I'm Going to the 2013 USA Outdoor Championships

A little while ago I mentioned on the blog about how I wasn't going to be able to compete in the USA Track and Field Masters Outdoor Championships because of a scheduling conflict. I'm still disappointed about that, but I am excited that I will be attending the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships this coming weekend. Now just as a point of clarification, these are the elite track and field athletes. People like Tyson Gay, Sanya Richards-Ross, Justin Gatlin, LaShawn Merritt, and Allyson Felix.

This is the meet that is used to determine who will represent Team USA at the IAAF World Championships August 10 - August 18 in Moscow, Russia. The World Championships only take place every-other year, so most of the big stars of Track and Field will be at the US Championships this year. 

It also happens to be taking place in Des Moines, Iowa at Drake Stadium. I haven't been back to Drake since 1995 when I was there to compete in the Drake Relays in college. My first memory of the Drake Relays was the year before that when I warmed up on the track with Carl Lewis and stood about five feet away from him as he started the 100 meter dash. But that's a story for another time. Des Moines is about a four-hour drive from my home so it works out great. Me and my son are going to go down there for three days. It should be some good bonding time for us and he seems to be excited about it as well. We're especially looking forward to the 100 Meter Men's final on Friday night. 

Our seats are in the section right after the finish line in the second row. As long as we get some good weather this weekend it should be a great time. I'm really looking forward to it. I'll consider it a week-after Father's Day weekend for me and my son.

One night a father overheard his son pray: 
Dear God, Make me the kind of man my Daddy is. 
Later that night, the Father prayed, 
Dear God, Make me the kind of man my son wants me to be.
~ Unknown

USA Track & Field Minnesota Masters and Mid-America Open Track & Field Outdoor Championships

We had the USATF MN Association Open and Masters meet this past weekend up in the Twin Cities. It seems like it is early in the track season to hold the State Championship meet, but the always run it the day after the Minnesota High School Track and Field Championships at the same venue. They also run a regional meet called the Mid-America Open.

The way it works is that if you are from Minnesota you are competing in both meets. If you are not, you are running in the Mid-America meet. The Minnesota meet is broken up into age groups, so the open division is 19-29 and Masters is five-year increments after that. My current age group is 35-39. So it's possible for a Minnesota resident to place twice in one event. For example, I placed first in my age group in the 400 Meters for Minnesota and third in the Mid-America Region Open. They used to have different age categories for the Regional meet, which meant that for age groups like mine without a lot of participation, I would come home with a lot of medals. I like this way of doing it better because it adds more value to being able to place in the Region.

As far as my times from this past weekend, I was pretty happy with my performances. Based on the weather conditions at the meet, my limited training so far this year, and my times I was hitting in practice, I was expecting to hit about 54 seconds in the 400 meters. I ended up running 53.28 which is quite a bit faster than I ran last year at this time. It at least gives me a small amount of hope that I might be able to get under the All-American Standard time of 52.5 seconds. With my shortened season I only have one more chance to hit that this year at the end of this month. And you never know what the weather will be like on that day.

Speaking of weather, we had some pretty rainy conditions this past weekend. It was pretty cool and was sprinkling a little bit for the 400 meters, which wasn't too bad. There was a pretty strong wind on the home stretch, but it wasn't terrible. By the time we got to our 200 meter race it was raining pretty hard. They were having some issues with the timing system so we were standing out in the rain for quite a while before our race. There's always a concern about staying warm and not straining any muscles when it gets colder out so the longer we were standing there, the more nervous I got. I went out a little tentative in the 200, but at the same time I really wanted to get to the finish line to get it done. I thought I ran a pretty good race considering the conditions.

Unfortunately, the timing system that they used for the meet had some issues with the rain and did not register the starting gun. They brought us all into a tent at the end of the meet and explained that they did not have our times. It was disappointing, but at the same time it probably doesn't really matter all that much. I don't think my 200 time would have been all that exceptional anyway. It would just be nice to know where I'm at even if the conditions were poor.

As I have mentioned a few times before, I am kind of a fairweather person when it comes to training outside on the track. I figure at my age it might as well be a nice day if I am going to run around outside. Otherwise I can just do my workouts in the comfort of my home. I might need to reconsider that a little bit and just go off of what my training schedule says I should do.

So with that, here is the quote for this post -

There is no such thing as bad weather, just soft people.
-Bill Bowerman 

The Masters Championships Dilemma

I was soooo looking forward to the USA Track and Field Masters Championships this year. I feel like I had a pretty good showing last year, placing 3rd in the 400 meters and 4th in the 200 meters. I was also just over a tenth of a second away from hitting the All-American mark in the 400 meters.

