I'm waiting for some Jimmy John's sandwiches to be delivered to my hotel room in Des Moines, and I don't know what else to do but write a new post.
I throw tonight at 6:00pm at USAs! I kind of like it when competitions are later at night. I get to relax all day and get some stuff done if I choose (like paint my nails, which I already did). I also like to watch movies :).
I'm currently in the market for some new methods of carrying-on to planes. Ever since my bags got misplaced on my way to a meet in London last year, I travel with the essentials at all times. My uniform and shoes are always in my carry-on, with some extra exercise gear and toiletries for good measure. The thing is, that stuff adds up to a lot of weight on my back if it's in a normal old backpack! I know it's not the coolest thing in the world, but I'm really excited about purchasing a rolling backpack. Don't hate. There might be some Asics ones out there! I figure that I can wear it as a backpack before I check my bags, and roll it around with me after. It's difficult to roll two bags and carry javelins, so this seems like the best option.
Russ's dad, Brad, traveled to San Diego for a visit last weekend! It was really fun to have him there, and it was his first-ever trip to the beautiful city. We did a lot of fishing. Actually, Russ and Brad did a lot of fishing, and I did a lot of eating, sleeping, and watching them fish :). We did go on a hike at Sunset Cliffs, though, and that was beautiful. I want to spend more time there!
We also took a chartered fishing trip with H&M Landing, and I caught a red rock fish. He was pretty!
We spent the day that Brad left at Fiesta Island, grilling and cooking seafood and playing games. I love a day in the sun with good friends :). We even watched as Stacy played badminton and went for beach walks at 9 months pregnant! What do you know, the next day she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Allyx Josephine. Congratulataions new parents, Ian and Stacy Waltz!! Here's a (weird) picture of Russ and I with baby Allyx!
My sandwiches are here; one for now and one for before I throw tonight! Gotta eat lunch and watch a movie before I get ready. Yay!
On Wednesday, I will board a plane to the 2010 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. The competition will be held at Drake Stadium in Des Moines, Iowa; the same venue I competed in Drake Relays at. I'm excited! I compete on Friday (6/25) at 6:00pm (Central time).
Because of all my missed-meet woes lately, I've gotten a LOT of good practice in. At first, that lots of practice messed with my body a little bit. I think at this point in the season, a track and field athlete's body is ready to compete, not keep pounding in practice day after day.
Something's gotta give,
and I had two somethings kinda give! About three weeks ago, my upper right back/shoulder blade area and my left Achilles tendon became aggravated for no apparent reason. Both those issues have plagued me slightly since, but are clearing up nicely now. Ty says that sometimes your body just does weird things before competing at a championship! I guess...
All year, I've been working hard to improve my technique. Some main points we've been trying to develop are landing behind my block after impulse, really slotting my right arm in a good position, landing closed, and waiting to push my chest until my left is down.
The mind is a powerful thing,
and I really feel that when I am forced to take time off from throwing by injury/aching, I get better when I come back to the runway because of all the thinking I get done! My last two throwing sessions have been awesome as far as hitting the positions I mentioned consistently. Yay!
If you ask Russ (or anyone really, including me), I'm not the most explosive athlete out there. This can make my weightroom sessions somewhat frustrating! I'm strong, sure, but maybe I use the wrong muscles for certain lifts or maybe I'm not explosive in the right directions. Lifting weights the right way transfers much more to throwing than my awkward way, though. Therefore, I've been doing my very best to learn proper Olympic lifting technique! On Thursday, I had snatch pulls (that's not the best link...), and I finally used my hips correctly and kept my back solid on all my repetitions! I was SO happy. I'll keep that up I think :).
I'll be roommates with Britney at USAs! I'm planning to throw on Friday night, watch some events on Saturday, drive my rental car up to see my Grandparents and hang out with Mom in Fort Dodge on Saturday night, and head back to Des Moines to watch Russ throw shot and catch my flight on Sunday!
In other news, I got into another meet! Pre was already on my schedule, and now I'm throwing on July 5th in the Harry Jerome International Track and Field Classic in Vancouver, B.C.! I haven't been to Vancouver to visit in my adult life, and I'm really excited about it. Russ, Melinda, and Krista Woodward will be there, too! If all goes according to plan, I'll go straight to Europe after Harry Jerome.
I'm still in Chula Vista. By myself. Because (it seems like) everyone else gets to travel and compete and I don't yet! We all know that the Brazil thing didn't work out because of the Visa agency. The Rome thing isn't working out just because they don't want me yet, and the Spain and Switzerland things (the meets I wanted to attend on the 9th and 12th of June in place of Rome) aren't working out because I'm told they don't have money and already have a bunch of athletes entered. So, I'm here, training and preparing for...what? Maybe a meet on the 12th or 14th locally, but maybe nothing before USAs (I throw on the 25th at Drake Stadium in Des Moines, Iowa).
