Not so SUNY Cortland

Another week down, and we made it a good one.  A few members from our training group including Pat, Zachary, JoJo, Michelle and myself travelled down to SUNY Cortland (State University of New York) for our first decathlon and heptathlon of the year and Pat's second.  

A helpful tailwind started off Day 1 and kept rolling for the remainder of our events.  Sending me to my second best 100m (11.10s) and Pat a PB (11.63s).  After running myself into a bit of trouble in the long jump starting off with two fouls, leaving a very important and very nerve racking last attempt where I mustered a 6.97m jump!  Sadly this is not the first time I've done this to myself this year...I must help myself out a bit more and get jumps in on the first attempt!  The rest of the day went along smoothly and ended with a surprisingly calm evening for the 400m.  Wish that could be said for Day 2..

Day 2 began as a beautiful but overcast day. It quickly darkened during the running of hurdles (coming from indoors 10 hurdles is far!). Shortly after the long day of rain began, making the throwing events especially challenging. Despite the less than ideal conditions Pat still was able to hold onto the discus long enough to throw it a PB distance of 48.83m. Luckily the kind people of Cortland State moved the pole vault into their repurposed airplane hanger that is now an indoor track facility.  This proved quite beneficial as both Pat and I had PB's in the vault with Pat jumping 4.20m and myself 3.90m.  Next was the absolute worst conditions for a javelin competition we have endured.  It was raining, a cool 6 degrees and on GRASS!  Not to mention grass with potholes, rocks and divots making full runways absolutely out of the question leaving room for only muscling it out there.  Needless to say we were all way off our normal throws.  However, it was an experience and an obstacle we dealt with and got through, now anything will be better and absolutely welcomed compared to that.  

And then all that was left was a rather uneventful yet still exciting 1500m.  Prior to the race Coach James told me I needed a 4:51.00 to reach 7000pts, and after crossing the line seeing 4:51.xx showing up I was quite nervous that I missed the mark by mere points.  Then he proceeds to tell me about a time he scored his PB 6999pts. He told how awful it was to have this PB stand for a year.  At this point I'm fearing the worst and accepting the loss.  Then he tells me that he was a big fat liar and all I needed was a 4:54.00. I actually scored 7033pts...needless to say I got James'd (a slogan we coined for being smeckledorfed by James).  Very funny coach!  Pat finished with a solid second decathlon of the season with a third all-time best 6910pts.  Congrats!

Overall a very solid decathlon for all and a new experience, as all decathlons are. 

As for Reid, he spent the weekend finishing his last exam of the school year and began celebrating his summer with a trip to the casino winning himself a handsome $70. With some of his winnings he made a trip down to Chinatown to a shady little acupuncture store. He walked away with his own set of needles so he can practice unlicensed acupuncture on his and Pat's legs. He's seen it done in movies and is convinced it's easy enough. Nice work all around this weekend I'd say..Until next week!      

For all those interested here is a link to the results!

http://www.leonetiming.com/2012/Outdoor/Cortland/   

Lastly, a big congrats to our teammate Zachary Kevlar for his pb in the dec.