Wow! That’s about how I feel after getting back to Virginia after my first true tour on the European track circuit; but not the sort of “wow” you might expect. For all the glitz and glamor that many outside the track and field world think goes with being on the circuit, there’s a WHOLE lot more grit and grind. As far as competitions and results are concerned for the trip, things didn’t go as I would have liked. Still, the highlights of my trip which I’ll detail in a separate post, help me give it an overall thumbs up. The competitions started off alright, with a 16.70m jump from miles behind the board in Reims, France but I couldn’t translate that performance into a 17m result like I probably should have. To give you guys a better impression of how the trip went as a whole though, I’ll take you through it from start to finish —

Tuesday,  June 29: Arrive in Paris, France at about 7am after an overnight flight. I was met in the airport by someone from the meet and then we were off to first pick up another athlete in the area and then we began our 2 hour drive to Reims where the meet was being held.  I competed the next day so I made it a point to get out to the track warmup and also see what I would be dealing with and to allow myself to visualize how the next day’s competition would go.

Wednesday, June 30: Competition Day. Like most meets overseas, I ended up competing in the evening. By the time competition was done and I got back to the hotel to shower and then find something to eat it was past the time when I would be able to get an adequate amount of sleep. Still, I was happy with relatively happy with my performance.

Thursday, July 1: My flight left from Paris a little before 11AM so I hopped on a train to the airport and began my trip to Stockholm. Luckily, I had a straight flight and made it to Sweden around 1:15PM. After a short trip to the airport, a quick lunch and brief nap it was time to get ready to hit the track again at the Sollentuna GP. As you may have noticed in my season up to this point and from last year’s schedule, competing in back to back weeks is not my favorite thing to do. Competing on back to back evenings though; and in two different countries no less??! Well let’s just say that I definitely won’t be doing it again…ever! I could only muster up a 16.04m jump for 4th place — not a good look.

Friday, July 2 – Sunday, July 4: I had a couple of days in Sollentuna/Stockholm to rest and recover before it was on to the next one. The way my body felt after the back to back fiasco from the two previous evenings, I really did not want to even leave my room let alone venture out into a foreign city. Fortunately, I changed my mind and took to the streets of Stockholm on Saturday for a self guided tour of the city. It only lasted a couple hours thanks to my weary legs along with the sun beating down on me but I think I saw nearly everything and it was a worthwhile excursion. Sunday morning at about 3:30 in the morning, I began my journey to the Greek island of Crete. About 10 or 11 hours later I had made it to the town of Rethymno and the beautiful beach front resort that would serve as the meet hotel. The first order of business was a pool workout to loosen up the legs after all the traveling.

Monday, July 5 – Wednesday, July 7: With a couple more days of rest, I felt as if I was able to get my legs back under me; for the most part. I spent the majority of my time reading “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and watching episodes of Smallville (I’d heard enough about it to pique my interest so I finally gave it a try and have been hooked ever since) but got a good track workout in on Monday. Tuesday was another recovery day and I was able to take a dip in the Sea of Crete for that purpose since getting enough ice to make an ice bath would have been extremely difficult with no ice machines in the hotel. Wednesday came and went and after another lackluster 16.64m performance considering the time I had had to rest/recover it was time to get mentally prepared for then next competition.

Thursday, July 8 – Friday, July 9: Thursday brought another 3:30AM departure, which I had to make on only about an hour of sleep since after the meet (which finished up later than it should have) I had to wait a while for a massage, then grabbed some dinner and hustled to do some packing so I could take a quick nap. Thanks to an air traffic controller strike in Athens, those athletes leaving Greece on the 8th either had to wait for hours in Athens until the strike was over so that they could find a flight OR as in my case, they winded up leaving Greece extra early and sitting in Dusseldorf, Germany for nearly 6 hours. Fortunately I met an agent who was also traveling to the Gateshead meet and was nice enough to allow me to be his guest in the extra comfortable and luxurious Lufthansa airport lounge. That helped the time fly by.

By the time I made it to Newcastle I had missed the bus to the track to workout which was just fine with me considering I was in no mood or condition physically to do anything on the track after the 16 hours of travel it took make it from Greece to England. Yea, it took a bit longer than it should have considering I was only traveling within Europe! So I hopped on the bike in the fitness center and even managed to get a little treatment on Thursday night. Friday was a rest and recovery day, so I got a massage in the morning and took an ice bath before bed.

Saturday, July 10: This was the last day of my trip and my last competition on this Euro-Tour. I love the atmosphere and competition in the Diamond League meets and felt very fortunate to be competing in another one. My warmup felt really good as did my approaches. By the time I got to doing some warmup jumps though, I could tell that my legs had another idea. As expected from those warmup jumps I felt flat when it came to getting off the ground in between phases and I could only get out to 16.67m. After the meet I got to eat and catch up with the Texas contingent that was in town including my coach from while I was down there. Afterwards I packed, rather haphazardly and the next morning was my final crack of dawn trip to the airport on this journey.

— A lot of people just head over to Europe for the summer but I’m back home training and tweaking things in anticipation of the CAC Games in a couple weeks. I fully intend to go down there and secure the gold for Haiti so I’m doing what I need to do now so that I can walk the walk down in Puerto Rico. I’ll follow up this post once I get some more free time after unpacking, doing laundry and getting readjusted to EST to briefly fill you in on what I considered to be the highlights of my trip.