Welcome to the official blog of 2007 Footlocker Cross Country National Champion Michael Fout! Make sure to bookmark the link http://michaelfout.thefinalsprint.com and check back every other Thursday for Mike’s latest entries as he completes his senior year of high school running and begins his NCAA career at Florida State!
What a weekend this past weekend was! There were jaw-dropping performances from both the NON meet in North Carolina and the Junior Nationals in Ohio. I am sure that the news has been broken to you about those performances, but I just wanted to congratulate all of those who had the opportunity to compete in those races and especially congratulate the winners and All-Americans. A huge congratulations goes out to German Fernandez for his uncontested performance of the week in my eyes and many others’. His national record in the 2 mile run was truly incredible, and even though he is a competitor of mine and I will race him in the seasons to come, credit must be given where credit is due. Congrats man.
While last weekend was nothing short of amazing and entertaining to follow, starting tomorrow the athletes that strive to represent the United States in Beijing will toe the line (throw, jump, etc.). This is really the first time I will closely follow the trials and the Olympic Games, and I am extremely excited.
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The USATF Junior Championships will be held this coming Friday through Sunday in Columbus, Ohio in Jesse Owens Stadium on the campus of Ohio State University. On the line is a trip to July’s IAAF World Junior Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland. (No, I can’t pronounce that, either.) Yours truly, the Track & Field Superfan, will be on site for all three days.
The meet is open to all athletes who are teenagers for the entirety of the 2008 calendar year, and that means all high schoolers and many college freshmen. Unfortunately, USATF was caught in a scheduling bind–some of the biggest states (New York, Ohio and others) had late state championships, pushing Nike Outdoor Nationals a week later than usual, while the Olympic Trials caused the Junior championships to be held a week earlier, and the result is that the two meets are on the same weekend.
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Welcome to the official blog of 2007 Footlocker Cross Country National Champion Michael Fout! Make sure to bookmark the link http://michaelfout.thefinalsprint.com and check back every other Thursday for Mike’s latest entries as he completes his senior year of high school running and begins his NCAA career at Florida State!
The road to recovery has been undeniably long. It has been a struggle to watch as the state finals here in Indiana came to a close and to sit back and see all of the jaw-dropping results that runners across the States are throwing down. But, I am extremely happy to announce that I am well on my way back to being and feeling like the runner I should be.
Sure, right now it is nothing major … run 2 days, take a day off, run 2 days and take a day off, and so on. This has been going on for a couple of weeks now. And as much as I would like to be able to go out for a 15 miler on Sunday, I know that I have to remain patient. It is nice to have my coach, Bob Braman of FSU, preaching that to me. Because of him, I feel more grounded already, and to me that is a good thing. This coming up week, since all is going well, I hope to run each day, just 30 minutes. But after being kept from the sport I love for 2 dreadful months, some is certainly better than none.
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This past weekend I went the Ohio High School Track & Field Championships, a meet I’ve missed only once since I first attended as a high school sophomore in 1987. I like it for a number of reasons; the competition is fierce, the meet is well-organized, the athletes cannot hide their love of the sport, and I get to see a lot of old friends. This year’s meet wasn’t much different from all the rest–some great marks, kids having the time of their life, battles that go right to the finish line. But I took away something from this meet I’ve never experienced before.
I love to run and compete, but I’ve always thought my only talent is hard-headedness. I suppose all distance runners downplay their inherent physical abilities, but I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever beaten another male runner of a similar age who takes running more seriously than I do. My best high school 1600-meter time was 4:56, and that after several years of very hard work. I simply have always believed that I had few if any physical abilities, mostly because I see my body is all wrong for distance running.
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Welcome to the official blog of 2007 Footlocker Cross Country National Champion Michael Fout! Make sure to bookmark the link http://michaelfout.thefinalsprint.com and check back every other Thursday for Mike’s latest entries as he completes his senior year of high school running and begins his NCAA career at Florida State!
Talk about the excitement in the air. The post season is finally here in Indiana and in many states across the country. Collegiate regionals will even be run soon. Yeah, yeah, it kills me to watch, but I am a huge fan of the sport in general, so being that it is time for people to start rolling, I am excited. And, as time has gone on and my injuries are beginning to heal up, I have learned even more and appreciated even more than I thought possible.
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Welcome to the official blog of Chris Derrick; the 2007 Gatorade High School Cross Country Runner of the Year and 5k record holder! Make sure to bookmark chrisderrick.thefinalsprint.com and check back every other Tuesday for Chris’ latest entries as he completes his senior year of high school running and begins his NCAA career at Stanford!
The last month or so since the Arcadia invite has been for me a really low key time in my racing. I haven’t really had any races to get worked up for or to treat as anything more then glorified workouts. This was supposed to be my downtime to train hard and charge up for my final glorious exit from high school track. My last chance to test my limits, set records, place my mark, etc. But then I got mono and, instead of a fitting climax, I just kind of hit the rising action and petered off somewhere to a denouement.
