Steve - 2.25

Day 1 of my Corporate Track and Field event. On Friday night I drove up to San Ramon, which is like a 6 hour drive from Los Angeles.

I at first was told I was going to run an open 400m race and a 200m leg in a relay. Then it turned into a 400 and a 400. Then a 400 and a 800. The  800 was in a relay for a preliminary round, so the time didn't really matter. Fortunately the 400 was up first so I could focus on that. It's been a long time since I have run an open 400 in a race, let alone an all-out sprint 400 in spikes. Despite not having even worn spikes in 3 years, I decided it was time to go for it. I warmed up carefully and did all my old track drills. Made sure I got up to full-speed running for some ~100m build-ups a few times.

Before the race I was talking with one runner entered in the same race who said he had run a 56 recently. I said I would be happy if I was a few ticks under 60. He said he was going to use blocks. There's no way in hell I was going to use blocks. I figured I would just do a standing start. There were 5 runners in the race and I drew a pretty favorable lane, lane 3. It felt weird just standing there waiting for the gun. I didn't know exactly how to do a standing start for it. I have done standing starts for open 800s before but that's totally different. Since in a 400 you basically want to sprint as hard as you can the first 100. You're definitely not supposed to do that in an 800.

Anyway, the gun finally went off and I blasted out of the starting line. I ran a pretty good curve because I heard the announcer say my name and that I was "running well out of lane 3" or something like that. That's always cool. Once we got to the straightaway and I let off the gas a bit and let my momentum take over. I could feel a few runners ahead of me and a few behind me as we approached the turn. Once we got to the turn, I basically accelerated as hard as I could. I didn't really observe any of the other runners going through the curve. With the stagger, things don't typically shake out until the final 100. Once I got there, I still felt strong and I hit the treacherous headwind. There were two runners ahead of me, one about 20m, the other 10-15m. I pushed as hard as I could. I could see that guy who said he had run a 56 was in first place. I focused on trying to make up ground on the #2 runner and I managed to close some ground once we finally hit the line. I heard the announcer say the winning time was 54:xx. I knew must have at least been under 60. The other two runners finished well behind me (more than 10 seconds) so I had an easy third place. I walked over to the timing tent and I got my official time of 58.89! I was pretty happy to be more than a second under 60! First place was 54.47 and second place was 57.04. Running that time in the 400 basically made the whole trip for me.

Later in the day I cruised the 800m in 2:39.