Reno: The Trip Out to…

Where to begin? We decided to jump Wednesday night from a short run. This means Bryan and I did not leave Wednesday at 5pm, we decided to crash quickly and wake up early. We were up around 2:20am (after about 4-5 hours of sleep). Hit 57 North around 2:50am and shot up to Chicago Midway for our flight, that left at 7:40am. We were the super early...stood in line forever...then hit the gates and awaited takeoff. The plane taxied in on time and we boarded around 7:30am. I was really tired so I took a nap, before we took off. I was knocked out for about an hour...only to awake to the same sight. We had sat on the runway for over an hour and went nowhere. Then to add insult to injury the following announcement was made by the stewardess "I'm sure many of you see your luggage still on the carts. We are having a bagging issue on the plane. There is not enough room in the cargo area for all of the bags. We will have to leave some luggage behind. It’s either us or the luggage." So you guessed right, we barely made our flight in Vegas to Reno and when we touched down in Reno one of the three bags we initially checked showed up. It wasn't my bag, but at least there was a size 9 set of track spikes in there.

It was not all bad, we ran into a seasoned vet in Vegas. Pat Manson happened to be on our flight to Reno, he interview Bryan about his "perspective" on the pole vault and the terminology he used. He definitely has some forward, progressive thinking/approach/questioning. Pat Mason is a legend, basically the pole vault example of Cal Ripken...or something (I don't really know baseball like that)...but the guy is Crazy Consistent, 22 years and counting over 18', while I'm just trying to string one 18 footer up there. Still he brought some good points out of Bryan...some stuff we have beeeeeen working on, but didn’t have sufficient terminology. Here were some excerpts of the conversation that stuck with me:
-Manson told us Rick Attig used the terms "bar eluding movements" to explain bar clearance (basically don’t touch the bar).
-There can not be any pauses/breaks in the natural motion of the swing/inversion or the vaulter won't utilize the maximum amount of pole energy.
-"Bubka's Model" shows that he kept pressure on his biggest poles, as opposed to bailing on the jumps where he might have felt unsafe, he committed to the invert and that downward pressure kept the pole moving.
-Vaulters have to recognize the difference between passive and active technique in the vault (weak/strong or off/on)...however you put it, know that it takes to work to jump high.

Check out patmanson.com
Check back for more updates.

If you are in Reno find me, buy some Jump High Bracelets.

4:35pm Update- No Bags nor Call