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[C-Fan]

Thanks for saying hi Armin! Missed you at Euros...

Yesterday I played freestyle for the first time in over a week. Taking that time off was a lot tougher than I expected. Maybe that’s a good thing, since it means my desire to play is high. On the flip of that, my knee doesn’t really feel any better. A bit more time might have helped, but who knows. Since USO is 3 weeks from today, I didn’t feel comfortable taking off too much more time. Beyond the risk of losing skill, I was also worried about losing stamina. My gym membership expired right before Euros, so I can’t replace footbag with basketball anymore, unless I buy a new gym pass. So the last week I’ve been eating my normal huge caloric load, but I haven’t been burning it at all.

It was blazing hot out yesterday, so I waited til late evening to play, and played in the shade. Not ideal filming conditions, but mostly I just wanted to kick off the rust. In order to limit my potential frustration (playing after a week’s hiatus), I decided to play for fun, and not practice my routine a single time. I also made a point to avoid symposium with my left leg, as well as double dexes and dyno/blender motions. Whirls seemed fine. Mostly I just worked on my basics, including both open sets, and basic downtime fours. I also played around with torques to far symposium twirls (reverse swivels?), inspired by a Zach Jahner video I saw. They felt very fun. I also had an unexpected visitor in the middle of the shred:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ2MkWgmIPo[/youtube]

In other USO news, I think I may have found a routine song for qualifiers. It may be a little too silly/flamboyantly gay to work, and it makes me laugh to envision myself doing a routine to it…and yet I may still do it. We’ll see if I have the balls to do it.

I’ll try and continue the Euros write up later today.

[Zjeezy]

I thought swivel was symp twirl, so my "rev swivel" is regular swirling, not rev swirling. After watching my video again, it sure looks like its rev swirling, but its not, I'll re film it. Either way super cool. Pretty neat to have your visitor, maybe he wanted to play tennis and felt you were hogging the court.

[Muffinman]

Yeah, I think swivel is far symp twirl.

[DTank126]

Nice write-up on Euros. I especially liked the part about beatboxing the same beat, haha. I also liked the Foxy Footbag video. Opexies are looking strong and pdx torque>far swivel looked fun. Hurry up and give me your tricks already!

[C-Fan]

Yeah Doug, we're due to switch styles soon. Personally, I can't wait to get non-symple swirls and ripstein down. That'd be sweet.

It's been blistering hot here in Denver. Hello NBA jerseys! This weekend I'm trying to play at dusk every night, and wake up early in the mornings to play before it gets too hot. My hips feel tight after my foxy session, probably because I hadn't played in a week and then jumped right back in. I keep reminding myself I have almost 3 weeks until USO, and I already know my routine, so I don't want to burn out on it. I'll practice it once or twice each session, but I'm also making a point to also play for fun and work on stamina.

OK, here's the next installment of my Euros write up:


Saturday morning: A+

I’ve always said that waking up on the second day of a footbag tournament is an interesting experience, because you’re disoriented at first, and then also you never know how your body recovered from the day before. This was even more true on this trip, since I wasn’t sure how my body would react to jet lag, especially given how hard I pushed it the day before. Thankfully, I woke up feeling completely refreshed. Given how tired I was the night before, I slept like a log. My legs didn’t feel sore at all, and I could already tell they had more spring in them than the day before, since I had a full tank of sleep in them. Janna and I slept at Paloma’s place, and we both wake up at the same time as Paloma is getting ready to head to the site. She tells us to have cereal and cherries, which hit the spot. Nice to have a relaxing start on the day. Janna helps us navigate the metro to the site, and when I get there I find out things are running on time.

Routines First round: Incomplete

As it gets closer to noon (when routines are to start), I see the judging staff running around trying to figure out pools. Since there are so few competitors, and a few of them are also net players, it is decided that first round of routines are cancelled, and we will only do finals. On one hand this is disappointing, since every opportunity to do a routine is another chance to go dropless. It’s also disappointing, since it’d give me an indication of how my body felt stamina wise. But for the most part, I take the news with a sense of relief. I no longer have to worry about warming up, competing, then waiting 6 hours before competing again on the same day. Not only will the cancellation make things easier on my body, it also means I can relax for most of the afternoon and watch net.

