Happy Birthday Yo-El!!!

Today is Joel's 29th birthday, too bad he's got to spend it in Sweden where it was snowing last night. I will give him a shout out even though he's an admitted Black Republican, voted for Bush the first time and would have voted for McCain if Palin wasn't his running mate. He still has helped me get to where I am as a hurdler.

We are off to Malmo, Sweden later this afternoon. Young Hearns rolled out on us after the meet, he's competing later today for the USA in Glasgow, U.K.

Last night at the Millrose Games in New York City, Terrence Trammell drop 7.45 in the hurdles. It's good to see him back in his usual indoor form after his unfortunate injury last season in Beijing, he's one of the best to ever do it in the high hurdles.

My World Lead lasted a little longer than 24 hours, I knew it shouldn't last very much longer than that when I found out he was running at Millrose. My personal best is 7.47, so I will shoot to break that and try to regain the World Lead in Malmo, hopefully I will be successful in that attempt.

Gothenburg, Back On Track!!!

7.54, second fastest time ever run by me and current World Leader. Enough said, LOL. Great 60m hurdle opener for me, my previous opening best was 7.60 from Glasgow last season.

I also won a Samsung Soul cell phone for being performer of the meet.

Joel was second with 7.62 and Aub was third with 7.74, so 4700 swept the Samsung Galan.

After we got in trouble as a group after our performances last week in Gainesville, all is well with Disney Elite.

Brooks said the only bad thing for my race was that it was only five hurdles.

Now we will post up here in Gothenburg then take the two hour bus ride over to Malmo on Saturday.

RunBlogRun.com Blog Post

I have to admit, one of the best interviews of the Olympic Games was David Oliver. Poised, relaxed and with a self deprecating sense of humor, Oliver is a perfect interview. He is also becoming one heck of a hurdler.

Do not get me wrong. Oliver is a tremendous hurdler, but he is learning the game. How to compete on the world circuit, how to deal with media who have never seen a track meet ask him dumb questions. how to deal with track geek media ask him prying questions-Oliver does it with style.

David is coached by Brooks Johnson and it shows. Coach Johnson likes the details. And so do his athletes. Oliver hurdles well, and with the exception of last weekend, starts pretty darn well. What I really like about David Oliver is that he does not stop until he gets across the finsh line-and HE KNOWS how to lean! If I see one more American hurdler or sprinter loose a race because they do not lean at the finish line and run through, I am going to make myself watch 24 hours of Hannity and Colmes and that just is not healthy. So, dear hurdlers and sprinters, listen to your high school coaches, and run through the finish line, lean at the tape and know what line you are leaning at ( many wise athletes walk the track before to make sure that they know what to do when)--the devil is still in the details!

Oliver to Europe

ORLANDO (USA): US Olympic hurdles medalist David Oliver travels after false starting in the finals in Gainesville during the weekend to Europe. He will compete at two meets in Sweden, on Thursday Jan 29 in Goteborg and on Tuesday Feb 3 in Malmo. After withdrawal of Dayron Robles he is the biggest star of the hurdles there. After short break in US he will return to Europe to compete at Aviva Grand Prix in Birmingham. Early March he plans for first time to travel to Australia for the top meets there.

Full Blog Post Here

Gothenburg Action

Brooks, Joel and I flew out here to Gothenburg after a nice workout yesterday morning. Young Hearns will be joining us tomorrow.

Travel out here was pretty easy, for some odd reason, I didn't tap out until the last 20 minutes of the flight. I can't believe I didn't sleep on the flight, that has never happened. I knew after getting up super early for that workout I would be sleep easily, I guess I was wrong.

I spent the first part of the day out here on the phone with Verizon setting up my global service. I don't know how I forgot to do that before I left. It's fairly cold as you can imagine, so I am going to have to double up on those multi's.

Tomorrow I just have a press conference to do, train after that and I guess sit around and swap lies with these track people like we normally do after that.

Gainesville Meet, Not One To Remember.......

The day started off well, had a great warm-up and felt very good. That was about the last thing that went well during the course of the competition for me.

I ran 7.13 in the preliminary round, which is a decent time. The guy next to me managed to hit my left wrist three times. First, coming out of the blocks, how he did that, who knows. Second, over one and thirdly over two. I was pretty upset about that. That's one thing that I don't like about these type of collegiate meets as opposed to our meets on the pro circuit. There is a big disparage in talent levels and things like that are destined to happen. Plus in indoor the lanes are not as wide as they are outdoor. That time was still good enough for the fastest in the opening round.

In the final, the unthinkable happened, I was hit with a false start. I have never false started out of a meet before, but I guess there's a first for everything. I felt the guy next to me flinch, so I stupidly, flinched even harder therefore causing the false start. I'm not to upset with not getting to run the finals, I have no one to blame but myself. At least it didn't cost me anything.

It was great to finally meet one of my loyal blog followers, EJ Heat, he's a pretty cool guy. Sorry I couldn't give you more for your trip up, next time man!

I've already shook this meet off, I'm going to pack tomorrow for my trip to Sweden on Monday. I have a couple of meets over there, time to get back on them chips, enough running on the house! LOL.

Tom Jones Memorial Invitational

Me and Young Hearns (Aub-Rida) rolled up to Gainesville this afternoon for our season opening meet at the University of Florida, which we'll run tomorrow.

This meet is in memory of one of Florida's greatest coaches, Tom Jones, who passed after a battle with cancer two years ago.

I'm competing in the 55m hurdles, a little bit shorter than the normal indoor distance of 60 meters. Renaldo Nehemiah is the world record holder at this distance with a time of 6.89. I set my personal best at this facility in 2006 at 7.03.

