Blogs : Matt Eicheldinger

A Small, But Productive Outdoor Season

Life has been going on the past few weeks, which explains my lack of entries in my blog. School wrapped up the week of May 5^th, and the NSIC Outdoor Track and Field Championships were on May 9^th, so I’ve been a busy guy.

The Conference Championships was held at Wayne State in Wayne, Nebraska this year, and like my freshman year, the weather was less than desirable. Day one wasn’t too bad, but day two consisted of strong winds and rain, which dragged the meet a little bit off the schedule. On Friday, I competed in the 4x800m. We were not in contention for 1^st place, but our squad did set a new school record, which two seniors were apart of (It’s always great to see seniors leave their last race on a good note)

On Saturday, I got to opportunity to retain my 800m Championship title, but unfortunately I was not able to keep it. I was in a fast heat, in which everyone was with in 2 seconds of each other. I came around the 400m mark in dead last, hitting about 58 seconds for my first quarter (which is about two full seconds slow). I took charge of the second lap though, and with 150m left in the race, passed 6 people to hold down 3^rd place with a 1:55:51. Stepping off the track with left over energy is never a good feeling, but I am still pleased with how my season went. This marks my first full year of the 800m, and in that first full year I won an Indoor Championship, and earned All-Conference for Outdoor. There is still room for improvement but all in all, I have nothing to complain about.

We had some other great performance on the day as well. Kawaskii Bacon defended his 100m and 200m crown, while Katie Johnson captured 1^st place in the long jump. Perhaps the best performances of the day came from Concorida senior Kris Enlund, who not only won his heat of the 800m, but also shaved a full two seconds off his lifetime PR. While Kris was running it was evident that he was going to leave everything on the track for his final race. By far, it was one of the coolest things I have seen all year.

Now what? I’ll be taking three full weeks off from running to recover from a long, hard season. It will be nice to have a month of rest, but I am going to be very hyper for those three weeks. It’s hard to go from full throttle training to absolutely nothing, but I know the rest is needed. Work will keep me occupied for now, but I can’t wait to start training again.

I’ll be blogging during the summer as well but until then, I hope all of you had a good conference race, and that you ended your season on the best note possible. God Bless.