Monday, July 30, 2012

The big wait

Some of you might be wondering what I've been up to over the past few days.  Well, I know my parents have.  To be honest, there really isn't a whole lot going on right now.  Unlike 2008 when tickets to multiple events were easy to get, for a small price, tickets here in London are very difficult to get.  I think there are a few reasons for that:

1.  Proximity to Europe and the ease of travel to London made it much easier to get here than to Beijing.
2.  Apparently any person that bought a ticket had their name printed on the ticket, so it is a personal ticket.  That makes it kind of hard to buy tickets on the street.

All that being said, I have continued to explore around the city, and of course, our practices have continued.  Amanda took Saturday and Sunday off, so we were back at some training this morning and again tomorrow.  Wednesday will be a rest day and then we will have a quick practice Thursday before she competes on Friday.

Here are a few pictures from my most recent explorations, this time with some travel partners: my roommate Michelle and another coach, Andreas, who is coaching one of the Gold medal favorites in the Men's 110 Hurdles, Aries Merritt.










That's all for now.  Until next time...

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Back to London

Sorry for taking so long to write another post.  I'll try to catch you all up on what's been going on over the past few days.

We had a solid training day yesterday as we got back to some more intense work.  The weather was still very nice so that certainly helped.  Yesterday was an approach day, so the plan was to do 6 and then follow that up with some multiple throws with a light med ball (around 3 kilograms).  I'll post videos of all of this below.  At the end Amanda had a quick lift.  Everything looked really good, so that was certainly very exciting.

Approach video, at least the last few steps.  This is from Mel Ramey, one of the USATF biomechanists.  This was my favorite run that Amanda did yesterday:


Here's some video of Amanda doing our multiple throws.  These are very common in the track world.  The first video is called an overhead backwards throw while the second is an between the legs forward throw:




Finally, here is a quick video of Amanda in the weight room doing some jump squats.  We do these during the end of the season to stay sharp and explosive.  These are with weights in both hands:



I didn't do too much yesterday after practice, just went and explored a bit.  Here are some pictures from me and Jeremy's adventures:






Today was another long travel day.  All of the athletes, coaches and support staff that were in Birmingham travelled down to London.  The athletes who have already processed at the Olympic Village left at 10:00.  Athletes who haven't been to the Village yet to get their credentials left at 10:45, and all of the coaches and support staff left at 11:30.  It took us 2:30 to get to the USOC facility at the Docklands facility in the Southeast of the city.  We were able to pick up our passes that will allow us to go to the practice track and then we headed on our way to our apartment.  It took us another 30 minutes to get over here near the Bethnal Green tube stop.  We finally found our place, dropped off our bags and then went to grab some food.  After lunch we headed over to the practice track, located at the Mile End park.  It's literally in the middle of a park and is only open for US athletes so we don't have to share the track with any other country.

Here are a few pictures from the track:





This should give you all an idea of what I've been up to over the past few days.  Tomorrow we have another practice where we will have our last technical session leading up to the Games.  Tomorrow night Amanda will walk in the Opening Ceremonies, an amazing honor that I am so jealous of.  Oh yeah, tomorrow is also me and Amanda's birthday!!  Things couldn't have worked out any better!!

That's all for now.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Birmingham Training Camp



Now that I've recovered from the fun travels of a few days ago, I thought I would write about the Training Camp here in Birmingham.  This training camp, or holding camp as they are sometimes called, was not mandatory for the athletes, so it appears that there is a little over half of the entire team here.  That's still a pretty large group, probably around 70 total athletes covering all of the event disciplines: Sprints, Jumps, Throws, Multis, Distance and even Race Walks.

The hotel is certainly very nice.  There are security guards to get into the hotel, to go onto the elevators, and in the elevator waiting area on each floor that US athletes are staying on.  We were given credentials to show them, so they know we are allowed to come and go.  There are practice times in the morning (9:30 departure and 10:30 departure) and afternoon (3:30 departure and 4:30 departure).  Three meals a day are covered.  We are even able to get into the movie theater for free with our credential.  Needless to say, there's a lot more to do here than there was in Dalian, China.

