Some brief advice on a Number that is now a Symbol

Keeping track of what you do in training is important, especially as a vaulter. Being able to look back and find a successful pattern in training can be extremely useful. At times in my career I have enjoyed the task of entering the data, and at other times it has made me sick to my stomach. When you are having a bad string of competitions or workouts, and you force yourself to continue recording them, rewriting them, and essentially reliving them, it can be extremely painful. Painful to the point of swearing on paper and turning a hard bound book into a projectile while cursing its horrible existence during flight. At one point in my career I was so fed up with it that I just quit writing in there, because I had nothing good to say, and put faith in myself to do the right thing and be able to look back at the blank period and know that its absence of information was the best thing for me at the time. Which worked by the way. But generally I am religious or diligent about entering the data.

As far as I know, most post collegiate and a large number of serious collegiate and even high school athletes keep an athletic journal. If you fall into one of those categories, I have something to share with you. You may have already thought of this or have been doing it all along, but I'd still like to share. In my athletic journals for years (not sure how many, more than 10, but since I have practiced the use of them) when I have scribbled the date each day before an entry it looks like this '1/07/12'. An easy and quick format with little importance so I can move on with my entry which seems much more valuable than the date. However on Jan 1st of this year a thought began growing in the back of my mind, and yesterday, I decided that after a decade of recording the date a certain way, its time for a change, I wrote in '1/07/2012' and it felt different, very different. The gravity of the number 2012 to an athlete is undeniable. The number itself has become a symbol of the Olympic games. Its on posters, websites, TV ads, billboards and even the radio. You can't escape it, and you shouldn't. Each time it pops up in these ads, I get chills. So each day, when I enter the date in my journal, I will write the full year, and for now that year is 2012, a powerful number, and a delight to write. I recommend trying it, and after you enter it for the first time take a moment to look at it and soak up the potent inspiration that is now attached to a once meaningless number.