400s

Monta Vista Track & Field added a new tradition to our program, with a Festival of 400s on March 5.

Sprint Coach John McKeeman had fond memories of his high school team having a similar trial, and we thought that this was a great idea!  The 400 is one of the distances where sprinters, hurdlers and distance runners all meet so it’s a fun way to compare where we are, and we included all the field eventers to make this a team wide event.  In addition to starting to sort out our 4×400 relay lineups, the Festival of 400s turned out to be a great team building event too!

It was great watching our athletes pushing themselves and cheering each other…pretty fabulous.

Lots of people ran this as a timed event for the first time.  You can find all our marks here.  Even if this is not your featured event, you are now on the ‘list’–you know where you are in the entire world of track athletes!  For those of you new to track, here is some perspective on the 400m run:

World Record:  43.18 (men), 47.60 (women)

Pac12 Champions 2013:  44.76 (men), 51.57 (women)

Pac12 Last Scoring Mark 2013:  48.37 (men), 54.84 (women)

Pac12 is a D1 college league which includes Stanford, Cal, UCLA, Washington, Oregon…

UAA Champions 2013:  47.91 (men), 55.99 (women)

UAA Last Scoring Mark 2013:  51.60 (men), 61.10 (women)

UAA is a D3 college league which includes Carnegie Mellon, Chicago, Washington University…

Last Medalist in the Central Coast Section, 2013:  49.51 (boys), 57.66 (girls)

Last Santa Clara Valley Athletic League mark to move on to CCS, 2013:  51.83 (boys), 62.15 (girls)

5th Medalist in our league (El Camino), 2013:  52.71 (boys), 66.77 (girls)

Remember, no matter where we finish, and while there is always someone faster than us and someone we want to catch next time, take the time to look back too…and not just at all the people that you are in front of today.  As an athlete who put yourself out on the track to compete and to be measured, you are not only ahead of everyone on the track behind you, you are also ahead of all the people who came out for track in the past and then quit…and all the people who never even tried.  Our team had a hundred runners on Wednesday, and there are thousands who could have competed and been on the team and were not out on the track.   You are the one in the arena and that puts you in a completely different category.

Thank you to Hank Lawson for providing the timing services and to Suanne Flatow for acting as ‘clerk of the course.’

Congrats to everyone on an excellent day!

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

–Theodore Roosevelt