This year the National Championships are going to be held in Olathe, KS. When I asked my best man, who lives in Kansas City how far it is from him, he said it's only minutes away from his home. "Perfect", I though. A good excuse to see my friend and run in the meet all over one long weekend. Maybe we can even get a masters relay team together. They have had the date up on the website for the past year and it just so happens it was scheduled for my birthday weekend. I would actually be running the 400 meter finals on my birthday. This is great. I cleared my schedule for the weekend and a couple of days before and after. I was so excited.

Then they opened up the website for registration...

"That's not the right date" I thought to myself as I clicked the link for the webpage. They moved the date up by a weekend. How can this be? They have had the other date on their website for the past eight months. I had a sinking feeling in my gut that we had something else going on that weekend. I walked upstairs to check our master calendar and sure enough, we have a family trip scheduled to go to Wisconsin Dells. My wife's sister is coming over from Taiwan with her kids and her entire family has blocked off the time to be there.

I tried to figure out any good way that I could make it work and I can't come up with anything. So it looks like I will be missing the National Championships this year. I'm still training, but for a much shorter season. It's also harder for me to get motivated to get out and train hard without having as much at stake. But it might be a good opportunity to try some different things with my training.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.  - Sri Ram

Pneumonia

I've been pretty sick for the past week. It started out as a sore throat, but has become worse over time. So bad in fact that I agreed to go to the doctor. We're about three days out from the Minnesota Indoor Track and Field Championships. I haven't been able to train much because I've been very short of breath whenever I try.

Anyone who knows me could tell you that I only see a doctor as a last resort for something that I think should take care of itself. This was pretty bad though. I was mostly sick over the weekend and tried to get some rest when I could. I went back to work on Monday and didn't feel too bad, but Tuesday morning when I tried to work out I just couldn't do much. I ended up calling in to work and went back to bed. I started having chills so bad that my whole body was shaking. Even with five blankets on and the temperature set at 72 degrees I was still freezing. So I called the doctor and made an appointment for 1pm that afternoon.

One of the main thoughts on my mind was that I need to get better for the track meet this weekend. I've been so concerned about not getting any conditioning in and how that will affect my race this weekend. This is going to be my last indoor meet of the year and the last chance to improve my times for the USATF rankings. After a few minutes with the doctor I realized that maybe the race shouldn't be my primary concern and I just need to focus on getting better.

The doctor had me go in for some x-rays on my chest and they determined that I potentially had pneumonia. It seemed to fit all of the symptoms that I was having and there was a spot on my x-ray in my left lung. So now I am on antibiotics that should help me get healed. I have been off work for the past few days as well.

I'm feeling much better now than I did a few days ago. My breathing is still a little rough, but I have some energy back. I am not going to rule out running at the meet this weekend until I need to. Either way I don't think I will be able to get any training in prior to the meet so I'll be in rough shape even if I do run. I think my most likely scenario is to go to the meet and watch my son, and the rest of the kids from the local track club run.

"You can only lead others where you yourself are prepared to go."

- Lachlan McLean

The Starting Blocks

When I came home from work the other night there was a box waiting for me. I was so excited I rushed into the house to open it up. It was a new set of starting blocks I just ordered over the weekend.

I've never owned starting blocks before, and it's one of those areas I haven't really spent a lot of time on. Unless you own or have access to blocks the only time you really get to use them is at a meet. As I get older, any little improvements I can make can make an impact on improving my sprinting times.

We've got an indoor meet coming up this weekend and the current plan is to go as a family. It's a very informal meet for all ages. My son will run and we should have a decent size group from our area going up. It's always fun to see the kids competing because they have the ability to get better every time they compete. As opposed to us Masters athletes who fight to slow our declining performances as much as possible.

My current training program is really a mix of different programs. I don't do any indoor training on a track, partially to give my legs a rest in the winter, but also due to not having easy access to a track to practice on. I'm still working out with my wife for about half of the week so those days are either Les Mills Combat or Turbo Fire. For the past couple of weeks I have been adding in P90X, RevAbs, and Insanity: The Asylum workouts. I still think Asylum has the best workouts for Track and Field so I try to get those in on days where I can really get a good workout in. The past couple of weekends I have done the Game Day and Championship workouts as my meet day simulations.

So we'll see if the hybrid workout approach pays off this weekend or if I will need to make some modifications and go more specifically to an Asylum-based program.

