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!