Watching net: A

The whole weekend was blistering hot outside. Like mid 90s temperatures, with no shade. This actually worked in my favor, since it made it even less tempting for me to play net. Instead, I just went from net game to net game and watched. The player I most enjoyed watching all weekend was Arthur Ledain. Arthur can’t be taller than 5’5, but his crazy vertical leap and athleticism means he plays every point above the net. It’s awesome to behold. While I’m nowhere near as athletic as Arthur, I definitely was inspired that little men can jump and spike and aren’t at that much of a disadvantage. I’m still telling myself I’d like to be a net player one day, but I’ve been saying that for a while. I just feel like I should focus on freestyle as much as I can while I’m still physically able to play well. Anyway, it was nice to watch net while eating paella and not worrying about my energy for routines.

Routine Finals: B+

I was the second seed in routines, since Vasek showed up. This ended up being a good thing, since Vasek did a crazy good routine, and it would have sucked for me if I had to try and follow it. I felt much better physically on Saturday than I did Friday, mostly because I had a good night’s sleep in me. I warmed up slowly, and felt surprisingly calm throughout. I was also excited, because I’d never done this routine in public before. My high seed also helped me, since the sun was going down, and the playing area was completely in the shade by that point. The earlier competitors in routine had to deal with a playing area that was half shade and half sun, which I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with. The music came on, and I went into routine mode. It was great, as the crowd reacted to the music and my cues just as I’d hoped. I got one early drop maybe 40 seconds into the routine, and then two stupid drops towards the end. Amazingly, none of these drops hurt the flow of my routine too badly. I’m glad I filmed it too, because later review of my routine convinced me that I can avoid that first drop next time (I dropped a flip spin by playing into it out of ducking clipper…next time I’ll just do clipper), and the last two drops were likely due to me not planning out that section well enough. The only other mistake on my part (I know…3 drops is plenty mistakes already), was changing the ending of my routine. Next time I want to do my planned ending for sure, but I adjusted well on the fly, and the audience was none the wiser for it.

When I bowed to the audience and left the stage, I felt good. Maybe I should have felt disappointed because I didn’t go dropless, and 3 drops is more than I’ve been averaging over the last couple years. That said, my choreo went over very well, and I found it promising that even with 3 drops my routine still felt strong to me, and the crowd liked it. If anything, I felt optimistic about how good it could be if I hit it better. While I knew I wouldn’t be European champ, I still was proud of my routine, and felt like I earned that second spot.

Once I was off stage, I felt a profound sense of relief. The main competition was done, and I was satisfied with my performances. Now I’d get to watch a Vasek routine, and then shred the rest of the evening. Nice. Vasek didn’t disappoint; he did a dropless gem which was on par with some of the best routines I’ve seen him do. The crowd and competitors all ate it up. As he was exiting the stage I gave him a high five and told him he should really go to Worlds this year. I hope he does…he totally has a shot at further burnishing his legacy. It’s not even that far for him to get there.

Post routine shred: A+

I love that moment at a tournament when you realize all pressure is off, and you can just play for fun. That moment happened less than five minutes after I was done with my routine, so I was still riding adrenaline from it. I started off shredding with Mikko, Tuomas, Rene, and Aleksi. Aleksi was busting so hard all weekend. Montage and montage rake looked very consistent. Mikko’s routine went very badly, and it was clear he was channeling that frustration and anger into his shred. He shredded so hard afterwards. After getting in a few decent turns in this circle, I decided to branch out and play with as many people as possible. I ended up playing a ton with the aforementioned 4 players (plus Rafal), since we competed against each other in Circles, and also warmed up for all the events together. I had fun going from circle to circle playing with people.

