Just got home from the last day of the championships.
Today we had the 200 heats, 200 final, and 4 x 400 relay. We expected only to have the 200 heat, and relay. There was 14 athletes down to run, and my athlete was 13 fastest. Well this morning only 10 entered the heats.
The heat was at 9.50am, we had a downpour for 20 minutes prior to the race (athlete also had family wedding the night before). He came 5th in heat 2, and was 8th fastest and qualified for final as 2 fastest non automatic. His heat time was 24.94 (pb=24.64)
The final was 4 hours later, the rain had gone but was replaced by wind gusts of 75km/h blowing directly into the first bend. Ultimately he came 8th and his time 25.02. Most of the field was 0.8 seconds off their bests.
3 hours later the athlete started for the club in the 4 x 4, and went through the first 200 in 25 point. Into the home straight he had a brain freeze and started to move from lane 6 into lane 4 before he realised and moved back into his lane. He run around 54 even after losing time, but managed to pass the baton first (he run against 52 runners). The rest of the team managed to hang on for a bronze against teams whose runners where all faster than than most of our team.
This week we did my version of Charlie’s 10 day peak, and I think it worked well.
From a performance point of view, the athletes 100 and 200 didn’t improve as much as I would have liked but I think that had more to do with losing 8 weeks of speed based session due to none training injuries. His 400m improved by just over 2 seconds.