I jumped Saturday at home in a competition and finally it went decently. Warmups actually weren't that good, and I was still stuck on the 13.7 for the first jump, and came in low at 5.05m and made it easily. After that I went straight up to the 13.3 and made 5.21m and 5.36m on first attempts. I was feeling pretty good so I went up to the 12.9 for my shots at 5.51m, and the pole rolled in surprisingly easy on the first jump, although I bailed. I really wish I would have turned this one up though, because it was my best takeoff of the day, and the pole rolled right to vertical. On the second one I got picked off the ground, but still turned it up but it was a miss, since I completely missed the middle part of the jump. Still, though, the pole rolled in fine. On the third I got too jacked up and ran myself (way) under and bailed. The good news though is that I am on the right poles to jump a big PR, and I finally felt really good and comfortable in a meet. Here's video of 5.36m:
Today (sunday) I woke up and drove to Iowa, and I'm here now staying with Jacob Pauli for a week before we hit up a meet at Iowa State this weekend with our good friend Jack Whitt. The runway is supposed to be good and I'm hoping for the best! We'll also be doing a LIVE STREAM again, so thanks to the people that watched this past weekend and I hope more of you guys tune in for the ISU meet Saturday. I'll post more details later.
So we are going to try something tomorrow that could be huge. Tomorrow during my meet I am going to conduct a live broadcast from my iPhone 4 courtesy of justin.tv. The broadcast will begin at 11:00am Eastern Time with warmups, and we will do some 1on1 stuff after warmups and then continue with the meet. The feed will be found at www.justin.tv/jcoover and will be narrated by my good friend John Jefferson. Most likely we will keep the feed going through the lower heights, and I'll start jumping in the competition sometime around 12:15pm EST. I think it's going to be a super fun thing, and I hope a lot of you guys will set your cell-phone alarms right now for 11:00am and watch the meet live. Tell your friends!!
Also, I encourage you all to tweet in to @jcoover, or send me a facebook message or just comment on this blog about a question or two you'd like answered or something tomorrow during the live cast. If nobody sends anything in, I'll just talk about random stuff! And hopefully I will be able to make some good bars as well. I did have the best shakeout of the year this morning!
Well some of you might have noticed by now that I'm struggling a little right now with meet results, but I want to let everyone know that I'm confident that the other end of this thing is going to be pretty big if I stick with it. I'm finally having some solid jumps in meets, and because of it I'm really unsure so far as to which poles I should be on! Also, at the end of last year I got a series of poles that fit inside of the series of IU's poles so I would have my own (almost) identical series. I have been committed to jumping on my own poles this year, and it has been a little different, especially since I am rolling through big poles from 16 steps (my full approach being 18 steps). In Reno I blew through my 5m 13.3 on my last attempt, and the next step is to be able to start on that pole on my first jump of the meet and work to the 12.9 after that. I'm feeling good about my speed and strength, and I know I will be able to make some big bars once I get the timing right on these poles. Last year from 18 steps at the USA outdoor championships with a tailwind I was on the 5m 13.3 with the standards on 70, and this year I've already blown through that pole from 16 steps. That is a good sign, but the next step is to actually make some decent bars. I'll be jumping at home tomorrow, and am hoping for the best. I'm going in there hell-bent on getting on my 13.3 for the first jump of the meet, and hope for the best.
Stay tuned, and thanks for reading.
Just for viewing pleasure, although I didn't think I'd ever post a miss at 5.20m from full approach, here is my last miss from Reno on the 13.3... It's a pretty good run and takeoff, and just a blowthrough.
