In The Arena: Matt Chisam

ITA: The Interview

2009-08-16T18:19:00.000-07:00

So, In The Arena wanted to interview a couple of it's athletes and asked me to be one of the chosen. After doing so it was suggested that I use it as a blog post, so here you go. I hope you enjoy (I really didn't see that last question coming and just about fell off my seat when I read it - good work ITA intern Kate):

1. What is the first sport that you ever played?
The first sport I was really into was soccer. I joined somewhere around 5 or 6 and was real into it until I got to high school. I was a goalkeeper (I was always tall) and was on a traveling team pretty early. That being said, I grew up in a "track house." My parents were coaches - my mom went into labor on the track during practice at UCLA while coaching and I saw my first USA v. Germany heptathlon when I was about 2 days old. Mom was coaching Jackie Joyner-Kersee at the time and had to break out of the hospital to go coach. Although I didn't start competing in track until middle school, it was always around (attached picture is me in the front yard with a hammer).

2. When did you first start participating in the decathlon?
I competed in my first decathlon the summer before my senior year in high school. It was 100 degrees plus in central california on a dirt track. The event I remember the most was the 11th: someone opened up the school's pool and diving board after the 1500m.

3. From your childhood, which of your coaches stands out the most in your mind? Why?
I've been blessed with great coaches. I was with my soccer coach, Tommy Anderson, for 5 or 6 years or so. He was great. I guess pre-high school he was the big one.

4. Who is your hero? What role did this person play in inspiring you to become a decathlete?
That's interesting I think. I didn't really have specific heroes growing up. I guess the closest thing was David Robinson: he was a great basketball player without the flash. He got his job done, he did it well and he didn't need to talk about it or tat up his arm to prove it. Blue-collar. Plus he was a bright guy - went to the Naval Academy. I didn't really get into the decathlon because I idolized anyone in particular. I got into the decathlon because I didn't have one thing I was great at but I could do many things pretty well.

5. What do you love most about the decathlon? What is the hardest part of being a decathlete?
My favorite thing about the decathlon is that there is room for everyone. There's guys with speed for days, they just might not be able to throw very well. There's guys that're big and slow (me) but work your butt off and become technically sounds and you can make up a lot of points in the technical events (throws, hurdles, vault, etc). There is no magic formula, there is no right way. I love coaching it for the same reason - everyone has a different path to becoming the best decathlete they can be, just like everyone has their own path to becoming the best person you can be. The hardest part about being a decathlete is that there is no magic formula, there is no right way... Multi-eventers are a different breed. Like all professional athletes you work your butt off day in and day out towards perfection, however, as a multi-eventer you will never get there. You can walk away from the best meet of your life and there's still a dozen things you wish you can do better. I talk with my athletes about this all the time: you can look at it positively or negatively and it took me a long time to figure this out on my own. You can walk off the track swearing and moping around with your head down because of all the "mistakes" you've made, or you can walk off the field with you head held high knowing that yes, you did a lot of good, but you there's also a lot of things that could have been better. You know what that means? That means you have that many opporutnities to be that much better the next time you step onto the track. It's a vicious addiction but it's also a great thing.
I also have to mention the people. Decathletes are a special breed and as such, the comraderie amongst the group is amazing. Yes we're competing against each other, but like no other sport I've been around, we're competing with each other. It's like this amazing club with a terrible entry fee: many many hours of pain and work. This picture was taken in Italy at Multistars this year. These guys are from all over the world (Germany, England, Kenya, South Africa, the US), none of them had met more than two days before, and hours earlier these guys were all competing against one another. Every decathlete has pictures like these from just about every big meet they've competed in. The 11th event is always worth the previous 10 and all it takes to get there...

6. Do you believe that everyone should try at least one sport?
I believe everyone should try 100 sports. Sport has so much to teach us - mentally, physically, socially, the list goes on and on. Everyone picks up a football, a baseball, or a soccer ball in the US and the majority of us are not going to be good at any of those. Just because you're not going to make $10 million a year doesn't mean you're not going to profit emenssly from the sport. In some form there is sport out there for everyone. Hell, even if you're born to be terrible at all of them, guarenteed the journey to find that out is going to teach you things about yourself and the world around you that you never dreamed possible. Sport is not about what you can be - everyone is so caught up on potential. Sport is about what you become. With your own two hands, feet, head, whatever, sport is about crafting yourself one trial, one error, one triumph at a time.

7. Are you superstitious in any ways? Do you have any good luck charms, lucky clothes, etc.? What are they?
I actually wrote on this earlier this year. If you want a more in depth answer check out my blog post here: http://in-the-arena-matt.blogspot.com/2008/12/superstitions.htmlBasically, no. I believe in preperation. The adage: luck is when preperation meets opportunity, I believe in that. I actually consider myself to be a pretty unlucky person. I believe that more often than not, I end up on the short side of lucky but as long as I work as hard as I possibly can and prepare as best I know how, there's nothing more I can do so the chips lie wear they fall.

8. What are some of your competition day rituals? Do you have a meal that you always eat before a big competition?
Before a big meet I wake up at least 4-5 hours before the competition for my "neuro wake-up." This often means very early mornings before a decathlon, but with a bit of a warm-up to get the blood flowing make me feel nice and loose coming into the meet when my competition warm-up begins. When the time schedule works out and soemthing is nearby I like to go to the movies in between days of a decathlon. This is a tradition started by Ryan Olkowski and I at our annual meets in Dallas. Otherwise I always ice bath in between days. I'm also a big fan of a cold shower before the 1500m if again, timing and facilities permit.My meals I keep simple - some protien, a decent amount of carbs. Usually I go wth some pasta and chicken or rice and potatoes type stuff.

9. What is your most memorable experience as an athlete?
The NCAA Champs in 2003 and the Olympic Trials in 2008. In 2003 it was the 20th anniversery of my parents winning their last national championships while coaching at UCLA. My dad was in the stands holding the phone up on speaker for my mom so she could listen to the 1500m. Yes I wanted to win, but I was psyched to place 2nd. Hearing everybody yell and scream for me during the 1500m and coming into the stands after that meet to my family on the phone and my teammates in the stands (we had a huge group of 22 qualify for the meet) congratulating me was awesome.The Trials in 2008 I will never forget. Some dissapointments, yes, but being in the spotlight during the pole vault, having 1,000s at a time clapping for me coming down the runway, running in that incredibly electric atmosphere during the 1500m, and hugging my brother during the victory lap, that was awesome. I get goosebumps talking about it still.On the whole though, what I will always remember about the decathlon is being part of that community. The movies in between days in Dallas, the jokes sitting around waiting to long jump, sharing rides, rooms, poles, you name it trying to make ends meet, breakfast in the hotel before Multistars in Italy, "What If" games the multis would gather in someone's hotel room to play the night after day 2. Multis are a whole different breed of people. We may only see each other a couple of times a year, but there's an understanding of each other that exists no where else. We're all crazy, but we're crazy together.

10. What is the pinnacle to your athletic career?
Man was I good in high school!! haha, just kidding.I guess this should be a much easier question that it seems to be right now. Is the pinnacle when I placed top 10 at the US Champs this year? Is being invited to compete in Italy at Multistars, scoring 34 points at my last collegiate meet, in high school when I placed 2nd in 2 events at sections within about 3 minutes of each other, or seeing myself highlighted on the scoreboard in Eugene, Oregon at the Olympic Trials along with Tom Pappas as one of the only 2 competitors remaining in the pole vault?You want the truth? The exact moment that is the pinnacle of my athletic career is reaching into the stands to hug my brother during the victory lap under the lights at the Olympic Trials as 20,000 fans cheered from their feet.

11. When did you determine that your dream of being a decathlete could become a reality?
I didn't really consider myself a real decathlete until I made my first US Champs in 2008. I had to run my butt off like never before during the 1500m at a meet in Dallas to qualify. I did and it was the best feeling in the world.

12. What has been your largest obstacle on the road to becoming an Olympian?
Support. Finding coaching, finding training partners, finding time, finding funding. In that order.

13. If you were able compete in any other Olympic event which would you choose and why?

We were talking about this after the meet at US Champs as we watched the rest of the meet. If I could be amazing at one event (other than my own) I think it would be the javelin or the pole vault...with leanings toward the javelin. I think it would be the most amazing feeling to haul butt down the runway and BOOM! launch a jav into the air, walk back, put my sweats on, and look back to see the sucker land 300 feet later. What a cool event. If I were to choose another sport? Basketball. Although I think it should still be college guys out there competing for us, I still think it's a great situation. The rules change: it isn't about contracts or conference champs or even March Madness, it's a coming together of guys that compete fiercly against each other regularly. They put aside their differences to work as a unit, their powers combined as best as possible in a limited amount of time in order to compete for their country. Take a sport that can be incredibly selfish in this country and strip it away until it's pure. That's what the Olympics are about....kind of like what the relays are about in track...but our sprinters have yet to figure that out so we're terrible at it.

[check out In The Arena's Mike Hazle establish himself as one of the best in the world at doing exactly what I wish I could as he drops bombs at the World Champs in Berlin in a couple days on the 21st.]

14. The decathlon is not a very popular sport here in the US. If you had all the power in the world for a day, what would you do to increase awareness of the sport?

Haha - something else that comes up often when sitting around in between events. We've got some great ideas too! How about running the 1500m in only 3 lanes with hockey boards around either side. The fans can be right there banging on the boards, plus the start would be staggered like a time trial in the Tour de France. If you passed someone in the race, you passed them in the overall standings too. We came up with that at US Indoors this year - lets see Joe Detmer get by me then! (he moved himself up from 6th place to 2nd in the last event alone - he holds the world record for that event).Honestly though, how about teaching the decathlon in high school PE? Everyone can benifit from such training. The decathlon is about using your strengths and balancing your weaknesses. It's about pushing yourself to your limits. Training for the decathlon has a funny way of teaching yourself about yourself. You're going to learn very quickly about what you can and can't do and what it takes to make yourself the best you can be, what it takes to make yourself whole. Everyone is so caught up on what they can't do. In the dec there is something you'll be able to do better than others, the trick is trying to figure out the rest of it in order to make yourself complete all-around. I think everyone can use some of that. Plus, as people understand what it takes to train for what we do and what it takes to do the things the top guys do, we might actaully attain some respect.Also the sport can do a much better job of presenting itself. American loves sports with numbers: On Base Percentages, Yards After Catch, the Triple-Double. Decathlon is all about the numbers - if people actually understood what they meant, I think that would go a long way to helping us out. All-in-all, I just think there's a lack of understanding out there about our event. I'm actually planning on trying to change some of that - we'll see.

15. What will you do as an individual to bring about these changes?

Ha, well, I'm glad you asked. There some major problems with the way the decathlon is run in the US: there is a lack of opporunitites to compete, a lack of opportunities to train, a lack of understanding of the event, a lack of support.I want to create more opportunities to compete. Most track athletes compete once every week or two for about 5 months a year. A decathlete competes max 4 times a year because of the effort a single meet takes and there are very very few (like 1 or 2) that are good enough to compete in single events at elite levels. Competitions enable opportunities: opportunities to test yourself, opportunities to test your opponents, opportunities to be seen. It's very difficult to try to drum up support when you only compete a couple times a year. Who wantst to sponsor someone that they see on the track three times a year? It is very difficult to know where youre training is and what you need to work on when you only have a couple chances to test yourself. You wont realize something is off until it is too late.It is very difficult to create a community when there are so few that see each other so often. Through competition and commradery is the only way to build a base to grow upon.I want to start a national league for multi-eventers. I want it to be team based. This way we can have multi-eventers at major track meets doing mini multis: 3 or 4 events at a time. They can team up and sum scores to try to compete against each other. This will encourage athletes to find each other to creat bonds through team work, this will put decathletes in the national spotlight of the sport rather than simply a weird offshoot you see once or twice a year, this will encourage coaches, managers, sponsors, etc to become involved as the spotlight grows.

16. The decathlon is an exhilarating sport to watch. Does it bring you a sense of thrill and excitement, or a sense of calmness and peace when you compete?

You learn to be a "flat-liner" as one of my football coaches called it. You want to be steady throughout, you can't let yourself get too high or too low. When one event is over, you must put it behind you and move on, good or bad. You can't look ahead or behind without losing sight of the present. This is something I'm getting much better at. This year at the US Champs I couldn't let my horrible 1st day get in the way of day 2. Last year at Trials I missed my first 2 (of 3) attempts at opening height in the pole vault almost ending my meet there. The year I did the same thing in the discus. If you step onto the runway or into the ring with anything on your mind but doing your job, that's when thing go wrong.That being said, you have to enjoy yourself. Momentum is huge and you have to be loose. In the end it comes down to pushing yourself over and over again.

17. If you had the ability to change one rule regarding your sport, what would it be and why?

It would be interesting if we had a mulligan. If we could do over or throw out one event. Some form of contact would be cool too. I was a football player and always enjoyed the contact element - the sport could use some sort of way to compete directly versus another person rather than simply the tables.
Jokingly I always thought it'd be interesting if each athlete was allowed to use a springboard in one event of their choosing...

18. So, you have pretty much made it to the top of your sport. What is the next goal you have set for yourself?

I've always wanted to represent my country by wearing a USA jersey.

19. What is the driving force that motivates you to volunteer so much of your time to the community?

it reminds me that there is more to this than me. My college coach used to say: "there's nothing more selfish than an elite athlete." The is so true - you're always worried about your training, your rest, your nutrition, how the weather effects you, how the travel effects you, it's always me, me, me. This actually used to eat me up quite a bit. I hated that, but since working with The Jets I realized how much good my training could actually do for others as an example or a source of knowledge.

20. What is the most rewarding aspect of working as a mentor?

See above, #19.

21. What one personality trait or attribute has allowed you to excel; and do you think it’s a sufficient condition for success when rooted in today’s at-risk children?

We are all given certain genes and traits, I was given the ability to work my butt off. I was given patience and determination and a stubborness against doing anything improperly or in part. I have the gall to believe that anything can be accomplished through hard work and time.I think this is the largest trait missing from today's at-risk children.

22. You have spent a lot of time working with kids. What is your most memorable story?

The day Devonte talked. Devonte is our 6 year-old superstar. Rememeber his name because he's going to be amazing someday (already is), but I never heard him say a word. A year in a half after joining the Jets he randomly turned to me at a practice to say "I got the new Madden." Simple words, but words none-the-less. It was when I realized that the kids actually have taken me in as one of them.

23. What advice would you give to someone just beginning to work as a mentor to kids?

Be yourself and be patient. Your a special person for being there in the first place. Kids see right through a faker, so just sit back and let things happen rather than trying to force anything.

24. What experience working as a mentor made you laugh the hardest?

Seeing Devonte run at the Boston Indoor Games blowing by kids twice his age and size carrying a baton the size of his femur.

25. If you were to choose a quote which sums up your life or represents who you are and what you believe in, what would it be?

Altius ibunt qui as summa nituntur. They will rise highest who strive for the highest place.

26. What was it that made you choose the decathlon over focusing all of your attention toward one specific event?

I always loved sport and I hated choosing one and giving others up. Decathlon is like trying to be good at everything at once. Plus I was never very good at winning anything but I could rack up 2nd places like nobodies business. A lot of 2nd places makes a pretty good decathlon.

27. How far west would you have to travel from Boston, MA to get a decent tri-tip meal?!

AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! I didn't see that one coming.Although I have found out that Trader Joe's does carry tri-tip, you said decent: my parent's backyard is about 3,100 miles away. It still kills me that no one on the east coast has even heard of Tri-Tip, aka, heaven in your mouth. It's the first thing I request when I go home - it's the first thing any of my friends from out here request after they've visited just once!

hello again...

2009-08-02T18:34:00.001-07:00

So, it's been a while.

For those of you (or that one or two of you...) that have been following this blog for a while, you may notice a simple trend: when things are flowing well, so does the blog. When I take a little break on the track (usually forced), the blog does the same.
The US Champs were an interesting experience for me this year. I honestly had big hopes for this year and for the most part I thought all was on course for all of my big goals. For some reasons things didn't seem to click when they needed to - with really the usual suspects being the weakest links. The first day, all the speed stuff, just seems to elude me. I worked more towards my speed than I have ever before, I finally started building great confidence in the long jump, shot was going to places, my high jump was great early in the year, and even my quarter workouts were going well.
I did again come back with a solid second day. Hurdles were a great start with my fastest decathlon time ever and my fastest race outright since college and disc was the length of half my toe close to being great (twice). Again, I came back with a solid pole vault. Although I'd been jumping higher recently, jumping 5 meters and having no one in the competition jump higher felt great. The Jav was decent (workouts in the two weeks after Eugene showed that I was actually capable of some real great things), and the 1500 was a solid event for me. The second day did a ton for my psyche and outlook, plus im increasingly proud of how my maturity and metal abilities in the event have improved in the last year or two - VERY big pieces of the decathlon.

My goal for a long while has been to break into the top 10 at the US Champs. The score may have not been what I expected, but reaching a goal is reaching a goal. Making the Thorpe Cup USA versus Germany dual meet team has probably been the goal I have sought after longer than any others. Coming into the meet I thought for sure a top 10 finish would put me there, but a missunderstanding on my part on how the team is chosen (5 from placing, 2 at-large coaches choice) meant that I was the first alternate. After a couple weeks of training and no call back I was forced to face an early end to the season and some time off. I was fortunate to spend much more time at home in California with family and friends than I have in a while which was awesome. Something I have learned in the past few years is how important taking advantage of the time you do get with friends and family is. We all have things that drive us and it may take us many places - the key is to be able to roam while still keeping your roots in.

All in all, however, it has been a great year. A great dissapointment to end it, but I accomplished many many things. My first international meet was an amazing experience and means the accomplishment of another of my very longtime goals. I competed and placed in my first US Indoor Championships and I broke through the top 10 at outdoors. Above all, I continued to grow in everyway. The decathlon can be so difficult because you have such limited opportunities to show what you have. With a usual maximum of 4 to 5 meets a year (on the very high end), you can be doing great things all year long with maybe none of it showing on those particular weekends. I feel that I took leaps and bounds in my training in every single event this year. Some of it came out very well - others remained to be hidden. Above all, I continue to be impressed with how I'm growing mentally within the sport. I've always heard that it takes a deceathlete so long to reach a maturity in the event - often not until the late 20s do you really start gaining a real understanding of the sport. I can see how guys like Tom Pappas and Kip Janvrin have been so successfull at such late ages. Even Bryan Clay is far from young now by general track standards, but he's really not starting to really attack the big pieces of the sports (American and World Records). I've been a decathlete for over ten years now and I feel like I'm just not starting to understand what the sport is about and yet every meet I go into I feel like I'm learning even more than I am mastering.

For now I'm just keeping busy in as diverse ways as possible. I'm keeping in shape with everything from rock climbing, to golf, to yoga, mountain biking, lifting, basketball, and this weekend I within 14 hours of one another I tried to learn how to surf and competed in my first 4 mile road race (a friend's charity race).

Hope you're all enjoying a great summer.

Day 1

2009-06-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

Day 1 was a tough day. Many in the field would say something similar (or worse), but there are a couple of guys having great meets as well.
Again for some reason my jumps were all over the place and my legs just didn't quite have much pop. We had some gusting winds that didn't help much, but overall the weather was decent at just below 70.
Hopefully my legs come back ready to roll tomorrow and i'll try to put together the day 2 i've been looking for for a while.

24 hours til Go Time

2009-06-24T12:46:00.001-07:00

We've got a day to go until start time at 11am PST. Today's a super easy day for me on the track so got a great night's sleep last night and a nice big breakfast with the family before sitting in 2 hours worth of lines for credentialing. If anything it is kind of cool to realize that at least at some point everyone here is exactly the same. You've got arguably the world's fastest man, skinny little distance folk, and huge throwers all bored in the same line.
In talking though I realized I do love being a decathlete. I met John Smith yesterday on the track. One of the premier sprint coaches in the world with some of the most prestigious athletes in our sport under his charge, as we were parting he had to correct himself: "enjoy the meet," he started "actually, I know YOU'LL enjoy the meet. You guys [the decathletes] always have a great time and get the crowd nice and fired up." Great to hear from someone coming from the end of our sport that can at times seem so far away.
It was definitely great running into a bunch of the athletes and coaches I haven't seen since this time a year ago. Makes it finally feel like Go Time.

Here.

2009-06-23T11:12:00.000-07:00

We made it in. The ride was decently long yesterday but felt real easy. It's been a while since I've taken a long car trip, but I'm glad we did it this way. Thanks in part to the many stops we took every couple of hours to shake out, the ride felt a lot better than a plane ride would have. Last night we checked into our hotel across from the track and have gotten a couple walks and shake-outs in since. The place doesn't have quite the same pomp as last year's Olympic Trials, but it's still a great facility that I'm sure they'll pack in without much trouble here in "Track Town USA." As one of the directors was quoted in the local paper today in comparison to the Trials: "I liken it to more of a backyard bbq."

However, whereas Eugene maybe a notch down, we've stepped it up at Team Chisam Headquarters. Head over to mchisam.com for your official Team Chisam US Championships 2009 fan kit. There're links to DecathlonUSA's Media Guide and even a score sheet complete with my PRs so you can keep up with the meet to see how I'm doing event to event. Thanks to the Team Chisam CCO (my brother) we're going to use Twitter for live updates throughout the meet. You'll be able to keep up, event-by-event, throw-by-throw, jump-by-jump. Subscribe to the TeamChisam page and you'll be sent web or sms text updates during the meet.
Also, check out the usatf.org for their Nationals Champs homepage where they'll have the entries (im coming in ranked 10th) , schedule & results (we start Thursday 11am PST), and even live streaming video during the meet (we'll see how much decathlon they show).

150 to go

2009-06-22T16:00:00.001-07:00

We're now in Oregon and on the homestretch. We've seen our fair share of rest stops (and have been getting great looks from people on out shake out jogs) but the trip has gone great.
150 miles to Eugene.

eugene or bust

2009-06-21T23:39:00.001-07:00

The final prep finished today with a final dad's day workout the Chisam way: me and training partner Kasey Hill in the blocks, papa Chisam with the starting gun at the local high school. I've been fortunate enough to make it home for the past few days to re-connect with my original coaches (mom and dad) and enjoy some California sunshine. Keeping with the throwback theme, tomorrow we wake up early and load the truck up for a drive to Eugene for the US Champs. When things get too complicated - go back to the basics.
The decathlon is Thursday and Friday but in the car I hope to finish the revamping of mchisam.com complete with how you can keep up with the meet and even some score cards for those of you really keeping up.

Talk to you soon,
Matt

Less is more

2009-06-04T13:00:00.001-07:00

Its always an interesting experience explaining to someone that I am a decathlete. From my experience when asked what I do, the responses fall into one of 3 catagories:

1. Someone who actually knows the the decathlon is usually responds complementary or with a story. For instance, my downastairs neighbor the other day asured me of some knowlwdge of the event with, "wow, you've got to be really well-rounded." Ok, he's got at least a pretty good idea of the event and didn't have to ask any further questions (see below).
The "storytellers" will show you their understanding with a tale of their days high junping or running the mile in high school - often beginning with something along the lines of "I used to run track."

