Counting Down

It's been 16 days since my strain in Reno and I have 19 days left until I jump at Kamloops. Still cautiously optimistic, but every now and then I hit a position where my arm feels weak and still injured. Like today I was changing the light bulb in the garage and I had to pull a lever toward me underhanded to open the ladder. It wasn't a sharp pain but certainly a dull hot spot. Then when I went to pick up the 45 lb (22 kg) plates for my lifting I felt it a little again and used the other hand to help. That said I ripped through 15 reps on my parallel high bars and was able to do some hang cleans a little heavier. All other lifts are back to 100%.

Part of this physical response is to be expected because I did something directly attacking the arm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday including bars on all three days and a little jumping Friday. Now I leave it alone until Thursday and get back to Dr. Clouthier three days this week. So work, work, work, rest, rest, rest and it seems to leap frog levels of recovery. Again, there were things that I thought nothing about doing at the end of this week that I wouldn't even consider last week.

All I can do is plan well and go out there and jump. If it works that's wonderful and if it doesn't I will stop rather than destroy the next eight weeks for full recovery. My feeling is that I can jump high enough on my small poles to get within striking distance of a medal and then hit the bigger poles as long as they will let me. I got three very good big pole jumps at Reno in warm up so if I can even get that I'll have a chance to go 4m (13' 1 1/2").

Overall my ramp up was to first get over 10' (3.05m) this week, which I did easy. Next week use a little bigger pole and make 11' (3.35m) and the following week go 12' (3.66m). That puts me eight days out from Worlds where I hope to jump 4m+. It's funny because I feel very certain I will hit my goal for the next two weeks without injury. It's when I hit the big poles that can go either way. Fortunately I have made 4m on five of the seven poles I'm taking.

Again, this is not paralysis by analysis but rather laying out all of my cards and seeing what matches up where as far as poles/runs/heights go. Even if I have to start on my smallest pole from 44' I can easily make 3.70m (12' 1 1/2") from there so that's a start. At this point I feel the majority of the focus needs to be on how I start. How I finish is purely a crap shoot since I won't try any big poles until 3.80m (12' 5 1/2"). If I got three jumps from there I'd at least have a shot at jumping high.

That's all my brain can take today. Thanks for being here. This is a great stress management tool. Bubba