Elitetrack: Sport Training & Conditioning

Quote of the day:
"Hey where did you get that sweatshirt?" Bob Larsen, coach of Nike sponsored athlete and silver medalist Meb to me. I had on the plainest of navy blue sweatshirts with a small swoosh on it, which I've had for years. He said he keeps asking Nike for one, but they never send him just a plain sweatshirt.

Athlete of the Day:
Shaka Sola of Guam. I turned on Eurosport yesterday morning to see a somewhat portley and uncoordinated-looking javelin thrower with a t-shirt which looked to have the letters GUAM screenprinted on it. He threw a whooping 41 meters, half the distance of most of the other competitors. To see his story see here

Wave Count:
Twice more, four times each we did the wave in a shortened session.

The Stairs:
In the North end of the stadium, in the D zone where the long throws are done from, the athletes enter the stadium from a set of covered stairs out of the ground. I believe there is a long tunnel that goes to the warmup track and the athletes are staged in that area under the stadium.

Overall:

An interesting evening last night (Tuesday). I decided I'd leave the hotel a little later than normal, so I wouldn't have to watch all the first round heats of the 100h and round two of the 200. I'd get there in time to pick up women's discus as they entered last three throws and then the finals of 800, steeplechase, and 400h. Lucky for me I did wait, because a massive rain/lightening storm rolled through and as I watched on television, they delayed the meet. Eventually we lost the television feed. After an hour or so, the IAAF page said they were resuming soon, with the 100h finishing up (they had run 2 heats before the rain), the men's triple qualifying moved to another day, the discus final moved and the 200 moved to another day. So I walked over to the stadium to catch the evening's activities.

Tough Event: The decathlon men's high jump was close to finishing, but they had to wait out the rain to finish up and then run the 400 at 9:30 that night. This morning they are to hurdle at 10am.

The Events:
Men's Steeplechase: The country which buys Kenyan athlete's, Qatar, had their athlete, Shaheen win again. Tightly bunched the whole race. With 600 to go the contenders put the hammer down and I mean down.

Women's 800: Out very slowly at 1:00.7 through 400, the whole field was still in it with 200 to go. A Cuban woman ran clear the last 100, with a Moroccan and Russian 2 and 3. A very, very slow race the whole way which seemed tactically poor to me.

Men's 400h: The rain started back up again and a strong wind on the homestretch started before this race. Clement had lane 1, Carter in lane 3, Jackson in lane 6. Jackson was out quickly to first hurdle, with Carter touching down first off of hurdles 3-4 and 5. On the outside in lane 6, putting on a big surge through hurdles 6-8 was a Japanese athlete, who as I saw it had the lead off of hurdle 7. Through hurdle 8, Carter held a slight lead on Jackson. Down the homestretch they were even with Jackson, pulling away off the last hurdle to win in a PR of 47.30, Carter just behind and the Japanese athlete holding on for 3rd with Clement 4th. I think without the head wind, Jackson would have run under 47.0.