The Grueling Preseason: Finale

      This blog post will serve as a reflection for one of my very first blog posts. Specifically, the one where I discussed the grueling preseason. Now, almost six weeks later, and the preseason is over. We topped of this last week with a workout and conditioning session on Monday, and an early morning pool workout on Wednesday. Knowing what I know now I can truly say, it was hard. However, it was worth it. Like I said before, if you approach conditioning with a bad attitude then you are going to hate every second you are out there. Therefore, I tried to adopt the mentality that I knew it was going to suck, but I would get through it. In my head I would just keep thinking that at some point later that day I was going to be in my bed. The truth is, nobody enjoys running 800 meter sprints six times. I mean, that is three miles of actual running. Not jogging. Running. Yet, I'm alive. I made it and the worst of it has passed because now I get to enjoy actual practices, and play in actual games. It was funny, one thing that always motivated me was the little saying on the bottom of every one of our lifting sheets. It read, "What is worse, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret?" Right below that it had the date of this year's Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC) championship game. It was small, and you could barely see it on the paper. But, there were times I didn't want to be there, or I didn't want to lift that weight or do the core to finish out the last set. However, I know that I couldn't live with myself if I were to get to the end of the season and think that I could have been better if I had only worked harder in the preseason. Thus, I would like to end this post with a quote from the great Muhammad Ali that seems to relate well to this topic. He claimed that he hated every minute of training, but he would tell himself, "Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion."