Track and Field Blogs - Kevin Sullivan

I told you all that I was not very good at keeping New Year’s resolutions!! My apologies if you were wondering what have been going on with my Olympic year preparations over the past weeks. But I figured I really better get a blog out when Coolsaet threatened to call me out. So here it goes.

My indoor season was really a mixed bag of results. I opened up with a 3000m at the Reebok Boston Indoor Games and came away very disappointed with the 7:55 effort. My training was progressing really well at that point and I felt ready to attack my PB of 7:40 and at the very least come away with something in the 7:45 range. But, as my coach Juli Henner reminded me after the race, it was only January, and at the end of the year no one is going to remember one poor effort in January. None-the-less I still hate running poorly when my fitness level is so high. But I tried my best to put it out of my mind and chalk it up to being first race rustiness.

Up next was the Tyson Invitational mile. I was really hoping to rebound with a strong showing here. Plus, it was one of the rare occasions where my wife was able to see me race as the Florida State men and women’s teams were both in Fayetteville competing in the collegiate portion of the meet. Coming into the race I knew I was probably less sharp than those guys in the field who were prepping for US Indoors and World Indoors but I still felt confident in my fitness. I had great fan support though as the FSU team was in attendance as well as my alma mater the University of Michigan. The pace was solid but nothing outrageous so my lack of sharpness really wasn’t a factor early in the race. I was able to avoid a lot of the early jostling, and put myself in a good postion to strike in the last 400m. Unfortunately for me, Nick Willis made the move at 350m to that I wanted to make. And, as it turned out, he was able to get a good jump on the rest of us. But, I was pleased with the way I hung on and fought over the last lap to end up a solid 2nd place in 3:58, my 38th sub-4 minute mile.

Right after Tyson we took a recovery week after a very solid 5 months of training. I was able to get out golfing a couple of times which was anything but relaxing. But I figure the decline in my golf game means my running must be going pretty well!! After a relaxing week of jogging and golf, it was back down to business. We were able to get back to some really solid tempos and the cross country course is in great condition so I’ve been able to utilize that in my training the past few weeks.

Two weeks ago, Chris Lukezic made his way to Tallahassee and has been staying with Karen, myself and our two cats. The cats have taken a strong liking to Chris, trying to steal his food, and generally looking for any type of attention they can get from him. The weather has been fabulous and the training has gone just as well.

In addition to our good training, my wife's athletes had a great indoor season culminating in TWO NCAA Champions in the mile (Hannah England) and the 3000m (Susan Kuijken). It was pretty exciting to see some of the sessions these girls were pumping out and knowing that they were going to be able to challenge anyone in the country despite what seemed like very little excitment around them even after going 1-2 at ACC's in 4:36 on the flat 200m UNC track.

Chris and I just finished up our hardest week of training this season, which included 4 sessions, including one day with an am and pm session. Plus, my parents were in town this week, and my brother came down from Chattanooga on Thursday, so the week has been busy to say the least. Thankfully the sessions this week went well since the golf was far from spectacular. I was thoroughly trounced by both my brother and my father despite all the bragging I had done about the new driver I had straightened out on the range last week. So much for that as I hit one fairway all day! I won’t even get into my putting as that was probably worse than the driver. Oh, yeah…the 34. I also had a birthday this week (March 20), so you all now know how young I really am!!

We had a relaxing Easter today. Chris and I had a medium long run today, then we hit up church and then took a drive down to Alligator Point to check out the Gulf Coast. It’s the first time I had ventured to the coast since I had moved to Tally and I am definitely heading back to the secluded beach during the off season.

Good training to all.