Let's Go Get 'Em Again...

Being a professional track and field athlete, our travels and journeys to exotic and remote places around the globe is definitely a perk that comes with the job. My journeys have now taken me to the south of France. Monaco to be exact.

This competition is a favorite of mine for a few reasons. The weather is always great, the scenery is off the charts and of course, the type of vehicles you see driving around town is like something out of the Robb Report.

This is the fifth time I've had the pleasure of visiting here for competition and I've historically done pretty well at this meet.

They have just finishing putting down a new surface for us to compete on, it's only been down for three days. I haven't heard of anything like this before, but I tell you, it's a definite upgrade from the old track in the looks department.

I've been pretty much chilling since I've been here, took a couple of trips to the track for light workouts. The lead up to an event is generally my favorite part of the track meet, with the pre-meet press conference being the highlight.

Of course all the press wants to ask and talk about is me running the world record. That's fine, at least they're talking to me about something, I remember the days when nobody cared what I had to say lol.

But I tell them like always, I don't try to chase a particular time, I run to get wins but of course I hope that the time is fast as well, but first and foremost, winning is paramount.

People get caught up in times, which basically is what our sport is all about, but I'm a firm believer that what we think is fast now will be common place in my lifetime. Say I go and run 12.86, that will mean the last two world records haven't lasted longer than two seasons. So the likelihood of that lasting isn't very good either.

Take my event, we see running under 13 seconds an all-time great performance. Since the '08 season, myself and Robles have run it a combined 14 times, a little over 30% of all of the sub 13 performances in the history of the event. In two years! So it's already becoming something that we see with regularity. Keep in mind in '09, we both didn't compete outside of a handful of times because we were injured, so imagine the numbers had we have been healthy.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to be the world record holder in the event, but I want to have a performance like Usain Bolt, where it's so impressive that my grand kids will still talk about it. That's where running a time can make you great, but I think winning is the ultimate key to being great.

If you look at Allen Johnson, he never had the world record and never solely owned the American record, yet and still he is considered the greatest hurdler of all time. Why? It's simple, he was a winner.

If you're someone who frequents my blog often, you never see me write about what time I am going to run in a given meet, simply because I have no idea what's going to happen. I can say I'm going to run 12.95, but what if I get to the meet and it's raining and a -1.7 headwind? The likelihood of me reaching that performance is slim. But one thing for sure, I can still give it 100% and get the win.

That's what I am going to strive for tomorrow night out here in Monaco. Give it 100% and try to get four more Diamond League points. One of my goals this year was to be the Diamond League champion and I really want to attain that goal.

Universal Sports will be having a live webcast of the competition tomorrow, they do an awesome job with the coverage, I hope you guys will check it out. I go off at 9:25pm local (3:25pm eastern)