I’ve met a good kid, and father, out at Heron the past couple weeks and today the kid, Ben, and I played a bit of a putting game.  He’s got some skills and I think he will be quite the golfer one day if he can maintain his drive and passion for the game.  Putting with him was part inspiring and part daunting.  On one hand, it’s refreshing to see someone so young have such a passion for the game (usually I practice with retirees, or the occasional college student..) who is also good at it.  Once he get’s his distance in he will be a scratch player and be moving along his path to 10,000 hours, probably reach that mark by the time he graduates college, or around 20 years old.  On the other hand, playing with someone like that really forces me to confront the disadvantage conferred by started my plan after the age of 30..  Perhaps I’m delusional in thinking that this is possible, but if so, at least I’m blinded by my delusions because I still see no real reason why I can’t make the PGA tour.

And, perhaps I actually have an advantage in there over this rising crop of super-star golfers.  There is a lot of life lessons that they all are bound to learn over the coming years, as well as school work, part-time jobs, dating, etc..  Me, I’m pretty set in my ways and know that I’m perfectly content training for the coming years and outside of minor issues happening around the house or between my girlfriend and I am able to focus 100 percent on the task at hand.

regardless of whether youth or experience (non-golf experience, mind you) has an advantage, we all have an enormous undertaking before us and it is imperative to not lose sight of the tiny little light way down the tunnel years into the future.

I have a feeling that this is going to be a great week of training.  My post-roadtrip blues have left the building and I have nothing to worry about except improving my game.

I wanted to say “Thank You” again to my brother and his family for donating a car to The Dan Plan.  It is, without a doubt, a generous and amazing gift and I love being able to drive out to Pumpkin without having to worry about breaking down along the way!

I was excited to get back to work today now that I’m back in Portland, but once I got out there I realized that the 1,900 mile drive over the past four days took a bit more of a tole on me than I had thought.  Today ended up being what was probably the toughest practice to date.  I’ve played with three hours sleep, while fighting with Marijke, with a sore back, while having financial issues, with allergies and a cold, in the near-freezing rain, on 105 degree days, etc..  but, for some reason today was tougher than them all to focus and get anything accomplished.

I’m sure there were a few issues at play here making it tough to focus.  One of them being that I started drinking coffee regularly again during the past  few weeks and so had a big cup this morning and I think the type of energy it gives you is not conducive to keeping the quiet mind necessary to putt.  Another is probably the fact that I didn’t get more than five hours of sleep on any night of the trip, something that slowly built up and I guess I was more exhausted than I thought by the end of it.  There was also a bit of stress on the trip between people getting ill, Marijke and I talking about breaking up, flat tires and lost Ipods.  Still, it was a good trip and I’m very happy to have gone and for everything that happened along the way.  You got to take the bad with the good and enjoy it all!

All of that said, I went back out from 7-9 PM and had a much better time at it.  I think by tomorrow, or Saturday at the latest, I’ll be back to the swing of things (no pun intended..)!

My putting has been sub-par too.  While in Omaha I pulled off my first 85% of five-footers and felt pretty groovy about it, but today it was a struggle to sink anything more than 50%.  Everything is related in golf, so I can tell that the sad showing in my putting is really just me not being able to focus on the task at hand..

I try to keep as upbeat an approach as possible, but to tell you the truth, I’m a bit worn down right now.  I think it must be time to go to sleep, whenever I start feeling overwhelmed by things I know that it’s really it’s just that I’m tired…  I’m going to read a bit of Heart of Darkness and sleep a deep sleep, perhaps I’ll dream up a solution to the fact that I’ve been pulling all of my putts lately.

We made it to Denver last night with only the minor hicup of a flat tire in what must be the very difinition of “the middle of nowhere.” I’ve attached a photo for some proof of that!

But, alas, I’ve found Denver to be pleasant as always. I’m staying with a good friend from the college days and her sister was getting tested to get he message certification so I managed to get a free one hour message, which felt great after the past three months of intensive putting. Without propping her at all, she said my lower back and neck were stiff and that I should stretch them more often, good advice.

I found the Denver city park golf course today too. It was a great facility near downtown that had a nice putting green, chipping area and driving range. I worked on the putting area for a couple hours, the greens were in excellent shape and I think were the same type of grass that is out at heron and pumpkin ridge. It was a bit thicker, though, so perhaps a different variety. The only problem was that the putting area was almost completely flat. It felt like putting on a pool table. It was still good for distance practice, so worked on some lag putting and longer putts. I also got some chipping in, am excited about learning the proper grip and how to swing a club for real once I get back to portland.

Tomorrow I need to get the tire fixed and then hit the course for a couple hours before heading to salt lake city to see what they have to offer..

Field Club turned out to be a good spot to practice for the day. It was an interesting little putting green that reminded me of Broadmoor’s in that it was kind of built on one big slope. The grass was different than you see in Portland, but kind of similar to the bent grass that they have out at Heron Lakes, just a bit longer and somewhat more “laid over.” There were a lot of dead patches too, I guess it’s pretty tough to maintain the quality of greens in thus climate, where the ground’s covered with snow for a few months a year and then bakes in the sun for the summer.. Not quite the sod paradise that the pacific northwest is, for better or worse.

I practiced for four hours, not too bad for being out of my routine, but was hoping to get a bit more in. It got really muggy out, though, and I felt like it was best to take it easy because I couldn’t sleep well last night and with the time change got about five hours, mostly laying awake. Will sleep well tonight for sure.. Tomorrow I’m going to head back to Field Club for a bit and then go out and challenge my brother in a little 18 hole putting game. Last time we played was early June and I barely beat him after nine holes, I think it was by one stroke. This time I’ve got a lot more confidence in my game, so am ready to go all out!