2. For flow of this blog I'm going to skip ahead to the other end, those with no idea what a decathlon is. Usually far from athletically inclined, I think these are the people that do whatch the Olympics here or there every four years but probably have very little understanding of track and field. Although at times frustrating, these encounters can be entertaining.
I think it's the "athlon" part of the name people do recognize which brings association with the olympics, but its about there the recognition ends and you get questions like "wow, how much do you swim?," or my personal favorite, "so that's like with the horseriding and shooting, right?" Such encounters provided for a funny story, yes, but this makes me sad more than anything. No offense to you modern pentathletes out there, but if there's a significant population in the United States that knows more about the modern pentathlon than something you devoted your young life to, well, I'm not evengoing to finish that thought. Good work on that Olympic coverage NBC. Single tear.
3. In the middle is the group that has some recognition of the event but not a great understanding. They can make the track & field association and, if they're older (as apparently I am too), they may even recognize a Dan & Dave reference. These people usual go with "wow, so how much do you run." As recreation runners, fans, or retired gym class mile run heros this is a simple and fair enough question that shows some level of understanding. In reality, however, its actually the most difficult question to answer.
I know that to most, proficiency in running is demonstrated by ability to run a lot, ability to run FAR. Coming from a professional track athlete, a "professional runner," they'd love to be awed by my 200 mile weeks or my double days of intervals and mile repeats. I'm 210 pounds dude, I don't actually like to run. Yes it feels great to run fast and I do like the feeling I get when I am DONE with a workout, and yes, I do love what I do, but I don't consider myself a professional runner. I am a decathlete, running hurts. My long runs rarely top 20 minutes (my new personal long record as of this summer is a whopping 5 miles - but I did do it 2 days in a row) and the majority of my "running" throughout the year is based around training for the 400m - and therefore sucks. On top of which, I am not fast - relatively speaking. Thus, even when I am running in competition I'm not exactly having
the time of my life, its more like hanging on. I'll never forget one of the dutch coaches in Italy: he looks across the table to Jake Arnold and I at breakfast and says, "I thought Americans were supposed to be fast."

This is actually why I enjoy this part of the year so much. It's getting towards Championship season with USAs on June 24 and thus everything is geared towards topping it all off. The bulk of the work is done, now is a lot of fine tuning. Some of my college coach, Deanne Vochatzher's favorite sayings (second only to "KNEE!!" when we're hurdling) are "the hay is in the barn," or, "the money's in the bank.". Although there's still a little more work to be done, a lot of it now is polishing.
Case and point, if you really want to know just how much I run as a "professional runner?" On Sunday I ran for roughly 69.5 seconds. That's it. If you only took that long to brush your teeth your dentist would be pissed. Even worse, the whole workout took me about 40 minutes and I ran a grand total of 600m. How's that for tough? I'm on pace for about a 90 minute mile if I keep it up and dig down for a big kick finish.
The workout was actually 4 x 150m with 10min for recovery so they're all out. The security guy gaurding the tent on the infield for graduation definitely thinks I'm crazy (it doesn't help that it was raining), but that's the great part about this time of year. Every practice you're going for it. You're hitting new bests in the weight room (I'm just trying to keep up with Ben Affleck who can be spotted in our weight room), finding yourself in new places in the jumps, and reaching new territory in the throws. Even the sucky workouts (3 x 300) make you feel good. It's actually a hell of a lot of fun and pretty damn addicting.

On the other end this time of the year is a bit of a bummer because I don't get to hang out with my Jets. I've been traveling a ton both for Harvard and for my own competitions (I've spent the last few weekends in Italy, New Jersey, Greensboro, and now Dallas) and the Jets have taken their practices outdoors and off-site so it's been impossible for me to get to them. I'm gonna try to check in with em next week, but hopefully they understand. Don't get me started on the social life. If it wasn't such a mess I'm sure my roommate would be thinking about subletting my share of our apartment.

I am excited though. In about an hour ill be back in Dallas for what I hope to be a great summer of competitions. Ill try to keep you posted on how TGA goes this weekend and for those of you in CA, I'll be coming home for a little training camp before the US Champs in a couple weeks.

-matt

TGA

2009-06-03T21:07:00.000-07:00

Im planning on putting some time into some posts soon (re: im traveling a lot so finally have some downtime in airports and on planes), but in case I slip I wanted to give you guys a quick update. I leave tomorrow for Dallas and the Texas Greatest Athlete multi.
The plan is to use this as a tune-up for the US Champs at the end of June, but as this is the first time in as long as I can remember that i'm going into a meet without a qualifying mark hanging over my head on top of the fact that I've PR'd at this meet a couple of times before - this might turn into a bit more than a simple "tune-up." We'll see. The plan is to compete in 8 or so of the events but really we're just looking to go into it loose and use it as an opportunity to take some chances and raise the bar.

I'm actually a little (well... A LOT) anxious as this is the first time I've had to ship my poles since having them destroyed coming home from this meet last year, so bypass any good luck wishes to me and send them to my poles!! Thanks to the incredibly gracious help from many of you i'm flying a tube full of beautiful new poles so it feels a little like parents must feel the first time they let their kids go to a sleepover...

Better

2009-05-25T06:37:00.000-07:00

No matter what the outcome, its always amazing how different I feel after my first decathlon of the year. Yes there are multis indoors, but at 7 events even those meets seem like practice. The fall and winter, now even most of spring as my schedule shifts (and I get better), feel like endless training. Just when it starts getting a little tedious and I start to wonder a bit about what I'm doing it all for, I hit that first meet and it all becomes clear. You're body remembers, "oh yeah, this is what its all about." Yes there's definitely a recovery period in which you basically feel like trash for a couple days, but recently I've been noticing a huge jump in confidence and even sense of strength coming out of these opening competitions. Even outcomes under expectations, as this past meet, finally knowing what pieces are there and what others need more work gives a huge boost to my
training both physically and mentally.
I tested my legs out with what was suppposed to be some easy 200s last week but after the first I was able to put together one of my best workouts of the year. In Friday's long jump session I finished an hour of jumping with a jump 40cm (and 100pts) longer than anything I jumped in Italy - off an approach 4 strides shorter than my full approach! The day before I took some of the best feeling high jump training jumps I've had all year.
I still have a lot of work to do before USA's at the end of June, which is coming fast, but it feels good to know I'm still on track.

This actually leads me to a pretty good point. Obviously in Italy I did not handle all the travel well. Despite feeling fine on thursday and friday leading into saturday's competition, my jumps showed that I must have left my legs somewhere in the states. I think for one thing I need to manage my sleep around my flights better as well as do much more moving around in flight to prevent the blood pooling in my legs (I had legitimate "cankles" post-flight), but would anyone like to share any advice for handling extensive travel for competitions?

Thanks all for your support,
Matt

live + learn

2009-05-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

It seems that just when I start feeling older (wiser?), it seems I am always quickly shown that I still have a lot to learn.
Although there were some good things to take away, Multistars turned into an ugly meet for me thanks to ridiculously poor jumps. Maybe it was jetlag and lack of sleep - Jake and I were both wide awake staring at the walls at about 3:45 the morning before the meet, maybe it was just one of those meets, but it's interesting how things turned out. It was actually the jumps I was most eageer to get to coming into this meet. I finally felt like I was grasping the long jump, my high jump has been getting more consitantly decent, and my vault had been going really well. My sprints were untested, my throws felt ok but still also felt untested, and I was actually really nervous to see what my 1500m fitness was like.
Although not amazing, all of my runs were real solid, my shot was good, my disc ok, my jav a work in progress, but I have no explaination for those jumps. It was real interesting dealing with the time change (6 hours ahead from the east coast) and travel (one 7 hours flight, one 5 hour layover, another 1.5 hour flight, one 2 hour car ride), but I actually felt pretty decent during my pre-meet shake outs on thursday and friday.
Thanks however to both Jake (Arnold), his brother Tom, and our new friend Joel Tull (decathlon massage master) I did learn a ton about competing internationally as well as had a great time. I'm still in Italy on my hotel's slow internet service thus I will save pictures and video for later, but I return tomorrow so I'll get some of the good stuff up asap. Heck, even Jake scored 7500 points here last year before coming back this year to score near 8000 for the win. Much like the contrast between my two times at the NCAA championships I guess I just need to chalk this first one up to experience, learn from it, and move on.

I did make a trip all the way up to Austria today which was pretty cool. I know some of you guys love the adventures of traveling with vault poles, so you'll like this one. Jake is competing in the Gotzis decathlon in 3 weeks and is going to stay in europe to train in Austria in the meantime. His ride up (the parents of an austrian decathlete) there kind of fell through so he was a bit stranded. He definitley couldn't bring poles on a train and we learned that despite advice from someone else, we couldn't rent a car one-way in between countries. We banded together and I volunteered to go up with them on the drive and bring the car back. Thus after a ton of running around (both literally and figuratively) we got a rental car delivered to our hotel (it's not easy finding decent sized rental cars in Europe), packed it full of 4 dudes (Jake, Tom, Joel, and I), Jake, Tom, and Joel's luggage, squeezed in Joel's massage table, strapped poles on the top and headed for the border. We got plenty of strange looks and even got pulled over by some non-english speaking cops just before the border (they don't like large objects roped to the roof of cars), but we eventually found our way to the town of Leinz where Jake is staying with a coach friend. After some Brats (which are amazing), I turned the car around and retraced the 4 hour journey back to Desenzano and got here relatively well considering I had very little idea what any of the road signs were telling me.
Now, in a couple of hours I get to see just how bad the Milano airport is going to freak out when I show up with pole on my shoulder expecting to get them on the plane...

wish me luck!

-matt

day one down, gots work to do.

2009-05-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

Hey guys,

A quick post as I have to get to bed. Day one was a little rough. I actually "got to" compete in 6 events as the timing didnt had a malfunction in my heat of the 100 so we had to re-run it. It was actually a decent time, but when I got to the long jump my legs felt terrible. I don't know if it's some travel catching up to me, just one of those days, or the terrible time sleeping I had last night, but I had some real bad hydration problems early in the meet. I recovered well in the shot with the 4th best throw overall, but by the time I got to the high jump I felt like I had somehow gained 40 - 80 ilbs and had been skipping out on practicing the last couple of months. I struggled over a couple heights before an early exit, but again came back with a decent 400m for this early in the season.
Overall Im down a just under 200 points from PR paces so I've got some work to do tomorrow, but I'm anxious to see what I can put out there.

-matt

Ciao!

2009-05-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

hey guys,

I made it safe and despite the travel, the legs actually feel pretty good. I think ive adapted pretty well to the time shift as well with a solid night sleep last night and not too much grogginess. We got in late weds night so just had time for a quick jog around town to shake the legs out and scope things out then get some dinner.

Yesterday we (Jake Arnold (the other american) and Susan the Canadian) made it over to the track to get some more quality work in before doing some site-seeing around the lake. Today was another shake out at the track for some pre-meet but it was a lot more crowded as the rest of the athletes started to show. Theres about 30 guys and as many girls from 29 different countries.

Ive got to make it quick because im at a cafe on the way back to the hotel, but im pyched for the start tomorrow at 10:15 our time (4:15am east coast time). We are gonna see if we can do some damage for the US. You can check meet results, pictures, startlists, and updates at multistars.org.

Ciao!

Matt

Multistars

2009-05-04T21:10:00.000-07:00

Woo-hoo! This time tomorrow I will be over the Atlantic on my way to Desenzano, Italy for the Multistars decathlon. More to follow and I'm going to do my best to keep you guys updated on my trip and results from the meet, but until then, wish me luck!

The official meet website is Multistars.org so you can find info and hopefully results and pictures there as well.

I also have to really thank In the Arena for making this all happen - No way I would be able to put this trip together without their support.

Hopefully talk to you guys soon,
Ciao,
Matt

A Week

2009-04-26T18:22:00.001-07:00

So, with all this whining from me about not having any time to post to this blog, I thought I'd keep a summary of my minutes for you. Below is what my week was like this week - a pretty typical week unless I had to travel with the Harvard team (then it gets messier).

-matt

Marathon Monday:
7:30 breakfast (950 cal)
9:00 office work
11:00 cheer on Amy and Erik
1-2:30 w/u + starts
2:30 -3 meeting
3-4:00 finish workout
4-5:30 Harvard Practice
5:30 - 6:30 Lift (power clean, jump squats)
6:30 - 8:00 Jets practice
8:30-9:00 Grocery Store (meat, fruits, veggies)
9:00 - 11:00 cook, eat, CSI, research Desenzano
Midnight bed

Tuesday:
8:00 breakfast
8:30 - 11:00 office work and meetings
11:30 -12:30 w/u
12:30 - 1:30 high jump
1:30 - 2:15 disc
2:30 - 4:00 office work and harvard practice (coaching)
5:00 - 7:00 Vault and Jav @ Northeastern U.

Weds:
7:30 breakfast
8:30 - 9:30 lift
9:30 - 10:30 coach
11:00 - 12:15 bike to Chiro appt
12:30 - 3:30 office work
3:30 - 5:30 Harvard practice
5:30 - 6:00 finish lift from the morning
6:00 - 7:00 client (personal coaching my little high jumper)

Thursday
7:30 wake and breakfast
8:30 office
9:45 - 11:45 w/u + High Jump
Lunch
12:15 - 2:00 hurdles + sprint work
Lunch #2 + Ice Bath
2:30 - 5:30 Harvard Practice
5:30 - 7:30 Office work
7:30 Home early!

Friday
9:00 sleep in + pancakes
10:30 - 2:30 w/u + jav workout + intervals (4 x 300m)
3:00 - 5:30 Harvard Practice
5:30 - 6:30 Lift
6:30 - 7:30 Jets Practice
9:00 - 11:00 A big ol' pizza, some ice cream, and a movie (Golden Compass)

Saturday
7:00 Breakfast @ The B Club (Basket Case + Oatmeal)
8:00am load the bus @ Harvard
10:30am - 4:00pm UMass Invite (coaching)
6:30pm arrive back in Boston

Sunday
7:00 Breakfast
8:30 drive to Rhode Island
9:30am - 3:00pm Brown Springtime Invite:
100m, Pole Vault, Discus
Drive home. Done.

We All Fall Down...

2009-04-17T14:32:00.001-07:00

This is a broken hurdle...
Yesterday, I broke it with my face.
Completely my fault - I set the hurdles specifically close and accidentally set up the final hurdle twice as close as it was supposed to be and didn't check them before full speed hurdling through them - I actually learned and (inadvertantly) taught a couple of good lessons at the cost of this poor hurdle.

1. We All Fall Down. A number of our Harvard athletes were on the track to witness my grace (what fun is an epic fall if ther's no one there to share it with? I mean, if a hurdler trips in the woods with no one there, there's still a sound, it's just not nearly as funny to talk about later), and I think it was actually a good thing for them to see. Possibly due to the completely fabricated stories I tell them about my training or the incredibly wise and all-knowing reputation that has been built up around me as an athlete and coach (please read sarcasm here) but I'm not sure they all realize that I still make plenty of mistakes. Just about every one of my hurdlers has gone down in a workout, and although it has been a while for me and I definitely don't like it to happen often, I hope they realize that its something we all do. Its just a part if hurdling. Again, I'm not a fan of
falling, nor do I coach my athletes to the point that I think they might fall, but to be honest, if you haven't fallen, if you haven't FAILED, as far as I'm concered, you're not trying hard enough. In order to get better you must go somewhere you've never been before. Until you step to that line and dare cross it, that line becomes a wall. On my new lift card from Coach P (now at Duke - good luck to him, we miss you around here) there's a quote attributed to Anthony C. Clarke:

"The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossoble."

True, its best not to use your face to seak such limits, but hey, different strokes for different folks...

2. Commit. This could have been much worse, but fortunately for me, this hurdle came of the incident much worse than I did and I attribute that to one thing: I was 100% commited to hurdling it - despite ridiculous circumstances. I use it all the time in coaching, especially the field events (ie pole vault), but its the old football rule: the moment you let off, as soon as you drop below anything but 100% commitment, that's when things go wrong, and that's when you open yourself up for injury. If you are staring down a 250 ilb linebacker running full bore for your spleen, or hauling but down a vault runway with a 16 foot long fiberglass pole in your hands the size of a telephone pole, or if say, completely hypathetically, you find yourself 3 hurdles deep and running at full speed into a 39" hurdle 3 feet closer than you expect, if you're not commited or trusting enough in your own
athletic ability to blast through and you try to bail, that's when you set yourself up to do something your body is unprepared for, when you set yourself up for disaster.
Hell, to tell you the truth, I'm damn proud of myself. I fully believe that a year or two ago, had I found myself at that speed that close to a hurdle, the "oh sh*t" mechanism would have kicked in and I would have spazzed out and done everything I could to avoid that hurdle. For the drill the hurdles were already close and thus I was already cue'ing on my quickness in between so that as I found myself impossibly close to the hurdle, surprisingly, my first reaction was simply: you're gonna have to get a lot quicker to make it over this one. I tried, I caught a spike, I tripped, I fell, but above all I did not question and just went. I commited.

Quick Video

2009-04-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

I'm still playing with the capabilities of some of this blog's mobile access so thought I'd share a quick video from tonight's vault session. Despite my legs feeling like they're 400 ilbs a piece this morning (thanks more than likely to the new lifting card started last night), it turned into a great day. Despite how this one looks, I had a great session in the vault, a good quick jav session after, and some solid disc work earlier today. Felt real good getting back in the air after a few weeks off due to my and my coach's equally crazy March schedules. Worked well also to blow off some steam after finding out how much the IRS is taking from me this year...

Hecticly Well

2009-04-12T19:23:00.000-07:00

Sorry guys, I owe you all as I've been doing a terrible job of keeping you guys updated. I've gotten through March and all the travels involved with a solid start to the outdoor season.
The meet at Davis wasn't anything amazing on the performance end, but above all, it was a great chance to get home around the family and friends. It's partially pretty tough going home whenever I do get the chance. My friends, my family...the sun, it's all incredibly tough to leave to come back to Boston. As much as a move from the west coast to the east coast is exactly opposite of what anyone would draw up, however at the time it was the best move for me and I've got a great situation going here. The Aggie Open was my first chance to be outside, as heavy snow this year hasn't even allowed me a single training day outdoors, so I was curious how it'd turn out. The hurdles felt incredibly long - as the first 110m run always does when compared to the indoor 60m hurdles (twice as many hurdles) - but I ran a decent opening time dispite mauling a few of the closing barriers. The vault was a very disappointing no-height as I was eager to show off some of the new poles in front my incredibly generous friends who have donated to the Pole-A-Thon (mchisam.com), but the real big event of the day was the disc. As I mentioned, I've had limited opportunities to get any disc training in this year and the day before the meet was the first time touching an actual disc since the summer, but I was able to pull off a throw just a couple feet under my lifetime best. In fact, I think most of my throws the day before in training (with my alma mater high school team) were even farther, so we shoud have some good things coming there real soon.
After returning from California I got in a couple more days in Mass. before traveling to Houston for 10 days on Spring Break with the Harvard Team. There I got in some great training in the sun and came away with a strong opening to the Long Jump in a meet at Rice University.
We returned to the cold and winds of the early outdoor New England season in April with the Penn Invite at U of Penn. There I had a bunch of coaching to do but I wanted to retry the hurdles to see where I was at and was pleasantly surprised to walk away with the win and a solid 14.78 into a legitimate 1.8 headwind. A decent time for me even on a still day this early. I think i've finally been making some breakthroughs in my hurdles so it's good to see the times matching the feelings in practice.
For now, however, this meets are going to be all I have for a while as the collegiate season really picks up. I'm not sure I'll have any chances to compete before the Italian Multistars meet in May which leaves me a bit anxious, but it gives me a great four week cycle to really put the head down for some good training. In college I would have freaked out going multiple weeks (or a single week for that matter) without a competition, but as I get older I'm really discovering how much competing actually takes out of you and how weeks without a meet provide for much more solid training. As it is I'm feeling really good about myself right now and based on the testing I did last week, the training is going really well. I blew away some of my PRs in the quad test and I'm starting to walk around a little taller. I think all althetes have some sort of cue they feel when things are going well and they're starting to feel really good. For me, when im beat up or out of shape, I feel big and heavy. I feel wide. When I feel good, I feel tall. Normally something I don't notice, but when I get on the track, or even walk into a room when training I am training hard and feeling good, I feel like im a foot taller than anyone else there. Just about every event has made some big breakthroughs in the past couple of weeks and I swear I had to duck under a doorway the other day (possible exaggeration), so Multistars, here we come.

Next Up: Multistars Decathlon, Descenzano Italy, May 9-10

travel Month (the great outdoors)

2009-03-12T21:50:00.000-07:00

Armed with my phone for catching up on my blogging (I love this thing), my ipod music and podcasts (President's weekly address, Photography 101, Al Jazeera Listening Posts are my current favorites + I'm always a Radiohead fan on airplanes), a new book (In Pursuit of Elegance, Matthew E. May), and a backpack full of PB & J's, I am on a plane again. It took a little while to cool down after being reamed by United for my poles (see previous entry) but after writing about it and getting my mid-flight stretching session (a must) I'm settled in and ready to open up the outdoor season this weekend.
I'm fortunate enough to be able to head home to California this weekend to not only get a chance to see my friends and family but also head back to my alma mater to compete. I haven't been on the track at UCD in 2 years so I'm looking forward to seeing how far I've come.
Last weekend I ended the Indoor season on a great note with a 4th place finish at the US Combined Events Championships - my first medal in USATF National Competition. I went down to North Carolina more so to get a meet in and test where I'm at than expecting any big placing. Although nothing was huge and my strongest event, the pole vault was pretty ugly, everything else was real solid based on the time of year. I was third overall in the HJ, 2nd in the Shot, and 2nd in the Vault. I'm a little bummed when I realize that clearing a height or two more in the PV or HJ would have earned me some decent prize money, but all-in-all I'm excited to see what's coming this outdoor season.
A lot of snow in Boston has kept me indoors the entire year thus far so this weekend will be the first time I touch a full-size track (or a real discus and javelin) this year. The hurdles are going to feel a mile long and the discus awkward, but I'm psyched. No matter what happens it'll be good to be competing amongst friends I haven't seen in too long.

