How i got into track:
When I was about 5 years old, one of my brother’s friend, named Jarand, moved along with his family into their newly built house, opposite ours. One day hanging out at the bball court, his younger brother called Jadric, one year older than me, came up to the court, and we all played bball, we became good friends ever since that day uptil now. This family would be the direct influence that lead me into track.
Their father was a naturally gifted athlete, he excelled at almost every discipline, break 6 school records in one day when he was just 15 years old, the 110 yards , 220 yards, 440 yards, (thats the equivalent of 100,200&400m, running 10.xx, 21.xx and 46.xx in them) long jump (over 7m), triple jump and the discuss. Added to that, it was run on tracks worse than what Jesse Owens had to run on! Its sad that he didnt continue track, he focused more on his academics and went on to become a lawyer, nevertheless he remained a big sports enthusiast and did as much as he could to give his s Anyway, both Jarand and Jadric obviously inherited his natural talent.
Me and Jadric went on countless adventures and we both had a passion for running and would use any opportunity to run and compete against each other, push each other. We were about the same speed and the winner of our races usually detemined on who got the better start off or duck across the line. We would lift weights just for the chance to find another thing to compete at, we were scarily strong for our age but we cooled down on the heavy weights after hearing of the old rumour of “wieghts will stunt your growth, dont do it when you are young, you wont be able to make children when you get old etc” Lol, how ignorant we were.
Fast forward 2 years, 1997, there we were, ended up in the same school as fate would have it, on the same team! Lol. What a coincidence. We were the two fastest boys in our age group, our only real competition was each other, it was this time that Jadric’s natural ability kicked in all of a sudden and he just pulled away from me in terms of progression, he became really faster than me, beating me by about 1-2 meters in races. It was devastating, but I was always glad for him, It was kind of like Maurice Greene and Ato Boldon, I was always one spot from the top, but i was glad that it was my buddy there.
We didnt have any training, our only knowledge was run a lap before the race to get warm and our stretching before races lasted about 30 seconds! The track was a rough grass/dirt track which was used for soccer, cricket, PE classes of all the surrounding schools, so you could imagine the horrible condition it was in, that didnt stop us though.
We would see hear of the likes of Ato Boldon, Donovan Bailey, Micheal Johnson, Maurice Green from Jadric’s older brother, Jarand, and we were really motivated to keep up with this thing called track and field.
This school sport was the only track and field meet that I knew of until the following year, when Jadric invited me to the heats for national champs in the summer of '97 but I went to America for that entire summer-----this was the lowest point of my track life, I gained weight like crazy in america, damn u mcdonalds, all-u-can-eat restaurants, food courts in malls, argg. Lol. Long story short it messed me up.
When I came back to svg, that was it. For the next years, i had to sit back and watch jadric go to regional meets like CAC juniors, Austin Sealey invitational, etc, because I couldnt qualify with all that extra fat. If it was a few years earlier i would have burned it off in no time but St. Vincent was sinking into the technology age, and with things like cable television, computers, hand held and video games, the adventures of the past were non-existant. I was ridiculously unfit.
He was running times like 11.5 at the age of 12, he was a tall lean sprinting machine, and I was shorter and a little on the chubby side. Puberty stepped in greatly though, over the next 4 years which brings me to the present day, he is 16 and im 15, but now im 6’ 1’’ and he is 5’ 10’’. He is still faster and leaner but im making ground on him. We trained together in the same track club since september last year but injuries hampered my training (and his also, this caused him to greatly underperform at the Carifta Champs and the World Juniors in Morroco this year). We still dont have proper training facilites, we train on a grass track thats used for soccer, rugby, cricket, parades, joggers you name it, the national track and field stadium is in progress though, cant wait. Finally synthetic tracks at home!
Next year will be interesting, were in separate age divisions now, he will be under 20 and I will be under 17. One day it will be like old times again though, both of us duking it out, side by side, competition at its purest form…
, so as you can imagine, we wasted our time at “practice” by working on the wrong things. Mostly, it was hanging out, talking trash with the guys, and trying to score points with the girls. Anyway, I basically had no training and never maximized my ability. That first year, I basically, got off my couch and ran my first ever 55m dash in 6.6 seconds, but never ran another indoor race. My outdoor 200 best was 22.7 and I did that with a fractured shin that we wrapped very tightly. I also long jumped 22’5" on that same leg.