Saturday, March 18, 2017

A busy finish to 2016.

This week was the final week of athletics for 2016.  First on Thursday (2 days before writing this) was a regular meet, where I had 4 events - the 200m sprint, triple jump, 60m and discus.

The 200m turned out to be my best ever run, both in terms of technique, as well as time run.  I finished it in 26.71 seconds into the wind, despite taking the start a bit slower than normal as a precaution for a tight hamstring.

The triple jump wasn’t one of my better efforts, with a jump of 7.61m being my best, well short of my 8.26m PB.  I decided against running the 60m, with another meet 2 days away.  So the next and final event was the discus, where I threw 15.28m, over a metre short of my PB.  Still, not a bad day.

Today was another meet, but something different.  It was the regional multi-event championships.  I entered the pentathlon for this one, which comprised long jump, javelin, 200m sprint, discus and 1500m run.  For those who don’t know how multi event competitions work, completing each event earns a number of points, depending on performance, and the points are added to give an overall score.

First up was the long jump.  My first 2 jumps were well below my PB.  The third jump looked good, but unfortunately was a no jump.  Result was a best jump of 3.95m, scoring 198 points.  Next up was the javelin.  As expected, this proved to be my weakest event, with 2 no throws, and a final throw of 13.44m - close to PB, but worth only 75 points.

The 200m was my best opportunity for points.  Conditions were tough, with a stronger headwind than Thursday.  However, on the plus side, I had a strength advantage from my fire brigade competitions.  Finished the race first, in a respectable time of 27.24 seconds, scoring 430 points.

Discus is an event I have been spending a little time training before the sprint work.  I had hoped to throw a PB, but the best of my 2 good (out of 3) throws was 15.24m, which earned me 184 points.

The final event was a trip into unknown territory - the 1500m.  The longest I’ve ever run on a track was 800 metres, and even in cross country, I have never run 1500m, only 1k or around 3k.  I wasn’t sure how I would hold up over this distance under the difficult, windy conditions.  As it turns out, my fitness held up pretty well.  I kept a fairly steady pace, with a sprint finish in the home straight for a time of 5:57.54.  My score for the 1500m was 274 points, the second highest for any of my events.

I finished the day with 1161 points in total, while the winner in my age group scored 1369 points.  Looks like I need to work on my field events for future multi event competitions.  It was a very enjoyable day with some good results.  Now let’s see what 2017 brings.  I will be maintaining my training schedule over the break.


- Tony via Tumblr http://ift.tt/2mTi9ki

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