As you can all imagine, it has been a particularly difficult week, given the catastrophic earthquake that hit Haiti on Tuesday. My family was indeed affected by the tragedy, and though we still have not had direct contact with my relatives on the island, we have received news that most of my relatives are “ok.” My grandparents were staying in Port-au-Prince and several of my family members actually flew down to Haiti on Tuesday, hours before the earthquake. So what “ok” exactly entails will remain a mystery until someone can get through via telephone. With that said, although we had some idea before, my teammate Moise Joseph and I agreed that we’re now a bit more cognizant of the fact that our competing internationally for Haiti isn’t just about us. I had been planning on opening my season this past weekend for some time now though and still ended up heading down to College Station, TX and the Texas A&M Invitational to do just that.

After each meet I do my own post-meet analysis and though I’ll hold off on giving y’all ALL of those details I’ll at least share how things went overall and my general feelings on the meet. Notwithstanding the fact that Ayanna and I weren’t told that unattached athletes wouldn’t be allowed to compete in the finals until she’d already completed her first 3 jumps and I was on the runway just about to start mine; this was my best season opener to date. So in light of all the negatives that I took away from my performance, and the fact that I was vexed at not knowing about only being allowed three attempts before booking my travel, I have to consider the meet an overall success and a performance that I can definitely build from.

Last year I began the season with a 15.93m performance and was able to get out to 16.22m this past Saturday. Considering the practices that I had last week, I had a bigger jump than 16.22m in mind going into the meet so I was of course initially disappointed. My approach this year is further back than it has been in the past (like at the World Championships where it looked like I was running half the distance of all the other competitors!), so getting used to the new cadence of the approach and additional strides, seems like it will definitely take some time. I can say that without a doubt, my horrid approach this weekend was the reason for my falling short of my goal. I didn’t run entirely through the board and thus couldn’t get the hop phase my coach and I have been working on. There were other things that didn’t go particularly well but I’m certain that if I fix just my approach and hop, this 16.22 performance easily ends up being 16.70m+! I’ll consider putting footage of the jump in the “videos” section so you guys can see what I’m talking about.

I planned on competing just three or four times going into the World Championships and it’s now looking like 4 is the magic number since the meet this past weekend felt more like a practice than a full competition. I’m currently looking for a meet to compete at this coming weekend before heading to New York the first weekend of February. Odds are that I will be at the PG Sports Complex in Landover, Maryland competing at an all-comers meet this Sunday. I suppose “beggars can’t be choosers” especially since I just need a runway, a pit and some officials so that I can work on things in a meet setting. Back to work in the mean time which also unfortunately means getting ready for the first day of classes tomorrow.

Please don’t hesitate to check out www.yele.org or the Red Cross if you’re looking to make a difference in Haiti. There was always a reason for my providing the Yele link on my site’s main page, but their efforts are now several times more important than before. It really is greatly appreciated!