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.
Hello again! It’s been two weeks since my last blog and now I’m happy to say I have some real races to talk about. Our first open meet was last night at Bowdoin.
I went into yesterday’s meet signed up for the 200, the 400, and high jump. I wasn’t too worried about the 400, but then again, “not too worried” just means I started freaking out about an hour before my race instead of 3 hours before it. I really wanted to get in a good time without battling someone the whole way for it, so I could hopefully get into the fast heat at states and set a fast time to improve upon. I started from my weird 3-point start blocks, because I’m still terrible with normal ones, (due to a distinct lack of upper body strength I think.) The first lap was relatively easy, and when I went through in a mid-25 I knew I was going kind of slowly. The second lap was the same as any second lap in a 400. I hit the 300 mark and suddenly felt like I was going to die of exhaustion, but I ended up coming through in just over 51, which I’m quite happy with.
The 200 was the weird race of the day. I was racing Luke Dang, who had the top time in the state. Unfortunately, he was not entered with a seed time, so his 200 was out of the first heat against very little competition. He was also pretty sick with the flu all week, so the big race against him I was hoping for/dreading didn’t actually happen.
When I went into my 200, I was still recovering a bit from my 400. I’ve always disliked how close the two events are in indoors, and my 200 start always struggles a bit because of it. That said, I did not appreciate the fact that I was in the 10th heat of the 200. Everyone just stood around nervously watching heat after heat of the 200 until finally I was up. My start was predictably kind of slow, but I picked up a lot of momentum and was in first by the time I hit the 100m mark
When I leaned into the second turn of the 200, I felt an actual pop from the bottom of my inside foot. I had no idea what it was, but it hurt a lot. As I kept leaning around the turn, I started sliding. At this point I knew my foot was bleeding, and running around the turn was like driving around a sharp turn on an icy road. The blood on my foot actually made me slide around a bit, so I had to turn inwards towards the center of the turn and run inwards as I slid outwards. It was definitely a weird feeling, but once I got out of the turn I picked it back up to finish in just under 23.3.
At this point I walked off the track and decided to look at exactly what had happened. When I took off my sock I wasn’t really sure what I was looking it. It looked like a really large band-aid had almost completely fallen off some bloody wound. Then I realized I wasn’t wearing a band-aid, and I decided to get the trainer to come see it. She told me a callus had ripped off my foot, and immediately set about cleaning it with all those gels and liquids that I suspect are made to be as painful as possible. I remember thinking that this was just like a scene from the Prefontaine movie I had seen, except the injury was less intense, I was slower, and I had gotten my injury in a much less…interesting…manner. AND I didn’t have a mustache, which was the really upsetting part.
Despite all this, I was really happy with my times, and at least now I have about a week to heal up. Brunswick boys also ended up winning the meet by .5 points, which was really awesome! I wish everyone happy holidays, and good luck in upcoming meets.
-Alex Nichols
More Information
