Chico Multi: Day 1 recap

Day 1 is over! Sorry that link I posted yesterday didn't work. No idea if it'll be up and running today, Chico's whole website is down. As for the results, it was fair to middling. Let's start at the top.

First up for me was hurdles. I've been working on remembering that I'm a sprinter first and that I need to just run fast and let the hurdles take care of themselves. I remembered that for about 4 hurdles and then everything fell apart from there. I hit hurdle 9 and barely saved the whole thing. As a result, I ran the worst hurdle time I ever had. But hey, at least I got some points! :-/

Next was high jump, which was the bright spot in my day!!! Pretty much every time Josh was pole vaulting, I was working on high jump and it paid off. I cleared 2 bars higher and got a 3 inch PR for a jump of 5'2.5". So much closer to being able to jump my height. YAY! :D

Shot put was next. This season we changed my approach to the shuffle from doing the glide. The idea is to make it easier for me to get across the ring and and get into a better power position. I've been executing somewhat inconsistently in practice. In practice, one throw might be 5 feet over my PR, the next 2 feet below my PR. I'm still figuring out the rhythm.  So it is maybe not too surprising I had a mediocre shotput yesterday. I put a good throw out there on my last throw of about 38 feet, which would have been a 4 foot PR, but then couldn't stop myself from falling out of the ring. Need to start catching myself in practice now. Urgh.

Finally was the 200. I was in the outermost lane, which I totally hate. I wish I could chase people and not be chased! I ran a pretty good 120 and then forgot everything I was supposed to do. I ran like a second slower than I wanted to. Over all, I ended the day with 2700 points, which is about 150 less than I ended day 1 last season. Full results are here. Oh well. Up for today is long jump, javelin, and 800.

For Josh, he started with the 100. His time was ok at 11.70, just need to work on his block start to get him closer to the pack from the beginning, rather than starting behind and trying to catch up.  Next was long jump. He did a much better job of running through the board and bringing his speed all the way through the jump. He got an in-competition PR of 6.32, or 20'8".

Next was shot put, which I got to see all of his throws thanks to scheduling. His best throw is below, at 11.99m/39ft. He's been putting big throws out there in practice of over 40 feet, but consistency isn't there for him either. Seems like by getting into a little better power position will make a huge difference, but for our shotput friends, any feedback? We could use all the help we could get!

High jump followed. Seeing as I have been working on high jump while he was working on pole vault, he hasn't got a lot of practice with high jump. He's getting way over the bar, but then knocking it down with his feet. More practice time with the approach will help his timing. He ended up getting a no height. Disappointing, but he said "I guess I shouldn't be too surprised..."

Finally was the 400. High jump took a few hours (one guy didn't even open until a very impressive 2.07) so he needed to do a full warm up again. He was in lane 2, which allowed him to visualize the whole field from the beginning. He went out really smoothly, but maybe a little slower than he wanted. He ran a 52.12, which isn't bad considering he was hoping for a just sub 52. Later that night, we were looking at the points difference if he ran his PR of 50.04 and it would only give him a small amount of points, which made him more satisfied with his result, he is thinking about being a little lessed focused on the 400 in our training. Up for him today is 110m hurdles, disc, pole vault, javelin, and 1500.  We have completely broken down our javelin, so he expects that to go poorly for him today, but with the goal of it paying off later in the season due to fixing bad habits. We start at noon and 12:30 so hoping to finish before 6. We'll see though.

Nay moo everyone!!

Here we go again!

Hey everyone! Another year, another start of season. We're currently diving up to Chico for our multi season opener. I had good intentions to post before today but life got in the way, as it usually does. C'est la vie!

A lot has happened in the months since our last meet. Most notably, we got married! We got engaged in August and married in November so a lot of our training plans went out the window. For example, we intended to clean up the garage so we could start lifting in October but we didn't get to lifting until late in November. (And never really cleaned the garage. Whoops.) Also, we ended up neglecting many of our goals we had for the off season, including spending more time on skill events such as javelin and high jump.

Aren't we cute?

The weather in California has been another spring-like drought-filled winter. This has been great for training but terrible for our watershed levels. We only had to alter plans a handful of days so far due to rain, which is pretty sad. The sun has been nice and warm but I feel my sock tan shouldn't be as prominent as it is.

During the of season, we were so blessed with knowledgeable family and friends who helped advise us. Our friend and former teammate Courtney (and her husband) visited us over the summer and provided a few instructional sessions for javelin. I think she got a good front-row seat to our javelin woes. (Wish I could say things are better now but more on that later.) Heather has been suckered into running workouts with me, which has been a complete lifesaver! It's so nice having a new person to suffer with. :-) Also, with the 800 being such a points suck for me, it's been really helpful having an 800 runner to train with. (Hopefully we can con you into a race soon, Heather.) Morgan as always continues to add her wisdom on hurdles, whether it's watching us in person or critiquing our videos! Her advise helps both of us see important details we may be missing or may be unable to hear from the other person. :) Josh also gets tremendous help in pole vault from Chris, Jim, and Randy as well as his pole vaulting buddy, Joe. Their help is super great because my understanding of pole vault is still rudimentary. My uncle Kelly (who has been a track mentor to me since I was little) was at our wedding and provided Josh with a lot of good pointers, from a coaching and training perspective. Over the last weekend, my cousin Ryan provided us with some more javelin advise. His advise inspired us to stumble upon this youtube instructional video and this one which revolutionized the way we approach the event. While it might be too soon to see any impact from all of this support, we're hoping that it will all pay off by the end of the season! 

We're a little rusty going into the meet so it's hard to know what to expect for the next two days. We dusted off some of the cobwebs about 4 weeks ago at Cal, but have been unable to do much else due to rain and a death in the family. As I said, we're just starting (and by starting I mean learned 3 days ago) to figure out javelin but not sure if we will be able to implement any of the changes on Friday. But we sure are (at least I am) excited to see how it goes! (Have to start somewhere!) And we will never feel 100% ready so let's just do this! Tomorrow we start around 2 pm so I'll finish around 6 and Josh will be done around 730 hopefully. I have 100 meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, and 200 meter dash on my plate. (Stuck in lane 7 for 200. Ugh, I hate being chased!) Josh has the 100 meter dash, long jump, shot put, high jump, and 400 meter run to do.

You can keep track of our progress at: http://highspeedtiming.com/chico/multi/

Or you can just wait with abated breath until I recap the day tomorrow! :)

Nay-moo, my friends!