Track and Field Blogs - Mark From Flotrack

I am at the Zurich Meeting right now, but I am not allowed to post any videos from the meet. I will try and get some interviews after at the meet hotel. We will see how that goes. The Zurich Meeting is the biggest of the European circuit. The Stadium is packed and has been sold out for months. Every race is basically the final from World Champs,, just a week ago, but there are some interesting twists, like A. Felix running the 400 against Sanya Richards and a USA vs Jamaica 4x100. THe best part of the meet is… more »

I did not get to the 2009 US Indoor championships in Boston this past weekend, but I have heard many reports from athletes, journalists, and agents and all accounts were the same, that the meets was a joke. Doug Logan has been at the top for less then a year and this was his first indoor championships so this blog is not meant to bash him or the USATF. This blog is a critque and hopefully it will be a forum with mine and the communities suggestion on how to save US indoors, if it is worth saving....... By all… more »

There are 12 days until I run the ING NYC Marathon and I am excited to see what I can do. I have been training since Sept 1st and I think things have gone pretty well. When I threw the idea out of running a marathon in Beijing Terrence Mahon, Ryan Hall and Deena Kastor's coach, said that I did not have the patience for it. I think he might have been trying to push my buttons but in reality it has been hard to stay focused. 25 mins into my first run when my legs started to hurt, my… more »

XC season is about to really begin and we are starting to ramp things up here in Austin, TX. I returned to the good ole US of A on Aug 26th from China after 20 days in Beijing. Beijing was quite an experience to say the least and I have the photos to prove it. The best thing about Beijing was that your money went so far. Beers at the stadium were 65 cents and hot dogs (actually they were called sandwich hot dogs?) were $1. I felt like a king buying rounds and sandwich hot dogs for everyone. After… more »

The driving in Beijing is pretty crazy. The horn is more of a tool you must use to survive and not seen as rude but more as a, "Heads up, just letting you know I'm behind you and I'm gonna pass so don't merge left." . China is a county of 1.3 billion people and almost every driver on the road is a basically a new driver bc the cars were never the norm until China's recent economic explosion. Bike is still a huge part of most Chinese people's lives and they are just as much part of the street… more »

Beijing: So the journey to my first Olympics started at LAX at 12PM Pac on Wed, which I think is yesterday for you guys but two days ago for us. Anyway the flights were pretty uneventful. I flew from LAX to Tokyo to Beijing. I was a little scared I might get denied in Beijing bc my passport is a little weathered but it was pretty ez. My brother Martin and Garrett who run wrestling and swimming sites respectfully arrived on a different flight so I had to run around trying to find them at the airport, bc our phones… more »

So it looks like our little road trip has taken a detour, and we are not talking about Las Vegas. We are 20 miles outside of santa Rosa, NM waiting for a tow truck. It looks like we got some bad gas and the gas filter is clogged. Of course I have no idea what I'm talking about but that is my best guess. If anyone is near Santa Rosa or knows someone there that might be able to help us out, fix our car, feed us, or wants to go for run let us know. We have about 25… more »

Ok so I am feeling a lot less stressed writing this blog than the last time I blogged. I do not write any of the code so I felt helpless to your complaints about the New Flotrack. Everybody made so many good points about problems in the new flotrack, but I could not do anything about it. It felt like I was in 5th grade again waiting for my mom to take me to my little league game. I know I told her that my game was at 5:45 pm, but I have no idea if she remembered, and there… more »

If you have been paying attention to Flotrack the last couple of weeks you know we have been all over the country and very busy. There has been a lack of sleep but we have had a lot of fun. Two weeks ago we covered three meets all across the USA, Vernon and Lance were at D2 National Championships in Charlotte, The two Kevins(Kevin Danaher and Kevin Selby) were in Eugene covering the West Regionals and Paul and I were in Columbia covering the the NCAA Div 1 Mideast Regionals. Last week Vernon and I went out to New York… more »

Ahhhhhh!You know when you just have to go for a run and you hope you will figure things out while your out on the roads? Well I just got back from a run to more comments telling me what I should of known from the beginning and confirming what the run made realize. I am looking at the site and I am with you guys... Who did this? We are listening to you guys and tomorrow we are going back at it and going to fix not just bugs but some unflotrack "applications". Who says "applications" anyway. Man I need… more »