At one point I realized I hadn’t played with Verena yet, but she was in a 5 person circle already. I asked the circle if they’d mind if I stole her to start a new circle. After recruiting Verena, I saw Ales warming up, and invited him to join our newly formed circle. I was stoked for this circle, since I like both of their styles, and I saw Verena was killing it all weekend. During one of Ales’ turns I was commenting to Verena how much I was enjoying the circle, when Vasek hopped in to join! His rationale was that Ales doesn’t play that often, so he wanted to take advantage of that. Verena and I didn’t complain. I also had a funny conversation with Ales:

Ken: Hey Ales, do you remember when you first hit blurrier swirl?
Ales: You know, I’m not sure that I ever hit that trick.
Ken: Really? I first hit it in January of 04, and when I asked on modified if anybody had hit it, Erik Chan said he was pretty sure you had hit it.
Vasek to Ales: Didn’t you hit that at the end of 2003?
Ken: Hey wait a minute…

Vasek hit a bunch of impressive things, and eventually I was worn out. I decided to call it a day shredwise, so I thanked everybody and went to watch some more net.

Next: Saturday night’s awesome party, and Sunday freestyle events.

[dasreen]

nice write up!

[C-Fan]

Final installment of my Euros report. Just to clarify, in case anybody was confused: the grades I’m assigning for each section are grades for myself (i.e. my experience/performance/etc.), and not for how the event was run. I thought the staff did a very good job throughout. So as an example, if I gave an A- for Circle qualifiers, that’s how I rated my performance, and not that event.

Saturday night party: A+

While I knew there were a few remaining freestyle events the next day, the real pressure was off. Circles and Routine were done, and that’s all I really cared about. I had fun watching some net and eating leftover paella at the site, and once that wrapped up, I walked back to the hostel with the Finns. They picked up some food on the way, and I bought us a 6 pack to preparty. At the hostel I enjoyed a beer as people got ready to go out, and listened to more Finnish freestyle rap. I made a point to go introduced myself to the large Polish net contingent, since I watched most of them compete. I tried some of their Polish grass vodka (Zubrowka) which I really liked. I love going to Worlds and tournies in other countries, because you get to experience different cultural treats like this.
We all metro to near where the party is, and then get a little lost. I ask a local for directions, and within minutes we’ve bumped into the Swiss contingent. I make a valiant attempt to converse in French with them (Vlad Eskenasy, Silwan Daouk, Sophie Andrey, and Yves Mingard), which is made less embarrassing by the bottle of rum we’re all sharing. We can’t bring it into the club with us, but despite our best attempts to kill it, we can’t. They end up hiding it in a mailbox which doesn’t look like it’ll be checked til morning. Nice.

When we get in the club I hear people talking about the “avestruz.” For a minute I think the rum is hitting me hard, since I think “avestruz” means ostrich, and there’s no way there’s an ostrich in the club. Except that there is. Surreal. The next few hours are kind of hazy, though I remember trying to start the dance floor by myself, actively trying to recruit/shame people into dancing, buying a couple beers for people, and getting a beer from Vlad. I remember having fun dancing, and hopefully didn’t annoy people too much.

Sunday “morning”: A

Woke up feeling decent. My legs were fine, and no real hangover to speak of. Had some breakfast at Paloma’s, and then headed to the site by myself. I didn’t know the names of stops, but I remembered the way based on yesterday’s trip. For example, I’d get off the metro to switch trains, and wouldn’t remember which direction to take. Then I’d see a movie poster which I remembered from the day before, and head that way. Amazingly, this technique got me to the site with zero mistakes. I find freestylers in the bleachers, where I have this exchange with Wiktor:

Wiktor: Congrats Ken, you took second in routines!
Ken: *feigning outrage* What!?!? Vasek beat me?!?! Who the hell was judging!?!?
Wiktor+Ken:

Everybody looks a step slow, so events start running like 2 hours behind schedule. First up is request contest.