Today, after lunch, the team captains and the US Track and Field nominee for flag bearer were chosen by all of the athletes who are here at the camp.  After a vote, the Men's team captain is Angelo Taylor, a two time Gold Medalist in the 400 hurdles and a four time Olympian.  The Women's team captain is Aretha Thurmond, a four time Olympian in the Discus and an incredibly outgoing person that everyone seems to love.  The flag bearer voting was very interesting.  I'm not sure if I am allowed to say who was chosen, or who was nominated, so I won't write anything about that here.  I will say, that the people who are nominated and chosen often have incredible life stories of overcoming adversity and struggle.  In 2008, the US flag bearer was a track athlete, Lopez Lomong, who had been a lost boy in Sudan and come over to the US.  In this years group was an athlete who was adopted after setting his parents house on fire, an athlete who overcame Epileptic seizures as a child, an athlete who was injured in 2008 and the doctors had essentially given up on them, and an athlete who was shot in both legs in a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time and who was told they would never again be able to compete at this level ever again.

As usual, I wandered around a bit yesterday and I'll put up some pictures below.  I also went to see the new Batman movie with Jeremy and a few of the others here.

We have had a few fairly easy days of training while recovering from the competition last weekend and the travel and will have our first hard session tomorrow.  We head back to London on Thursday and the Opening Ceremonies take place on Friday, the 27th of July.  That day is actually my birthday, and, ironically enough, is Amanda's birthday as well!  It's certainly a small world.

Here's a video of some of the athletes at the practice track from a few days ago.  Amanda is in here a few times:

http://www.flotrack.org/coverage/248216-2012-London-Olympics-Games-XXX-Summer-Games/video/651487-Team-USA-preps-for-London-at-Birmingham-training-camp

This is adjacent to the hotel:


This building is directly across from the hotel:


Apparently the Jamaican team is here in Birmingham as well.

There are a series of canals that run through this portion of the city with restaurants and coffee shops lining them.


This is actually the grandstand on the backstretch of the track.  A pretty impressive structure for a track facility


Lastly, the small crowd in the stands are reporters who are here covering Team USA.

That's all for now!

Sunday, July 22, 2012

58th Memorial Janusza Kusocińskiego Invitational

Sorry it's taken so long to post anything, but it's been a long day.  I left the hotel at 9:30 am for my shuttle to the Berlin Tegel Airport for my 4:00 pm flight.  Connected through Frankfurt and then flew to London where I then took an express train to Birmingham to come to the training camp for the next four days.  I finally arrived at 10:00 pm.

My roommate at the camp is Jeremy Fischer, who coaches Will Claye, one of only two athletes for the US team in multiple events, the Long Jump and the Triple Jump.  Will won a silver medal in the triple jump last year at the World Championships and could medal in both events at the Games.  Needless to say, he's a stud.

The hotel is really nice and there's a bunch of security here as well so it should be an interesting few days.  Very different than the training camp in Dalian, China.  Sorry Shani!!

OK.  On to the meet.  Amanda didn't compete until 8:10 pm last night.  Yesterday was one of the nicest days we've had since we have been over here, but the fact that the meet was so late meant that the temps were a little cooler than they could have been.  At the end of the day, anything is better than cold rain with headwinds!

There were 8 girls in the field, all solid jumpers.  Amanda jumped 13.90 (45' 7) on her second jump and was poised to move up in the finals.  Annoyingly, the awards podium was right next to the runway, so every time they did an awards ceremony, the athletes had to wait.  It was a minor deal, but I'll complain nonetheless.  Going into the final three jumps, Amanda was in third place.  Her fifth jump was probably her best of the night, but it was a foul by about 2 inches.  Her last jump was also really good, but she just buckled just a little bit on her step landing (her last contact before jumping into the pit), so it wasn't nearly as good as it could have been.  Unfortunately, the girl who was in fourth place jumped far enough to pass Amanda based on their second best jumps.  If you see the results linked below, (page 10) it will hopefully make sense to you non-track people:

http://www.domtel-sport.pl/insidethecode/files/3303-pl.pdf

Other cool things from last night: Dan Pfaff's pole vaulter, Steve Lewis, broke the Great Britain national record with a jump of 5.82 (19' 1).  After the meet I actually ended up grabbing dinner with Dan, Steve, Steve Hooker (the defending Olympic Champion and Australian National record holder), Brad Walker (the US national record holder), and a couple of the Australian team support staff.  It certainly made for an interesting night.