Upcoming:
March 14 - Aggie Open, Davis CA
March 28 - Bayou Classic, Houston TX
April 24 - Drake Relays, Des Moines IA
May 9,10 - Multistars Decathlon, Descenzano Italy

Dear United

2009-03-12T14:30:00.000-07:00

Dear United Airlines,

I will never fly your airline again.
It is true I have spent many free flight hours apon your wings in the past two years thanks to the numerous travel vouchers earned for your disability to stay on schedule (and my ability to not need a specific flight schedule) and writing this just minutes from take-off on one of your cross-country flights may not be the most appropriate of moves, kharmically speaking, but seriously, $175 to check pole vault poles?! I remember in 6th grade when that kid socked me in the face after thinking I snitched on him. Walking away from your counter I feel just as assaulted.
Yes, I understand the times are tough and the nickel and diming has become as natural to flying as stripping down at security. Hell, $15 for luggage, $9 for a soggy sandwich - excuse me: soggy "wrap" - is even somewhat understandable. A year or two ago you charged $80 for my poles - a standard fee not too difficult to choke down as it would only be slightly more expensive to ship them. Awkward at 17 feet long, I know the pole tube can be difficult to negotiate through the winds and twists of the checked baggage super-highway (try the check-in lines with that tube on your shoulder), but right now I'm sitting in 1 of 6 seats in the 28th of the 34 rows of this airplane, once slid into the bay, at 30 or so pounds, there is no possible way my pole tube is worth $175 of hassle - well over twice as much hassle as a year or two ago. Before this trip I was debating whether or not I could afford a new laptop. Now I know I could have - but no longer can.
Last week I flew to North Carolina for the Indoor US Combined Events Championships. After a host of phone calls and queries before the trip, I was stoked to find out that previously unknown to me, on top of a ridiculously good airfare, plenty of leg room, and comfy seats for my sore (and lanky) apendages, Jetblue was able to check pole vault poles. The $75 was an expected and competitive charge not too far off of what I might have ended up spending at a bar watching the same college basketball games I enjoyed during the flight complements of the headrest satellite TVs. Unfortunately, Jetblue's scheduling didn't work out for me to fly to California this weekend and the other airlines that are actually enjoyable to fly either don't fly out of Boston (Southwest) or can't take poles (Virgin America) so I was forced to take United - the airline I used to consider "the one of the old airlines that isn't too bad." Then you charged me nearly the same price for my poles to fly under your plane as you did for me to sit in your cramped cardboard isle seat.
I should have left the poles and bought the laptop...Virgin has inflight Wi-Fi.

Good luck in the future,
Matt Chisam

Combined Events Champs, Day 1

2009-03-07T17:03:00.000-08:00

Good day today.
We're at a great facility and we've got a great group of guys. After a couple of scratches we're down to only a field of 8 people so it's a good number without being too big.
The meet started well with a PR in the 60m and a solid Long Jump. I was in 8th after 2 events but it was close. I opened the shot with a real solid 14.33m throw (47 ft) which led the competition by quite a bit until Jake Arnold stepped up with a big 14.98m throw. I wasn't able to answer but was still able to hop up one spot to 7th place.
In the high jump I continued the charge. Feeling great after warm-ups I opened with big clearances at 6-2 and 6-4.5. I was battling some inconsistencies in my approach (the story of my HJ this year) so despite big height over the bar I was only able to clear 1.97m cleanly (6-5ish) but still a solid showing and was in fact enough to jump me up to 5th place over all.
At the end of the first day I'm sitting on a first day PR of 3001 pts. It'll be a battle day 2 as there is less than 150 pts seperating places 2nd - 8th.

En Route

2009-03-06T05:20:00.000-08:00

I'm currently waiting to board my plane at Boston's Logan airport, so this will be my first mobile post. I'm headed to the University of North Carolina for my first Indoor Combined Events Championships with the Heptathlon being Sat + Sunday.
I continue my refusal to do things the easy way as I found out in the terminal that I accidentally booked my flight for next week rather than this morning. On top of which, homeland security tried to take confiscate my pole bag while I was in line. "That's real bad," the guy said, "do you know why the dog is here? I just called in to have these picked up as an 'unattended rug.'" My poles have been mistaken for many things (oars, winsurfing sails, etc) but never a rug.
Anyways, planes here, I'm om board (hopefully so are my poles), UNC here I come.

How to Win? Don't Screw It Up.

2009-03-01T19:05:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, Amory (In The Arena founder) poses a prompt for our consideration when posting. For this week:

Your challenge - should you choose to accept it - is to blog about your own advice for "record-breaking" in whatever capacity that phrase is relevant to your athletic pursuits. Each one of you [of the In The Arena roster] is involved in pushing the boundaries of our physical and psychological limits, talents, and expertise. In essence, you're chasing records everyday...

As an athlete it is your job every single day to get better. You wake every single morning (and go to bed every single night) with the sole intent of improving yourself in some facet. Will you get stronger, will you get faster, will you get wiser?

Taking the job as a coach at Harvard, i'll be the first to admit a total lack in confidence in my ability to "coach" college athletes. I had so much to learn as an athlete and was myself only 1 full year out of college - how was I anywhere near qualified for such a job? Alas, I was somewhat bullied into the job (thanks PT (RIP)), but I have not regretted the decision since. Where am I going with this, you ask? I didn't think I was ready to coach because I felt that I lacked the technical knowledge to coach. Because I was far from a perfect hurdler, I didn't feel that I could teach a kid to become a perfect hurdler - then I quickly learned that the technical side is only one small part of coaching. The biggest part is my answer to Amory's prompt.

How do you get better everyday, how do you win, how do you break records? Yes you have to work everyday, you have to show up to the track (the gym, the field, etc) everyday and improve in some facet to slow build upon your ability, but come game day, come meet day or the time to perform you have to do what is many times the absolute most difficult and unnatural feeling thing to do: Let It Happen.

True, in order to PR (personal record), or do better than you've ever done before, you do have to do something you've never done before, you have to be at least slightly better then you've ever been before, but what is so difficult to grasp for most athletes is that if you only need to let happen what's never happened before. Overanalyzing, over-stressing, over-thinking, it's so often the case that the biggest obstacle to you doing better than you've ever done before is yourself. If my college coaches are reading this they're laughing their butts off right now because this is exactly what stood in my way for so long. If you step into a hurdle race thinking:

okay, stay loose and make sure you get good pressure on the blocks. When the gun goes off, drive the arms, but stay low, don't pop your head up. BANG! keep my heels low, push hard, keep driving the arms, be patient with my acceleration (did they get a better start than me), here comes the first hurdle, stay fast, drive the knee, keep the arms moving, stay forward, sprint through the first hurdle (are they ahead of me?), quick arms, but don't let them get too big...

Not only are you definitely not going to stay loose, but you're almost certainly not going to break any records. Practice is the time for learning, for thinking, competition is the time for performing, for letting all that you've built come out. As I type, Sportscenter is on and in just the last 10 minutes of reporting the show is rife with this theme. Kyle Busch just won a NASCAR race in Vegas thereby setting numerous records for early season driving performance. In his words:

"It was a methodical day....the car was there in the beginning, we just had to ride and get what it would give us"

Simple words but so important - and surprising difficult to follow: drive the car you came in. The Detroit Pistons just knocked off the Celtics in Boston. Having recently traded for superstar Allen Iverson, the Pistons have been sputtering despite a very strong team. Today they knock off the Celts with Rip Hamilton starting in place of injured superstar Allen Iverson, why? They know Rip. With him they are able to "just do what they do." With AI they're just pieces "trying to figure out how to fit." With Rip, a player they've all been playing with (and winning with) for years they can simply relax and play basketball, play their game without much thought. It's all reaction and performance. Will they eventually be a stronger team with Iverson at the helm, maybe once they figure it all out, but for now, they're trying to do to much. You can't learn how to be a team and win.

I feel i'm digressing here a bit, so to bring it back I have to brag a little big. I coached my first conference champion in the hurdles today*. Over the past 2 days we've hosted the Ivy League Championships at Harvard (The Crimson recap video here) and one of my hurdlers, Dara Wilson, won the 60m Hurdles.

I'm super proud of her winning her first conference title, but above all it was the circumstances in which she did it that makes me most proud. Coming in as one of the top couple seeds, she had a rough run in the semi-finals thanks to nearly false-starting, but kept her cool and qualified for the finals. The less than stellar qualifying heat left her in lane 8 and despite huge commotion over girls hitting hurdles and almost going down around her on top of a slow start, Dara kept her cool, kept her confidence and battled back to take her title. A title deserved through hard work day in and day out at practice, but a title earned through performing when it counted. It was far from a perfect race technically but once you get to meet day it matters not how you get there as long as you get there before everyone else.

Afterwards, Dara gives a great interview talking about her transition from the qualifying race to the finals:

She didn't freak out and try to figure out "how to fix" everything, she knew that all she had to do was drive the car she came in.

It's late, it's been a long weekend, and I have to get to bed (5 days to go under USATF Combined Event Champs) so I think i'm dragging a bit so i'll wrap it up. Paul Turner (RIP), as I mentioned above, one of the primary reasons I am coaching at Harvard, passed along his simple key to coaching success:

Get good athletes, don't screw em up.

Whether coaching, whether competing, my advice for breaking records and winning: Make it happen during the week, but when it comes time to perform, Let It Happen.

*Shannon Flahive, another our athletes I help coach at Harvard won the pentathlon on Saturday night as well. Her hurdle time combined with Dara's actually makes it wins for Harvard Hurdlers in both hurdle events of the meet - the open and the pentathlon 60m Hurdles (while we're on the subject of bragging...). Congrats ladies.

addiction

2009-02-22T20:48:00.001-08:00

If you're doing things right, there seems to come a time every year in which you absolutely love training. I will be the first to admit: it is a sickness, it is not normal, it may not even be right...but it its great. I am there now.
This past week I was fortunate to have coach John Powell (who runs the Trackspeed-1 club out of London) in town. I've started training with a couple of guys following his workouts halfway through last year. This year is my first year working with his stuff from the start and my track strength feels great. He brought out a couple Brits as well so our small training group grew and we got some great work in. Unfortunately all the tough work put a damper on the meet today at Harvard (my legs pretty much felt like mud), but I know in the long run we made a big deposite into the bank this week. Hopefully come a couple of weeks from now we can see some dividends come the US Combined Events Championships in Chapel Hill, March 7-8th.

With outdoor quickly approaching I've finally got some resemblence of a schedule:

March 7-8: USATF Combined Events Championships, Indoor Heptathlon (Chapel Hill, NC)
March 14: Aggie Open, Pole Vault, Hurdles, Discus (UC Davis, CA!!!)
March 21: TSU Relays (Houston, TX)
March 28: Bayou Classic (Houston, TX @ Rice University)
April 22: Drake Relays, Select Decathlon Events (Des Moine, Iowa)
May 7: Multistars Decathlon (Descenzano, Italy...hopefully!)
June 6-7: Texas Greatest Athlete, Select Decathlon Events (Dallas, TX)
June 25-28: USATF National Championships, Decathlon (Eugene, OR)

Nature v. Nurture - compilation

2009-02-15T20:21:00.000-08:00

From my little social survey I may not have taken any strides forward in the eternal battle of Nature versus Nurture, but if there are any conclusions that I can draw, it's that a very quick way to get an athlete talking is to ask him/her about their childhood in sports. The feedback I received from everyone was amazingly quick and insightful and proved fodder for an great discussion in the class.
As a recap, I was asked to guest speak in a Boston College Business School class on on Competition with the specific topic of my experiences with Nature versus Nurture and how people become experts. Although not nearly as nervous as I would have been a couple of years ago (thank you coaching and teaching), I wasn't all that sure where to begin so I reached out to all the athletes I knew who could be considered "experts" (pro or high-level collegiate) in what they did (thus if I had nothing original to talk about, I could at least regurgitate everyone else's ideas). The responses made inbox checking for that week particularly interesting and as per request, and simply because it's interesting, this is what I got out of it all:

I received email responses from 18 people and spoke in person to 1 (she's got a gold medal and multiple World Championships so she gets special treatment).
12 of these were Track in Field (mostly multi-eventers, the others field eventers)
2 Endurance Athletes (triathlon and marathon)
4 Nordic Skiiers
1 Soccer Player.

Weighing Nature v Nurture
Of these 19 people - actually, I'll include myself in order to pad my own stats - of these 20 people, only 3.5 of these people specifically put the nature versus nurture balance at a higher ratio than 50/50. 1 person (unless i'm using them for a laugh, i'll keep most names out of the discussion), one of the endurance athletes, tipped the scales towards nurture, with 2.5 believing nature to be of stronger influence. 0.5 a person? I guess I should explain. Jason Hinkin, a buddy of mine and someone to helped intoduce me to the pole vault (among other things I can't mention here) comes from parents of zero athletic background and yet of his siblings, Jason has one brother international rugby star, one brother that just missed the US National Rugby Team, a sister that competes in Dressage (horse riding stuff that I tried to understand watching the Olympics...), and another sister that won an NCAA Soccer Championship at North Carolina. As Jason put it: "I think Mark Spitz was our mailman, it's the only way to explain it." Jason believes this is proof of some sort of strong nature...but could it also be proof of just incredible nurture? Thus, he only counts as half - plus he also mentioned seeing the nurture side be as evident as the nature in so many others. The most intriguing factor among these 3 is that these were the only 3 amongst the 20 that didn't write glowing happy accounts of their youth in sports. Jason was a soccer player growing up but just kind of did it to have something to do and he only picked up pole vault in high school because he heard it was a good way to meet chicks. Of the other 2 "nature-leaners," neither remembered being at all encouraged toward sport and neither really enjoyed sport all that much growing up. It took until much later in life to really find a passion for competition (both are now professional Heptathletes).

The Early Years
On the contrary - and this is my favorite part - every single one of the others surveryed used some sort of positive exclaimation (either with punctuation or rhetoric) to explain their early stages of exposure in sport. There were no pushy dad or crazy soccer moms of mention, and in fact only one athlete, the soccer player (not shockingly), mentioned the competitive side of their sport early on. In fact, some learned their sports early - like the skiiers who learned to ski about the same time they learned to walk, some learned their sports late - like the triathlete who didn't pick it up until college, but absolutely every single one of the 20 participated in sports other than the one they are now professional in.
Personally, I think the over-specializating, hyper-competitive mentality so many young parents have now is an absolutely terrible trend. Everyone is trying to create the next Tiger Woods by making their kid play golf at 4 years old or enrolling their kids in tennis academys instead of grade school. There were 3 girls I talked to that participated in heavy gymnastics early on, you know, the 4 - 6 hours a day from the time you're 3 type stuff. Did you notice my list of sports in the introduction? Not one of these is still involved in gymnastics. All 3 of them are now heptathletes (one of them an olympian) because they got so burned out of gymnastics that around high school they got out of the gym and picked up any and all other sports they could get their hands on. One of them was 5' - 4" when she left gymnastics in high school. She's now 5' - 11".
Specifically, half of the surveyed used the words "fun" or "enjoyed" when speaking about early sports. Many did use the word competitive, but it was always the enjoyement that was emphasized. Trey Hardee, olympic decathlete and NCAA record holder, specifically mentioned how non-competitive his youth leagues were. Zoila Gomez, alternate for Olympic Marathon, who comes up to about my waist in height, remembers her absolute love for basketball growing up. In fact, other than the skiiers and the soccer player, most didn't even start competing in their sport until 8th grade or later - something I think to be very refreshing. Hell, Mike Hazle, Olympic Javelin thrower, didn't pick up his first jav until college - where he was on a football and baseball scholarship. Zoila, 11-time Div. II All-American and 6-time NCAA Champion didn't start running until she was 17. The academic literature loves to talk the thousands of hours of "deliberate practice" it takes to become an expert at something. Yes it takes time, it takes practice, but pushing a kid into a sport at 4 years old produces nothing without true enjoyment - just ask those gymnasts. This actually brings me to the next thing I noticed:

The Role of Parents and Coaches
For the class I was asked to speak in front of, an article was assigned* which outlined Benjamin Bloom's stages of talent development and the roles of teachers and parents in these stages. In the early years a child is introduced to a field; the parents are usually responsible for introducing this field due to their own involvement or excitement (ie, whether dad played baseball or watches it nightly, the ol' game of catch eventually comes out). Early it's the role of the teachers/coaches to emphasize the process of learning. Later in the middle years, the kid gets hooked. Here, the teachers/coaches move on to teach actual skills and technic while emphasizing discipline and work ethic. The role of the parents is of support (often emotionally and/or financially). The final stage is that of perfection in which the athlete/musician/scientist becomes devoted to their field and can eventually become an expert. It is only those that have reached this third stage that I sought out for my survey and in their responses I found Bloom to be spot on. As I mentioned before, 2 of the total didn't feel that they were particularly encouraged early on by their parents or otherwise, but absolutely everyone else made it a significant point to talk about their support system growing it. Whether or not their parents college basketball players, street racers, band members, or completely non-athletic, everyone had either parents, coaches, or both that were instrumental in their lives early on. Katie Whitcomb, 2010 Olympic Noridic Skiing hopeful, who "started skiing as soon as I was too heavy for my parents' backpack" said it was "super important" to note that it was her folks that made it all possible. Chris Helwick, decathlete, said his parents were the support and encouragement but his early coaches introduced him to his sport and put in huge time to help teach him it. In fact, almost half the athletes specifically used the words "support" when speaking of their parents, or as Julie Picker, heptathlete, expanded by saying her parents were "extremely supportive" and were responsible for introducing her to many great sports. It was then the coaches that taught her the sports themselves. Mike Hazle were "extremely instrumental" in his early success because they provided the means for excelence but were never pushy whereas his coaches taught the work ethic and character. Sarah Groff, triathlete, reflected many in that her parents were super no-pressure and that it was her enjoyment over her victories they stressed. Her parents were her emotional support as well as her taxi drivers. Those few that didn't have particularly active parents found some coach along the way to step in. My mom, discus, javelin, hurdler at ucla grew up in a time when women were far from encouraged to become athletes but it was the huge heart, knowledge, and time commitment of her high school coach and lifetime mentor that was her support system. For Zoila it was a PE teacher that discovered and encouraged her running ability, and for Stacy Dragila, many time world champion pole vaulter, it's still her dad to this day that is her emotional support after each meet. To tell you the truth, deep down I always wondered if I was the only one who had amazing parents and coaches growing up. In reading these responses I am of course psyched to see how many others shared experiences like mine developing in sport, but part of me also wonders, with the decline of two parent families (many spoke of one parent being the introducing of the sport, the other the taxi driver, etc), with the striping of physical education departments and after-school sports, what is going to happen to those that will never see the support systems we were blessed with?

Genetics (Nature)
It was interesting to see how few people actually talked about their gentic gifts. Many did have athlete parents, but also, many did not. Trey Hardee, at 6'-4" is the tallest in his family by about 5 inches, and Brian Gregg, skiier, talked about being naturally talented in just about everything he tried, but that was about all I really heard. Everybody was so excited to talk about their parents and coaches. Yes, Trey is tall, but you can't long jump 25 feet off of height alone (kid's got speed for days), and if you've seen Mike Hazle on youTube or the new [Impact!] video, you can see that Mike's got a cannon for an arm and some incredible strength. These guys actually summed it up pretty well themselves: According to Trey, the nature determines your potential, the cap on how good you can possibly be, but it's the nurture that determines how close that you become, whereas Mike related it to hardware and software. Nature deals you the hardware, but without the software, the nurture, the hardware will get you nowhere.
We opened the class at BC with a discussion one of the students brought up. She had heard that they are starting to be able to read your genetic code with the ability to tell you what you will be good at and she wanted to know what I thought about this. To me I'm curious as to how they think they can determine what makes you good at something as yes, becoming an expert may take "10,000 hours" of deliberate practice, but who determines what tools you use to get there? What if you told Bryan Clay, world's greatest athlete via his decathlon gold medal, that he was too short to be a decathlete (he's 5'-10" in a sport dominated by 6'4" monsters)? What if Labron James was given a discus rather than a basketball when growing up? Some elite athletes are freakishly fast, some freakishly large, some strong, most are their own special brew of each of these. It's terrible enough that so many parents are trying to force their kids into one sport or another in hope of Venus and Sarena Williams 2.0, I can't imagine how many more childhoods would be crushed by docters trying to impose stricker restrictions to a child's hope. If anything I took from this little experiment it is this: obviously nature has much say in where you may end up, but its really the software, the nurture that creates an expert, an elite, and it's only on their own terms, through enjoyment and support that one will find his way to the top of the mountain.

Thanks to all those that helped and to Cathy Utzschneider for the opportunity to speak with her class.

-matt

*Nurture over Nature: A New Twist to the Developement of Expertise, Bush & Salmela (it's actually very interesting if you want to look it up)

Nature or Nurture...

2009-02-01T20:46:00.000-08:00

One of my personal training clients (supporting a decathlon habit isn't cheap) teaches at the Boston University business school and has asked me this week to come in and talk to her class. Specifically they are studying the roles of Nature versus Nurture in producing experts of a field (sports, music, science, etc). If you've been around the blogs of my fellow ITA athletes you'll notice that I've reached out to them (as well as many of my other athlete friends in various sports) for their thoughts on the subject with a series of questions. It has been incredibly interesting being able to read everyones responses but in turn, I guess I should turn the questions on myself as well.

1. (Nature) What is the athletic background of your parents and family?
My parents were both athletic, and good at what they did. My dad grew up with baseball and tried to play football in high school (but loves to tell the story of his first season ending on the opening kickoff of his first game when he broke a toe). At something like 140 ilbs (I think I weight that much when I was 6), the baseball/football route wasn't exactly in the cards. He was much better suited for cross country and middle distance running on the track. A very good 800m/mile runner he excelled at Pasadena City College before moving on to run at UCLA. To put a date on it, he raced Prefontaine and has stories about running cross country courses barefoot. After graduating he went on to coach at the high school level (Arcadia High School where he helped found the Arcadia Invitational) eventually moving up to the collegiate ranks as the head coach at UCLA (winning 2 national championships) and ending up at Stanford. He now teaches middle school physical education and coaches high school track at Del Mar High School in San Jose. My mom was on the opposite side: being her current height of 5-10 since the 6th grade, she was an obvious basketball and volleyball player, but excelled at track (despite VERY limited opportunities for girls to compete in the sport). She eventually earned her way on to the team at UCLA in one of the first years they fielded a women's program where she hurdled as well as through discus and javelin. A few years later she took a coaching position at UCLA where she met my dad (her labor with me began at practice on the track at UCLA). When we moved to northern California to follow my dad at Stanford, she bowed out of collegiate coaching to teach and coach high school track and cross country at Saint Francis High School in Mt. View where she remains today. Needless to say, theres a little bit of Nature there.

2. When did you begin participating in your sport?
I began running track in middle school, I think 6th grade. There I picked up the hurdles and the high jump. I did my first decathlon after my junior year of high school.

3. What was your early experience like with sports?
I can't remember a time when I wasn't playing something. I grew up with a pool in my backyard (don't ask how dad taught me to swim) and I began soccer after I was 7 or so (which was my first love) and then played little league. At recess I was one of those kids always moving. From flat out races (despite what Josh Kruzer says, I was the fastest kid at Castlemont Elementary School) to four-square, to butts-up, to good ol' run away from the girls, to tetherball, I always had to be doing something. Once I hit middle school I participated in every sport the school offered (expect cross country - which isn't really a sport, so that doesn't count...): basketball (except for the first year when I got cut (maybe still bitter about that), wrestling, soccer, track, and even volleyball for 2 weeks (we needed 6 for a team but could only round up 5). On top of which I was heavily active in select soccer and little league. Before school we played basketball, lunch was soccer or basketball, PE was in between, after school I went from school practice for the sport of the season directly to either soccer or baseball. Whenever I had free time we played roller hockey or my brother and I made something up in the yard (or pool).