We have had a ton of feedback for the redesign and even though we wished everyone would love it and adapt to it right away we knew this was prob not going to happen bc we were kind of throwing it out there so people could tell us what they wanted and they could help us find the bugs. If we were Microsoft the site would not have gone up and it prob would not go live for another 6-12 months. I guess one or two of us have a lil ADD and we did not have the patince for… more »

As of 12:39 AM central time the New Flotrack went LIVE! We have been working on this for the last 7 months and we are so excited that we are finally done with it. It has taken longer then we originally thought but it is done now and we need your help to let us know what you like and don't like. So please play around with the site and if something does not work please tell us. We need to know so we can fix it. If you find something that does not quite work let us know by… more »

I love the sport of Track and Field and it is the best sport on earth. Nothing matches the physical strength and beauty in its purest form like the high school 4x4 at Penn where Long Beach Poly and St. Jago are neck and neck coming down the home stretch with 40,000 people cheering or the unbridled emotion of Darren Brown after he honored his father by breaking four, but the lack of vision and direction the USATF and the leaders have for our sport is depressing. The sport of Track and Field begs like a dog under the table… more »

Sometimes you have to take one step back to go two forward and I do not know if we have gone one step back the last couple of months but we have spent a majority working on the back end so we can step it up a notch. I spend my waking hours thinking how we can push the envelope, how we can make the sport better and more entertaining, how we can survive! Ever since the beginning of Flotrack we have had his idea of how a track broadcast could be produced and this Friday night we are taking… more »

Arrived in Arkansas yesterday afternoon for the NCAA Championships and I am excited about this weekend's action. I guess I'm looking forward to the DMR and the Mile the most but I think every distance runner out there looks forward to those races every year. The days before nationals is always pretty cool. The Holiday Inn in Springdale is where most of the teams stay and hang out. The hotel has a huge atrium so you can see all 8 floors with the nation's best runners, throwers and jumpers weaving in and out of their rooms. Race day at the… more »

Will try to blog as much as I can today.
Lets see how it goes.

Mark more »

If anyone cares to get update results I am in Boston and I will try to do a live blog. I will leave comments below. more »

Today is the start of the 2008 track season for me and for Flotrack's race coverage and like the feeling you get before your first race of the season, "How can I be expected to run fast when we haven't done any workouts on the track?", I am feeling a lil of the butterflies. I haven't done any play by play since I think Huesden, XC doesn't really count, and I'm wondering if I can PR..I mean, be coherent behind the camera.
I should prob tell you, if you don't already realize, I made it back safe and… more »

Karlskona, Sweden: I have arrived in Sweden after 40 some hours of travel. It was kind of crazy, I left Perth at 5 pm and took a 6 or 7 hour flight to kuala Lampur. I arrived at 10 pm KL time and had a flight at 9 Am so I crashed at the airport until my flight to Stockholm. That flight was 13 hours, which was hard, I arrived in Stockholm two days after I left Perth at 2:30 pm, but when I arrived to my surprise I had to take another flight at 6pm to Ronnerby and then… more »

Happy New Year Everyone!

I'm sitting here in the Melbourne airport waiting for my flight to head off to Auckland (its already 3 hours late), but life is good because Quantas bumped me up to Biz Class, which means I get to hang out in the Airport lounge and sit on the upper deck of the plane. The lounge is cool with free food, drinks, and cricket on the tele. I have not uploaded so many videos bc again we are gathering content for our upcoming series, but the last day I was in Melbourne I got… more »

11 PM Austin, Tx:

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving. I headed to Chicago after NCAAs in Terre Haute and had a great holiday eating and laying around my house. Thanksgiving was always the best holiday in college because your cross season just ended so you were on a break and you didn't have to run and you could eat whatever you wanted because indoor seemed a world away.

Recently we started to allow user video uploading and we have featured a couple of them on our homepage and we will continue to… more »

My phone died at NCAAs just after the mens race. I had full battery so I dont know what happened. I am uploading interviews right now. Sorry if some of you were waiting for updates.

If anyone knows how to fix a "JVM Error 102" on a blackberry let me know.


Mark more »

It's been one year since Flotrack Started. Yup we started last Halloween, and thanks to all of you we've gotten the chance to meet a lot of great people, shown you a lot of great videos and covered a lot of events. Stay tuned for more to come this year. It's going to be bigger and better than ever!

Mark Wetmore's Colorado Team Workout video was our very first video and we wanted to share it with you again. Hope you enjoy.

