A Dad's Diary by Clayton Frech - August 17th, 2021

This blog post originated from Clayton’s Frech’s personal Facebook page. He is chronicling his journey as a dad with his son that is headed to Tokyo.

I am Burning the Candle at Both Ends

So when Ezra decided to shift his sleep schedule to be closer to Tokyo time, I thought it was a great idea. A few days after that, I realized it may cause me challenges, but I kept it to myself. And man, today was a great example of this. I got up at 7am like clockwork. Worked all day to knock out my “to do” list of Tokyo prep, angel city sports projects, and home projects. There’s nothing worse than leaving on a big trip and having loose ends all over the place.

But Ezra doesn’t wake up until I get him up. And he doesn’t need to be up until like 3pm or so most days. We arent getting to the track until 5pm or even 6pm most days. Meaning dinner and everything for me pushes back.

Table filled with Covid Tests.

And then I end up helping him prepare until super late, like midnight, 1am, 2am. So my sleep schedule is getting killed… So I am waking up with a sleep hangover-style headache every day now…

So I got Ezra up and we immediately got ready to head to his school to do some filming with our documentary film crew from Angel City. Today was a big day – sitting Ezra down to actually document how he’s feeling ahead of Tokyo. We have hundreds of hours of training… but not that much of him talking to the camera. (if is interested in helping us on this passion project following four Paralympians to the Games and in their pursuit of impact, please reach out. We need some executive producers, editor, and some videographers potentially to help capture some of the on-the-ground stuff while the athletes are in Tokyo).

Final Full Track Workout Before We Leave

Then we hit the track. LaTi wasn’t feeling great so we did the long jump session and sent her videos. I grabbed the rake and my primary duty was to rake the sand, and I still spaced out on a couple of jumps. When you don’t rake the sand before a jump, it makes it incredibly hard to figure out where you landed because the sand is all disrupted. Just one of those funny nuances. The people that rake the sand, make it nice and smooth and level, should get paid a lot!  He did a short approach, meaning not full speed, and jumped pretty well with a lot of room to improve his landings… This will need some work in Tokyo once we get on the training track.

Then Ezra went over and did a final weight room workout that was mostly jumping and strengthening work. And we finished the evening with some high jump approaches for good measure. Approaches are when he runs through the motions but doesn’t actually do a full plant and jump, and there’s no bar. So it’s pretty mellow on your body. Also in the middle of his workout he spoke to his USOPC Coach, Chris Mack, who is in Tokyo with the team already, about his sleep schedule during the flight over and got some great insight. We also recorded some content for our prosthetic sponsor, Ottobock, sharing his behind the scenes in preparation for Tokyo...

Fake Packing

When we got home, we ate dinner and then started “fake packing” as I called it. We just tried to fit everything… He’s got a ton of prosthetic gear, recovery stuff, team usa clothing… There was very little room for his regular clothing. We are trying to fit him into one checked bag and possible just one carry-on. We are close. We will know more tomorrow when we finalize the packing…

2nd Pre-Tokyo Covid Test

Then we took our second covid test. This time, in theory, was more important… but a little less stressful. We set the test up with a timer and kept packing. We came back after 30 minutes and we… drum roll… tested negative again! Yeahooo!

We finished the packing and strategizing re: what we needed about 1am and then I shifted to getting ready for bed, while Ezra had his “dinner”…

A heck of a good day…