|
|
|
| Photo Galleries Blog Athlete Features News Links | About/Support Contact RSS |
When I headed over to the track this afternoon, the weather had become pretty unbearably hot and quite windy. The rain earlier in the day had delayed the decathlon, but the rest of the running events were set to begin on schedule, at 4:30 p.m. The whole meet eventually ended up behind schedule, though, when the decathlon's running events had to be inserted into the schedule.
When I got to the track, I went for a short run. Along the way, I saw lots of people warming up for their events, and they all made me feel slow and out of shape. The weather wasn't quite as bad as it's been in New England recently (extremely humid with temperatures in the 90s), but it was only a couple notches better than that. The first event I shot was the 800m prelims. I usually think that the rounds are a good indicator of who might do well in the final, but I don't think the women's prelims gave much away. Because they have to run their race three times (if all goes well), all of the 800 runners seemed to be conserving as much energy as possible. Phoebe Wright's 2:06.10 ended up being the fastest time of the day. Alysia Johnson looked the most confident, for what it's worth. On the men's side, it was nice to finally see Andrew Wheating run. He made qualifying look the easiest, but it's always hard to tell. His 1:48.88 was the fastest time of the day.
To be honest, it's sometimes hard to pay attention to many of details of a race while also photographing it, so I don't have a lot to say about the steeplechase and 5,000m prelims. Jenny Barringer looked like a strong favorite in the women's steeple, and she had a big smile on her face as she came off the last water barrier and cruised to the fastest time of the day (10:00.56). She just dominated her heat. The men's final looks like it might be a little more wide open. There will be a strong Kenyan presence in the final. Billy Nelson's run made us wonder if CU could sweep the men's and women's titles, but no one is going to hand it to him.
To be completely honest, the 5,000 prelims were pretty boring. In both cases, the first heat was slow, and all of the time qualifiers came out of the second heat. Sally Kipyego and Brent Vaughn looked great. The thing that left the strongest impression on me, however, were the ridiculously slow splits in the first heat of the women's 5k. They went through the 400 in 99 seconds (6:36 1,600m pace!), 1k in 3:56, and the 1,600 in 6:08. When I left the track, my rental car seemed to think that it was 80 degrees out, and the warm, humid conditions contributed to the slow times, but so did the fact that everyone was trying to conserve as much energy as they could.
As soon as the men crossed the finish line in the second heat of the 5,000, there was announcement that a huge storm was 20-30 minutes away. I had considered staying and doing a little more work, but instead I pack up my camera, ran to my car, and drove back to my hotel as quickly as possible. I haven't yet heard a storm outside, but reading headlines like this one is sobering. Other than the announcement at the end of the meet, there wasn't much talk about the weather. The big story at the meet is the meet itself, and hopefully it will stay that way!
(I'm working on posting my photos from the 800 rounds. The process is going slowly, but I hope to have at least those photos before I collapse into bed tonight.)
Posted by Alison Wade at 11:15 p.m. | Tags: 2008 NCAA Outdoor T&F Champs