Yahoo, broke my record by 57 points for a total of 4036. Here's the event-by-event: I got a pretty good start in the hurdles, better than the week before in the masters exhibition race at senior nationals, but still not perfect. I got a good push, but still stood up a bit quick. I think I can still take a couple tenths out of my start to the second hurdle. Some of that will come from doing more resistance starts and sled pushing over the rest of the spring training. In the middle of the race I was fairly smooth, but was sitting back or snapping to erect after clearing the hurdle. I need to work on bucking the hurdle and keeping some forward lean from hurdle to hurdle to maintain the momentum better. Time: 8.94, which I was satisfied with. For the long jump, we were forced to jump in the secondary pit which was a crummy plywood runway with no board, just the squishy plywood from which to jump. My first jump was a very close foul, and probably at 20', so that was bad. My second jump I went safe and jumped from about 14" behind the board, so it was only 18-8. At this point I was freaking out, so I moved back to my longer 116' runup and gave it all I had and came up with 5.97m or 19-7, which I still wasn't happy with, but that was ok considering the first two jumps. I was still ahead of record pace, but not by nearly as much as I had hoped. I moved to the shot and felt good, and really connected on my second throw, 12.09m or 39-8 for PB number 2. Only 10cm farther than last year, but still very good considering I didn't know if I'd even throw 37'. So now I was pumped again and went over to the high jump pretty confident that I would get the record. My warmup felt smooth and I started at 1.66 which I made first time, then went to 1.72, first time clearance, then 1.75, first time clearance by a mile, then second time clearance at 1.78 again by several cm. At this point I was pretty sure I'd get the record. I made 1.81 again on second clearance, and almost made 1.84 on the third try. I really should have made it. I'm jumping too close to the right standard, so I need to move down the bar so I'm clearing over the lowest point. So now I needed about 3:14 to break my record. I knew I would do that, but I was dreading the altitude, and it did really hurt me so I only ran 3:08.18. That was disappointing after running that 2:59 in a workout, but I was on the track afterwards, so it really hurt.
After the event, I immediately started thinking about the pentathlon in Kamloops, and first decided not to do it, but after a couple days changed my mind because I think I'm really peaking well and can do better. So, I'm leaving in two days to drive up to Canada and do it all over again. I certainly don't want to, but they don't hand out records based on a written application.
On the second day of the championships I also won the long jump and hurdles with a 6.20 in the same pit as the day before, and a 9.06 in the hurdles. That long jump was very good for that pit, I think it might have been a 21-0 or 6.40m in the real pit. Bummer, but I'm totally confident that I can get that distance during the rest of the season. So, see you next week with the results from Kamloops.
I have good video from the meet, and will work on getting it edited for the web.