Request contest: B+

This was one of the weirder request contests I’ve been in. It seemed like every other combo in the middle rounds had shut set. I’m a good bit more confident in my shut set, but it’s still only reliable on one side, so this was eventually going to hurt me. I got knocked out in the round where my options were swirl-sidewalk (and swirl couldn’t be symple), or gyro pickup-muted shut clipper. I opted for the second link, but couldn’t get it to work. So awkward. Vasek was funny in request. Steve would announce the first combo, and Vasek would always hit it before the second combo was even announced. Aleksi hung tough for a while, and I half expected him to beat Vasek, but ultimately Vasek pulled it out. We had a good crowd, and they were entertained, so I thought it went well.

Sick 3: A+

Since we were running behind schedule, we had to do Sick 3 while net finals were going on. Normally this would make me sad, since I love watching net finals, but I wouldn’t have been able to watch them anyway. Based on my last taxi experience, I was determined to take public transportation to the airport. People’s time estimates varied, so I decided it’d be smart to leave early. In order to pull this off, I volunteered to go first in Sick3, and once my turn was up I got to packing and saying goodbyes.

Sick 3 was very informal. We each had 10 (!) tries to hit our combos, and we weren’t limited in the number of attempts we had per combo. So if you wanted to try one combo ten times, you could. All you had to do was announce your combo to Ales before you tried it. My safety combo in warm-ups was bedwetter-darkwalk-paranoia (double peeking osis), which I was hitting pretty consistently. I hit it in comp within a few tries. My main combo I wanted, was e-walk-blurry torque-mindbender. In practice I was coming close, but I kept missing the blender at the end. Since I got my safety combo down in the first couple tries, I felt relaxed. I figured I had 8 tries to get my main combo, so I was therefore surprised when I hit it first try! I was tempted to stop right there, since I didn’t have anything better in mind and I needed to get ready for the airport, but then I figured I was warmed up already and had 7 tries, so might as well get one more combo down. I announced shooting down-ps eggbeater-blackula, which I’d never hit before, but sounded do-able. Amazingly, I also hit this combo first try! At this point I decided to quit while I was ahead, so I bowed out. I got Sergio to film the remaining competitors, but the camera battery died after a couple players. Bummer.

Big One: Incomplete

I had to leave before Big One happened. Sorry.

Goodbyes: A-

I hate saying goodbyes at tournaments. It’s worse too when it’s in Europe, because I don’t get to see these guys very often. I went to the bleachers where people were watching net, looked at everybody, and decided I didn’t want to disrupt/distract the match by trudging around saying goodbyes. Instead I went back to the freestyle site where most of the freestylers were, and I said nice individual goodbyes there. Sergio gave me my silver medal for routines and my bronze for circle, and Alex Trenner gave me a super cool green PlanetFootbag shirt, since I was the competitor who traveled the farthest. Thanks PlanetFootbag!

I tried to push out the sadness of leaving a tournament by replacing it with the urgency of getting to the airport. But as I sat on the last leg of the metro ride to the airport, I couldn’t help but feel sad that Euros was over. I cheered myself up some by reminding myself what a great time it was, and that I would be going to USO in a month.

Thank yous and shout outs:

•Paloma, for letting me crash at her place for two nights, and for partying hard Saturday. You rock.
•Wiktor Debski, for all his organizing work throughout the tourney. Steve also did a ton of behind the scenes work, but Wiktor competed in everything too! I don’t know how he mentally and physically juggles all that.
•Rene Ruhr for pushing me so hard in Circle, and forcing me to wake up.
•Mikel Oroz for spinning very good music all tourney long. It really makes a difference.
•Silwan, Sophie, and Vlad for prepartying outside the party, and humoring my French.
•Aleksi, Jana, and Tuomas, for making Friday night’s beer drinking much more of an adventure than I could have hoped for.
•Aleksi and Tuomas. I didn’t know either of you guys hardly at all before this tourney, so it was awesome to hang out so much and find out you were so cool.
•Arthur Ledain, for showing me how badass and over the net a short guy can be. I doubt I’ll ever be as good as him at net, but at least I know not to use height as an excuse.
•Alex Trenner and Planet Footbag. Thanks for the awesome shirt. I'll wear it at USO. Trenner ist ein renner!
•Steve, for inspiring me. I often catch myself thinking about retirement, or wondering how long I can stay competitive or even enthusiastic. Steve proves you can keep that flame alive for as long as you want. I’m going to aspire to do that.
•Everybody I hung out with. Just a great collection of people at this tourney, which made it an unforgettable time. Thank you.

