Well, my last national meet was a mixed bag. The weather in southern California was absolutely terrible for all the days that we ran. "It never rains in southern California".......riiight. The day of 400m prelims we had three hours in delays. I felt that I warmed up well, and was ready to run, but I just went out too hard. Like Kayne West said, "when you try hard, is when you die hard", well I died hard. I ended up running 47-high, which was my first 47 since indoor. I was definitely disappointed, but I didn't dwell on it because I still had my relay counting on me for the 4x400. To make a long story short, we won our prelim heat in 3:10.40, and we ended up taking 2nd in the final in 3:09.02. I finished up my DII career as a 10 time All-American, and I'm happy with the run I had. When we got back I took a week off to recouperate and now I'm back practicing. I'm a Bahamian national, so I'm going down to compete in the trials at the end of this month. I plan on continuing to run, as I feel that I still have a lot of improvement left in me. I'll keep you all updated. I always wanted to get a shoeshine, and I finally did it on the way back from Cali. haha
Well, we leave for nationals in about 3 hours. This is my last meet as a collegiate athlete....it still hasn't really hit me yet, but I'm sure it will. I'm hoping that this will also be my best meet as a collegiate athlete. I've qualified for the national championships 8 out of 8 times, and have placed everywhere from 8th to 2nd, but I've never been a champion. Hopefully I'll put some good races together this weekend in the 400 and the 4x400 and come out of the meet with that championship. Prelims of the 400 are on thursday, so I'll update after those.
Since my last update we've had 2 meets. Our conference meet was 2 weekends ago, and it also was the last time I would get to run with the entire team. This year I had 5 events again; 100,200,400,4x100, and 4x400. I felt like I was in high school again doing all those events. I set a new P.R. in the 200m prelims at 21.39. My start was pretty horrible, so I think that a 20.999999 isn't out of the realm of possibility later. To make a long story short, we won the 4x1, I won the 200, 400, then took 5th I think in the 100m finals (which were back to back with the 400) and we won the 4x400. Oh, and the conference championship on both sides as well. It was a good way to leave the conference and to end my regular season on.
This past weekend we had the Billy Hays meet at Indiana. This was the last weekend to qualify, so most people were looking to do something big. I wanted our 4x4 to at least go 3:10. Unfortunately, I twisted my knee that morning and couldn't run. How did I twist it you ask? GETTING OUT OF BED. Wow, I'm old. I was scared that something was seriously damaged, but it's been getting progressively better as the days go on, so I'm sure I'll be fine. The 4x4 ended up running 3:11.9 without me on it, and had a great leg from our 400h Jeremy. Now we have a little over a week before NCAA's in California.
I ran in my last regular season track meet on Saturday. We hosted our Twilight meet. This was my first time being there, because in past years we've been at Drake on that weekend. The weather was nice, staying right around 64 degrees for most of the day.
I started my meet off with a warmup 4x100. We were in second when I got it on the anchor leg, and with that crowd cheering, I couldn't go out like that. I ended up passing right before the line and we ran 41.61, which is our best for the season. Next up was the 400. It was good to be home and have our usual trainer. I woke up early Saturday morning for treatment, so I was feeling better than I had been at any of our away meets. My last 400 race at Vanderbilt left me determined to get out better in the first half of my race, so that was my focus as I entered the blocks. I got out well enough for the first 100, and my 2nd 100 felt really smooth. I hit the final turn well and maintained form well to the finish. 46.38 was the time. I was a little let down, because I wanted to P.R, but I'm glad that my family got to see me run so fast. Once I iron out my first 200, I feel 45 second 400s are going to come. Almost 4 hours passed before the 4x400s and it got a bit colder. We ran well, despite no real competition (I'm talking about you B team!) and shaky handoffs to finish in 3:11.39, which is our fastest of the season.
Now I'm gearing up for our GLVC conference meet, which we're hosting here again on Friday and Saturday.
I was hoping to run fast at the Vanderbilt Invitational this past weekend, but I didn't really execute my race well. I came out of the blocks slow and got picked up about 50m into the race by Hogans, and that pretty much was it. I felt that I ran well from 100m-400m, but that slow first turn killed me. I still ran 46.72 and auto qualified for nationals, but I wanted a lot more from the race. We have a home meet this weekend, and I'm going to really concentrate on that first half of my race. I know I have the strength, but I need to incorporate more speed into my first 200m in order to run what I need to.
