Day 1

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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...