The first round goes off at 1:15 and the final at 2:20.

I am working on a few new things that I hope work out when the gun goes off, we will see. I'm shooting for a new personal best.

I am always super nervous in these early competitions. I'm sure I'm not alone when it comes to the psyche of the elite level athletes. You hope all your training has been going right, you want to start the season off on the right foot and you really don't want to get embarrassed by the collegiate kids.

Although I use these meets as competitive practice, I still want to have a good showing of myself.

Hopefully all works out tomorrow afternoon.

New Training Partner

Xavier Carter, one of the fastest 200/400 combination sprinters in history has come down to Orlando to train under the tutelage of Brooks. He has personal bests of 19.63 in the 200 and 44.53 in the 400 as well as 10.00 in the 100. He is supremely talented and I am excited to see what he will produce as he attempts to comeback from an injury plagued 2008 season. Practice just got a little more interesting!

Now the training group consists of:

Tiffany Ross-Williams (400H)- Olympic Trials Champion, World Rank #5

Moushaumi Robinson (400)- 2004 Olympic Gold Medal 4x400 relay

Kenia Sinclair (800)- 6th 2008 Olympic Games, World Rank #8

Novlene Williams (400)- 2004 and 2008 Olympic Bronze Medal 4x400 relay, World Rank #3

Korene Hinds (Steeple)- 9:40.50 PB

James Beckford (LJ)- 1996 Olympic Silver Medal, 8m62cm PB

X-Man (Sprints) and 4700 (110H). Pretty good group.

Change Is Here, Officially!

I've just finished watching Barack Obama be the 44th man to take the Presidential Oath. He now is officially THE MAN to turn around America and re-affirm our nation's greatness.

He's got a lot of things to accomplish in America to bring the change he has promised. The economic, housing, energy and school crises that are gripping the country now, are and will be, his biggest challenges. He has the opportunity to become the greatest President in our history.

A black man in office, how fitting on the day after we celebrated one of the most influential individuals. Ever. Regardless of race.

I was watching ESPN this morning and Harrison Dillard, an individual whom I was super excited to meet in Beijing, was featured and interviewed during a segment. To hear our older legends speak about today's events is something else. He said what a lot of older blacks say, that he never thought he would live to see a black man in office, now that's happened. Barack epitomizes his slogan of "Change, Progress and Hope".

By the way, he's left handed too, just like me. He will do great!

Godspeed President Obama. God bless America.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day

The singularly most important individual in the American Civil Rights Movement is immortalized today.

After practice, I have been engulfed by the History Chanel with all the vintage Dr. King documentary stuff. My interest is always peaked by this.

I thank Dr. King for all that he had done, although he probably wouldn't be totally happy with what we as American Blacks are doing, he would see the fruits of what he started in what was arguably the most violent period in American history.

Tomorrow we will see a Black man inaugurated in the White House, I know Dr. King is smiling down.

In the great words of one of his speeches, "If you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl, but by all means keep moving." Everyone keep moving towards something positive in your life and erase any hate out of your hearts in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

R.I.P.

I just found out today that one of my fellow Howard Alums was gunned down tonight in front of his home in Phoenix, Arizona.

His name was Bilal Russell, a guy that was on the basketball team the same time I was at Howard and a guy I use to hoop with all summer long while we were in summer school.

He was getting ready to go to Law School in the fall.

This was a guy who was on his way to do something with his life. This was another senseless death and act of violence, people we need to wake up!

Of course the police have no suspects.

"For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain...having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better" (Philip. 1:21-23)

Friend, rest now in God's hands

NCTCCCA Coaches Clinic

I had the pleasure of being invited by the North Carolina Coaches Association to be a guest speaker for their annual coaches clinic.

I spent the weekend in Greensboro, they flew Brooks, Randy and myself up. This event was in conjunction with the kick-off for the International Friendship Freedom Games that Brooks hosts annually at N.C. A&T.

There were a couple hundred high school coaches in North Carolina that attended the clinic. I spoke on the elite side of the 110 hurdle event. I spoke to the coaches for about two hours on the basics of proper technique, elite level training, a typical training cycle I go through, the mentality of elite hurdlers and several other topics.

The coaches were really receptive and were eager to learn everything that I had to say, that's pretty cool. I feel that I'm 26 years old and have an expansive understanding of the event, that a lot of my peers and a whole bunch of coaches don't. That's all thanks to Brooks, LOL.

The thing that the coaches couldn't fathom was the fact that I was an Olympic Medalist and I wasn't elite on the high school or college level. They had a hard time grasping that just because you are not the top ranked high school or college athlete, you can go on to make things happen on the elite level. When I explained to them that I was a 14.25 hurdler in high school, they were like "Well, we had about 10 guys run sub 14 last year." I really emphasized to them that they should never give up on an athlete because they never know who they might have in their midst.

I had a really good time out there sharing the knowledge that I have with people that are really eager to learn.

Heartbreak City

I feel just like Chad Pennington does right now.

Happy New Year!

Well it's time to kick off 2009!!

2008 was a hell of a year personally. I reached a lot of goals that I had set for myself for the year. Good thing is, I didn't reach ALL of them. I can roll some of those goals over for '09.

Hopefully I can make 2009 way better than 2008 personally and professionally.

2008 brought me: 2 National Championships, an Olympic Medal, fast times, a Black man as President and last but not least, a division title for my Miami Dolphins!

It's going to be hard to top that, but I believe I can.

Let's set some goals for ourselves and stick to them. The main one should be to keep your haters happy. Keep getting your seven laughs in on them because you really know why they're mad!! LOL.