Track takes up a lot of my life. I spend at least an hour at practice a day, plus lifting, plus meditating/visualizing/watching video, and sometimes distance runs or extra core workouts. It requires blood (which happened this past week), sweat (which happens all the time), and tears (which happened a few weeks ago). It requires a mentality that is confident and fierce, especially for pole vaulting where a lack of confidence can mean injury and scary vaults extremely quickly.
I’m still working on the mentality, but I’m definitely more confident now than I used to be.
Today at Indoor Conferences at Haverford, all the work I’ve put into this season paid off. Coming off a disappointing performance in the shotput, where I just wasn’t using the power I have, I was determined to do better and make improvement. For me, it was about time.
And then an amazing thing happened: I made a personal record of 8ft 6.25in.
And then I was very close to making 9ft. I ultimately didn’t make it, but the jump that was close was the best one I did in my entire life, and that counts for a lot.
And I was fifth place overall.
This indoor season had me questioning why I’m on the track team. Sure, I have friends on the team, but the sport itself has a lot to do with it. Making no progress made me wonder why I kept pushing myself and doing drills and covering myself in bruises from the training.
Now I know why. The feeling of reaching a goal, of improving, is one of the best things in the world, especially after putting in a lot of hard work. And in this case, hearing my name announced with a rundown of the top eight in the event was a glorious moment.
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