Crunk Juice 8/23/10

I just got my crunk juice for today! I just happen to go on the NIKE website and saw my picture on there and I got SUPER hype. I was so crunk that I wouldn't be surprised if the people staying below me in the hotel send security up here. Like I said it doesn't take very much for me to get hyped up, good thing I didn't see this before a race LOL.

Things out here in Sweden have been going amazing. Training has been definitely been awesome. I miss practicing with my teammates though, at least I'll see a couple of them in Rieti late this week. I've got some celebrity status out here too, everywhere I go, people here know who I am. It feels pretty good taking pictures and signing autographs. We work so hard and I appreciate every minor sign of respect. I guess people have been writing on Swedish blogs that they've been seeing me around town, so tomorrow I have an interview with the major paper so that should be fun.

I had to ship my Diamond League trophy back home unfortunately. It was VERY hard traveling with it from Zurich to Sweden and I have several more flights to catch and I don't think I can manage. That thing weighs over ten pounds in it's case. I got the information of the guy from DHL that is responsible for sending it just in case something happens, I know who I need to come back to Sweden and see about.

All things aren't so great, the U.S. track and field community lost a great man in Scott Davis, the voice of our U.S. championships for what seems like forever. The last time we conversed, I was giving him a hard time because he announced I was an All-American from the University of Tennessee! We laughed and talked out in Sacramento for what seemed like all night long. He was very entertaining. There's a Facebook group formed to put him on the cover of Track and Field News, I'm all for it! The people behind the scenes are responsible for the development and growth of our sport just as much as the athletes are.

Also my training partner Novlene Williams-Mills is dealing with a loss in her family and had to leave Europe abruptly. Please keep their families in your prayers.

Fantasy Football Time!

Last night I had my draft for my favorite fall pastime, fantasy football.

Being so competitive from the time the calendar flips to January 1 of every year, all the way until the middle to end of September given my career, it's hard to give up the competitive juices. This gives me an avenue to compete while I'm bored out of my mind during the fall season.

I'm in a league with 11 other of my friends, including my brother and of course Aubrey Herring and Joel Brown. Like I said before, we had the draft last night and we all were on line for it, it was cool catching up with everybody all at once.

Somehow Joel and his raggedy looking team won the Super Bowl last year, this is the fourth year of it for us and hopefully I can bring home my first title.

I'm confident in my squad, it shapes up like this:

QB- Matt Schaub (Hou), Eli Manning (NYG), Matt Ryan (Atl)
RB- Frank Gore (SF), LeShawn McCoy (Phi), Micheal Bush (Oak), Jahvid Best (Det)
WR- Lee Evans (Buf), Kenny Britt (Ten), Percy Harvin (Min), Steve Breaston (Ari)
TE- John Carlson (Sea)
K- Neil Rackers (Hou)
Defense- Minnesota Vikings, Miami Dolphins

Pretty solid team, I like my chances. We'll see what happens. You can say I'm a fantasy junkie because I also play fantasy football, European style with the English Premier League. I'm killing in that as well, two weeks into the season.

The one rule I live by is that you should only have one team. I know people who have three or four teams, that's weak! It's like filling out ten brackets for the NCAA tournament!

Went Out With A Bang...

Figuratively and literally!

I capped off my great time out here in Zurich with an impressive performance, running 12,93 (-0.4w). We were the penultimate individual event of the competition and I made the fans go crazy! That really makes me feel good that they are so appreciative of all the hard work we put in to this sport. Trust me, it is not easy going out and running fast time after time after time. As a sprinter, a serious injury is knocking on the door every training session and every race.

I got to officially wrap my hands around the championship trophy for the Diamond League. The celebration that had for us was so classy!

As I mentioned, I literally went out with a bang when I crossed the finish line. I don't know exactly what happened, but I knew something like this would be inevitable. I tend to lean so hard at the end, don't ask me why I do it either. I've never trained or practiced a lean, so I guess this is just how I naturally finish the race. Not sure if it's a bad thing or a good thing, but it works so it's cool.

Thankfully, nothing is messed up, got a couple of track burns, but I've had WAY worse turf burns playing football, so this is nothing.

I said in my previous post that I was hoping the training group could go 1-2-3, but that didn't happen. Dwight finished second in a seasons best 13.25, it's cool seeing him put the pieces together a little at a time, that's the same thing I spent years doing. Joel finished fifth in 13.31 after an awful start.
The race was pretty fast top to bottom. 13.36 got you eighth place! That's crazy.

