And that's a wrap! Claremont Multi Day 2

Oh man, just read through my post from Day 1 results. Remind me in the future to edit before I publish my posts. Whoops. I'm gonna go back and edit them later and also add in some information about Josh's day 1. But that's neither here nor there. On to Day 2 results!!

Day 2 for hep consists of long jump (my first love!!), javelin, and the 800m (my 7th favorite event! ;)). The dec has 100m hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin, and the 1500. Dec started at 2pm so we thought for sure we were going to be there until at least 830pm. There was the possibility that we were going to have to be back home by 9am the next morning so Josh could coach pole vault for his high schoolers, meaning he had the potential for having a mere 12 hours to cool down, drive 6 hours home, sleep, and wake up in time to go to the meet. Luckily, the high school pole vault was pushed back to the following week so we were able to go into the day not worrying about leaving quickly.

No videos of my day this time. (Video from above is a random one from shot put practice a few weeks ago.) The way the day lined up, Josh wasn't able to film any of my events, and lets be honest, watching me run the 800 is really only helpful for the pure hilarity of the whole thing. But first things first....

I felt a little sore that morning, but probably still stiff from the drive down. However, at some point during day 1, I strained my quad on my right leg and also tweaked my hamstring on that same leg (which is my lead leg for hurdles, take off leg for high jump and long jump, and my power leg for both throws). I think it was while I was warming up for hurdles. This has happened before when I'm not fully warmed up before I put strain on my legs. (Maybe our 15 min warm-up really isn't sufficient, but that may be for a different post...) So, I decided to heat my upper leg prior to warm-up, but I waited too long to ask the trainers if they had any available and had only 10 minutes before I had decided I was going to warm-up, so that idea was out.

I did have a 3-in. ace bandage from when I tweaked my leg before and decided that wrapping it during warm-ups might help. It still hurt a little during warm-ups and really hurt when I was walking around and stretching, but somehow, once I starting running, it felt relatively fine. My first jump was a solid opener at 5.72m (about 18'9"). I slowed down a bit coming into the board (which is bad because you want to carry speed through the board and almost accelerate into the plant. Failing to do so just converts less speed into distance, meaning a shorter jump.) The wind was also really gusting so it was hard to figure out a starting mark. Next jump was solid; 5.93m (19' 5.5"), which ended up being my best mark for 828 points. I lost about 25 points from last year, which meant I was still up over 100 points.

Javelin, oh javelin, how you are not my friend yet. Josh and I really have very little idea for what to do and it has so far resulted in us getting hurt and we both wear supportive braces on our elbows to try and limit the damage we've probably already done. (Because of how the javelin is thrown, if you throw it incorrectly, it puts a lot of strain on your elbow.) By having a few sessions here and there with people who know what they're talking about, we're starting to understand some concepts, but they aren't integrated quite yet. I seem to be putting a few pieces together, but there are huge gaps, such as my plant position, blocking correctly, not bending at the shoulders too soon, pushing my hips through, keeping my shoulders back to create a whip action; you know, small stuff ;)). I ended up throwing 109', which was 7 ft farther than my PR, for 50 more points making me about 150 points up from last year, meaning...

As long as I didn't bomb out completely in the 800, I was going to have an overall PR. Certainly, not at the same level that I was hoping for at the beginning of the season, but still an improvement. My goal was to run 2:30, which would have been a 2 sec. PR. Game plan was to run a 35sec first 200, maintain through the turn, push slightly for the next 200, and focus on increasing my turnover as the pain hit. I kept with the game plan through 500m; went out in a 35 for the first 200, came back in a 36 for the next 200 (which is by far the fasted 2nd 200 I've ran), and pushed it through the next 100. However, my downfall started with 300m to go. Prior to the race, Josh and I were talking about the game plan and he said, "Push it through the turn after 400m and then you only have 300m to go!" Great advice! If only I'd listened. Instead, with 300 to go, I told myself, "Oh man, 300 to go!!" and just gave in to the pain. As I came around the last turn, I could hear Josh saying, "Stand upright. Bring your hips through" (Which meant I was sitting too much). I ended up with a 2:34, which was pretty disappointing. However, it wasn't much off from where I was last season!!!

