Vaulting in the Big Leagues

I figured three posts in one day was a little excessive, and then I realized if I didn’t type this up I would forget what I was going to say (either I’m getting old or finals stress is already wrecking my brain). So I waited three days.

Had my last first indoor meet, and it went really well! PR’d in weight, almost hit the 45 foot mark I randomly chose as my goal, and I didn’t suck at shot put. Now I get to wait until January 21st for my next meet. And I probably won’t throw weight again until after break. And why did we have that meet again? I still haven’t quite figured out the point of the random meet before winter break. But I did well, and I had lots of fun, and I finally saw the Dark Knight. Movies for this trip were surprisingly good. Dark Knight, then the Breakfast Club on the way there.  On the way home Bridesmaids (which I puts my headphones in and ignored) and then How to Train Your Dragon. Last one was by far the best.

Oh right, I’m supposed to be talking about athletics. Well, to celebrate how awesome we were at our meet (every thrower pr’d in something) we got Monday off. And yesterday and today we’re redoing our maxes to see how much stronger we’ve gotten. Yesterday was  a super success. Increased my power clean by 52% (and we’ll just pretend we didn’t bench…). We all wore lifting belts and got to throw the bar down on the ground where it crashed and rattled and made a bunch of noise so pretty much we were super BA. Today we’re squatting and hang snatching. A little nervous about the snatching, but we’ll see how it goes. Oh, and we’re throwing weight after that. Which at first made no sense to me. Why throw 20 pounds around after doing three leg maxes. Turns out throwers are just as big of head cases as vaulters (go figure) and our coach is hoping that if we’re exhausted then we’ll focus on form instead of whining about distance.

I guess that leaves school. The good news: my finals are all due the 16th. The bad news: that’s nine days from now. I have a 15 page research paper on how the mind-body problem manifests itself in Jewish American Immigrant Fiction. Did that sound smart? I hope so. My plan is to sound like I know what I’m talking about and hope my professor doesn’t realize that I actually have no clue. I have two 6-25 page (a bit of a range there) short stories due which means I should probably start redrafting them..and some philosophy paper that hasn’t been assigned so I don’t know how long or what it’s on or anything. But it’s fine. Why would I want to know those things anyways. It’s not like finals count as a significant part of my grade or anything.

And the most important part of my college life: the fun part. 12 of our alumni from last year are coming up for the annual Christmas Party so this weekend is going to be wonderful! There are three that I really want to see that I haven’t seen since graduation so I’m super stoked. Until I remember finals and start panicking.

And now it’s nap time. Because my roommate for some reason was laughing until like 1am, and I had an 8am shift at work. Note to self: pick better hours next semester.

Apparently the trend right now is to be talking about preseason training. Technically we’ve moved into our regular season, but since our first meet isn’t until December 5th and our first real meet isn’t until January 21st, regular season is a bit of a stretch. Except, it means we can have coaches at practice. And that means throwing!

It’s amazing how you look forward to something so much and then once you get it, you wonder how you were excited. Or if you were experiencing memory loss. All I wanted was regular season to start so I could throw (even shot put, I must be crazy) and then it started, and I’m back to being super frustrated. But sometimes still excited. There are just so many things that can go wrong and often they do (sounds like pole vault to anyone?). Luckily I have a fantastic teammate that I made a positivity pact with. Yeah, it sounds kind of stupid, but the worst thing you can do is get into your own head. Plus, with one teammate who spends all practice pouting like her puppy died and two people that just started dating and are super giggly/PDA/why would you do that when I’m holding a twenty pound weight in my hands and have pretty good aim, it’s nice to have a close friend. One to push me and remind me to stay positive.

And it’s working. We’re lifting partners, and I’ve started lifting above my weights. We’re going to be maxing out again in December, and I can’t wait to see how much they go up. I’ve never felt this strong or this comfortable in the weight room. It’s amazing what a new coach can do. Plus, I had two really good practices this week. Shot put actually went well and I was consistently hitting 36-38 off a nice easy full spin. And I’m starting to figure out my feet in the weight throw. Which is good. Plus, I started 2-turning there and got a few decent throws (BU, here I come???)

And then this happened.

I mean, it’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Completely snapped the bolt so Coach is going to have an interesting time reassembling the weight. Our only competition implement by the way. What I’m actually angry about is that it was going to be a rocking throw. I have never felt so good-fast, powerful, balanced, in control. I hit all my steps, I got a push with my left hand, and then suddenly I was flying out of the ring. And my entire team was laughing at me.

But like I said, it’s fine. I picked up our back-up weight and started 2-turning. I suppose there’s a lesson in there about perseverance and pushing through adversity and getting back on the horse, but I’m too tired to care. And really, I was just angry that it had to break on one of my good throws.

