Saturday, July 6, 2013

My Very First Post

I have never been a blogger - aside from the mandatory posts on an internal blog I have to do for work. But here I am 4 days away from leaving for Israel, thinking of no better way to update the people back home than a blog.

As most of you know I will be participating in the 19th Maccabiah in Israel as a member of the USA Track & Field team - and experience I could not be more excited, nervous, anxious (really insert just about any adjective here) about. Since being notified of my selection roughly a year ago, my emotions and actions have been constantly shifting. First it was joy, then the reality set it, I had been dealing with an injury for a few months and the only sign of it getting better was sheer optimism. Fast forward a few more months and finally I was healthy and training properly, it would be a long road back but I felt that I had just the right enough time to get into proper shape for the games. Now all I had to do was raise the necessary funds to be able to compete.

Maccabi USA the governing body for the US team, heavily subsidizes the 3-week journey, but still requires each open athlete to fund-raise $5,000 as our "Yachad" commitment. For those of you not brushed up on your Hebrew - Yachad means together. Now that I think of it, perhaps I will add a Hebrew word of the day to this blog, it will help you all and I learn a bit of the language simultaneously. So today's word is Yachad - Together, a word that really is symbolic of why I am doing this blog in the first place.

Many of you reading this blog, helped contribute to my "Yachad Commitment" and if you did not contribute financially, you have been supportive in many other ways be it words of encouragement, joining in on training runs or many other ways that I can not think of right now. If it were not for all of you, I literally would not be able to be a part of the incredible experience that I am getting ready to embark on.

My plane takes off in almost exactly 4 days and I am not yet packed. I am organized, but not packed, and frankly I am shocked I am not being hounded by my Mother (although I did promise to be just about done by tomorrow night). In the roughly 96 hours that remain I have a lot more to do than just pack. The coming days include 4 more days of training including one final workout before I leave, 4 more days of work, store visits and events before I go incommunicado for 3 weeks,  and as if the next 4 days were not going to be stressful enough, I also need to get as much of my MBA application completed as possible.

Soon the stress will change to joy and excitement, but it might not be until just minutes before I arrive at the Philadelphia airport. There is a little comfort in that I finally know a bit more of my scheduled. Track competition will be held on July 24/25. My expected event - The 5000m will be held on the 25th at around 8:30 pm local time. I say expected, because there is a chance I could be running additional/different events, but I sure hope not since I have been putting all of my focus toward the 5000 for the last year. I will know for sure once the whole team is together and I will let you all know here.

I look forward to updating you throughout my journey...


1 comment:

  1. Good luck, Daniel. I'll be following your blog. Have a great trip!

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