All in all, I ended up with 4858 points, a 147 point PR!!! As I said before, it wasn't what I had hoped for, but an improvement is still an improvement!! :D

After no-heighting in high jump the day before, Josh decided he was going to shift his focus to the middle three events of day two. He decided to DNF (Did Not Finish) the hurdles for this reason. So his day started out with discus. His first throw was into the cage around the ring, which was unusual for him. His next throw was really good, but outside the sector. The video is of his 3rd throw, which was 115', below average from recent practice, but at least it was a legal throw.

Next up was pole vault, which was the event Josh was really excited about. He'd been doing really well in practice lately, so he felt prepared to set a PR. In the meet, he cleared 2 bars higher than he had before and cleared 13'5" for a 5 inch PR!! Unfortunately, pole vault was going on while I was throwing javelin so I didn't get any videos.

Next up was javelin. Competition started after my 800 was over so I was able to film lots! Prior to the event starting, one of the other competitors (Mike, the pole vault coach at UCSD and UCD alumn) gave Josh some pointers and things to think about. Knowing that it would probably make his throws worse during that day, Josh practiced some. Some of his attempts were pretty... interesting. His first two were fouls because they didn't land tip first. His last throw was about 10 ft less than last year. Not sure if he wants me to post his videos so here's a video of one of the Chico guys instead... He did feel like the pointers he got during warmups will be helpful in the long run though, he said he thought he understood the event better and had a better idea of what to work on during practice.

Next up was the 1500m. Josh's past life as a distance runner really helps him in this event. Josh decided he would see if one of the guys wanted to be paced through part of it. One of the guys wanted to break 4:30 so Josh paced him through 1000m and then dropped out. The guy ended up slowing down a bit for the last 500 meters and so only ran 4:30.04. So close!!

Here's the link to the full results: http://www.cmsathletics.org/meetresults/track/classic/classic14.htm

Anyways, that wrapped up this season. Josh plans to focus on pole vault only for the next few weeks and compete at the PA meet in the pole vault on June 1st. I'm toying with the idea of either competing in hurdles and long jump or seeing if I can learn to pole vault in 3 weeks. :) Then there's a decathlon in September, that we're both thinking of doing, depending on how pole vaulting and disc goes for me. I am really not looking forward to running a 1500 though and I've never run an open 400 so it will certainly be interesting. We'll keep you updated if that happens, but we would probably be a bit out of shape, so we would be trying to see how well we could do only with improved technique.

Either way, our main focus for events for the summer will be Javelin and high jump for me, and those two plus hurdles for Josh. We won't be doing a lot of running though, so we will be spending a lot less time at the track than during the season.

Thank you so much to those of you who have supported us through this. I know that it is not easy to understand why we are so unavailable sometimes and why we are tired all the time. Hopefully, we can maximize our summer months to seeing everyone and enjoying life outside the red oval. :)

Claremont Multi: Road Trip and Day 1 recap

Hey! So I had intended to thoroughly document the awesomeness that is the drive from the beautiful Bay Area, down the most interesting road in the world (I-5), and SoCal. But, it took us longer to get down here than I expected so I'll just have to do highlights. :)

So bored!

Look! Josh is driving!

Road Trip!!!! Josh and I don't do well sitting still, so long car rides are never fun with the 2 of us. To entertain us, I read a few chapters from his book out loud. Then we listened to the audiobook version of The Road. Probably not the best book to listen to because not a ton happens. (I slept through about an hour of it and didn't miss anything in the story!) But it gives us something to do. We stopped for lunch at this random gas station in the middle of nowhere. While there, we ran into Russ Dekelver! We both realized he hadn't seen him in about 9 years so it totally made my day to run into him. :D Some awesome pictures from the awesome drive. The only other great part was there wasn't any traffic!!!

First views of the grapevine (if you can squint and see)

Only a few hours to go!

Day 1 of the Multi!! I had the hurdles, high jump, shot put and 200. Josh had 100, long jump, shot put, high jump, and 400. The field on both sides are pretty big. There are 17 women in the heptathlon and 17 men in the decathlon. Both fields feature a few Olympians/Elite multis as well as DIII and NAIA competitors. And then there's me and Deuce, somewhere in the middle....

