Meet report - USATF GA Assoc. Masters

No Gain

400m - 56.82
200m - 25.32

A combined difference of less than 0.2 sec off what I ran last week.  I guess maybe it's hard to improve when running three 400 and two 200m races in 14 days.  Still, disappointed.

with David (M48), he got me by a tenth 

In the 400m, I was racing M48 David, a guy who beat me 2 weeks ago by a half second so I tried too hard to make the split up on him too soon, so I suffered in the end.  Didn't feel as comfortable as last week.  I'm going to have to be more patient.

I almost got to race Emma in the 400m, 100/200 W45 Champion in Perth, running in her last meet as a W45... she turns 50 this week.  They were going to put her in with the guys since no other woman showed up, but at the last minute, a lady showed up and she got in a separate heat.  Good thing, because she would have beaten an M42 guy in our heat.

The 200m in lane 5, I had David to my outside in lane 6 and we fought the whole way down the stretch.  I think that may have caused me to tighten up a bit near the end.  Pissed that I ran 0.02 slower than last week.  Just a slightly better finish would have made the difference.

In both my races I raced M51 Karnell, I think he's the fastest M50 in the world right now and could conceivably win world and national championships in 5 events if he wanted to: all the sprints and hurdles.  He put on an awesome display:  52.46 / 11.31 / 23.17.  11.31 100m after running a 400m!

I saw Rohan for the first time in a while.  He beat me in the 200 at SE masters 7 years ago.  Good to see him back.  He was the only guy in my age group, he ran 26.1.  (I went back and looked, I ran 25.34 at SE Masters in 2011 ... my first yr of Masters track, faster today 7 yrs later). 

It was a really low turnout meet, only one heat of everything.  Hard to even know anything was going on if you were driving by.  By 1 pm for the 200m, it was 92º+ with a blazing sun.  I stayed to cheer on a 71 yr old guy run the last event of the meet by himself in hellishly hot conditions - the 2000m steeplechase, almost no one was there by that point.  Gotta love this sport.

My feet are getting beat up so I need to rest today and hopefully be back out tomorrow night.  My next meet is 2 weeks away and I hope to get a good training cycle in leading up to that meet and make some gains.  That meet has the 400 and 200 on Sat and Sunday, and I will have some really good competition with Stanley in the 400 who is now M55, 2 yrs ago he ran 55.55 to break my state record.

Just shows me the way to improvement will not be easy.  Guess it never is.

Julia, me, Emma, Rohan, Karnell