Vaulting in the Big Leagues

This semester is finally over!!!!!

After reading close to 3,000 pages in chapter books, writing close to 60 pages of essays, learning well over 300 note card, and begin stressed out of my mind, I’m beyond excited for this semester to be over.  Last year being a business major I had little work to do, but after switching over to being an early education major the work load has tripped in size.  At first I had no clue how to handle all the work which effect my jumping a lot.

The first meet of the season went no where near as well as I was hoping.  After dropping my bagel cream cheese side up  on my lap at breakfast, I knew it was not gong to be a good meet. I almost no height, had a mental break down and just wanted to go back to bed.  So going in to the second meet I was a little hesitant to jump.  I jumped better but was a little disapointed with only making 9’6, but I was happy I had a good day. After the work load finally settled down, my jumping became better.  I finally started to care a lot more and was ready to jump again. Finally with a great practiced under my belt I finally felt good about going on break.

I guess stress does really take a toll on your body if you know it or not.  Sometimes there nothing you can do but just move past it, and keep your head up.  The worst that will happen is have a bad day.

Now all I need to do it have a nice break and get ready to go RENO!!!!!!!

Happy Holidays!

Hi all,

Sorry for the hiatus from the blog. It was due to a big hiatus from the vault. At WPI we have a big project to do our junior year and I just happen to be completing mine off campus on Nantucket (living the life, I know.) I just finished my project this week, but have been stuck on this island the last two months with no track, no runway and more importantly, barely any streetlights for when it gets dark out. This made for some interesting workouts, especially with the gym on the island being $170 per month and me being too broke to pay for it.

Before the project when I was at school, there were also some complications involving my super time consuming prep class for this project and Kyle’s evening grad classes, so I only got over to patriot once during the fall

But here I am, ready to kick off break and my access to the gym tonight. It’s time to get back into weight lifting (ouch.) and get my butt into all around shape for january practices. Lots of core, yoga, sprints and pole drops for me this break.

I get one last vacation (read, cool stuff by day, NEED to work out *note to boyfriend who is taking me on this trip: NEED* by night) before the January season starts and then it’s back into a whirlwind of classes, practices and meets.

I’m not sure how ready I am to step foot back onto the runway. I have not attempted a jump since September and to be quite honest, I’m chalking my first meet up to getting the cobwebs out of my legs.

Anywho, I’ll let everyone know how the season goes, but as for right now, it’s time to get my butt out of bed, finish packing and get off this island and to the local Y!

Jacqui

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.

So I was thinking “Yeah I’m gonna be a good little collegiate athlete and write a blog post after the Smith meet this weekend. It’ll look even better since no one’s posted in a while.” Then I come on and Chriss JUST posted.

Anyways yesterday was my “first” collegiate meet. Granted it wasn’t an official meet for us so I wasn’t competing for UMass, so when all’s said and done, it wasn’t any difference between this and every other meet that I did indoor in high school. I guess one difference would be that instead of having Doug or Ingrid or someone to coach me, I just had to rely on my teammates (luckily we had quite the pole vault crew!). I decided that for fun, instead of competing just unattached I would give Patriot some representation out in western Mass since everyone else was in Boston. The meet itself went pretty well. I won it, but I only had two competitors (my teammate Alyssa and som girl from Smith). What was more exciting than winning was realizing that this was the first meet I had competed in completely uninjured in a long time. I only went 9’6, but considering I’d been hitting a solid 9′ for a while, it was good to get back over that mental block. One thing I definitely need to work on is having more patience, but the funniest moment was probably being told to be more patient up top and then proceeding to have my most rushed jump immediately afterwards…oops!

