Claremont Multi: Road Trip and Day 1 recap

Hey! So I had intended to thoroughly document the awesomeness that is the drive from the beautiful Bay Area, down the most interesting road in the world (I-5), and SoCal. But, it took us longer to get down here than I expected so I'll just have to do highlights. :)

So bored!

Look! Josh is driving!

Road Trip!!!! Josh and I don't do well sitting still, so long car rides are never fun with the 2 of us. To entertain us, I read a few chapters from his book out loud. Then we listened to the audiobook version of The Road. Probably not the best book to listen to because not a ton happens. (I slept through about an hour of it and didn't miss anything in the story!) But it gives us something to do. We stopped for lunch at this random gas station in the middle of nowhere. While there, we ran into Russ Dekelver! We both realized he hadn't seen him in about 9 years so it totally made my day to run into him. :D Some awesome pictures from the awesome drive. The only other great part was there wasn't any traffic!!!

First views of the grapevine (if you can squint and see)

Only a few hours to go!

Day 1 of the Multi!! I had the hurdles, high jump, shot put and 200. Josh had 100, long jump, shot put, high jump, and 400. The field on both sides are pretty big. There are 17 women in the heptathlon and 17 men in the decathlon. Both fields feature a few Olympians/Elite multis as well as DIII and NAIA competitors. And then there's me and Deuce, somewhere in the middle....

First up for me was the 100 hurdles. In practices lately, I've been working on not reaching my left arm too far across my body, causing me to get twisted. Main focus for the race was to just push hard the whole way and not just settle into a comfortable rhythm. The video is shown above and I'm in lane 8. My first 4 hurdles felt amazing!! I was super jazzed! And then I hit hurdle 6 and it kind of went downhill from there. Wasn't as bad as my race a few weeks ago where I completely lost it. I still ran a PR, but it could have been so much better!!! That put me up 3 points from last year. At least I know now that I need to not be lazy in practice and actually put more than 4 hurdles out. 

Next up was the high jump. I knew going into it that this was my big crap-shoot event. Practice had been feeling way better, but wasn't sure if I was going to pull it together. I ended up clearing 1.47m which is a 1cm PR over my best! High jump put me 100 points up from last season so the day was still looking up.

Next was shot put. We had been neglecting this event a little because of our focus on high jump and javelin. Defintely didn't put it together as well as I had at Cal. Threw 34' 7", for 19 more points than last season, but not as well as the 36+ feet I had been throwing this season. I guess I couldn't be too upset keeping in mind I would have been pretty excited to throw that last season.

Next was the 200. I got super excited because I was seeded in the first heat!!! Was in lane 8 again. Video is above. I knew I had to get out super hard because I had no one to chase. I felt really good until the 150 and then tightened up. Ran a 25.5, which was .2 sec faster than last season for 14 more points. All in all, I'm up 144 points from last season so I'm excited to see what Day 2 has to bring. 

Josh's day went ok but not great. He started out with the 100. Last year at this meet he ran 11.7. He struggles badly with his start, so not surprisingly, he was last out of the blocks and well behind everybody in his field at 30 meters in. Strangely, he was gaining on everybody in his field. I didn't have a good view of the finish, so I was surprised to see he ended up getting second in his heat, because he was so far back of the pack at the start. He told me afterwards that he was gaining on the leader, who ran 11.5. Josh only ran 11.8 though. It seems like he at least has the speed to run 11.5, but we really need to improve his start, he is losing a ton of time right now. In theory this should be an easy fix if we can make it a priority.

Next up was long jump for him. This has been going ok for him this season, going 6.24 at his last meet. Today he jumped 6.12, which was ok for him, not too disappointing.

In shotput, he was feeling really good in warmups, with multiple throws out to 42' or so, which would be a PR. Unfortunately, he ended up throwing only about 38 feet in the competition. On his third throw, he set up really well for a big throw, but lost the shot and had basically no finish to the throw. It still went 38 feet without any finish, so it definitely would have been a big throw if he could have put it together. The video is below.

Next up was high jump. We have been working on this quite a bit. After waiting over an hour for his opening height, he missed all three attempts, registering a no-height. This was too bad, because it meant that there was no chance of him being able to get an overall PR. This means the focus now would shift from trying to establish a new overall PR for the decathlon to practicing doing a decathlon.

Up next was the 400. Since he had a no height in the high jump, he decided to try running the 400 at about 95%. Our friend Dimitry has the theory that doing the 400 at 95% in day one is beneficial since it saves energy for day 2 and allows you to score better in the second day. Since he had nothing to lose, Josh decided to give it a try and see how it worked out. He was hoping his 95% would be a high 51 for the 400. He ended up running a low 52 in some very high winds, but looked quite relaxed and didn't tie up as badly as in a full out 400, holding back just slightly as planed. Since I am currently editing this post after the meet is over, we already know that he felt this worked, since he did feel better than usual the next day, so he might try this again in the future.

The results can be found here: http://www.cmsathletics.org/meetresults/track/classic/classic14dayone.htm