Fin!

In the part of the world I am in currently, it means finished.

That's exactly the word to describe my 2010 track season and man it was a hell of a good one!

Out here in Annecy, France, a city not too far from the French Alps, the curtain came down and I went out with another win in 13.11 seconds at the sixth edition of the DecaNation meet. The French guy who finished second at the European Champs finished second in 13.65.

I love this competition, in 2005, it was the first time I got to put on the USA national team colors and represent us in a minor competition. I ended up second to the World Champion at the time, Ladji Doucore from France.

I don't think people understand the feeling you get when you put on a jersey and it has "USA" across the front. I still get the same feeling now, after being on several USA teams, as I did that first time in 2005.

I took this competition very seriously. It's always a meet such as this that you can end up taking a loss or taking the competition lightly and you give your competitors just an inch of hope. I believe that's what happened back in '05. It was my first year on the professional circuit and in the DecaNation competition, I finished just four hundredths of a second behind the world champ, might not have meant much to him, but it meant the world to me.

My race wasn't the best, as I made a few more mistakes than normal, but I was very happy with my performance. I know very well that I don't have to run all out every time to win, but it is very helpful in my development for the future. In '08 I was closing out the season running low to mid 13.20s, but now I'm over a tenth better in '10.

This whole trip was made even better because my family came out with me. Being in Paris with them for three days before coming out here was so cool. Walking the Champs Elleyse, visiting the Arc de Triumph, eating on the Eiffel Tower, visiting the Mona Lisa and the Louvre, it was great! They also got to experience traveling and eating in Europe and my mom gives us major props for being able to last out here for all these months we're over here because the food from the meet was not good at all. I really don't think these European athletes understand how good they have it on the circuit in certain regards.

It's a bitter sweet ending. I love to compete so much and now there are no more competitions, I'm battling a slight bout of depression about that. Now I have to wait for months to compete again. Worse than that, I'll have to train for months with no end in sight once my break is over. It's sweet because I need to take a break, I was running about once a week, so that's not very much, but with the quality of the races I ran, it's time for it to end.

I toed the line to run 19 110m hurdle races (including rounds) and my name came on top of every single race, every single time. Finishing undefeated for a season in this event is big. Never clipped a hurdle and fell or clip a hurdle and knock myself out of a race (which we see often) or false start or DNF, nothing.

Being undefeated is a great accomplishment in and of itself, I will have to check to see the last hurdler to do that, I believe Allen did it in maybe 1996, but I am not sure. I definitely know Colin Jackson did it for a long period of time, 32 races before Allen ended it in 1995. Needless to say, it's been a very long time since we've seen a feat like this.

I will now go back to the house and post up and kick my feet up and probably spend a lot of time sleeping!!

I appreciate you guys going on this ride thru the season with me, checking out the blog and stuff, I really appreciated every last comment I got. But trust, I update this thing year round, so stay tuned