First up for me was the 100 hurdles. In practices lately, I've been working on not reaching my left arm too far across my body, causing me to get twisted. Main focus for the race was to just push hard the whole way and not just settle into a comfortable rhythm. The video is shown above and I'm in lane 8. My first 4 hurdles felt amazing!! I was super jazzed! And then I hit hurdle 6 and it kind of went downhill from there. Wasn't as bad as my race a few weeks ago where I completely lost it. I still ran a PR, but it could have been so much better!!! That put me up 3 points from last year. At least I know now that I need to not be lazy in practice and actually put more than 4 hurdles out. 

Next up was the high jump. I knew going into it that this was my big crap-shoot event. Practice had been feeling way better, but wasn't sure if I was going to pull it together. I ended up clearing 1.47m which is a 1cm PR over my best! High jump put me 100 points up from last season so the day was still looking up.

Next was shot put. We had been neglecting this event a little because of our focus on high jump and javelin. Defintely didn't put it together as well as I had at Cal. Threw 34' 7", for 19 more points than last season, but not as well as the 36+ feet I had been throwing this season. I guess I couldn't be too upset keeping in mind I would have been pretty excited to throw that last season.

Next was the 200. I got super excited because I was seeded in the first heat!!! Was in lane 8 again. Video is above. I knew I had to get out super hard because I had no one to chase. I felt really good until the 150 and then tightened up. Ran a 25.5, which was .2 sec faster than last season for 14 more points. All in all, I'm up 144 points from last season so I'm excited to see what Day 2 has to bring. 

Josh's day went ok but not great. He started out with the 100. Last year at this meet he ran 11.7. He struggles badly with his start, so not surprisingly, he was last out of the blocks and well behind everybody in his field at 30 meters in. Strangely, he was gaining on everybody in his field. I didn't have a good view of the finish, so I was surprised to see he ended up getting second in his heat, because he was so far back of the pack at the start. He told me afterwards that he was gaining on the leader, who ran 11.5. Josh only ran 11.8 though. It seems like he at least has the speed to run 11.5, but we really need to improve his start, he is losing a ton of time right now. In theory this should be an easy fix if we can make it a priority.

Next up was long jump for him. This has been going ok for him this season, going 6.24 at his last meet. Today he jumped 6.12, which was ok for him, not too disappointing.

In shotput, he was feeling really good in warmups, with multiple throws out to 42' or so, which would be a PR. Unfortunately, he ended up throwing only about 38 feet in the competition. On his third throw, he set up really well for a big throw, but lost the shot and had basically no finish to the throw. It still went 38 feet without any finish, so it definitely would have been a big throw if he could have put it together. The video is below.

Next up was high jump. We have been working on this quite a bit. After waiting over an hour for his opening height, he missed all three attempts, registering a no-height. This was too bad, because it meant that there was no chance of him being able to get an overall PR. This means the focus now would shift from trying to establish a new overall PR for the decathlon to practicing doing a decathlon.

Up next was the 400. Since he had a no height in the high jump, he decided to try running the 400 at about 95%. Our friend Dimitry has the theory that doing the 400 at 95% in day one is beneficial since it saves energy for day 2 and allows you to score better in the second day. Since he had nothing to lose, Josh decided to give it a try and see how it worked out. He was hoping his 95% would be a high 51 for the 400. He ended up running a low 52 in some very high winds, but looked quite relaxed and didn't tie up as badly as in a full out 400, holding back just slightly as planed. Since I am currently editing this post after the meet is over, we already know that he felt this worked, since he did feel better than usual the next day, so he might try this again in the future.

The results can be found here: http://www.cmsathletics.org/meetresults/track/classic/classic14dayone.htm

Winding down and amping up!

Nice tan lines, bro.

Less than a week to go! It's still hard to believe how quickly this season went. And what a weird one it was! The winter was beautiful; warm and sunny almost every day with very little rain and then sorting was cold and rainy four a few days followed by hot and sunny. Make up your mind California!

