Last season... whoops

The most wonderful part of vacation is the time to write...

When Bachelorette parties land in the middle of season,
you still have to get your workout in!

I have sat down in front of my computer so many times, intending to write a new post. Somehow, I was always able to convince myself to walk away and never actually put anything down. Mostly, it seemed to stem from the lackluster performances we kept putting out there. I felt so frustrated that I knew it would just come out all mopey. I did a lot of reflecting during that time and have started to piece together some ideas as to what happened. (That'll be the next post though.)

Bachelorette party #2 workout:
What else is there to do in Vegas? ;)

However, the last 2 1/2 meets seemed to make up for everything crappy that happened! While down in Claremont for our last multi, my first day went pretty horribly. However, during day 2, I threw about a 15 foot PR in the javelin and ran sub 2:30 in the 800!! Those two things made me super excited despite how poorly the rest of the events went. 

A few weeks later, I competed at the USATF Pacific Association (PA) area meet in San Mateo where things could not have gone better! The wind was pretty high so it's hard to be too excited about my marks, but mostly, it was just so nice to have a meet where nothing went horribly wrong, as had been the case the rest of the season. I ran a 12.15 in the 100 (with a 5 meter/sec tailwind though!) [race is the video below] and a 14.5 in the 100 hurdles (3 m/s wind). 

Beautiful College of San Mateo track!!

However, the most exciting part was I jumped 6.50 meters (21ft 4 inches) in the long jump, which was a foot and a half PR (granted it was a 3.2m/s tailwind). :D I just kept staring at my mark in utter disbelief. I was so stunned, I started crying a little bit and wasn't really able to get back to that same mindset for my other jumps. However, you only need one! :) Had the wind been legal (although of course I probably wouldn't have jumped quite as far with legal wind), I could have qualified for the USATF national championships!! It certainly caused me to change my thinking on things, but I'll go into that in another post. Another amazing part of the meet was getting to see my old teammate, Adriana, whom I hadn't seen in an embarrassingly long amount of time, considering we live like 25 minutes from one another. Hopefully, this just means we'll start to get to see each other more often. :D

A few weeks following, Josh and I competed at the Pride meet in San Francisco. It's a really fun, laid back meet where individuals of all ages get to compete with one another. We got to see an 80 year old woman run a world record time in the 80m hurdles and I ran a 4x100 with an over 70 year old man on my relay team. Made me really think that I'm never going to be too old to still be running and training, just maybe on a different level. 

I ran a forgettable 100m hurdle race and an ok 100 race. During long jump, I was running back and forth between all my different events (Have I ever mentioned I hate rolling schedules?) so got 2 jumps in before my hurdle race. I pretty effortlessly popped out a 6.03m (19'9") wind-legal jump and was pretty happy about it. Josh ran the 100 and got out of the blocks pretty nicely! He also long jumped 6.18m and was happy I didn't beat him. ;)

Below is the video of my 6.03 at the pride meet. This is the longest jump I've taken that I have on video. Josh's comment on this jump was that it was "pretty far for a mediocre jump." He thinks 6.50 really is possible with a better jump in legal wind.

We've had a lot of conversations this off-season, trying to decide what to do about this upcoming season. Doing multis is so much fun and so much work/time. The season was pretty frustrating and painful, emotionally and physically. From breaking his ankle and separating his shoulder, Josh struggles through pain every day we are out there. He's even had to learn to jump off his opposite foot in high jump and is considering learning to throw javelin with his opposite hand to try and eliminate some of the pain. Prior to the PA meet, I was ready to hang up my spikes, so to say. But after making that last jump, I almost don't feel like I can quit now. We have a few more decisions to make over the next few months until training starts to ramp up again. For now though, I think we can safely say we're not quite ready to stop.