New Years Racing Resolutions

[Eric Merryfield]

I'll start:

This year, for the first time in a decade, I am going to try and not race hurt. Just about each and every year, I get a few injuries playing 30+ baseball, now its 38+ baseball, but most of us are not in our 40's....ouch.

Over the years the worst by far for racing was a left hamstring pull(truly, truly sucks to try and footbrake)

next worse, was getting drilled in the left knee and having to wear a brace...also didn't work out too well.

A spiral shoulder fracture left, dove for a ball against Doug Fluties team, didn't make the play, it did made life challenging, especially in the pre-Goldman fixed steering in dragpak...

Broken wrist(right) happened at track, fluke Pitbull came out of nowhere and went after the Beagles, flipped up didn't nail the landing. Opted to race the Gremlin that day as the swelling got big, and bigger...But it was a ASRA race and ...Not too bad....Just towed home with arm up, and went to the Ortho guy in the AM, as the previous sholder fracture was somehow not seen on a xray by e-room types, lesson learned.

Soft tissue/tendon damage.....thumbs, wrists, this year was left wrist getting drilled(I catch, fluke), and elbow UCL tweak(my fault, threw too hard in early season, and the vibrating stick shifter in the Dragpak puts a hurting on it. Good things with these, you don't feel them till after the run, so they are more of a distraction. You certainly feel them loading up though.

So I am going to train a bit harder this off season for baseball, so I don't hopefully get hurt, and will armor up more, and go easy in the early season.

Eric