At the beginning of the season (and throughout even), we kept saying "we have to work in high jump and javelin. Those are the priorities." While I did work on high jump more, we have yet to make much progress with the two. But some progress it better than none! Definitely don't feel ready with either of them but that's how the multi goes. If you wait until you are ready then you'll never compete!

Our fearless hurdle leader!

Yesterday was an awesome hurdle session! Both of us came out of blocks thorough 4 hurdles and it was probably the best we have looked so far. Really excited to see how we put a race together! Then worked on high jump. The approach is becoming a lot more patterned and feels a little more natural. Today, Josh vaulted for a little, while I did a short leg shake out and then more high jump. Finally understanding how to feels to really take off in the correct position! (Which is kinda freaky cause you take off while leaning in the complete opposite direction!!!) 

Last few weeks of competition have been up and down. We went to Chabot College a few weeks ago. The weather was beautiful and conditions were awesome. I love it when the timing works out perfectly and I don't have to jump around from event to event. (Makes it so much easier for my short attention span brain to handle.) The highlight of the day for me was long jump. All season (and really for the past few seasons) I have been consistently jumping from behind the board, which just means I end up losing a lot of distance. The first few jumps, I was at least a foot behind to board and still jumping mid-18'. Finally, my last 2 jumps, I was on the board for the first time all season and it really paid off!! Last jump was 6.04m (19'9 3/4") which was a slight PR. :) Really hoping I can pull it together for meet this week. Video is from I think jump #3 or 4, which was just over 19 ft.

I also did hurdles, high jump, and the 200 that day. The other events went about as expected. On track for putting up bigger numbers than last season. Whoop Whoop.

Awkward turtle...

Josh then did long jump, pole vault, 100 and the 200. The 100 and 200 were mostly for blocks practice. He's certainly getting a lot better at coming out of the blocks and driving for longer than a few steps. Long jump went ok. He's getting good height off the board and bringing in ok speed at times. Now, those 2 things have to happen at the same jump. :) Pole vault was his main focus for the day. He'd been looking so awesome in the practices leading up to this meet. He just purchased a bunch of poles and has been trying to get used to them. (Apparently, every pole is different, whether they're made by the same manufacturer and are the same specs or not.) The video is his huge clearance at 12'10". He struggled with the attempts at the next height so I know he was a little frustrated by that. However, he cleared 13'6" in practice this week and looked like he could have cleared 14". Super excited to see how it pulls together this week. Being in the middle of the dec changes everything because you're way more tired, but he doesn't seem to be phased by being tired.

Expect multiple posts this week as we literally pack up for the trek to SoCal. I'm just praying that I don't have to hear this song on repeat for an hour and a half this year! :)
I See Hawks in L.A.: Grapevine

Cal multi

Wow can't believe it took me this long to post about day 2. Day 2 for me was ok. Nothing spectacular. Josh's day 2 did not go so well.
For me:
Long jump: Won with an 18'5". I keep having the same problem that I was having for the last few seasons. I feel great in warm ups and am on the board (on my mark) for all my run throughs (my beginning practice runs). Then, something changes when I do my actual jumps and I'm a foot behind the board. Unfortunately they don't measure from where my foot took off, meaning I'm losing more than a foot every time. (The board is 8 inches long do when I take off even half a foot behind the board, I'm losing more than a foot on my measurement.) I ended up jumping a little more than a foot less than last year which is where I lost all the points I was ahead from day 1. More on my long jump woes later though.
Javelin: Nothing has really changed since last season. We still don't really know what we are doing and we've only practiced a little since then. This mostly results in me having to think about every single moment while competing. (Ideally when you get to competition time, you have practiced enough times that the motions are second nature and you don't have to think about anything.) I threw about the same as last season so didn't lose too many points there.
800: With only 5 of us in the field, is hard to find someone to run with. I'm usually in the back of the pack and was afraid I'd have to run by myself the whole time. My goal was to go out in 35 for the first 200 and keep that pace going for the rest of the time. Josh has been really helpful in this event because he always has extra tidbits to give. He advised I give it a little extra has when coming through the 400 and focus on increasing my turnover when I have 150 meters to go. One of the competitors was going out the same time as me so I just tried to remember what Josh told me and not let her get too far ahead of me. I ran a 2:32 and got a personal best by 2 seconds! Still have a ways to go since I want to be under 2:30. Improving the time on my second lap will help with that.
Full results from the hep:
http://www.rtspt.com/events/cal/multis14/140320F001.htm