The picture below is Marijke checking out the practice green and the clubhouse in the background. It was private, but nobody said anything and in fact gave me a free cup of decaf, so I figured all was well..

Guess Omaha saw me coming a mile away!

Just got to town today and already found a nice spot to practice starting tomorrow. It’s called Field Club and is right down the street from my brother’s house. Looks pretty nice, the sign says it’s been open since 1898, so bet there is some history there to find out tomorrow.

Going to go down in the morning and try to practice, it’s a private club so not sure if I’ll get kicked out or not, but will give it a shot!

It’s been a good week so far out here in Portland, but it’s time to hit the road for a bit and check out a bit more of the country’s golf courses.  Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to actually play the courses that I get to, but I will be able to check out different types of greens and get a feel for what a few more of the western cities in our country have to offer as far as public courses go.  Tomorrow, I’m flying into Omaha.  I’m heading there because my super generous brother is donating a car (with good MPG) to The Dan Plan before he and his family makes the move to NYC.  So, I’ll fly there and spend a few days with them and practice at a few courses in Nebraska and then head to Denver for a couple nights to see what they have, then Salt Lake City and Boise before the long drive back across Oregon to Portland.  I’m excited about the entire trip and think that it comes at a good time in the plan.  I’ve been working pretty hard for the past 3.5 months and feel like a bit of a break is what the doctor has ordered!

I will be blogging along the way (can update with my phone, gotta love technology for that!) but will not be able to update my “stopwatch” page, but will be able to catch up next week when I get home.

Speaking of hitting the road (kind of..) my concentration today was like a diesel engine.  It started cold and slow and puttered about for a second, but once I warmed up it was a great day out there.  I also went and saw Darren, the cognitive trainer, too and had a good meeting with him.  We went over the past weeks work and started in on a new exercise dealing with word recognition, focus and memorization which I am pretty excited about.  It’s been a lot of building block stuff to this point, but things are now getting very interesting and it looks like I’ll soon be doing things that four months ago I wouldn’t have come close to being able to do.  Sorry I can’t go into more detail about his program, I had to sign a confidentiality agreement so am just going to chat about the generalities for now..

So, it’s been a good, yet short, week so far.  I’m going to pack for my trip and then head out to Heron for a bit of evening putting before calling it a day to get ready for my trip tomorrow.

I officially logged in my 400th training hour this week and I’m pretty proud of the milestone.  It’s not a very big one, but still, I think it shows a lot in the arena of “intent of pursuing 10,000.”  Just a few months ago this was all a hypothetical conversation with a lot of “what ifs” and “is it possibles,” and although I’m nowhere near answering the latter, at least I’ve swallowed my medicine and am out there giving it my all on a daily basis (Well, perhaps not daily, I do take one day off to maintain certain levels of sanity..).

And, there’s no place I’d rather be.  Still.

Looking a bit down the road, I’m excited about crossing over 500 some time next month.  It will be a nice little milestone, 5% of my 10,000 hour goal, or 1/20th of the way there.  When I hit 100 and thought about  being 1% into the plan I was a bit daunted and almost discouraged about the journey ahead, but 5% is a real chunk.  This is not to say that I’m looking forward to finishing my 10,000 hours, by any means.  It’s more about realizing that the amount of work that is necessary to put in to really excel at something (again, I’ve yet to prove that, but that’s the theory we’re testing here) is not overwhelming, especially if you can break it down into chunks and have little goals to look forward to along the way.  I’m definitely going to celebrate my 500th hour, but when 1,000 hits, that’s going to be a time for a real party!

regardless of numbers, I had a perfect week by all means.  My putting felt good, my energy was up every day until Friday when I hit a bit of an end-of-the-week wall, and my morale was tops.  I’m going to have to look back and read my daily training thoughts notes when it’s the middle of the winter and remember that weeks like this one exist in the world!

I’ve taken today off to let my body rest a bit and then am heading out to see Christopher out at Pumpkin tomorrow for a lesson.  This coming week is going to be a bit unusual as far as training goes because I’m going to be visiting my brother and his family in Omaha, so will have to check out some of the greens out there for a few days.  Will let you know how that goes soon..

One more picture of Heron Lakes in the evening.

It doesn’t get much better than between 7PM and 9PM out at Heron.  For some reason, there is hardly anyone out there using the greens and the weather is near perfect.  Also, you can get a real good look at the bumps and nuances of the green as the low angle of the sun casts shadows from any imperfections of the grass.

All's quiet on the Heron front.

I’m not looking forward to the winter.

Not because of the cold or rain, although both of those are not exactly positives..  But, rather, because of the sunlight.  More like the lack of sunlight.

Today, I got out to Heron a bit before 8AM and left just past 8PM (I did break for lunch and dinner, I’m not completely crazy..) and there was still about an hour of sunlight left that I could have taken advantage of if my energy level had lasted.  In December, the sun sets here at about 4PM and doesn’t really rise (takes a bit longer with the constant cloud cover) until about 9AM, so even if I maxed out the complete day without a break I could get 7 hours in, but in a more realistic scenario, I’ll be limited to about 4 or 5 hours.  Hopefully, I will be able to train indoors on my swing somewhere, will just have to figure out where you can do that in Portland.

For now, I’m going to enjoy the next few months of long days by going out to Heron in the evenings more when there is never anyone on the putting green.