Blogs : Eric Simmons

Hmmm...

Lately, I have not been running rather well and I'm not sure exactly what the "problem" is. This past week, we ran at the North Carolina Chik-Fil-A Invite at, you guessed right, North Carolina. I ran 49.30 in the 400 for 2nd, ran 22.35 in the 200 for 4th, which are times that I feel like I should be exceeding at this particular juncture of the season. After I saw the 200 time flash across the board, I admit I almost felt like crying. I'm not the type of person to make a public spectacle about a disappointing performance, so I refrained from throwing something or cussing. Instead, I went outside, cooled down, and just kinda laid on the pole vault pit and looked at the sky.

Fast forward to today, two days later, and I have a new outlook on the situation. Because I've run bad a few times doesn't mean I'm a bad runner, or that I've "lost it". It just means that I ran bad a few times. It can't be the training, because this same training over the past 4 years has helped me accomplish a lot of great things on the track. Perhaps I'm thinking too much about something that at this point in my college career, should be routine. The races are still 400 and 200 meters, and they will be far after my career is over with. I need to not let a bad race consume my life, and just be thankful for the fact that I have 2 more shots to improve my standing on the national list and see if I can make the most of these opportunities. This week, we're gonna try to scale it back a little bit and see if I can enter these meets with fresh legs, which I think will help.

Even though North Carolina was our last indoor meet as a team, Coach Mead is giving me chances to run the remaining two weekends as I am on the perfomance list, but not near where I need to be to have a shot to make it in. He explained to me that "I was a senior and all that good stuff" so I deserve it.  Sometimes, I'll admit, I have not seen eye to eye with some stuff that Coach Mead has done in the past, but I'm extremely greatful that he is giving me some more chances to qualify for nationals and I definitely cannot question the commitment he has to seeing his athletes succeed and I thank him for that.

Moving past all that emotional garbage, we had two girls qualify for nationals. Allison Kreutzer qualifed in the 5000, but right now the time she ran escapes me. I do know that her time is faster than the time that got her in last year, which means she improved, which is always a good thing. Jon Taylor also qualified in the long jump with an 18 ' 8, which has her in a good position to make it to her first national meet. Allison has always done great things as she is a 2 time XC All-American as well as a 2 time track All-American, but it's great to see Jon have a breakthrough. (No, I'm not saying Jon sucked and she got lucky, I'm not saying that at all. I'm actually saying she has the most natural athletic ability on the team and we're all happy that after working so hard, she's hit that major breakthrough). Congratulations ladies!

Well, that's it for this sort of different than normal journal entry. Let's see if I have some good stuff to write about regarding the Virginia Tech meet this weekend.