This last Monday was our first official track practice of the season. Workout wise it wasn’t a very hard week, just a nice easy transition for those who haven’t been doing much in the offseason. One of the more difficult things we did was running 10 hallways (roughly 200m) at a 40sec pace with equal rest. 

It wasn’t so much the running part that was difficult; it’s the sharp turns throughout the hallways while also dodging students who seem to be oblivious to groups of us sprinting down the halls. The other workout we did is a stair/sprint circuit, where we sprint up stairs then run across our pool balcony, go down the stairs, then sprint back to the start. We do each lap in about 25 seconds with equal rest. Usually we will do 15+ of those. Sometimes we’ll go two laps in 50s, or 3 laps in 75s usually with equal rest. Before doing one of these workouts we would do a warm-up run, agilities, hip stretches over hurdles, and speed ladder drills. After practice a few of us head to the weight room to do a little lifting, but since I mainly lift during PE I will normally just do an ab workout.

This past weekend, with only single week of practice under the teams’ belt, my team was down at ISU while I went up to the Windy City Pole Vault Summit. Before leaving to the summit I still went to ISU to hang out with the team and was able to catch a few field events and the 55 dash before taking the 2 hour drive up to Rolling Meadows. The Windy City Summit is a pretty sweet meet. I was excited to come back for my senior year after skipping out last year. The fantastic field of vaulters, the fast runway, and the loud music all add up to a place in which big bars are bound to happen. The only thing I missed was the enjoyment of watching my teammates compete in other events. But luckily the Summit was stacked with Flying Dragons, so it was kind of like having a team with me.

Warming up I felt alright, I was a bit sore from something, but I have no idea what. Anyway, I worked it out, and felt strong and ready to good. As warm-ups went along I ran though a few times and I started to lose a bit of confidence and started to feel a little mad at myself for not going up. Warm-ups having gone terribly, I sat down and began to think about what I was doing. I then realized that this was the sort of thing that got me into trouble last year. 

Last year, I found myself constantly chasing a height, which put a lot of unneeded stress on me. Somehow I thought that if I cleared a certain height or got on certain poles then my season would be a ‘good’ one, which made vaulting no fun. After that whole experience, I told myself I would never put that useless pressure on myself again. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to have goals, because I myself have a list of them. But I’m saying that you shouldn’t define your season, career, meet, or whatever solely on the time you run, how far you throw, or how high or how far you jump. That just makes everything a grind, and that’s not what track is about.

I refocused myself on just having fun and letting the jump happen. The bar moved up to my opening height of 14’1. I then had another 2 min warm up on the runway, and this time I did something with it. I crushed 14’1 and 14’7 and then skipped up to 15’1. At this point I was on the biggest pole I’ve been on (15’ 170lbs), however I was starting to really get into the jumps, and the pole wasn’t giving me much in return. So my coach and I decided that it was time to move up poles. The next pole was a 15’6 165lbs, up until this point I had only tired to use this pole once and it completely rejected me. But I just picked it up and went for it, telling myself I was just going to do it. On my first attempt, I smoked 15’1. As I was falling I was yelling in excitement, it was just natural since the jump felt so great. I had to try and calm myself for the next height of 15’7. I had 1 fantastic attempt at it, and another fairly solid attempt.

I came out with a second place, but in my mind, a huge win. I overcame a little setback during warm-ups and still had a steller day. My takeoff is also getting better and better with every meet (actually so well that sometimes it’s scary) and as a result I’m already on bigger poles than I was last year. And on top of that, I’m now I’m confident about using the 15’6 poles. Everything is coming together well; the only problem may be finding bigger poles. But I’m not complaining, that’s a good problem to have.

Anyway, this blog pretty much sums up my whole week. Thanks again to anyone who reads my blogs! You guys are the best!

As always, if you have any comments, questions, or requests feel free to E-mail me:

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Thanks a lot!

Tyler