Time Out of The Boat
It’s been exactly 41 days since I last sailed a laser. That’s a record for me. When I came home from Europe at the end of August, I was pretty down on myself. I had had a really tough time over the last four months where it felt like I was moving backwards, my confidence was at an all time low, and I didn’t know how I was going to get myself back on track. For me, the hardest part was not having a clear plan. I felt like I had tried everything that I knew how to try on my own, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to reconnect with my coach until sometime in October. I decided to take this period of time and focus it solely on fitness and weight gain. I needed to feel like I was moving forward and doing something productive and this was a good way to do it. I also knew that once I did get back into on water training, it would be long and intense, so having a higher fitness level and a more competitive weight would both be big positives and help the next training block be as productive as possible. Over the last month, I’ve been in the gym 6 days per week, and successfully put on 8 pounds. I also think that having this time away from the boat has been good for me because it’s helped me gain some perspective on the last four months. Because my last few regattas hadn’t gone well for me, I had sort of grew the problem in my mind to make it seem like the last four months had been completely unproductive. While, there were without a doubt a number of bad moments, there were also some good ones, and I had minimized those. I’ve had the opportunity to isolate specifically where the issues were which has led me to realize (and by that I mean my sport psych led me to realize…) that the majority of my skills are just as good, or better than they were. There are still clearly some issues that need to be fixed, but I’m up for it and ready to get back to work.
Right now, I’m about to board a flight to head down to Sydney, Australia to get back into the training routine with my coach. I’m really looking forward to it. I know it’s going to be really productive, really hard, and really fun. This is the start of what is going to be a big year for me…
I don’t have any photos from the past month of gym training, so this is one from last year’s training in Sydney.
Thanks for reading,
Fillah