The Flotrack team: The burglar (mark), wicked witch (martin), Stan from south… more »

Sorry I have not posted in a while and I promise I will get back in the grove of posting about the ins and outs of Flotrack if you want, so let me know. This past weekend in Cali at Mt. SAC was amazing for a couple of reasons. I guess have to talk about the meet it self first before I talk about what blew me away. Mt. SAC is like nothing I have ever seen before. 22,000 kids ran over two packed days. Most of the time there were three races on the course at the same time.....… more »

We have just updated our new home page and we hope you like it. We have added a couple new features like results, which because I have been a lil lazy is not totally complete yet. We have added our most popular, most commented and most voted videos. We added articles and news to our home page and 7 blogs instead of just 2. Let me know what you guys think and if you have any questions please leave them here.
I would like to talk about news and results because they are fueled by you the community.… more »

Siberia -- It is midnight and we are sending shirts out tomorrow so if you are on the list below please put in your address info. We don't really have time to go around chasing your address so please, no pretty please put in your address to your flotrackr account so we can get you your T's.

THE LIST

Arizona cameronliston
Arkansas rgw651
California jbcolletti
Colorado kevin.akers
Connecticut ptdxc
Delaware dsuher
Florida seankyle
Georgia enriques87
Hawaii zatopek808
Idaho michelin
Illinois steeplechaser more »

So I could not make everyone happy and I have had a ton of emails asking about the Ts and the rules and all that jazz. I had to make some hard decisions and there were many sleepless nights but we have our official winners for the Ts. It took us a while to filter through all the posts. Some people said they were from Alaska but we should just send the T to their summer house in Texas. Anyway in the end Madhu aka Madhuski complied the list and here it is.


Arizona… more »

We have been working hard here at HQ in Austin, Tx and we finally have gotten a News page up for you guys. For most of you this will be a new experience for some people because the News Page is run by you the community. There is not one or two people who decide what is news worthy, but the whole community decides.

Heres how it works.

Some of the News is added by the Contributers but most of them are added by the community. When you go to the "News Page"… more »

Today's video is from Seth Webinger a runner for UW Lacrosse. Seth is red shirting this season so he decided to chronicle his team's 2007 XC season and we are excited to show his shows. We will have a couple other teams doing the same thing and I encourage anyone and everyone to pick up a camera and show how life on your team is like. If you are red shirting, a team manager, a runner who is good with a camera, or just like to video contact us if you want to have your shows on Flotrack. We think… more »

Sorry about no video today but we are doing a lot of work and hoping to roll out some new features later this week. We will be back at the videos tomorrow.
Sorry about that,

Mark more »

So Zap Fitness in Boone, NC was a ton of fun and I should get a video up of the whole experience sometime next week I hope. Today Madhu and I filmed an Ohio State workout so I hope to get that up as well.
Now on to business of the T=shirts. We wanted to say thanks for all the community has done for us, so we are giving away some Black Shirts. We don't like to many rules here at the HQ (Flocasts World Headquarters), but we did not want people to abuse the system and get a… more »

We have had a ton of requests for T-Shirts and interest in out internship positions. On the T-shirt front we said first person from every USA state. I am traveling right now, no surprise, to Zap fitness in Boone NC so if anyone is up for going through the comments and letting me know who was first from each state. If you did not get a shirt and do this for me I will send you out a shirt for your help.
On to interns...
We have had a lot of interest and when I get back… more »

I left Osaka early Monday morning(Osaka time) and I'm pretty tired. I did not get much sleep last night because after the races there was an after party for all the athletes, staff and I guess Spanish team managers. Anyway the party was a lot of fun with a lot of bad dancing but as I have some time to kill in the Seoul airport I was curious as to see how accurate the predictions were for the "Win Nick Willis gear contest.
It turns out we were pretty good at guessing the women's 1500 time with the… more »

So Osaka is winding down and it has been an up and down adventure. The subways here are packed...... well everything here is packed. There is no time in the day that you don't see a ton of people around. It is so easy to get lost here because it seems like everything is one huge mall. If you watch the Sully video on a the train you will see what I mean. I got lost for quite a bit of time yesterday and I will try to post a short video about it. Every shoe company has a hospitality… more »

Ok, so the last few days have been hard but I will be back tomorrow. I could not be in the press area again last night but that will all change becuase there are people out that believe what we are doing is good. I will try to get Bernard and Webb tomorrow and all the post race interviews you can handle. I recieved a ton of emails and Flotrackr messages of support and I cannot tell you how much that helps. Thanks so much and I will keep on keeping on.

