. so i was somewhat confident with it.. anyways there were two guys in really early, one older guy getting taped already then the other guy comes in and hes standing there waiting then the older guy motions and is like "hey, they're free" towards us, and apparently the second guys is a frosh because he's like, ok! and we look at each other PANIC STRICKEN because we weren't expecting to be able to do ankles at all!! so I volunteer to do it and im like freaking out.. and he sits up there with both legs down and so im like "ok, you want your right and left ankle then?" and hes like "yup" and im like HOLY SHIT lol..

so Im panicking, almost forgot the stick spray and the heel and lace pads because we dont even practice using those on each other... so i figured that out then fucked up the prewrap job lol and then most of my tape was pretty smooth but i messed up the last heel lock on the right ankle and there was a small window i only saw when he was walking away.. the left one when allright but still wrinkles.

then we are standing there and some guy who looked older is like, "can you guys tape my ankle?" and we're like "well, we can. if you want.." and we felt bad obviously and we should have just be like SURE! and happy but we were still panicking lmao.. and so me and caitlyn are looking at each other like do you want to do it, should i? should you? and eventually i was like i can do it if you want, because i was feeling at least a little reinforced by making in through the two before without anything awful happening so i had a little better idea of what to do so i was a bit faster but still not as fast as mike the head trainer holy shit.

so yeah practice itself.. well yesterday i was with QBs, and they move everywhere because they work with every group and then obviously are in the scrimmage drills once it gets around the 18th-20th periods (prax is divided into periods ..there's a little thing that goes off every 5 minutes or something like that and it keeps count of the buzzers and the regular days have been 27 periods). anyways the QBs were everywhere and we are told to "stand right up by them" which is almost impossible and so i almost got biffed in the face several times. one of them i think a freshman, when i missed what the drill really was and it was a slant in my direction, was motioning different ways for me to move and then when i was in an ok spot he gave me a thumbs up and told me i was fine. the QB coach was really nice right away he asked me what my name was and where i was from, told me he was Paul and at the end of practice three hours later he remembered my name which was amazing. I mean i remember his name too but he was busy calling plays and drills and shit of course.

so yesterday just destroyed me... we eat lunch at about 12:45 then eat dinner at about 7:30-8, so its crazy when i'm used to eating all the time. today was better maybe because we learned how to stretch people's hamstrings, quads, hip flexors, etc today. so we all did that this morning and felt ok after that. my arms hurt a lot, because in practice we have to be on the move, if they start running somewhere you have to run there too, and you have to lug around 6 water bottles in a little tray thing with a rough plastic handle, and it is pretty crazy.

the ice bath thing was the funniest thing ever.... they guys were just hilarious. there were a couple of lighter boys i'm guessing WRs or something they came out right away and they got in and started screaming and shrieking and then singing a ton and just FREAKING OUT lmao it was soo fucking hilarious. then a lot of linemen were there and they were all going two to a tub and it was HILARIOUS because they are just huge of course and they're all making ridiculous jokes."



So that was my first day or two of practice. two-a-days are even more insane than regular practice days because we have to be there at 7:15am and don't leave until 11pm. It's pretty insane. I've started to get used to it. I like being around the guys now that I've started to learn a bunch of names and faces and we joke around and such. On treatments, such as today, we walk them through their rehab exercises and such and stretch them out and stuff. We give them ice and stuff, also. I like being on taping when I get to do ankles. Last Monday morning I got to do TWO guys.. they BOTH asked me to tape them up. It was, again, pretty surprising, because they really normally don't trust the first years to do it. So that was kind of cool.

I have been surprised by the guys, there are a number who will introduce themselves and talk to you and stuff. I found this especially to be the case with the defensive backs, a few came up to me right away and asked my name and told me theirs.

I'm trying to be careful about what I say, because I'm not supposed to comment on injuries, and I'm not supposed to comment on "how the team is doing". So I'm trying to make sure my comments are as nonspecific as possible, even though there are certain things I want to remember haha.

Anyways, in the midst of this chaos of getting to know a football team of 100+ guys, I moved into a new apartment. I now live alone, which is strange, in a small little niche on state st which is a little crowded and is kind of scary. it's a nice place but I am afraid of things like the stove and the lack of space in my kitchen for a microwave or toaster (I don't have any counter space). The stove is at least 40 years old and when I want to cook or bake anything I have to literally light the burners or the stove myself. I am terrified of setting myself on fire and its very odd.. I have always had electric stoves growing up and my grandparents have always had gas, so I have seen them before, buuuut yeah.

Otherwise, I don't know where my life went. I'm slowly getting used to the new place, but I feel like everything just shifted so rapidly that I don't know where I've been and I feel like the past two weeks have been months and months rather than 14 days. there's one week left of preseason camp, one week of summer. I don't know what weekends are anymore, there are no days off.

I think the most interesting thing I have found so far is comparison of my experiences at practice to those of the media reports about each practice. Half the time they are wrong. I am finding that I know more about situations than people at large do. I like this but it's also kind of awkward. I also have access to some interesting places, and I mean, not everyone gets to eat with the football team. So there's definitely been some crazy adjustments. I don't even know.

I'll try to keep writing sometimes.. but now I'm going to try to go for a short little run.