Despite all the doom and gloom in my last post, the track meet went pretty darn well. Five events, five medals including 3 golds in the jumping events, four new personal bests and four All-American standards.
As expected, shot put was the weakest event. I threw a couple feet short of what I did earlier this year, but it was still good enough to take the bronze medal for my age group. I didn’t have much pain when I threw, but I’ve been pretty sore for the last couple of days.
I think I’m going to try throwing with my other arm. I won’t throw competitively again until next spring, so I’m hoping that gives me enough time to figure it out. That side of my body should be just as strong, it will just take a lot of reps to develop the coordination. I am somewhat ambidexterous, so I hope I can pull it off.
The second event for me was the 100 meter hurdles. My goal here was a safe race (no crashing), a healthy finish (hamstring stays in one piece), and an All-American time (under 18 seconds). I knew winning was pretty much out of the question, as I would be running against the fastest man under 50 in the world this year.
There were four of us in the race, and by the second hurdle it was pretty clear who would be first and who would be last. That left two of us to battle it out for second and third. By the middle of the race I was in 3rd, a yard or two behind the guy in the lane next to me. I started focusing on my form over the hurdles, and gradually began narrowing the gap.
By the ninth hurdle I was right on his shoulder, and I passed him as we crossed the final barrier. My momentum carried me across the finish line just ahead of him in a time of 16.25 seconds. Silver medal and All-American standard…not bad for the first time running the event in my life!
The final event on Friday evening was the high jump, which I won with a jump of 5′ 4″ inches. This was the third time I’d jumped this year, and it was the best I have done. I even beat all the guys in their 40s, so that was a good feeling. It was getting late, so I didn’t try to go any higher. I needed to save something for the next day.
Unfortunately resting wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. My son had decided to host a party at our house that night. The guests were loud and stayed late, and it was after 2am by the time I was able to get to sleep. I was then up before 6 in order to get back to Davis for long jump at 8am.
My two previous attempts doing the long jump showed some promise, but I could never get my take-off close to the board. I was pretty sure that with a good jump I could hit the All-American standard of 17′ 09″.
I probably should have practiced some approaches, because it was like deja vu…my first few jumps were short of the board and/or off the wrong foot. They were OK…I was winning, but still a few inches shy of what I was looking to post.
Fortunately they gave us the option to take 6 jumps if we wanted to. With each progressive jump I was getting closer to the board, and finally on my sixth and final attempt I hit it. I sailed 18′ 1/2″ to take my second gold medal. I checked online when I got home, and I now rank 2nd in the nation in my age group for 2009.
Sunday morning I was back at 8am for the triple jump. By now I had my competitors pretty well sized up and figured a third gold medal was probably a pretty sure bet. So what I was really focused on was hitting another All-American standard, which is a little over 34′ for men my age.
At least now I had my steps figured out pretty well, so I wouldn’t be spending a lot of energy on jumps started behind the take-off board. I didn’t do any warm-up jumps; I was pretty confident I could do it, and I wanted to save as much wear and tear on my body as I could.
I have never been coached in the triple jump and the last time I tried it I was a junior in high school. But both of my sons had done it and I had watched them, so I had some idea of what it was supposed to look like.
I took four jumps, and they all surpassed the AA standard. The best one was a centimeter shy of 37 feet. I had the kids with me for this event, so I was able to get this gold medal performance documented. Pretty horrible second phase, but that’s typical when you’re new at doing the triple jump:
