Winding Down & More Questions

Felt a little sore during the night from yesterday's leg lift since I skipped the previous rotation. I'm sure it's nothing. Typically I get a good idea of how I will feel for a meet on about Tuesday or Wednesday so we will see what happens. I'm optimistic that I have trained and tapered accordingly.

Though my workouts leading up to this meet were similar to what I did before Reno, there are a number of improvements and refinements. Overall I think I should be really ready, but again, you have to execute. So the new questions have to do more with my weight and the facility as it pertains to pole and run selection.

The plan was to be up one pole on every height but as of now it looks like I'm coming in 3-4 pounds (1.5-2kg) lighter than I was in Reno. It's a little harder to move a stiffer pole at a lighter weight but it's also a little easier to hold higher so that should cancel that problem out. The fact that the runway is really fast will help as I can really relax. Like Reno, most of these decisions will be made during warm up and early on in the meet. The only thing that really matters is to start the day with lot of poles speed. Then I can gradually slow it down and work my way more up the pole as the poles get stiffer.

Starting height is another issue. For the past few years I have been starting at around 12' (3.66m) but this year I have been starting at 11' 6" (3.51m) so I could work my way through to my bigger poles. If I start at 12' on the pole I expect to be on for that height I will need to be at 12 steps and I normally like to start my meet from 10 steps. In Reno I started at 10 steps and ended at 14 steps and I probably will here too. I think I will make my final decision after warm up and when I see the bar height progression. I'd LOVE to start at 12' from 10 steps but I don't think I can roll a pole that big from that run after sitting around for over an hour. When in doubt I'll play it safe at the start and get more aggressive as I go.

As you see, I do all of these "what if" scenarios now so that at the meet I just respond to the situation and don't have to think. Worse case I will go through my regular pole and run progression and best case I'll be up one pole per height as planned.

Why does this matter? It's going to take 13' 9 1/2" (4.20m) or 14' 1 1/4" (4.30m) to win so how many jumps will I need to get to that level? I took 13 meet jumps in Reno because I had a 2nd attempt make and two 3rd attempt makes. If I can go through clean and make most bars on my first jump as I usually do, then I'm fine. But I can't afford to get to a height that matters and have no jumps left in me. Or even worse, I can't start on too big of a pole too early that I don't make the earlier heights.

As much as it seems like it, this is not paralysis by analysis, but rather working through my options so that I feel comfortable with the plan. I'll run this by Kris and see what he thinks but my guess is that we will stick to the original plan of trying to be up one pole per height.

Thanks for being here. This is the hard part - waiting and thinking. Bubba