June 26, 2013
So today marks the first 36" 110mh race of the year. I’m a youth (16-17) but I wanted to qualify for the BC Junior team before this week so I predominately raced over 39". Unfortunately, I couldn’t reach the standard, which was 14.70. Boo. Now onto qualifying for the bc youth team.
Today I had to go to a completely new track. I’ve never been there so I was nervous on the bus trip there, which took 2 hours, exactly the estimation I had on mind. Their track schedule was ‘rolling’. I’ve never heard this term before but I assumed they do all the sprint events then eventually get to the longer distances. After they moved through the 100m heats, contrary to my thought, they did not run 110mh. But I was okay with that. I prepared my warmup well enough. Flash commented on Ben Johnson’s race thread, and he mentioned that Ben said that he just lets the warm up happen, not really rushing it. That was very interesting. In speed trap, Charlie mentions that Ben was napping away and when he was forcibly waken up, he said something along… “Don’t worry, I’m ready.”
My question is if your warm up is ahead of the planned schedule (which is good, rather be early than late), what should you do to stay warm and remain the laser focus. Ben demonstrates that in that story so I’m very curious as I want to anticipate if I’m ahead schedule.
So I was hoping to race between 7:30-8:00pm, but my race stalled to 9:20pm ish. That’s one hour off. I want to prepared more next time. But it’s good that I had this issue here, so I know how to act when the big championship meets come. But they should follow the schedule better as the races become more significant.
On the race: I thought it was a pretty technically sound race. But my ankle is not 100%. After the warm-up sprints each time, I was limping but I made sure not to step the breaks suddenly, in case the issue is exacerbated. I had a good start (relative terms). I kept my trail arm bent, behind hip (this got better through the race, I felt in the earlier hurdles it was in front of the hip). I kept my lead arm tight (not good enough yet). I made sure to pull it back fast so my trail leg could move faster. The problem was that I wasn’t aware of my legs. I’m sure that my trail leg was dull. Slow turnover. On focus, since it was long after my prediction of the schedule, I was less-focused. I could see my shadow ahead of me, and I was looking at that. Bad. Not enough focus. When I finish off the hurdle I kept looking at the clock on the side. I’ll stop this.
There was only 1 other competitor. I blew him off at hurdle 2 when he smashed a hurdle. So I was pretty much running a one man race. It sucks because my recent competition have pretty much zero competition.
I ran a 15.21. Absolutely not what I had in mind. I was expecting a 14.6. BC youth team standard is 14.8. To me it was a pretty technically sound race. I think regarding the warmup, little competition, did I lose quite a bit of time. My personal best was 15.04 last year. I ran a 15.17 at a 110MH 39" just last 2-3 weeks… smashing every hurdle. It was quite disappointing, because I thought the race was good! I’m hoping to shave off quite a bit of time at the next meet.
Injury:
I ‘tweaked’ my ankle last week or so. When I was running the 200m (I mentioned something about speed end. last post) I was in lane 1. The sharpest turn was in lane 1. I probably entered the turn too sharp so there was an imbalance of force at my ankle? It is only on my right so it makes perfect sense. I didn’t feel anything in retrospect, but 4-5 days over when it start to feel tight. After two track practices (speed sessions) I was limping. The worst part is that after the speed reps I’ll go cruising off, which is when it hurts the most. I made sure I iced, long socks, lots of rest and elevation. Essentialy RICE without compression. There is no bruising, nothing physically different than a normal, healthy ankle. It is only when I am inverting (i believe that is the correct term, turning my ankle inside) that my ankle is in pain. Any other movement does not hurt it. It is starting to worry me since it’s been lingering for a week. In the soleus strain thread, someone mentions that if postural muscles get injured, it’ll take a while for it to heal. Since my ankle felt great before it started to hurt and it happened suddenly, I didn’t expect the injury to last this long (1 week). I think long stress = long injury short stress = short injury. I believe my reason was short and sudden.
Sorry for the bad English in this post. Hopefully it’s somewhat readable.