Up North

Hi All!

Sorry, it has been so long since my last post. I'm preparing for a long summer of track meets. I moved up to Ashland, Ohio on Thursday. I have to be honest that this season has not gone has great as I had planned. I got a little burnt out from the collegiate season this year, but I am now fired up to finish strong. The atmosphere here is amazing. My last two weeks of practices in Louisiana went really good. I got a bit scared when I arrived at Ashland because my first practice went pretty bad. It was probably all the driving. Also, I have been having finger problems the past month. It has cut a lot of practices short. But I am working through it. I threw in a meet on Tuesday at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. The meet at Indiana had initially canceled the shot put so my friend Norm Zylstra, the coach at Calvin, put together a meet for me. My mark wasn't amazing but my technique was good. I was much better balanced and didn't foul as much as earlier this season. I threw 19.07m (62'7") and had a foul at 19.72m. My timing still needs to get better, but the technique is there. This makes me very happy, because it only takes me 2-3 weeks to find the timing when I am balanced and confident. I will be ready for USA Outdoors and the European circuit. I will have one more meet before USA's at the University of Kentucky on Thursday, 6/14. This will be a good meet to see where I am at. There should be some good competition there and a 65' throw would show that I'm on pace for some big throws. I had a great practice on Thursday in Ashland. It was my first real practice with Jud Logan as my coach. He is the head coach at Ashland and a 4x Olympian in the hammer. Great coach. I threw the 15 lb shot and had some throws out near 21m (69'). This practice was easily my 2nd best practice of the year. We figured out some technical things early on in practice and then I was able to get after it. Things are still not perfect, but definitely very close.

I should also add that I'm very excited for next year. I don't want to get into it too much until the season is over, but I think this was the best choice I could have made for a push towards the Olympics in 2008.

I will get back to another post after Thursday. Posts will pick up from there as I use this web blog to update everyone on my European meets. Take care!