4. How instrumental were parents and coaches in the early part of your development as an athlete?
My parents were amazingly through this. Always super encouraging and supportive. They found a way to pay for the "Select" soccer team (and all its travel) that I had to be on and were my personal taxi drivers from practice to practice (sometimes 3 sports at once). Never pushy, they were the first onces to hold me out of a practice or game if my homework wasn't getting done (I hated this). In between they were our constant playmates between bike riding, basketball, home-run derby with mom or "burn-out" catch with dad. When we didn't have school we'd go to work with dad and play around the Stanford stadiums and locker rooms all day. Sports were kind of what we did.
The thing I lvoe is that our parents never pushed us into track. They wanted us to be happy any way we wanted to be happy. My parents loved track and passed on that enthusiasm (the Olympics were always big times at our house) so my brother and I eventually found our way to track but it was all completely on our own terms. Hell, it used to frustrate me to no end in college when my mom would try to suggest that I take some time off of track when my studies got hectic. They were, however, always there for us however we needed it. Pitching to us in the driveway, mom teaching us javelin at the park or taking us to school to learn how to lift properly, dad helping us build our quarter-pipe in the front yard or teaching me high jump fundamentals. Our best coaches, fans, shuttle drivers were there every night at the dinner table.
On top of which, and i've mentioned this before, I was incredibly blessed with phenomenal coaching early on. From Tommy Anderson my soccer coach for many years to a host of Little League coaches, to amazing fottball, basketball, and track coaches in high school. The level of quality and enthusiasm was awesome.

5. How were you introduced to your sport and how many other sports did you seriously participate in?
I've mentioned a bit all the sports I played above. Soccer and baseball were the big ones early. Track and Football were my focuses in high school. I debated played college football but believe it or not I was a lineman and didn't see myself having any ability to put on the weight I would need to have been real good (you could see my ribs poking out of my skinny chest until my junior year of high school).
In track I was a decent hurdler and high jumper (14.80 hurdles, 6-4 high jump) who played around with other events (shot and discus) and eventually learned to pole vault at the end of my junior year (thanks to awesome coaches - see last blog post). As I often put it, I was exceptionally good at getting 2nd place. One sectional championships meet I got second in the hurdles (with the same time as the winner chosen by photo finish) and second in the pole vault (jumping the same height as the champion but losing based off of missed attempts) within 10 minutes of each other. I figured that I wasn't fast enough to become a great hurdler nor springy enough to specialize in a jump, but a lot of 2nd places added up makes a pretty good decathlon score and thus began my decathlon odyssey. Mom taught me to lift and throw, dad taught me to run and jump.
I guess I should mention that I saw Jackie Joyner-Kersee compete in a heptathlon for the first time when I was 2 days old. My mom was coaching her at the time and broke me out of the hospital to get to the meet. How's that for early introducing to the sport?

6. Is your success a product of Nature or Nurture?
Its both, but more significantly it was nurture. My dad is 6 foot tall and my mom's about an inch shorter, thus, I am tall. My dad gave me a bit of endurance, my mom gave me huge shoulders. My dad also had a perfect math SAT, my mom's entire side of the family has chicken legs, and both sides of my family have histories of drinking issues. This could add up to anything or nothing. Growing up I was super shy kid whose parents taught at his school, couldn't stay out late on school nights and always got As (yeah, I was that kid). How does this make a decathlete? More than shoulders or skinny legs, my mom taught me how to work my butt off. How to do things properly and a passion for learning. My dad gave me the fire to compete and the determination to get things done. Together they put no limit on my exposure and answered all my curiosities. I am not a decathlete because rather than a Nintendo my parents gave me a rope swing. I am a decathlete because my parents used to help each other break down film at the dinner table, because I grew up listening to my dad's recruiting calls while I was doing my homework. I am a decathlete because my coaches were great people I never wanted to let down who gave me every tool I asked for. I turned down much better scholarship offers to go to a division II college that had the decathlon program I was looking for. I have a degree in engineering and yet at 26 years old, because they refuse to let me give up on what I love, my parents are still paying my school bills and car payments. Relatively to my peers, I am not fast, I am not strong. Nature gave me a large frame and a very stubborn will, but it was nurture that allowed me to fill it all in.

7. Are you an expert in your field? (by your own definition)
They say it takes 10,000 hours to truly become and expert (around 2 hrs/day for ten years). I am just past the ten year mark and although I am very much closer than I was just couple of years ago, I now very much understand why a decathlete takes so long to mature in the event. There's a lot of ground to cover and it seems like the more I learn, the more I understand, the more I realize how much I don't actually know. By my own definition I've got a ways to go before becoming an expert in the decathlon.

Season's Greetings.

2009-01-18T06:39:00.000-08:00

Im at home right now waiting to go over the the track at Harvard for the Greater Boston Track Club Invite where I plan to open up in a couple of the field events for the first time this year (PV and Shot). More importantly, next week will be my season opening multi-event with a Heptathlon at Harvard.
I can't believe as I count back, this will begin my second decade as a decathlete. Decade. Like 10 years...
Before this season starts, however, before everything gets too carried away, I have a lot of people to thank for the last ten years of my life. Between my first two years being exposed to the multi events in high school, 5 years at UC Davis, and the last 3 years post-collegiately, there is no way I could mention everyone that has influenced me, but I'd like to at least mention some of those that have enabled me to get to where I am today.

First, foremost, and above all I have been blessed with an incredible family. My first coaches, forever my fans and support crew. No matter what sport I picked up it was they that took me from wrestling practice to baseball, then to soccer or whichever the season held in store. It was they that kept me out of practice if my homework wasn't done, it was they who held me up the first time I got cut from a team (...and the last time). My dad taught me to run, to jump, to always find a way to get things done - and to enjoy it in the process. I'm not sure there are many moms out there that could take their sons to the park to learn the javelin, to throw the shot and disc, hell, my mom even taught me olympic lifting. Even moreso, my mom taught me how to stick me head down and work hard, about determination, and how to keep a level head. From wiffle ball homerun derby over the telephone wires, to hockey in the driveway, to that water-polo game in the pool, to Chisam v. Chisam throwing competitions at UCD, always my teammate, always my competitor, always my brother, Chris taught me about pride. I couldn't have asked for more in a family and everyday they seem to become more supportive...but I guess it is at least half their fault I grew up to be a track bum.

Then, of course, there's those other parents of mine: My coaches. In high school there was our head coach, Dave Frank who helped teach me the joy of Track and Field, my hurdle coaches, Dan Quinn who was as much an inspiration in the classroom as out, and Carl Florant who would come to the track after a full day of work to teach us the finer points of hurdling. Then of course when you have the opportunity to learn from Tom Tuite, on the of finest pole vault gurus you will find anywhere, and Jason Hinkin, one of the biggest and yet brightest nuts you will ever meet, I got a hell of an inclusive experience. To round it out, Jeff Myers coached my first love, the high jump. It wasn't until I started taking recruiting trips and competing on a collegiate level did I realize how incredibly gifted my high school coaches were on a technical level, but it was well before this that I realized how amazing my high school coaches were as people. Sure Carl taught me the importance of being relaxed while I run and coach Myers taught me how to arch over a bar, but so much more than the technical lessons it was the lessons in between the intervals, in between the jumps, and outside of practice from each of these great coaches, great teachers, that I truly learned to become the athlete and person I am today. And those were just my track coaches. Mr. Kemp, Coach Filios, Mr. Smith, Coach Adams, Coach Ivers and so many more. I bring a small part of everyone of these people with me every day I get out of bed. Thank you.

Then at Davis and continuing after, I've met the second half of my family in those that were there with me on the track, in the hills and the weightroom day after day. From training partners like Ben Forbes and Caroline Sheldon, mentors like Tony and Grady, teammates like Josh, Kajari, Lil Matt, John-boy, Ryan, and Azzy. Furthermore the likes of Kyle Auclair and Ian (Glory-boy) Kenworthy, my jump and hurdle partners at Saint Francis High School as well as at UC Davis, and teammate turned roommate turned coach Byron Talley, helped blur the lines even greater between track and life.

Of course, post-collegiately, track becomes a very different monster. Even more so the reason you go the bed at night at the reason you wake in the morning takes on greater focus, the line between coach and friend, training partner and family becomes much less distinct as I began to see more of them than my roommates, parents, or brother. Chris Huffins, Ed Miller, and very much Phil McMullen, and training partners Bruce and Mark at UC Berkeley introduced me to this world and it was there that track turned from simply something I was good at to something I needed, something I loved.

Leaving the familiarity and comfort of all that I knew in California was a huge decision for me, but with the support of Will Thomas and his now wife Francoise, I knew that at least I was doing so with great friends and another new part of my family. Since here in Boston the Team Chisam roster has only strengthened in size of incredible people willing to give up significant chunks of their lives to help me pursue my goals. I can't thank my coach, Brenner Abbott, enough. One day I just kind of showed up in Will's backseat and he has been so much more than incredibly giving of his time an energies in putting up with my high maintenance attempts at figuring out this whole Decathlon thing. Hell, his couch was my home the first two weeks here and even still I probably take a lot more room on that couch (and the dinner table) than he and Kyra bargained for.

Even further, the coaches here at Harvard have done nothing but give of their time and their minds to me and I am eternally grateful. Coach P (Dan Perlmutter), the weight room mastermind continues to push me (and put up with me) with incredible workouts (see: "The Beast"), Jason Saretsky, has been incredibly accepting of my crazy hours and competition schedule, and Karen Tolzcyk's words as well as her hands strengthen me each month. Coach Gee (also one of my bosses who even more directly has to put up with the burden of my training schedule) is the finest long jump coach I have even seen and someday may even crack the age-old code of my long jump disfunctions, and Coach Erickson who has opened up to me her throws practices and has even passed along some of her super-secret javelin workouts.

Of course, there is no way I can give thanks without mentioning Amory Rowe, David Salem, and In The Arena. Without them there is no way I could have made it this far.

It was through my time with these people - be it long out and back runs with Ben, early morning lifts with Caroline, taking a ride on the Pain Train with Josh, laughing with Bruce and Huff as Will dry heaves at the bottom at Campanile Hill, buses, vans, planes, Chico Multis where I learned to be a decathlete, Dallas multis where I learned to be a professional, and Eugene with both my blood family and track family both in the stands and in the blocks next to me that I learned who I am as an athlete, who I am as a person.

Notice a theme here? As a decathlete you have a chance to learn many things - yes this includes silly things like how to throw a javelin or huck yourself over a bar using a fiberglass pole, but more importantly, in pursuing these ten events you learn a hell of a lot about yourself thanks only to the people around you.

In the decathlon only one athlete competes throughout the ten events, but there's 1,000 people that helped him get there.

I'm sorry for the long post, but it was important to me before this season starts to give thanks to all of you (and the many many more I didn't mention) before yet another season starts.

Thank you all,

matt

Can't Run Here...

2008-12-20T21:39:00.000-08:00

I was pretty lame growing up so never got kicked out of anywhere for skateboarding or anything cool like that, but I never imagined I'd ever get kicked off a track and threatened with trespassing for doing some flying 40's.

I had to be in Phoenix all last week for a conference and was stoked when my google maps fly-over found a dirt track nearby to workout on. Unfortunately Capt. Golf Cart discovered my unlawful intervalling half-way through my workout and made sure to escort me off the premises despite my pleas (I only had 10 minutes to go before my last interval). I was able to get my final run on the local jogging path (much to the confusion of some power-walkers), but it was definitely the first time I've been kicked off a track for running.

On the update front, this will probably be my last post of 2008 but that means 2009 and the track season is just around the corner. The Jets have their first meets coming up in January and I competed in my first meet last week. Also, in Pole-A-Thon news things have gotten off the ground surprisingly well. Huge, HUGE, thanks go out to my good buddy Ian Kenworthy, a hurdle teammate both at Saint Francis High School (he broke the school record I couldn't get) and UC Davis, and Team Awesome (Tyler Smith, Joe Huffsmith, and Dave Preston) for donating my first two poles - dubbed Glory Pole and Peppermint Taco respectively. Guys, I can't thank you enough.

For now, I get a couple of days in California to rest up and enjoy the family before getting back to Boston and buckling down for the season. Until then, have great holidays everybody.

Pole-A-Thon...I need your help.

2008-12-10T19:18:00.001-08:00

As some of you close to me know, the week before the Olympic Trials was actually extremely stressful. The week before I had come to find out that the shipping company I ~~use~~ used to use ruined just about every single pole I had shipped to Dallas for my decathlon at the beginning of June. And I use the general term 'ruined' on purpose...I have no idea what they could have done to them to cause the damage I've been left with.

Seriously, Short of a laser-pistol fight amongst guerillas I have no way to explain how 8 poles could be not only smashed, but burnt as well. They weren't even flown, they were ground shipped. Anyways, I lucked out and was able to borrow poles during the Trials (thank you Ryan Harlan) but with the size of poles that I need (big) being so rare, they only way I'm going to be able to find poles for this year is to buy them and unfortunately at over $500 and $600 a piece for most of them, they're far from cheap. I lost a few grand of poles (as well as a couple that were lent to me by Northeastern and Harvard University so that fellow competitors in Dallas could borrow poles to jump on) so I'm going to need a lot of support.

The great guys at M-F Athletic have pledged to give me 20% off each of my poles (which is HUGE!!! Thanks Guys!) so we've got a good start but if you or anyone you know is willing to support your favorite decathlete (me...), then please take a moment to visit my site at mchisam.com. Every little bit helps so even if you can't help out monetarily, please take a moment to show your support with a comment. Plus, if you're able to help out by donating a whole pole (Thanks You!!!) then not only will you get to name the pole, but you'll also be kept up to date with how your pole's season is coming along all year. We started to get some great places last year, help me get even higher (literally) this year.

Thanks all,

Matt

mchisam.com

Superstitions

2008-12-02T08:53:00.000-08:00

Whereas I've ever really been the superstitious type it's definitely something you will always find around you in sport and the topic was recently sparked by one of my athletes asking about any superstitions I adhere to. I actually remember in Little League I was jealous that the pro guys were superstitious so I thought that i should be too and thus took a Winchester Mystery House coin and put it in my shoe during a game "for good luck." Most painful game ever.
Being a huge over-thinker, rather than having superstitions I just get incredibly OCD about my preparations. I have to have the right breakfast, I have to do the right thorough warm-up (and spend way too much time doing it), my shoes always have to be tight enough, but never too tight and if one must be re-tied I can never not re-tie the other because it will then feel too loose in comparison to the newly tied shoe. I always have to put on a fresh jersey before my first event so I can never warm-up with it on. When vaulting (a whole 'nother story when it comes to superstitions and OCD behavior) I have to ensure that my entire hands are completely covered in chalk right before I step on the runway. If there is then an interruption in my pre-approach routine or if I have to wait too long to jump, I almost always have to re-chalk my hands.

But I guess there are a few things that might qualify:
1. If possible I always pack a box of honey wheat Wheatables crackers for every decathlon. This goes back to college when a teammate and I always brought these to meets. I don't even eat them half the time, but I always like to have them - it reminds me of the good ol' days with my UC Davis team and our multi-event trips. My coach usually ate more of them then we did (and then tried to get us to go to Carl's Jr every day because his wife (our other coach) wouldn't let him eat it at home).
2. I always down a Boost shake after the final days event in a decathlon - this if for recovery tho, so chalk it up to OCD.
3. If possible, I always shower right before the 1500 meters. This I got from Phil McMullen (friend, training partner, hero to all man) and I have PR'd in the 1500m every time I've been able to find a shower since.
4. In one of my first college decathlons, American Record Holder Dan O'Brien was competing with us and he was the first one to approach me after the 1500m - which is a big deal to a decathlete. I had my hands on my knees and was debating falling over when he came up to me and said: "Stand up. Americans never lay down after the 1500." I can hear him say that the moment I cross the line every time I finish a 15 and thus I don't lay down.

Be Warned...

2008-11-24T19:25:00.000-08:00

The Jets have begun relay practice! The world is on notice.

Hills, Drills, and Jets

2008-11-10T22:40:00.000-08:00

November is here and with it has come a step up in the event training (specific event work - ie, drills), a step up in the intervals (with a heavy dose of hills), and The Jets! The Cambridge Jets have begun their season so I am finally back working with them. It's great to see a lot of familiar faces and we've been able to hop right into the fun. This year I'm excited as I will get to work specifically with some of the kids on some field event stuff. We got to long jump last year, but I'm eager to try some other events out as well.
I keep forgetting to take some time to use my Flip out at practice with the Jets, but otherwise here's a snapshot of my November:

...

2008-10-27T18:05:00.000-07:00

In one week it will be November. Things are starting to pick up real quick. You know that climb up the first big roller coaster hill? The chains slowly clicking, the plastic seat under your butt still a bit cold to the touch, the excitement starting to mix with anxiety - am I ready? is the bar clicked tight enough to my lap? Is it too tight? Do I put my hands up, do I scream? Where's the camera going to be? I wonder when they built this thing? This is going to be awesome.

In November I start with the Jets which is going to be great. I even ran into one of my guy's parents at Microcenter this weekend. His son, Jordan, and the family saw me on TV at the Trials - even picked me out of the background on some of the clips on top of the 1500m coverage. Now Jordan wants to try some multis this year, maybe even a decathlon this summer.
In November I will be one month away from the Harvard team's first meet. I'm psyched as this is going to be a great year. We've brought a lot of change to that program that will really come to show this year. I've got some great new kids and I'm stoked to see what my vets are going to accomplish, but once we start, there's really no let up 'til May.
In November I will be two months out from my first meet. Two months. eight weeks, 60 real-world days, 48 training days, 2 training cycles, then its here.

Probably means I should get to bed. Got lift in 10 hours. This is going to be awesome.

Sport

2008-10-17T17:42:00.000-07:00

Sitting on the sidelines of one of the athletic department's twice weekly "Noon Hoops" games this week it dawned on me just how much sport gives to all of us. I use these and the subsequent Noon Soccer games as early season cross-training (got to switch it up sometimes, right?), but taking some time out a looking around the other day really made me appreciate it all. In one game we had 2 soccer coaches, a swim coach who used to be a boxer, 3 track coaches, a basketball coach who is still on some of Dukes all-time records as a player, Directors of Opererations, Alumni relations people, guys in charge of facilities, operations guys in charge of making those facilities work, interns, business school professors, 25 year olds, 50 year olds, guys, gals, people that can shoot, people that can run, and everything in between. 2 buildings over staff members and business school students were converging for pretty much the same situtation but on ice and with sticks. In the soccer games we get hockey coaches who've never played a game of soccer in their life next to secretaries, 300 ilb ex-linemen next to 130 ilb ex-cross-country runners, next to athletic directors. Everyone enjoying a little sweat and some competition along with great company.
For me and our young staff in the track offices it's how we've gotten to know the other coaches and administrators in the department - what i've dubbed "Noon Hoops diplomacy." For others it's a workout and a way to get in shape, some just need to get out of the office, but for all it's a chance to interact with the people around them.

On the other end of the spectrum, just a few hours earlier I was staring face down at a puddle of my own sweat attempting to finish up another one of my strength coach's "Beastday" workouts. Next to me were two brave friends I talked into joining me for the workout. After finally completing the workout and collapsing to the ground I couldn't help but think that although most people had yet to show up to the office for the day, there were 1,000's of athletes just like me in gyms, on tracks, on mountains, on bikes, on courts, in pools or on roads all over the country doing just the same as I. Maybe re-defining booty-lock, or mentally mapping the quickest route to the nearest trash can in case breafast decides to make another appearance, mopping up pools of their own sweat, or even yearning for a tub of ice to dunk themselves in. Some in a brightly lit training center surrounded by coaches, teammates, and the hum of video and computer analytical equipment. Others in dimly lit gyms surrounded by echos and rust. Here athletes are learning about themselves the way many will never know.

Then you have the kids; eagerly awaiting the end of the day for soccer practice, football practice, or lacrosse. I remembered never wanting to get sick because if I missed school, mom and dad wouldn't let me go to practice. Then a few years later it was sports that helped me fit in so that I wasn't just the nerd in honors classes whose mom was a teacher.

Sports are where so many find ourselves, where we find others, where we consequences and rewards, how to win, how to lose, where we learn to push and desire, where we learn to work.

In the wake of districts across the country cutting down on Physical Education and After-School sports, watching those Noon Hoops games and having the opportunity to hang out with the young guys with the Cambridge Jets always reminds me of how incredibly important sport can actually be.

Camp Foss II

2008-09-19T14:02:00.001-07:00

I've finally had a chance to upload some film I took with my handy camera at Foss. When you pretty much live on the track from winter through summer it's always a good time getting in workouts well outside the lane lines.

"The Beast"

2008-09-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

"Conquer the beast, Lest it conquer you."
These words are printed on the bottom of my Thursday strength circuit. You see, it turns out that when you tell your strength coach that you want him to feel free to experiment with you in your training, things get interesting real fast. Entitled "The Beast," my Thursday workout is an excellent example of this. Wanna try?

THE BEAST
50 x Deadlifts (w/ 135 ilbs)
50 x Pushups
50 x Barbell hang clean and jerk
50 x Straight leg sit-ups
50 x Overhead extensions (w/ 50ilb sandbag)
50 x Box step-ups (no bounce. 25 x each leg)
100 x Icemen (prone hold on elbows. extend one arm out and back = 1; 50 x each arm)
4 x MedBall Gassers (throw 12ilb ball in air, run to it, do it again for 80m)
50 x Mtn Climbers on slideboard (50 each leg)
75 x Atomic sit-ups (lying: bring head to knees, repeat)
25 x Chin-ups

Start a stopwatch at the beginning. Stop it after your chin-ups. Do better next week. Enjoy.

Camp Foss, NH

2008-09-04T06:17:00.001-07:00

My college coach used to say: "There's no one more selfish than an elite athlete." In many regards this is very true. You are constantly thinking about yourself, what you are doing, what you are not doing, what you need to do. At times you can get caught up in all the nonsense, but about an hour ago I was reminded just how much an elite athlete can give back at the same time.

I am spending this week at Camp Foss outside of Stafford, New Hampshire with the Harvard Cross Country team (at this moment I am typing on the dock of our amazingly peaceful lake. The sun has just passed the hills, the crickets are fighting for attention against a group of the girls who have started a spontaneous sing-a-long and my legs are happily tired from a long day of workouts. There are definitely worse places to be...). We just finished dinner and the subsequent "Thought of the Day" presentation before entering the dining hall tonight was brought to us by one of our Juniors named Bobby. For tonight's theme, Bobby wanted to express the inspiration he has taken from In-The-Arena's own 1500 meter runner Gabe Jennings. Bobby was increibly impressed in that although Gabe may be very serious about running, at the same time doesn't allow that to get in the way of who he is and wants to be as a person. Gabe competed in the Boston Indoor Games this past winter, and I am sure it was either on his way to or from ITA founder Amory Rowe's apartment in Harvard Square that Bobby was able to meet Gabe wandering through The Square. I'm sure the interaction lasted no more than a couple minutes but I could clearly see on Bobby's face that this chance meeting would be with him for the rest of his life influencing not only who Bobby is and will be as a runner, but who Bobby will be as a person as well. On top of which, thanks to our "Thought of the Day" presentation and Bobby's great speach, this chance meeting was passed onto 50 more of Harvard's finest as they romp about in the woods this week and beyond. It's so easy as an athlete to get caught up in fine-tuning the body and razor sharpening the mind but I think Gabe is such an amazing example of the fact that without balance between your goals as an athlete and your goals as a person neither will every reach it's potential. The two do not detract from one another as many might think (I myself have been one of those), but with balance comes strength.

For myself, this trip as it did last year marks the official start of this coming season's training. I've had a great summer taking time off to rest the body and visity with family and friends but now it's time to get back to work. As far as it matters to me, New Years 2009 fell on September 2nd. I celebrated with a 2.5 mile run, some hill repeats, and a very dirty and sweaty strength circuit. I love being up here and there's no better way to start the year off right then a healthy dose of trail running, lake swimming, canoeing, hill runs, volleyball, and card games.

