rodzik@www

So I've been really slacking on this whole blog thing lately, and instead of trying to catch up on some things I've been meaning to post about I'm going to go ahead and mention the last couple days. Hopefully I'll rewind and cover some other things, but for now, this weekend...

Friday was the inauguration of the 13th President of Rose-Hulman, who I prefer to call Dr. Jack. I thought about attending but when I found out they were webcasting it I decided to stay here and work on other things while watching it at the same time, a decision I don't regret. It was interesting listening to some of the things that many of the speakers said. Friday night was a general good time just wandering the house and hanging out with people or playing Guitar Hero.

Saturday morning bright and early was Pike's International Workday (all the chapters around the country participate, but generally it's on different days...ours was this Saturday). The project I was assigned to had enough people so I went to go help a couple guys out with setting up the brand new foam machine that our seniors bought as part of their senior project. Just some quick backstory: we hold a foam party twice a year, but our old home-made foam machines were really inefficient and barely worked anymore. So we got a new foam machine last week and spent most of the day Saturday setting it up and then finally testing it. The new machine worked amazingly well, and there was tons of foam at the party later that night. We had some problems initially but once we worked those out the last couple hours of the party were nuts. I just wish I could've enjoyed it more instead of performing my duties as President and making sure everything was going well, but I knew this would happen when I ran for the position so oh well.... What was really awesome was right after the party ended I decided to see how fast we could fill the room end-to-end, top-to-bottom. After all, we couldn't let the leftover foam mix go to waste. I'd say this picture sums things up perfectly. When the room filled up completely it was a bit difficult to make it from one end of the room to the other, and at one point I got completely lost and nearly died from inhaling a bunch of foam, but fortunately I made it. After that we managed to make it through fairly easily by covering out mouths with our shirts and following the wall with one hand while holding the other in front of us searching for the doorway. Good times.

Today was Greek Games. This is the first time I've actually been able to make it to more than half an hour of the events. Freshman year I had to drive my big-big brother back to the airport for his trip back to the west coast, and last year I had too much to do in preparation for E3 that I couldn't go (speaking of E3, I got invited to this year's invite-only E3...wow...but that's a different post). I told our Greek Games chairman that I could do any event that needed speed, so I ended up anchoring the chariot race and running the human wheelbarrow leg of the relay race. It was a close competition, but we ended up winning Greek Games!

I finished off Sunday with our weekly Executive Council meeting and then a long By-Laws meeting, and soon realized I had a lot more homework than I thought. So while I'm worried about an all-nighter, I'm busy typing away on this thing instead. Oh well...I guess I should get to work though.

Stress. Sleep. Classes. Homework. Projects. Pike. Injuries. Scheduling. I can blame any and all of those, and tons of other things as well for my performance in Track here over the last three years, but do I need to place blame? For a long time I thought that I'd really, really hate myself if I didn't break my PR. For the record, my PR in the 800M was set on May 15th, 2004, at the Georgia State Track & Field Finals, in which I ran a 2:04.10 and placed 6th for AA men. I distinctly remember sitting at the lake house with a bunch of my friends in between graduation and the beginning of college and discussing my ambitions of breaking the 2:00 barrier. It seemed entirely obvious back then that I would do it, both to myself and my friends. I'd dropped to 2:04.10 in high school, at a AA school with an extremely young track program, a relatively inexperienced coaching staff, and our school had no track. I was about to attend a school with top-notch facilities and a much better track program, so of course I could drop 4 seconds.

And here I am. I have 4 days of practice left, and then at 6 PM Friday night we have our final regular season meet, our Home Twilight Meet. I ran last night at Little State here at IUPUI in Indianapolis and while I ran my best and outkicked two guys at the end, my time was a meager 2:09.28. That's not far off from my time for my first ever 800m. Sure, it doesn't exactly help that I'm coming off of spring break, at the beginning of which I suffered an ankle injury, but still, 2:09? The odd thing is though, after getting over the initial disappointment (and grueling pain that follows an 800) of seeing my time, I really wasn't that upset at all. I had trained as much as I could, I ran the best race I could, and that's how it was.

So now it all comes down to this. Four days of practice, only one of which will likely be hard, and then the end. I don't expect myself to break 2:00.00, in fact I'd be astonished if I did. I doubt I'll even break my PR, though that won't stop me from trying my absolute hardest to do so. All I know is that I've worked my ass off for three solid years. I've put in all the work I feasible could (e.g. without sacrificing other important activities such as scholarship or fun, though fun has been sacrificed at times) and I've done my best. So no matter what happens in the next week, I've given it my best shot, and that I can live with.