Bottle Discus/ Trackour

I have mentioned before in my blog that I have sixth period release. Because it is track season, a couple of other friends and I who have that period off are able to create games when we feel like not doing homework.

One of these games is Trackour. Trackour is a play off the new popular sport called parkour, also known as free running. Trackour however is exclusively for track runners only. All we basically do is jump on to the high jump mats doing flips yelling “Trackour,” extremely loud. We have done Trackour a lot this year, but we are very discreet about it. Our coaches openly oppose and discourage us from doing this new Trackour thing. They believe, for some reason, that someone will get hurt from doing it, they are probably right.

The other game we have just recently begun playing is called Bottle Discus. It originated on a cloudy Wednesday afternoon. The people who were in the gym gathered to have our first discus off of the season. We used a partially filled water bottle as the discus and the floor markings as the ring to stay in. It is a pretty popular sport within our track team, and even as I am writing this a friend of mine is bugging me to go play Bottle Discus.

Yesterday was our first out side competition for Bottle Discus and it came down to the last throw to decide the winner. Kevin edged me out with his last throw, beating me by a few inches. We don’t actually measure how far we throw, but we can eyeball it pretty darn good. Between throws we marked where the bottle landed with odd things. We used sticks, crumpled up tape and small flags that we found to show our farthest throw.

One time while “trackour”ing we helped a friend of ours move some mats under the basketball hoop and then stacked them on top of each other. Then he was able to climb over the top of the backboard and stand on the rim. Then he sat on the rim. It was the purest form of Trackour I had ever seen. Yet I couldn’t keep focus on it because I was scared that he was going to hurt himself. He is a good track runner and if he had hurt himself than that would have been the end to Trackour as I know it. Luckily the sport is still alive today, because he returned to the ground safely and without the coaches ever knowing what happened.

Drake Relays

Yesterday, our team had a meet in Waterloo. Yesterday, our track team participated in a larger than normal meet in Waterloo. This day was important for a lot of track teams because it was the last meet to get a qualifying time for the Drake Relays. The Drake Relays is the biggest track meet in the Midwest region. Located in Des Moines, it attracts professional, collegiate and high school runners. This year is the 100th year of the Drake Relays and they are celebrating it by having many famous track stars came back to watch the events. This includes Michael Johnson, four time gold medalist at the Olympics. For high school runners they take the top certain amount of relay teams and individuals with the fastest times. This year all of our relays have made it into Drake, which is quite an achievement.

I run in the four by eight hundred meter relay. I believe that we actually have a shot at winning it because we have the runners that can absolutely beast it. Kyle and Anthony are two members of the team there best times are 1:55 and 1:57 respectively. However, when we qualified for Drake, Anthony ran a 2:02, five seconds slower than what he’s capable of. If you take five seconds off of our qualifying time than we have the fastest posted time in the state. I’m not trying to be cocky, but we have a very good chance of winning. I say this for a number of reasons. First because in the last five meets my time has dropped one or two seconds every time all the way down to my best time as of now of 2:05. Second because of Anthony and the time can drop and also because Kyle said he is going to run a 1:53, which I fully believe. Third because our other runner, Spencer is also dropping his time, which now is a 2:08, he is a long distance runner and therefore doesn’t have the best foot speed. As he works on his short distance speed, he will get faster making our chances of winning very good.

It begins next Thursday with field events, the high school running events are next Friday and Saturday. Even though, I am really nervous, I think I am prepared to run to the best of my ability and let my teammates do the rest.

Kevin Beat Me Up

The Saturday was looking promising. The sun shining, a bit of a wind, but not that chilly because of the heat felt when standing in the sunlight. That day we had a track meet, just down the road at Xavier High School. It would have been at Kingston Stadium, but the football field is being replaced. I went there around two and found the wind was quite strong in the open area of the track, but still the sun was successfully countering it. I ended up doing all right in my races. The meet had gotten pretty cold by the end and a couple of friends and I decided to go to the Edgewood Hy-Vee to eat. I agreed to go, but decided not to eat.

We were done chilling there and decided to go home, tired from the races. We were hollering our good-byes to each other. I unlocked my car to get in and started opening the door, when suddenly Kevin sprinted over and slammed it. Kevin is a goofy fellow of sorts and for some reason unknown to me decided to not let me get in my car to drive home. I thought it was pretty funny, because it was so ridiculous. Every time I made the move to open the driver’s door he would shut it. I realized he wasn’t going to leave any time soon, so I started trying strategies to enter the guarded car.

At first I tried to turn the tables on him and go over and stand by his car. That failed because he followed me, but never gave me too much space for me to have time to sprint back to my locked car and get in. The next plan was for me to get in my car from the passenger seat and then lock the doors. That way I could just slide over and finally make my way home. It almost worked, but when he sprinted around the car when he saw me unlock it and closed it. I tried that method again, and I was literally in the car when he got there. He pulled me straight out of the car. The last method I used, which kind of worked, was I challenged him to a race. He started at the back of my car and could run as soon as I touched the door handle. I faked him out as I pretended to go for the handle. He sprints at me screaming, but I say “False start,” and thought he would stop. He apparently didn’t hear me as he tackled me to the ground.

I lay there on there ground and Kevin, standing above me asks me if I’m ok. I told him I would be in a little bit. It came to his attention that there are probably video cameras, filming the parking lot. So he thought it would be funny to act like he was beating me up as I laid there on the cement. Then two of the managers came out and asked us if everything was alright. We started laughing because we imagined that they saw us on the camera and had thought Kevin had beat me up. We told them that everything was fine. They left and Kevin finally let me go home, injured and tired.

Track is Wasup

Yeah, track has now startedYeah, track has started since last time I have blogged and so far it is going ok. Our first track meet was this Monday at Wartburg College in Waverly. Their facilities are extremely new and very nice, but like all track meets this early in the year, everyone is slow and they are on an indoor track. Indoor tracks are 200 meters around while the normal track is 400 meters, so it messes with your head a little bit. I run mainly 800’s and 400’s, so instead of running 2 laps and 1 lap races, I ran 4 laps and 2 lap races, which definitely messes with your race. It messes up your strategy because you are not sure when to conserve your energy and when to go all out and pass other racers to finish. Also another aspect of an indoor track that is annoying when running is that the turns are much sharper than a normal track and when running the turns I could feel my feet slide all the way to the right in my shoes, and it felt that I was on the verge of tripping.

We got out of class at 12:15 that day, 2 minutes before my class got out for lunch which meant that I had the privilege of eating on the bus there. It also meant that we would arrive at the meet at 2:15, approximately five and a half hours before my first race was to start. For some reason, that morning I had decided it was more important to get to school five minutes earlier than I would have if I had chosen to pack myself a snack for the long track meet. Fortunately my dad showed up and took me out to subway because I had so long until my first race.

We cam back and it turned out that they were and hour ahead of schedule, but I still had plenty of time to get ready for my event. I warmed up and then ran my 800 in a decent time. Afterwards, though, I was dead tired and could feel my heart beat pump through my entire body as I struggled to get up and make my way to the bleachers, where we were sitting. I tried to rest my legs and try to prepare for my 400 that was coming up, but I didn’t have enough time. The meet was significantly over an hour ahead of schedule and that meant less rest for me so I completely got dominated by the 400 and finished with an extremely poor time. My first race gave me hope for this season and that I might be able to do well in the season to come.