The Summit

So the National Pole Vault Summit turned out to be quite the crazy trip. Overall, I was disappointed with the experience. I have been to the Summit twice before, in 2007 and 2009. Both times I had nothing but great memories. I always loved the lectures, the elite competition was exciting, and the competition itself was always a lot of fun. But this time around was different. I don't feel like I got much out of the lectures, though I think it had less to do with the lectures being different as it did with me just having a lot more knowledge on the topics. The question and answer session with Brad Walker and Tim Mack was really good though. It was just the college and open athletes in there with them, so were a lot of great questions about training. And the highlight of the lecture day was by far Willie Banks' talk as the keynote speaker. If you don't know who he is, he was a world record holder in the triple jump. Check it out, very inspiring!!

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The competition itself on the whole was very disappointing. Maybe I have a different view on everything this time around because of how far I have come in the last 2 years, but it was just unimpressive. In the elite competition on Friday night, only one girl cleared higher than 14 feet. Two of the top vaulters in the US, one a former Olympian and the other a World team member, both failed to clear a bar at all. I don't think this takes anything away from the girls. They are all great vaulters. I think it just illustrates how difficult it was to jump at the Summit this year. For my own competition on Saturday, I think it was possibly one of the worst run meets that I have ever competed in. I was with a really good group of girls, most of them are capable of jumping 13 feet or higher. But the situation was just terrible. About 10 minutes into warm ups we were told we were only getting 20 more minutes on the runway. Normally you are given about an hour to warm up. And once we started competing the hardest thing to deal with was the crowd. I really like having people watch me jump. In fact, the more the better. It really gets me going. But what I don't like is when all of those people are standing just a couple feet back from the runway. It was like a party down there. And no one was paying attention to the vaulters that were competing. From where my coach was standing at the box, he couldn't see 30 feet down the runway to catch my mid mark. I don't watch the other vaulters much during the meet, but I think the results tell it all. Everyone was struggling. Only 5 girls cleared higher than 12 feet.

Overall I was very proud of myself with how I handled the situation. For the day I only had 2 run thrus, and I know exactly why I ran through on them. It's an easy fix. It was my first meet running from my full run and I handled it well. I finally moved up onto my bigger poles. And I finally felt like I put together a decent jump over a bar:

So I am very happy with how I handled the situation. But the experience was bad enough that we will have to think really hard about whether or not we will add this meet to our schedule again.

The trip back was a great way to top off the weekend. Our flight out of Reno Sunday morning was cancelled. Since there were at least 3 big conventions in town the earliest they were telling us we could get out was Monday evening. So rather than sit there and be unproductive, Geoff and I rented a car and drove by Lake Tahoe over to Sacramento, CA. We were told that the pass was covered in snow and that we wouldn't be able to make it without chains, but it was a gorgeous sunny day up there. Definitely made me wish we had time to stay a while.

Glad he was able to stop before he needed to take a runaway truck ramp!

We were able to get on a flight out of Sacramento Sunday evening, and we met my coach in Phoenix and we were all on the red-eye back Sunday night. I am not a fan of all-nighters so it has taken me a while to recover from that. But my next meet is actually TODAY in Johnson City! It has been an easy week letting my body recover from the travel, and I'm really excited to be back and Johnson City jumping in front of friends and family again. I've got good feelings about this!! I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.