Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Meets to come

Friday is going to be our first meet that is outdoors. I am rather nervous for this meet because it will be outside and it is going to be very cold out. it is predicted to only be about 45 degrees out.
The one bad thing about having a meet outdoors when it is cold out is that your muscles tend to tighten up very easily and fast. so therefor you have to keep all of you warm ups on until seconds before you run. If you don't warm up properly or warm up at all you will risk pulling a muscle when you run and be out for a while. so you want to make sure that you do this no matter how annoying the warm up are or how much you hate running 2 laps around the track before you run.
I am very excited for the meet too. It will be every ones first time running outside so our times might be better then indoor. The reason times are generally better outdoors then indoors is because the curves you have to turn are not as sharp and there are not as many. So therefore you run faster and are able to run a straight line without turning corners ever 50 meters. Also when running outdoors it is usually warmer so your muscles are already warmed up all you would have to do is get some good stretches in and strides.

The events that i assume i will be running on friday are the 200, 4x100, 4x200 and the sprint medley. I am really excited to run and find out what our times will be. I am really hoping that they will be faster then indoor because I will know then we have a good chance at competing at drake. i want to make it a goal to try and make it to drake in three events. If i do that it will make me day!!

Friday, March 27, 2009

Indoor State

Now on our 3rd and last indoor meet we did great!! We only took up 8 girls from the team and ran in six different events and one field event. All of the girls that went up did amazing and you could tell that we all really wanted to do our best and try our hardest to get up on the podium.

all of the events that were going to be ran by the girls were the 60 meter dash, 200 meter dash, 4x200, 4x100, and 800 meters. And the one field event was the high jump. Every event that was ran was placed within the top 20 out of almost 160 competitors in each event.
Before running i was very nervous and didn't know what to expect. I knew that i would be running against some tough competition so i knew i had to get myself mentally prepared for it. the first event that I got out of my way was the 4x2. knowing how we had done in previous events i was pretty excited to run this. All I could think about before running was about being on that podium and how cool it would feel. After running it and having an ok first leg, but feeling like i could have done better we ended up getting 5th place. i thought that was pretty good. Now the next race i have to get ready for is my open 200. This race always makes me very nervous because its a race i have to run on my own and it all is up to me and how i perform. which in a way can make me want it even more and strive for it to all that i can. I was really happy with how i can i ended up getting first place in my heat, but i know that can mean nothing knowing that there were 21 heats and i was the 18th heat. i ended up getting 13th place. I knew i could have done better but i felt pretty satisfied. for the last race of the day was the 4x1..you save the best for last!! the whole team was pumped for this we were only running a 100 and had done pretty good the whole day. we knew what we were capable of doing. i started us off and broke the stagger with hading the baton off first. the rest of the hand offs were great!! With everything in the race going well we ended up placing 4h over all..i was very happy with this!!
so far this meet was the most exciting for me placing in 2 events out of 3. just have to wait for the nest one now..

UNI mvc

So we recently had our 2nd track meet, which was at UNI. It was the MVC indoor meet which means that it was the Mississippi valley conference meet. MVC is everyone that we will be running against to try and qualify for state. This meet i ran the maximum number of events that you are able to run, which is 4 events they were the 60 meter dash, 4x100, 4x200 and the sprint medley.

In this meet it was really hard for me to get focused and not be thinking about other things. Recently i have had a lot of things on my mind, and sometimes i find that getting in the way at track and even sometimes at school. But now with everything on my mind i am trying got use that in a good way and actually help me with my race. I think that it actually worked this time too. Right before I ran my 60 I thought of things that really made me angry to pump me up and want to run fast and a way to release my anger. i ended up getting 2nd in my heat and 3rd over all. i was very happy with that. To think that we were at the MVC meet and i received 3rd place made me happy and only motivates me more for the outdoor season to start.
Next up was the 4x200. This race was going to be a little different to run, because all indoor track are 200 meter tracks. So to run a 200 indoors you are running more curves then you usually do and your time is usually slower because of this. But depending on the track you could have a really good time because of the good quality of the track and it being a "fast track". We were very surprised once we finished running the relay. We ended up getting 1st in our heat. we had a lead of about 25 meter which is very rare to happen. Over all we ended up getting 2nd. With the 4x1 the same thing happened we got 1st in out heat with placing 2nd over all. Running a 100 in indoors is always a very awkward race because you have to run a curve and it seems to be a lot longer when it actually is the just the same. and for the last race..the sprint med. this always was my favorite race to run I always start it out with running a 100. Then after the 100 i had off and the next girl run a 100 then it goes to a 200 and finally a 400. we didn't do so hot in this relay but still placed 4th in our heat.

that's all for this meet!!

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Wartburg

So Tuesday was our first track meet. This meet was a little different then others and how they score the events. With this meet they just gave you team points or individual points on how well you did in the relay or in your event. There was no over all team as a whole who won.


In the meet i only ran in 2 events (200 meter dash and the 4x200). I ended up placing 3rd over all in the 200 out of 44 people with a time of 27.7. That time made me mad. My PR (personal record) is 26.9, so i was almost a whole second slower. but i have to take into account that i was in lane 2 and i have been training on lanes 5 and 6..which has a huge impact because of how tight the curves are on the track.
our 4x2 team did great for it being our first meet. We placed in the top, which is really good considering our competitors that we were going against. We went against some of the best runners in the state. I am very proud of how everyone performed for it being the first meet and indoors.