Backyard Record

After 5 weeks of mostly physical boredom, do to fear of a medium threat knee injury, I decided that it was time to test it out. I started putting some mileage in on the bike about a week and a half ago and it has held up well so I felt confident it was time to do a test run, literally. While I was trying to decide what I should do for a running workout I reminded myself that for almost two years, I didn't do any running workouts, unless I was vaulting. So, although not on the safest course of action possible, the argument still seemed fairly logical, and I've been dying to jump obviously.
Home alone (don't jump alone, like all good coaches always say 'do like I say, not like I do') I headed down the dirt hill to my pit with a bag of random sized poles not knowing what to expect. For the first time in years, I did straight pole drills to warm up, knee felt great. I went back to a 14 step run ("7 lefts" if your from the western half of the US) and took some jumps. My camera with a view finder had a dead battery, so I had no way to catch my take off step or mid mark but I didn't really care, went by feel, just like the tougher pioneers of pole vault had too in the old days. My GoPro had some juice so I figured I would at least document my jumps for later viewing. A modest opinion of what I was potentially capable of that day, I started with a height of 15'7" after clearing it put the bar on the next set of pegs at 16'7", made it, then put the bar on the next set of pegs, so I didn't have to mess with the standards of course, at 17'7" clearing that with surprise. A long drug out story to tell you something that in your life is something close to meaningless, but in mine brought me a great feeling of joy, I broke the backyard pole vault record at my home facility, finally reclaiming ownership of the mark, and I did it at an extremely random and unlikely time with odd circumstances. When you perform well after weeks of zero preparation and a year of scattered half ass training, you always wonder what the hell you were doing wrong all those years you thought you were perfectly prepared. All you can do is laugh about it and enjoy the strange irony.

I would show you the video, but the jump was ugly enough that I'm embarrassed to share it, and I don't invite online outside analysis often, so here is a snap shot from the video of me sneaking over 17'7". I was on a 15.4 flex (195lb), 5.00m(16'5")pole, gripping 15'3", 14step (7left) run.