AP&ES Track and Field Competition Day 2Yesterday was a long day and I didn’t get around to...

AP&ES Track and Field Competition Day 2

Yesterday was a long day and I didn’t get around to posting the update, but here it is, finally!

The day was a busy one, with 5 individual events and 3 relays.

First up was the 110m hurdles. In a way, this was part familiar and part strange. Familiar in that the distance was 110 metres, same as I had run last summer twice. However, the oddities were firstly that the distance spec was wrong for me - I should now only run 100 metres with the hurdles closer together (one of the perks of getting old!). The other odd thing is the height was only 76 cm instead of 91cm, because they were Little Athletics hurdles.

Anyway, I started the race with my ugly but effective technique, but soon I found I could run a smooth 5 stride technique, and covered the rest of the race faster. Finished with silver with a time of 24.73.

Next up was triple jump. Got into a tight competition with another guy, but couldn’t quite beat his best jump. Silver with a 7.47m jump.

Towards the middle of the day came the event I wasn’t looking forward to, because it’s longer than my normal distances - the 800 metres. I made a last minute decision to enter it almost 3 weeks ago after studying past results and figuring that I actually had a chance in it.

Anyway, the race got under way, and a number of guys raced off ahead and then cut into lane 1 hard when we were permitted to, after the first bend. I started more cautiously, and slowly eased myself into lane 1, because that was the shortest distance to the finish, and it gave me time to select a place in the pack.

By the end of the first lap, I had passed a couple of runners, and took on a couple more over the next 200 metres. With 200m to go, I only had two in front of me, and I was feeling good. The heavy tactics of this race kept me mentally occupied, and I didn’t notice fatigue.

At 150n to go, I could see the guy in front of me starting to slow down, so I increased speed a little more, to get close to him on the bend. As soon as we got into the home straight, I took a step to the side and went for the sprint finish, leaving him behind, and now I was starting to feel in the front runner. Finished the heat second in a time around 2:54, but as the other guy was in a younger age group, I got the gold in mine. Second place in my age group was around 34 seconds behind me.

After the 800m, I had a bite to eat, then it was a long wait for discus. However, as we were about to start the discus, we were called to the 200m start, to run that event first. Ran the 200 into a stiff headwind on the bend, getting silver in a time of 29.43.

Meanwhile, back to the discus, I wasn’t able to reproduce the form of last week, and was only able to throw 15 metres, instead of 19. That left the throws the only discipline that I didn’t win a medal in.

The day finished with 3 relays. I teamed up with Police members from Western Australia and New South Wales to form a team.

In the 4x100m relay, we came in third of the over 160 (total age) teams for bronze. I ran a strong third leg here.

In the 4x200m, I again ran the third leg, which was the most technical, with the transition from set lanes to running in Lane 1. This time, we easily won the gold from a Northern Territory team.

The final relay was the Swedish relay, which has legs of 100m, 200m, 300m, and 400m. They were run in a different order - 100, 300, 200, 400m. I suggested rearranging the team order, to put a faster short sprinter (who won the 100m) in the first leg, and have the guy who would have been there run the 400m leg, because that was a stronger distance for him. If the two of us left, the other guy was a longer distance runner, so he got the 300m leg, leaving me with 200 metres to run.

This combination worked well, with the first two legs putting us in a good position. I ran a fairly fast 200m leg, before passing on to the last runner for his 400m. He ran a strong leg, and again, we got the gold.

After the final medal presentations (with a bit of light hearted fun), my tally was 4 gold, 4 silver and 2 bronze, 10 medals from 14 events. All in all, a very successful meet.

- Tony via Tumblr https://ift.tt/2AD4sOY