2011 Decathlons

Well, it's been a long time since my last post and a couple things have occurred in the meantime. The national masters decathlon in Dallas in June was a heartbreaking close brush with the WR in my age group. Backing up one step, just before I went to Dallas, I looked at the website that lists all the masters records and saw that the mark that had been the record for the decathlon in my age group had been thrown out, probably because it was determined to be wind-aided in hindsight. So the record dropped from 76-something to 7480, which gave me a better chance. The facilities were almost perfect, and even the 100 degree heat wasn't so bad because we had an air-conditioned gymnasium we could hang out in in between events, and even warm up in. The decathlon was going great from event to event, but my left hamstring was so tight I really couldn't stretch it at all. It got sore after a hard interval workout a couple weeks before, and just never loosened up, then I injured it very slightly doing some starts. I knew I was tempting fate, but I felt good otherwise, and really never considered dropping out because of the hamstring. On my second attempt at 3.80m in the vault, which was the height I made in training just the week before, I pulled the hamstring pretty badly. I had to stop the vault immediately, and I could only hope that it would loosen up before the 1500. I was still able to throw the javelin OK, and even threw a PB 39.80, but there was no joy in the 1500. I just needed to run a 5:20 to score over 7480 and break the WR, but I just couldn't stride out at all. A little over three weeks later I would run a 5:03 in the World Championships, so I know I would have been able to run 5:20 in Dallas. So, I had to settle for 6820 from 9 events. It was really heartbreaking to be so close to the record and see it slip away knowing I might not get that close again. The marks were: 12.20 6.32 11.43 1.73 55.36 15.90 38.01 3.70 39.80. The high jump was bad, but otherwise everything was on plan. The long jump was from behind the board, so it was probably close to 6.50!
So at that point I had about 3.5 weeks to rest my leg before the Worlds, and as I left Dallas I really had ZERO hope that I would be able to do that. I had trouble driving, just getting in and out of the car, and I could barely sit down because of the pain. I shunned all the fancy-smancy new-age crap like lasers and deep tissue massage, and just started running up stairs after about 4 days. Lo and behold, it started loosening up pretty quickly, and I progressed from stairs to jogging to running, to some longer intervals, and eventually to a little bit of sprinting and hurdling. It wasn't 100% in Sacramento, but I got through it and won, which was the plan. The heat there seemed even more intense than Dallas, and we didn't have an air-conditioned building, although I did sit in the car a little bit. I started out thinking that if I could just make it through the decathlon I would win, but a guy showed up from Puerto Rico that decided to make my life difficult. He was a very good athlete, apparently ran a 47s 400 when he was 20, and had done decathlons back in the day at the same time I did. My sprints and LJ were kind of bad like I expected, but my second day was pretty good with PBs in the javelin and 1500. Because Rosado had a good javelin throw, I was actually still behind him going into the 1500 and had to beat him by 5 seconds to win. I went out conservatively, a pace that I knew would get me under 5:10 thinking that would be good enough to win, but I felt good after a couple laps, and could tell that Rosado was close, so I started to pick it up, and with 400m to go, I could tell he was still just about 5 seconds back, so I gave it all I had and beat him by 8 seconds. My time was 5:03. It was the closest battle of all the age groups at Worlds, and the only one with two guys over 7000. My performances scored as a 40 year old would have won the 40 age group as well.