Upcoming season excitement!

Only a few more months still the season begins! I am really excited to see how we do. Every time we have hurdle practice, I'm amazed at the amount of progress we have made in just a year. Hurdles is one event where the change is dramatic. A year ago, we were barely hurdling over plastic hurdles that had to be propped up with water bottles to get to the correct height. Now, we are working on finer details. For instance, I've been working on driving through the first hurdle and not jumping over it and Josh is perfecting his trail leg. By the time the season starts, I know I'm not going to be wondering if I will be able to make it through all 10 hurdles, which was definitely my concern at the start of my first race last season. First two videos below are from last year Sept (notice the plastic hurdles!). Josh is only going over 39' and the thought of going over 42' was unimaginable. Now he tackles those like they're baby hurdles! The other video is from a few weeks ago.

As I may have mentioned before, training for multis is a game of time vs. points: you try to maximize the points you can get in the most efficient way possible. As a result, we let a few events slide last season. We focused a lot of attention on the hurdles and running since those are big points events. Also, every event requires running of some sort (except shot and disc) so really, that training helped with all the other events. However, high jump and javelin were definitely put on the back burner and it showed in the number of points we got. High for us was 530/480 (Josh and Laura respectively) and javelin was 411/502 on our last meet.

It certainly showed that we neglected high jump when we went to Claremont. All the other tracks we had practiced at had the pit facing the curve of the track. At Claremont, the pit faced the infield, which threw off all of my visual cues that I had been using. All of my warm-up jumps felt off and it took me 3 attempts to clear my opening height. That was as far as I got as I missed all the rest of my attempts. Lately, I've been able to get in some practice 3 times in the past 3 weeks and it really put into perspective how big of a difference a little practice would have made. We went back to the basics. I spent one practice working on a 4-step approach and the next week working on a 4-stride approach without a take-off. During the 4-step approach, I was easily clearing my Claremont opening height. My goal this season is to jump 5'1", but Josh thinks I can jump over my height. We'll see. 

Javelin has been a similar story. Last season, I had no idea what I was doing! I literally just chucked the javelin as hard as I could with practically no technique. When she came to visit at the end of August, Courtney gave us a real quick tutoring session on javelin, which was the fist time we had been 'coached' on it. It was amazing! We learned so much in that hour. However, it would have been even more amazing if we picked up our javelins since then to work on the things she taught us! Whoops... Josh said the goal is to start doing 1 day a week of high jump and 1 of javelin. I'm crossing my fingers that that happens otherwise we may be in trouble for when February comes. :)

The 800 should also be interesting this season. Last summer/fall, we obsessed over learning how to hurdle, which meant we weren't able to get as good of a base in as we would have liked. Also, I had no concept of running farther than 400 meters, so workouts were really challenging. My default was to panic and not focus on the right aspects of the workout. (Really, not much has changed, but I'm a little better at it! :)) Since we didn't have to spend as much time hurdling this summer/fall, we were able to focus more on getting in good base training and incorporate more longer tempos to the point that I'm almost starting to feel like a distance runner. (Almost!) I'm hopeful that this better base training will allow me to know what to expect more in the 800 and be able to run the race more efficiently.

Shot put is, for some reason, one of those events that my brain has a difficult time wrapping around. My stand throw is definitely improving. I'm getting much better at getting my hips in front of my shoulders and pushing through the shot during the whole throw. The start of the throw isn't going as well though. For the start of the glide, Josh keeps telling me that the concepts are very similar to coming out of blocks, just in reverse. Somehow, that doesn't help me to understand. I don't think my brain likes to work backwards! Any suggestions?

I can't speak to Josh's goals for himself (or even me) for this season. However, here's a list of my goals for the season and their corresponding points:

Event	Personal Best	Goal	Points
100 Hurdles	14.9	14.0	978
High jump	4’9”	5’1”	678
Shot Put	33’ 8.5”	40’	674
200	25.7	25.5	841
Long jump	19’ 8”	20’	880
Javelin	102’ 9”	131’	667
800	2:33	2:30	693
Total points	4711		5411

Wish us luck!

After my sprint workout in the snow