It will also be interesting to see how my son does with a block start. He's been practicing with the blocks, but it almost seems to be throwing off his first few steps. I think at this point he doesn't want to use them, but I'll have them there in case he changes his mind.

It's been fun to watch the kids practicing with the blocks. They take turns with a Nerf gun as the starting pistol and run through their whole starting sequence just like the pros. Very cute.

The quote for this week is from Insanity: The Asylum Volume 2 - Championship:

"Whenever there's 70 meters left to go in a 400 you've got two choices to make - you can give up, or you can keep going." - Shaun T

Charities Challenge - First Indoor Meet

We had the Charities Challenge indoor track this weekend up in the Twin Cities. I'm not sure whether to call it the first indoor meet of 2013 or the last one of 2012. I think as far as USA Track & Field is concerned, it is considered the 2013 Indoor Season so I'll call it the first meet of the year.

My training for this meet consisted of starting up Insanity: The Asylum Volume 2. I was only a week and a half into the program, but I can tell that this is going to be a great workout for my training. When I started the Championship workout, the first thing we do is a simulated 400 meters. If there was any question about whether or not this was the workout for me, it was answered right there.

I went up with another Master's sprinter and we took along three youth. Two of them were our kids and the other one was a friend of my son's. One of my goals has been to try to get greater participation at the meets so I try to invite anyone I can. If we can get people to experience the meets and how much fun it can be, hopefully they will come back and invite others.

It was the first track meet for one of the boys. The three were technically in different age groups even though my son and his friend are in the same grade. It was great to see the boys enjoying themselves while showing a lot of effort in the races. Since they were all different ages, they were each able to have first-place finishes in their races while racing against each other. There were also meet records set by all of the boys. In fact, the youngest boy also set the Minnesota state record for each of his events in his age group. Pretty good for his first meet ever.

My races were a little better than I did at this point last year, but not quite where I thought I should be. I made a tactical mistake in my 400 and I think it cost me some time. I gave up the inside lane when we made the break at the 160 mark. (Actually the break line was incorrect so we can't technically turn in our times for the meet.) I ended up running out in lane two around the third corner and was never able to gain back any ground. I was running against all high-school boys so time-wise I was with a good group. My time was 55.24 so it was about two seconds slower than my Indoor National time from last year.

Gives me something to work on for next time.


"The pride you gain is worth the pain."  -Dennis Ogilvie

What's Next?

I believe that I mentioned in a previous post that I won't be updating the blog as much since I'm not in a traditional training cycle right now. I didn't do an update on Extra-Life yet so I will say that it went pretty well. I was disappointed that I didn't make my fundraising goal, but I know that overall over 2-million dollars was raised for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals nationally. I don't yet have results for our specific hospital, but I know it was at least $686.

Even though I don't have any major track and field events coming up it's still a good time to look toward the future so I can plan my training and recovery accordingly. I did my cycle of the Beachbody Ultimate Reset a couple of months ago now and that went extremely well. I'll even have some exciting news about that coming up soon, but I can't share it quite yet.

Since I finished the Reset cleanse I have been working out to Chalene Johnson's Turbo Fire program. It's mainly a cardio program, but not as insane as Insanity. It's been keeping me in shape without breaking me down which is what I need right now. It has also given me a chance to work out with my wife for the first time ever since I started working out at home. The new Insanity: Asylum Volume 2 program came out earlier this month and I had planned to start it, but I'm enjoying the workout time with my wife and it's nice to be able to accomplish our workouts at the same time. If I switched programs right now I would probably have to go to an evening workout schedule if my wife keeps the morning. It's not worth it for me at the moment as long as I'm still getting a good workout with Turbo Fire.

I did pick up a special deal on Rev Abs, which is a total-body and core strengthening program with Brett Hoebel. He was one of the trainers on The Biggest Loser. They had a one-day deal where the entire program was only $22 for coaches with free shipping so I thought I should at least pick it up and add it to the collection. I started doing some of the workouts on days where my wife was running or working out later than me. I've really been enjoying it so far. The core training is one of those things that is very important for injury prevention in sprinters. I would love to do the 90 days straight through sometime, but for now I am working it in when I can with Turbo Fire. Kind of like my own little hybrid program.

So looking forward. I know that my plans always seem to change, but I am not currently planning to run in the USA Track & Field Indoor Masters Championships this year. It's just too far away and I'm not sure it would be worth it. I have a series of Charities Challenge indoor meets that I plan to run this winter and I'll probably try to make it to the Minnesota Indoor Championships as well. So the only National Championships this year that I plan to run is outdoor. It is in Olathe, KS which is probably about a seven hour drive. My buddy lives in Kansas City so I have a place to stay and hopefully we can get a relay together. It's also my birthday weekend so it should be a good time.