Thanks to last night's strength circuit I've realized that although I may have forgotten a bit of what it feels like to push through the pain, I am also remembering how great it feels to go to bed at night sore and exhausted.

The mosquitos have found me and the camp fire calls, I will post again soon.

2009, here we go.

Real Beijing

2008-08-29T12:02:00.001-07:00

I didn't get a chance to read Mike's blog before writing my own, but I have just done so. It's one thing to watch the Olympics and be inspired. It's one thing to hear Morgan Freeman tell inspiring stories about athletes (I may or may not tear up everytime I see that one about the 400m runner and his dad in Barcelona). But if you want to see what it really means to be an Olympic Athletic please take a moment to read Mike's blog.

http://in-the-arena-mike.blogspot.com

Pro Track, Part I

2008-08-29T10:14:00.001-07:00

Recently I have had to sought out by a couple multi-eventers either graduating or coming towards the close of their collegiate careers looking for advice about training post-collegiately. With the closing ceremonies of the Beijing Games just a couple days ago we all have had a great couple of weeks of sport to entertain and inspire us. I'll be the first to say that I'm a bit relieved to see them come to an end as the 2am bedtimes were killing me and I don't have DVR, but with the end of one Olympic cycle brings about an interesting time in Olympic sports like our Track and Field. These times and the turmoil rarely make it to the public conscious but are at the forefront for the athletes themselves. Once I get fired up about something it's hard to stop me so for your sake i'll split this up into two parts as noted by the title.

I can't speak for the outside world, but in American Track & Field, after you explain what you do for a living, the reason you're out in the rain running intervals on Friday evenings, why you, as a man, somehow feel more comfortable in skin tight spandex than you do in basketball shorts down to your ankles, the first question is: so you're going to be in the Olympics? I think everyone has their reasons for being out here, and of course, everyone dreams of walking in that stadium for Opening Ceremonies and getting the rings tattooed on your butt in the Olympic Village (oh, that's just me? nevermind), but there's so much more to it. Four years is a very long time. When you're twenty something like most of us are, four years can be a very long time and thus we are forced to face some very serious questions. I turned 26 a couple days after the Trials this summer. I wake up everyday and love what I do. I have a reason to get to bed every night, a reason to get up in the morning, a reason to eat well and take care of myself as do so many like me. That being said those many are also like me in that we've never had a spring break due to competitions, I never studied abroad because of worries about training, I'm four years removed from college and have never had a real full time job. My parents still pay my college loans for me and part of my car. Did I mention I regularly wear spandex and use friday evenings for interval workouts? Not exactly a stellar move for the social life. I know I did mention I love what I do, but is this where I want to be in four years when I hit the big 3-0? These are some of the questions 1,000s of great athletes around the country are facing right now. Am I willing to sell out another four years of my life?
Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to sound negative as I have a life and experiences I would never trade in, but there's always the internal sociological tug-of-war.
Unfortunatley the decathlon community, for these very reasons are going to lose some great competitors from our ranks this year.
Ryan Olkowski (Goose), despite my efforts to try to get him up to Boston to join me, at 28 has been feeling the pressure of the outside world for some time now. He also has been blessed with an incredibly supportive family and thanks to his father, he has been able train as a decathlete for the past 6 years since graduating from Penn State.
Joe Cebulski, 31, sold his house, bought a diesel car he converted to run on vegetable oil, and moved his family nearly across the country for his final shot this past year at the Olympic Team and his dream. I was there when he hit his A-mark qualifier for the trials in Dallas and was unfortunatley the one to call him with the heads up that USATF was trying to disallow our marks for qualifying due to wind. He sold ten years of his life to our sport and we're all better off for it.
And now what happens of To m Pappas? I'm sure we'll still see him competing, but for how long? I'm sure there are questions throughout his head right now. As Bryan Clay jokingly told Pappas in the ice bath after the Trials: "Tom, if you're still around for the next Olympics, I'm going to hit you in the nuts. I'll be 30!" Tom is still one of the greatest athletes in the world (it was just a couple of years ago he became the first person to jump 27' in the long jump, 7' in the high jump, and 17' in the pole vault in the same meet - ridiculous), but has had to pull out of the last two olympics with injury. He's got a wife and a young kid...how much longer do you push it? Yes Tom is one of the few fortunatley to be able to make a living by simply running, but every year after the Olympic a re-evaluation period takes place in which many many athletes quickly find themselves without the sponsors they've relied on going into the Games. Pro Track on this level is business and decathletes anytime outside of an Olympic year are not good business. We eat too much.

Yes there is so much more to the sport than the 4 year cycle, and for the majority of us it is that majority outside of the sport outside the Olympics but although your years, even months in the sport may be numbered and you may never make it anywhere near an Opening Ceremonies, when you step out on the track every single day, into the weight room every morning, into the covers early everynight, maybe only symbolically, but nonetheless, you are training for the Olympic Games.

(Pictures copywrite Bill Franks SI Vault)

Olympics!!

2008-08-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

I love the Olympics. I'd be lying if there were some sports whose membership at The Games that I question (ballroom dancing??), but what I don't question is the sacrifice and work that everyone there put in to get there. I love every four years when the off-events get showcased - when you can watch team handball at midnight, catch some of the modern pentathlon (so I know what it is when people ask me if I have to ride horses or shoot guns as a part of the decathlon), and even right now I've got some crazy equestrian thing on in the background on my computer. I have no idea what's going on, I think the horse has directional issues because it's crooked most of the time, but the rider seems very serious so I think they're doing the right thing. Despite my ignorance, I know one thing for sure, this crazy Canadian in a top hat probably worked damn hard to get to where he is. It's so great to think that right now in China there are thousands of athletes all living in one village. The gymnasts are eating right next to the gymnasts, million-dollar NBA guys are like 12 year olds trying to catch a glimpse of hard-core table tennis in action, and you know the pole vaulters are finding a way to hang out with the beach volleyball players. 300+ ilb men (maybe even women) 4'-8" girls, 41 year old ripped swimmers, people in top hats who ride horses, multi-million dollar basketball players, athletes from countries the size of my state, all coming together to realize how alike they all are. They may all look very much different, may act very much different, but inside they are all composed the same: heart, determination, grit, pride. I love it.

Catching Up.

2008-07-16T21:44:00.001-07:00

There are ten events in the decathlon. Right now I think I hold an emotion for each.

I. Alleviated

To make easier to endure; lessen; mitigate

This has been a year of incredible peaks and Valleys. Going back to look at the goals I set for myself, on the small end I accomplished a lot, but they never seemed to add up when it counted. From an indoor season marked by PR after PR but a no-mark in the shot at Dartmouth Relays keeping me out of a big Heptathlon score and possible berth at USA Indoors. A huge first day at LSU to open the season was marred by bad luck and poor execution on day 2.
Full of confidence in my progress, the Dallas meet started off the incredibly rocky month of June. A good day two saved a weak first day making a meet long with regret and what I thought for sure was a missed chance at the Olympic Trials. The next couple weeks were wrought with phone calls and anguish while battling USATF to get my mark legitimized then endlessly waiting for a chance to make the meet. After selling my rooms, my family selling their tickets, building hope, losing hope, and finally preparing for the Hexham meet in England, a dream finally unfolded in front of me. Even while finally in Eugene it was far from smooth sailing, but still an experience never to be forgot. In the end, I just found out that I missed the USA vs. Germany dual meet team by one or two spots, thus my season is now over. Frustration? yes, but finally as well...relaxation.
Like the speech for incoming freshman I stole from my dad: "There's good stress and there's bad stress, but it's all still stress." Tis true, and I've felt it all. It is finally time to just let it all go. Time to rest. Time to sit. Finally.

II. Apprehensive

Capable of apprehending, or quick to do so; apt; discerning.
Perceptive.
Uneasy or fearful about something that might happen.

This year if nothing else taught me one thing: never be content. Especially with the nature of our sport. Many great pieces came this year: PRs in 6 of the ten events (100m, LJ, SP, HJ, PV, 1500m), but you can never let it be enough. This year 10 guys scored the Olympic A standard of 8,000 pts - a feat only bettered once before in US History. The field of 20 assembled in Eugene this year was one of the best ever to meet on US soil. Numerous multi-event NCAA record holders, World Record Holders, an Attempt at the American Decathlon record, the end of great careers (see: Celbuski), the begenning of others (see: Eaton), and even the fastest decathlon 110mH heat in history. I was building a good year, but I wasn't the only one stepping it up.
Plus, on top of which: you never know what is going to happen. In LSU a meet turned with the wind when within minutes a beautiful tailwind evaporated into a tailwind with rain and thunderstorms. My allowed my meet and score to follow suit. The poles that had carried me towards 17 feet in the same event at Dallas were taken from my my inexplicable damage in shipping. I wasn't going to let luck deter me in Eugene as it had in Baton Rogue. I again took shots at 17 feet at the Trials, but this time is was on borrowed poles I hadn't touch before. I can fund raise to replace poles, but to get to where I want to be it's going to take a lot more than some new poles.

III. Thankful

feeling or expressing gratitude; appreciative.

When all is said and done: intervals, toe-board fouls, cross-country moves, early mornings, long days, credit cards, appeals, plane rides, the 1,500, there's nothing like walking off the track amidst 20,000 people to have your family there waiting with the biggest smiles you've ever seen. Everything else goes away as you finally take a moment to realize all that went into the moment you're finally able to live. Emails, voice messages, and text messages from people you haven't heard from in years. Hugging your brother in the stands during the victory lap, hearing voices from the stands: your high school school coach, your old teammate, the athletes you coach, your uncle who somehow got a press pass, your mom. Only through them did I get where I have gotten. For them I am here.

IV. Antagonistic

Indicating opposition or resitance
Characterized by antagonism or antipathy; "slaves antagonistic to their masters"

Unfortunately I've also learned another lesson: you only get so far without politics. I've fought some - I guess maybe even started some - battles this past month. I've never been a fighter, maybe I've just never been passionate to fight over anything. Our sport is far from perfect and it's going to take those who love it to do something about it.

V. Optimistic

disposed to take a favorable view of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome.

As I've said before, I've done a hell of a lot of good this year. I can't wait to build onto it. Next year starts now.

VI. Perturbed

to be disturbed or disquiet greatly in mind; agitated.

Again, much good was done, but there's much more in store. The decathlon gives you many chances to succeed, but you have just as many opportunities to fail. I did much right, but there's some I need to change and much that can be improved. Next year starts now.

VII. Restless

characterized by or showing inability to remain at rest
unquiet or uneasy, as a person, the mind, or the heart.
unceasingly active; averse to quiet or inaction.

Next year starts now!! Whereas when I was younger at times I would be longing for the time of year I finally got a chance to rest. A break. Recently it's become the toughest part of my whole year. It's nice to let the hair down a bit, enjoy being young a bit, spend a little more time with friends, a lot less time on the track, but at the same time rest is the last thing you want. There's so much to fix, so much work to get done. You get the taste of where you can be, you can't just put it down. The body needs rest but the mind and heart want everything but. Not to mention the fact that I am literally restless. When you're used to hours of intense activity a day, now that i've cut myself off of working out I'm incredibly far from tired come the end of the night...

VIII. Insecure

Not secure; exposed or liable to risk, loss, or danger.
Not firmly or reliably placed or fastened.

There's a lot more there than came out this year. Will I find a way to bring it out? There were holes in my training this year, can I fix them? What about my poles? Do I have what it takes to step up along with the rest of the guys? Can I find a way to recruit training partners? When I don't allow my body to put in work, my mind takes over.

IX. Anxious

earnestly desirous; eager

Next year starts now. I can't wait. Seriously, I really don't want to wait.

X. Elated

Very happy or proud; jubilant; in high spirits.

I did it. :)

I never really considered it a dream until I actually got to live a piece of it. Its funny how I might have even more questions and yet I have never been more secure. Thank you to my incredible family that has always supported me, the incredible teachers and coaches that I learn from every day, my athletes that keep me inspired, and all my great friends that make it worthwhile. Of course, Amory and In-The-Arena, I don't know what I could have done without you.

Trials, Part II

2008-07-02T12:14:00.000-07:00

So day 2 turned around much better than the first. The meet itself was incredible with some guys putting up some ridiculous scores. Many are considering it one of the greatests decathlons ever at a Trials. Unfortunately after losing so many points after the first day my overall score wasn't quite what I was going for, I came back strong on day two scoring just 25 pts shy of 4,000 for the day and working my way up from 19th to 15th.

I started off on a decent foot by battling well in the hurdles to come back and win my heat. The discus was again decently solid at just over 44m on my first throw, but the real fireworks came in the vault. I have to thank Ryan Harlan, Trey Hardee, and the U of O coach Dan Steele for all being coming through and being great enough to offer their poles for me to borrow. I went with Ryan's and it payed off huge. It took a jump or two but I was eventually able to move up to 5 meter poles that I have never been on before. I got the crowd into it, and my coach and family's heart pumping by missing my first two attempts at opening height (video to come later), but once I was over that, it was all fun from there on in. The crowd, again, was amazing. By the time we got to the vault the stadium was probably at least half full and after my clearance at 5.10m (16'-8") only Tom Pappas left in the competition. The couple time world champion was currently in 2nd place and is also from Oregon so we had the attention of the crowd. Their clapping and cheering was unbelievable. I took a couple of good hacks at 5.20 (~17'), but just couldn't quite get it.

After the vault we went on to jav in usual order, but once we finished the jav we had a nearly 2.5 hour break before the 1,500m. It was interesting trying to figure out what to do with a couple hour break, but in the end it was all worth it. We took the track at 9:30pm just after the crowd of 40,000 plus witness three Oregon's qualify for the Olympics in the 800m. The place was unbelievably electric. Bryan Clay was taking a shot at the American record and needed to run about a 4:40 to do it so I figured if he was close, I'd be on a good pace. It turns out I wouldn't even see Clay for the first 1,050 meters as with all the excitement I took it out real quick behind the lead group. It's amazing what 40,000 screaming fans will do for you. As most of us commented on later, after two days, nine events, and a 3 hour break, with a wall of noise running with you through the race, you barely felt tired. Unfortunately one of my hamstrings that I was having earlier trouble with (even cramped up on the massage table before the javelin) came back with a vengence halfway through the second lap and I was basically trying to see how fast I could run without lifting my heels more than six inches off the track....good ol' 1500. Clay passed me with just over a lap to go, but once we hit the bell lap I dug deep and kicked it hard in for the final 400m. My time (4:46) was actually much better than I tought it would be considering the hamstring issues, but with that crowd going the whole time, it felt much more like you were floating than running. Amazing.

The real highlight came after the awards ceremony when Clay, Trey, and Pappas call us all back out on the track and we as a field took a victory lap around the stadium. Giving high fives, signing autographs, hugging family, all to the standing ovation of a packed Hayward field. Again amazing.

I'll try to get so video and whatnot up later, but that's it for now. For all of those of you that have emailed, called, texted, etc after following the meet or seeing the coverage on NBC, thank you so much. To my family who was able to make it out, mom, dad, Chris, Tim, all my old coaches and friends (and of course super-fan Ian Kenworth who flew in last minute just for a day), it was even more special having you all there with me. You all were all there with me thank you.

-matt

Oly Trials: Day One

2008-06-29T21:04:00.000-07:00

I'm back at the hotel room now after dinner and recovery after day one. I'm not exactly where I was hoping to be with a 100m that was a bit sluggish, 2 fouls into a third long jump that didn't touch the take-off board, a decent shot, and another mediocre high jump, but the atmosphere is amazing. There was a pretty good crowd all day and they're super into it. By the time we got to the 400m we were in front of a crowd of 20,000 people. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel like a rookie a bit (I may or may not have been distracted at one point in the high jump when I noticed the videoboard in the corner of my eye following my jumps). I pulled a rookie mistake in the ~~over-officiated~~ high jump when the official scratched my third attempt at 1.96m because I approached the bar too soon (yeah, that happened). Anyways, it's a hell of an experience and I'm looking forward to coming back for day two f ora chance to drop some big events.

Til then I'll leave you with these (100m - lane 2 on far right, Shot - my last and best throw, but a foul):

I'm in...I'm out...I'm IN....i'm out..........

2008-06-27T12:48:00.001-07:00

I'm in. Not exactly the way it mapped out, but I've got my spot for The Trials. I found out yesterday (about 7 hours after my rooms were re-sold), spent most of the day on the phone sending in appeals, trying to track down poles to buy or borrow, finding rooms, getting some flights for my family, prepping for a meet 3 days away rather than 2 weeks...but i'm in. I'm now in Denver waiting for my connecting flight, ill get some pre-meet in tomorrow, then come Sunday & Monday, it's Go Time.

As the Cambridge Jets say:

Or, as Will poetically put it:

"Things never work out the way you think they will"

When It Rains...

2008-06-23T23:46:00.001-07:00

It's almost half past 1am and I've been staring at my wall for a couple hours now. It's been a tough month that has produced plenty of thoughts for me to stew over, which is apparently much more exciting to my mind than sleep right now. I don't have a girlfriend to complain to and I've spent way to many hours on the phone recently, so, forgive me, but you guys are going to be stuck with my rants - plus I'm hoping some writing and the glass of milk next to me will help me calm down a bit. What's on my mind? I'm glad you asked:

Hexham: I've decided I need to get another meet in. As #20 on the list for the Trials, I am not going to get in unless someone else doesn't go. As Jason, the Harvard head coach said: too much training to quit now. I've got to get another meet in. I'm in great shape and it's way too early to end it. There's a meet in Northern England that I've been thinking about going to for the past couple of years. Normally heald in September, it's being held on July 12th this year, thus, perfect time to go. I've been emailing back and forth with the meet director trying to get all the logistics squared away. It's a meet which has had constant rain the past four years in a row, but it has a good international field and not only would I have a chance to place or even win, but I'd also have a chance at some meet records and making some prize money. I will be traveling completely on my own with very little idea of what I'm doing, but if anything it'll be a good experience.

Trials: Since returning from Dallas it has been a whirlwind couple of weeks (has it been that long??). I have been in an ongoing battle with USA Track and Field about the legitimacy about our scores. It seems USATF is enforcing a new rule about wind-aided marks in the combined events that they neglected to tell anyone about. I just typed the incredibly boring details about this whole debacle, but have also just erased them to save you. You're welcome (if actually are interested, see Frank Zarnowski's article on the whole thing here at DecathlonUSA). Anyways, I have been constantly on the phone and email about the situation since I got back. It has however, led to two developments

An incredible frustration at the way our governing body is ran.
If USATF accepts my mark from Dallas (which they they more than likely will - after a $250 appeal process) I am the first alternate to be accepted if anyone doesn't declare for the meet.

There is one person in particular that is recovering from surgery and hasn't competed in a meet all year that has yet to declare. However, everyone has until 2 days before the meet to declare their intent to compete, thus, I could be getting a call as late as Friday to let me know that I can compete in the decathlon on Sunday. At which point I get to scramble to replace the hotels and flights I already gave up, undo all the figuring I've been doing for Hexham, and even more nerve racking: figure out a way to get my pole vault poles from Boston to Eugene in two days.
....Oh yeah, I forgot to mention my poles:

My Poles: In recent years fewer and fewer airlines are allowing you to take poles on planes (as well as charging ridiculous fees for some of those that do carry them - see US Air's new charge PER POLE policy), thus like the previous 3 times I've competed at this meet, I shipped my poles. My poles arrived back on Tuesday while I was at lunch, so I got there just after they arrived. I noticed some rips in the bag, but unfortunately this is pretty par of the course when shipping poles, so after a real quick look at the tops of the poles and a quick shake test to listen for broken poles, I figured the poles themselves were fine.
While recruiting for Harvard at a meet in North Carolina this weekend I got a disturbing call from Brenner (my coach) who was borrowing some of the poles I had in the bag for a camp. That 'rip' in the bag turned out to be much much more.
Along with five of my poles, I brought down about 4 other poles some of the guys at the Dallas meet asked me to bring down for them to use. Of the 9 poles that were in that bag, maybe three of them can still be used. Somehow my pole bag (a canvas bag over a platic tube housing the poles) was run over or caught on something so that most of the poles are in some way crushed, melted, or some combination of the two. I don't even understand what they could have done. It looks like someone took a torch to the tube.
Of course, the poles were not insured (it was never offered and for some reason never even thought of it), and because they came at the precise half an hour that I was out of the office for lunch, someone with no knowledge of vault poles signed for them. Vis à vis, er go, I am royally hosed.
Today was the first day I was able to look at them myself. The most blatent damage was done to the poles I had for the other guys, but mine didn't exactly come out well either. My baby, the 16' - 210# (4.90m 13.6 for those of you in the know), the pole I've been battling with all year, the pole that finally got me over 5.10m, the pole I was hoping would soon get me over 17' (5.20) has about 4cm worth of hairline cracks about 4 inches up from the bottom of the pole. Just enough to not look like much, probably just enough to make it completely worthless. I think my 205 might actually be ok, but other than that, the 5m pole that should have been the successor to my 16-210 is crushed (a pole I had to beg, borrow, and steal to get), the 16-200 is melted and crushed. All in all, about (9 x average $400)...I don't even want to do that math...a lot of money's worth of damage. With time, I'll find a way to replace those poles...the problem is, for the poles I jump on, I don't have time. Anything stiffer than a 16'-195 is a rare pole. Not many vaulters are big enough to need a pole that big, not many decathletes jump well enough to need a pole that big. A 16'-210, however, you should see the reactions I get just telling people I have that pole. For Hexham, not to mention if I get into Trials, I'm not sure there's even one to try to borrow, let alone know where to find it if it exists. I knew at some point I would have to find a way to get some new poles...I just never thought it'd have to include poles I already had.

Kids, always fly your poles with you if you can. If you can't, get insurance, and always check your pole on delivery.

I'm going to bed (I hope).

TGA: 7,694

2008-06-10T18:21:00.001-07:00

Coming into the meet, 18th on The List
for Trials, ie, the last spot, was 7,790, thus it would take that score or higher to go. After the first day I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least a bit panicked, but after looking at the numbers I knew that a solid 2nd day could still get to 7800 and a spot in the meet. We figured it'd take about a 14.6 hurdle, 45m disc, 5.10m vault, a 57m jav, and a 4:47 1500m. All but the vault I'd done before.
The day had some great spots, but I just didn't have enough. My hurdles just weren't there for me, but everything else was pretty close. I was far from clean early in the race and just didn't have much pop in the legs to get em sprinting after that: 14.93. This discus was decently solid at 43.92m (144'), but again, the points were slowly slipping away.
The vault, however, went very well. I opened at 4.80m (5cm under my PR a year ago) with a big clearance, skipped to 5.00m and hit a HUGE clearance for a first attempt new PR. I then moved to 5.10m (16'-8.75") and also cleared this on my first attempt. The guys were giving me crap for not celebrating my PR the height before, so at this one I had to give out a bit of a yell with my obligatory fist pumps. We then moved the bar 5.20m (~17') despite some big hip height, I wasn't able to clear it cleanly. My confidence was great, I was working my largest pole with ease, and 16 feet looked like 14 feet. It felt great. The vault was finally coming around. I walked away with 940 points and I was back into the game with a chance.
The jav was better than it had been. I opened with a strong 56 (184') meter throw, but couldn't get things to line up enough to better it on my final two. I was able to muster up a strong kick on top of a strong run in the 1500m to finish with a 4:39, a 2 second PR to punctuate a 90 pt overall PR, but in the end, if the guys who are supposed to know what they're talking about know what they're talking about, I'm going to be about 100 pts shy of making the cut for The Trials. I'll know for sure after this weekend when all declarations are required.

