It's Been Too Long...

The title of this blog post could refer to how long it's been since I've posted OR how long it's been since I jumped decently in a meet! Don't get me wrong, I feel better than I ever have before. I'm stronger, faster, healthier and a better pole vaulter than I have ever been before. I am just not competing. A few weeks ago I made 5.36m at Indiana on a big blowthrough on a 5m 13.3, and took shots at 5.51m on a 12.9 (first time I'd planted that). It was a decent day but nothing great, and qualified me for US indoors. I decided to scoot back to 18 steps from 16, and while I was bringing a lot more speed into the jump and hitting good positions, I was on the 12.9 in warmups and just couldn't quite time things up to make the opening bar of 5.20m. It was a frustrating meet, but I'm excited for the future. I really don't feel like I've really hit any great takeoffs from long approach yet this year like I have from 6, 8 and 12 steps, and I'm excited for what happens when I finally do.

So speaking of the future, I guess I should tell you what's in store for mine. This weekend I'm going to jump at a meet at Notre Dame from 6 Lefts. The whole goal is to come in really really low and make a bunch of bars. Now I'd like to see myself taking jumps on my 5m 13.7 from there, but really I just want to make lots of bars on any pole. The week after that I'm gonna head to a meet at Fuzion Athletics in Minneapolis where I will compete from full approach and hope to really hit one. I'll be in Iowa some of the week leading up to that, and then some of the week after, and then I'll be headed to San Diego, and specifically Chula Vista, to train with Coach Ty Sevin for 6 weeks. I'm super excited for the opportunity to work at the Olympic Training Center for a while, and stoked to get a fresh set of eyes on my jump and make some strides. Coach Sevin and I talked this weekend about the plan while I'm there, and he wants to get me into every meet I can find, and just try to get me over 5.60m. So far the plan is to hit a SDSU meet as soon as I get there, and then a meet at Arizona State the second weekend of April, Mt SAC on April 16th, and possibly a meet at Stanford the week after that, along with any other meets that happen to be at SDSU, the Training Center, or UCSD. Super psyched.

So I'll leave you with a video from yesterday I suppose. Coach Sevin talked with me in Albuquerque this weekend about how I'm not putting any pressure into the system with my arms, and am just hitting the box and swinging underneath my top hand, instead of compressing the pole and catching the ride. Yesterday that was my soul focus, and from 3 Lefts I had a pretty nice jump at a 4.85m bungee. This was probably my best jump from that approach ever, and it felt really good to feel flat and still roll in big poles strictly on technical changes. I'm still missing a lot of the pressure that he is talking about, but I think this is a step in the right direction.

Alright, well sorry for the long delay between posts recently, and I promise to be better about it in the coming weeks!

Thanks for reading!