The last couple days I?ve been teaching at a USATF Coaches Education school and I?m exhausted. Day 1 had me teaching for 3.5 hours; Day 2 for 7 hours; and Day 3 for 3.5 hours. It worked out to 14 hours of speaking in a 44 hour period. Needless to say I?m sick of hearing myself speak and I?m sure that the students in the class are too. I?m tired physically and mentally and I feel like I need an extended vacation somewhere in a small island in the Caribbean. Though I won?t have that, I am going out to Eugene, OR for USATF National Championships tomorrow. I was supposed to leave today but that’s another story altogether. Unlike the previous 3 years, I?ll have a relatively minimal workload. The past 3 years I’ve had coaching duties for my athletes; doing the motion capture and spatial calibration necessary to fulfill my role as the biomechanist for the shot putters: and managing my company’s operations as the first 3rd party provider of immediate on-site feedback and video analysis services to the athletes. This year I’ll only have the first two to handle. No more 19-20 hour days and micro-managing a crew of 25 people to get an average of 3 camera views on every single event and turn around that video for analysis and distribution of the video to athletes within 60 minutes of the conclusion of the event. No more cataloging, meta-tagging, and backing up those files (600 gb of data last year!) in to the wee hours of the morning. 2 years ago it took me about a full month to recover from the week of running operations at the national championship meet. Due to last year’s lighter schedule (during Olympic years it changes) and the fact that we get more efficient with every job, things weren’t so bad but this year returns to the non-Olympic year format and I’m glad to not be handling that load again on top of dealing with organizing all our remaining equipment orders and ironing out the final steps of our property lease. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a little rest and hammer out the final details of our property lease while I’m there. The goal is to have all aspects of the remaining customs and shipping done by the time I return to NC, pick up whatever equipment that isn’t already in the Triangle from Wilmington, NC, and then start moving everything in to my two public storage rooms to the facility on July 1. I’m also hoping that the two athletes that compete for my club will do well and make the World Championship team. Knocking on wood.