My performance was just .01 off the meet record held by the legendary Roger Kingdom set back in 1989 which was a world record at the time. I am now equal second fastest ever at this great venue, tied with another great, Renaldo Nehemiah. His time was also a world record when he ran it.
The fans at the meet showed me SO much love! I thoroughly enjoy that. I went out on the track early for the "Presentation of the Stars" and it was so electric in the stadium already! Fans made signs for me and everything.

This blog has been taking on a life of its own and I guess the local Swiss fans are avid readers. They read about my love of chocolate, so on my victory lap, I received several boxes of chocolate. I really do appreciate the support! Like I've said before, I try to sign every autograph and take ever picture, although after a race I'm exhausted. Showing the fans my appreciation for them is equally as important as their appreciation for me.

Unfortunately, my time in Zurich has come to an end. I'm heading up to Sweden tomorrow to just chill out and recharge my batteries and train for a while. I will be running at the Continental Cup, September 5th representing the America's team. I'm not too sure if I'll be doing anything before that or not, I really hope I will because I love competing. My coach has had to reign me in this year as far as my schedule because if it was up to me, I'd be running all the time. It's pretty hard for me to deal with the fact that I can't compete as much as I use to or would like to, but I know it's for the best.

I'm going to see my number one favorite soccer team, FC Barcelona, play next week, I'm so excited to go to that. They are the reason I even started paying attention to the sport in the first place back in early '06.

I'll keep you guys posted on all the goings on out here! Stay tuned...

Screamin' Let's Get It From Another Planet!!

My time out here in Zurich has been great, the hospitality has been very impressive!

In my last post, I commented about the kids clinic I was attending in the town of Chur, Switzerland. I must say, the reception I received there blew me away!

First I hopped on the helicopter for the 20 minute flight to the neighboring city. I am a big fan of helicopter rides, the views of the mountain sides of Zurich were off the charts.

The chopped landed right in the middle of the infield and we were awaited by hundreds of Swiss kids ranging from first grade to middle school.

One of the most unexpected things happened to me out there. A kid I gave my autographed starting bib number to at this meet in 2008 brought it out and asked me if I remembered. Of course I didn't, but he said that he stayed with athletics because I gave him that and inspired him. That was really cool. Like I mentioned in the previous post, I know you can't touch everybody, but you can affect at least one and it looked like I did that back in '08.

I find it very important to sign as many autographs and take as many pictures as I can because the fans are the lifeline of the sport to be honest.

I had a press conference yesterday that lasted for just about an hour. It was the longest one I have ever had, but it was cool to me. You never know what type of funny question someone will ask you. I stay will a smile on my face because this is a true blessing to be doing what I want to do. I'm a very positive person and it was disappointing to me when I read a recent article I did in London that painted me in a negative light, but I know the "if it bleeds, it reads" mantra in the media, so it's ok, you live and you learn.

Tonight is the big night, race day! Man I live for this.

This is the last Diamond League race for the 110m hurdle event and I have an insurmountable lead in the points, so tonight, I will be taking home this nice piece of hardware!

Everyone knows I love winning tangible things such as trophies and medals, so you better believe this will not be leaving my sight once it touches my hands after the race! It will definitely have a prominent position in my house as well LOL.

As for the race tonight, I'm not exactly sure who is all in the race, my two other training partners are though. It is funny because I remember when I started out on the circuit, I use to be obsessed with looking at start lists. I am hoping that we can finish 1-2-3, of course with me in first position, LOL (come on, cut me some slack haha) and everyone walks away 100% healthy and can get ready for the next competition.

I will make a post meet update later on, wish me success!

My Arrival In The Home of Chocolate!

I have now arrived in Zurich, had a nice workout session and a great interview with the Swiss television media.

Zurich is to me, the BEST meeting on the European circuit and it's not even close. They have the best physio, best food, top level accommodations and the atmosphere during the competition is electric!

When I landed at the airport, I was picked up swiftly, arrived at the hotel and was greeted personally by the meeting director, Patrick Magyar, who already had my room key and meet information packet ready. All I had to do was walk in the door and head right to my room. That is very big to a lot of us athletes as we criss-cross Europe for these competitions. Not to mention they even do our laundry for free at this competition.