[C-Fan]

Going to Utah for a couple days, so likely not much posting. Hopefully I'll be able to get in some sessions and make a video, like I did with Montana. We'll see. Things have been busy for me in general lately.

Been training hard for USO. This past weekend, I got in sessions Friday evening, Saturday morning and evening, and Sunday morning and evening. Also Monday evening. My finals routine is feeling very good now, though I’ve been mostly ignoring my first round routine. I need to be careful with that, since I don’t know how cuts will work at USO, and I also don’t want to make finals with too low of a seed. My goals for USO are dropless and podium, and ideally both. The latter will depend a bit on how other people do (and if Clavens shows, that’s one less spot on the podium), but the former is something I can control. I’d love to get one more dropless routine…I have five now, but six is a nice round number. I kinda wish USO were this weekend already, since I feel ready now, and just want to get it out of the way.

My knee has been feeling much better, though I’m still being conservative with it. The soreness is also gone from my hips. Until USO is over, I’m going to focus on long strings and getting my routine basics solid, and mostly avoid big tricks and links. I don’t want to risk injury unnecessarily. Here’s a video of some highlights from the weekend. The blistering heat has forced me to play in the shade, which isn’t ideal filming conditions, but hey.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRB8ZJNV2xo[/youtube]

The other notable footbag happening from this weekend, happened at a food truck event. I was in line waiting to pick up some food, when I hear from behind me: "hey Ken?" I turn around, and who do I see, other than...Stephen Barnes!? When I first moved to Denver, I tried to contact Stephen, but his phone seemed disconnected, and he didn't reply to emails. A couple months ago I looked him up on Facebook, and it appeared he was in South America somewhere, and it looked like for the long haul. Apparently he just moved back into town, so it was amazing timing to run into him like that. He says he doesn't really play anymore, but maybe I can convince him otherwise. It'd be so amazing to have a guiltless shred partner in the same city. On that note, there's also been talk at work of sending me to Hoover Dam for a month as part of a work rotation. How is that related? Hoover Dam is just outside of Las Vegas...

[C-Fan]

Thunderstorm season in Denver now. This is bad for my USO training for a couple reasons:

1.It’s muggy and hot out right after work, and I no longer have gym access. For the last couple weeks there’s been a thunderstorm around 6, which breaks the heat and humidity, but obviously I can’t play during the storm, and then the ground’s wet afterwards.

2.The constant changes in atmospheric pressure make my joints feel weird, particularly my bad left knee.

My bad left knee. I took a week off footbag after Euros, and my knee was feeling better. Maybe I pushed too hard during yesterday’s session, or maybe the weird pressure changes from the storm got to me, but right after playing my knee started to hurt as I climbed the stairs to my apartment. Crap. Still feels off today too. I’m not going to panic yet, but this isn’t good. If I had to compete today I could, as I’m sure a combination of adrenaline and ibuprofen would get me through. But even if I make it through USO, it’s not a good sign that a knee injury I sustained in mid-May is still giving me problems in August. My plan is to completely lay off it until the weekend, and then train lightly until USO, taking care to not play over an hour at a time, and not do any motions that’d hurt it.

On a more positive note, last Thursday marked my 14th anniversary playing footbag. I can’t believe I’ve been playing 14 years. I wonder how many adds I’ve hit over that time. For fun, I’m going to do a brief, year-by-year highlights of my time in footbag.

