The Successful End of My Midwest Circuit!

It looks like getting a hotel room paid off! I woke up fresh and rested, ready to take on my third competition in 4 days. I don't think I ever took a picture of my hair on Saturday, but if you remember from Friday, Julia put a "Wisconsin" on the back and then we had to drive down to Illinois right after that competition so we didn't have time to bleach it out and put a new design on. So for Saturday, we put the state of Illinois on a different part of my head to signify which states I competed in this weekend. I liked the idea at first, but then I thought about it... I would've had to put the state of MISSOURI on my head. That's just not gonna happen. Luckily we had Sunday off from competing and Julia and I had he chance to come up with something new. Erica Bartolina, another professional vaulter who was traveling around to meets this weekend also, recommended I do a flag. We decided that was perfect for the 4th of July competition in St. Louis. It turned out pretty awesome and everyone in the Webster Groves community LOVED it. Pictures Below...

We got to the competition site around 11:30am because Julia's competition was scheduled to start around 1pm. She jumped great except for a couple technical things were missing that we couldn't figure out. She looked fast, tall, had a great take-off, then would get stuck on the swing. (Happens to me all the time, but I still have no idea how to fix it without Coach around... too many variables). So she didn't jump as high as she wanted to but I was excited at how she looked coming down the runway. And Ryan didn't jump because he didn't have big enough poles. So on to my competition... I FINALLY WON!! And when I think about it... I haven't won a competition in over a month! Not since the Big XII Outdoor Championships on May 14th! It really felt good to come off the weekend with a win. Even if I didn't jump as high as I wanted to, I had finished runner-up the 2 previous meets on Friday and Saturday and it felt good to be on top in the end. I won with 5.35m/17'6" and came up short on all my attempts at 5.50m/18'. But boy was I getting up there yet again! My first attempt at 18' wasn't so hot, as you'll see in the video, ha. I swung right off the ground and came up really short, luckily to the right of the box. And then my next two attempts had plenty of height but brushed the bar on the way down. I wasn't penetrating as efficiently as i wanted to, but it was still a good day. The runway was pretty solid, I thought, except for the fact that the yellow box collar around the box was sloped up to the left for some reason. It's hard to explain without being able to show you, but it was making all of us feel like we were leaning to the right at take-off. Some of the vaulters claimed the runway was leaning to the right, and maybe it was to some degree, but they put shims under that section to level it out once the competition started. People, including me, were vaulting to the right, every single time. It was scary at times... I can't count how many times someone rolled off the right side of the pit after they landed or actually hit the standard as they were coming down. Yes, I was one of them. I was told I had the worst crash of anyone, and I'm not arguing about that because IT. HURT. It was the first plant that I took up in warm-ups and I must having leaning to the right at a strong angle at take-off because I went straight up and into the right standard. I pushed it away from me in mid-air and then came down, feet first into the standard mats. My left leg kicked the standard on the way down and my right foot went straight down to the base of the standard below developing a very painful heel bruise that I would feel in about 5 minutes after the adrenaline stopped pumpin. I was fortunate though that it didn't hurt when I ran, just when I walked, so essentially I wasn't really hurt at all. Well, today I certainly feel the pain but that's irrelevant, ha. Back to the meet. Warm-ups didn't go as well as I had hoped but I was trying to just stay relaxed and fluid on the runway and not trying to force anything magical to happen. I just wanted to let things happen as they would naturally. There was a headwind the entire competition until my last few jumps so everyone was on little poles. I started the comp on my 5m 15.3 which is generally the first pole I jump on in warmups before going to the 14.9 on the next jump. But with that wind and my tired legs, I was ok being on that pole. I opened at 5.20m/17' and cleared it on my first attempt... somehow. I could have sworn I knocked it off as I was going over it so I just kind of relaxed going over it and fell down to the mats to see it still on the pegs and the 500+ crowd cheering. I certainly was relieved as I haven't made an opening bar on the 1st attempt in a while - a couple months at least. I blew through the pole pretty good and hit it on the way and usually it never stays when you hit it at that angle. I went up to the next pole for 5.35m/17'6" and did the same thing! I got another lucky break as I thought I hit it even harder this time and it STILL stayed up! I knew it could be a good day after that, because the bar gods were on my side for sure. There were about 6 guys who made 5.20m/17' but I was the only one to successfully clear 5.35m/17'6". I was pretty excited I won, but on the other hand, I don't jump well when I'm by myself and I wanted to jump high again. I wish someone else had cleared that bar and put some pressure on me to clear 5.50m/18'. But I was the lone competitor... I finally got my take-off to be more aggressive the last 2 jumps, but didn't quite finish the jumps like I should have. I feel good about it though. A little more fine-tuning and I'm gonna jump super freakin high, you just wait...
We packed up our chairs and cooler and poles right after the meet was done and we were about to drive off when Ryan got a call from his buddy telling him that I need to pick up my check. I forgot I got prize money again!!! $400 more makes this weekend a $1266 weekend plus whatever I get in the mail from the first meet director. I still can't quite believe I made that much money in one weekend, but I sure am glad I decided to go on this long trip! It was more worth it than I thought it would be and I'm feeling pretty good about my jumping right now. I can't wait to come up with my next big road trip. Until then, on with the training! Video of the meet is below along with more pictures.

The best gas station food court ever!