No worries, I’m not talking about my school. I am 100% sure I belong at Allegheny. I mean, I’m pretty sure we’re in the process of changing our admissions slogan from Unusual Combinations to Wonderfully Weird (I’m so glad I’m graduating before this has a chance to be official). The title refers to this blog. You see, it’s called Vaulting in the Big Leagues. And I think my collegiate pole vaulting career has come to a close.  What happened was last year we had no pole vaulters and to not compete in an event is like to freely give away points so my coach was like, you’ve done this before, you’re going to jump. And then outdoor happened and I’m primarily a thrower meaning I regularly compete in 3 events, and I’ve started to figure hammer out so my coach decided that I should stop vaulting so I could focus on throwing.

And now it’s senior year. And training to only vault in the indoor season just doesn’t seem practical. Plus, we have a new throwing coach so hopefully big things are going to happen in weight and hammer for me this year. Anyway all of this adds up to the fact that I think I’m done pole vaulting. But, and this may come as a shock to some people, college (and even this blog) is not all about pole vaulting. Which means I still have plenty to talk about. And even if I didn’t, let’s be real, I’m an English major, I can talk for hours about absolutely nothing.

Like I mentioned just a few sentences ago, this is senior year for me. And I am super excited. Don’t get me wrong, I love Allegheny, but it’s been four years, and it’s time for the next chapter in my life. And I used that cliche mostly because it amused me. See, my goal is to go to Seton Hill University to get my MFA in Popular Fiction. I want to write books. Specifically the kind of books that people actually want to read. Hence, chapter. Get it? I know, I’m hilarious.  I actually went to an open house for Seton Hill yesterday, and I have completely fallen in love. The campus was gorgeous, the people I talked to were super helpful, and I had a serious conversation with someone about writing urban fantasy. I was so excited I went to the bookstore and now I have a lovely SHU longsleeve.

But, that’s still a long way away. My application isn’t even due until April. And I kind of have to do this graduating thing. I know, total drag. This semester isn’t so bad. My classes are fantastic: Jewish American Fiction, Oppression and Liberation (a study of racism and sexism in America), Myth Making and the War: WWII as the Best War Ever, and my Advanced Fiction Workshop. Next semester, however, I have to do this thing that we call a Comp, but most people call a Senior Project. I’m working on my audition right now, and if I pass then next semester I have to generate 50-70 pages of short stories. Which means I’m probably going to lose my mind next semester.

In the meantime, I have my audition and a paper due next week. So what have I been doing with my time? Well, Saturday I went shopping at the outlets, yesterday I went to an open house, and now I’m writing a blog post. What should I be doing? Outlining a paper and writing two short stories. And since I have no motivation, I have made a rule. I am not allowed to eat dinner until I finish the story I’m working on. Sometime extreme methods are needed to combat procrastination, or plain laziness. The sooner you employ them, the less stressful your college experience will be.

So, I don’t know if I mentioned this before or not and since I’m now a lazy college student I’m not going to look back through my posts, but we don’t have the facilities or enough people for me to get full jumps in at practice. I practice at 6:30am and usually it’s just me and my coach so we never pull out all the mats. By the time we did that some other team would be kicking us off the courts, and I wouldn’t get any practice in at all. All this means is that the only time I get to do full runways and jumps is at meets so we’ve been treating all our meets as practices. It also means that I don’t get a lot of practice swinging.

Which is where pool vaulting comes in. Once I got over giggling because pool and pole sound similar I started panicking because, as some of you know, I hate water and I hate going upside down. Two things that this workout was going to entail. And, since it’s no fun whining when Coach Doug isn’t around, I actually did it. And it was kind of a lot of fun. Pretty much my coach stuck a 16 foot or so pole in the pool and held it and I dove down and then held onto the pole and swung up to get used to being completely inverted. The only problem was when I threw my head back because then I’d get water up my nose and then start spluttering and dying but other than that it was a lot more fun than I’d been anticipating. I guess this is an example of why trying new things is good. But why put valuable life lessons into what is supposed to be a laid back account of a wacky practice?

Jumping once a week doesn’t really give me a lot to talk about, though next weekend is our Indoor Conference meet. Hopefully I’ll clear a height. But even if I don’t, Spring Break is coming up which means outdoor is officially starting and while Meadville’s weather doesn’t cooperate with this fact and continues to snow, hopefully I’ll be able to get outside and start jumping soon.

