rodzik@www

Yesterday was our Track team's Indoor Finale, our last indoor meet of the season (a home meet), and as such, it marked the last indoor meet of my career. Additionally, it's also the first phase of the end of my track career as a whole, as it's the first half of the indoor/outdoor combined season that I'll be finishing up in April. I suppose with anything that I commit copious amounts of time to, it's a bit of a loss when it's over. As much as I hate indoor track - the air inside the SRC that's somehow dry enough to make my lungs explode and burn holes in my throat but wet enough to make me sweat a ton, the hellish weather that we have to do our distance runs in outside (and sometimes intervals also), the shortened track that requires that my body be tilted at at least a 30 degree angle at all times - it'll be hard for me not to miss the challenge of it. It took me almost two full years of indoor for me to teach myself how to run the 800m indoors instead of outdoors, and I suppose I could boil my strategy down to this:

• Lap 1: Go out semi-fast, don't get boxed in. Target: 28 seconds
• Lap 2: Maintain speed and position, don't get boxed in. Target: 57-59 seconds
• Lap 3: Hardest lap, push through it by focusing on passing people. Towards the end, start building into the kick. Target: ???
• Lap 4: Kick it as hard as possible. Sprint with everything left, pass people if possible, do not get passed.

When I finished my Cross Country career in high school I had high hopes. I'd broken the school record (a modest 17:49, I went to a small private school) earlier in the season and was pissed for finishing 2nd in the region when I should've won the race. As most runners (and athletes) could tell you, when they're ticked off at themselves, it's some of the best motivation to do better the next time. So I set out to medal at the state meet, meaning that I'd have to place in the top 20 overall (which would almost certainly give me the added benefit of PRing). I hung in with the pack of 10-15th place for the first two miles, and then literally right at mile marker 2, with 1.1 miles to go, I got the worst side-stitch I've ever had in my life (a side-stitch is that pain/cramping feeling you get in the side of your gut sometimes when running). Whenever it happened in practice I always ran through it, but running through it didn't work, and it stuck with me until after the race, thus dropping me from medal contention and a PR to nothing. I think I finished around 61st, and I certainly didn't PR. It certainly wasn't how I wanted to end my XC career, but at least I can say I did my best.

At the end of track in high school I was determined to not let it end the same way as cross country had. I set the goal to be region champion in the 800M, instead of runner-up as I was the previous year (and that year in XC), and to outperform my school record setting performance in state the previous year (2:05.80 + 1 point, making myself the first guy from my school to ever make it to finals with the added bonus of also scoring a point). I easily won at the regional meet, ran a smart race at state prelims, resisting the urge to pass people in front of me when I didn't need to in order to qualify, and then ran all-out in finals, breaking my previous record by almost 2 seconds by running a 2:04.10.

So of course, all I was thinking about yesterday during my race was that it's my last indoor race ever and I better not give into the pain of the 800. I've had a cold since last weekend and due to the weather we've had an odd week of practice, including a day off on Tuesday, so I wasn't too sure how it was going to go. The guy starting alongside me was seeded at the same time I was, a 2:06.00, despite the fact that my fastest time this season was only a 2:06.99, so I figured I'd try and stick with him for the whole race and see what happened.

The gun went off and I made sure to take the lead position in alley one, taking advantage of the fact that I had the far inside lane, a rare benefit. I focused on hitting a good 200m pace and came in at around a 28, right on target. Right around this point I was still in the lead, and realized I felt a lot better than I thought I would, so I shifted my goals to maintaining the lead for the current (2nd) lap. We came in around a 60/61, a bit slow, so I knew I needed to push it through the 3rd lap. Going around the first turn I started to feel the guy behind me trying to pass me on the outside. I made sure he couldn't get past me on the turn, making him expend a lot more energy in the process, but wasn't sure if I would be able to hold him off forever. Going down the back straightaway however, he wasn't pushing hard enough, and I was able to make it impossible for him to get ahead of me, and I continued to hold him off around the back turn and front straightaway. At this point it was pretty much over for him, as I have a pretty good kick when I need to, and I sprinted through the last lap. One of his supporters pretty much eliminated any chance he may have had of passing me when, with 100m to go, he yelled at him as I went by "You can get him, I can see that he's struggling!" That only served to make me speed up even more, and I ended up winning my heat.

It's always nice to win the heat, but the real prize was turning around and seeing that I'd shattered my indoor PR. My official time ended up being a 2:05.21, and my previous indoor PR was a 2:06.90, a time I ran freshman year. With my overall PR (set outdoors in HS) being a 2:04.10, I was pretty happy to be barely more than a second off of it halfway through the season, on an indoor track. That and I got the added bonus of scoring 2 points for our team. Overall we ended up winning the meet by around 60 points or so, making our indoor record for the year 18-2.

Hopefully this is a sign of the upcoming outdoor season and I'll be able to continue to improve until our last outdoor meet. Either way, I can certainly say that 6 years of track has greatly enhanced my life.

So it's currently 7 degrees outside (with windchill of 0). That's really, really cold. I, being from Hotlanta, obviously thought it couldn't really get any worse than that, but apparently I'm mistaken. Sadly, the low for Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday is ZERO DEGREES (I don't want to think about windchill)! Ugh...12 more months until I'm in Europe where it's much, much warmer. Not to mention that it's Europe and thus is certainly not Terre Haute.