110mH State Title Quest

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It’s been a really long time since I posted last…

The first 8 weeks of season has been terrible weather. On days that were nice we tried to get in quality SE work. The theme during indoor was initial focus on speed and then cut back on most speed work to leave time for specific hurdle work. That was the philosophy taken during outdoor. The cold weather has just made it really tough overall. The first 3 dual meets were in cold and raining weather. Being so much faster, he jogged those races and we considered them hurdle endurance workouts. Last Saturday was cold but sunny (37f). He ran a personal best hand time into a headwind of 14.2 Overall I felt it was not the most technically sound race but given the time spent on SE so far, was acceptable. With the pressure of the boys team repeating as champs again, we have decided to focus on training the next few weeks in preparation for regionals. He should have no problem winning that meet and advancing to state finals. That week would begin a “race and rest” week with 3 meets in 6 days leading to a taper into state finals.

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2 weeks since last post…

He ended up racing a bit after he and I discussed some things. He ran 13.6 in his meet back and 37.2. Technically was outstanding. Unfortunately I was running the finish line and didn’t get video.

A few days later he ran again, btu looked really bad in the 110s but fantastic in the 300s. Without practicing it, he has found a great cadence that should get him to be state champ in the 300s. With some issues still lingering, training has been scarce, s I have chosen a race a rest method. This is similar to what we did during indoors.

After the poor race we had a week off. It was mostly just warm-up drills over hurdles working on little things like arm and trail leg positions. At regionals, the focus was a great start, which he did in the prelims flying through the first 6 hurdles before cruising to advance. Smei finials he repeated it and eased over 9 and 10 to advance. In the finals, tore through the entire 10 in 13.7, a regional meet record set by the state record holder. Everything so far is on track to get the 13.65 FAT state meet record we set out for in the fall. In the 300H, he ran a very clean fast ran in 37.4. 2nd place was at 40.0. =)

He also ran in 2 relays and did a great job.

This week we have the league championship on Tuesday, county championship on Thursday, and team state championship on Saturday, then gets 1 week of “Rest” to prepare for individual state finals where he will run both hurdles and 2 sprint relays.

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That is great to hear. Keep us posted!

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https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/63548988/115_1251.MOV

13.7 race at regionals

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This is the last post for this forum! The end of the season is finally here! What a ride is has been.

In the 110H, mission accomplished! State champion, but not without obstacles along the way (not the hurdle type!) About 10 days from state finals, his back got pretty tight and we had to only do treatments until state finals. Once there, he had a hard time warming up, even with my treatments at the team tent area. He felt loose overall, so he just ran races. He would sit and hang out and then go run. Between races I would treat him again. In the end he didn’t run great at all, wasn’t able to get his fast starts and won by a small margin.

He then later took 2nd in the 300H and I could tell it started to bug him again.

He is off until he leaves for college in the fall. No summer plans training wise. He put in a solid 9 months this year, 1 month more than last year.

As a coach of a successful athlete, it was quite the challenge I did not expect. Too many things along the way to mention, but I think a line from Charlie sums it up, the road to success is more fun than the road to stay there (Ange, I think this was the line!) The indoor season was fantastic, but the mental aspect of being labeled a national champion and then having to deal with uncontrollables such as weather for training, weather for meets, lack of competition for most of the year etc kept leading to frustration on his end which did impact me as well.

He will certainly be missed around here and had achieved a local celebrity status of sorts. Kids asking for training advice, people coming up with all kinds of achievements (world national indoor world record holder), kids wanting to hold his blocks during warm up starts, parents talking to him during warm up at meets etc. He leaves holding both hurdle school records and was part of all 3 sprint relay school records (4x1, 4x2, 4x4). He had the ability to break the 200 and 100 records as well, but the opportunity to do it was never there.

For me, I have grown to really appreciate the beauty of the hurdle events, and almost prefer to coach hurdlers, whereas before I coached mainly sprinters.

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That is fantastic. Do you know if he’ll train with you in the summers at all, or will he be taken over entirely by the school paying for his degree? :slight_smile:

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He will be with the college.