Coming into high school means I’ll be competing in high school track, which subsequently means that I’ll be competing against kids one, two or three years older than me. Which is the reason I’m attributing my results at my first meet to. Overall, the meet went exactly how I thought it would – with me in the starting blocks, preparing to race competitors that had at least a year, not to mention a foot of height, on me.
Basically, I got destroyed. Some of that was because I was one of the youngest ones, and the other bit was the fact that I just didn’t run well. In the long jump, I placed 23rd out of 67, jumping 17’6″ (which is not a bad jump, I have to say). Now, this was one of those situations where I was simply competing against older competitors. I had the best result of any freshman competing that day, and not only that, but I beat out the next best scored freshman by a little over 8 inches. When I put it in a perspective like that, I don’t feel so bad with my result. But being the best out of all the freshmen competing doesn’t mean anything. I need that top 8 finish. And that’s what I’m striving to do and will continue to attempt to achieve throughout the season. I figure I need an additional 10 inches to have a chance at placing top 8, and I’m definitely placing long jump as one of my stronger suits in track for now, seeing as people are jumping at least a foot higher than my PR in high jump.
Now, the 200m was a different story. I honestly have no idea what I did wrong. Maybe I was just tired from all my previous events? Maybe I saw I was in the lead and was content with that? I have no idea. Anyways, what happened was that I got placed in the first heat because I had no prior result to seed me into the competition (which is where the slowest people compete). I ended up winning my heat, but I also ran my slowest time in the 200 since early 7th grade. I definitely need to improve on that, so I’ll definitely put in some time into sprinting endurance.
I’m just going to skip over the two relays I ran, as we got disqualified in the 4×200, and placed last in the 4×100. As a whole (I say overall way too much, so I need to change it up), it was a good first experience, and gave me a good place to work off of. My next meet is this Saturday, and hopefully I can do a bit better. That’s also on top of preparing for Snowboarding Nationals, which happens in just TWO weeks! It’s going to be a crazy next few weeks… but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to be fun.