It was a hot day at the USA Track & Field Masters National Outdoor Championships. It was 95 degrees and all sun at this time of our 400 meter race this afternoon. I ended up placing third with a time of 52.67.I'm going to just briefly recap my thoughts on preparing and going through the day. The thoughts in this post might seem kind of random, but I've been standing out in the heat all afternoon.
I'm out here without my family. We were thinking about making a trip out of it, but I'm glad that my wife and kids didn't have to sit in the stands on a day like today. It also makes is easy for me to handle meals when I only have myself to worry about. I went to Target yesterday and picked up some groceries. I also have some packets of Shakeology that I use as my pre-race meal. My breakfast this morning was a couple of pouches of oatmeal. You're supposed to mix them with water, but I just eat them. Mid-morning I had an apple and some frozen blueberries and a granola bar. Then the Tropical Shakeology for lunch.
The story of the day was the heat. I waited until almost noon to show up and they were behind schedule because of a medical emergency in the morning. It's a pretty professional crew so they did a good job of getting close. I didn't do as much of a warmup as I usually do because I found myself getting short of breath while practicing accelerations. The check-in area is a big tent so there is shade. We sat in the tent for over a half-hour so I found myself starting to tighten up before the race. I brought some water and gatorade with me in the tent so I made sure to keep hydrated.
We had a couple of guys who were signed up, but did not run. I drew lane two which I wasn't really thrilled with. The one nice thing about having the inside lane is that you can see everyone at the beginning and position yourself coming around the final corner. The world champion for our age group, Antwon Dussett, was there and there are few people in the world in our age group who even come close to us. As expected he won pretty handily. Antwon was not at the National Outdoor Championship last year because he raced in the World Championship. Last year's National Outdoor Champion was in our race and got second place.
My goal has been to medal in the National Championships so I was able to do that again. It seems like I am perennially in the third spot. I've been fortunate to get third in the last two Outdoor Championships and the Indoor this past year. You can't control who is going to show up so I feel better about my time than my place. I had a goal to get under 53 seconds, which I knew I could get based on my practice times. I was able to get quite a bit under that with 52.67. The All-american standard for our age is 52.5 so I was close to that and it gives me something to shoot for next year.
I've got the 200 prelims tomorrow. I have been thinking that it would be very difficult for me to make the final, but based on some of the guys scratching out of the previous events I have a feeling I might have a chance. Mainly I want to be able to get under 24 seconds and if I do that I'll feel good.
Sorry. I've been all over the place here. I've just got a lot of thoughts going through my head right now. I'd better wrap it up and get my rumble roller out while I watch some Olympic coverage.
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