1997: Saw freestyle for my first time ever at the New York Footbag Explosion. Met Steve Goldberg, Ian Brill, and Bruce Dole amongst others. Still friends with them today.

1998: Graduated high school, moved to Rhode Island for undergrad for the next 4 years. Competed in my first tournament, a small one in Montreal where I won intermediate routines, even though I should have competed in open.

1999: Went to my first Worlds, in Chicago. Met several of my idols.

2000: Burned out on freestyle, quit for 6 months. Came back just to play for fun, stopped caring about external pressure, and never looked back.

2001: Spent the summer in Denver, CO for an internship. I missed Worlds because of it, but got to play with Rippin, Genz, Red, and Jon Schneider for an entire summer. Hit alpine symple food cleanly on video.

2002: Moved to Japan for 3 years. Thought I’d give up footbag, since there was no scene there at the time.

2003: Helped organize and judge Tokyo Shredder Gathering 1, and Japanese Footbag Championships 1, the first two footbag tournaments in Asia. Pepsi sponsored JFC1, so we had huge marketing and cash prizes. Exciting times.

2004: Took close to ten members of Team Japan to Worlds. There’s been a Team Japan presence at every Worlds since.

2005: Finished 4th in Shred30 at Worlds. Switched to G-Units, after 8 years in Lavers. Last year in Japan. Before JFC3, I trained a group of judges how to judge routines. JFC3 was their final exam, which they passed with flying colors. JFC and TSG have occurred every year since.

2006-7: Moved back to the states, started grad school in Ithaca, NY. Met Pascal Tomecek and Luis Lipchak, and for those two years we had a great scene. Co-hosted Cornell Footbag Jam 1+2 with Luis, which had good turnout and were lots of fun.

2008-09: Finished grad school and started work in DC. Went to more tournaments in this two year span than any time in my life, thanks to Age Dukes and Vince Bradley. Won East Coasts twice, and NYFA twice, and got my first four dropless routines.

2010: Finished tied for 10th in routines at Worlds. Moved to Denver Colorado. Hit my first beast combo, and ended up getting 40. Started playing net/takraw.

2011: Finally got video editing software, started making regular videos. Had a string of good results in routines and circles at tournies, resulting in inflated online rank, and inflated ego.

Still can’t believe it’s been 14 years. I guess I’ve blogged pretty religiously for the past 7 years, so that accounts for half my time in the sport in gory detail. I have to say I’ve been pretty lucky with my health, and it’s certainly been a pleasant, unexpected surprise that I’m playing at my peak this late in my career. More than anything though, I think it’s a testament to the varied and challenging nature of footbag, that I’ve managed to stay this interested this long. I hope I can stay active with freestyle for a few more years, but even if I have to take a step back with my game to keep playing, or even if I have to switch to net, I feel very fortunate to have stuck around so long. I also feel very lucky to have made so many strong, lasting friendships in the sport over the last 14 years.

Here’s a video I made from my trip to Salt Lake City last week. The footage in the yellow shirt is from the 28th, which was my 14th anniversary:

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=oJ7C_2ob3k0[/youtube]

[Zeke]

Wow, happy 14th! That's quite the career so far. I'm still amazed about you starting an entire scene in Japan.

Any goals for the next 14?

[C-Fan]

I clearly remember meeting you at the Navy Pier at Worlds 99 Zeke…doesn’t that make you feel old? I think it’s pretty cool though when people stay in the footbag scene as long as we have. Even if you had to turn to the dark side early…

Goals for the next 14 years? I like that. It’s easy for me to look at my career in footbag as mostly done, with most of my big achievements behind me. But there’s no reason to think like that. Here’s what I’ve come up with for goals for the next…ten years:

• Podium at USO in the next three years (first crack at this in one week).
• Finals at Worlds.
• Start a scene in Denver. I’ve been here long enough, there’s no excuse.
• Host a tournament in Denver. CSS8?
• Win an intermediate event at a net tournament.
• Become a competent open net player.
• Be playing footbag in some form or other when I’m 40.


