Blogs : Eric Simmons

I qualified for nationals but....

There still remains a great deal of work to be done. At the Indiana Relays, I ran 48.77 in the 400 and 21.89 in the 200, which both are provisional standards for the NCAA Division II Championships. While these marks are under the provisional standards, they are under by the smallest of margins, but that's okay. I feel like these races can be used as stepping stones to improve in the next 2 (hopefully 3) meets.

On Monday of last week, I purchased a Samsung digital camera for about $120 from Radio Shack, which turns out to be the only noteworthy thing I did last week. I only have one class, and no, I did not go to it. Not that I skipped it, but it was cancelled for some reason or another. So other than buying this camera, I spent a good majority of last week tracking down and reading Beowulf books that are more dry than the busted chicken they serve at the athletic banquet every year, and I'm sure those of you that actually take the time to read my journal every week do not want to hear about the significance of Beowulf giving money and riches to his fellow warriors, so I won't bore you with that.

Anyway, the camera was a great investment. I have spent a little while looking at my races of this past week and seeing what I can improve on them, and the good news is that they are all mistakes that can be corrected. In the 400, I let up for some odd reason between 250-325 meters. During the race, I couldn't tell, but it was painfully obvious on camera. In the 200, my blockwork can be tweaked a little bit to get more of a push off of the blocks. Also, my mom likes to see pictures, and she complained that in the 25 years I've been in college (okay, maybe 5), that I have brought home only one photo album in the nearly 50 meets I have ran in. In other words, she was not very happy. I love my mother, and I wish to make her happy, so I bought the camera.

Other than me qualifying, we bought home other stuff. Ahmad Rolle had the performance of the weekend, jumping 48'8 in the triple jump which should have him sitting quite nicely for a trip to Minnesota. We ran 3:24 in the relay, which is not that good, but damn good if you saw our race. We had a horrible handoff due to some minor contact between Lawrence and I's exchange, and our 3rd leg left the team for personal reasons so we ran with our 60 meter guy on anchor, who has never attempted an indoor quarter and who is nursing a hamstring injury so he sort of didn't push it as hard as he could have.  Our splits were 49.7, 52 something, 48.06, and 53 something. If we don't get bumped at the exchange zone, and everyone is healthy, and the planets are aligned in the proper manner (I'm kidding), then I  seriously think we can run the provisional time in the relay.

I also came away from Indiana with a massive cold/flu/whatever you want to call it. I hit the auto standard for cold chills in one hour and then feeling like I was on fire in the next. I've been on Tylenol cold and flu and all that jazz for the past few days, which has given me the sluggish, nonchalant feeling that has me wearing the same sweatsuit for the past three days at work. Now, I'm going to go hydrate myself before practice, which will be fun as I spend the rest time between reps spewing up all sorts of colorful garbage and praying for a swift, painless ending (Nah, I'm exaggerating).