Weekend of 100 hurdlers

Hillsdale College Wide Track Classic

This past weekend was in interesting racing situation. Hillsdale is new to the indoor track community, building a new indoor 200 meter track last year. The special thing about this track is that it claims to the widest track in the world. Although this track has 9 48 inch lanes, with 50 hurdlers on each genders side all warming up at the same time, along with some eager 60m open runners trying to warm up in the same space, things got a bit complicated. In this situation it becomes nice to have friends.

Lucky for me I ran into a handful of my Canadian hurdle acquaintances that were interested in getting a quality warm up in just as I was. Having this group became very key for the first 2 rounds of the hurdles. Small spaces always cause issues but this warmup scenario was by far the most complicated, never knowing how far you could keep your head down or even run for that matter.

Unfortunately I began feeling a bit sick during the week before the meet so Friday I wasn’t feeling great throughout my body. My goal was to survive and make it to the next round. I managed to do so, with the 4th best time on the day, getting me to the semifinals.

The semi-finals went a bit better, body starting to recover a bit more, although I may have just made the decision to ignore it more. My race went better than Friday’s prelims, improving my time and ending the round with the fastest time overall.

The finals I was the number 1 seed going in, my mindset was that no one would beat me but myself. I know what I have to do to improve my time by a large amount. I got to my blocks ready to go, and when the gun went, the guy in the lane next to me pushed and his blocks went slipping back. This is something I have had happen to me before, a number of times and never had called back...but it was deemed an unfair start. This start ended up being much better than the final which went all the way to the finish. My final race of the day went just slightly better than my semifinal round, and when I crossed the finish line I felt as though I was the winner. When I turned around I saw someone else’s name in first with a time I would have been satisfied with, but just barely. My time ended up being just .02 behind the winner.

When it comes down to it, the placing of the race really means nothing to me; it was just fun to compete against my Canadian friends. I need a lot more work on one specific area which has been plaguing me all season.

The majority of my race is coming together but the first half is a struggle. I will be dedicating my next 2 weeks in preparation for Karlsruhe Feb, 21st and 22nd.

Next race will be on Friday at the GVSU Big Meet day 1 against a tough field. If I can make the appropriate changes it should be a good race. After Friday I will being packing to fly over to Germany for a Week of acclimating to the time difference and getting my final tweaks to form and start work.

Wish me luck! These next two weeks are the most important and exciting in my career so far!!!