A Dad's Diary by Clayton Frech - August 16th, 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.

Ezra slept in until I woke him at 3:30pm… He didn’t fall asleep until 5am after we finished some packing at around 2am. I fell right asleep, and, unfortunate for me, got up at 6:30am like I normally do. I was feeling pretty tired all day, but it has been a fairly productive day of cranking on various tasks to get ready for Tokyo.

Covid Stress and Family Separation Before Travelling

We have had quite a stressful summer navigating the pandemic and trying to avoid getting covid, especially as delta variant started raging. Imagine staging a huge event like this in a pandemic. Then add a rapidly spreading variant and the need to keep the athletes and staff negative. Crazy challenge.

Thus, after a period of quarantining and masking in our home due to potential exposures, we made the difficult decision to separate our immediate family a week before we fly.

This has left a unique stress level on Ezra and I where we don’t have the normal family environment full of love and support in person. We are seeing each other with drive bys and masks on. So weird. Almost like we are in a hotel in our own home. But without housekeeping.

My two younger sons moved over to their grandmother’s house last weekend and my wife Bahar moved there yesterday. We made this decision so they could start to socialize with friends and attend school, where we know there are significant risks. We are hearing stories of so many people with covid right now. Kids. Adults. Vaccinated. The delta variant doesn’t care who you are or who you know...

So we have been stressing for days about taking the pre-tokyo covid tests. It will be a true blessing if we test negative after all the scares and challenges of navigating the pandemic this summer. A positive test means we likely don't make it to Tokyo.

This leaves Ezra and I alone at the house to pack and prepare. But it’s definitely a surreal, strange existence to not be close to my kids and my wife the last few days before we leave.

First Test Today

After this summer of stress, today Ezra and I have to take our first of two PRE-tokyo covid tests…. But first, he got some work done by our amazing chiropractor, Amit, and then we sat down in our living room to do the tests.

We need to test negative in order to go to Tokyo. People must think we are off our rocker’s as we have been masking and social distancing for the entire summer, avoiding parties, avoiding people…. We have had to become hermits…

I know I will feel the weight of the world off of my shoulders with a negative test….

So we pull out the instructions… Cameras are rolling. Bahar comes by to share in the moment. The process is pretty complicated and we don’t want to mess it up. We read it over and over again. We start the process. I have never jammed anything up my nose that far. I was crying, seriously crying.

And then put the swab in the mixture and we waited. And we waited. 30 long minutes.

Then a little green light popped. Test done. NEGATIVE! We celebrated for a little bit. One step down… Beyond relieved…

Final Prosthetic Prep

After we test, we went to the track for some training but also to do a final prosthetic check. We have been visiting Hanger Clinic almost weekly for the last few months, leading up to Dessert Challenge Games, US Paralympic Trials, and Tokyo.

You can’t imagine how much energy and time has gone into getting the leg as dialed in a possible. Do you have the right components? Do you have them all set at the right settings? When you move the tiniest thing, it sets off a chain reaction and the leg performs completely different.

So today we are meeting our prosthetist on the track to walk through EVERYTHING we are packing. We have extra knees, an extra blade, rings, straps, and liners. It’s an insane amount of gear, but thanks to his sponsors Hanger Clinic and Ottobock, we are in really good shape.

This is one thing that sets the Paralympics apart and makes it more nuanced and interesting to me is that many athletes have a technology component that they MUST master to become elite. Regardless of their physical abilities, they must be smart when figuring out how to integrate the tech, whether a leg, brace, chair, or whatever.

Ezra then had a very productive high jump session and we filmed a few tiktok videos and called it a night.

So tomorrow (8/17), we do an interview on the track, train in long jump, and then do our second covid test in the evening. Fingers crossed!

Oh yeah, and we should probably finish packing!

Clayton

CEO & Founder