The indoor season is quickly coming to an end with the World Championships just over a week away at this point. This has been the most extensive indoor season that I’ve had since about 2005, and that’s because the plan all along was to build on things from meet to meet. I definitely think I’ve been doing that and fortunately enough, things are coming together at just the right time. Before heading to Doha I’ve made a stop in northern France for a meet being held in Lievin on Friday evening. As I’ve said before, the meet on Friday will be a “systems check” before the first round of Worlds on the 12th. Speaking of “systems checks” though, I competed at a relatively low key meet at George Mason this past Sunday and although I had planned on taking just one jump (because I had a weight session afterwords), I ended up taking 4 and managed to run ALL the way to AND through the board on 3 of them. 2 of the 4 jumps produced “big fouls” but as we all know, there are no such things as “big fouls,” only “big jumps.” Still, the meet was definitely a success for me, I was able to actually feel what my approach should be like from here on out and on Friday I’m just going to duplicate what I did on Sunday so that I truly get it down before hopping over to Qatar.

Back to the subject of the fake World Tour that I’m on at the moment though. Ayanna and I spent some time in Paris in August and as you can imagine, northern France (our hotel is in Lesquin) is nothing like Paris and certainly not during March when its only 40 degrees. Everybody has been quite helpful and very hospitable though and they seem to love the fact that I speak French (to some extent). On top of that, the hotel isn’t bad and although I wish there was more water available to us, the meals are free and even edible so you’ll hear no complaints out of me. I got to do a little bike/treadmill workout once I got here so my body feels pretty good for having just flown for 7+ hours, but I’m looking forward to getting a track workout in today.

Check out the startlists for Friday at: http://www.meeting-pasdecalais.com/6LIEV10StartListau3mars21h00.pdf. It seems as if all of the events are packed with top level talent and my guess is that everybody is trying to get a meet in before Worlds, like myself. As far as the TJ field is concerned; I think all but maybe 2 of us will be heading to Doha over the weekend so as far as test runs go, Friday’s meet will likely produce something relatively close to the competition atmosphere I’ll get next week. At the end of the day though, it will still be just another meet where I’ll be trying to bring as much speed in my approach as possible and work on my hop phase…much like I have all season.