I hope you all are enjoying your summer. Right now, I’m in the middle of training camp and we’re definitely grinding. But before I get going on training camp, let me tell you how my “summer” ended.

After the Tahoe golf tournament, my wife and I spent our final weeks of “summer” in San Diego. We spend our off-season there and, as you can imagine, that means we spend a lot of time at the beach. If you ever take a vacation out there, try to check out Downtown La Jolla or The Plaza in Del Mar. Both places have some amazing restaurants and great shopping.

The other thing that I’m a huge fan of is Opening Day at the Del Mar Races. I enjoy horse races and make every attempt to go to the Kentucky Derby every year. Although not quite the spectacle of the Derby, Opening Day at Del Mar is a great time. With the ocean a couple hundred yards in the distance, people dressed up in their best track outfits (i.e. seer sucker and huge hats) and the beautiful Southern California weather, it’s the ideal setting to have some fun with your friends. For the past two years, I have been fortunate enough to go down to the winner’s circle after one of the races and pose with the winning horse and the jockey and the owner. They also had other NFL guys like Drew Brees and John Lynch do it as well so it was cool to see them out there. Again, if you ever get a chance, I highly recommend Opening Day at the Del Mar races.

Also, while I’m in San Diego, it’s my final prep time to get my body right for training camp. I train with a stud trainer named Todd Durkin from 7:00 to 10:00 in the morning at a place called Fitness Quest in Scripps Ranch. A ton of NFL guys workout there (i.e. Drew Brees, Ladanian Tomlinson and a bunch of other Chargers) and they focus on high metabolic non-stop workouts that avoid wear and tear on your body like some of the other workouts (i.e. heavy squatting, power cleans). It’s helped me get in the perfect playing shape and I strongly recommend it if you’re looking for a gym in SD.

After the fun in San Diego, it was back to the grind here in Cincinnati. Right now, I’m writing from Georgetown College where our training camp is held in Georgetown, Kentucky. We come out here for a couple weeks and have a very intensive series of practices, meetings and meals as a team before the season starts. Most days we’re working for no less than 10 hours a day and it’s really a time to get our foundation set for season. I feel really good about the team that we have and I’m really proud of the great strides we’ve made this off-season. Normally this is where I would talk about how great our offense is doing and how excited I am for what we’re doing. However, I want to point out that our defense has looked awesome thus far in training camp. They’re firing on all cylinders and they’re hungry. It’s exciting to see and it makes us on the offensive side of the ball want to work that much harder. As I said, I’m excited for the season to get going and I think our team is going to have a great year.

On a non-football note, I’ve managed to sneak away a couple of days and golf at one of my favorite courses in Kentucky, Cherry Blossom Golf Course in Georgetown, Kentucky. It’s a great course and has been wonderful in taking my mind off of hot routes and coaches!

Now I’ve got to get back to the playbook. I hope you guys enjoyed this blog and to all the college sports fans out there – Fight On! If you have any questions about training or travels, send them my way!

Carson Palmer

Carson Palmer is the Quarterback of the Cincinnati Bengals.