The 400m Semi & 5000m final

My 400m prelim last night went very well for the first 300m and then got really difficult and frustrating. I started very well and held a resonable top speed in comming into the second corner. At the half way mark, I was actually hovering around my personal best for the 200m of 25 second.

Unfortunetly when I came around the corner, a few of the athletes made up the stager and I lost my concentration. I shortened my stoke rather than lengthinging it which made me decellerate a little dropping me from 3rd postion, to 5th. I still made it into the Semi-final but I need to figure out how to cruise at my top speed becuause it wasn't there last night, maybe some longer accelerations in the warm-up to get ready for that will be best. I also am thankful of not needing the naproxen anymore and have now gone back to IB Profen with only slight discomfort.

So after my 400m heat, I came back to the village, showered and jetted off to the track to watch the 5000m where we had both men and woman competing (not together of course). The womans final was amazing right up until the last few laps. I was seated in the final straight and was able to the the worst crash I have ever seen live. Fortunetly I was also able to see my friend and training partner Diane Roy bypass the carnige and captured the Gold Medal.

In my perspective, the swiss girl caused the crash and was invloved in it which isn't nice but it would be terrible if you caused a crash and weren't affected. I don't know what happend after because there were 4 girls sprawled out on the track and no one helping them. As the remaining girls started to come around, they officials started pulling the off the track. This late action nearly caused a secondary crash because the officials were oblivious to the remaining athletes and one had to go really wide to avoid the stretcher with a broken athlete on it.

Sadly as countries sometimes do, a few protests were lodged and although you can't protest a crash, they seem to be protesting the fact that the officials walked out onto the track during the race. With one girl looking completly knocked out and another I hear has a broken collarbone, I think getting them off the track was the right thing to do. Also, this happend after several athletes were out of the race which makes me wonder the relevence.

Anyway, I've heard that they may re-run the race and that makes me sad because Diane won that race by surviving for 5000m and that's always half the battle. Think of nascar, 30 cars start, 15 finish. It's just racing....

I race my 400m Semi tonight and think I may go for a jog after lunch to make sure I'm nice and sharp.

Bye for now