It seems like this season was already a bit of a waiting game before recent disappointments. I had that back spasm before Drake, and had to play by ear whether or not I would throw. That worked out. Then I went to Tucson, where I didn't know if I would throw on the second day of competition after I found out I probably wasn't going to Brazil. That worked out, too. Now I'm waiting a) to get into some meets and b) to execute techniques I've had the chance to really focus on since I'm not traveling. Those things will most likely work out.
Even though plans change, javelin (and the way I approach it) remains the same.
Meanwhile, I'm house-sitting this weekend. It worked out (whaddya know) that I get to hang out at this awesome house-complete with awesome pool, awesome dog, and awesome cat-just when I was feeling kinda down and disappointed with my circumstances. It's great to have a little responsibility thrown at you when you get to feeling too sorry for yourself. The cat seems to say to me, "You stop that sulking right meow!"
Speaking of the cat (Cairo), he doesn't like Bentley (Yoo Kim and Katherine's dog) very much. Katherine was over yesterday after we let Bentley and Aurora (the dog I'm watching) play, and Cairo got a little upset, made some weird noises, and tried to attack Bentley through the screen door! Odd, but funny. Bentley was very respectful of the cat's wishes that he not come anywhere near after the altercation!
I took Aurora on the best walk today. We went to her normal canyon trails and park, but instead of coming straight back, sat in the shade for a while and hung out. There is just something about being completely happy with where you're at in a moment, and dogs show that attitude off so well.
She rolled around and let me pet her, and was SO HAPPY the whole time. It's therapeutic to make a dog's day better!
And, of course, I wore some Asics shoes. So great :).
Russ and Drew Ulrick are in Brazil, and they got second and third at the meet in Uberlandia today!
Good work, guys. :)
Speaking of those two...the three of us (Russ, me and Drew) got to go to the Reid Park Zoo in Tucson on Sunday before Russ and I left town! We were lucky enough to get a behind-the-scenes tour from one of Adam's roommates, Jed. It was amazing. When you go to a zoo, all you see is the animals in their habitats, minding their own business and maybe not seeming that happy. When you get to go on an exclusive tour of the Tucson Zoo and meet animals like Shaba the elephant, Denver and Texas the giraffes, DJ the mandrill, and Kobe the polar bear, you see the special relationship that the keepers form with the animals and what a great service zoos do for education, not to mention sustaining species of animals.
We got to feed the giraffes carrots! I tried to pet one of them, but I guess they don't like that very much. Their tongues are black instead of pink so they don't get sunburned! I heard somewhere a long time ago that a giraffe tongue can take the skin off of a human, but I don't think that's true, as I still have the skin on my hands.
I don't know if you know this about me, but I LOVE elephants. In March of 2009, Russ and I came to San Diego to visit the training center and make sure we wanted to move here, and on our trip, we got to see a two-day-old elephant at the San Diego's Zoo's Wild Animal Park. I am not even embarassed to say that I cried a little bit when I saw him. Up to this point in my life though, I haven't had (that I remember) a close encounter with one.So, when Jed's girlfriend Cassie took us into the elephant exhibit to meet Shaba, a huge female African elephant, I was beyond words. Cassie asked Java to lay down and stand back up, lift up each of her feet, wave her trunk at us, and fan out her ears, among other tricks and behaviors. We got some great pictures at that point, and came back later to touch the bottoms of her feet (she's ticklish!), her side, and her tail. SO COOL.
Drew likes monkeys, so we met DJ, a male mandrill. He was in the overnight room behind the exhibit when we met him; he smiled at us, gave us a little head bob (apparently a sign of dominance...), and we fed him peanuts through the door of his room! It was awesome to see his little fingers reach for the food through the cracks! He doesn't eat the peanut shells either, so it was even more impressive that he peeled them off and just got at the good stuff.
Russ's enthusiasm for bears might equal mine for elephants. He even made little black bear stencils to put on his discuses, and they are really cool. The last animal we visited on our tour was Kobe, a 700-pound female polar bear. She was waiting at a chain-link fence behind her exhibit for Alicia, her trainer, when we all walked up! We each got a turn standing next to her and asking her to perform her behaviors for us; "Kobe, tongue" for her to lick our fingers through the fence or, "Kobe, open" for her to open her mouth wide and show her scary teeth! Once she did what we asked her to, we got to feed her a cracker! To have your fingers that close to a polar bear's mouth is kind of intense. I was struck by the urge to try and reach through the fence and pet the bear's head, and this sentiment let me know that I should never be a polar bear trainer; I'd most likely lose my perspective on the reality that these animals are extremely powerful! Better safe than sorry!
