Height: 5.05m or 16' 6.75"
Approach: 14 steps
Pole: 5m - 15.3
Place: 1st
Boy was that a hell of a first meet... It was completely not how I pictured it in my head, even after warmups, which went very well. I opened up at 5.05m and blew through on my first attempt. I went up a pole and sailed over it on my second attempt. Boom, first bar of 2012 and a long road ahead... Well when I went to the next bar of 5.20m or 17', the 5m - 15.3 pole that I had just used felt extremely soft and didn't give me anything in return. I brushed the bar off on the way down and was very confused that I might have not moved the pole like I should've. My take-off and positions were great except I wasn't clearing the bar. I was really confused and so was coach, but we decided to go UP a pole and see what happens. We moved the standards in a little and went up to my 5m - 14.9 and I blew through it. Just as we suspected, the 15.3 was too soft so it was over-bending and "shooting" me straight up and straight back down. So by going up to the next pole, we eliminated the over-bend and just about cleared the bar by a foot. Instead, I brushed it on the way up and there goes my second attempt at the scrawny 17' bar. We decided to take the last jump with the standards as far back as they would go and I still hit it coming out up top. Which means either the pole was giving me nothing or I was flagging out really bad/kicking out at the bar. I don't feel like I was kicking out that bad but the whole meet was so weird that who knows, I definitely could've been. Long story short, I had a jump-off with one of the vaulters on the KU team that I've trained with for the past year and a half, Alex Bishop. We were tied at 17' so we each got another crack at it. We both missed the bar on our fourth attempt so it was lowered 5 centimeters, due to the "jump-off, no-tie for 1st place rule"... We missed again, it dropped 5cm lower... and we missed again... and one more time... and then finally I made 5m or 16' 4.75" and he missed. We were exhausted and both pretty upset with ourselves for not doing any better than that during the jump-off. But I came out with the win and that's really all I wanted to say for this entire blog post is that I won. It's pretty embarrassing to have to tell you that I jumped 5.05m at any point during an Olympic year at the age of 23, but it happened and I must move on. Hopefully you still have faith in me because I feel that good things are coming. First, I need to adjust to my recent weight gain of 8 pounds and speed I have acquired over the last 3 months. I have been hitting the weight room hard and eating right and taking a whey protein supplement in order to help gain some muscle mass. I did just that and now I weigh a consistent 184 lbs, which is a big difference on a pole. We'll just have to see how this indoor season goes! Wish me luck! I'm hoping to jump at K-State next week from a long run to prepare for the Reno Pole Vault Summit. I hope it goes a little (a lot) better!
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