So, I don’t have a full entry for you (I’m sure you’re all secretly cheering inside) and if I don’t hurry I’m going to end up being late for vault practice. No, there is no time difference between MA and PA. Yes, I have 6:30am pole vault practice. Vaulting is 1/4 dedication, 3/4 insanity, right? But the point is, on a website that I adore, even if I don’t get any of their complex math/science jokes, I found a reference to pole vaulting. So I’m sharing. Hope you enjoy, and don’t forget to hold your mouse over the comic once you’ve finished reading.

http://www.xckd.com/852/

One of the weirder things about being in college as opposed to high school is that I now have two first days of classes instead of just one. I have my first day of classes for my M/W/F classes (though this semester only M/W which is awesome) and my first day for my T/Th classes. According to the email Ingrid sent me I’m not supposed to talk just about track, which I’m perfectly fine with. I like to talk. It doesn’t really matter what it’s about.

M/W I get to spend an hour and fifteen minutes stuck in a classroom learning about philosophy. Here is probably the best advice I can ever give you. Unless you for some reason don’t value your sanity, stay away from philosophy. I took it because I needed a fourth class and it was an intro class and I figured it would be easy. I’m now seriously considering taking it pass/fail (I haven’t tried this out yet, but I’ve heard good things). The first day of class my professor told us that the Earth doesn’t revolve around the sun. And (as anyone who knows me can tell you, I’m not a science person) I have no idea if he meant that literally or philosophically or metaphorically or if he was just messing with people’s heads. Long story short, I may end up getting owned by an intro level class. Which would just be sad.

On a more positive note Tuesdays and Thursdays are going to be much better. I have a Ne0-Victorian lit class from 9:30-10:45 which pretty much is reading Victorian era novels and then contemporary adaptations and comparing and contrasting them. Which sounds really cool to me. And means that I’m finally getting around to reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This weekend. Luckily it’s a short book. My other two classes are both history classes. My Problems in Contemporary America class seems like it’ll be wicked good. Studying America as an imperial power and modern crises like the hostage situation in Iran and the atomic bomb.  Plus, since I go to a little school, I found a professor I really liked and I took him twice last semester and I have him twice again this semester. I also know at least one person in all of my classes. Another plus to a small school.

And, because I can’t have a post without any track, I can tell you all about the best part of me week. I had my first pole practice! And yes it consisted of a single mat and baby drills and will probably by at 6:30am from now on, but I’m finally getting to jump! And I got to do this weird ab/inversion exercise and I didn’t completely fail. I’m not jumping at the meet tomorrow because I haven’t done anything longer than a four step since probably my sophmore year of high school. Which was five years ago. But I’ll work up to it. And hopefully finally get that 10 feet Coach Lang has been promising me since I was a freshman.

And there was all my excitement of my first week back at school. Intense lifting, four classes, my first vault practice, and as of tomorrow my first meet. Oh, and my first day as a desk assistant in the IM office. This could quite possibly be my busiest semester so far. And I will love every minute of it. And to this you might say ‘every minute? Really? I didn’t realize a female pole vaulter from Westborough could have such endless optimism’. And then I’ll be forced to age myself by making a Get Smart reference. So I’m going to circumvent all that by saying it’ll be an interesting semester, and you’ll probably be getting frequent updates on it.

If there is one thing I’ve learned from being a 4 year vaulter for Westborough High is that pole vaulters can be some of the most intelligent and dumbest people at the same exact time. Which I’ve attributed to the fact that book/school smart doesn’t always equal common sense. In some cases, the two cannot coexist. Which makes for a plethora of quotes to put on the back of our t-shirts and some hilarious practices.

That’s not what it resulted in today. And before you start to worry or anything I was not anywhere near a pole. Nor was anyone else. Today was our first practice of the season and our coach is so excited that we have a second one this afternoon. But I’ll be throwing then and that has nothing to do with vaulting so I’ll stick to our lifting session this morning. Long story short Coach hands out a piece of paper with a bunch of lifts on it and says go. Do it as fast as possible. I don’t recommend doing 50 deadlifts in a row, break them up into sets. He bragged about how fast he did it, then warned us against going his speed because he almost vommed. Yeah, bent over the trash can is not how I want to start my post-winter break track season. So I took things a bit slower.

Me and the three other girls I was lifting with were going through the sheet. We did something that some random guy in the weight room called a 300. That was not my choice of words for it. Let me see if I can remember. 50 sit ups, 25 push ups, 25 jump squats, 50 deadlifts, 50 DB shoulder press, 25 lat pull down, 25 calf raises, and 50 lunges. And that equals 300 so that should be right. Yeah, so we did all that and then went onto the next section Olympic Lifts. We cleaned, squat pressed, and benched before wondering why everyone was leaving the gym. I mean, we’d started before they did and weren’t wicked slow. Yeah, it turns out we weren’t supposed to go onto the next section. So we did almost all of tomorrow’s lifting.