It’s fun thinking about footbag in the future, because footbag in the present isn’t going so well for me. On Monday I re-tweaked my injured left knee. I had a long session after work right after a thunderstorm, and I didn’t do any motions/moves that should hurt the knee. After I was done though, I felt something tweak in there as I was climbing the stairs to my apartment. In the past my knee just felt sore, but didn’t hurt. This time, it hurts. Yes, present tense. 4 days later, it still doesn’t feel right, though it does feel slightly better than yesterday. So no footbag since Monday, but I’m going to test out the knee tomorrow with a light training session. I need to be careful, since USO is in exactly a week. It will be a fine line between getting prepared mentally/physically for it, and getting injured again. Ugh. After USO is over, I plan on taking off at least 3 weeks from playing. While I haven’t played this week, I have been listening to my routine songs every day, and visualizing the choreo. I’m hoping that will help on some level.

Here’s some highlights from my Monday session. I mostly worked on strengthening basics on both sides, and also going for longer runs as a way of improving my stamina for routines. My last video didn’t get much positive response, so I didn’t even bother with a song or editing this time:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD8PrLJhXWE[/youtube]

[RipWalker]

I really enjoyed that video! I think I even liked it better sans music; I like being able to hear the footwork. Loved the nice, long strings!

In other news, I'll be near Denver from the 12th to the 20th. I know that nicely overlaps with the USO time frame but if you're back in Denver during any of those days, let me know.

[Matt K]

My last video didn’t get much positive response, so I didn’t even bother with a song or editing this time:

Speaking personally, I watch videos on mute because I usually have my own audio going. I do always enjoy the shred though.

Looking forward to seeing, playing with, and living with you in a week.

[Corey]

Just because you didn't get a ton of comments doesn't mean we didn't like it. I challenge you to hit a gyro (diving or weaving) gyro trick. I know you can do it.
Also do some more of that trials stuff. Maybe phoenix off of a picnic table in a suit. But that is probably not the best idea if you want to play another 14 years.

[Muffinman]

I love reading about your career accomplishments. I wish I had a better record of my own, even though they're not nearly as impressive. I guess my equivalent is more like my history of injuries! Haha! Actually, I base a lot of my history on yours, since I started a year or 2 after you, or something, so I can relate where I was based on your experiences. I met Zeke the same year at Navy Pier! I think it must have been after Worlds though. Or maybe it was early 2000. I knew nothing, and he and Dan Klokow kept telling me that I almost met the world champion! (did Scott win that year?)

Your first Beast followed by another 39 is particularly impressive!

[sen]

I really liked you're 14 year recap, good stuff. I wish I was around for everything you've witnessed or that I had made the time to go to even a quarter of the jams you've gone to. Also just watched your USO Rehab vid and liked it. As always I have nothing to say about the actual shred because after 8 years I'm still a noob that only recognizes tiltless... But it looked and felt like high energy. May the Force Be With You at USO!

[C-Fan]

Thanks for all the comments guys.

Corey: before I go for alpine paranoia, I need to get better at spinning ducking. You can see what my average spinning ducking looks like in the video below, but it’s still far from feeling natural.

Erik+Tony: glad you enjoyed the career highlights. I could have written them in much greater detail, but I’m guessing the reason you probably enjoyed them was because I didn’t.

Exactly 4 days from the time of this post I will be competing at US Open. I feel a strange mixture of nervousness and excitement for this. I re-tweaked my bad knee a week ago, took off five days, and then got in some sessions this weekend. My knee is far from 100%, but the rest time helped it a bit. The knee feels worst during warmup, and there are still lots of motions I’m avoiding with it, but once I’m warmed up I can hit all the components of my routine. My stamina doesn’t appear to be much worse despite the time off, which is good.

In no particular order, here are some things which I’m worried about with USO:

• My knee. Assuming I don’t reinjure it in the next few days, will it be strong enough to hold up through the entire weekend of USO? Should I sacrifice Circle comp to minimize my injury risk and give myself a better chance in routines? If I have to cool down and warm up on the same day, how will it react?

