I think I might start off my blog, and therefore introduce myself a little differently: I puked today. Sorry for anybody squeamish, but I think such a fact is a graphic but actually pretty good illustration of how strange it is being an athlete.

You see, I think it's similar to the reason I find it difficult to answer the question of what I do for a "living." Well, I make money by being a coach, true. Don't get me wrong, I love coaching and I put all I have into it when it's time to coach, but coaching pays the bills so that I can then do what I consider to be my job, my occupation. I am a decathlete.

I wake up in the morning based on and for the reason of my workout for the day. My meals revolve around, my sleep is geared towards, coaching is juggled around my workout that day. 365 days in a year, 52 weeks, and 12 months, all geared towards one two-day series. Sometimes it makes me glad I'm not a sprinter: some of them work just as hard and get fewer than 10 seconds to show for it. A decathlon, however, is two days. Ten events on the track in two days. Ten chances, ten opportunities at one goal.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not one of the I-do-ten-events-thus-work-ten-times-harder-than-you crowd and am not attempting a tirade about my "blood, sweat, and tears," I just thinks it's an incredible thing how this has all turned out for me. Sure I fantasized like everyone else as a kid about making NBA buzzer-beaters or hitting that walk-off dinger to win the World Series, but I truly never pictured myself as professional track athlete. I was always a bit of a work-aholic who played by the rules. In fact, my plan was more along the lines of get good grades, you go to college, get a degree, you get a job, buy a Beamer and a big house. Nice car, dog, and hoping by this time I'd be good enough to have my own office with my name on the door: safe, following the path, getting it done.

After graduating, however, I decided to go out to Berkeley to train and live with my uncle in Walnut Creek, CA. To get to and from I took the BART trains in the mornings and I think it's there it really hit me for the first time. The train I took eventually went on into San Francisco and thus was a big commuter train. Everyone was in a tie and jacket with a Blackberry on the hip, coffee in one hand, and "Wall Street Journal" in the other. Then, of course, there was me: bright fleece warmup jacket, track pants, backpack, and running shoes still sandy from the previous day's long jump session. As much as I used to see myself as one of those anonymous daily grinders I loved the fact that I was different, that I was "that guy." Just like I loved being "that guy" in the back of my college physics lectures with ice on his hamstring and eating a tuna sandwich, or one of "those guys" running suicide intervals up UC Berkeley's Campanelli hill at 8am weaving in and out of sleepy-eyed students making their way to the first class of the day. Somewhere I caught a sickness that turned into a passion, that turned into a love for my sport that made me crave waking up daily to push myself as much as I could just to see where I could go with it, pushing myself, building myself, then getting to bed to do it all over again tomorrow.

Which, I guess leads me back to the beginning: I puked today. I am not normal, and I love it. I was not sick, I didn't eat anything bad, I wasn't nauseous, I ran. I ran hard. Furthermore, to tell you the truth, to make matters worse, I was actually worried that I wasn't going to puke. I was worried that I felt too good after the workout. Sure, I couldn't stand up well or walk straight, but I didn't have to puke...but then, sure enough it came. Don't get me wrong, this is far from a regular occurrence, but during the early part of the season you have to get yourself into shape and there are certain workouts that I know are going to get me. You have to work and work and work. You have to push your body where it may not want to go now so that come spring and summer during competition season, your body can go exactly where you want it to go. I had been fine all year thus far, but today was the first day of slightly faster and more intense intervals. Just 200m at a time, but with only 2:00 minutes rest in between each, they catch up to you in a hurry - and sometimes you get to "re-eat" breakfast because of it. Thus, today, just like in the bleachers at Berkeley after that plyo workout, on the infield at Davis after that set of 8 x 300m, and at the few other places that have had the privilege of hosting the workouts leading towards my initial puke-inducing workout of a season, I found myself doubled over a trash-can in the bathroom of Harvard's Gordon Indoor Track Center...and it made me happy.