Blogs : Eric Simmons

Humble beginnings

I know it's been a while since I've updated my journal, but I was pretty busy over the break with training and visiting friends and family and just never got around to doing it. I had some quality workouts, some poor workouts dues to the cold front the swept through GA, I got thrown on the ground by some campus police officers during a hill workout during what they called " mistaken identity" and "necessary procedure", and I went to Philly and watched an Eagles game.

So, we had a two meets this past weekend. After spending a wonderful 6 hours in a van on Thursday and 2 on friday to make for a total of 8 hours of cramped activities, we did a low key meet on Friday, at Division III Rose-Hulman where the Division III nationals previously have been held (Very nice facilities I might add). There were only four teams there, so the meet basically functioned as a knock the rust off type deal. Originally, my goal was for me to run qualifying times in my events. I didn't think this was an unrealistic goal as I opened up last season with a qualifying time in the 400. On Monday, though, I tweaked my ham a little bit during a 500, 400, 300, 200, 100 workout. It was kinda odd that I felt a twinge running an 11.8 100 when I was slowing down at the end, but whatever. Anyway.... with the tweak, there was a change of plan. We now just wanted to make it through the weekend with my hamstring relatively intact. On Friday, I didn't get out very hard in the 400 because I was paranoid out of my mind about suffering a third right hamstring injury and heeded Clive's advice about just making sure I make it through the race. By the time I figured out I wasn't going to pull up in this particular race, the race was over and I finished first in 49.66. Everything we had a male entry in, we won. Ahmad won the long jump, Tim the 55, and Lawrence the hurdles. It was also cool that our female sprinter Jon Taylor ran the 55 with the men as there was an open lane and only one female entry. She was about .07 off of qualifying and I think 4 inches off in the long jump, so we're looking for big things out of her this year.

On Saturday, we were at the Indiana Open at, of course, the University of Indiana. My hamstring felt a little bit better, but I was still hesitant about it. In the 200, I drew the wonderful lane 2 where no bank is present. Lane 6 false started, and Lane 3 ran about 24 seconds which made me wish I was able to get one of those lanes even more. I finished with the wonderfully mediocre time of 22.36 for 3rd place in my heat, 4th place overall. After the 200, I felt kinda down, but I reached to the back of my leg and realized that my hamstring was still there, so I was okay.

Within an hour of the 200 was the 4x4, so I basically just stayed around the warmup area after my race and Flex-Alled myself to death. Once again, we drew lane 2, bringing our total of races in lane 2 to 75%. Ahmad popped off the relay with a 49.8, our freshman Chris ran 50.8, Lawrence went 53.3, and I anchored with 47.3, which is great in January considering my fastest indoor split ever is 47.1 and that was in Late February last year. We ran 3:21 something to finish 4th overall. After the relay, I felt pretty good, until I walked about 3 steps off of the track and caught a mean cramp.

During the 8 hour van ride on the way home directly after the track meet, I did a lot of thinking about the weekend. From a time standpoint, I didn't run all that well. However, I made it through the meet. I thought I had my start down pretty well, but I need to do some fine-tuning on that. My speed is good for this time of year and my recovery is good as well. Taking all this into consideration, I feel like I gained a good deal this weekend and set up some solid building blocks for the remainder of the season. As a team, I feel like there is the potential for a lot of good to happen and feel that there could be several National qualifiers. I feel like our relay team can qualify, but we're going to need another 50 point or so to do it. I also feel like there were some people who returned from the holiday break a bit out of shape and it showed during Monday's practice as well as in this weekend's meets.

Nevertheless, it was only the first meet of the season and there remains a lot of work to be done by everyone. The indoor season stretches until mid-March and anything can happen during the mean time. As I look back on this journal, I feel like I rambled on too much about some stuff and I probably left out even more stuff. I apologize, but the tightness of my hamstrings and the little bit of fatigue I'm suffering from due to the 8 hour van ride yesterday are responsible for what may be viewed as a lackluster journal effort. I'll try to do better next time.

Don\'t even sweat it.

3:41 AM, January 15, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

There will be many more opportunities. The guy with the 53 split was probably just having a bad day. Hopefully he will bounce back the next time you guys run the relay.
Other than that just keep your head up. You and your team will be fine.