Day 2 of the dec is way harder than day 2 of the hep. I only have 3 event and those 3 aren't terribly taxing, mentally or physically, especially when compared to the dec. Every event in dec day 2 is technically difficult.
Hurdles: Josh came out of the blocks fine but then sailed over the first hurdle. When that happens, there's not much you can do from there. His trail leg has improved so much from last year. He just needs more practice coming out of blocks to the first hurdle and I think it'll come together.
Disc: He threw ok. Certainly not as far as he's been throwing in practice. Since the disc isn't in the hep, I barely know anything about disc so he is pretty much trying to coach himself with very little feedback. Also, accessibility of field and his ankle have made it so he hasn't been able to practice much.
Pole vault: He's been practicing a lot lately and was hoping for a big pr. But pole vault is weird and sometimes it's hard to put things together and the big jump didn't come together.
Javelin: went about the same for him as it did for me. After that was over, he decided it wasn't worth it to run the 1500 hard and be too tired to work out for a week so we left.
Full results from the Dec:
http://www.rtspt.com/events/cal/multis14/140320F002.htm

Only about 5 weeks until our last multi. We have a long ways to go before then but hopefully we can pull together greatness. :-)

Cal day 1 wrap-up and day 2 preview

Day 1 of the cal multi ended pretty well for both of us. Over our last multi from last season, I improved at least a tiny bit in every event and Josh improved in most events. Competition is way higher at this season's cal multi over the one from last year. I sure felt more tired at the end of the day than I remember feeling.

My results from yesterday:
100 hurdles: 14.88 (personal best [pr])
High jump: 4'8.25" (better than last meet last season but still my big weak point)
Shot put: 36' (pr)
200: 25.76 (few hundredths slower than last season but it's early and started way too slow)

Josh results:
100: 11.66 (pr)
Long jump: 20'2.25" (better than last season; last jump was big but he scratched [aka his foot was beyond the take-off board])
Shot put: 38'9"
High jump: 5'8" (better than last year but we have a long way to go; not bad considering his broken ankle is his jump leg and high jump puts a lot of strain on the ankle)
400: 51.62 (got out pretty slow also, but that helped him not feel quite as tired and spent at the end of the day)

Today should be a fun day for both of us! Josh has the 100 hurdles, disc, pole vault, javelin, and 1500 in that order. I start my day with long jump (my favorite!) and then have javelin and the 800. Definitely going to be a cooler day today but at least the sun finally came out. :-) Here we go!

First multi of the season!

OMG! Today is the first day of our first multi! We were hoping it would be our second but weather decided otherwise. We're competing at UC Berkeley. There are 6 women in my group and 12 guys in Josh's. Josh starts at 11:25 with the 100 meter dash. He then has the long jump, shot put, high jump, and 400 meter dash, in that order. I start at 12:15 with 100 meter hurdles. Then I have the high jump, shot put, and 200 meter dash. Weather so far is totally beautiful!

This season so far we have only done 2 other meets. We competed at an all comer meet at Cal a few weeks ago and then I competed at our old alma mater, UC Davis last week. At the all comer, Josh did pole vault and long jump while I did long jump, high jump, hurdles, and the 800. Last week I did the long jump and hurdles. Can definitely say we are a little rusty but those meets sure helped get the kinks out. Super nervous about high jump and javelin. This season our training had focused mostly on running and less on skill events, meaning we have some big holes in our repertoire. That's the name of the game though: maximize your strengths while minimizing your weaknesses. This meet is really going to show where we need to place our focus for the rest of the season.

We'll update hopefully after competition today. Wish us luck! Naymoo!

-Laura/Deucebach

Lost in the crowd?

