Saturday, March 18, 2017

2017 Victorian Country Athletics Championships

The Victorian Country Championships were on again over the past 3 days.  This year, I entered javelin, 100 metres, 400 metres, long jump and 200 metres.

I arrived on Thursday after a long drive.  Unfortunately, due to running around sorting the accommodation, I just missed the sign in time for the javelin, so I didn’t get to throw.  I had no other events on Thursday, so we went to our accommodation.  My time spent earlier paid off, as we had arrived after reception closed.

Yesterday, I had 2 events - the 100m and 400m sprints.  This year, fields were small, so there were no heats.  In the 100m, I had a strong headwind.  The run felt good, except I didn’t feel I could quite get up to speed.  Finished 5th in a slow time of 13.66, even taking the wind into account.  Others also had slow times, compared to their normal performances.

The 400m went fairly well.  The slow track didn’t seem to be as big an issue as the strong headwind in the home straight.  Finished with a time of 1:03.21, which was good for the wind conditions.  After returning to our accommodation and a club BBQ dinner, a couple of us headed to the beach for a recovery soak.
Today’s first event was the long jump.  Here, a strong tail wind was the challenge.  I struggled to get my run up right, but even so, I managed a jump of 4.03 metres, while taking off well before the board.  I could have jumped over 50cm further, if I could get my run up right.  Looks like one to practice, so I can capitalise on improvements in my jumping technique.

The 200 metres was next.  Again, with a strong headwind.  The headwind and slow track left me with a time of 28.23.

All that remained now were the relays.  First up was the 4x100m relay.  As I have all season, I ran the first leg.  This time, I got off to a good start and built up decent speed, getting us off to a good start.  We finished with a silver medal, out of 4 teams, which was as good or better than we anticipated.

The final event was the 4x400m relay.  By now, we had an injury plagued team, with one runner replaced by a substitute, why hasn’t run 400m in years, and another who got an injury in the 4x100.  Before the injuries, we were looking at a potential gold medal, but we had to settle for silver.

Anyway, I pulled up OK, but it’s not over for me yet.  I’m off to Maryborough tomorrow to run in a fire brigade competition! :)


- Tony via Tumblr http://ift.tt/2mTeR0f

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