Opener @ Florida Relays

This year, just like every other year I've been living in Florida, I went up to Gainesville for the Florida Relays.

This is one of my favorite meets, mainly because I'm so popular there lol. From the judges and referees to the high school and collegiate athletes. Even in this day and age of the internet and almost every race being on youtube, it's still funny to me the conversations I have with some of these high school kids about hurdling. They know all the results and they watch every race, they even give me grief about how I need to work on my start more. It's hilarious to me.

I ran the open 110 hurdle race on Friday. I produced a time of 13.32 (0.4 wind), which is actually the slowest time I had every run at this meet. I won the race though for the fifth year in a row. Generally coming into this race, I've had a couple of runs at Disney or last year I had opened up in Austrailia.

As far as opening times, 13.32 is about on par with what I normal drop. In '07 I ran a 13.26, '08 13.48, '09 13.29.

The last three hurdles seemed like they were set at 45'' I tell you, it feels like this every year. I don't know what it is about that first time competitively over ten hurdles that's so difficult.

RACE VIDEO



Saturday, I popped off the opening leg of the shuttle hurdle relay. None of my other training partners ran, so I was picked up by a team that trains across town with Dennis Mitchell. Of course we ended up winning the race in fashion! It felt great to go out and get another run over ten in. It doesn't take me too long to get into my race rhythm, so by the time I get ready to run the finals out at North Carolina A&T in a couple of weeks, I will be ready for sure.

I'll post up some pics as soon as Eric Mitchum forwards the ones he took to me.