Deuce's entry #1

When Laura told me she thought we should start a blog about our training, I was not enthused. Who would want to read our blog? We aren't exceptional, we aren't unique, we haven't overcome a horrible disease against terrible odds (although I did recently have a mild cold, and recovered!). To have a blog suggests you believe something about you is worth reading about, which just seemed like arrogance to me. Well, Laura had made up her mind. This blog was happening, with or without me.

These Crawdads, while delicious when sauteed in garlic, are not unique. In fact, they are all nearly identical. While I enjoyed eating them, if one of them were to start a blog, I doubt the other crawdads would want to read it. They are just another another poor-man's lobster, lost in the crowd.

Then after much nagging gentle persuasion, Laura convinced me to write a blog post. Then my introspection began. What would I write about? Was there a minimum word limit? Laura's posts were quite long and I felt like I couldn't compete with that, so could I simply fill space with pictures to make it look like my blog post was longer than it actually was?

Women hate it when you post awkward photos of them. Here Laura is getting tired of me taking forever to walk 800 meters from the parking lot to the Pt Arena lighthouse (The 800 is one of the events in the Heptathlon, that is a tie-in!!) because there were lots of flowers, and I insisted on taking a picture of every single one of them.

In high school, I was on a huge team. If you go to any given league track meet, you might see boys run anything from  4 minutes to 6 minutes for the mile. Then when you go to college, the bottom end drops off, leaving only the faster maybe 10% of guys left competing. Then you graduate from college and again you have a large number departing the sport, leaving only maybe the top 5% of college athletes to continue competing after college.

This guy won NCAAs in 2010. For the last 4 years he has continued to compete post collegiately in an attempt to "take it to the next level." It makes sense why somebody like that might decide to continue to compete and make his training a priority. People seem confused when Laura and I, who are not elite athletes, choose to devote so much time and energy in this pursuit.

Laura doesn't quite fit into that top group, and I am far behind that top group. Not surprisingly, we also hung up the spikes. Laura painfully ran a half marathon and vowed never to do that again, I ran a few road races and gained 20 pounds, life was good. But after 4 or 5 years of not competing, we missed it.

After years of running and trying to push my self athletically, I found myself continuing to challenge myself in random ways. I took this picture in the red sea (but it's blue?) just to see if I really could free dive to 90 feet and take a picture. This was a pointless challenge, but sitting on the surface above this ship wreck, I just had to do it. Despite the fact that 90 feet is nowhere near the depths the top freedivers can go, I was still compelled to try, for my own satisfaction.

 So what makes us interesting? People read It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life because he had cancer, he almost freakin' died, and then doped his way to a record seven zero Tour de France victories! People visit the personal website of Renaud Lavillienie because he is the current best hope to break the world record in the Pole Vault, despite being a smelly Frenchman. People read Lolo Jones' twitter feed because of all those olympic medals she has won    because she won't shut up about being a virgin   because NBC tells us to   because she is hot   because she once stumbled her way out of medaling in the Olympics. 

How can I compete with the likes of Lolo, Renaud, and Lance? Pretty much the only thing I do better than any of them, is that I'm typically worse smelling than the frenchman. Also, I have a picture of me with a cattle-dog puppy, which is totally cheating.

Then I realized what was our "hook". In fact, we already had the uniforms! Our very mediocrity, our shambleness, was what made us unique. Nobody else is dumb enough to try to pick up the decathlon at 27 after having been a mediocre distance-runner-turned-400-runner in college. I was going to have to learn 8 of the events! Laura had only ever done the 200 and long jump. Maybe we were naive, maybe we were arrogant, maybe we just didn't care, maybe we were the last of the horsecows, a dying breed known for their brash nature, their heavy drinking high waisted pants joie de vivre, their... Well that is pretty much all they are known for.

Green eggs and ham? More like Green Hamms and egg!

Anyway, we had a long road to go, but it's been a bit over a year since we decided to stop talking about how we had always dreamed of doing the multis and just do it, and we've made some excellent progress in some events, and a complete lack of progress in others. I don't regret our journey, because.... well... because Nay-Moo MotherFucker!

NAY-MOO!!

Signed,
Deuce