Monthly Archives: April 2005

Pole Vaulting in Phoenix

Did you ever dream of soar­ing through the air at 7+ feet or higher? I def­i­nitely did not, but that is exactly what I was doing Fri­day night. How Aaron gets me into these things is beyond me but after last night’s meet, I was really glad he got me into this one.

A lit­tle over a year ago Aaron found out about a pole vault­ing club in Tuc­son. He was pumped — he hadn’t vaulted since high school and fan­ta­sized about soar­ing over a 14 foot bar again. I was excited for him but never imag­ined myself vault­ing. Hav­ing a lit­tle fear of heights, I don’t think pole vault­ing is some­thing I would grav­i­tate towards. After a few prac­tices Aaron talked me into going to watch. I am not a watcher — I am a doer. I didn’t last long just watch­ing. That first night I just got on the tram­po­line to “warm up” — it was a cool night for just sit­ting around. The next prac­tice I went to try this pole vault­ing thing.

Jenny Preparing to Vault
Men­tal Preparation

Well learn­ing how to pole vault has been a slow process with a cou­ple of injuries along the way but here I am a year later com­pet­ing in my first meet. It wasn’t as scary as I antic­i­pated, in fact it was rather excit­ing and not scary at all. I was the only female vaulter thus, as long as I cleared some­thing, I would “win”. Well I started at 6 ft. and cleared that with no prob­lems. We bumped it up 6 inches and I cleared it again — no prob­lem. Seven feet took two attempts to clear and 7’6″ proved too much for me. After every jump I was giddy with excite­ment. It was hard to believe that I was actu­ally pole vaulting.

Vaulting at Phoenix Inv.

I am excited about our next meet and look­ing for­ward to prac­tice. I have lots left to learn — in my opin­ion I have only learned half of the vault — I can plant and jump but I don’ t really invert or turn over the bar. It makes clear­ing the bar a lit­tle dif­fi­cult since I go over side­ways. I tend to be a slow method­i­cal learner, espe­cially when it comes to sports but you know, the beauty of the whole thing is that I can learn this at a grad­ual pace. I am not lim­ited to a 3 month track sea­son or even four years of high school. I really have as long as my won­der­ful coaches are will­ing to coach.

To be quite hon­est, as with most new things I try the vault has really been a life les­son for me. The most impor­tant thing about the vault for me is learn­ing how to step out of my com­fort zone into an area of uncer­tainty in order to improve. If I never leave my com­fort zone, I don’t chal­lenge myself to become bet­ter. I put a lot of trust in my coaches and in myself that I can do what I am asked to do. With each lit­tle suc­cess, a sliver of con­fi­dence is gained. That con­fi­dence is crit­i­cal for me. If I don’t believe I can do some­thing I usu­ally won’t. How­ever if I believe I can, I have a much greater chance of actu­ally doing it. So as for me in the vault, nine feet here I come!

Oh yeah, I also did long jump at the meet — it was ugly– enough said!

View the rest of the pic­tures from the meet (includ­ing some of Aaron) .

Water In the Desert — Cargodera Canyon

Water in the desert is such a rare thing — it is almost sacred. Com­ing from a place where you have more water than you know what to do with (the Ohio River Val­ley) it was hard to grasp the pre­cious­ness of water in the south­west. How­ever, hav­ing lived here for just two years I have learned to appre­ci­ate water in almost any form; rain, snow, sleet, river, well, bot­tled, tap and I could go on. When­ever we are out on a hike, if I see even a trickle of water or pud­dle that hasn’t quite dried up I get giddy with excite­ment. Well, you can imag­ine my state when we hiked in Car­godera Canyon a few weeks ago where you could hear the water rush­ing from over 100 yards away! Okay, so at some places it was more of a gur­gle and it never got so fierce that we had to wade through it but, it was flow­ing the whole way down the canyon — in the desert that is some­thing to get excited about.

Sutherland Trail
Suther­land Trail

So on Feb­ru­ary 27th, Lance, Erin (friends of ours), Aaron and myself set off for Car­godera Canyon in the front range of the Catalina moun­tains just north of Catalina State Park. We hiked up the Suther­land trail a ways and then dropped down to the creekbed of the canyon and essen­tially boulder-hopped our way out of the canyon. As I men­tioned the water was flow­ing down the entire canyon. If you do enough hik­ing in the desert you learn that water likes to play dis­ap­pear­ing acts . It will be trick­ling along then all of a sud­den it is gone and you are look­ing at sand. Then maybe another 100 feet or even a 1/2 mile later it shows up again gur­gling along. So to say there was water flow­ing down the entire canyon is rather profound.

Cargodera Canyon
look­ing down Car­godera Canyon

Our hike was absolutely won­der­ful — I was ecsta­tic hop­ping from rock to rock over the water. Smelling it, hear­ing it, watch­ing it tum­ble, swirl, and cas­cade over rocks just made me smile the whole way. The day was awe­some, partly cloudy with big puffy dark clouds threat­en­ing the sky, adding an ele­ment of excite­ment to the hike. Every­thing was fresh and alive with all of the recent rains. Lance and Erin as always were such a plea­sure to hike with, shar­ing all kinds of infor­ma­tion about the land­scape and his­tory of the area. I wouldn’t have wanted to spend the day any other way.

water cascade in Cargodera Canyon
water cas­cade in Car­godera Canyon