My week started with me finishing off a wonderful visit back to Quinnipiac University, Hamden CT visiting friends, coaches, and professors. I had a lovely breakfast with a close friend of mine that I travelled to South Africa with in January, 2015. I was then able to catch up with my old strength and conditioning coach to go over some new workout material to help with my continued development physically. My coach then ran me through many of the exercises and I will now continue to implement these exercises in my training. Although this was a trip to enjoy friends and all, I was still able to focus a certain period of time on my future goal. My afternoon was filled with more visits to two different professors who heavily influenced my educational experience at Quinnipiac. I also visited faculty members that I worked with on different extra curricular activities during my time. This rounded out a fantastic visit that was much needed but also just showed the importance of staying connected with important people in your life. As life goes on, the connections you have and the connections you make can continue to influence the direction of your life, and as I have learned, it is very important to stay connected positively.

Tuesday, I was straight back into training, and the intensity has risen into a new gear. Throughout the week the sessions were tough, and I have embraced that as I know it will only get me to a better place than where I am currently. Through my experiences over the past 10 months, I’ve continued to embrace the grind knowing that it will all be worth it in the end, and that is what keeps me going. It is a mentality that I have developed, through rejection and disappointment, but my drive and grit allow me to continue. Simply put, my mentality is to chase my dreams, something that so many young people fail to do and just opt for safety and comfort.

 

There are various aspects of chasing a dream, and I hope that one day I can lay out every step that I took in my journey. Another piece of my current puzzle is work. Work for me not only fills time when I am not training, but it also allows me to make money to cover my living costs during this period. I have never been one to sit around all day, so it is great to now have work most afternoons or evenings during the week. It simply just adds to the experience.

By Sunday, I was able to relax a little bit and enjoy the great spring weather that the greater Chicago Area is treating us with. We headed into Naperville to watch some academy games of u18s and u16s. It has happened to me a few times where I am always the one playing football, that I never really get to go and watch a live game of young players, so it was nice. As I mentioned earlier, connections are something that are very important to my opportunities in life, and today was no different. Nearly 6 years on from when I attended a camp at Northwestern University as I was looking at colleges for scholarships, I ran into Neil Jones, who at the time was an assistant coach at Northwestern, and who is originally from New Zealand. He is currently the head coach of Loyola Men’s Soccer team, just outside Chicago, and he was scouting the academy games for players for his team. We had a good catch up about all that had gone on in my career in the last 6 odd years and as always, it was just lovely to have another Kiwi around! You never know who you’ll bump into, so it’s always best to leave a good impression on people so that down the line when you may reconnect or bump into them, they are willing to help!

And for those who have kept up with the blog well, you may have remembered that Sunday was my long run day. Well that has been thrown out the window as it has become inappropriate training for my current situation as I look to improve my speed, agility, and more specifically my fast twitch muscles. These longs runs weren’t exactly detrimental, but there were much better uses of my time that could be a lot more beneficial to my body and purpose. And with this in mind, although very late, I headed out to the local park at 9pm to do a sprint training session. It’s never too late, and the question that I ask myself is, “how much do you want it?”.