Coach laughed. Told us it would help make up for the fact that we didn’t lift over break (which is an unfounded assumption. Yes, I did not lift as often as I should have, but there were extenuating circumstances, and I haven’t told him that yet). So pretty much this leaves me at a familiar crossroad. Either I was not very observant and did more than I was supposed to or I was an overachiever. I don’t really want to be either.  Because on the one hand I have my coach asking me why I didn’t dye my hair while I was getting it cut and on the other I don’t want to be that girl. The one who shows up and does more than they’re supposed to and makes everyone else feel awful about themselves. I’m usually on the other side of this. And it’s no fun.

I guess this is my advice for those of you on your way to college. Especially if you’re a freshman don’t be an overachiever and throw it in the upperclassman’s faces. They don’t like that.

Not that I think any of you are particularly worried, but I’m going to recover from my weight lifting session today, and I have learned a valuable lesson. Before doing something you think is ridiculous, check with your coach. You’re probably right.

Hopefully at some point I’m going to actually start jumping so I can talk about that. Though classes start on Wednesday so soon I’ll be able to regale you with tales about the Destruction of the Bison (this is an actual book title of mine) in America or give you my deep philosophical thoughts courtesy of Socrates and Plato.

So, I haven’t actually pole vaulted at a college meet, but apparently Ingrid has faith in my ability to achieve collegiate pole vaulter status because she invited me to write for this blog. Collegiate throwing, on the other hand, I can talk at great lengths about.

Despite the fact that I haven’t made my collegiate vaulting debut yet (I’m hoping it will happen my first meet back from winter break) I’ve gotten to do all the wonderful drills and training that go alongside pole vaulting. It’s probably best that I have lots of groundwork training because I have attempted to pole vault twice in my history at Allegheny College. The first time, freshman year, I pulled my quad and was told no more jumping. The second, on the first captain’s practice of the season, I rolled my ankle. Despite all these very obvious warnings against throwing myself into the sky with the assistance of a fiberglass pole, I keep persisting.

And persistence is rewarded. That is the first lesson I have learned this season. Well, second. The first was to know which first I step with first on my runway. Much easier to avoid rolling an ankle in the box when you actually do your runway correctly. Imagine that.

Anyway, persistence.  I’ve had a lot of practice with it this season and I think it’s going to be a continuing theme. Lucky me. I, for the first time since I think freshman year (of high school), was assigned the glorious task of bubkas. I was supposed to do 25 of them after throwing practice and that would be my vault workout for the day. Easy, right?

No.

First of all, I couldn’t even do a full bubka (I still can’t but it is my goal for the end of indoor season). That was extremely frustrating. I barely even got my swing past 90 degrees. Thankfully, I have a wonderful jumping coach who saw my pitiful attempts, shrugged, and said ‘that’s why we practice. Start doing them twice a week’.

And so I did. And now, I can (almost all the time) swing fully up so I’m upside down. I haven’t extended yet, but it’s probably best that way. We don’t have rings so I’m going it on the pull up station in the weight room and am 89% positive that I’ll hit the ceiling if I fully extend. A convenient excuse. Pole vaulters are full of them.

Side note: Do any of you that do bubkas have problems with your hands sweating? I am deathly afraid of slipping while I’m upside which of course only makes me nervous which makes my hands sweat which sucks me back into this lovely cycle. Moral of this story, don’t wait to do my vault workout until after my throwing workout.

But now I’m home for winter break and have the wonderful Douglas Lang to patiently coach me through all of my pole vaulting neuroses so that this year I can finally jump 10 feet. Coach Lang promised me in high school that I would clear it, throwing got in the way of vaulting, but I’m still going to hold him to his promise.

And apparently I’m supposed to talk about things not related to track. They exist?

Kidding. I guess, I should probably give an introduction, which would have made sense to do at the beginning. And editing this would be very easy and I could put this at the beginning but I’m lazy. Thank you college. First thing I learned. Never do more work than you have to.

Also kidding. Professors love to see extra effort. In the you’ve prepared for the class discussion so you have something meaning to contribute way and not in the I’ve written an extra 4 pages for my essay. Not that I’ve done the latter, but I do a lot of paper writing and professors are very specific on their page limit.

Still haven’t introduced myself. In case you can’t tell, I get distracted easily. But I’m Kristin Collins, I attended Westborough High School and now I go to Allegheny College in Meadville, PA. It’s a cute little liberal arts school where I got to play volleyball and now participate in track. I’m a junior this year, terrifying because now I have to start thinking about this thing called real life. And by that I mean, I’m going to grad school so I can put it off for a little bit longer.

In case you couldn’t tell by this increasingly long-winded post (it will end soon, I promise) I’m a Creative Writing Major, History Minor. Which means a lot of reading and a lot of writing but I love it and am going to continue pursuing writing both in Grad School and Post-Grad.

And I feel like that’s good for a first post. I’m sure none of you want to hear about the finals I took or the papers I wrote on Victorian lit or the Jesuits or whatever that other paper I wrote was about (I swear I put in more effort than it sounds like here).