Sunday was an exciting day, well, day and night. I spent it moving pole vault pits from a friend’s house to my backyard. Overjoyed with the task I told all of my friends who are passing through town this spring, and to each of them I finished with “I’ll send you pictures tomorrow during the daylight”, being impossible at that moment as the project was completed in the late evening hours. I awoke Monday morning to dark clouds and rain, and rained it has, for the past three days. I feel like I brought it on myself talking about how fantastic the weather is here all the time, but no matter. It’s actually pretty funny. I would snap some photos, but with the presence of a massive tarp and the lack of presence of the sun, the photos would not paint a picture that I would enjoy sharing.
The backyard project is not completely finished, but it is jumpable. My runway is currently 140’, so another 10’ slab will go in when it stops raining. The rubber is down, the standards are patiently on standby, waiting for the nice cement pads to be poured so they have a strong level place to sit and relax while I go sailing over the high bars they are so kind to hold up for me. By all means I could go down there and jump right now, from a full run, in the rain, with the standards on pallets and it would work, but I’m not that desperate just yet.
The ten day forecast does not look promising for a jump day anytime soon, but hopefully the weather folks aren’t quite on the mark. Regardless of that I am making good use of my time away from the runway and the runway project. There were plenty of things I had been delaying or holding at bay in order to get jumping again. As the rain has prevented me from doing so, my productivity level in these other areas has skyrocketed. So rather than seeing the rain as a detriment, as I very well could, I choose to see it as necessary and part of the larger scheme of things. The timing seems a bit odd, but this is the way it was supposed to happen, or it would have happened differently. The end result (or goal) remains unchanged in my mind, and that is what really matters.
Not so often, but from time to time, well the anxiety of time creeps into my conscious. At the end of indoors, even though results didn’t show it, I felt like I was on the verge of breaking through to another level, right at a cusp, if you will. So the urgency to continue down this path through volume of jumping pokes fun at my confidence when it can. So I continually remind myself that early on indoors I jumped from a full run Dec 2nd, for the first time since early September when I thrashed my ankle in Colorado, then did not do it again until Jan 14th in competition, and I did just fine, jumped 17’7”. Which is nothing to write home about, but it’s not bad for 3 competition run sessions in 4 months. And I’m a hell of a lot better now than I was then. So, I’m not fretting this little 2 and a half week gap between my sessions. That’s nothing, and it will probably extend to 3 and half or 4 if the weather folks have there way. The truth is that I’ve put the volume in, I know how to jump (some could argue I still haven’t learned, but that is another discussion) if I remain confident and healthy during the gaps between sessions, I will pick up right where I left off, without the need to start the process all over.
I traveled with a mere four poles in my bag during the indoor season, all of which were 5m (16’5”); I only jumped on two of them, the entire time. For my first outdoor session, I will walk down to my runway with only those two poles, when the weather permits, and I will take successful jumps.
No comments:
Post a Comment