- I stayed home on Wednesday for our snow day. I always go in because I have to try to sort practice and schedules for wrestling and I have stuff to do. Well, I was planning on giving the guys Wednesday off since we lost on Tuesday and don't compete again for another 10 days. Also, I stayed late on Monday and caught up on my grading. So, I had no reason to go in on an optional workday. Nice!
- Everything regarding a bailout scares me. If there are holes in my backyard, that's just where I buried my money in mason jars. Doh! I wasn't supposed to tell anybody...
- Nice weekend. No wrestling tournament and mid 60s. I actually pulled the motorcycle out of the basement and rode Saturday and Sunday. And played frisbee today. It was marvelous. Rode up 276 because I wanted to ride the Blue Ridge Parkway past Graveyard Fields and Devil's Courthouse and back through Balsam Grove. Alas, they had closed the Parkway, but beautiful ride through the Pisgah National Forest still.
Crush of the Week:
As a Track and Field coach, I have learned to appreciate the art that is the sport. Watching a perfectly excuted handoff in the 4x100, a smooth glide in the shot or the proper approach, plant and takeoff in the high jump is thrilling in the same way as seeing a Matisse, Degas or Dali. You just know it's special.
The events I love watching the most are, ironically, events I did not participate in: the 4x400 and Pole Vault. The 4x400 is the last event in a typical meet and, to me, the most exciting. The Pole Vault is fun because it is such a technical event and so difficult to do. It takes a lot of practice. In many things, athleticism will carry you and you can get by with flawed technique. In the pole vault, flawed technique hurts.
This week's crush is Jen Stuczynski, the 2008 Olympic Bronze medalist who this past week at the Millrose Games in Boston, set the new American record in Women's Pole Vault at 15' 9 3/4". Go ahead and try it. Take a fiberglass pole, and 7 stride approach at full speed, plant into a 60cm wide, 20cm deep hole in the ground and get the pole to bend and trust it to sling you safely 15 feet into the air. It's hard, which is why my vaulters cannot practice without a coach present.
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