Alex Nichols is a senior at Brunswick HS, he is the defending Class A indoor state champion in the 400m. Nichols has a personal best of 49.91 in the 400m & 22.69 in the 200m. Follow along this winter as Alex goes for a repeat.
Woah, looks like I fell behind a little bit in my blogging. Oh no! I’m going to get fired! Well okay, maybe not, but I do have quite a bit to cram into my last indoor blog! Since my last blog, I’ve had States, New Englands, and Nationals, all of which were awesome experiences.
States was a while ago, and I did better than I could have expected to. My ankle was wrapped up tight so my 400 felt fine. After that I started to fall apart. My ankle had limited my training for the past couple weeks, so I had a lot of trouble recovering after the 400 for the 200. It was perhaps the most painful 200 of my life, but well worth it as I came away with 2 State Titles! I guess you could say I left my mark on the track…in that I threw up all over the infield afterward.
I decided to run the 300 at New Englands because of my ankle, and because Nationals were less than a week later. I had no idea how to run a 300. It was either an extended 200 (which is a full sprint) or a short 400 (which isn’t quite full-out for me) but I didn’t know which way to approach it. I decided I would watch the other kids in my heat and go from there, but unfortunately they put me in lane 6 so that didn’t happen. I started out much too slow and had to catch up in the last 100 meters. I ended up finishing 7th overall, but by the end I definitely felt like I had approached it the wrong way. I will say it seemed like a great event and I wish it existed in Maine.
Finally, Nationals came last weekend, so my mom and I headed down to the Armory in New York for the 400. The track was ridiculously fast, and so were all the kids there. At one point I walked through a group of throwers, and let me tell you, every single thrower at Nationals was at least 4 inches taller than me and at least double my weight. I probably looked like a javelin to them, and they definitely could have thrown me almost as far as a javelin. I also was a lot smaller than most of the other sprinters, so I got mistaken for a distance runner a lot. (Good thing no one asked me my mile time, which would have been embarrassing.)
My race was scheduled for 12:30 on Friday, but the lady checking everyone in said there was about a 10 minute delay, so I warmed up and aimed to be ready to race at 1:00ish at the latest. I ended up racing at 2:10, and the extra hour definitely hurt me. There was a period of time where I thought I could definitely run a mid-49, but as the delay stretched on I started losing a bunch of energy. I ended up going to the line somewhere between “not warmed up” and “tired from warming up too much”. It felt terrible; I got off to a slow start and had to catch people in the second lap. I also got boxed in pretty badly. I didn’t think a 50.60 would ever feel slow to me but it felt very slow. I still had fun going, and I ended up 13th in the Emerging Elite Division.
This has definitely been my best season so far, and I’m already excited for outdoor to start. I’ve had a lot of fun meeting lots of people and getting cheered on by Maine kids at the bigger meets, so thanks a ton for that. Outdoor is 2 weeks away, and I’m hoping to keep improving for my last high school season. I’ll see you all out there!
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