1 Hogans, Obra Unat-Tennessee 46.10# 1 2 Rose, Kyle Siu-Edwardsville 46.72# 1 3 Lalang, Boaz Rend Lake 47.60 1 4 Brooks, Jason Uattached-Ark St 47.63 2 5 Morris, Ronald Unat- Tsu 47.93 2 6 Fraser, Samdi Tennessee 47.98 2 7 Wright, Chris Siu-Edwardsville 48.05 2 8 Biggs, Sammy Southern Illinoi 48.10 1
The weather this weekend at the Western Illinois meet was pretty bad. We had everything from rain, to sleet and snow. I only ran the 4x100 and the 100. That's pretty much the weekend. I have more colorful commentary on the meet, but I'll keep that to myself. I'm looking forward to this coming weekend in Nashville at the Vanderbilt Invitational.
Our home meet got canceled this past weekend, which turned out to be a good thing. Instead, we traveled to Cape Girardeau, MO for the meet at SEMO. Coach had me entered in the 4x100 (which I hate), the 400, and the 4x400. We took 2nd in the 4x1 after an uncharacteristic bobbled exchange between me and Chris. I was fairly conservative on the run because I have a bad habit of hurting myself on 4x1s. Then the time for me to open up my outdoor season in the 400 came around. Traditionally, we've run here at the SEMO meet to open our outdoor season. Freshman year I ran 48.81, sophmore year 48.01, last year the weather was horrible and I ran 48.81. I hadn't been feeling too good in practice last week so I told coach that I thought I'd probably go 47.4. He seemed to think I would be faster than that, and most of the time he can tell how I'm feeling better than I can. So I decided that I'd shoot for the DII auto mark of 46.80. I came out of the blocks well and got up to speed well in the first 110. By that time Miles was rolling past me, but that's the beauty of the outdoor 400m: everyone is in their own lane and I don't have to worry about what they're doing. I stayed relaxed on the backstretch and began to move again at 200m. I felt strong for the last 150m and finished a little behind Miles to take 2nd in the race, like I've done pretty much every year. I looked at the board and saw 46.85. It's not auto, but I'll take it.
Event 6 Men 400 Meter Dash =================================================================== NCAA D1 Rgnl: + 47.20 Meet Record: R 45.59 1988 Michael Franks, Nike TC Name Year School Finals H# =================================================================== 1 Smith, Miles SR SE Missouri St.U 46.23+ 1 2 Rose, Kyle SR SIU-Edwardsville 46.85+ 1 3 Kinda, Yawusa JR Illinois 47.81 1 4 Jones, Daniel FR Illinois 48.65 1 5 Littleton, Chris JR SIU-Edwardsville 48.72 1 6 Wright, Chris SR SIU-Edwardsville 48.98 1 7 Mkwezalamba, Maxwell JR Illinois 49.40 2 8 Johnson, Paul SR Illinois 49.75 2 9 Poindexter, Chris SR SE Missouri St.U 50.12 1 10 Pettigrew, Myron JR SE Missouri St.U 50.34 2 11 Jones, Jarred JR Memphis 51.36 1
We opened up our outdoor season this past weekend at SIU Carbondale. I have a lot of friends in Carbondale, so it was good to get to see them at the meet. The weather could have been better, but I didn't expect it to be. It was pretty chilly and windy for most of the day. I had a fairly light day, and only ran the 800 and 4x400. In my second career 800 I went out much more conservatively than the first one I ran. I pretty much hung with the pack until about 600m, then they pulled away. I didn't really break down, but I can't say I kicked either, and finished in 2:00.2 which was almost the same time as my first 800, but this one didn't hurt nearly as much. After the 800, I kicked it for a while until the 4x400. I ran anchor and split around 47.4 which is where I felt I was at in my training. It's hard to trust your training regimen when you see a lot of guys running fast already (that 45.5 by Green comes to mind haha), but I know that my coach knows what he's doing, and I'm confident I'll be in a position to meet my goals when the outdoor championships come around. This coming weekend we have a home meet. Hopefully the weather is better than last year. It actually SNOWED.... I'm probably going to run another 800, so I get to look forward to that haha.
The DII Indoor National
Championships were this past weekend in Mankato, Minnesota. Last week was our Spring Break here at school
as well, so almost everyone was gone except the track team. We practiced here
in Edwardsville on Monday and Tuesday, and then flew to Minneapolis on Wednesday
morning. I was in my usual drugged up state for the flight, so I couldn’t tell
you much about that. Once we reached Minneapolis, we rented some vans and drove
about an hour south to Mankato. We stayed in the Holliday Inn downtown, and it
was pretty nice.
Prelims
in the 400 were on Friday. I got out well, was first to the cut, and led the
race from start to finish. My 48.19 had me seeded 2nd going into
finals. I felt that I was ready to run. Saturday, in the finals of the 400 I
was out in lane 6 again in the 2nd heat. I got out hard again, but
got beat to cut by Damian Prince from Morehouse. He pretty much had an answer
for every move I tried to make and I ended up using a lot more energy than I
intended. I finished in 48.71 and took 8th place. I was upset for
about 2 minutes, then shook it off and started getting my mind ready for the
4x400.
