I keep saying that I need to blog on a more frequent and more consistent basis, and I really do mean it when I say it; let’s see if I can actually get the ball rolling in 2012 though.

In any case, for this first blog post of 2012 I just wanted to share an interview that I recently did with BBC Sports. Check it out, feel free to comment here and also check out (and ‘like’) my Facebook Fan Page while you’re at it since I share tidbits there a little more frequently than I do here.

Training is going really well and I most likely won’t open up my season until February, in anticipation of the World Indoor Champs. We’re getting into things a little bit more gradually this time around since I’ve already hit all of the important competition standards. I’ll be back with some training and other updates in the near future.

Happy New Year folks!

On October 27^th I’ll be competing at my second Pan American Games which are officially underway as of Friday. My performance in a torrential downpour in Rio de Janeiro in 2007 is pretty amusing now that I look back at it. I think I jumped 15.45m even though my season best that year was 16.31m. I am certainly not the athlete that I was then and unless one of my teammates beats me to it this year, I plan on coming away with Haiti’s first Pan American Games medal in athletics. Training since Daegu has been…interesting and somewhat up and down. I’m sure my body is a bit surprised by being in this phase of training all the way into October but with a couple weeks until Pan Ams we’re starting to kick training up even more and things are beginning to fall into place and finally starting to get excited about being back on the runway.  I’m definitely excited to be one of the 12 athletes (8 track and field, 1 tae kwon do, 1 judo, 1 tennis and 1 weightlifting) representing Haiti at the Games though! Compare that to the US’s 600 athletes.

The accommodations here are definitely pretty comfortable to say the least and Daegu pulled out all the stops for this village and as far as taking care of the athletes is concerned. The food leaves  a bit to be desired, but hey…it can’t all be perfect and luckily I brought a good amount of Rivalus Promasil along with some other snacks just in case.

My coach gets in today but the workouts I’ve done on my own since being here have gone pretty well; each one better than the next. I’ve already had three relatively light weight room sessions as well as a speed session so I’m getting nice and familiar with the track and with getting my body going early in the AM since I’ll be competing at 10:30 AM on Friday. Now that coach is here though I’ll hop on the runway for some approaches and light jumping.

The fact that I compete at the tail end of the meet means that I’ve been venturing out of the village only to hit the track and a shopping center that happens to be a five minute bike ride away. This is my 2nd time in Daegu and I didn’t do any sightseeing last time either but from what I’ve heard there isn’t too much to see anyhow; unlike Seoul where there’s plenty to see and do. I’ve been passing the time by making use of the Kindle app on my iPad, watching episodes of “Breaking Bad” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and of course tuning into the meet. I still wish I hadn’t blown the AC adapter for my Xbox on my first day here!

P.S. Huge thanks to Mizuno for helping us look like we belong at the World Championships.  They provided our team with some pretty amazing uniforms and gear!

I competed at the Aviva London Grand Prix two weeks ago now and although it didn’t go as expected (16.61m for 6th place), it felt good to get back on the runway without having Criminal Procedure, Secured Transactions, Evidence, Wills or some other bar exam topic in the back of my mind. My pre-meet workout felt great but when Saturday morning rolled around and it was time to warmup to compete, I felt a bit more tired than I would have liked. During the competition itself, I felt as if I was jumping well as far as technique is concerned aside from a flat jump phase, but I wasn’t running as well as I did down in Puerto Rico. At this point speed is the name of the game and I definitely didn’t have it then. Considering the fact that we’re now starting to do more and more speed work in practice though, I know my speed won’t be a problem in Daegu. On top of that, I’ll have more than just one day to get over the time zone shift which is what I dealt with out in London.

Last week was probably the final week where I’ll be lifting heavy and doing some “serious” jumping in practice so it seems we’re finally starting to taper off; especially as we get closer to about two weeks or so out from the first day of jumping in Korea. I actually had two jumping sessions in a week for the first time in a while last week. That was in addition to the heavy weight room loads that I mentioned but I know I needed a week like that. The benefit of our competition starting so late is the fact that I’m able to get these couple extra weeks of solid training in and I’m not complaining about at all. Still, I’m definitely excited as we start to shave things off here and there in training. I’m certain that the results will speak for themselves come Spetember 2nd and 4th.

Check back later this week for the results of my last, intense short approach jump session. Here’s how things went last time -

Click here to view the embedded video.

Training has also never been better over the past month. If you’d like to know why, see for yourself –

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve been working on fixing my jump phase by timing my arms better since it was flat in both Jamaica and Brazil. The whole timing/synchronization of the arms adjustment also helped my step phase as you can tell.