Enough about the Smith meet. You guys are probably wondering how this young padawan is doing in the big scary world of D1 collegiate track, eh? Well, sometimes I feel like my major is too sciency, and other times (especially the beginning of the semester) I feel like my life is devoted to track. All in all it’s going good so far. I mean there’s that little bit of fear that I won’t make roster since the roster hasnt been finalized yet. Preseason training went pretty well, of course I wished I had trained more over the summer to avoid some of the soreness that came with the first few weeks. One big thing that I was glad I had on my side though was the fact that I could actually do most of the drills right off the bat, never have I ever been so happy for the countless hours I spent at indoor Patriot practices. One interesting thing was that at the beginning of the season Coach Jackson told me that he was going to be telling me lots of things that would probably be different than what I was taught at Patriot, on the contrary though, everything that he has stressed to me this fall were mentioned to me within the past year while I was at a Patriot practice. Essentially, I have gotten to pick up where I left off. The worst part has been having to get used to Spirit poles since coming into UMass, the last time I had used one was relays junior year when I went up, stalled out, and crashed back down one the runway scraping up my side. Needless to say, that was a bit of a mental block.

Well, I ought to get back to homework since as Chrissy said finals are quickly approaching. I’m hoping that with this kind of start to the season I can maybe, just maybe PR for the first time since leagues sophomore year.

Oh! Doug, coach Bell from Pioneer Valley Pole Vault says hi.

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Kwanzaa! Happy winter solstice! Happy other winter holidays that I can’t remember since I don’t feel like running down to the lobby!

Bless me, PPVCers, for I have sinned.  It has been over a month and a half since my last post….I think.

Well, hello again!

I think it might be better to just separate this post out into categories: Athletics & Academics.

Athletics:  Training has taken an interesting turn this year.  I had been mostly injury-free (besides nasty shin splints) and training really hard.  I’ve done the most sprint-training since my freshman year back when I actually was a sprinter.  It felt really good for a while to be back on the track, but then it took a nasty turn.  I was pounding too hard on my legs.  I was absolutely useless on actual pole vaulting days.  I couldn’t get off the ground.  My runway was off.  Coach Jackson said I was running “gingerly” towards the box–which is not something I take lightly.  I’m proud of my powerful runway, because well…for a while that’s all I really had going for me in pole vaulting (probably still is!).  It looked like workouts were starting to do more harm than good.

So we both decided (okay, Coach decided) that I would pull back on the pounding and focus on keeping legs fresh.  My training is off the track, very little sprinting and more mechanics and technical stuff.  Pole vault practices are the pounding days and he wants me to treat them more like meets when it comes to my legs.  He wants to really see how I can get stuff moving and have quality practices because I’m already in good shape running-wise.  We’d taken the approach of less is more.  It’s always kind of hard to hear that–especially when you’ve been taught your whole life to train hard and push harder to work for what you want.  But you can’t just train hard, you have to train smart.

Then I got into a car accident.

I’ll bet you were starting to think there wasn’t going to be anything crazy in this post.

My mom and I got rear ended at a stop light coming from Red Apple Farm in Phillipston, MA.  A big pickup truck towing a trailer with 4-wheelers on it didn’t stop in time and crashed into us.  No one was seriously hurt, but we had a lot of weight slam into the back of our vehicle (my previous car, my 95 Jeep Grand Cherokee–which surprisingly took the hit like a CHAMP!).  It resulted in some serious soreness and whiplash for the both of us, which meant a week off for me and multiple trips to the chiropractor and athletic trainers.

As stressful as it was to manage the before-Thanksgiving-”get all your work in”, now adding scheduled appointments, and that I was in so much pain I couldn’t even carry a backpack around campus, I was grateful for the week off from track.  My legs recovered nicely and I came back feeling fresh and ready to jump.  I already see an improvement in practice and I’m taking better quality jumps.

We’re still continuing with the less is more routine, so it’ll be interesting to see what Winter training will have in store for me when we go up to 3 sessions a day and start competing.

Academics: This semester flew by!  This week is the last week of classes and finals start next week.  I’m ready for the break.  I believe I’m going through what they describe as “burnout”, at least that was a vocabulary word from one of my education classes for “teachers who have little to no motivation for their work and tend to take it out on their students.”  I hear ya, Teach.  Except I don’t take it out on my students, more like my roommates and family (when I see them). I wander the house grunting, “UGH!” and they hear obscenities coming from my bedroom while I click clack away at yet another paper.  (Thanks, guys! Love you!)