If you ever have the chance to see how zookeepers and trainers interact with their animals first-hand, it would be a big mistake to pass it up. It was simply incredible!
Ever since I first heard about the Tucson Elite Throwers' Classic at the University of Arizona, I have wanted to attend! However, I haven't gotten the chance because of a clash between this meet and the collegiate championship season.
This weekend was my first trip to Tucson, Arizona; loved it.
I drove the 6.5 hours with Russ on Tuesday morning after a massage for me and acupuncture for him at AcuSport Health Center. We have fun on road trips, no matter what he might tell you! A new trivia game on the iPad was helpful :). We drove straight to the track and did a shake-out, got some dinner with Adam Kuehl and girlfriend Courtney, and put in some shut-eye! Wednesday was a day of pre-meet practice, greeting thrower friends that arrived that day, and rest.
Tucson Elite is set up to mimic a bigger, championship season competition. The two-day format imitates the Olympic Trials, Olympics or Worlds in that there is a qualifying round (three attempts per athlete) followed 48 hours later by a final contested between the top 12 athletes from the qualifier. It's awesome to get some practice competing close together like this! There was a meet Thursday and another one Saturday. The meets started at 4pm with women's hammer, followed closely by and at the same time as all of the other throwing events! Women's javelin was at 7:30pm, and Russ threw discus at 5:30 and shot put at 8:30. I've never really done a shake-out/get-the-muscles-firing jaunt the morning of a meet, but I tried it out on Thursday. Kept it minimal; just a bit of a walking warm-up, maybe two 20-meter sprints and some low jumping before getting lunch and relaxing all afternoon (I watched Planet 51; juvenile but cute!).
Thursday was fun! Saturday was more fun!
Thursday I threw 60.33m on my first throw, and 60.14m on my second, followed by 4 throws in the 50s. It was my first meet with two throws over 60 meters! Then Saturday (I didn't do a shakeout/warm-up in the morning), I threw 61.74m on my first throw, 57m on my second, and 61.17m on my third! Two throws over sixty one meters. The biomechanists that USATF employs to analyze the different throwing events were in attendance, and watching video that Steve Leigh took from Thursday helped me keep my right shoulder higher, control my speed at the beginning of my approach, and try to keep my chest up at release on Saturday. Here's my best throw from Saturday (61.75m); as you can see, the chest still has a long way to go :).
As previously posted, my plan was to throw on May 20th (Thursday) in Tucson, then on May 26th (Wednesday) in Uberlandia, Brazil. However, Brazilian Visa drama struck on Friday morning around 6:45am. I received a wake-up call (literally!) from the lady helping me at the visa agency I am using in Chicago. She told me that she didn't think they would receive my Visa on Friday, meaning they wouldn't be able to overnight it that night, and I wouldn't be able to leave on Monday as planned because I need it (and my passport, which they have) to travel. The Consulate isn't open on weekends, so Saturday wasn't an option either. I talked to them this morning, and it really doesn't look like I'll be going to Brazil after all. The frustrating thing about this experience is that I followed directions. I called numerous times to make sure I was submitting the right paperwork and signing all the dotted lines I needed to, but it's not working out. Coach Jim Lathrop, my strength coach at Purdue, gave me a great piece of advice once.
He said to worry about what you can control.
I can control my attitude about the change of plans. I can control how I prepare for whichever meet will be my next. I'd rather focus on those things than get worked up about something I can actally learn from. Speaking of things I can control; it is well within my control to drive to the Brazilian Consulate in LA next time and get the Visa myself :).
Russ did amazing this weekend!!! He PRed in shot on Thursday, throwing three fair throws over 20.30m (the World A Standard from last year) with a best effort of 21.25m (69' 8"). Then on Saturday he had six shot throws over 20.30m, with exactly the same best effort of 21.25m! It was awesome to see him so fired up and competitive; he has been working so hard on technique and cementing throwing concepts that it was nice to see him let loose! He also had three or four discus throws on Saturday over 60m! What a STUD! Here's his best throw from Saturday, courtesy of Will Conwell's YouTube account. Britney was incredible as well!! She PRed in hammer on Saturday, twice. Her fourth throw was 70.90m, and her sixth was 71.15m. That's an America-leading throw :). I was so excited when I heard that I teared up! Go you.
