I arrived in Austin on July 3rd in the early evening. I didn’t get any work done for the next couple of days, as travel usually throws off my routines for at few days while I get settled.
On July 5th, I joined Hyde Park Gym in north Austin. This is a great place to get some lifting work done, but of course there are none of the comforts of your average family-oriented gym. For example, the change room has a circa-1980’s hockey dressing room motif, complete with concrete floor and washroom stalls without doors. One stall has a shower curtain to preserve your modesty, and one, well, is for Number One only I suppose, as the shower curtain is entirely missing-there isn’t even a curtain rod.
Hyde Park Gym is a terrific place though, as it’s easy to join for a short period of time, has a friendly members (including some really tremendous athletes), friendly staff, and you can drop weights and grunt to your heart’s content without getting thrown out for scaring the suburbanites.
Monday, July 5th- Hyde Park Gym
Bike tempo: 10x45sec
CF medball circuit x1
abs
Tuesday, July 6th- Texas School of the Deaf
Speed workout:
warmup 1, warmup 2
2x50m easy accelerations in flats, 2x50m in spikes
5x30m accelerations, 4 mins rest between each
1x80m
4x80m easy strides cooldown, static stretching
I hadn’t done much tempo since my last speed session on Friday night, so I made sure to use the massage stick on my somewhat tight calves between runs.
I didn’t know where to find too many tracks, so I hopped the fence at Texas School of the Deaf, and worked out there. I didn’t notice the buzz-cutted security guys driving around on their golf carts until later, but I managed to avoid detection. Later in the week, some Austin cops that I raced against in Dallas told me not to hop the fence at TSD due to the freakjobs that work security there, and just run on high school tracks as their tracks are rubberized and open to the public. Oops! I don’t need any trespassing charges thanks.
Wednesday, July 7th- random nearby park
Tempo workout:
-I kept this workout easy as there are three meets to choose from on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
warmup 1
6x100m
stretch
abs
Thursday July 8th- Trinity University, San Antonio, TX
-I intended to run in this meet, but double checked the schedule and found that the shortest race on offer this week was the 400m, so forget that!
Friday, July 9th- Texas School of the Deaf
Austin Twilight Meet:
-scheduled to run the 50m, 100m, 200m in a laid back hand-timed meet
-arrived at TSD and the meet was cancelled, apparently because there might possibly theoretically have been some rain in the area. Wusses!
Saturday, July 10th- Coppell High School, Coppell, TX
Texas Masters Championships:
100m: 12.92 NWI
-So this is my lifetime personal worst (PW?) in the 100m. The wind was not listed, but allegedly it was in the -2.0 range, but that is no excuse for this atrocious result.
-came out of the blocks very slowly, and felt like I had zero speed at the 60m mark, which is how I’ve felt in each of my 100m races so far this year. My technique felt terrible, I was just all over the place (legs cartwheeling behind me by 70m!) and it just felt like I wasn’t even running hard. Horrible!
200m: 25.89 +0.9
-I knew I had more in me than the 100m showed, and I was pretty determined to have a good race here. I got lane 5, which was very sweet, who doesn’t love being in the middle of the track?
-got a half decent start, accelerated smoothly and economically out to the 45-50m mark and maintained around the turn while the rookie in lane six was burning the turn like a wildman (even though I told him not to)
-increased effort slightly at the 110m mark, and felt pretty good. I was definitely using my energy better than in the first two 200m races I ran this year.
-relaxed at the 160m mark, and my form started to break down at 180m, but less dramatically than in previous races. I saw the video of me crossing the finish line in the timing booth, and my hips were pretty low. I didn’t run through the line, this nonsense has got to stop! Still, I was happy with the result considering how poorly I’d been running so far outdoors.
I got a call from Frank, the coach I’m now working with down here, and we scheduled our first workout for Monday morning.
Sunday, July 11th- Austin High School
Tempo workout:
warmup 1
2x5x100m+50m
stretch
-Wow, was it ever sweltering hot doing tempo in the middle of the day. That’s not going to happen again too many times! Time to start with the summer coach…