The All-nighter

There are some experiences in life that even sleep must step aside for.  One of those things is Track and Field.  The Olympic Trials in Eugene, OR to be exact. I know on TV you get a much better view, it's up close, it has commentary (not always a good thing).  But they will cut away from a 5K showing only the beginning and the last straight-away, if they show it all, and there just isn't anything like being there when it comes to running races.

And even though I had to catch the HUT shuttle from Corvallis to the Portland airport at 2:30am and I wasn't yet packed for my trip to Crested Butte and Boulder (save for my MTB shoes and pedals), I decided that as soon as I got off work, I would be making the 40-mile drive to Eugene and Hayward Field.

Hayward Field, a week before the trials.  Tool and I drove down and touched the track.

The line-up for Monday night went as follows:  Women's steeplechase (which I missed thanks to the high-caliber individuals at security who couldn't decided if my folding chair was a weapon or not), Women's 800m final, Men's 800m final, Women's 5000m semi-final, Men's 5000m final. Yeah, baby.

I didn't have a ticket, but there were still individual tickets for sale scattered along the back-stretch.  I sprinted through the festival area and entered the stadium right as the steeplechase was ending.  Oh, well.  I had a seat in the front row, but decided to meet up with Paris and Nick and Friends, people that I run with occasionally in Corvallis (only occasionally, because they are so much faster than me, no joke).  They were sitting in a higher row and had a better view of the entire stadium.

The women's 800m was exciting, but predictable, and weird for me because there are people out there racing that I lined up with on the track in when I was in college.  No regrets, but still.

Hazel Clark took the first 200m out at a blistering pace ~26 seconds.  To give some perspective, she averaged 30 seconds per 200m for the race (and the men would go out in 24 seconds later on).  The field hung right there with her, and the finish came down to whoe could sprint through there butt-lock the best.  Hazel was able to lead wire-to-wire and hold on for the win, just under 2:00 at 1:59 (smokin' even with the crazy 200m start).  And Alice Schmidt, formerly of the UNC track team (there's some history there), ran the race like a champion and just came up short.

But, the men's.  OMG, what a nail-biter.  And what a crazy race!  If you didn't see it, I order you to stop reading now and paste the words "800m Men's Olympic Trials" into the search on YouTube.com and watch it over and over again.  Then come back.  Better yet, here it is:

Nick Symmonds made the perfect move (he is the one who won).  Andrew Wheating did the same thing he did at the NCAA championships, a come-from-behind-blast-them-put-of-the-water-go-go-gadget-legs-move that I have done and have seen so many times in an 800m.  This youngin' has an awesome future ahead.  And Christian Smith chose the perfect moment to take a face plant on the track.  You know the best part about this race, those guys all train together in Eugene, local boys, and they came out to the concert after the meet to mingle and talk it up with the fans.

But that wasn't all.  I got to watch both women's 5000m semi-finals from start to finish.  Lauren Fleshman, Shalane Flanagan, Molly Huddle, Sarah Slattery, and Kara Goucher all made it through to the finals on Friday.  Showdown!  They made a 15:30 5K look easy.  Sarah didn't look all that sharp, but I've seen her pull out all the stops for big-time races (Bolder Boulder 2006).

The Men's 5000m was...strange.  Brent Vaughn took it out hard in the first 3-4 laps and lead the field by almost 40 yards at one point. Then there was a lot jostling and fighting for position, Adam Goucher dropped out (??!!).  And Mat Tegenkamp almost ate it on the final turn before firing off the adrenaline rush for a 2nd place finish.  No meet record, stadium record, or trials record.  Prefontaine's 5k Olympic Trials record still stands for another four years.  I think some people in the crowd almost breathed a sigh of relief when that happened.  People, records are meant to be broken.

After all that, I hung around Eugene until 11:00 am or so.  I drove Paris back to Corvallis, dropped by my house to pack really quick and drove to the HUT shuttle stop, glad I had booked it at the last minute because I thought I would probably fall asleep driving myself.  However, I was so wound up, that sleep wouldn't come and I ended up surfing the net and reading all the way to Portland and then on to Boulder.