i'm sure i'm like a lot of people, addicted to magazines.  i subscribe to bike magazine since i'm an avid mountain biker.  well maybe not avid.. anyway i'm getting pretty excited about this upcoming summer to go out to my favorite trails, find new trails just have a lot of fun out there.  this edition is dedicated to pain.  the cover says "pure, sweet, PAIN.. a tribute to suffering, adversity and the rewards for risking it all."  well i started reading.. and one of the first stories is about a guy that is 22 and has torn his ACL four times.  what i related to was his response to a question about the pain he felt when he hurt his knee. he said, "i have a really high threshhold for pain; i usually don't even hurt, even with all these surgeries. what hurts most is just knowing that something is wrong with your body.  that's the most frustrating thing"

its so true!  i think its why we're addicted to chiropractors to physical therapy, its why we become training room junkies.  nothing is more unsettling to an athlete than the feeling that something is wrong with his/her body.  you put all the time in training, in getting mentally prepared, but you cannot predict when injury will occur.  on monday i was throwing and my back got stuck.  it sucks a lot!  i was really ready to throw, my strength was great!  my lower back was finally strong.  my technique was coming together and in one day, one throw its back to square one if i can even get there.  right now the muscles around my spine are releasing but there is still something wrong with my back.  i know it and no one else can feel it.  i can point to the spot, i can tell people how it feels, that my hand gets tingly when i throw..   but no one can fix it.  nobody else can feel how wrong this feels.  how many times can you get injured before you lose the motivation to fight back?  another story in the magazine features a guy that lost his leg and got a prosthesus.. no big story there except that doctors told him they couldn't make an artificial leg that would allow him to keep riding. that didn't stop him though, he designed and created a limb that would allow him to ride still so he could keep doing the thing that he loved.  do you stop when people tell you there is nothing they can do, because do they really know what you're feeling?  no.  they don't know your limits, they only know your hypothetical limits.

what oregon fans haven't experienced lately is good head to head competition that breeds huge personal best performances.  i've been looking at these videos of interviews with oregon coaches and athletes and something is overlooked and that is that ucla is used to dual meets.  every year the ucla-usc dual meet produces big marks and fast times, its a meet of upsets and letdowns in which the teams rally for points.  its very exciting and fun to watch.  ucla is a veteran team and they know how to win dual meets.  i would argue that dual meets help athletes find a different more self-less way to compete.  it sucks that the weather is going to be bad because there's nothing like training in 80 degree, sunny weather and coming to 40 degree cold rainy inclement weather.  i don't think we'll see the same record breaking type performances if its raining, but i'm sure we'll see big gutsy finishes that make track so addictive.  again i'm very excited for a close competition and for oregonians to enjoy a dual meet, not to see who wins or loses but to see how athletes' competitive nature is drawn out from this type of contest. 

we just got back to eugene last night after a short but busy trip to LA aka the homeland. it was my first time competing in 2008 and only my second time throwing at ucla since i graduated in 2004 from there. i was pretty disappointed in my preparation for this meet, but i'm glad i went and that i did compete because now i'm motivated to not suck so much at the next meet which will be this coming friday at western oregon. i drove by the trials countdown sign and i can't believe we're in double digits. aside from the meet at western on friday i couldn't be more excited for the ucla-oregon dual meet. its going to be a great competition between two very strong teams. wow.