When the show got on the road down in Freeport last Saturday, I felt great, the crowd was engaged (even if it was only to cheer for Leevan) and I was ready to put up a big mark. Things didn’t exactly go that way though. I ended up fouling all of my respectable jumps, but at least they were jumps that I could live with…had I gotten a white flag on any one of them. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t great or even as good as the above training jumps but they were 17 meters+ and I can’t complain about 17 meter jumps. There’s also the fact that the runway had a 6 foot long jump board which meant that I wasn’t getting as much going into my jump phase as I would have liked and lost nearly all of my speed each time I landed on it.

I fouled a total of 4 of my 6 jumps and took one from way behind the board but here are a couple of those fouls –

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, something has to be said for the pit we were jumping into. Typically, there’s nothing better than hitting a pit when it is nicely raked and properly dug up. This pit over the weekend couldn’t have been any further from that. The pit was so hard that when your feet hit it, they slid out from under your as if you were trying to jump on concrete with cleats on. They tried digging the pit up after each round but it didn’t help at all and every jumper left the pit limping thanks to a sore tailbone. It wasn’t a good look; to say the least.

All in all, the trip was a great one. The Bahamian Federation and population in general were amazingly helpful and accommodating which made the trip that much more enjoyable. As far as my runway issues are concerned, I’d actually prefer fouling to the stutter-stepping I was doing all last year because it means that I’m finally running all the way down the runway and probably that I just have a better drive phase. I compete again next weekend in New York, as opposed to a month from now so I’ll be able to get a rhythm going finally which is great because I’m anxious to fix some things from last week and get a legal jump that reflects the level I’m ready to compete at!

P.S. — Photo credit to my teammate Alie Beauvais

After a reasonably long flight from Miami to Rio and about an hour drive to the hotel I was finally able to get a decent meal and then head straight to the track. Believe it or not, I laced up my spikes and did some bounding and accelerations/sprints to shake out the cobwebs and get some blood flowing in my legs again. The following day was a simple pre-meet warm up that included some hurdle hops along with some block starts to help me feel how I would like to drive in my first few strides on the runway. Looks like I should consider doing some sprinting on the side right? Or at least start giving folks lessons on coming out of the blocks! In all seriousness though, I felt great going into Thursday night’s competition and was ready to take care of business.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go exactly as planned although I won’t complain too much about the outcome. I started off warm ups having a little trouble with my approach and it was probably thrown off by the fact that I was driving, pushing and just running better down the runway. So after fouling my first jump, I jumped into the lead in the second round with a 16.92m attempt which ended up being my best of the night. That lead didn’t last long as I was eventually passed by two former World Championships medalists from Cuba (one jumping 16.95m and the other jumping 16.93m). I actually passed my 4th attempt because my knee started to feel a little sore in the third round so I figured it wasn’t worth it since 16.92m was a mark I could live with in my second “real” competition of the year.

The competition itself wasn’t bad although the stadium was pretty much empty except for the backstretch where the runways were. Even with people watching the competition it seemed like they were more interested in partying than cheering for competitors, although the Brazilian athletes got some solid support which is to be expected. I didn’t mind though since I get a boost just about any time I hear noise, music or cheering in the stands and I’m about to jump…even if it’s not for me.

The jumps themselves felt good and relatively effortless like they should. It would have been nice to get some video but that’s usually tough to do. I have been working hardest on my approach and hop-step as you all know and my jump phase hasn’t been what it will eventually be (or even what it usually is). I felt as if I wasn’t being patient and simply curled into a ball and cannon-balled into the pit and as a result probably robbed myself of at least an extra foot. That won’t happen anymore and I’m looking forward to fixing it the next time I compete which will hopefully be on June 11th at the Adidas Grand Prix in NY; if not there then June 25th in the Bahamas.

Finally a quick thanks to a couple new/relatively new sponsors that I am now happy to be working with: Mizuno and RIVALUS.

ON TO THE NEXT ONE…

After some uncertainty about whether or not I would be competing at the meet at all, I received my flight itinerary a little over two hours from the “wheels up” time so I was in hustle mode from the get-go. With my flight leaving from Baltimore as opposed to Washington National airport for some reason, I had a 45 mile drive in some thick Friday afternoon traffic before making it onto the plane.  Thanks to my tight schedule I found myself running from security to my gate (of course I first cut the security line to save some time) which is something I laugh at when I see other people doing. Guess I won’t be laughing anymore.

