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April 21st, Thursday, 10 p.m.
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“Put me in, Coach.”
I caught up with some old friends at the Somerset County relay championships at Ridge High School this afternoon. The day was beautiful and sunny and about 70 degrees, perfect for a spring track meet. Arlene and I traveled to Basking Ridge for the afternoon event. Coaching and watching relay meets has always been the most enjoyable part of the track experience for me. Something is going on at every moment in 10 different places throughout the facility. It is always exciting to watch athletes doing it for the team. The competition is always fierce, and everybody wants to be in the game participating. These are the meets wherein athletes have to dig deep, running those doubles and triples and sometimes quadruples. Nothing can make a coach prouder than hearing a nearly exhausted runner plead, “Put me in, Coach, I’m ready to go.”
I was happy to see my friend Jimmy O’Connor looking and feeling well and his son, both coaching the jumps of course at Ridge High School. I got to speak for a while with Coach Jim McCluskey an old rival and good friend. With Jim O’Connor as my assistant in the 1990s we put together some of the best track teams ever seen in Central Jersey. At the same time we were battling tooth and nail with Jim McCluskey’s Franklin High School teams that were equal or better during that entire period. Both of those teams provided some of the best performers ever to come out of track and field in central New Jersey. It was good to see those guys again.
I spent a few minutes with my old coaching mates at Hillsborough Eric, Tierra and Rich. All were very excited about the team’s prospects for the day and their performances so far this year. Everybody is getting ready to go to Penn Relays next weekend. The competition for the team title was very hot in both the boys and girls division. When I left the titles had not yet been decided, but both were very close.
After returning home I headed over to the clubhouse to get in a little work. The pool is open until 9 p.m. on Thursdays so I was able to swim for 20 minutes. My swim routine is to swim alternating laps of Australian crawl, backstroke and breaststroke. Tonight the swimming was a little rough because it has been a while and, I was pretty tired by the time I got to the 20 minute mark. It was still a good aerobic 20 minutes. Next I went to the deep end with my noodle under my arms and ran very controlled full extension strides for 10 minutes. (Exaggerated back kick, to exaggerated knee lift, to full lower leg extension ) I find that I can only perform this totally fully extended stride in the pool and I very much enjoy doing it. Next into the whirlpool for 15 minutes to heat up my sore foot and my tender Achilles tendons.
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Not a very demanding workout but 30 minutes of full body movement with the absence of any impact.