A visit to 4th Grade

So on December 11th i was privileged enough to visit a local elementary school in Needham, MA. A good friend of my coach, Mrs. HB :) teaches 4th grade and asked if i would be so kind as to stop by and visit her class. It was to be nothing formal, i didnt have to prepare a speech or come dressed in a suit, but simply show up and answer some questions. Of course i said yes and got excited because i love kids.

Mrs. HBs class had done a project on the Olympics and had learned about many of the different sports and athletes. To their surprise Mrs. HB knew an actual OLYMPIAN!! OMG! so ofcourse they were excited to see me. She wrote a small report on me and talked me up in the weeks prior to my showing up, but she didnt inform them that i would actually be stopping by one day. The day before i was supposed to show up though it slips and so the word gets out that i would be coming to class. You can read about how it "slipped" at her blog

So anyways, we know im not huge superstar (yet) but she talked me up and they were really excited to see me. Sure theyd never heard of me but i was excited to visit them because i remember when i was little i always looked up to the older kids and always enjoyed when i got to meet an elite athlete, so i knew they would enjoy my visiting.

I stopped by with a training partner of mine Shane (muscly-amrs (in my Mr. Herbert from Family guy voice)) and from the moment we walked in the door it was a blast. The kids went crazy! The first thing i heard was HE'S HUGE!! haha which of course made me laugh. I stood at the front of the class with Mr. Muscly arms and we answered questions. A couple minutes into it a second class came in and sat down right in front of me to join in on the fun!

They asked me a wide variety of questions such as How tall are you? how high do you jump? do you know how fast you are? one kid asked me if id met Usain Bolt, and ofcourse i though it was cool that these kids even knew who Bolt was. Track and Field is not a very big sport in the US and to see how these 4th graders knew who Usain Bolt was, was pretty cool. They asked a million and 1 questions, most of which made me laugh.

My favorite question though was "What do you do when youre not training". Now i dont have a part-time job because my coach and I decided that the best way to improve was to go at this Full-Time, so when im not training i usually just sit on the computer, eat, and watch TV. So i told the kids i usually just sit around and eat alot. lol. but that wasnt good enough! So i said ok, ill walk you through my day.

I wake up, i eat breakfast, i sit on the internet.... and one of the kids stops me and says "you dont brush your teeth???" hahha and of course i bust out laughing, she also says "you dont make your bed" another HAHA. so i have to restart while laughing and say OK. I wake up, i brush my teeth, i make my bed, i eat breakfast......etc. I thought that was pretty funny.

The entire time was a good laugh. Kids ask the funniest questions and i had a great time. After the questions were asked i signed about a gazillion autographs. i signed pieces of paper, shoes, hats, teddy bears, you name it! lol

We finished off with a couple videos of me going over hurdles and they were impressed. They all begged me to come back and visit them next year when they are in 5th grade, and i sure wouldnt mind. So Mrs. HB let me know!!

Today Mrs. HB (Stephanie) stopped by the gym where i train and brought Shane and I a delicious Honey Baked Ham as a special thank you for visiting the class. The Ham was given to us maybe 2 hours ago and its just about GONE. I love that Honey Baked Ham!

She also brought in a bunch of pictures that the kids drew for me and Shane saying thank you! Here are a couple!

The first on is of Mrs. HB (Stephanie), Shane (Muscly-arms), and Myself rocking the ballin Gold medal that one of her students made for me. And the second two are beautiful drawings of me going over a hurdle.





Thanks alot Stephanie for inviting me! and thanks to the Kids as well for being so much fun!

Harvard Open

Ran my second indoor meet of the season on Saturday at the Harvard Open. I set a new PR twice and broke 7.85 as planned.

The prelim round was 7.91 and the final was 7.83. I won both races by about half a second so im sure had i had a bit of competition i could have broken 7.80.

Either way i am happy with the results and it seems i am on the right track to meeting my goals for the season. I will not run again until January though but will train everyday except 3 (vacation) so i plan on picking up where i left off.

In other news, i power cleaned 253 pounds the other day. that puts me only ten pounds under my previous best, and i weighed 191 today :)

here is the Prelim race and the Final from the Harvard Open on Saturday December 15th

Northeastern Husky Carnival

So today i ran my first indoor meet since 2006. It was at the Northeastern Husky Carnival. I represented Greater Boston Track Club and things went pretty good.

I did not run a miraculous time, but i did run my fastest opener ever. My time was 7.46 in the prelims, and 7.42 in the finals.

Nothing special but that puts me in the 7.9s (60 conversion) to start the season.

In college, i was horrible at the 60 hurdles, on breaking 8.00 on maybe 2 or 3 occasions. Today i would have broken 8 twice so its not a bad start. And seeing as its only December 6th i cant complain.

Now im not content with 7.9s but seeing as ive never ran this early and i accomplished something i rarely did in college, i am happy.

In practice ive been working on my first 8 steps but sadly i did not execute very well today. My block clearance is good and my first 4 steps are good, but around the 6th step i open up too much and start to over-stride. Yes it is possible to over stride this early in the race because i am doing it.

Things have been getting better in practice but i didnt put it together in my race.

I run again next saturday and ill look to execute better next time.

Also, i am officially 190 pounds. I was 188 for a while but this week i stayed above 190 all week so im happy.

In the weight room i havent done anything too impressive but my numbers are decent for now.

I am power cleaning 242 pretty easy (havent gone any higher), and my bench was at 285 about a week or week and a half ago.

I also did a couple pull ups with 100 added pounds and got up to 305 with the squats.

305 is the most ive done since HS so im happy with that as well.

sometime this week ill try to post a video of my weight room and or track workouts.

November Update

Things have been going pretty well. Started going over hurdles about 2 weeks ago and things picked up pretty much where they left off in August.

Right now we are trying to fix my start. We have been recording every practice and reveiwing in extra slow motion to pick up the errors in my running.

there are many errors but we are fixing them and things are coming along well.

its pretty cool to see the progress in your technique and running when you view footage from last year, last month, and today.

i wont be challenging the world indoor record anytime soon but things have definitely improved since my college indoor days.

my first meet will be on December 6th and the Reggie Lewis Center (the track i train at) and it should be fun.

ive been really eager to get back to competing cause i find that life is pretty boring when im not running.

In other news, my brother Alex recently had his first child on November 19, 2008. He and his fiance Thaymmie had a beautiful baby boy whom they named Adrian William Cotto

He was born 8.1lbs, 19.5 inches on 10:57am :) woop woop! i am an uncle for the first time! i will not be spending time with my family this thanksgiving because i dont want to interrupt training, but i will be flying down to Ft. Lauterdale for Christmas to see the new baby and spend time with my Brother his fiance, my mom (whom i havent seen in a year) and hopefully my sister if she decides to go down :)

congrats to Alex and Thaymmie for bringing a beautiful baby boy into this world.