It's small things like getting laundry done that we take for granted at home, but it's a lot of work to do on our own out here. Keeping a clean set of underwear is not an easy task for us! Keep in mind they only allow us 20kg worth of luggage to carry as well and we are gone for months at a time. Zurich takes care of a lot of the off the track things we have to deal with so we can focus down on having great performances.

Being in Zurich plays into one of my vices though. Upon check in, they always give us a big box of Swiss chocolate. Everybody that knows me knows how much I love chocolate. That is probably the main reason why I had to get three root canals and spent over 20 hours in the dentist office before I went to London! I try to lay off, but I just can't help myself. I'm always telling myself "OK, just one more" but I think they sprinkle something in the chocolate over here, it's so addictive.

The Zurich Diamond League event is the only competition I have been to every single year of my career. They have always extended an invitation to me. My first season in 2005 I got in because they had a "B" heat, '06 I finished 4th, which was very big for me at the time, in '07, although I got hurt at the World Championships and every other meeting was rescinding their invitations, Zurich still had me in attendance. In '08, I ran my second legal sub-13 here and '09 they had me back for my first real appearance coming off of my torn calf and I finished 5th, beating individuals who were finalist at the World Championships.

We race here on Thursday evening, but today, I'm looking forward to a kids clinic I am doing in the city of Chur, Switzerland. I am traveling by helicopter so I will be able to check out some great views of the land. I always like when I get a chance to interact with kids, no matter what country they are from, they are the future of our world and like I always believe, I may not affect every kid, but I know I will have an impact on at least one by the time I leave.

Video of My 13.06 Race In London/Interview

Race footage from this past weekend, with a couple of post race interviews. It felt good to hear one of the all time hurdled greats, Colin Jackson, positively critiquing my race. I know that I am a good hurdler, but when you get some of the best people that ever did it saying positive things about your performances, it feels good.

Wrapped Up the Diamond League Title!!

For some reason out here in London, the internet had been down for four days! I've never heard of a situation like this, you can only imagine the agony I was going through. No Slingbox to watch, no internet to surf, couldn't update the blog, I was going through it!!

Although I was without the most important thing I have during my European travels, I was kept plenty busy.

I arrived in London last Tuesday. I flew over on U.S. Airways, remind me to tell my manager never to book me on them again for international travel.

Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty chill days for me. Just eat, catch up on sleep, did some interviews and had a couple of training sessions. I wanted to go out on Wednesday, but the weather had not been good at all, lots of rain and cold of course.

Thursday came around and I finally . Myself, Tyson Gay and European hurdle champion Andy Turner caught a classic English bus to the press conference activities in central London.

The cool thing about the bus we rode on was it had our pictures on the side of it promoting the competition.

We rode around on that bus for quite a while, but it was cool, you know I don't mind doing interviews and taking pictures LOL. We made a quick stop by the 2012 Olympic Stadium and it looks awesome, they are doing a great job on it. Hopefully I'll be in able to compete in there for the Games when they roll around.
After my day out on the town, of course I had my last training prep before competition. Now it was time to kick my feet up and chill until I took the track.

The London Diamond League is a very unique competition. It is the only invitational that hosts every track and field event, but it's also spread over two days. When I saw everyone heading to the track Friday, I was very glad I wasn't competing that day. It was pretty cold and the rain looked like it wasn't going to let up. I just caught a ride to a local laundry mat and washed clothes.

Saturday morning rolled around and I had to do something the night before that I NEVER do for my European competitions and that was set an alarm. Had to be on the shuttle to the stadium at 11:30am. Most of the time I'm not competing until 9 at night.

The London Diamond League is also unique in that it is the only major invitational that I've been to where I had to run a preliminary race and then I final. I like the set up, I use the first round as an extended part of my warm up anyway.

This was a big set of races for me because if I won this meet, I would lock up the Diamond League championship for 2010, I really wanted to handle that business here and not put it to chance out in Zurich next week.

My first round went off, nothing unexpected happened and I ran a wind aided 13.02 to win my heat. My training partners Joel Brown and Dwight Thomas finished second and third. It feels good when you look up and see your teammates finishing right in order, I think that is what is suppose to happen when you're training with top level performers.

Between the prelim and final, there wasn't much time before we had to report back to the call room. Just enough time to get stretched, talk to my coach and catch my breath.

