12/27 – 1/3
Saturday: Missed practice (sick)
Monday: Meet 2!
Tuesday: Blocking drills, kickbacks, relay practice
Wednesday: Practice @ UMO -> kneeling throws, distance throws, relay practice
Thursday: No practice/New Year’s Day
Friday: Blocking drills, form throws, relay practice
Saturday: Black Bear Relays!
Training: We’ve been working on blocking this week, which is the stabilization of the left leg/hip and the use of the left arm to bring around a right-handed thrower to increase the velocity of the shot. I’ve never been able to block effectively, so I’m glad that we’ve been working on it. We also ran every day to prepare for the throwers’ running relay. Our group was a few rungs below excited, but we ran it.
Meet 2: I hadn’t been to practice in a week, so I was a bit nervous about this one. I started out by finding that I left my track sneakers at home! It wasn’t a big deal, but it threw me off a bit. We had three girls compete in shot put for the first time, so the rest of us spent a good portion of warm-ups helping our teammates. They did so well! One of them has adopted my (horrible) technique for throwing, which is basically a side-shuffle. It works for her, but it’s hard to train out of. I’ve tried the glide off-and-on with mixed results and have decided to switch to it again starting with Meet 3.
Anyway, one of our shots got battle scars because some genius tried to balance on it with spikes on. The only other shot we had is this “grapefruit” shot, which is solid, hard plastic and weighs 9 pounds versus 8.8, which makes a bigger difference than it sounds. I used it in finals and threw farther, but Coach won’t let me use it. We all did well, considering it was a vacation meet.
Black Bear Relays: Our team was missing a lot of girls, but we went out there to improve and many of us did. Coach had the throwers warming up ridiculously early. I re-injured my wrist while we were starting warm-ups, so I spent time helping the newer girls. On my first throw, I made my injury worse. Coach wanted me to stop throwing, but I’m stubborn about throwing at meets. I promised him that I’d see the trainer after I was done. My next throw was my best, but I didn’t do that well. Fortunately, the two other girls in my relay did amazing; we beat our mark from last year by three feet! The running relay could have been better. I was the lead leg and unfortunately got us way behind the other teams. Our third leg caught us up, but we still ended up last. The good news is that our time was our best in four years – 2:34! I was happy and upset at the same time.. kind of strange, eh? At least I’ll never be entered in a 220! We have a big meet on the 9th, so I’m looking forward to that.