This weekend was the first meet of the 2012 indoor season for me. We headed out to Nampa, Idaho for the Blue and Orange opener hosted by Boise State. Most meets we fly to, but this one was close enough that we packed up a bus and hit the road. The group that went mostly consisted of sprinters, jumpers and throwers, but we had a few representatives from the mid-distance and distance squad.

The reason we decided to open up at this meet was Boise State is the host of the 2012 indoor NCAA championships. We thought it would be a good experience to see the venue and get comfortable with the area before NCAAs. Here's a few things we learned. (1) The track is in a barn, (2) Nampa is in the middle of nowhere,(3) Cafe Rio is about 12 miles away, and every other decent restaurant is about a mile away (which is why we ordered Pizza Hut two nights in a row) and (4) they don't give you an altitude adjustment for your times, but you can still feel some altitude effects. We learned some other valuable things at the meet that will hopefully give us an edge for NCAAs in two months.

The race itself was good. Justin Hedin and I took the top two spots, running away from everyone else. I ran a 1:49.8 and Hedin ran 1:50.1. Unfortunately they were hand timed because the meet officials forgot to reset the clock after the women's race. But that's okay, we're planning on running faster in a couple of weeks at the University of Washington meet. This meet, we actually both felt a little sluggish. We trained right through the meet with some really hard workouts and weight lifting, so we're optimistic that we can run a lot faster when we're fresh on the fast track in Seattle.

Here's a link to the video of our race on facebook. In the video, you will not only get to see our race, you will get to meet the newest addition of the BYU 800 crew, AKA 880, Shaquille Walker. Shaq is hillarious. He is this hyper little freshman who doesn't have any gangsterness in his body, but for some reason when the turns on, he acts like he's Lil Wayne or something. Anyway, here's the link....

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=2222290575679

As this blog title entails, there was much more to the trip than just racing.

The seven hour bus rides were actually a little more entertaining than I expected. We watched a couple movies that kept us from going crazy. Rocky IV is always a good one to watch before competition. Every time I watch that movie it makes me want to go back to Steens Mountain running camp in Oregon and just train in the wilderness. The funniest part of the movie was when Rocky is fighting Drago the Russian and Rocky lands a nice punch on him and cut him. Taylor Farnsworth, the lone long distance runner on the trip, stood up out of his seat and started cheering as if we were watching a live fight. The cheering continued until the end of the fight when Rocky finally won.

We also watched John Q., Indiana Jones, and an old Western Movie, Quigley Down Under. Now, Quigley Down Under has an actor in it by the name of Alan Rickman. Many people know Rickman as the actor who plays Professor Snape in the Harry Potter movies. As we were watching the movie, Shaq yelled, "Woah! It's Coach Eyestone!"  The rest of us cracked up. Alan Rickman looked just like Coach used to in his racing days. Check this out!




Another funny part of the trip was one of my homework assignments. I had to watch a scary movie and check my heart rate every 10 minutes to see what effect the movie had on my body. I am not a guy who usually likes or watches scary movies so this was an interesting assignment for me. We watched Insidious and my heart rate nearly doubled during the movie. That night I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep for about half an hour because all I was thinking about was the red faced man with claws standing outside that kid's window and the creepy music playing in the background. I wasn't the only one who got scared though. Coach Eyestone watched the movie by himself that night in his hotel room. As he was about halfway through it his battery in his laptop started to die, so he had to unplug the lamp next to his bed to plug in his computer. When the movie ended, he reached for the lamp to turn it on, but forgot he unplugged it. Then he tried to turn the TV on to give himself some light but the remote wasn't working. He finally got everything settled, but I'm sure his heart rate went up a bit too.

The rest of the trip was spent using Hedin's new video camera and documenting our season. Shaq, relatively calm the entire trip, went crazy every time that camera turned on. We got some nice footage of the Idaho landscape (880 loves nature), post race interviews and the long bus ride. We also listened to the hilarious songs that Ryan Jones and Shaq wrote on the guitar and wrote the rules of 880.

Overall a great trip. Looking forward to the next meet when the rest of the distance guys will travel with us to Seattle. Hopefully we'll make some more good memories and run some real fast times. Until then, you can follow me on Twitter @RyanWaite880 to get little updates of life in Provo.

Go Cougars!