Wow, this season is just flying by. It is now post season time, at least what I consider to be post season. Conference is this week, sectionals next, then Charleston for the last time. I couldn’t ask for a crazier final season with all the weather and meet cancellations, but as a team we were able to overcome the lack of competitive races and weather and grind it out through the season. Of the eight seniors on the track team, two of them, including me, did not do cross-country. They are basically teammates year round from XC to winter running then track season to summer running and then repeat it all over again. They welcomed me in as a member of the team and I have gotten to know all of them throughout my four years at PND and I would have to say it’s a great group of runners that I will miss next year. Yes, even you Tyler.
Now to get to what happened this past week. We had two meets, a dual meet at home and the Morton Relays. The Tuesday meet was interesting, coach split our varsity 4x800 and JV 4x800 to make even teams. I was anchor on my team and I got the baton about five seconds behind the other PND anchor. I got up on his shoulder and just drafted for a lap and kicked the last lap to let us win by about five seconds. It was a good race. Then was the open 400m. It's definitely a weird race for me to run, having to have to start out of blocks but I ended up doing fine with the start. It was the finish into the wind, which was hard, I was able to run a 52 second 400 though. I came back in about 4-5 minutes to run the mile. (Only one heat of the 300m hurdles in between) It was not a pretty run but I was able to finish. After that was the 4x400, which again was separated by, one event luckily more than one heat. We ended up getting second in that but still ran about a 3:40.
Wednesday and Thursday were distance runs but not too long. Friday was the Morton relays. I did not know what to expect since we got there and it was still raining a little bit. Running events weren’t supposed to being until 6pm and it was only 345pm. I was relaxing trying to sleep on the bus when our coach came on and said, “They are starting running events at 415!!” I guess expect the unexpected so I got up and got the 4x8 team on a warmup. We were doing pretty good most the race sitting in the second position a ways back from the leader. I got the baton about 70m behind the leader and I set my sights on catching him. I didn’t catch him until the 500m and I looked for another gear to speed past him so he would not try and stay with me. We ended up winning with a time of 8:21. I had what would have seemed like a lot of time for the 4x4 so I was just walking about talking to people but there was only about 45 minutes after my 4x8 I was running the 4x4. We ended up getting 4th with a time of 3:36, which wasn’t bad. I ran a 52 second split. We were out of Morton by 6:30 so it was a pretty fast meet.
4x400m Relay
4x800m Relay
In other news, this is my last month in high school. While most seniors get out of school this weekend or next weekend, I get out the week after state and graduate June 2nd… So not fair. I have 14 school days left (if I don’t have to take finals). I have basically checked out but I’m still doing homework and studying just not as hard as I normally would. I have to also make an 8th grade video in the next few weeks. Need to get going on that. Luckily we finish my calculus book so we are just learning some other things that our teacher thinks will help us in college and not taking it for a grade. (Integration by parts) Also, in physics we made mouse trap cars, which was really neat. My partner and I made ours about of two vinyls with a bronze axle in connecting both vinyls. We cut a hole through a block of wood and then put that in between the wheels and nailed the mousetrap on top of the block. We tied string to the latch that snaps forward and made it long enough to reach the rod to wind it up. It goes pretty far. (The whole length of our gym not sure how far) It isn’t extremely fast but I’d rather it go far than go really fast and stop after ten meters.
It's been a pretty busy week as it normally. Only a few weeks of school then summer and off to Mizzou cannot wait. This week, as I said is conference on Thursday, and then I will be heading to the SEC outdoor track and field championships Saturday and Sunday. I will update you on that next week. Thanks again for reading!