In the finals, I was pretty much unpressed from the start, so I tried to focus on staying in attack mode for all ten hurdles. The last thing I wanted to do was relent or take my foot off the gas thinking I had the win already because in the hurdles, it's never a definite until you cross that tape! I crossed in 13.06 (-0.4w) which was the meet record. Dwight finished second and Joel ran into some issues but was able to finish fifth.

When I finished, I was under-impressed with some technical aspects of my run, but that quickly subsided when I breathed a big sigh of relief, realizing I clinched the top spot as the number one hurdler in the world undoubtedly. Accomplishing goals is so important in life because it's a quantifiable measure of improvement. Whether you're an athlete or work a 9 to 5 job, we all have goals we want to check off the list short term and long term and I love when I can draw a line right through one more thing on my list for 2010.
I spent an extra day in London and I was looking forward to this day from the time I found out I would be here another day after competition.

I got the chance to catch a Premier League soccer match between Arsenal and Liverpool at Anfield Road, one of the most hallowed grounds of European football. The Gunners of Arsenal are my favorite English football team and to get a chance to catch a game, I was all for it.
Arsenal hooked me up with some fresh gear too! A personalized jersey was one of the items, but I dare not wear that to Liverpool's home grounds LOL. The game was great, ended in a 1-1 draw as Arsenal pulled even in the latter moments of the game. My favorite Gunner, Cesc Fabregas didn't play today so that was unfortunate, but I saw Van Persie and Abou Diaby get it in.

This was the best sporting event I have ever been too. The fans are SO passionate about their team and their players. They had songs for every one of their star players! It was loud and rocking for the entire 90 minutes. I thought I was a die hard fan, but I'm not even close and neither is any other American I know when it comes to supporting their team. We have a long way to go!

A big thanks goes out to Zarah, she works with the UK Athletics and she looked after me while I was here and made sure we sorted the game out smoothly, I'll put my vote in to get here a raise!

Now I'm off to Zurich, the last stop in the Diamond League for 110 hurdles. Since I've clinched, I can just relax and have a good time out there like I normally do. Sorry for the length of this post, but I've got to blame the internet here because this should have been three different one's if I had the chance, but thanks for taking time out to read it as usual, I appreciate it!

Bridging the Hurdling Gap

Marc Middleton and his crew from "Growing Bolder" came out to the track and did a short documentary on my coach Brooks Johnson. This is a great piece they put together.

As you can see from the video, I seemed to be the only one not training the day they came out and that's for good reason, I was coming off one of my nine hour sessions at the dentist and only had a jog and stretch workout.



You can check out more from the crew at www.marcmiddleton.com and www.growingbolder.com

Made The Cover!

People have a "bucket list" of things they want to do or accomplish by the time they die, well I can cross off making the cover of Track and Field News on my bucket list of things I want to accomplish before I retire.

I'm sure people might be wondering how in the world did it take me four days before I wrote a blog post on it, but trust, it would have only taken me four minutes, the only problem was trying to find a big enough picture of the cover. I only could save the tiny thumbnail picture from their website, so I stole this picture off of track and field news' twitter page.

My mom called me when I was in Cracker Barrel after practice ordering myself some dinner to go, that's how I found out. She asked me how come I didn't tell her the big news, I had no clue what she was referring to, but then she told me. I played it cool because I was in public and didn't want to cause I scene, but I rushed to my house to hop online and see.

I usually never pass go or collect $200 before I hop my stank behind in the shower, but that could wait this time. When I got to the website and scrolled to the bottom to see the magazine, I got super crunk, I started hollering and running around my house. I don't remember the last time I was that crunk, I mean I was on level 100! I don't think anybody in the history of Track and Field News has been more excited to be on the cover than me. I'm not even sure why it was something I deemed important.

Small things like that brings me a lot of joy. I think I brought up being on the cover of the magazine to everybody that works at Track and Field News. I thought it would be hard to make the cover because you don't see hurdlers on the cover ever. Only distance runners and Bolt really. The G.O.A.T. Allen Johnson only made it one time and that was in 2006, think of all the accomplishments he had prior to making it.

I really appreciate it in all honesty. Jon Hendershott has been a great guy and really has been giving me some pub since 2006 in the mag. He's one guy I really enjoy interviewing with. I said that I am going to buy 1000 copies of the magazine to wall paper a room in my house with, but I haven't even seen it yet, but you better believe I've been blowing up my local bookstores and Track Shack waiting for it to come it!