merci. wrote:Track tryouts caught me completely by surprise! There was nothing posted on our school website or any indication that there would be tryouts, so on Monday, when my friend told me that tryouts were that day, I was completely unprepared. I haven't been running, and that day I hadn't brought any running clothes, so my mom had to bring my clothes and shoes to school for me xP
Well, since I had thought that we might have a month or two until tryouts, I hadn't -cough- been running much at all, so time trials the first day were torturous embarrassment. I got 30 seconds slower than my PR and it was terrible. I had no friends on the distance team. During cross-country, we do intervals around the track on Mondays, the workout that I always detest the most. I'm not sure what quite possessed me, then, to join the distance team in track seeing as it's my least favourite workout during cross-country season.
Needless to say, after one day I'd had enough. I didn't think I could tolerate that every day, so I joined several of my friends at pole vault. I can't sprint at all, it's a bit funny actually, and I don't think I would have any skill in shotput or discus, so pole vault was pretty much the only option. My mom was number one in her city in track and field when she was my age, and her best event was jumping, but it doesn't look like something I'd particularly enjoy doing.
I didn't initially plan on joining pole vault because I was afraid that, if I decided to try it ( and I wanted to try it, it looked like so much fun watching the pole vaulters last year! ), and I was bad, I would be so far behind the distance runners in terms of training that it would be much too late to join distance and I'd be left without a sport for the springtime, which is exactly the opposite of what I wanted to do.
But I did want to try pole vaulting at some point, so I did on Tuesday, and it was actually really fun! I'm not very good at it but I'm hoping I'll get better. I think I'm going to stick with just pole vault this season. Any of you out there who have pole vaulting experience? I feel like there's some reason why I'm not very good, maybe I'm not doing something right? Or if you just want to share your records, that's cool too ^^
We didn't vault today- since I'm from California, track and field practice is outside- because we've had quite a bit more rain than normal this week. It actually poured today ( by Southern California standards, I'm sure all of you on the East Coast would call it a mere drizzle xD ), so the box where the pole goes flooded with water and I don't think it's such a good idea to pole vault in the rain.
Oh oh oh I pole vault!! It's the most fun I have ever had in my whole life. It's so fun. I had trouble too in the beginning but it gets easier as you get more comfortable with it. When you land on the mat, are you hitting the center of the white box thing? I know I had trouble with that in the beginning.
so I tried again this year. I am a sprinter but I am not near as fast as the others. But somehow I got picked to go to this weeks track meet. I ran a 1x400 ( I don't think that us how you say it. Like i said, I'm new. So I ran a relay with 3 other girls and all together it was a full 400 meters. I also did the same just together it was two laps. So we each ran 200 meters.) so at the meet, one if the girls told us to go stand by where we were going to start. They didnt bother to tell me that our race was next. So since it was my first meet ever, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't find the tennis balls to set up for the baton pass or anything. So I found a random tennis ball and started doing my steps just so I could be ready for when it was our turn to run. Well I was doing my steps when next thing I knew, here the girl was handing me the baton! I was NOT ready! So I had to make an awkward take off. Then when I got to the third leg (I was second leg) she took off too early and was going super fast. So I literally had to chase her around the turn! She was half way done with her run before I got the baton to her!! It was humiliating!! We obviously came in last place and the girls in my relay were not being good sports. They all avoided me and blew me off. When I needed help with something, they would just tell me to go figure it out. I wanted to go home and cry. So track has not made a good impression on me, but hopefully it will get better!
