Wednesday, February 09, 2005

You're Looking at a Record Holder

After watching the Millrose games on Saturday, I started getting really nostalgic about my track days. I really enjoyed being in track back in high school and sometimes wish that I would have continued on doing it in college, but injuries and lack of time kept me from it unfortunately. I enjoyed track (and cross country) much more than I did basketball because it was an individual sport where I was responsible for what I did and didn't depend on anyone else (unless it was a relay, of course). I also knew that I was going to play, as opposed to basketball when I could get to play 2 minutes or an entire half depending upon the coaching style of the game.

In cross country, I was never that great of a runner. I was usually the 5, 6, or 7 guy on our team and since we didn't have a very deep team this meant that I never really was much competition for the runners on the other teams. My first 5K I ran in something around 21 and a half minutes, which if you're not a CC runner, is atrocious. By the end of the season I had my times down to right under 20 minutes and I think my personal best for the season was 19:30 or something around there. As I said before, this isn't very good, especially in comparison to the lead runners who'd be finishing in the upper 16's and low 17's.

I eventually worked my 5K time down to around 18:30, but that was while I was in college and was simply training to do road races. Even though it was much better than my high school times, I was not even close to being good enough to compete at the collegate level. That, and my ankle injury still bothered me at times.

Now, back to where I was actually going with this--track. Part of the reason I enjoyed this sport so much was the variety of what I got to do. Throughout my high school track career I did every event except for pole vault, hurdles, and high jump. Many of the events I wasn't very good at, but sprints were my forte. Most often I'd run a combination of the open 100, 200, 400 and the 4x100, 4x200, and 4x400. Obviously I couldn't run all six because of Minnesota State High School League rules, but I'd often run a mixed combination of the six.

As I was putting some of my little brother's stuff away from when we'd moved it out of his room to carpet, I noticed his track stats sheet from last year. Still in my nostalgic state, I glanced through it, noting how Ryan had did in his events (he only does shotput and discus). At the end of the packet was a list of all of the school records. While I was a senior, I was actually a part of 3 of the relay school records--the 4x100, 4x200, and 4x400. We had an extremely good sprinting crew that year with a couple of developing underclassmen. These little whipper-snappers broke the 4x100 and 4x200 records the next year after I had graduated. I figured that they'd also take the 4x400 record... but they didn't.

Right there in the Hayfield track and field record book, my name was still printed, along with my three teammates, as holding the 4x400 school record. That is probably my biggest accomplishment in high school sports, and I can only hope it stays in there for a while.

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