This
year is the first year my relay came to indoors with me since 2005, so we were
excited to prove that we belonged there. As we were waiting to run, we got a
chance to see our women’s 4x4 take the national championship, so
congratulations to them. Our relay had a rough start and by the time the baton
got to me in on the third leg, we were in last. I went out hard, and just tried
to catch people. I ended up passing two teams and handing off to Chris, our
anchor leg, in second. We kept the same position and finished 2nd
behind St. Augs. I was happy that we did so well, and now we take about 1
minute off and then we get ready to head outdoors. California here we come.
This past Saturday was my last indoor conference meet. I started the day running the lead off leg in the 4x200. We had pretty good handoffs and won in 1:28.43, just missing the conference record by .3 seconds. Next up was the 400. I got out really relaxed, and was first to the cut. My relaxation probably backfired on me, because I pretty much fell asleep on the backstretch of the 2nd lap and didn’t realize it until my teammate Chris came up on my shoulder. I ended up winning in 48.63, and my teammates Chris Wright and Chris Littleton ended up running 48s as well, so congrats to them. I had a little break, and then the 200. In practice the night before, I TORE my shoes so my forefoot was pretty much floating around inside my spike. I had a hard time navigating the turns in lane 3 and ran 22.03 for 2nd place. By the time the 4x400 came around, I felt pretty beat up and my coach didn’t want me to run it, but I had been part of every 4x400 at conference since freshman year and we had a 6 meet streak going (indoor and outdoor) and I didn’t want to lose it. I anchored us home in 3:17.88 to break the meet record we set back in 2005. I felt that everyone ran well considering how tired we were. Our men’s and women’s teams both won team titles. So congrats to the Lady Cougars as well. Now we have this weekend off and next week, NATIONALS!
Now to the good stuff, pics!:
Men's team picture
Me and Chris being fools.
Post-400
Getting my stretch on
Waiting for the stick in the 4x400 Chris in the 4x200 Me and Christine in our Senior shirts.
Des and Megan getting ready to run the 55m Hurdles
Seniors. We're laughing because we just noticed that Wasim is wearing his shirt backwards.
Well, it's here; my final indoor
conference meet of my track career. The weather here in E’ville has been really
ridiculous this past week, so getting good practice sessions in has been tough.
I actually slipped on some ice yesterday and fell backwards down some stairs in
front of a crowd of at least 40 people. I guess that was payback for laughing
at that girl that face planted after she tripped on some blocks at Iowa State.
I hurt my wrist a little, but nothing major thankfully.
This year I’ve actually got it easy
(relatively) at conference. I run the 4x200, 200, 400, and 4x400. Which is 2
less races than I did last year. I’ve
got my eyes on several conference records that I want to see my name attached
to before I put the spikes back in the bag Saturday night. I know I speak for
the rest of the squad when I say that we are FOCUSED. This is our last year in
the GLVC, and we definitely plan to go out with the proverbial guns blazing,
but we still are going to have fun doing it. Be on the lookout for the pictures
in my next entry, because we’ll be clowning.
The team went bowling this past Saturday,
and that was a good time. My 10 pin game is really slacking right now, so I’m going
to have to hit the lanes and train for a grudge match with my teammates, Drew
and Zo.
That’s all I have for this entry.
Good luck to everyone in their conference meets, and stay healthy.
Man, I have been slacking on my blogging. I apologize for that everyone. It's been an eventful year so far.
January: I had a few personal problems that caused me to miss our first two meets (Mizzou and EIU), but I think it worked out for me. I opened up on the 26th at the Illinois College SnowbirdInvitational. My 400 time was 48.41, which is my flat track P.R. I felt that it was a good opener. My relay team didnt come to that meet, so that was pretty much all I did (I'm not going to count the mediocre 200 I ran).
