Middle of the first week.

I woke up exhausted today and whenever that happens I know I’m in for a rough ride of a day.  I decided not to go easy on myself by starting later than usual and instead actually went out to the course a bit earlier.  I was hoping that once I got going and the sun came out I would find a second wind of energy, but it just never rolled around today.  Even after I worked out (working out usually boosts my energy) I was dragging.  I think this is just the jet lag catching up and am sure tomorrow will be a much more rested day.  Regardless of my energy, I put in 5 hours and actually had a lot of good realizations today about my putting and chipping.

I realized that you can literally feel the grain on the putting green and this created a huge improvement in my putting from just yesterday.  If you brush your palm on the putting green you can tell which way the grass grows and then strike the ball accordingly.  On Monday, it took about 45 minutes to sink 17 3-footers, today I made 32 in a row without a problem and then hit in another 20 in a row just to make sure I could do it.  I also made 20 five-footers today because I took my time and felt the grain before every one.  There could be a lot of reasons why I putted better today, but paying attention to the grass definitely doesn’t hurt.

In bigger news, I found out that I’m invited to give a presentation about The Dan Plan at Florida State University February 19.  There is a conference that weekend put on by SPEAR, or Sport Professional’s Experience and Leadership, with an emphasis on “The purpose of the conference is to promote the discussion and scientific examination of topics related to the sport sciences from a variety of perspectives.  This year’s conference theme is Expertise Across Domains.”

This is just up my alley!  So, I contacted them and mentioned the project and they invited my up there to get involved.  I was going to go visit Tallahassee anyway in order to visit Dr. Len Hill and Dr. K Anders Ericsson, who happens to be talking at the same conference, so it’s really a perfect situation and I’m excited about meeting everyone involved.

That said, I’m by no means a public speaking fan and am a bit nervous about getting in front of a group of professionals, but you gotta do what you gotta do and this is an ideal opportunity to spread the word and get some input about the progress of The Dan Plan, as well as suggestions about how to improve my training regimen down the line..

I will be taking notes over the next two weeks and will try and put together an official spiel.  I think this exercise will be good for me too, force me to come up with a concise answer to exactly what The Plan stands for and what I’m trying to do here.  I will film the conference and have a video up as soon as I’m back in Portland.

In the meantime, check out these fairways:

not quite the best, but check out the views!:

and here:

and you can’t beat the Florida sunset!:

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