It's been about a month since my last competition, but it has been a very good month nonetheless. I remember in college how strange it was for me to think about professional track athletes only competing every couple of weeks or so. It was always made me real antsy on the few occasions that we had bye weeks without competition during the season. Now, however, I love it. I'm sure my attitude will change a bit as we get deeper into the season (it's still very early) and more towards the Trials, but I think because i've put out such defined goals this year, the training aspect has become a lot more important and even more enjoyable to me. It's showing well too.
I've been really enjoying the level of consistency I've been able to achieve in my workouts lately. My schedule has been amazingly busy, but it's been steady and much much more consistent than ever before. I ran into
Stephen Harris this weekend who was all the way up from Georgia to compete because it was the closest meet he could find allowing open athletes to compete. Kind of funny actually, in such a huge meet with some really great competitors on the track -
Kim Smith running the fastest mile of the year with a New Zealand national record,
Jen Toomey (american record holder in the 1,000m), as well as a host of other guys they were constantly talking about over the PA - you've got an 8,000+ pt decathlete, 2003 NCAA champion competing in total obscurity in various events throughout the meet. People started to notice as he got to crowd clapping for him while battling for the win in the long jump and high jump, but I'm sure they still have no idea who "that guy" was. It was actually pretty disappointing to hear how much trouble he is having getting training in. Stephen is a full time history teacher at his former high school (Norcross) in Georgia so trains both before and after school every day. If you're familiar with high school schedules, yes, that means he starts
training at 3am (!) 4 days a week. Not to mention the fact that he's a great guy in general, much like Mustafa I talked about in my previous post, it is just so funny to me the inconsistencies of the sport we chose to love. Makes me thankful again to have found my way here and into the graces of people like those at In The Arena.
Anyways, I'll stop my rants there. Training has been going great and I was eager for this weekend to put it all on the track and see what happens. I was competing at Boston University's St. Valentine's Invitational - a meet of ridiculously epic proportions. There were 36 heats of the men's 400m, 143 people in the women's high jump, etc, etc. It was guys only on Saturday but it still went from 11am through well past 8pm. I started warming up at 9:30am and finished my final event at about 6:30pm. I very long day, but a good one.
ST. VALENTINE'S INVITE, BOSTON UNIVERSITY:The Shot, High Jump, and Pole Vault were all slated to start at 11am, but I wasn't going to enter the high jump until the second height and although the vault started at 13 feet, I knew it wouldn't be another couple of hours until it reached my opening height of 15 feet. Because the line for warmup jumps alone meant 20 minutes or more in between jumps, I didn't even have a chance to get on the vault runway before it all started. Add the hurdles at 11:25 and I was running around pretty good for the first couple hours.
After warming up in the shot (a mere 2 throws, one standing, one full spin), I checked out and jogged over to the hurdle start, threw my spikes on and took a couple quick runs before it was time to go. It was a pretty smooth race, but a bit too smooth so not super fast, but I wasn't disappointed with it. There's still much to clean up, but should be easy fixes. What was disappointing was that I missed out on qualifying for final by one person and only .01 of a second.
Flotrack was there for the meet so you can see video of my heat
here. They cut me out of the start, but I'm in lane 1 on the far right side in the red of Greater Boston Track Club.
After the finish of the hurdles, I literally hopped right off the track (squeezing between the railing) into the shot cage, changed my shoes, and got right back into the line up as the competition had already moved on into the second round of throws. My first throw was a decent but rushed mid 13 meter toss. My second throw, however, I was able to clean up a lot better and produced yet another PR (personal record) at 14.60m (or 47'-10"). It was a great through, but even better was the fact of how easy it felt. I had put up some somewhat unbelievable throws in practice this past week so I was pumped to bring my PR up again, but it actually still seemed a bit unimpressive. Probably the biggest significance of the mark, however, is that I have FINALLY taken over the family lead in the shot put ;) My "little" brother graduated this past year and although he was mainly a javelin thrower he has had the family lead in the shot put and definitely lets me hear about it every chance he gets. Me finally upping him may bring him out of retirement as well as make me look for a meet I can get at home some time soon!
Anyways, high jump was after the shot and I jumped a decent 6-4. Just never felt super comfortable on the runway coming into my take-off, but I guess when 6-4 jumps are starting to be a disappointment, that's not a bad sign.
When the bar eventually got around to 15 feet (about 4 or so hours later) I ended up with a really good day in the vault. Ill try to post some of the pictures the Northeastern athletes got of me when I get my hands on them, but I jumped 4.80m (15-9), but even better was the hip height at which I was doing it. The vault is starting feel much better than it has in the past couple of years and although it hasn't translated into actual clearances yet, its making some pretty spectacular misses. Again, with the cleaning up of a couple things, the vault is going to start to get real interesting.
I was fortunate enough to get into another 4 x 400m relay with some of the guys with GBTC so that concluded my day. I was the second leg, and again, you can see the video from Flotrack by clicking
here. Although I had been working hard, I wasn't totally sure how my 400m workouts had been going. I've been fortunate to find a couple of sprinters to workout with once a week for my sprint workouts which have been awesome. Both guys are a lot faster and stronger than I so I really have to push myself. The 400m intervals, however, have been lonely, painful sessions often late on friday nights. All for the best apparently though. I ran a low 50 second split at which is probably my fastest ever 400m. More importantly I think was the way I ran it. I was able to push myself to get out hard and kept some attackers off me in the final hundred meters - the area I usually have a lot of trouble with. Thus a great race capped off a great day.
Things are definitely coming along. The strength is great, technique is coming along well, and even the speed is looking real good right now. I will have a couple weeks of training before the USATF New England Championships at the end of the month on our own (Harvard's) indoor track, so time to hit it hard and see what happens in a couple weeks.
our 3 foot tall wonder (take a look at the size relationship between his thigh and the baton), will again be anchoring the boys team. The picture at right is him anchoring the winning (by a ton) team at the Boston Indoor Games a month ago. Like the Indoor Games, this event is hosted as an exhibition event between various local clubs. I just got done working with both teams on their hand-offs (a hilarious experience) and although I missed the Indoor Games, I will definitely be in attendance this weekend. If we can keep the girls running in their lanes and prevent Devonte from getting run over by Jordan (our 3rd leg - who is at least a foot and a half taller) we should be set because those kid can flat out run!