A lot of good came out of this meet. A great breakthrough in the 100m, another in the vault, and great strong finish in the 1500m. I was top three in all throws with wins in the shot and vault against some very good competition. It was the first time I'd been over 7,000 pts after 9 events (a secret goal of mine for a while), and a day two PR better topping 3,900 pts combines for a score that puts me in the top 45 in the world.

100 pts:
10 cm in the long jump (25 pts)
2 bars (6cm) in the high jump (54 pts)
1 bar (10cm) in the vault or 0.20 seconds in the hurdles (31 pts)
thus, taking the hurdles out of it: 26 cm, ie, less than 11 inches.

Texas Greatest Athlete Decathlon: Git it Done.

2008-06-10T17:23:00.001-07:00

Intro
I'm in Dallas right now recovering from the first day of the Texas Greatest Athlete Decathlon (and heptathlon). It's a great meet put on at St. Marks School of Texas, a high school with incredible facilities whose program is run by John Turek, the head of USATF Heptathlon as well as a great coach and even better guy. As of last July, I hold the facility record here (this will be my fourth meet here in three years - I spend more time in Texas than I do home now...) and my overall PR is from here, my 1500m PR is from here, my 400m PR is from here, until indoors, my High Jump PR is from here, and although we throw off of a grass runway, both times I've been over 60 meters in the jav were here. Thus, I'm excited to be here, but I walk in to this meet with a very weighty purpose. This will be the final chance to boost my provisional "B" standard for the Olympic Trials. In fact, it's a pretty huge meet for just that reason: there are about 12 guys here trying boost their marks into the top 18 needed to make The Trials. Which, although nerve-racking, also makes this a great meet for the people as well. It's really the huge part about the decathlon that a lot of other sports miss out on:

A handful of us have been doing this meet for a few years now

Chris Staton whom I have been decathloning against since high school, and Mike Marsh both come from Southern California. I've competed against both those guys about a dozen times...man, I'm getting old),
Mark Jellison was one of my training partners in Berkeley, and still trains there
Goose, I think you've heard me talk about before and is actually my roommate on the trip. He's out of Penn State and is actually only doing select events this time around as he dropped a big 7800+ pt score a few weeks back to secure his trip to Trials.
Moose, from Dartmouth who now trains in Colorado is here with his coach and some friends he brought along. He as well has had a HUGE year, dropping a 8100+ pt score, and BIG PR to not only secure the A Mark for both Trials and The Games, but also thrusts him in to contention for a spot on the team to Beijing. You've heard me talk plenty about Moose if you read my post on the Dartmouth Relays.

But even more so, we've been able to bring some new guys into the mix and introduce them to this great meet. Both Trey Hardee (NCAA record holder out of U of Texas and current top 5 in the world) and Jake Arnold (2 time NCAA dec champ out of Arizona - but more importantly, Northern California kid out of Santa Rosa that I haven't competed against in a few years) are both out here dong some select events in prep for the Trials. A number of other great guys are competing in the full dec, each vying to reach that magic number (7790 as of right now) that will place them in the top 18 and thus earn them a right to the Trials.

That being said: we're here for business:

Day One:
I'm coming into the meet feeling great. I haven't been able to really compete in anything since LSU (April!!) due to my glute issue and just lack of meets + travel with the Harvard team so I'm not totally sure where my fitness is at, but my jumps have been awesome in practice, my throws are feeling pretty good, and my workouts have been feeling good.
Day one was about 100 degrees with plenty of humidity but some good winds as well. I've competed here many times before under the heat but for some reason, today was the first time I think it really affected me.
100m
I started off great in the 100m. We had a great heat, I got out to a great start and was able to battle with all the guys the entire way down. I think 80 percent or better in the race PR'd - including myself: 11.16. Huge PR not only by time, but especially mentally. It's a mark I've been trying to bring down for way too long and is finally something that pretty respectable. It also get me well into 800 pts.
Long Jump
practice in the long had been going great recently and although it's an event i've struggled with for a while, I feel like I'm finally starting to get it. With the confidence of the 100m I was ready to go big.
I warmed up great and was ready to roll. Unfortunately, due to the size of the meet (maybe we shouldn't have told everybody about this meet) I was 18th in the order and had to wait a bit to jump. Not that that's an excuse, but I ended up jumping much more poor than I had expected. I just couldn't seem to get things to work together and ended up with a 6.67m best. A year about it would have been decent, but after LSU and the way things had been going - a large dissappointment. Not to mention, this was only the second event and I was already feeling the affects of the heat with some twinging going on in the left hamstring.
Shot Put
Shot turned out decently well. I wussed a bit on the first throw to hit a super slow but safe 13 meters. I came back on the second with my best mark of 14.21m. A solid throw and decent score. Mine was the furthest throw on the day.
High Jump
High Jump was ugly. Every jump felt a bit different than the last. Trouble with running the curve and I just couldn't get things to work together. I felt ok, but just couldn't get it done. I ended up at 1.94m, around 6-4, and a solid 2 bars lower than LSU, 3 less than the Dartmouth Relays. Ouch.
400m
Going into the quarter I knew I had dug myself into a hole. I took it out strong with a 23-mid first 200m but couldn't quite hold on. It was a LONG final 70m. I finished with a 51.7. Not great but only a couple tenths slower than LSU although nothing gained, not a ton lost.

Day one started off great with a big breakthrough in the hundred, but with real weak jumps, I had some serious ground to make up. I was just over 100 pts down from the day one score at LSU.

Training Vlog

2008-05-29T18:36:00.000-07:00

I figured I'd get my flip camera out and see what's it like if I took some film every hour while training...

"On The Breaking Point"

2008-05-18T19:26:00.000-07:00

A month or so back, I was contacted by Whitney J. Fox, a grad student in the communications department at BU, and she wanted to know if she could follow me around for a day or so and document a bit of what I do for a project she was doing on local athletes training for the summer games. I always thought it'd be interesting to see an outside perspective on what I do on a daily basis. Whitney came to a Tuesday night vault session with myself, Brenner, and the Northeastern vaulters and took a bunch of still photos, then her counterpart, Andy Beatman, also of BU School of Communications, came to a high jump session of mine the next day where he took some video of the session, then asked me some questions about what I do. Later that day Whitney came back to watch and take some pictures of me at Harvard both coaching then getting a lift in. A week later they came out with a great film, as they entitled it: "On The Breaking Point."

...check it out:

It was great working with both Whitney and Andy. You should be sure to check out Whitney's new website as well: whitneyjfox.com. Be sure to check out the great video of Zara Northover, Northeastern alum and stud Jamaican shot putter friend of mine, that Whitney and Andy filmed as well.

As for training, I'm feeling great. Although sitting still sucks, I'm back to full workouts and intensity on my glute. I've had some great sessions the past couple of weeks and feel like I'm in solid shape. Unfortunately it's going to be real difficult to test it out as there aren't many local meets this time of year so I might have to wait until next month when I head down to Dallas for the Texas Greatest Athlete decathlon.

"How are elite athletes made?"

2008-04-30T21:26:00.001-07:00

Although Amory often provides great prompts for our blogs, I often take a pass in favor of blabbing about running and jumping and stuff. Although we're just now trying to get the season revved up, this is a tough month for competitions as a post-collegiate athlete because most meets are reserved for various collegiate championships. As a result, we are discriminated against for being too ~~old~~ cool for school. On top of which, I'm curiously battling a mysterious flare up of my glute injury that I picked up in April. As a result, not much to speak about on the track so I think this is a pretty good opportunity to try my shot at one of Amory's prompts that I've actually been thinking about for a while.

As posed by Amory herself:

tell the story of when you first self-identified as an athlete. Was it in grade school? Middle school? High school or later? When did you first realize you were possessed of an abundance of talent and passion for sport? I think it’s fun to plumb the depths of the question “How are elite athletes made?”

For most I guess this is one of those basic questions of nature versus nurture, but I think I might be able to answer this prompt with a single picture:

What? You didn't have a hammer to play with in your front yard? Yes, that's me. While you were smashing toy cars into the wall and trying not to drool on your over-alls, I was training. Well, ok, to this day I have no idea how to actually throw the hammer, but needless to say, I come from a bit of a track family. My parents both separately competed for then eventually met while coaching at UCLA. My mom was a hurdler, javelin thrower, and discus thrower turned throws coach. Yes, she was the first to teach me the proper way to squat and clean, but she also taught me how to work hard and to get things done the right way. Dad was a crazy mid-distance runner but also my first jumps coach. On top of which, they may have one a couple national titles along the way. Thus, there was some pretty decent nature there (thanks for the shoulders mom...but dad, when the hell are those 1500m genes going to kick in?), but for me I think it's really the nurture that counts. I was a little misguiding here or there (baseball), but on the whole, when you spend your sick days bicycling around Stanford's track and football stadium and throw javelins at the park with mom and little brother during Christmas Breaks, you're given pretty good opportunities to do and generally enjoy track and field. Even to this day, when Brenner wasn't able to make it down to Baton Rouge for the LSU dec, dad was able to make it down to help me out as a coach.

In fact, I really don't think there was a time that I self-identified myself as an athlete; It's just all I've ever known. I'd never be one to say I've really got any pure talents, I mean, Josh Kreuzer and I had some epic races for fastest kid in school in third grade and I was always one of the few boys that could outrun the girls at recess (looking back on it, probably not the best skill I could have picked up), but since then I haven't really been that fast. I was always the shy, tall geeky kid whose skinny ribs you could see sticking out of my chest until maybe my sophomore year of high school. Other than that, I was just really good at eating.

As far as passion goes, however, I just always loved sport. My big sport growing up was always soccer and I played baseball through my freshman year in high school, but on top of the club teams I played every sport my middle school had to offer (except for cross country of course, I may never understand distance running...). I wrestled (thereby adding some gray hairs for mom), played basketball (at least after getting cut once or twice), ran track, and even played volleyball for 3 weeks until we failed to find a six man to make our squad whole. There were seasons that mom and dad got to cart me around to basketball, baseball, and soccer practices all at the same time (on top of my younger brother having a similar schedule). Of course, however, it was all only if my homework was done the night before...thanks mom.

Ironically enough, I actually managed to excel in the positions that required the least to do with my eventual path towards the jumping, throwing, and the endless running of track and field. In baseball I was a catcher (to the detriment of my knees) and was one of the few kids in the history of little league to almost never pitch and I was never able to hit a ball out of the park. My arm sucked - to the extent that my high school baseball coach once asked me after try-outs: "so, have you ever had any injuries to your arm" - and my power hitting was worse. In soccer I was a goalkeeper, probably mostly due to my height and asthma, but even worse was that our team was good, thus I hardly ever saw action. So much so that I once had to be carried off the field because the lack of movement in the second half of one cold game stole my ability to do anything but stand in place and chatter my teeth while mumbling: "I-I-I-Immm c-c-c-c-ooooooolllld-d-d..." while the rest of the team shook hands with the traditional "good game" exchange. The first day of freshman football in high school (again, more gray hairs for mom) I signed up for strong safety (so I could hit people without them seeing it coming) and wide receiver (so I could run away from getting hit - plus I figured I was way too skinny for anything else). Within two days I was a defensive end and tight end. A couple weeks later and I was a defensive tackle and a center. I got moved up to varsity my sophomore year to back up an all-league center that was maybe 5-10 and about 250 ilbs. I was 6-3, had ballooned up 185 thanks to that off-season strength work, and my shoulder pads made my arms look like long icicles dripping off a roof-top.

Thus, my point being, how does a skinny slow kid with asthma turn into an "elite athlete"? Easy, the people around him: amazing parents, and great coaches and teachers. Yes, the genes you get from your family play a role, but more importantly, having parents that tirelessly drive you from soccer practice to baseball practice, come to all the games (even when your 25 years old and they're still making your car payments), and never push, but always encourage and support. Furthermore, it's from them I learned the value of hard work, and about how determination and attention to detail pay huge in the long run. The reason I'm still where I am is because I learned how to always strive to be better - plus I'm just too stubborn to quit.

What got me here are the coaches. I have been incredibly fortunate in that my coaches from Tommy Anderson (developer of the amazing Daisy Cutta'), my U-10 soccer coach to my Little League coaches, to Coach Filios every summer at basketball camp, to my amazing high school coaches - Tom Tuite and Jason Hinkin who taught me to vault, Dan Quinn and Carl Florant who taught me to hurdle, Coach Frank, Coach Adams, Coach Ivers, and even teachers like Mike Kemp, Gary Dinneen, and Don Carroll (who I hope is not proof-reading this right now), and so many others that I may not have ever seen on a track yet I still carry with me every day the lessons I learned in their classrooms. You pick up a lot of great stuff when you surround yourself with good people. Things like carrying horsepower on the runway, keeping your dive through a hurdle, or the proper way to warm up are huge, but it's really the little lessons I learn from these people that I carry with me every day. It's about how to treat people, how to be unsatisfied with nothing but the best, how to love what you do. Those are the real lessons I learned from my coaches and teachers that get me through every day of training. Though, when you start traveling for competitions in college and realize that your high school coaches were better than 80% of the college coaches you see around, that doesn't hurt.

Of course, my college coaches weren't too shabby either. Coach Dee taught us all to work our butt's off, V always kept us on track and going with a smile on our faces (when he wasn't stealing my Wheat Thins...). When you have a chance to go to a D-II school, get a great degree, and be coached day in and day out by people that are not only some of the best coaches in the world, but also world-class people, how can you go wrong? Again, it's almost like the toughest part is just not screwing up all they have to give you. Then of course you've got your scattering of Olympic finalist throwers (Andy Bloom) to teach you a thing or two about hucking things and lifting weights, a Japanese Olympic coach to teach you some things about high jumping (H) - plus fix you here or there when you're nice and broken, Coach Rob (he tried his best to make me fast), and Ken Norlan who all contributed in so many ways. Not to mention someone like Julie Baclene and her endless hours in the training room with me when things were not quite right (if you plan on being a decathlete, make good friends with a great trainer).

Thus, I guess what I'm trying to say is, the answer is in the question. From my experience, elite athletes are just that: made. Find yourself some great parents and surround yourself with the most amazing people around. Next, just keep you ears open and do what they say (even if you're countless 400's deep, in the rain, an hour after the rest of the team has gone home, barely able to stand, and all you can here is V yelling: "shuffle!").

Congrats to Zoila: 4th at Trials and Beijing alternate

2008-04-20T09:23:00.000-07:00

The Women's Marathon Olympic Trials were in Boston so I got up early to go cheer on fellow In-TheArena'er Zoila Gomez. Plus I figured it'd be a great way to try out my new toy: the Flip video cameras that Amory got for all of us.

Zoila came in with the 6th best time in the field but with a truly inspiring last couple of miles, she came hard charging to win by a mere second. I couldn't imagine what's it like to be that poor girl Zoila hawked down (running over 26 miles and lose the alternate spot by a mere stride length), but congrats to Zoila for showing so much heart.

I was on the Mass Ave. bridge (and got to the race late, but in time for the good start), so when I showed up Zoila came by me in 6th place at mile 21:

Here she was pretty well alone in 5th, but with some strong final miles, she was quickly coming up on 4th place. Here she is at mile 25 (she's the second one) with less than a minute between her and the 4th place spot:

Despite my bike, I wasn't able to get in an out of people fast enough to make it to the finish, but from what I here it was about as close as you can get.

I'm glad I was able to make it out. Definitely an inspiring experience and great to see. However, I am going to feel like a real wuss on my monster 20 minute run today...

LSU Tiger Combined Events: Day 2

2008-04-17T08:56:00.001-07:00

So, in the decathlon there are 2 days....
Normally a fact that works huge in my favor and is something that I thrive on. I remember NCAA's (Div. II) in 2003: I came in thinking that if I was within the top 8 after the first day, I had a shot at really shocking some people. After day one, I was seventh. Unfortunately I didn't have enough to catch the winner, but it only took me the first 3 of the 5 events on day two to solidify myself in second place. The second day is my day.

But this one hurt. The legs felt pretty good when I woke up. I worked all night at trying to loosen up the glute and hamstring so I didn't feel too bad after waking and getting my morning shake out in. Again, when we got to the track we had beautiful conditions. It was only a couple degrees hotter at ~88 degrees, but it def felt a little sweatier than the first day. Not quite as strong as the day before, but we again had that beautiful tail wind.

110m High Hurdles
Lesson learned: I made sure I had someone to hold my blocks for me this time. I had a great heat myself in the middle surrounded by 3 low 14 second hurdlers: the two other unnattached guys as well as Leander McKenzie out of Troy who had already run a regional qualifier in the 110s this year. We had a lane in between each of us as per NCAA rules (this is to save us from ourselves - decathletes tend to be very large, very ugly hurdlers and we're not afraid to hit each other. See my 60mH at the Dartmouth Relays earlier this year. If the guy next to you smacks you enough to ruin your race and thus meet after putting a long days work in the day before, you would not unhappy to very unhappy.) With the wind the way it was, I knew I really needed to keep quick otherwise i'd be hitting some hurdles.
I felt good through the first half of the race and felt like I could really start coming up on Claston in the lane next to me, but unfortunately I hit a couple hurdles late in the race which through me a bit off balance. I could def. still tell I need some work outdoors with the hurdles as it's still feeling like a long race. As I crossed the line and saw the guys just ahead of me were in the low 14s, I knew I had a solid time.
14.69 - a hundredth faster than my decathlon PR set this time a year ago. That made it 4 decathlon PRs for the meet and a solid start to the second day.

Discus
Much like the shot the day before, warm-ups for disc were a bit of an adventure. I felt pretty good in the ring, but my release was all over the place. We were facing away from the track (and parallel to the Mike, the Tiger's Cage), so the wind was in our face this time, but this can be a great thing in the disc as long as you keep the disc low. Something I did not do.
I first throw was a weak 38m throw that went higher than it did far, but it was conservative and I had a mark so I knew I could really get after the next couple throws.
Again on the second throw I got way to much height on the disc and wasn't able to get a ton of power out of the back of the ring. It was a minor improvement to just over 40 meters.
I think you can hear in the video my yell on my third had a big more flavor of desperation than anything else. Claston, a couple of throws before me, had hit his final throw really well at just under 50m - right where I was hoping to be. I was much better out of the back of the ring and got a bit more pop on my final throw, but again had some trouble with the height and had to settle for a mark at 42.37m (139'). Not a bad mark, especially compared to my first two, but over ten feet shy of my PR and well off what I'd been training at.
However, the vault and the jav coming up were the two events I was really waiting for on this day, so I was ready to put some real points on the board.

Pole Vault
As they set up the pit for the vault, the sun was still shining bright and we had a great little tail wind. Warm-ups were feeling great and I had some good confidence about getting onto my larger poles. I had a great jump at a 16'-8" bungie to finish off warm-ups, then packed up my poles and gear to head inside to the A/C of the indoor track. We were starting at 10 feet and there were a number of beginner type jumpers so I knew I had some time.
I returned an hour later to find the field narrowed down a bit, but with some ugly clouds on the horizon. They seemed to be in a direction to pass by us, but as I was finishing my re-warm-up things took a turn for the worse, literally. The height before I entered the competition, our beautiful tail wind instantaneously switched 180 degrees to become a gusting head-wind. On top of which, this also changed the direction of our storm so that it was now heading right for us.
I knew after warm-ups that I would need to open on my 16' - 205# pole, and although it took me one jump to get everything going, I had a clearance at 4.65m (15' - 3"). 800pts in the bag, and a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. It was actually a year ago at the Sea Ray relays that some ugly cross winds had helped me no-height in the vault thereby scrubbing a decent meet and producing my first ever decathlon no mark.
I had plenty of height on clearance, and there was just one other jumper in the competition at this point so in order to conserve jumps for later, I passed 4.75m and moved right to 4.85. The other jumper (Dmitri Kabakov) did the same, but unfortunately the weather was moving as quick as the bar was. At this point is was raining as well and the wind was not getting any better. We were both spending considerable time at the back of the runway before jumps trying to wait for calms in the wind, but they rarely came. I almost never jump with the standards closer than 70cm (and it's rare I even put them there), but despite moving them to 70m I was still having some trouble getting into the pit. Although my dad was doing a great job and helping a ton, this is where it gets tough not having your coach there with you. Should I move down a pole? Should I move my step up? Am I slowing down into the box? The height was there, I just couldn't get it over the bar.
I had to settle for opening height: 4.65m (15' - 3"). Disappointing, yes, but I actually came away feeling a bit relieved I got any bar in with the way the weather turned. In fact, right after we finished, it really started coming down and we had to clear the track for about a half an hour or so due to lightening.

Javelin
We came back to a soggy track and the sun had long since left us, but the jav was really the even that I had been looking forward to all meet. My meets in Houston went real well and thanks to my board of coaches (Brenner, mom, Chris - my brother), I had some easy ways to throw much farther... I just couldn't find them.
I warmed up well with some easy tosses over 180 feet. I had put together a bit more of a full run that I was planning on using so I would be added quite a bit more speed to the 55m tosses I had in Houston. Unfortunately it seems like someone was using a giant magnet for my javelin at 50m. I felt like I was putting out huge tosses and was developing much more whip, especially on my first attempt, then I had felt in a long time, and yet every throw seemed to fall out of the sky right at 50m. I kept composure well because I knew that just like the shot and the discus, I was only one throw away from the big one. Then I ran out of throws.

I've learned to stop counting points during a decathlon, to put The Book (table of scores) away and just compete event by event, but at this point I had to know. Counting chickens before the eggs, possibly, but after day one, I had some great looking eggs. With a good second day, let alone a vault, disc, and jav like I had been practicing, I was ready for a huge score. Not to mention, in the back of my head I was definitely going for the cool factor of scoring over 7,000 pts after just 9 events.
After nine events: 6,903 pts. My heart sunk. This meet was about much more than PRing, but I looked it up to see what I'd have to run in the 1500m to better 7,600: 4:34.

1,500m: final event
My legs had been real tight since pole vault warm-ups (and a big thanks to dad for making the supermarket run to stock up on Pedialyte and sports drinks to combat my dehydration) and I had not done a single traditional 1,500m type workout this year, so I was curious how I was going to run. I knew I was strong and in my 1,000m at Dartmouth earlier in the year, felt good despite how I ran.
Again, there was a lot of inexperience in the field, so no one really knew how they were going to run (this one kid seemed to surge about 4 times per lap and would sprint ahead every time I caught him), but Claston was going for 8,000m points and the Olympic A standard and needed a 4:34 to do it. Funny how that works. My plan was to stick behind him, let him pull me through and see how I felt.
I started conservative (not the usual for me) and had some fun as we fought for position a bit the first 200m. 2 of the Portland guys took it out and were well ahead (typical Oregon guys in the 1,500m), but I was right in the pack around Claston. Unfortunately I felt early that this wasn't quite 4:34 pace (either than or I was in ridiculous shape). We came through the first lap in about 73, which is right about 4:40+ place.
I felt good and comfortable through the second lap and all the changes in pace in the guys around me were great for giving me something to think about other than my own legs. I came through the 800 in 2:36 and I still felt real good so knew I had to do some work the next lap.
My final 600m was probably the strongest I've felt at that point in the race and I was surprised to find a pretty decent kick in me for the last 400. As I came to the final turn I came up on Dmitry and Cory Roberts out of SE Louisiana fighting each other to the finish so I dug down and fought to come up on them.
With my first 800m in about 2:30 I closed real well to a 2:20 final 800m and a 71 final lap for a 4:49.97. Especially considering the way my legs felt half way through the day, this was a great finish and only a couple seconds off my PR set last summer.

