GILL ATHLETICS ROCKS!!!!

Well this last week was a whirlwind of all sorts…

I got back home from an awesome trip to Reno, only to find out that my poles were lost for a day.  Once I opened them up on Wednesday I found out that 7 of my poles were broken!  Literally smashed like pancakes!  :(  I was warmed up and everything…then spent the next 45 mins looking at which poles were broken and talking with my agent, Jeff Hartwig, to see if we can get some more made quickly.  Jeff relayed all of the info to Gill Athletics and they said they might be able to get a few poles done by Friday, if not all of them!

So after that 45 mins of hell…excuse my language…I had to re-warm-up again and get focused for my jump session that day!  Luckily ISU has the same series of poles that I ordered out of college, so I had backups.  They’re just a little heavier and thicker so it’s hard to go back and forth in between new and old poles.  Once I got on the runway I was feeling better and starting to cheer up.  I ended up having a good jump day considering the mental roller coaster I was on!

The next day, Thursday, I headed up to Northern Iowa with the multi-eventers and ISU’s back up set of poles.  After about a day and a half of stressing and hoping my poles would be finished in time to jump on at UNI last weekend…I found out ALL 7 poles were finished!  They were still packing them and wrapping them all together when Jeff Martin and the ISU vaulters made the stop to pick them up on their way up to UNI.  But they were finished and on their way to me! 

OMG I was so excited!  GILL ATHLETICS made 7 poles in a little over a day…AND wrapped them in BLUE!  I can’t thank GILL enough for making sure I had my poles in such little time.  Simply amazing. :)  I’m so proud to be sponsored by GILL ATHLETICS as well as being a part of Team Pacer!  The poles look so good!  The material is slightly different than my old poles(in a good way), so they are a little bit thicker.  They also feel about the same weight, but I can’t really tell a difference!  I taped them all Friday night and had them ready to go for Saturday’s competition. I was so pumped!

Then competition day comes around…and it didn’t really go as planned.  I jumped 4.35m(14’3”).  I feel like I really lost a great opportunity to jump high, which is super disappointing.  I wasn’t committing to my swing at the takeoff and it really showed in my video.  It was one of those days where I thought I looked a lot better than I actually did.  Weird.  My legs felt a little tired, but not enough that I was thinking about them all the time.  Everything was coming at me so much faster than normal and I wasn’t getting my plant up on time.  Buuut…looking on the positive side…I started on my 14’6” poles for the first time this year, and ended on the biggest pole I’ve jumped on since 2011!  Oh and I jumped on 4 of 7 new poles Gill Athletics made for me!  They worked out great, and I was so happy to have them!

Huge Thank You to GILL ATHLETICS!!!! :) 

My next competition is The Meyo Invitational at Notre Dame on Saturday at 11:30am!  If you're in South Bend come out and support!  :)

Thanks for reading!

Kylie

@ratherBvaulting

www.facebook.com/pv.kylie