I did something "trendy." I don't normally go out and buy things to keep up with the Joneses or what have you, but for traveling and entertainment purposes, I purchased an iPad. It's light and small, has great battery life, and I can read books on it! I love to read but I sorta hate traveling with books, so problem solved. Let's just all hope my eyesight doesn't suffer! The games I can get are really fun, but Russ pointed something out yesterday; people spend lots of money buying these expensive pieces of equipment, only to play simple, basic games on them. For example: large, powerful office computers are often used for Solitaire! That's not to say that we both don't enjoy playing Unblock Me on my iPad, though.
Russ wants to start spearfishing. Before I met him and we started dating, I had no idea there were so many different kinds of fishing to be done! Anyway, I think spearfishing is interesting, but unlike the other kinds of fishing I've tried with the best BF ever, I have no interest in participating in this kind. I would, however, like to get into other water activities! Snorkeling, scuba diving, stand-up paddle boarding, etc. Snorkeling here will be much different than what I remember it being when I was little in Hawaii, though; cooler water temperatures and murkier water are slightly scary to me! Therefore, I bought a nice wetsuit yesterday that was on super clearance sale as a first step to delving into new underwater fun. I'm excited!
Upcoming meets for me are as follows:
Tucson, Arizona: May 20th Uberlandia, Brazil: May 26th Maringa, Brazil: May 30th Hopefully: Rome, Italy: June 10th If Not: San Diego Mesa College: June 12th Des Moines, Iowa (USA Championships): June 25th
The meet in Rome is huge. The Diamond League makes its debut this summer, and the first meet with women's javelin is tomorrow in Doha, Qatar. Rome is the second. The start list for Doha doesn't have me on it and I'm sad, but I just have a little more proving myself to do!
I'm feeling awesome. I've been a little tired lately, but going to bed a little (sometimes a lot) earlier, taking a few more ice baths, and keeping up with my vitamins is essential for getting fresh again! When your body is complaining and you don't know quite why, make good decisions to get it better.
How you feel is mostly your responsibility!
All in all, I have been repeating generally great technique, and I feel like I have good power. I've also been getting back into a comfort zone in the weightroom; I'm still a little nervous that something might cramp up at any time since I've had such problems with that, but it's no way to live life, so I'll get over it soon :). I'm really looking forward to my impending flurry of competitions!
Happy Cinco de Mayo!! Kudos, Mexican army, for defeating the French army in the Battle of Puebla in 1862.
Today was a rest day for me, or at least a recovery day. I did a walking warm-up, hurdle mobility for my hips, and a bunch of rehabilitation stuff that helps the little, complicated parts of my body (ahem, shoulders) stay together.
I love days like this because I walk away from practice feeling whole and balanced.
I'm competing in two meets in Brazil at the end of May; Uberlandia on May 26th and Maringa on May 30th. In order to enter Brazil, Americans need a Visa. The process of getting one can be pretty complicated, and I spent the day post-practice filling out paperwork in order to get one. I don't know if you've ever gone through the process before, but it's a good idea to start early. Oops. Sometimes that's not possible in the track and field world!
Best to be flexible and open-minded at all times.
After dealing with all the business, I headed down to the field to watch Mike and Andreas Thorkildsen throw. Lately we've had a bunch of foreign throwers around the training center, and it's simply an awesome environment! Everyone is happy to be here and working alongside each other to improve; it's so fun to see four discuses (disci?) flying across the field at a time instead of just one, and getting to know everyone has been great. Alas, there will always be more ring throwers than javelin throwers!
I think there's something you can learn from everyone you meet,
and there's a lot I can learn from athletes that have already been in the professional track and field environment for a while. Tero Jarvenpaa, Mikaela Ingberg, and a younger thrower, Miko (who is very good but I don't know his last name and I feel terrible) are three Finns who trained here too. Mikaela is amazing. She has SO much experience and is super willing to share ideas, opinions, and advice. I'm not much of a brain-picker, but I asked her a fair few questions :).
Anyway! Watching Andreas and Mike throw today was really cool. I don't know if you know this, but Andreas is kind of a big deal, and to be able to even attempt to learn from a javelin thrower of his caliber is exciting!! Plus, he's a nice guy, willing to help younger, more inexperienced athletes (read: me).
Basically, this summer will be about getting as much international competition in as I can! I want to learn to be tough and always ready to release a big throw. This probably won't get accomplished in just one season, but I tend to expect a lot from myself. Being surrounded by people that encourage and challenge me to improve is never a bad thing!
Here's a picture of Mike, since he's my current favorite training partner :).
We did go on a hike at Sunset Cliffs, though, and that was beautiful. I want to spend more time there! 
