It was such a cool meet. So many Olympians and world champions. I learned that this meet is being used by the pros to get in their required number of meets per year per their Nike contracts.
It was quite warm, was soaked after my warmups. Had signed up the the 100m and 200m, but I felt rather sluggish and my performance was slightly slower than last time. I actually ran the 100m twice and both times were just 0.01 apart, about a 0.10 slower than I ran last week, but I had a great time. It's made me do some trouble shooting on what I have to do to get my 100 speed up. I've got some idea, more about that later.
There were only 2 masters there this week, me and a 59 yr old, but he was not competitive. Not hitting the time I wanted, I opted to not run the 200m and get in a later heat of the 100m. (They have a heat at the end of the meet for those who were doing field events). I felt a lot of soreness in my foot and some in my ham after the first 100, and I almost bailed on this race. I decided at the last minute to jump in and ran almost the same time as the first 100m. But ... I go to race against Chris Belcher! He's a world class 100m elite pro, 2x USA Medalist at Nationals, has run 9.93 in the 100m, and represented the USA at World Relays where he won a Gold. Watching the video of the start confirmed to me that my start is not a problem, however I did get a little off to the right side of the lane. My reaction and first 3 steps were almost exactly with the elites. However, my end game was not good. I got tight in the last 30, and my turnover and knee lift needs improvement. It was cool though, at age 60 racing a pro.
Roya came by and took some photos and the above video. There was an amazing 400m elite race. 4 elite pros in the final: Michael Cherry, Machel Cedenio, Matthew Hudson-Smith, and Vernon Norwood. To everyone's surprise, they were all beaten by someone I hadn't heard of, an 18 yr old just out of HS - Justin Robinson who ran the fastest time in the world this year! 44.91. It was amazing. Michael Cherry was just a hair behind in 44.98. 5 guys under 47 in this race. In the video you can see Roya and I on the far turn, (me in the white t shirt under the purple tent). When those guys ran by, I was thinking 'who is that!'
https://www.milesplit.com/articles/284301/justin-robinson-drops-4491-sets-new-world-best-in-400m
After my last race, I hung out with Chris and spoke to Olympic Champion Shaunae Miller-Uibo, World Champion Steven Gardiner, US National Champion Fred Kerley, Olympic Silver Medalist Erik Kynard, and others. It was sooo cool. I could list the names of a dozen world class pros there.
Erik Kynard - Olympic Silver Medalist - High jump
I'll post more details about the plan ahead in my next post. Looking at a new approach to strengthening, drills, technique, etc...
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