But ’tis the season to be jolly.  Christmas/Winter break is almost here!

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.

Hello all! I hope everyone had a great summer and start to fall! My summer went well. After my season ended I took a couple weeks off then started running again to get back in shape for preseason. I started off small and increased my mileage each week. By the end of the summer I was doing about 4 miles 3 times a week. Which is quite an accomplishment for me considering I’m about as far from a distance runner as you can get.  In addition to running I did a conditioning circuit twice a week. Nothing too intense but just enough to stay in shape. I went down to Westborough when I could, but it was a bit difficult to get there very often while working. I was working at the place where I did gymnastics. When I did vault I mainly just had fun with it. After vaulting competitively for 6 months it was nice to not stress about vaulting and just have fun; remind myself what a great and fun sport it was, even though it can get extremely frustrating at times.

But anyway, I felt pretty in shape heading into preseason. During preseason we run a timed 5k on Mondays, trying to beat our time each week. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we do a conditioning circuit or prisoner squats. As you can guess by the name, prisoner squats are NOT fun. It’s basically jump squats up a set of bleachers, run down and do the same for the next section of bleachers. I did the math out to over 200 jump squats. The circuits are pretty tough too, but not as bad as the prisoner squats. Wednesdays we usually did just a 25 minute recovery run. And Fridays were captains practice and we’d just go for a slow jog. We also do abs after practice everyday and lift twice a week. So preseason is not very fun. But now we are vaulting again and life is good! Now we have sprint practices on Mondays which are usually pretty miserable. This week we did 400, 300, 200, 400, 300, 200; it was pretty awful. But then Tuesdays we vault! Yay! Wednesday we do drills usually. This week we did a ton of baby hurdle running drills. Thursdays we vault again. And Fridays vary. This week we did pole runs and short sprints.

It felt amazing to get back on the runway this week. Even though we just did 3 steps on Tuesday and got back to 4 on Thursday, it was still great.  We still have a month until our first meet so there’s no rush in getting back to full runs. We’ll just be really working on form for the next couple weeks. But I look forward to seeing some fellow patriots at the first meet!

As far as life outside of track, I’m currently on co-op. Which basically means I’m working full time instead of taking classes. It’s a great way to gain some experience in your field before graduating. I’m working at Children’s Hospital and love it! I’m super busy during the week. Work 7:30-4, then straight to practice. But nights and weekends I have some time to relax since I have no homework. It’s pretty great!

Well that’s it for now! Hope everyone else’s training is going well!

I guess you don’t realize how much something weighs you down until it’s finally over.

Throughout the entire NCAA-Indoor-Compliance-eligibility issue,  I remained as positive as I could knowing everything would work out eventually, no matter what the outcome was.  Everything always works out.  Because it has to!

It wasn’t until I finally received an email from our Assistant Compliance Director with the attached letter from the NE-10 conference that I realized how  much this stress was bringing me down.

“Based on the information provided to this office, it is determined that Christine meets all the requirements for the granting of a hardship waiver per NCAA bylaw 14.2.5 and is eligible to regain her season of competition in Indoor Track and Field.”

I jumped.  I yelled.  I screamed.  I danced.  A huge weight was lifted off my shoulders.  I called my mom, dad, brother, stepdad–even if no one answered!  I texted Coach Jackson super excited.  It was all finally over!!

Now that this stupid stuff is over with, it has completely changed my mental approach to practice and training.  I have a much clearer goal and focus.  It’s not some wishy washy, “well, I might be competing for indoor, but definitely outdoor.”  Yes. I’m competing.  My motivation has soared off the charts. Good.  I’m competing.  NOW LET’S GET IT!

