One Year

One year ago I felt like i had become inconsistent with my back therapy. It was easy to feel the difference in how a felt, slept and trained. What started as a ten day challenge quickly turned into a 30 day challenge and so on. An easy goal of committing to doing therapy everyday rain or shine, sick or healthy, busy or free. After the 10 days breezed by I decided to go for a month, then the 100 day goal followed which went by quicker than I expected, so I shot for one year. I'm pleased to announce that Saturday Nov 2nd 2013 I have done back therapy everyday for one year and now that I'm here I think it only makes sense to shoot for two. The ultimate goal of the experiment is to train my brain to do it everyday without thinking. Making It as necessary and automatic as breathing.

Character Development

This is an excerpt of something else I just wrote that I felt like sharing.  

My goals as an athlete linger, but I am no longer capable of pursuing them fully. A new set of priorities and responsibilities are steering the vehicle that is my life, and pole vault has been placed in the back seat. It will always be there, making chatter and occasionally kicking the back of the front seat, but it will never again be the primary driver.

As a high level athlete you are forced to design a perpetual state of consciousness that is entirely focused on your event, training, and psychological health. In this state, material things, media, financial survival, and even family and friendships are pushed into the back seat, always there but quietly competing for second place. It takes an immense amount of time and effort to shape this persona. It’s almost as if you are creating a character for a movie, and you are stepping into it, without any after thought of someday needing to step back out. You don’t look further ahead than your athletic goals, you can’t, because if you do, it can invite or represent the option of failure, and failure does not fit into the formula, thoughts that propose any minuet level of probability of manifesting stress must be eliminated. In your minds eye, there is no such thing as life after your athletic career. 

For more than a decade many of us stand inside of that character, working tirelessly everyday to reinforce its walls, making them impenetrable. Then, like a flash of lightning, that other life shows up.........

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The Glue

For whatever reason, the glue that has been holding me together for the past few years is starting to give way. My back has been feeling great but my left foot and my right knee aren't behaving like I'd prefer. I was speaking with Steve Chappell of UCS down at Mount Sac last week and he had a great line for it. I said "I guess I'm just getting old." and he replied "Your not old, you've just got high mileage."
Training has been more creative than usual as my schedule continues to be very complex. Despite the injuries and lack of time I have managed to stay extremely fit and light weight, and each time I vault I'm on much larger poles than I expect to be (poles I have jumped PR's on). With an absence of direction in the pole vault, I've allowed my other obsessions to take up space in my life again, Mountain Biking and Rock Climbing mostly, and its been fantastic. I've also decided to start coaching and allow athletes to share my training grounds with me. It's great to be working with vaulters again.

The Pole Vault Family

                                                            Backyard session 3/10/13

I'm realizing that I've become a Pole Vault fan again. That may sound strange, but let me explain. For years I have been trying to avoid searching and reviewing pole vault results from all over the world because at times it would bring me down, feeling as if I was being left behind or having a poor season. But now when I see great results I'm full of excitement and pride. Pride for our sport as a whole. Although we compete with each other, we are all a big family and in this together. In a time of economic crises, where budget cuts and fear effect all of us, Track and Field being a smaller sport in the US seems to come up on the budget chopping block all to often and at all levels, and with the potential to be dangerous and expensive Pole Vaults removal number one on the list. When I see great results and success despite the odds against our sport I swell with happiness and pride. Thank you to all of those who continue to persevere; from facility access, to coaching, to competing. Long live the Pole Vault family.

If you need some fresh inspiration today, look at the results from NCAA Indoors.
http://www.ncaa.com/sites/default/files/files/DI%20TF%20finalresults.pdf