Race Day 27/10/2012

Well I have just completed my 400m Hurdles and i must say I am F******g annoyed with how it went. I prepared as if it was a national final and made sure I was mentally and physically reading. During my warm up the weather was amazing, blue skies and the sun shining down on everyone. Except as the race time approached you could see the clouds starting to roll in, in the background. I knew that the weather would be fine for my race and it would have been if we had been running to schedule. My race was suppose to run at 2.40pm and so i headed out to the track 10mins earlier to get my spikes on and do a few strides before my race. As I arrived on the rack i came to the conclusion that the 800m races were still yet to start, this was not an issue as I knew i could hold my warm up and stay ready by doing strides. As I went to do my first stride out I got stopped by an official and was told that if I was not competing in the 800m I need to leave the competition area, although by this time my race should have already run. As I went to just hide off to the side of the track the same official yelled at me saying that i needed to get behind the fence. So now as I wasn't able complete my strides to keep warm i had to sit through 6 heats of 800m while getting to watch the thunder storm coming rolling in, it was about this time I realised that my perfect conditions to race is were about to change and that i would be running in the rain. Finally once my race was soon to start i was finally allowed back on to the track to try and warm up for my race and as i had antcipated just earlier, the rain truly started to set in the winds had started to pick up. After the final 800m race the 300m hurdlers had completed their race it was finally time to forget about everything that had just happened and get ready to destroy this race. As I got in to my blocks for the start of the race i remember thinking I'm ready. BANG!! The gun went off and so did I, ran 21 strides to the first hurdle and hit it perfectly, 14 strides in to the second hurdle and i was feeling amazing. Next thing i remember thinking is, wait shouldn't their be a hurdle coming up, where is the third hurdle. After having the officials not put out the hurdle I had to keep on running, the damage of this would not be felt until the first hurdle as it threw me off my complete rhythm and caused me to slow in to hurdle 4. This caused me to drop my strides to 15 two hurdles early, what made this worse was the fact that this was right before I was about to run into the headwind. As I was not up to full speed when hit by the head wind, it threw me back and forced me to drop an extra stride of the final bend into the home straight. By this time the race was practically over and i felt like I was just in damage control now and just trying to prevent anything worse happening. My final time was 56.17, 4.17 seconds off what I was hoping to accomplish. Now i knew that this was going to be a tough task going into it but had faith that I should at least get close to it, and after looking at the race I firmly believe had that 3rd hurdle been in place this would be a much different story right now. Also in pure frustration of what had just happened I decided to run the 60m race a little later in the track program. This helps back up that I was running well as I ended up running a 7.27sec into a 1.2mps head wind, which is very good as this was within 0.03secs of my 60m personal best. Any way it's time to move on from this and prepare for the rest of the season, here's hoping it will go much better. Next goal is to continue on training hard and to try and qualify for world university games being held in Russia during June 2013. This should help having my training partner Dan O'Shea racing and hopefully both of us and get our times down under the qualifying mark.

Here is the video of my race.

InBody Test 3

Here are the results from my third and final InBody test.

The results from this test shows that I have put on an extra 3.1kgs, this is not a worry as my muscle mass is up 2.5kgs from last time and my body fat percentage is down 1.9%.

Training for Week 12

Here is training for the final week of my journey. I will be completing my event this Saturday and will attempt to complete my goal of running sub 52 seconds for the 400m Hurdles. This is my final chance to achieve this goal as i will be turning 20 on Monday the 29th of October, making me ineligible for level 4 carding. So here is the final part of the plan to give me the best possible chance to achieve this.

Review of Training Week 11

In Review week 11 was a lighter week. My average RPE for the week was 7.6. This weeks focus was on more specific exercises with my last hard session on the Wednesday being 10 days before my event. This allows a bit of an overshoot to occur and gives the body the time to recover in time for the planned event or in this case the 400m hurdles.

Race Day 20/10/2012

Thankfully the races weren't canceled this week therefore i was able to compete in my first 110m hurdles and 200m of this season. The 110m Hurdles were a little disappointing as after having a good warm up and a couple of amazing runs over the first two hurdles, I managed to smash the first hurdle with my knee in the race. This threw me completely off my race and clipping multiple other hurdles throughout the rest of the race. Although I did manage to recover the final time of 16.85 was much slower than I was anticipating. The other race I ran was the 200m. This race went much better. I decided to go out hard on the bend and in doing so ended up making the stagger on the whole field by the time I had reached the straight. The final time of 22.98secs was misleading as it doesn't show my easing up down the home straight, this however is a good  sign for things to come as being able to go sub 23 in my opener while still easing up is showing a lot of potential for what might be possible of doing in this event this year.

Training for Week 11

Here is week 11's plan for training, this Saturday i plan on running a 200m and a 110m hurdles. Lets hope the competition doesn't get cancelled again.

Review of Week 10

Training this week went really well and was feeling really good for Saturday,then the meet got canceled. Was lucky that i like to go down early before races as I did not know it had been until I arrived and my coach told me. Would have been good to see how I had fared over the 400m hurdles that day due to the fact that I was coming of a heavy week of training but I guess you have to do what you can therefore it was changed to 2x200m and race pace just to get the body going. The average RPE was 8.2 for the week. Mondays session was a killer on the body but was a good confidence builder leading up into the weekend. hurdles went well this week so am just hoping it will carry on into next.

Race Day 13/10/2012

So I was suppose to compete today but due to the snow warning the meet was canceled so this means my first 400m Hurdles for the season will have be done on the day of the event as it is not scheduled on next weeks track program. Due to the meeting being canceled, I ended up just training instead. I completed two 200m at race pace today. They felt smooth and fast so hopefully this can transfer into my racing next week and I can achieve some fast times.

Joined Hill City University

Today I finally joined Hill City University Athletics Club. In doing so i have switched from my old club Kiwi Athletics Club, whom is based in Wellington. This change means that I will no longer be competing under the yellow and black colors of Wellington at nationals, instead trading them in for the blue and yellow of Otago.

Training for Week 10

Here is my plan for week 10. On Saturday I plan on running my first 400m Hurdles of the season, heres hoping it all goes well :) .

Review of Week 9

Week 10 was tough on me as I spent a lot of the first half of the week recovering from competing on Saturday therefore RPEs were higher than they should have been. The average RPE for the week was 8 so it still could have been worse. Apart from feeling sluggish at the start the body started to come to and was able to get some good training in later in the week.

Start of Training for Week 9

As this is the last week of training before I start competing, I am hoping that it will go smoothly without to many problems. Although my knee has been playing up over the last month I plan on keeping up with the foam rolling of adductors to allow me to keep on training.

Training For the Month of October

Here my whole training program for the month of October. As October marks the begin of the Athletics New Zealand Season, I will be aiming to get in a few races before my 400m Hurdles on the 27th of October. The plan is to run two 400m Hurdles in this month the first being on the 13th October and the other being my event. I will also attempt to complete a 110m Hurdles and a 200m race in the weekend separating the two 400m hurdles.