The flight to Kingston itself isn’t a long one really, but with the layover in Miami and then passport control in JA, I was exhausted by the time I got to eat dinner at almost midnight. Even so, I felt mostly rested on the day of the competition but the fact that we competed after 8PM didn’t help my cause. The meet itself was amazing though. It’s no mystery that track and field might as well be the national sport in JA and the crowd definitely reflected that fact. With probably no more than 25,000 people in the stands, it sounded as if there were 60,000 and the athletes definitely responded. For a meet in the first weekend of May there were some amazing performances across the board so as a fan of the sport, I had a great time! Ayanna being at the meet to compete in both the triple jump and long jump definitely helped my overall experience too though.

As far as the triple jump competition is concerned, like I hinted at above, we started a good bit behind schedule (about 40 minutes to be exact). On top of that, with all of the winds being headwinds, I’m not sure why we didn’t jump in the opposite direction. In any case, while I wish I had some video to share, I’ll just say that I ran through the board for the second time this season and jumped 16.80m into a 1.2m/s headwind on my first jump. The other jumps ended up being all over the place (all of them fouls either because I was over the board or ran out of the hop because things didn’t feel right) but the 16.80m felt easy and that’s a great thing. Getting the W is a good thing too and that jump was enough to do that. The distance could have/should have been a bit farther but my jump phase wasn’t as long and patient as it usually is but that’s an easy enough fix and a fix I’ll make at my next meet in Brazil.

This is a good starting point as the meets get more and more serious and competitive from here on out.

I set an indoor personal best yesterday and felt relatively comfortable doing it. Still, by now you know that indoors doesn’t excite me too much except that I appreciate being able to “train” in a competition atmosphere and at full speed. I also appreciate indoors as a preview of what to expect for outdoors considering things like the fact that because our training is focused on June through August we are still in a bit of a strength training phase.

I got back to work today though because I’m ready to go farther, much farther. Check out the meet footage below. I wish the first jump wasn’t a foul even though the last phase wasn’t near as good as my second jump. But, there’s no such thing as big fouls…only big jumps right?

Click here to view the embedded video.

P.S. If you haven’t yet, head on over to my Facebook fan page and hit the “like” button for me. I try to put up new blog posts as frequently as possible but I am able to post smaller updates over there as they happen.

My approach this year has been, respectable. Not great and not “exactly” where I think it should and eventually will be, but it is far better than last year. As a result, I am hitting the board with far more speed and my timing on each phase is a bit out of wack because of it. I feel as if I end up rushing things on the jumps rather than taking advantage of the extra speed and enjoying the ride on each phase. It boils down to timing though, because that is what influences foot placement and arm position; the two things that help to minimize ground contact time and also determine the amount of speed conserved throughout the jump. As I learn to be patient I have also got to slow things down in the air until exactly the right moment when I end up exploding into the next phase. So with that said, here is the product of my competition at the Armory this past weekend.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The above jump is actually the main reason that the competition wasn’t a complete waste. It certainly wasn’t my farthest jump of the day and the approach wasn’t even as good as it has been in recent competitions, but this jump teaches me enough to make up for the lackluster distance of my best jump of the meet. After all, indoors isn’t about distances anyways remember? Even though I am actually “mostly” happy with the approach on the jump, the hop phase is what really caught my eye. I was more patient than I had been at other competitions and got some good distance on the hop. The final two phases are horrible but that is where the timing becomes an issue.

Once I get my timing down I won’t crash on the transition of the hop-step and will be able to explode into the second and then into the third phases. I will also be able to make efficient use of my left arm rather tucking it like I did here. Even though I slowed things down a little, it wasn’t slow enough considering the ground I was covering and I ended up basically falling back onto my right foot rather than being active and exploding into the next phase. The end result is a horrible second phase and horrible posture in that phase. It seems I also cut the cycle of my right left short on the hop phase. It’s always the little things.

Even with all that, I can say that this jump is a quality one in my book because of the lessons learned from it. Even though my hop phase is the only worthwhile piece of this jump I feel as if this jump will be the template for the huge ones to follow. It’s just a matter of time before I get my timing down.

…And when I do…

Click here to view the embedded video.

As you’d expect, even though was mostly pleased with how things went I am able to pick out plenty of things that I’m going to have to address to get where I want to go both indoors and moving into the outdoor season. Of course my body position and posture from the second phase into the final phase need some serious fixing. To be honest, I think that if I wasn’t fighting to avoid falling on my face on my step phase the above jump actually would have been an indoor personal best; especially considering where I ended up after two phases from a 41 foot board. My jump phase wasn’t half of what it typically is or should have been thanks to my being off balance and out of position but I’ll take it for the first jump/meet of the new year.

Combine the above adjustment/correction with the patience that comes from just jumping from a full approach and competing and I’ll be right where I want to be. Some other, more minor adjustments will always be necessary like tweaking my arms in my first phase but considering how my approach looked, after this meet it seems that all systems are definitely a go.

The next outing should be in 2 weeks…