February: This month we started off at the Hoosier Relays at Indiana University. My hamstring had been bothering me, so I only ran in the invite 400 and the 4x4. The 400 was interesting, I came through the 200 in about 21.6, which I think wasn't too fast but I was pressing too much, and had an UGLY last 50. I still ran 47.87 to P.R though, so I was happy with it. The relay wasn't what we expected, and we ran 3:15.29 to take 3rd. The next week, I headed back to Illinois College, but this time the whole team came. Coach thought that I could use a nice workout, so he decided to have me run the 4x200, 800, and the 800 leg on the DMR. I had never run an 800 before, so in the open 800 I just took it out and lead the race for the first 600 or so meters. I was lookin' GOOD! haha, then about 6 gorillas came and jumped on my back. I ended up running 2:00.3, which was about right for me haha. By the time the DMR rolled around, I was hurting, so my split had to be ugly, but we still ended up winning it. This weekend was the Iowa State Classic. I had never SEEN an oversized track before, let alone run on one, so it was a little intimidating at first. Friday night we ran the 200, which for me was absolutely atrocious. Andretti Bain from ORU dropped a 21.12 on me as I watched from my lane coming in at 22.01. Most of the team had similarly disappointing 200m results. Saturday was a different ballgame though, since I had the 400 and the 4x4. I was in lane 8 in the 400, and I went into the race just wanting to get out hard and keep those wild dogs in the lanes inside of me from breaking the stagger too soon. Iowa state has some super long turns, but I held it out pretty well. I got to the break just a little behind Justin Kremer from Arizona State. A guy from Nebraska passed me on the final straight, but I held on well enough for a 47.15. Which was good to see on the boards. This is the fastest I've ever run indoors, my first indoor auto mark, and that ranks me in the top spot in DII after the .5 second conversion to 200m flat track standards. My 4x4 also did well, we won our heat in 3:13.08 to hit automatic qualifying. This is the first time since 05 my relay is going to indoor nationals with me, so I'm excited by that. I also got to meet a few people from Trackshark, so shout out to SMU Trackstar and Jeremy Orr. I promise, I'll update more frequently now. Thanks for reading.
Since we last spoke, finals went pretty well. I ended up with 3 Bs and a C for the semester. That C is killing me, because I know I should have done better in my database design class, but I slacked a little too much. One of those B's is killing me too, because it's an 89.2% B and I guess my professor wasn't feeling the Christmas spirit when she decided to hit the 'B' key instead of the 'A' key. We spent a couple of days on campus after school had concluded to practice. The weather was NOT cooperating, and one day, we actually had to shovel snow off the track to run on it. If this were a movie, we'd be the hardworking underdog, with little to no facilities, training to take on the rich, established champion of the world or something. Sort of like Mr. T in Rocky III.
Currently I'm back home in Kankakee, where the weather is WORSE than E'ville. I went for a 3 mile run the other day, and couldn't even see the sidewalk. I had to run in the street, and that was filled with snow and slush as well. My Grandma is cooking up a storm, and I'm loving that. I'm going through about 4 movies a day, and quickly running out of things to watch. My uncle and aunt and some cousins are up here visiting from the Bahamas, and I haven't seen them in a while, so it's cool to get to hang out with them. I'm pretty much just ready to be back in the Ville and getting ready to open up on the 11th at Mizzou. MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone.
Man, I'm going to miss the Reggie Lewis Center and sunny Boston, MA. This year's indoor nationals are at Minnesota State Mankato. Which has several things going against it: Besides being a flat track, it's MINNESOTA! Chris Rock said it best in his famous stand up, "Ain't no black people in Minnesota!" haha
We're midway through finals week, and things are going well for me as predicted. My friends are staying up until 3a.m. studying, and I'm up until 3 a.m. playing Street Fighter 3. If only practice could be this effortless....
Wow, I missed the entire month of November haha. Things have been pretty much the same around here in Edwardsville. I got sick over Thanksgiving break like I do every year. It was my fault this time though. I waited 5 1/2 hours outside of Best Buy at home in 25 degrees to get this super cheap laptop on black Friday, and I ended up being 10 people too far back in line! They're doing some construction at the track, so we're practicing at a local middle school right now. The big problem with us doing that is the lack of lights at the middle school's track. Our practice doesn't start until 4pm, and sunset is usually before 5:00 these days, so we do some running in the dark. It's also super cold right now. Thursday it snowed/sleeted on us during the workout, and let me tell you..... it sucked. This is finals week here at school. I'm glad, because I'm ready for this semester to be over. I'm doing pretty good in all my classes, so I'm not stressed at all, unlike most people on my AIM Buddy List. Pretty much everybody's away message is "Studying" or "I hate finals" or "killmyself", while I'm just sitting here watching movies and playing Xbox 360. I want to give a shout out to my boy Jared Randle from Lincoln PA for jumping 7.95m (26'1") yesterday. Kankakee, IL is in the building folks.
Here are some random pictures from the past month and a half: One of the many XC meets the track team had to work. I've seen more than my fair share of people throwing up in the chutes Man... I miss the days where we wore shorts
You can tell how much fun I'm having...
Yes, folks, that piece of ICE we're walking on is actually a track
I got to hang out with some of my boys from High School over thanksgiving break.
. The day of 400m prelims we had three hours in delays. I felt that I warmed up well, and was ready to run, but I just went out too hard. Like Kayne West said, "when you try hard, is when you die hard", well I died hard. I ended up running 47-high, which was my first 47 since indoor. I was definitely disappointed, but I didn't dwell on it because I still had my relay counting on me for the 4x400. To make a long story short, we won our prelim heat in 3:10.40, and we ended up taking 2nd in the final in 3:09.02. 
Man... I miss the days where we wore shorts 