Final score: 7,522 points.

It's taken me a couple days to write this, and probably with good reason because a couple days ago it would have a much different tone, but all-in-all, this is a meet that shows a ton of promise. I finally hit a first day like I have been waiting for for a long time now. Minus some technical difficulties I would have had 4 out of 5 decathlon and outdoor PRs which is a hell of a start to the season. Especially considering it's still April. I've never broken 7,000pts in April before (sadly), which actually makes this about a 500 point PR for the time of year. Now I'm definitely not saying this is going to lead to a 500 point PR come June (although I'll take it), but what it does show is that my training is going great and is right about where I want it. The speed is so much better than it ever has been at this point, I'm FINALLY starting to figure out the long jump, the high jump bar is looking lower and lower every day, the strength is great, and my technique is approaching a whole new level. I as def. able to tell which events are going to require a lot more outdoor training of which I haven't been able to get much in at this point (hurdles #6-#10, disc, jav), but as of right now is a beautiful 60 degrees out (that great for Boston) so things are looking up. The second day will come, I'm not worried. Now it's time to hunker down and keep doing what I'm doing. Stick to the game plan, work hard, and hit it again come June when I'll do one more meet in Dallas a few weeks before the Trials. The good thing is, if I had popped that big score last week, it would have ruined the surprise. At least this way I can save the good stuff for June.

Oh, and I'm working on getting some of the video and pictures myself, but thanks to my Director of Arts and Driving, you can watch some video of each day here.

LSU Tiger Combined Events: Day 1: PR's around

2008-04-12T17:29:00.001-07:00

Good Day.
The weather turned out to be pretty much ideal. It was def. warm at 85+ but the cloud cover kept it from getting too bad. It was def. windy, but it was nice and consistent which provided for a great first two events (100m & LJ) but it actually calmed down a bit by the time we got to the 400m.

100m
Warming up I felt much better than I had the couple days before so I knew I was finally ready to go. I took my time and had a nice surprise when checking the heat sheets: we would have a field of 12 to start, mostly of the collegians I figured would be there, but in addition was Claston Benard, ex-LSU decathlete and 8,200+ point scorer out of Jamaica. This was his first decathlon in three years, but as he put it, this was his chance to ease back into things and score his Olympic A qualifier (8,000 pts). Always good to have someone around to compete with, especially when their local.
Coming out of the block in warm-ups I had noticed the start area was a little chewed up from years of starts, but I didn't have any problems with my blocks slipping, so paid it no mind...way to go Matt.
I was in the outside of the first heat in Lane 8 with Claston on the far side in 2. On the command I came to set, and BOOM, gun goes off but as I push my front foot against the blocks I get only slippage in return. The starter doesn't notice so from there on it's all catch up time. We had a good but legal wind at our backs so I still came away with a good time at 11.32 which equals my 100m from PR meet at Dallas last year and is only .02 off my lifetime PR set at NCAAs in 2003. Both of those marks were months later in the season than it is now.
Claston cruised to a 10.70 to win it. After giving everyone a nice head start (even more than usual) I powered back pretty well on the field in the second part of the race. It would have been great to see what that race would have been with a real start. Good mark to start the day with and it shows the training is right where I want it to be.

Long Jump
On what seems like an unnecessary side note: I usually long jump with my older long jump specific shoes, but have recently toyed with the idea of jumping in my newer and better fitting vaulting shoes. Although I figured I'd stick with what I use in practice (the LJ spikes), at the very last minute before leaving the hotel this morning I threw my vault spikes in my bag and figured I'd make it a game time decision...
I knew my speed was good and things have really been clicking well in practice lately so I was stoked to see how the long jump was going to go for me. The wind had picked up even greater so I was a bit worried about how that would affect my run, but excited more than anything. Good day to jump well. After shaking out from the 100m, checking in, putting my mark out, and gathering my stuff, I sat down to put my spikes on. Boom, the shoe string on my left spike snaps as I yank on it to pull it tight. "Great," I think, first my blocks slip, then my shoe string snaps. The laces are long so I try to just take in some slack and balance the string from the other side, but it turns out Nike decided you don't need a real shoe string in your long jump shoes, instead, they were kind enough to permanently attach each side of the lace. As a result, I was screwed and I was scrambling trying to figure out how to try my shoe before it hit me: good job me, go grab the vault spikes. This was going to be a good day, but the decathlon gods sure weren't going to make it easy on me...
My first warm-up run-through was a good couple feet over the board on top of the foot I already moved my mark back, but after again moving the mark back another couple feet, my second approach was right on the board, thus I knew I was ready to roll. I finished off warm-ups with a couple pop-ups, moved the approach back a couple of inches to account for first jump jitters, and tried to find some shade to hang out in.

On first jump I felt great on the runway, just as we'd been practicing, I was nice and patient. I felt good off the board, but think I left my take-off foot out in front thus I didn't feel a ton of pop, but the speed was good and jump felt like a good start. I had left about 2 inches to spare on the take-off board. I saw them lining up the tape measure at something + about 80cm. It was either going to be a good day or a really ugly one. Boom, 6.83m (22-5). New PR. Good day.

I wanted to really start hitting it, plus the wind was starting to pick up some, so I moved the approach back another couple of inches, and it's a good thing I did. Second jump felt great. I actually thought I fouled it, but I got my take-off foot underneath me which gave me some pop, and I think the landing was even pretty solid. Expecting to see a big red flag when I got up, I was even more stoked to see him throw the white flag up in the air so signify a legal jump. The judge also laid down the little marker to show where your foot was and I had absolutely no board to spare. Boom. 6.87m (22-6). New PR, but I knew I had a lot more in me. Time to go for 7 meters.

The third jump always carries more steam. I moved the mark back 6 inches figuring I'd leave a little room to spare and really tried to get after it on the take-off. Again, the jump felt great, white flag...Boom: 6.94m (22' - 9"). Not quite 7 meters, but now I know I have it in me. Plus, it's tough to argue with 3 back-to-back-to-back PRs in a decathlon. I was particularly happy with my board management with strong winds. I probably left a combined 3 inches of board to spare all day. I was third in the event to Bernard and Fagen, the only other post-collegiates in the field.

Shot Put
Although I felt great, with good speed and great pop, not much was going right in warm-ups once I moved on to the full spin. I just couldn't get myself onto the ball with any control. Normally I'm king of warm-ups to my own demise, this time I was just going to have to trust it and get it going once the comp started.
Once we got rolling I knew that trying to be too safe is almost more dangerous than anything else, thus I still attacked the throw knowing that by just letting myself do what I do, the ball will go. Foul. I had no control coming to the center and front of the ring, for no real reason I could figure out on my own and wasn't able to hang onto the throw. It went well, but I flew out of the front right side of the ring.
The day was going too well, I couldn't have another Dartmouth Relays with a No Mark in the shot. Practice lately had been going amazingly well, so I knew there was a big throw waiting to come out, I just had to find it somewhere. In the decathlon you have to have a short memory. From event to event, even throw to throw or jump to jump, you have to take it all one at a time or your head can eat itself alive - but you also can't let one event ruin erase a two day meet. I hate the idea of going into a throw wondering if I'll make it or not, so admitting a lack of confidence was tough, but I knew I had to take a safe standing throw on my second attempt to allow me to really attack the third. I stood just over 40 feet (we won't talk about how far my stand in warm-ups was).
On the third I knew I had a job to do. It was super windy at this point and I was getting some good gusts to the face in the back of the ring. It sounds strange to even consider, but I didn't know if the wind was actually affecting my rotation. I was feeling super fast, so that on top of the wind may have just been enough to have been throwing me off. The little I could figure out about my throw was that I was real soft up front and was blowing threw the toe board, .launching myself into the sector. I had to get my left foot down strong and quick in order to keep myself in the ring. Stay on balance and I should be able to salvage something in the mid 40s. Every point counts. I got into the ring and actually waited for a good few seconds for the wind to calm down, stepped the the back of the ring, focused on staying tall, got my right foot out of the back, drove the the middle (kind of), and slammed the left foot down at the front of the ring as quick as I could. In the video, I've noticed my yell seemed to have an added bit of desperation more so than anything else. I wavered a bit at the front of the ring, but was able to walk out of the back under control as the shot landed somewhere over 40 feet...anywhere over 40 feet.
Somehow I actually managed to pull out a near 14.31m (46' - 11.5") throw for a big decathlon PR and not far off my marks this year. I would have been great to see what types of throws I had in me had I been able to get to any level of consistency.
Anyways, disaster averted, decathlon PRs or lifetime PRs in 2 out of 3 events. Good day. Maybe not easy, but good.

High Jump
We had to wait a few minutes for the ladies in the heptathlon to finish high jumping so we could use the same pit, but the time gave me a much needed chance to grab a couple minutes in the air conditioned indoor track next door and dunk my head in a cold shower. The wind was still pretty steady but it'd been mid-80s or better all day.
Here, again, I felt great in warm-ups. The wind was a cross and at my back into my curve but really didn't affect me at all and for the first time all day I was able to put it out of mind. The approach took only a small bit of adjustment that I was glad to have my dad there for, but my pop was great. I hit a nice 5-8+ scissor in warm-ups and a full flop with room over 6-4. I knew I was ready to roll. We started low, so again I was able to get a couple minutes of break time indoors while I waited to come in. The plan was to open at 1.85m (6' - 0.75") to get a safe bar in, pass 1.88 to conserver the jumps, and move on from there.
Once I came out and entered there were only 3 people left in the competition so I moved quickly. I still had great pop and the approach felt real good. I cleared opening height with ease and did the same at 1.91m. I had a small lapse at my first jump at 1.94 in which I lost my curve a bit and jumped into the bar, but cleared well on my second attempt.
As the bar continued to raise I continued to feel good and the bar seemed low, a good sign, but I think the number of jumps and toll of the day finally started to catch up to me as my legs eventually stated feeling some fatigue. Still, I managed to clear 2.00m (6' - 6.75"), a new outdoor and decathlon PR, and I manged some good attempts at 2.03m.
3 out of 3 field event decathlon PRs for the first day, not a bad start.

400m
This was probably the most I had been looking forward to a 400 in a while. My workouts had been going well and I'm much stronger then I've been before. The legs were def. feeling it by the high jump, but the temp had cooled down considerably and the wind wasn't quite as bad as it had been earlier in the day.
I drew lane 8 on the far outside with Claston to my inside in 7. I felt pretty good and relaxed coming through the 200, and pretty strong through 300, but hit a bit of wind and locked up a bit coming home. I was hoping to be in at 50 point, but just couldn't hang on in the end. 51.47, not the way I was hoping to end such a good day, but still less than a tenth off decathlon PR.

3,888 points was a great way to start the meet and a 180 point first day PR. I came into this year wanting to emphasize that first day and it looks like the plan has been working. The speed is much better then it ever has been this time of year, and obviously the field events are coming up as well. 3 tenths of a second shorter and I would have been 5 for 5 on decathlon PRs.

LSU Tiger Combined Events Decathlon: Day 0

2008-04-09T20:22:00.001-07:00

I'm in and ready.

I got into Baton Rogue yesterday (luckily not flying American). I flew out mid-day, thus was able to get in a staff meeting and a quick workout at home before leaving. Brenner, my coach wasn't able to make it down, but I get one of my original coaches on this trip: dad was able to fly out and is here with me now. I got in a shake-out jog and stretch around the lake last night, then Pops and I got some good Cajun food for dinner.

Today we made it down to the track to get some pre-meet in... and we're not in the Ivy Leagues no more. This is my first time to LSU, and although I was impressed with the facilities at Univ. of Tennessee last year, this place is amazing. It'd take quite a few hands to count the number of huge frat/sorority houses around us on the lake (we're staying right on campus), but the athletic facilities are ridiculous. I'll post pictures soon (I forgot the usb cord for my camera), but imagine a track with a 9 lane oval, sprint straight away down the center of the track, 6 long jump pits, 4 throws cages, and count em: 9 possible vault boxes. Sadly, the tiger wasn't home, but of course, there is a live tiger habitat right behind one of the throws cages.

But getting on with it, the weather has been great so far around 80 with some cloud cover (not too much sun) and a bit of wind (good when the facility can run/jump/throw any direction). We have 20% chance of thunderstorms for Day 1 tomorrow (100m, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400m) but we hope it stays dry on friday (hurdles, discus, vault, jav, 1,500m) where we have 60% chance of t-storms. The meet doesn't start until after 3:30pm each day so it shouldn't be too warm. Pre-meet felt decent today and the glute feels fine as long unless I'm not sitting (the flight here was not that fun), so I'm looking forward to enjoying a solid meet. The field will be 15 guys and as far as I know all collegiate other than I. I saw the Texas Tech kids warming up as I was finishing up, but other than that I don't know who else will be here. If they keep the results updating live you will be able to find them here.

Wish me luck (and do a rain dance for me on Friday).

Houston

2008-04-05T16:15:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately coaching on the side of training can mean a lot of extra travel (it's 7am and I am on a 2.5 hour bus ride south to UConn right now), but fortunately it also means that I've just returned from a ten day training and competing trip in Houston. It's amazing how much ten days in the sun can do for your training. Just as the outdoor transition starts to really get frustrating (average sub-40 with ugly winds), that ten days in the sun saves me. Not to mention we get to be a part of one of what I think is one of the best track and field meets in the country: the T.S.U Relays at Texas Southern. Us pasty New England kids definitely stick out like sore thumbs at that meet, but it's an incredible experience full of music, energy, and some culture shock for both sides like I've seen nowhere else.

I think a poor travel schedule and some subsequent lack of planning on my part led to a bit of a glute strain on my end (note to self: hard quarter workouts the day before a 4am wake-up call and 6 hour plane flight may not be the best idea in the world). As a result I wasn't able to do nearly the amount of competing that I wanted to, but I was able to get a couple events in, a couple of solid workouts, but more importantly, a ton of rest as a break from my usual schedule.

I did get a chance to finally get some outdoor Javelin in. I threw a super easy 55.95m (~180 ft) the last weekend there which was a great start of the year for me. With just a couple technical things and adding some speed with an approach, that can go up real quick. I was able to get another hurdle race in, a 100m, a long jump, and a shot put as well, so although it all wasn't as much as I had planned, it worked out decently well. Getting back this week the glute still kills when I have to sit in one place for more than 15 minutes (ie, right now...), but it's been great in workouts. Both my vault and long jump sessions this week were among my best I've had and I actually enjoyed the dreaded 250-100 workout I did last night in the rain (run 250m, take :30 seconds rest, run 100m. Repeat as necessary). All is pointed well towards the decathlon in Baton Rouge next week.

For this weekend I'm laying low and trying to stay dry as I will just be coaching and resting up. I shipped my poles out yesterday (pray for me that they get there without any problems), and I will leave on my flight for Baton Rouge Tuesday evening. I hope everyone has a good weekend, and if you're in the south or in the west, enjoy some of that sun for me.

UNC-Wilmington Outdoor Debut

2008-04-04T19:22:00.001-07:00

(I just realized this post has been sitting in my box as a draft and I forgot to publish it, sorry for the delay:)
This weekend ended up pretty well. We couldn't have asked for any better weather: low 70's with tail winds miraculously for both the hurdles and vault - although they faced opposite directions. It was my first 110m hurdle race and although it felt like someone put 15 hurdles in my lane rather than just 10, it was a decent start to the year. I was under 15 seconds which is always a good precursor.
The vault, although some good came out of it, I was pretty unhappy with. I was a little flustered with warm-ups as although the hurdles were supposed to start 10 minutes before the vault, the vault judge - who was also jumping as a masters athlete - decided that because he was ready, the competition could start 15 minutes early. As a result I didn't get a chance to take any actual jumps during warm-up. I blew through my first pole at my first attempt on opening height - 15' 3". I cleared with my second attempt on my next pole, but then blew through that pole on my first jump at 15' 9" ("blew through" = pole is too soft so I hit the bar on the way up). My next pole up is the biggest one I have, my 16' 210 ilb rated pole. It's a testimate to how much faster, stronger, and more proficient that I am this year that I am able to get on this pole so early in the season, but also means that I am going to have to be scrambling the country in search for some huge poles soon (anyone have any 16-215+ poles lying around???). Something that may get real expensive - as well as something that is going to require me to learn to be real ballsy as well.

I was real happy with how the disc went. I started off decent, then each throw was a bit better than the last. With only two days of actually touching a discus coming into this meet, that's not a bad thing at all. I know there's still a ton of technical things that can be improved very quickly, but I still managed a mark just 2 meters shy of the PR I set last year.

One of the best parts of this year is that I seem to have really picked up right where I left off last year. With track and field being the endless 'build-up' - always trying to get faster and stronger at the right times, that's a good thing to feel coming into the season.

Indoor Wrap-Up

2008-03-12T20:35:00.000-07:00

I'm going to make this quick because I leave in a couple hours for my Wilmington, North Carolina and my first outdoor meet of the season. I've am fortunate enough to have the chance to travel with the Northeastern team and Brenner to UNC-Wilmington for their meet this weekend. I'll be vaulting, and attempting a few of my first outdoor events: 110m Hurdles and the Disc.

I'm leaving a hell of an indoor season behind me though. With the new vault PR from the USATF New England Championships a couple weeks ago (4.95m - 16' 3") I've PR'd in nearly every indoor event possible. Although I didn't get it in fair, I'm positive even my long jump from the same meet would have been a new best.

Some have been bigger than others (the picture at the right is my clearance over my previous PR of 16'), but all are signs that things are definitely working. That paired with how good I feel dispite the level of training being so high has me with a lot of confidence looking forward to my opening decathlon in April.

In total:

2008 Indoor Season PRs:
60m: 7.48 (Dartmouth Relays, Jan)
HJ: 2.02m (Dartmouth Relays, Jan)
60mH: 8.27 (Harvard Open, Dec)
Shot Put: 14.60m (St. Valentine's Meet, Feb)
PV: 4.95m (USATFNE, Feb)

Not a bad start. I feel like all of these can drop (or raise) as well. I'm psyched to get outdoors now - especially with the forecast in the mid-70s for this weekend (we're excited if it gets into the upper 40s around Boston right now).

Big Weekend for the Jets!

2008-02-21T17:24:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have heard of or even experienced the famous Cambridge Jets 4 x 200m relay team. They're back in action this weekend at the USA Track & Field Championships being hosting at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston this weekend. This time there will be separate boys and girls relays, but, back by popular demand, Devonte, 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!

The meet itself will be a great time and is THE US Indoor National Championships. This is a World Championships year, so everyone is gunning for their spots on the team. Also, fellow In-The-Arena athlete Sara Hall will be there competing in the 1500m, so if you're fortunate enough to be going to the meet, cheer loud! I'm excited as well because a fellow multi-eventer and friend of mine, Lela Nelson, will be competing in (and hopefully winning!) the women's long jump. Also in attendance, for you decathlon fans, it looks like World Decathlon Champion Bryan Clay will be competing in the men's long jump. It'll be great to see those two represent the multi-eventers by mixing it up (and whupping on...) the "specialists."

As for me, I will be competing on the home track at Harvard in the USATF New England Championships on Sunday. It's going to be yet another crazy New England track meet so I'm not quite sure how the scheduling is going to work out, but I'm planning on running the 60m Hurdles, Long Jumping, Vaulting, and throwing the shot. My body has been super beat up the last couple of days after a long cycle of training, but I am taking some down time this week and thus should be ready to roll by Sunday. I'm sure I'll be nice and inspired by watching the meet on Saturday too. Until then...

Go Jets!

Feb Update + St. Valentine's Meet

2008-02-11T08:14:00.000-08:00

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.

Dartmouth Relays Heptathlon

2008-01-19T13:39:00.000-08:00

Something you may notice, and I apologize for it, is that when things don't go super well for me at a meet, it takes me a little longer to post about it. Not to start off on the wrong foot, because a lot of good came out of the meet, but overall it was a bit unsatisfying. I guess the earliness of the meet in the overall season really showed through. The overall results can be seen here:
http://www.lancertiming.com/results/winter08/dr-hept.htm

DAY ONE: 60m, LJ, Shot, HJ
The first day of the meet, Friday, started pretty well and ended great, but the middle left some to be desired.
I made the 2 hour trek up to Hanover late on Thursday night, got some decent sleep in the hotel, and felt pretty good warming up.

They set the meet up pretty well and put Chris Boyles on the inside in lane 1 Moose in lane just to my inside and Chris Helwick just to my outside in lane 5. I had a decent reaction to the gun, but stood up much too quickly so didn't get much of a drive phase. Moose got out great to what was the start of a huge Heptathlon. My 7.48 was a PR, but with a start like I had in December at the Harvard Open I would have easily been sub 7.4. Still a PR is a PR and it was a decent start.

In the long jump we found out that the Chris's (Boyles and Helwick) were not planning on competing full in any of the jumping events so planning on completing the meet would just be the half dozen or so collegiate guys and Moose and I. As I mentioned before the meet, I've recently moved back to a new ten stride approach that is real long but feeling great. Here too, I felt great on the approach, but for some reason or another, I just couldn't get much pop off the board. After reviewing the video with my coaches, we know exactly why now, but much like the shot, hurdles, and vault to follow, the LJ was a good example on why early meets are tough: the body may be ready for big things, but the awareness might still have some catching up to do. If finished at just over 21 feet, which technically isn't horrible for me, but I'm hoping to put such marks far in the distance behind me sometime soon. Moose, again, had a great event with a huge 7.20m jump after fouling his first.

The shot was one of the events I was most looking forward too. I had started off the year with a great PR in December and was eager to apply such a throw to the points table and get a big boost from it. I was warming up great and took a good throw over 45 feet, sat down, and waited for my time to come so I could make it count. Again, like LJ, I was trying some new things that we had been working on in practice; things that I wasn't quite comfortable yet nor really understood, but the ball was going far anyways. The problem here was that it was going far, but in the wrong direction... In my first throw I was a big off balance coming out of the back of the ring and wasn't too shocked to see the sector foul out of the right side that it produced. My second attempt felt good and much more aligned...only to see the ball drop even further outside the right sector line. This is something that I hadn't had any trouble with since I picked up the spin a year ago, plus I couldn't really feel where the disconnect was so I was a bit confused. Now, as a multi-eventer, you only get 3 attempts and if you don't get it done in those confines, you get a nice fat zero for the event. Had this been a big meet or one I was really trying to get a score in, or any DECathon for that matter, at this point I would have had to play it safe with a standing throw just too get some points safely rather than risk the zero. Being that I saw this meet as experience for later meets and more of a test of my progress thus far, I decided to go with a full throw. Besides, Brenner noticed that I just wasn't finishing the throw all the way through, thus I figured I'd just get the shot around a little better and I was money...