I'll try to load up some pictures tomorrow of the meet and of my adventures here in Birmingham.  That's all for now!!

Friday, July 20, 2012

Meet credentials

Whenever you go to a meet, as a coach or an athlete, you have to get your credential.  This is what lets the security guards, etc, know that you as a coach or athlete are allowed to go to certain parts of the facility that the fans are not allowed to go to.  Here is a picture of my credential from the meet here in Poland:


As you can see, under the Trener/Coach designation in the top right corner are the numbers 1 and 5.  Those numbers state where we are allowed to go:

1 = VIP area
5 = Warm-up area

We are not allowed into the competition area or the track.  This is common at track meets, unlike most other sports.  In track, coaches have to essentially coach from the stands.  The event your athlete is competing in, and where that event is in the venue, can really affect how that interaction goes.  Sometimes, the event takes place very close to the stands.  Sometimes you have to yell across all 8 lanes of the track.  This can get a little crazy when races are taking place, especially if you're in a big stadium with thousands of people who are yelling and screaming.

I'll try to post some pictures of the facility after we go this afternoon.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Poland, at last

After a terribly long day of travel, we have finally arrived in Poland.  I was at Heathrow at 5:30 am for my 7:10 am flight.  Arrived in Berlin at around noon.  Waited for Amanda to get in at 4:30.  Then we had a two hour shuttle to the hotel in Szczecin.  Grabbed some dinner and now getting ready to crash.  We will head over to the track at some time tomorrow to do our pre meet shakeout.  I'll try to upload some pictures tomorrow.

Here's the link to the start lists from the meet.  As always, some solid athletes will be competing as this will most likely be everyone's last meet prior to the games.

http://en.kusocinski.mosrir.szczecin.pl/starting-list/

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Traveling around London

For those of you who haven't traveled with me, which would be just about everyone reading this, I thought I would fill you in on how I like to travel, or wander, throughout a city.  As I did last year throughout Europe and in 2009 after the World Championships in Berlin, I rarely have a plan when going to a city.  I usually book my hotel a week or so ahead of time.  It's amazing how easy online search engines make the process.  After any practices or meets are finished with, I use the remaining time to wander through a city.  Having done this enough I have a pretty good feel for public transportation, etc.  I'll grab a city subway (Tube) map and just start picking out places to go.  Once I arrive, I generally ramble around the area until I see something that interests me.  If not, I'll simply jump back on the subway and find another place to explore.  I couldn't do any of this without my music and my camera.

I've done this the past two days and came across some pretty neat stuff:

1. Buckingham Palace




2.  Downing Street 


3.  Westminster Palace and Big Ben



4.  The London Eye


5.  Tower Bridge


6.  The Tower of London


7.  The Gherkin


On top of all that wandering, I was also able to meet up with an old friend from Wake Forest and her husband and a cousin of mine (I said a distant relative in an earlier post, which is sort of true since she lives in London and I don't think I've ever met her before, but, of course, my mom corrected me and told me she's actually my second cousin).  

Tomorrow I'm going to Lee Valley to meet up with one of the coaches that I used to work for at the University of Florida, Dan Pfaff.  He's been over here for four years helping to coach the British athletes.  Here's a link to an article about him (he's the one with the mustache): 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/15/london-2012-athletes-dan-pfaff
  
Finally, I'll be heading to Sczcecin, Poland on Thursday for our last meet before the Games.  I got a neat email from Cousin Ellen about this city.  In her words:

Flo's (my great grandmother) parents emigrated from Sczcecin, Poland! And I imagine, other than when her parents went back to visit on the eve of WWII, you are the only family member to have returned.


So there you have it.  A pretty cool family connection that I had no idea about until a few days ago.  

I think that is enough for now.  At least enough to keep my parents satisfied for a few days.  As always, if anyone has any questions or comments, please let me know.

Until next time



Saturday, July 14, 2012

London Diamond League, Day 2

Surprise, surprise, the wind and rain continued for another day.  I think this might become a theme for the trip.  We took the 10:30 shuttle for the 40 minute ride over to the track with the 7 other triple jumpers.  The TJ was the first event up so Amanda was competing as the stadium was filling up.  



