I had the pleasure today of being a guest on the House of Run podcast. Kevin and Jason are great hosts. Like Jesse Squire’s blog, their podcast provides the perfect fan perspective in their short humor-filled weekly broadcasts about all things running and track. This is their first episode to touch on throwing, so I felt honored to shed a little light on the bigger guys and girls of track and field.
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Sometimes I forget that this site started as a way to update everyone on my training and results. It’s often hard to write about training this time of year since, frankly, it can get a bit monotonous. At least this winter I will have some results to post since I will be throwing outside rather the indoors.
Once again, my only break this “offseason” was for a few days of travel. As soon as I arrived back in North America last month, Dr. Bondarchuk put me on an active rest program. This meant that I completely stopped weight lifting, but have been doing some simple core exercises and maintaining a decent throwing volume of 75 to 210 throws each week with the 5- and 8-kilogram hammers. The rest has been perfect. Rather than losing a few meters by taking the entire month off, I have actually gained distance by allowing my body to rest while still keeping in contact with the hammer. On Saturday I threw a new personal best of 62.20-meters with the 8-kilogram hammer. During that training session, half of my throws were over my old personal best of 61.90-meters.
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As much as I love the hammer throw, I am a really a fan of every track and field event. The hammer throw just happens to be the one I participate in. Coach Metcalf used to use my knowledge of the everyone’s personal bests as an example for the rest of our team. Others, e.g. my teammates, thought I was teacher’s pet. Now most of my throwing colleagues think I’m crazy for watching events like today’s New York Marathon. The truth is that I just like the sport and have as much fun watching a good marathon as I do watching an elite pole vaulter.
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