USA Track and Field Masters Recap

It was a pretty good weekend at the USATF Outdoor Masters Championships. There were a lot of great performances and many great people to meet and talk to. It's an interesting group. It takes a very dedicated person to compete at this level. There is a definite time commitment. Not only did many people have to take almost a week off to travel to the meet and back home again. There are the registration fees, hotel, and travel expenses. And then just the time that it takes to train to compete at a national event like this. We have some pretty understanding families who also have to put up with our schedules and time away from home.

The weather at the meet was not ideal. It was in the mid-90s for most of the days. I believe it was in the 80s for the final day, but it sure didn't seem all that much cooler. I didn't end up having to run a preliminary race for the 200 meters on Saturday, but I still had to show up and declare. Then we waited to see if we would have enough for a prelim. The timing was such that I needed to do my warmup just in case we were going to run. We had eight runners in our age group declare so we rolled over to the final the next day. It would have been nice to just take the day off to go into Chicago, but that's the way it goes.

For the 200 finals I wanted to try to get under 24 seconds. I haven't run a lot of 200s since high school so I don't really know the last time I was under 24 seconds. I knew from my indoor time and my practice times that it was possible. My fastest time in high school was 23.5 so it's hard to say that I could get close to that 20 years later. I was able to run a 23.86 which was good enough for 4th place. It's one place out from getting a medal, but honestly I was just happy with my time.

We also ran a 4 x 400, which gave us a shot at a gold medal. I ran with some great guys from Kentucky who raced in the 400 hurdles. I was born in Kentucky so we had a connection. We were fortunate to bring home gold medals for the relay in a time of 3:37.18. This was my first National Championship so I was happy that they asked me to join them. Great guys as well.

So overall these were my results for the meet:
400 meters - 52.67 - 3rd place
200 meters - 23.86 - 4th place
4x400 meters - 3:37.18 (didn't get splits) - 1st place

How to break 50 seconds in the 400 meters

There's a great site out there called SpeedEndurance.com that has a lot of great information on 400 meter training. They put up an article about how to break 50 seconds in the 400. The article is mostly about how to figure out if you can break 50 seconds based on how fast you can run shorter distances. I know that one of the keys to getting my 400 meter time down is to improve on my 200. That's been one of my goals this year. I'm currently trying to get it under 24 seconds. My fastest in a race was back in high school at 23.5. That's really not that fast. Since I converted to the 800 meters in college I never ran an open 200 meters.

I ran a 24.00 in my last meet this year so I'm hoping I can get under that at the National Championships in a couple of weeks. My chances of making the finals look pretty slim for the 200 so I'll likely only have one more try. I bring up the 200 time because one of the formulas on how fast you can run the 400 is to take your 200 time x 2 and add 4 seconds. Since I was fortunate enough to run exactly 24 seconds it's an easy formula for me. 24 x 2 is 28 + 4 = 52. I'm shooting to get under 53 seconds so at least I know that's a reasonable expectation.

Here is a video that sums up the article. There's some good information although I wish they would have included the 300 meter formulas as that's what I've been using for my training.

Since it's been so hot out lately I have adjusted my training slightly for this week. I was planning to run 4 x 200s with 65 seconds rest this week, but I think I will shift that workout to this weekend. I have been pushing pretty hard on the Asylum and P90X2 workouts so that should keep my cardio and strength up. The workout I did in place of the 200 meter workout on Tuesday was Asylum Vertical Plyo and I'm sure I got a great workout in so I don't feel like I missed out on anything. I'm also feeling like I should back off a little bit on the track workouts right now. My hamstrings and lower back have been pretty tight lately and need some time to recover.

On the Track Again

This would be mainly a recovery week based on my P90X2/Asylum hybrid program right now. I would still have a few more intense workouts to start the week since I started in the middle of a week originally. After the MN Masters Championships my legs have been pretty sore. I'm especially having issues with my left calf so I am going to try to be careful with it. I am quickly realizing as I try to get back to running more that this is going to be an issue for me all summer. To help this I picked up some new shoes for my Beachbody workouts.

On my way from from St. Paul I stopped off in Rochester and tried on a lot of shoes. I need a pretty specific type of shoe which is not as common because I tend to supinate when I run, meaning that I run on the outside of my foot. This limits my shoe choices since more people pronate or run on the inside of their foot so there are more shoe options for them. I picked up a pair of Reebok RealFlex shoes for my training. I also tried on some running shoes and found a pair that would work well, but were pretty expensive at the store. I will probably check online to see if I can get a better price.