See the guy with the tape measure in the background stand up to measure it? Yeah, it was that close. The sector line itself was a crooked dotted "line" of tape upon which my shot landed directly on. Something I might have been able to argue, something they maybe should have marked, but no excuses: Foul #3. Zero Points. On the whole my meet score was done, but the shot was traveling well so I know I'm doing a lot of things right, I just have to figure out the one or two things I'm doing wrong.
As I mentioned anyways, this meet was early, and it was more to see where I was at then anything thus the meet must go on.
I did end up coming back from the shot mishap very well in the High Jump though. I felt good in warmups so decided to come in fairly high for me at 1.87m (6'-1.5"). After a bar or two it was just me and Chris Boyles left. Chris is a great high jumper (PR over 7 feet) but hadn't been jumping much this year so he and Helwick were only taking a couple short approach jumps at lower heights. I was jumping real well, however, and didn't want to be the only one in the competition so I tried to get C-Bo riled up a bit to see if he'd help push me. That's the great thing about competing with such good guys is that it's far from a dog-eat-dog competition. The better the guy next to you does, the better he can push you. I caught Chris up in a little friendly trash talking and it worked. He got into it a bit with me and I could tell he wasn't going to let me get the better of him - all the better for me. I was jumping great and had only one miss when I cleared 1.99m to tie my PR. The bar went up to 2.02, we got the crowd into it a bit and boom, I cleared my first attempt at 2.02m (6'-7.5"). A took some great attempts at 2.05 (just under 6-9) and had a very near make on my last. With that competition and the way practices have been going I feel like my HJ is finally getting to where it has been going for some time now. I've got to thank Chris Boyles as well for jumping in with me and playing along. He ended up jumping real well taking some great attempts at 2.11 - a height I am sure that is much higher than he expected to be attempting that day.

DAY TWO: 60mHH, Vault, 1000m
Coming back for day two I felt pretty decent. I had a little tightness in my right glute that I noticed warming up the day before, but it didn't seem to affect me much. Day two corresponded with a huge high school meet so unlike the day before when we had most of the arena to ourselves, Saturday was a packed house with thousands of high school kids and families all over the place. Remeber that nice serene picture of the track I posted before the meet? This one was taken later Saturday night when things had died down a bit. The Chrises, Moose, and I had to work together to get our warmup in. It was quite a site to see the four of us sprinting full out in single file line making our way through a mob of high school kids wandering the track in order to get our accelerations in before the race.

Getting over the hurdles just before race time I didn't feel super smooth but, again (theres a theme here) I didn't really know why. Once we got past the first hurdle I found out exactly why: my arms were all over the place. Chris Helwick was again in the lane next to me and I smacked the poor guy in the chest at least a couple of times. It seemed to affect me more than him as my rhythm was severely thrown off and hit the hell out of some hurdles. With Moose again starting the day off with a bang and a PR, the rest of us trailed behind. My 8.81 was more than a half second slower than my opening race a month before. Ugly, but easily fixed.
In the vault, by the time I opened up at 15'-1" I was actually the only vaulter left in the competition, and as I found out later, was the the new owner of the meet record for that event. I cleared with great height, but in moving up to 15-5 I was unable to clear. Being that my first day upside down and near my meet poles was 4 days before, its not a bad start. In keeping with the theme, I felt good, I just lack awareness of what my bodies doing in the air at this early stage in the game.
The 1,000m must have been a very interesting event to watch, and to tell you the truth, I probably looked like a pretty dumb runner. With my foul out of the shot put I was no longer going for a big mark, but I knew that Moose was. I wasn't sure where his score was at, but I knew he had some huge events. On top of which, Moose is a very strong 1,500m/1,000m runner and after asking around I found out that no one in the field was going to be anywhere near his pace. You hardly ever get a chance to do it, but have you ever wondered what it would be like to take out a race WAY too hard and just see what happens? This was my chance. I told Mustafa that I would help him pace the first couple laps (or as long as I could hold on). He and his coach had decided he would shoot for 30-31 second laps (of the 200m track).
It doesn't sound like much, but that is about 4 seconds faster than I would have paced my own race. After pacing a lap during warm-ups I found out that it was going to be real fast for me...thus making the last couple laps a whole lot of fun. I sprinted of the line at the gun and "settled" into my pace. It actually felt real good - real fast, but real good. I didn't hear much behind me so was a little worried about taking it out to hard but sure enough I came through the first lap at exactly 31. Apparently Moose was a bit behind me, but as he mentioned before hand, it always helps just having someone ahead of you just to look at. I came through the second lap at another 31 and with a look behind me I still had some space but soon after, I heard Moose charging up behind me. He passed me look real strong after about 550m and was able to hold through for an awesome 2:36, capturing not only the meet record in the 1,000m, but also breaking his own meet record and PR in the Hept for a huge 5,883 point score. Thus, I had done my job...sort of. Once Moose flew by me I still had 2 laps to go, and I was hurting. My legs felt like they weighed 100ilbs a piece and each of those laps were looking real long. It must have been a sight to see me charge to the lead and fly through the first three laps only to see me dye a horrible death the last two as almost everyone in the field cruised by me. I felt like an RV that had someone gotten on the track of the Indy 500 as these guys flew by me and I was just struggling to keep my legs going in front of the hundreds of high schoolers lining the track. Good times. I was pleasantly...well maybe not pleasantly, as it hurt like hell, but I was surprised to see that I still had come in at 2:54, only three seconds over my PR - with about the worst race strategy possible. Makes me think that my fitness is there for a good mark.

All in all, there is definitely a lot to fix, but there is a lot of good coming from the meet as well. The speed is there, the strength is there, and I'm jumping well. If I keep having two PR's a meet, it's something you can't argue with. Now I just have to hit the practices, fix some things, and I'm set. (oh, and In The Arena placed 19th overall in the whole meet - not bad for having just one athlete)

Season's Opening Multi Tomorrow

2008-01-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

It has been a big week. I've got what I consider to be my first meet of the year this weekend (actually, tomorrow) with the Heptathlon at the Dartmouth Relays (meet website here: http://lancertiming.com/drelays/relays2008.htm?SPSID=48808&SPID=4706&DB_OEM_ID=11600). The Dartmouth Relays, up in New Hampshire, is a big annual meet that i've always heard of but never actually seen so I am looking forward to being a part of it...as well as competing of course.
The meet actually looks like its going to be a hell of a competition as well. I knew Mustafa (Moose) was going to be there - he's actually a graduate of Dartmouth and a Boston native although he now trains in Colorado. Although I had heard much about him beforehand, I had the chance to finally meet and compete with Moose this last year down in Dallas. A really great guy. He took a year off after graduating to complete his masters in Mechanical Engineering (yeah, wicked smart), but came back last year in great shape. He's a speedy little guy that's a great hurdler who can really finish off the meet with a studly 1,000 or 1,500m.
I was surprised yesterday when the entries went up to see that "Team 2 Guys Named Chris" (a name I just learned about as well) will be in the house as well. Chris Boyles (aka. "C-Bo") and Chris Helwick train together out of Wake Forest in North Carolina. Helwick just graduated from University of Tennessee this last spring and C-Bo is a few years older than me but graduated from little Messiah College. Both are good guys as well as near 8,000 point decathletes so they'll bring a lot to the competition. Boyles is a great high jumper, but I look forward to seeing both on day two as each are good hurdlers, 16+ foot vaulters, and good distance guys. Funny, now that I think about it, it was actually the team of Moose and the Chris's (as well as Ryan Olkowski who I tried to get out for this meet to no avail) who brought me through to my PR decathlon in Dallas this summer by helping pace a 1,500m that I would have had to otherwise run alone.
As well as these guys there will be a bunch of local collegiate kids to round out the field to 15. To see the full start list, check out the link to the Dartmouth relays above.
It's going to be a great meet. These guys will make it a lot of fun and bring a hugely competitive atmosphere.

THE HEPTATHLON
Day One:
The heptathlon is the indoor version of the decathlon in which rather than 10 events (100m, Long jump, shot put, high jump, 400m, 110m HH, Disc, Vault, Jav, 1,500m), we do 7. Obviously (or maybe not obviously), we don't throw the discus or the javelin indoors. There's just not enough room. Thus the heptathlon is adapted to the constraints of the common indoor tracks. On the first day (starting at 11:15am EST tomorrow) we will compete in the 60m, the Long Jump, the Shot Put, and the High Jump. The first day, much like the rest of the Hept as well, is a huge speed day. A lot of times you will get really good athletes coming out of the woodwork during indoor season by posting really good hept scores. If you're just blatantly fast, you can usually do very well in at least the first day. It's a really strange day as well because you end on the high jump. In the decathlon you end the first day with the 400 meters...and it SUCKS. You're very much glad to be done because most of the time, you can barely walk straight afterwords. If you're anything like me, you probably have trouble keeping lunch down as well. With the Hept, you jump as well as you can, then you're just done. Technically, if you're not one of the better jumpers, you can actually leave the track for the day while other people are competing. You feel almost guilty for leaving the track still feeling so fresh. As a California kid, I haven't done that many heptathlons (or a indoor meets for that matter) so it's still really strange for me.

60m
For me, I'm going to see what I can do to scare some people in the 60m to start off. Those guys aren't going to expect to see me up there with them, but I have been feeling great lately and am looking forward to a good race. Moose is going to take it out on all of us, but if I shoot somewhere near 7.30 or better, I'll be off to a PR and a huge start.

long jump
This event is going to be interestng in a great way. My PR here is 6.78m or a little over 22 feet. I've had a much bigger jump in me for a while and with some changes to my approach and a lot of work with my coach (Jeremy Gee) I think it might finally be here. He's backed me up to a really long ten stride approach that's much further than anything i've jumped on before, but it feels great. I had a great practice yesterday and am eager to see what happens. 7 meters is 23 feet. I am going to try to get as near that as possible.

shot put
Again, I had a huge practice yesterday. Coach Erickson has me doing some new technical things that I'm still trying to figure out, but in the meantime, the ball is going a long way. I've started off the season great here and I'm looking to keep improving.
My PR as of a month ago is 14.27m or just under 47 feet.

high jump
And again, great practice yesterday, one of my best ever. Body feels great, time to jump.
C-Bo is usually near 6-10, Helwick usually good for a bar or two over 2 meters, and Moose's PR is either exactly or within a couple cm of mine: 1.99m

Day Two:
As my dad always puts it: "The first day is for athletes, the second day is for decathletes." The second day of the hept is short, with only three events, but is much more technical. We start off with the 60m Hurdles, head to the pole vault, and finish with the 1,000m - 5 laps around the 200m oval track.

60m
I started the year off huge here with my PR 8.27 a month ago at the Harvard Invite so I'm looking to improve even more onto that. Moose especially, but both Chris's are good hurdlers as well. It's going to be a fun battle. With the 60 though, you only get 5 hurdles so the start is huge.

Pole Vault
I've been over a bar once this whole year, and that was Tuesday night. I'm on a short 5 step approach, but even so I'm faster than ever and jumping well, so if my one practice of actual jumping is any indicator, I am going to get on some big poles real early this year. This could mean big heights. My PR as of this summer is 4.87m or 16 feet exactly, but in the past 4 years I have jumped 4.85m many more times than I would like to count. Sometime soon some big heights are going to come.
I think C-Bo has been around 5 meters before (16'-4") but Helwick has been near 17 feet. It will be a great comp.

1,000m
5 laps, as fast as you can. Moose is going to take this out because he's a stud. I have a little grudge against Helwick right now as I think I made a tactical mistake last year at the Sea Ray Relays to let him beat me in the 1,500m. Other than the occasional "long" (20-30 min) runs during the weekends I have done zero mid-distance specific work. I'm just going to go out, try to race, and see what happens. A 2:50 or better here will be a PR.

My PR in the heptathlon is 5,297 points from the UConn Heptathlon about this time last year.

I'm not sure if I will have time in between days, but I will try to post result when I can. The results should be posted somewhere on the Relays site here.

Wish me luck.

Go Time,
Matt

Happy New Years, Welcome to 2008

2008-01-01T12:39:00.000-08:00

Happy New Years everyone. 2008 is a big year I think for all involved in track & field and I have a very excited mixture of relief and anxiety now that it is here.
I've just returned to Boston from a great trip home to California with family and friends. I was able to spend some great quality time with my family, get some much deserved rest, was able to get some good workouts in outdoors - something I don't get very often around here. In fact, it was ironic to meet up with some local friends that were trying to find ways of working out indoors because of how "cold" it was and yet I was so excited to get some workouts in on an outdoor track in the "warm" weather. What a difference a year makes.
As great as it is being home around my great family I'm excited to be back and ready to work. The break gave me some good time off and the body feels great. Coming back was a reminder of how lucky I am to have such great facilities here as well. The decision for me to move out here 16 months ago was one I had a lot of mixed feelings about and something a lot of people definitely questioned for the sake of my career, but my first workout back, last night, quickly reminded me on why things have worked out so well. Not many people decide to move from northern California to the Northeast to train for anything other than maybe hockey or bobsledding, but even in California it's not always calm and 65 or better. Here, it is, and it was nice to get in some work independent of any other obstacles :

Plus, before I left for break, I filmed a workout session of mine for another project, but I thought it would be interesting to post as a glimpse of one of my workouts, other than the hurdle clip on the end which I have already posted. Its just a few seconds of my warm-up and some clips of a sled pull workout.

New Years for me is always a big marking of the season - indoor competitions are just around the corner, which means the outdoor season comes much too quickly. This year, however there's a new sense of haste I am enjoying. Usually one to want "just another week" or so to iron out the details, get in just a little better shape, and fix just a couple more technical points before my big meets, this year I feel very different. I've found myself at a great point in my career. The difficult thing about the decathlon is that there is so much to learn, so much to try to master. It's in fact what draws me to the event, but it is also what can make it incredibly frustrating. Last year was the first time I really felt a sense of maturity in my event and was able to start stepping past simply learning and into really competing and performing. I've finally developed a strong sense of confidence in each of my ten events. I know I have weaknesses and strength, but my weaknesses are getting getting much less so. Anyways, although it is still really early in the season and I've only just began my event specific training, I am eager for my first my first multi coming up on the 11th so I can finally put it all to the test and see where I am at.

The break also meant I haven't been able to work with the Cambridge Jets in a couple weeks either so I am happy to get back working with them as well as my Harvard team this week. The Cambridge kids have been a very interesting experience for me thus far. They're great kids, and I always enjoy trying to teach and coach kids so young. Some of them even come straight from their high school track practices to our practices because they enjoy it so much. I'm always amazed of the ridiculous amounts of energy they have. I see these guys do activities that would double me over in half the time! I try to work them hard, but it seems as soon as they're done they give you that "so that was it?" look. It's definitely opening my eyes and stretching my own bounds as a coach. I hope they're getting as much out of it as I am, but they seem to be having a good time. It's always cool to have a couple of them ask me as soon as I enter the track before practice: "Matt, can we work with you today?."

Happy New Years everyone, have a great 2008.

First Meet - 2 PRs!!

2007-12-10T17:07:00.000-08:00

Woo-hoo! I had a great weekend today. Here at Harvard where I coach, we hosted out annual Harvard Open indoor meet. It's a huge meet (over 1,300 competitors this year) so it gets crazy in when everyone is stuck in our indoor track, but it's a great chance to get some low-key events in early.
I really only started event work a week or two ago as up to this point my training has been geared towards simply getting in shape and working on building the foundations for the rest of the year. Although I had really had only two hurdle workouts (including the one the day before the meet), and three shot put workouts since ending last season 4 months ago, I was feeling pretty good and decided to try those events out to see where I am at - kind of a trial by fire.
I've always been a hurdler, so it's the event I am most comfortable with and thus the event I think I have always picked to start off my competition season every year. The hurdles are tricky, however because early in the season its very tough to develop any sort of a rhythm when both your technique and speed are in their very early stages. That being said, I felt great the day before (both my first time coming out of blocks as well as my first time over high hurdles all year) and warm-ups before my prelim race felt great so I was eager to see how I'd do.
An area that usually hinders me in this event, my start was actually great coming out of the blocks and in fact may have been my best ever. I had a ton of speed coming through the first hurdle and was able to stay real crisp and clean throughout each of the 5 barriers in the 60m hurdles. I was clear of the field after the first hurdle and the race was over well before I realized what was going on - a great sign for such an early race. It felt fast, and it felt smooth.
My coach, Brenner Abbott, was there with some of his athletes from Northeastern and he was one of the first people I saw immediately after my race. "What's your PR [personal record]," he asked. Just as I was saying "I think Eight point Thir..," the results of my race came over the scoreboard and I had to correct myself: "or two-seven, I guess," as 8.27 was my official time and a new personal record. A great way to start of the year.
Here is the video from my prelim race:

I'm in lane 7, the one closest to the camera in the white singlet and black tights.

I made the finals with the top seed and therefore got to run out of lane 4. This time I was a little shaky in the blocks and was actually moving a bit when the gun fired so I was a bit caught off guard. I guess this is why you should practice more than once before a competition! Thus, I gave everyone a headstart and had to battle my way back. As a result, the hurdling was a little sloppier, but I came through with a huge lean at the tape to overtake two guys and win the meet with a 8.37 - in fact, the same time as the guy in second, but just enough faster that they were able to give me the win. Below is the video for the finals (I'm in the middle in lane 4):

As well as the hurdles, I also competed in and walk away with a big PR in the Shot Put. Just like the hurdles, I'd only had two or three days even picking up a shot since this summer. Last year I switched to the rotational style shot (spinning with the shot rather than the more traditional glide technique most decathletes use) full time. I had been a glider all throughout college, but was really kind of frustrated with the event because at my stature I should have been a much better thrower. I played around with the rotational style in 2006 when training in Berkeley under Chris Huffins but whereas there were some flashes of great potential early on and I improved my lifetime PR by a couple feet in only a few weeks, I was much too inconsistent with it and abandoned it in favor of the more consistent glide technique. Partly through last year, however, Brenner and I decided to re-visit the rotational style and we really started to figure out some things that worked. I started getting real consistent with it and my shot on the whole really began to improve significantly ended in not only a lifetime PR around 13.80 (~45'), but more importantly a lot more confidence in the event coming into this year.
Anyways, this year, due to scheduling and some added responsibilities placed upon him by his head coach (grumble...grumble...), Brenner hasn't has as much time to work with me one-on-one this year so I have begun working with Cathrine Erickson, our new throws coach here at Harvard. She has introduced some new technique points to me that had me a little worried going into the meet, as I had only had a two sessions to work on them, but it all worked out great as I had two throws of my 6 total over my old PR. I took 4th in the meet with a great new PR of 14.27m, or 46' - 10". This is a huge improvement in not only my psychy , by will alone add about 50 pts to me decathlon score if I do it in a multi.
To finish the day off (about 10 hours after starting) I also ran a leg in a 4x400m relay with some local guys to get a quarter-mile in - an event I need all the practice I can get. I wasn't super fast here, but again, it's real early in the season and my training so I was happy with how it went. All in all, I couldn't have asked for a better way to start the season and it has me very excited for the months to come.

For now things get quiet around here as far as competitions go as everyone take some time off for Winter Break, but I'll be working hard. I'm going back home to California for 10 days during Christmas so I'm real excited for that, but otherwise it's time to gear up for the Dartmouth Relays in January when i'll compete in my opening Heptathlon (the indoor multi-event we do instead of the full decathlon).

If I don't post before then, everyone have a great holiday season.

2007-12-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

I think I might start off my blog, and therefore introduce myself a little differently: I puked today. Sorry for anybody squeamish, but I think such a fact is a graphic but actually pretty good illustration of how strange it is being an athlete.

You see, I think it's similar to the reason I find it difficult to answer the question of what I do for a "living." Well, I make money by being a coach, true. Don't get me wrong, I love coaching and I put all I have into it when it's time to coach, but coaching pays the bills so that I can then do what I consider to be my job, my occupation. I am a decathlete.

I wake up in the morning based on and for the reason of my workout for the day. My meals revolve around, my sleep is geared towards, coaching is juggled around my workout that day. 365 days in a year, 52 weeks, and 12 months, all geared towards one two-day series. Sometimes it makes me glad I'm not a sprinter: some of them work just as hard and get fewer than 10 seconds to show for it. A decathlon, however, is two days. Ten events on the track in two days. Ten chances, ten opportunities at one goal.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not one of the I-do-ten-events-thus-work-ten-times-harder-than-you crowd and am not attempting a tirade about my "blood, sweat, and tears," I just thinks it's an incredible thing how this has all turned out for me. Sure I fantasized like everyone else as a kid about making NBA buzzer-beaters or hitting that walk-off dinger to win the World Series, but I truly never pictured myself as professional track athlete. I was always a bit of a work-aholic who played by the rules. In fact, my plan was more along the lines of get good grades, you go to college, get a degree, you get a job, buy a Beamer and a big house. Nice car, dog, and hoping by this time I'd be good enough to have my own office with my name on the door: safe, following the path, getting it done.

After graduating, however, I decided to go out to Berkeley to train and live with my uncle in Walnut Creek, CA. To get to and from I took the BART trains in the mornings and I think it's there it really hit me for the first time. The train I took eventually went on into San Francisco and thus was a big commuter train. Everyone was in a tie and jacket with a Blackberry on the hip, coffee in one hand, and "Wall Street Journal" in the other. Then, of course, there was me: bright fleece warmup jacket, track pants, backpack, and running shoes still sandy from the previous day's long jump session. As much as I used to see myself as one of those anonymous daily grinders I loved the fact that I was different, that I was "that guy." Just like I loved being "that guy" in the back of my college physics lectures with ice on his hamstring and eating a tuna sandwich, or one of "those guys" running suicide intervals up UC Berkeley's Campanelli hill at 8am weaving in and out of sleepy-eyed students making their way to the first class of the day. Somewhere I caught a sickness that turned into a passion, that turned into a love for my sport that made me crave waking up daily to push myself as much as I could just to see where I could go with it, pushing myself, building myself, then getting to bed to do it all over again tomorrow.

Which, I guess leads me back to the beginning: I puked today. I am not normal, and I love it. I was not sick, I didn't eat anything bad, I wasn't nauseous, I ran. I ran hard. Furthermore, to tell you the truth, to make matters worse, I was actually worried that I wasn't going to puke. I was worried that I felt too good after the workout. Sure, I couldn't stand up well or walk straight, but I didn't have to puke...but then, sure enough it came. Don't get me wrong, this is far from a regular occurrence, but during the early part of the season you have to get yourself into shape and there are certain workouts that I know are going to get me. You have to work and work and work. You have to push your body where it may not want to go now so that come spring and summer during competition season, your body can go exactly where you want it to go. I had been fine all year thus far, but today was the first day of slightly faster and more intense intervals. Just 200m at a time, but with only 2:00 minutes rest in between each, they catch up to you in a hurry - and sometimes you get to "re-eat" breakfast because of it. Thus, today, just like in the bleachers at Berkeley after that plyo workout, on the infield at Davis after that set of 8 x 300m, and at the few other places that have had the privilege of hosting the workouts leading towards my initial puke-inducing workout of a season, I found myself doubled over a trash-can in the bathroom of Harvard's Gordon Indoor Track Center...and it made me happy.