My last day of work work. No more 0430 wake up calls, no more early evenings for your intrepid blog author.
Breakfast turned out okay. Tasty quiche.
I did notice that, once again, chicken is on the noon menu, but thank goodness not of the lemon herb variety.
Saw a great article about the gold and silver medalists in the 1976 Olympic 400m. I’ve worked many meets with Fred: heck, the man was my childhood hero, and I’m just thrilled to know him. One of my all time favorite moments on the track with him occurred at the 2012 Olympic Trials.
Great shot of that amazing Montreal 4x400m relay team, with Fred on the left. Look at the smiles! You’d be happy too, if you ran 2:56 almost 50 years ago….#Wheels…..and I always was in awe of bespectacled Bennie Brown’s shoulders.
From the “completely unrelated to track but still awesome” category, here is a boss move if I ever saw one! Business travelers, take heed.
Full work day, as usual, but enough time to ride my bike for 45 minutes or so along the River Trail. Then it’s off to play track once again!
While walking thru the stadium before the events begin, i see 1500m finalist Josh Thompson. I tell him that during Nationals, I was standing on the track in front of his family, and my ears are still ringing. He ran that race from the back, only moving up at the bell, and snuck into 3rd place at the wire. Very cool to see a guy with a child of his own work his way onto the Worlds team. I believe he got a personal best here as well.
I asked if he knew what happened to Woody Kincaid, who fell in the 5000 semi and couldn’t quite make up the ground to qualify. Josh said that Woody was clipped from behind; his protest was disallowed because the judges said the fall was early and he had plenty of time to catch up. If that’s an accurate accounting, it’s a horribly unfair outcome. He was tripped by someone else, found himself injured and 30m behind the pack, and is denied the final because there were a lot of laps remaining?!?
Not cool.
College classmates Chris and Duncan are in the house once more! They were here at the 2016 Trials, when Chris somehow recognized me from 30 years prior, and confirmed by digging thru the meet program to find the umpire listings. Duncan ran down from the bleachers and got this great shot of us.
The men’s 400 was interesting: 4 runners abreast coming off the final turn, and Mike Norman squeezes out the victory. Shaunae Miller-Uibo has no such problems in the women’s final, as she put the race away handily.
Then, the women’s 400m hurdles. At Nationals, Sydney set a world record with no competition, and we all wondered what she’d do with the best runners in the world pushing her at this meet.
What she did is go lights out, putting away the race on the backstretch, and continuing her destructive assault on this poor defenseless event. Who breaks their own world record by 3/4 of a second?
If she runs that time against the open 400m finalists (she hurdles while they don’t), she’s 7th in the final. That’s pure insanity. Then again, she’s from Central Jersey, so that explains much!
(I grew up in Central Jersey myself, so my own insanity is similarly explained away)
I was feeling great, full of energy after the meet, and one drink changed all that. It’s been a long 10 days for me! I was so tired that I left my phone in the car and missed a perfectly good photo op with Anna Cockrell and Raevyn Rogers.
#RookieMistake
Day 7: An American Record, and Old Friends
Day 5: Errant Photographers, and a kid who finally listened to Dad Day 4: Don’t you hate it when your clothes don’t fit (and errant photographers)
Day 3: Marathons, Dance Cams, and not enough caffeine
Day 2: Celebrity Day at the Track
Day 1: Preview
No comments:
Post a Comment