rodzik@www

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.