I was scheduled for X2 Plyocide tonight, but I decided to run at the track instead. The kids just started tennis lessons and wanted to play that evening. I figured I would do a quick workout at the track and then play tennis in place of the Plyocide workout. I had a workout in my training log from last year where I did a quick 300, 200, and 100 with a walk recovery in between. The pace is not fast, but the intent is to simulate the end of a 400. With a warmup and cooldown I could get that done in about a half-hour.

So here was the workout:
Distance         Time         Rest
300 meters     43.35       200 walk
200 meters     28.03       300 walk
100 meters     13.11       Cooldown

Then we played tennis as a family for about an hour. The kids have these low-speed tennis balls that I had never seen before, but I love them. They don't go very far and me and my son were able to get some pretty good volleys in. I could run down just about anything he hit to me because the ball moved so slow so it was a pretty good workout. My calves are feeling it now, but it was pretty fun.

Now I'll follow through on my recovery week which will consist of a couple of core workouts, yoga, and stretching.

A Windy Track Meet

We had the USA Track and Field Minnesota Open and Masters Championships today and boy was it windy. The meet was in St. Paul which is about a two hour drive for me. Since it was forecast to be in the 90s we decided to have the rest of the family stay home so I went up by myself.

For anyone who knows me, there is one thing that I really dislike and that is wind. I guess it's all those years up in the flatlands of the Fargo/Moorhead area. It's also an issue I have with losing my breath when I run into the wind. I don't know if it's the way that I breath while I am running, but it is very difficult for me to catch my breath when running into a strong wind. Today's wind up in the Twin Cities was between 20 and 30 miles per hour.

For the 400 meter race there was a cross wind where it really hit me at the final turn. The worst part was there were a bunch of small buds on a couple of trees that were blowing right into our faces. They were going into my mouth and eyes while I was making the turn so I had to put my head down and take short breaths. Very frustrating going into the final 100 meters. My time was a little over a second slower than my time at the Indoor National Championships. World Champion Antwon Dussett was also in the race and it didnt' seem to affect him, so I need to find a way to do better despite the conditions.

The 200 meters wasn't any better. The wind shifted to being in our faces for the entire home stretch with a big gust hitting us with about 30 meters remaining. I ended up running over 25 seconds for the first time in a long time, so that was disappointing. I still came home with two gold medals, but it's the clock that's my main opponent right now.

In the end, considering that I have only been to the track for one workout so far this year I guess I can't be too hard on myself. It is an eye-opener that I have some work to do before the National Championships in August. The good thing is that there is enough time. I have another meet in two weeks so I will shoot for some better times. I've got a good plan for the next two weeks which will include 3-4 track workouts, P90X2, and the Asylum.

Time to focus and stay on track, no pun intended. As someone once told me, "Don't be defined by the past and don't underestimate the potential that you have." I've got a new goal to run under 53.5 seconds for the 400 in two weeks and under 24.5 for the 200.

First Real Outdoor Track Workout of 2012

I'm falling behind on a lot of stuff right now. It's hard to stay motivated when my mind keeps shifting to other things I should be doing. One key that I heard one of my workout buddies on Team Beachbody say was that motivation will only last for so long. Then discipline needs to kick in. I've been doing pretty well with the P90X2/Asylum hybrid, but getting out to the track and posting to the blog have suffered lately. Since there are two recovery days each week on that program I will try to work it in where my track workouts and meets take the place of a recovery day.

I do have an outdoor meet this weekend. It's the Minnesota and Regional Masters Championships. I always thought it was unusual that the Championship meet is the first outdoor meet of the season, but they use the same venue as the MN State High School meet, which is Friday and Saturday. I assume that they have staff and equipment already from the High School meet so that is the best time for our meet.

I'm already feeling some soreness and some calf issues so I don't want to push it too hard this week. I wanted to get a little speed work in, but nothing too fast. I alternated 100 and 200 meters at about race pace with a walk recovery. Here's basically my workout and times:

Warmup - 10 minutes

Distance      Time       Rest
100m         13.45       200m walk
200m         27.91       300m walk
100m         12.84       200m walk
200m         26.72       300m walk
100m         12.76       3 minutes

Four practice starts with blocks on the 400 meter start curve.
Cooldown

Here's the quote of the day from Shaun T -
"Sports performance is about combining the strength of your heart with the strength of your mind."