By Aaron Blake | July 19, 2010 at 11:11 PM EDT |
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Today is Monday July 19, over the weekend I had a meet at West Seattle Stadium it was the Seattle Masters Classic.
I competed in the 100 and 200m from my review of my performance It started out not good and ended up much better, not according to times but according to performance.
In the 100 I believe I had a good start considering I had younger masters athletes and the 50 year old World Champion in my heat.
I was in lane 5, as I said my start was good. My drive phase was good then around 30m lane 4 (sorry I can't remember his name) began to pull away, I actually thought I would be able to take him. Then around 50m I looked up and saw what looked like the World Champion (Michael Waller) was about 30m ahead of me and so was the other younger masters. So while in the midst of finishing the 100 I had this thought, "did I back off, slowdown after 50m"?
So after I finished I went to ask my wife if I did what I think I did.
She confirmed that I slowed down around 50-60m the upside was that my form was good despite slowing down.
So now I'm asking myself "why did I do that"? what happened?
Instead of getting angry like I have in the past with a bad performance, I started asking myself why.
As my wife and I talked we discussed how I was over-thinking my race instead of relying on my muscle memory from practice carrying me through my race.
Then I had this thought "just run!"
So as I prepared for the 200, my warm-up consisted of doing 50m sprints around the curve at the start of the 200.
Through each one of these warm-up runs I made sure that I sprinted
hard, no build-up, just run fast.
So when the 200 came up I was back in the heat with the younger masters sprinters, the World Champion sat the 200 out.
In my mind all I said to myself was "get out and run fast"
When the gun went off that is what I did, I found myself up with the younger masters as we came out of the curve they began to pull away but this time it wasn't like in the 100 I just kept running fast as I got to the 150m mark I could feel myself tighten up I took a breath and I felt relaxed but within the next 10m I tightened up again, oh well. I just kept running fast. As I finished the race I felt good about what I did. My time didn't matter I was concerned about how I ran my race. As I walked back from the finish line I looked over to my wife for confirmation that I did well, that is run fast and let my body do what I have practiced on, she gave me a big smile and said good job.
Out of that day I came away with, I need to run fast to prepare myself and my mind for Nationals if I don't do that I could have a performance like I did in the 100 in West Seattle, well that is a definite NO!!
Today at practice knowing that I leave on Thursday heading to Sacramento and having that revelation on Saturday in West Seattle I was determined to have a fast training day.
So I started out with 4x100 in the curve to work on my model starts in the 200, each one being faster than the last, the times went 16.5, 15.9, 15.5, 15.7 then I moved to block starts I did 4x30m starts, they all felt great! I was starting to feel fast!
Then came the 60's. I did 2x60m it went 8.24 and 8.44 Now I know that I am fast!!
So as a Masters sprinter we have to deal with so many different things in our training especially our MINDS!!