• The heat. Weather.com is forecasting highs in the mid to high 90s, with no cloud cover. I think the event is outdoors, so this could be brutal. I’m in my thirties now, so any added physical challenges to competition work against me. It’s hard enough competing against athletes 10 years younger than me, even in ideal conditions. I’m hoping the stage for finals is covered, or we compete late enough that there is some shade.

• My first round routine. For strategy reasons, I don’t want to do the same routine both rounds. I’m feeling very good about my finals routine, but I’m still not sure what routine I’m doing for the first round. This late in the game, the smart move would probably be to use one of my routines from Green Cup. Yet I’m still tempted to do a routine to a new song I like, even though I’ve never done a full runthrough of it even in practice. While I know you can finish well in a tournament even if you have a low seed in finals, that’s still not a position I want to put myself in for no reason.

Here’s a video of my sessions from the weekend. I practiced my routines of course, but I also played for fun to test a range of motions, and also to improve my stamina some. My flip open set felt more consistent; I’d like to hit Open Everything in the near future. I've had a surprisingly tough time with this drill up until recently, but I see a light at the end of the tunnel now.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DnL8Qfe19U[/youtube]

Looking at this video, I don’t look injured at all. I guess that’s a good thing, but in truth I feel like I can only play at about 70% of my ability because of the injury. My plan is still to take time off after USO, and only do light training before it.

Emily Kulczyk and Fletch Funk stayed at my place this weekend, on their way from California to Chicago. It was fun hanging out, and Fletch even played a little freestyle with me. It was cool to see the spark of freestyle reappear in his eyes as we played. I also got to play a game of Scrabble against him, which was fun despite bad timing on how the letters came out of the bag. I still managed two bingos (when you use all 7 tiles on your rack in one turn) in our game: FRIENDS and GRANGErs (lower case denotes blanks).

Worlds finished yesterday. I’m hoping to see some write-ups…it’s been a while since I missed doing a Worlds writeup myself, since I went to 7 of the last 8 Worlds before missing this year. I think there’s a very good chance I’ll go next year though, so hopefully that’ll start up a new streak.

[sen]

Erik+Tony: glad you enjoyed the career highlights. I could have written them in much greater detail, but I’m guessing the reason you probably enjoyed them was because I didn’t.

I enjoy your long write ups. They make me feel involved.

[g00d33]

There were a lot of really good combos in that last video (and in your other recent videos too). Some of the drills were my favorite

[C-Fan]

Thanks John. Hopefully I'll come back from USO with a good writeup and some good video.

I'm super hyped for USO. I'm not entirely sure why... I haven't had this feeling in a while. It reminds me of when I first started playing. I had trouble concentrating at work today, and ended up leaving early because of that.

It's always fun going through the pre-tourney rituals before a tourney. It's like each thing is a step towards your goal. Charging the ipod. Confirming the flight. Charging the camera. Packing the bag, and repacking it again. Washing your routine footbags, and patching them up. Listening to your routine songs. Competition haircut. Dumping footage off the camera to make room. Breathe. Breathe.

I took today off from footbag, to let my legs rest up. My plan is to play just enough tomorrow to qualify for finals of routines, and hopefully circle too. I'm a bit worried about circle, because I don't want to push too hard tomorrow and reinjure myself. I have a feeling that making Circle finals is going to be a challenge. Penske, Moir, Landes, Bevier, Dale, Chris Dean? I need to beat three of those guys to make it, which would be hard even if I were at full strength. But then, "that's why they play the games" as they say.

I'm so hyped for routine finals, it's going to be weird once they're over. I have no other tournaments on the horizon, and it'll mark the end of a very packed tournament year for me. I'd really like to end 2011 strong.

I'm gonna have trouble sleeping tonight.

Here's a video of a drill I hit on Wednesday, since I don't like making video-less posts.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11szMPazm4w[/youtube]

Gonna go try and sleep. Breathe!