I’ve really been surprising myself throughout this preseason training.  I’m excited about the progress I’ve made so early.  It’s only October and I’m making huge improvements at practice.  I’m jumping pretty consistently at 12′ at practice (6 inches above my PR), working on staying close to the pole up top and extending higher to get a bit more height.  I’m actually turning!  It only took 8 years.  I just recently started working with 13ft poles.  I’ve gotten on a few light ones, but do absolutely nothing with them when I get in the air.  It’s going to take some getting used to.  This week I’m going to start doing my pole runs and drills on 13’7″s so hopefully it’ll help me get the timing down and be less intimidated by something new.  To sum up, I need to stop being a baby and jump.

We’ve also started talking about pulling me back to 7 steps instead of 5 steps.  That will be very interesting.  I’ve jumped from 5 steps since my freshman year of high school.  Stay tuned for that fun!

I also have my tarsal tunnel syndrome in check.  It’s a condition that I will have for the rest of my life, but it’s about making the pain more manageable.  Heat, ice, ultrasound, the goods.  I’ve also worked out a few lifting plans with the weight room staff that are easier to fit into my schedule, mixing days together, focusing on more on the main lifts, and just getting in the weight room whenever I can.

So as usual, things have finally made their way back on track.  I knew it would eventually, it’s just exhausting in the process.  We’re halfway through the fall semester and it’s time work hard, finish strong, and start get pumped for winter training and indoor track–now that I know I actually have an indoor season.  :-)

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.

Preseason is in full swing.  Midterms are upon us and I’m just trying my best to keep myself together without getting too overwhelmed.

I’d like to say that I’m nicely settled in my senior year schedule, but it seems to be always changing and throwing something else at me.  For the most part, it’s class, work, practice, while still trying to fit in a meal or two and time to read the four novels a week I need to complete,and paper upon paper, upon paper.  Oh, and sleep.  Unfortunately, lifting has been getting the worst of it.  I’m TERRIBLE at getting to the weight room after two straight weeks of not missing a day, which is actually really good for me.  Well, that stopped when the schoolwork got piled on and I couldn’t call out of work (no work = no money = nowhere to live).  But I’m getting REALLY good at close readings and critical analysis of our readings.  I question EVERYTHING.  It blows my mind.  Drives me crazy, actually.  To the point where I start talking in circles. [Like I didn't do enough of that before.]

The biggest stress in my life right now is certainly the NCAA Compliance issue that I’ve been trying to fix for a few months now.  It has been a serious roadblock in a lot of the usual preseason activities.  I have been getting the runaround since the beginning of the school year and NOTHING has happened. I had a lovely conversation with UMass Lowell compliance office that went along the lines of:

“So…you started at UMass Amherst this fall?”

“No, I’ve been there for a year.   This will be my second year competing there.”

“Oh, really? You transferred last year?”

Now picture me giving a “really?!?!?!” face with the phone pressed against my ear.

I had another lovely conversation, no–verbal lashing–from our very own compliance office at UMass Amherst.  I was insulted and belittled from the confident 22 year old respectful and mature adult I am to calling Coach Jackson bawling like a little girl,

“*sniffle*BUT SHE *sniffle* YELLED AT ME *cough* AND *sniffle* WAS. SO. MEAAAAAN! I. JUST. ASKED. A. QUESTION!”

I genuinely still don’t even know what happened in that conversation.  There was a huge misunderstanding that I apologized profusely for while being as respectful as possible.  I really wanted to yell, “YOU’RE NOT EVEN LISTENING TO ME!”  I guess she was having a very bad day and took it out on the unsuspecting athlete asking for guidance–me.  She had already made up her mind and was going to speak over me and insult me.  It was uncalled for and very unprofessional.  Needless to say the athletic department received a strongly worded email from Miss Chrissy Silvar herself.  Yay for adulthood.

On top of all this, the good ol’ tarsal tunnel syndrome has been acting up again.  I went the entire year last year without a problem with it and it’s started up again.  If I were reading my story in class, I’d raise my hand in literature discussion and say, “I think it’s interesting to point out that while this whole compliance process is going on, our heroine is plagued by the same injury she lost her indoor season with 4 years ago while her new indoor season is held in the hands of the directors and doctors of the NE-10 conference.” Coincidence? Dramatic irony?

I probably need new arch supports in my sneaks.