Chillin

one of my favorite videos.

i had a decent week of practice last week.

monday and tuesday were shit. but by friday i felt like superman! lol so im back on track.

now im just chillin..

Update

Ok so here is an update for whoever is reading this.

I was forced to take last week off from training. i did not have a ride to pracitce because the buses werent running on campus and my girl went home for the summer.

i lifted weights and ran on the bike our apt complex has.

Monday i started training again.

and today my training has to go an halt again.

This morning my mom called me and told me she needed me on a plane to dallas texas to help her move her belongings back to North Carolina.

Apparently she wants to live in the raleigh area again.

so i am catching a flight a 5pm. and we should be headed back here tomorrow. i helped drive her down there with a couple uhauls back in August and it was a horrible trip. it took about 27 hrs and we slept for only 3.

going thru the mountains in western carolina is pretty tough in a big uhaul because the truck refuses to go faster than 30mph.

hopefully the trip wont take as long and i can get back to training soon.

well thats it. nothing special going on here. it seems i face as many hurdles in my day to day life as i do on the track and that sucks.

but thats life and im positive things will get better so i try not to complain too much.

-Cotto

Duke Twilight

Just got back from the meet at Duke University.

Ran pretty bad...

Woke up this morning called my boy who said he was gonna let me use his car but he didnt pick up. i was planning on leaving at noon. Around 11:20AM i talked to my boy Kevin who told me hed ask my other friend AD if he could give me a ride to the track meet.

so at 12 o'clock they show up and we leave. there is 5 of us in a Nissan Altima and we are packed like mexicans (i can say that cause im latino). i feel my right hamstring tightening up but i tell myself ill be ok and dont complain.

i got there around 230pm and immedialtely start to warm up.

The race was to be a timed final so i warmed up extra early and gave myself an hour rest. I wanted to feel as if id run a prelim because i know that my first race of the day is always my slowest and i wanted to run fast in the final.

i warmed up fine and i felt pretty good. there is no one at the meet that can run with me but i still wanted to push and run a fast time.

My goal for the meet was 13.50. it would be a pretty big chunk off my last meet of 13.72 but i felt confident i could handle it.

anyway...things did NOT go as planned. I got out of the blocks well. Over the hurdle fine my take off was off by no more than a couple inches so that was good.

hurdles 1 and 2 were good but thats where the good part of the race ends.

from 3 to the finish like i ran a big D-

I crashed 3 or 4 hurdles with my lead leg pretty good but i was still staying ahead of the pack. I did not see anyone until the finish line when a kid from App State almost caught me.

at hurdle 8 i decided i would pout about my race and had decided that i would not sprint to the finish line. so i didnt. i damn near stopped and almost ended up losing. i ran 14.24 and second place ran 14.28

i was pretty pissed. and as of right now im not quite sure exactly what went wrong.

I was crashing hurdles with my lead leg, which means i was getting too close to the hurdles so i think there must of been a tailwind even though when i was getting in the blocks i felt a head wind.

either way i figure if i hadnt crashed so many hurdles and had sprinted to the finish line, that i would have ran 13.7x. not good but at least it would not have been a big step back.

i decided to run the 200 meter dash as well. and here is how that race went.

I warmed up very little. it was 58 degrees by now 7:30pm and there was a huge headwind on the homestretch.

I got out of the blocks piss poor. (C-) My plan was to catch lane 8 (i was in lane 6 and lane 7 was empty) by 20 meters. I came out of my blocks and went from the inner side of the lane to the outter side of the lane and finally back to the inner side. I didnt break stagger on lane 8 until about 50-60 meters.

around 80-90 meters i told myself i would run as if i was running a 400 meter dash. to me that would mean not going 100%, instead running about 85%

that plan flew out the window really fast because lane 5 was on my ass and i decided that i had to do what i could to win. i stayed in the lead by MAYBE 6-7 INCHES. yea it was really close. at 150 meters i told myself that i needed to pull away because i was tired of being neck and neck.

I tried to turn-over faster but it just wouldnt happen. at 170 meters i said F-this and slowed to a jog. i damn near stopped. the winning time was 22.02 so i figure ida crossed the line in 21.99 which is pretty pathetic so it really didint matter if i had finished or not. i ended up running 23.62 or something and i just laughed about it. it was a good workout for me though so at least i got that out of it.

ive decided i will run the 200 a couple more times this summer just so i dont have that slow ass 23 on my record. i figure i can run a low 21 or maybe even a high 20 if train a little better.

the videos of my races and all the other races run today at the Duke Twilight are on www.accselect.com

as soon as they upload my videos i will upload them to this blog for my 15 viewers to watch.

all in all i guess today wasnt the worst day ever. I am still very confident that my 110 hurdle time will improve and so im pleased.

it was nice to get out of the house and run.

Race at A&T

My race at A&T went ok.

I got a little over 3 hours of sleep friday night because people kept texting and calling me at 3am and when it happened the second time i couldnt fall back asleep.

It was horrible but i really wanted to run at this meet so i finally woke up at 5am, got ready and hit the road around 6:15am

We (me and my girl Alex) got there around 8:30am and i warmed up and got ready to run.

I had just realized the night before that i would have 2 races instead of 1 so i told myself i wouldnt run too hard in the prelims.

In the prelims at 9:45am i ran in heat 4 of 4 and ran 13.99 basically jogging. I was happy because i knew that if i could run 13.9 without giving much effort that i could go much faster in the finals.

After the race my lack of sleep kicked in though. I went and sat in my girls car for about an hour and tried to get some rest.

I felt horrible. I felt like it was still 3am in the morning and i had just woken up. At 11:30 though i decided to warm up again for my 2nd race.

I was to run in the slow section of the 2 heat finals.

I was not mad about this at all because at this point in the season i dont need to be running against guys who are a half a second faster than me.

I got out of the blocks good and ran the first 5 hurdles well. My lead leg floated over a couple hurdles but i kept it together to come across the line in 13.72.

I didnt get a chance to sprint off of the last hurdle because i landed off balance but i held on for a second place finish behind Jared Macleod from Canada who ran 13.58

I was upset because i didnt run the time i was aiming for which was 13.65 but i was pleased that i ran so well under the circumstances.

I watched my race and i have SO much work to do. That just makes me happier though because i am prety confident that i will set a HUGE personal best by seasons end.

here is the video of my final. the quality isnt great but in slow motion (like i watch it) its bareable.

the second video is of the 1 of 2 finals in wich David Oliver won in 13.22 seconds