Hecticly Well

Sorry guys, I owe you all as I've been doing a terrible job of keeping you guys updated. I've gotten through March and all the travels involved with a solid start to the outdoor season.
The meet at Davis wasn't anything amazing on the performance end, but above all, it was a great chance to get home around the family and friends. It's partially pretty tough going home whenever I do get the chance. My friends, my family...the sun, it's all incredibly tough to leave to come back to Boston. As much as a move from the west coast to the east coast is exactly opposite of what anyone would draw up, however at the time it was the best move for me and I've got a great situation going here. The Aggie Open was my first chance to be outside, as heavy snow this year hasn't even allowed me a single training day outdoors, so I was curious how it'd turn out. The hurdles felt incredibly long - as the first 110m run always does when compared to the indoor 60m hurdles (twice as many hurdles) - but I ran a decent opening time dispite mauling a few of the closing barriers. The vault was a very disappointing no-height as I was eager to show off some of the new poles in front my incredibly generous friends who have donated to the Pole-A-Thon (mchisam.com), but the real big event of the day was the disc. As I mentioned, I've had limited opportunities to get any disc training in this year and the day before the meet was the first time touching an actual disc since the summer, but I was able to pull off a throw just a couple feet under my lifetime best. In fact, I think most of my throws the day before in training (with my alma mater high school team) were even farther, so we shoud have some good things coming there real soon.
After returning from California I got in a couple more days in Mass. before traveling to Houston for 10 days on Spring Break with the Harvard Team. There I got in some great training in the sun and came away with a strong opening to the Long Jump in a meet at Rice University.
We returned to the cold and winds of the early outdoor New England season in April with the Penn Invite at U of Penn. There I had a bunch of coaching to do but I wanted to retry the hurdles to see where I was at and was pleasantly surprised to walk away with the win and a solid 14.78 into a legitimate 1.8 headwind. A decent time for me even on a still day this early. I think i've finally been making some breakthroughs in my hurdles so it's good to see the times matching the feelings in practice.
For now, however, this meets are going to be all I have for a while as the collegiate season really picks up. I'm not sure I'll have any chances to compete before the Italian Multistars meet in May which leaves me a bit anxious, but it gives me a great four week cycle to really put the head down for some good training. In college I would have freaked out going multiple weeks (or a single week for that matter) without a competition, but as I get older I'm really discovering how much competing actually takes out of you and how weeks without a meet provide for much more solid training. As it is I'm feeling really good about myself right now and based on the testing I did last week, the training is going really well. I blew away some of my PRs in the quad test and I'm starting to walk around a little taller. I think all althetes have some sort of cue they feel when things are going well and they're starting to feel really good. For me, when im beat up or out of shape, I feel big and heavy. I feel wide. When I feel good, I feel tall. Normally something I don't notice, but when I get on the track, or even walk into a room when training I am training hard and feeling good, I feel like im a foot taller than anyone else there. Just about every event has made some big breakthroughs in the past couple of weeks and I swear I had to duck under a doorway the other day (possible exaggeration), so Multistars, here we come.


Next Up: Multistars Decathlon, Descenzano Italy, May 9-10