My symptoms began last Wednesday or Thursday when I began to get abnormally tired and just generally feel like dog doo-doo. I ran the 3200/1600 double at my sectional meet where I had been hoping to run around 8:45 for the 3200. When I nearly fell asleep a little over an hour before my race and doing strides was a serious labor I knew I was in trouble. I didn’t push extremely hard in the race, although I did push, but still it was one of the worst races of my life. Not so much because of pain but frustration at running slower than my 5k pr pace and feeling like I was struggling. I ended up running 8:58 which is actually faster then I had run the year before but was also completely demoralizing. I seriously considered scratching the 1600 but at the time I thought that this was just a passing bug that I would be over by the time state came so I thought I would just gut it out. I ended up feeling much better the second half of the 1600 and actually ran 4:14 (2:11-2:03) to win by 3 seconds. That got me in a better mood (one that was interrupted when Danny Pawola played a practical joke and told me Kevin Havel had just run 8:44/4:14), but I was still ridiculously tired.
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Nike today announced that its Nike Team Nationals (NTN) team cross-country championship will expand this year to include individuals, becoming Nike Cross Nationals (NXN). The Nike Team Nationals event, which began in 2004, featured the 22 best teams of each gender selected via a series of regional qualifying events. This year, the top 22 teams will be joined by the 90 fastest individuals from non-qualifying teams. Nike Cross Nationals is the only national cross-country championship for both teams and individuals.
“Nike Cross Nationals is going to be the ultimate competition for high school cross country,” said Ken Dice, vice president of the Nike USA Brand. “It’s true cross country, and a true national championship. We’re inviting the best runners in the country, whether they compete individually or as part of a team. Nike Cross Nationals is going to take cross country to a whole new level of competition for these elite athletes.”
Welcome to the official blog of Chris Derrick; the 2007 Gatorade High School Cross Country Runner of the Year and 5k record holder! Make sure to bookmark chrisderrick.thefinalsprint.com and check back every other Tuesday for Chris’ latest entries as he completes his senior year of high school running and begins his NCAA career at Stanford!
I’d like to begin my blogging experience by sharing one of the most epic runs I’ve ever had, and one that encapsulates my team as well. First a little background. Like most distance runners, we at Neuqua Valley are pretty weird. One of our more minor quirks is our belief in the Interval Gods*. The Interval Gods hate us. They have cursed us and given us crappy weather at all of our meets and interval workouts this track season. What’s more they are trying to kill us: right after we left the NTN meet in Portland there were mudslides and now, just weeks after we left Arcadia, it is threatened by wild fires.
Fortunately we’ve managed to stay (for now) one step ahead of them. We only got a break from the interval Gods wrath at the Aracadia Invite. Arcadia doesn’t really count as we are fairly certain the Interval Gods live there. We tried to appease them by feeding some squirrels in a local park and it was going swimmingly until Danny Pawola offered them extra-sour-rye bread, which they hated. I’ll let that little tidbit set the scene for our tale…
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Welcome to the official blog of 2007 Footlocker Cross Country National Champion Michael Fout! Make sure to bookmark the link http://michaelfout.thefinalsprint.com and check back every other Thursday for Mike’s latest entries as he completes his senior year of high school running and begins his NCAA career at Florida State!
Yesterday, May 7, I officially became a man. And by that, I mean I turned 18 years old. As you could probably guess, I do not feel any different than I did when I was 17. Another year, another two seasons of running almost complete. Along with my birthday celebrations came reflections on the past. Those reflections dealt, of course, with running. And what a year it has been.
This time last year I was a healthy body, running everyday and incredibly excited about the track season I was putting together. I was beginning to think that I could be a national caliber runner. My first goal: Winning the state championship in the 3200 meter run. As the days until the state meet quickly passed, I was beginning to feel very anxious to see if I could reach that goal. In my head, I knew I could do it. The day came, and there was no way I was going to lose. It turns out, I didn’t! I had done it. It was, however, by no means easy. I won by just over a second as a hard charging, now freshman IU runner, came on strong. But as I crossed the line, an unexplainable feeling of excitement rushed through my body. Next stop: Nike Outdoor Nationals. I ran a 9:03 3200 a few weeks prior to NON and my goal on that chilly night in North Carolina was to run sub 9 for 2 full miles. As everybody knows, the 2 mile field that night was ridiculous as far as talent goes. I knew I had a good chance and that I could just hop on the end and “go for a ride.” I wound up finishing 11th and ran 8:58 for the full deuce! I knew I had to now put together a great cross season so that people would not think my run was just some fluke. Let the work begin.
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Welcome to the official blog of 2007 Footlocker Cross Country National Champion Michael Fout! Make sure to bookmark the link http://michaelfout.thefinalsprint.com and check back every other Thursday for Mike’s latest entries as he completes his senior year of high school running and begins his NCAA career at Florida State!
Someone once said, “Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.” For those who do not know, I have been dealing with injury for some time now. Up until last week, I had not run since March 22. I had, and am recovering from, a stress fracture in my right tibia. Sure, injuries are no fun, but the fact is that most of us will come across one at some point in time. I have had my fair share of injuries, and they never really get any easier to deal with, but you learn to deal with them in different ways.
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