In the field were three of the past six World Championships medalists (2011 Outdoors and 2012 Indoors) along with several other athletes who have jumped over 46 - 47 feet so it was a quality field.  It was in the high 50's when she jumped and there were some pretty strong headwinds throughout the competition.  Amanda had two jumps with -3.0 winds or stronger!!  For those of you non-track people, that's a pretty significant headwind.  Amanda was in fourth after the first three jumps with a solid jump of 13.82 (45'4), just 12 centimeters short of her season's best, which she jumped at the Olympic Trials.  Unfortunately she wasn't able to improve on that jump and she was passed by one athlete (the World Indoor Champion).  That being said, it was a pretty successful meet, where we were able to see several of the top girls in the world and compete in conditions that we will probably see in three weeks at the Olympic Games.  Plus, it's always good to beat a few girls, especially some who have made finals at some Major meets.


Amanda heads up to Birmingham tomorrow to check into the US training camp for a few days.  I'll hang out in London and do a little sightseeing and hopefully meet up with some old friends and maybe even some distant relatives that I haven't seen in many years.  We will meet up again on Thursday at the Berlin airport to get the shuttle to our next meet.  

Below is a link to todays meet: 

http://www.diamondleague-london.com/Live-StartlistsResults/Overview/Triple-Jump/

That's all for now.  It might be a few days before another post, so bear with me.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Diamonds are forever, Day 1

That song (Diamonds are forever) played nearly the entire time during today's meet here in London.  Cold and rainy conditions continued.  We went to the track this morning for our pre meet practice and to check out the facility.  About 50 meters from the track is a covered 8 lane, 100m straight away where the athletes can warm up before the meet.  Needless to say, an hour before the meet it was packed with athletes warming up, coming out of blocks, going over hurdles, and with wheelchair athletes getting ready for some of their races as well.

Below are some videos and pictures from the meet.  The videos are their intros for each event with the meet's mascot.  This could be one of my favorite things about big meets, they have mascots.  Berlino (from the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, obviously) remains my favorite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG66G4Jj0eE 

Anyways, here are the pics and vids:




Amanda competes tomorrow at 1:00.  Here's the start list and a link to the results page:

http://www.diamondleague-london.com/Live-StartlistsResults/Overview/Triple-Jump/

That's all for now.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Rain in London?

Surprise, surprise, it's raining in London.  It was actually really nice when I arrived but it's turned cold and rainy, much like Eugene was for the Olympic Trials.  No major snags with travel.  Got an entire row to myself from Detroit to Heathrow, so that certainly made things a little easier to deal with.  My hotel is about a 10 minute walk from one of the meet hotels for the London DL meet, so I headed over there to grab my credential and to meet up with Amanda for a bit.  All of the foreign (aka, non British) athletes are staying at her hotel, so it was pretty cool to see some of those athletes.  Xiang Liu and Sally Pierson, two of the top hurdlers in the world, were there along with lots of others.  We will head over to the track tomorrow morning at 10:00 for her pre meet shake out.  I'll definitely post some pictures from the meet and any adventures that we have.  Amanda competes on Saturday so hopefully I'll be able to take in some of the meet tomorrow as there are some awesome events going off.  That's all for now!

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Here goes nothing, Volume 2

This feels like deja vu all over again.  Four short years ago I was getting ready to head to Beijing to coach Shani at the 2008 Olympics.  I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  So much has happened in the past four years that I won't even get into it here.  All that matters is that Amanda is a 2012 Olympian and getting ready for her first Olympics.  We head to London tomorrow for a month of competition and travel.

Amanda was accepted into the London Diamond League meet at the Crystal Palace, one of the biggest meets in the world, other than the Olympics, and one of the most storied venues as well.  Amanda competes on the 14th against some of the top female triple jumpers in the world, almost all will be competing in the Olympics a few weeks later.  The following week, Amanda will be competing in the JANUSZ KUSOCIŃSKI memorial in Sczcecin, Poland.


Following the Polish meet, we will head to Birmingham, England for a brief stint at the USA Track and Field training camp before we head back to London for the Games.  


I'll be sure to update this as regularly as I can.  Like 2008, please feel free to pass this along to anyone you think might be interested.  I'll do all that I can to be as entertaining and informative as possible. 


That's it for now.