Flo Jr. more »

Just have to say sorry that the coverage has been a little up and down, but I have been running into some road blocks here. I have been spending a lot of time trying to fix these problems and it has drained me mentally and physically. There are only so many times you can fight the good fight. I am going to have to find other ways to get you guys coverage. I hope everyone is doing well and I will talk to ya'll later.

Mark more »

It has taken me a while to get caught up here in Osaka. The travel took a lot out of me and the heat drains you throughout the day. I have been going to both the morning session and the evening sessions the last two days and it keeps me from doing my video blogs so I will try tomorrow to get a video blog up and going again. Sorry about that.
Talk ya'll real soon,


Mark more »

I will try to do a couple race recaps when I have time. So here is a recap of a couple of the races from this morning.
I just got back to the hotel from the morning section of day 1 and I have already learned so much. This is my first World Championships experience and I have not been to an Olympics yet, so this is the biggest comp I have ever been to. Like I said I have already learned a lot and I think Sully (Kevin Sullivan) sums it up in his interview when he said,… more »

I have finally made it to Osaka!
I left at 12:50 AM on Thursday New York time and arrived in Seoul, Korea 13hrs later at 3:30 AM Seoul time and I had 6 hrs to kill in the Seoul airport until my flight to Osaka so I worked on the "Running School" Video. The Running School was a lot of fun, the campers were great, all 500 of them. After sleeping on a couple chairs in the airport I headed off to Osaka and landed at noon Osaka time and took a an hour bus into the city. I… more »

On Monday I headed up to Ann Arbor to catch Nick Willis do his last workout in the states before heading to Osaka. Nick and I had talked a couple weeks before so I knew he was working out Monday evening but on Friday I called up Anna Willard and she was down with me filming her workout. Anna Willard, the steeplechaser who just finished her career at Michigan, got second at USAs and headed to Osaka on Tuesday as well. I will be posting her workout right now (hope you like it).
Being a former steeplechaser, I must… more »

Today is an exciting day for flotrack because we are introducing athlete blogs. A couple times a month our athletes will post and let us know about what they are doing on and off the track. It is another way for us to get to know our athletes. You will be able to leave comments and be flotrackr friends with the athletes. I encourage you to leave comments because I know how you guys have helped me keep on keeping on and I guarantee it will leave an impact. I cannot over state the power of your comments and words… more »

I just wanted to say thanks to all the athletes and coaches. I tried to get as many of them in the video as possible but I know I missed a few so I wanted to thanks some of the people you did not see in the video. Jen Rhines and Stephen Haas for helping do some play by play, Kate O'Neill, Mary Cullen, Roisin McGettigan, Molly Huddle, New Zealand dudes, David Krumenacker, Reid Coolsiet, Eric Gillis, Paul Morrison, Steve Sherer, Chris Layne, Andy Stubbs, Ray Flynn, Aaron Aguayo, Brian Olinger, Chris Lukezic, Alistair Cragg, Aries Merrit, Sarah Jamieson, Steve… more »

Sorry for the short video but today was a long day. Andrew Carlson and I headed to the airport together at 7 in the morning after getting back from Heusden late on Saturday. I had a lot of fun the last 25 days and I could not of kept up the blog without all your support. It was hard work but well worth it. I learned, experienced new cultures and met a ton of great people. I will try to get a little recap video done here in the next couple days. I am in Austin so I think I… more »

Leuven race mgmt has just informed us that there looks to be a mystery guest added to the mens 800 field.

While race mgmt is in Monaco for the Herculis GP they spoke with the mystery guests sports agent to secure the deal. Negotiations on travel and appearance fee (rumored to be Belgian beer) are being finalized as of press time.

The mystery runner, who wishes to remain anonymous until race time, fits all the events qualifying criteria.

1. Entrant must be a "has been" or "wanna-be".

2.… more »

I am here in amsterdam paying 0.35 Euro a second for the Internet, so i am going to be brief. Check out the Nick Symmonds Workout. I will try to get more and watch out for the races this weekend, its going to be fun. more »

Here at HQ in Austin we have been talking about what we should do about tags and comments. We like the fact that you do not have to sign in and you can say what you want but we don't like the fact that some people are abusing it. I don't mind and the guys think it's funny when people bash me but when people are writing degrading comments and tags that are meant to hurt people it makes us wonder. We want the community to regulate the tags, comments and the whole site so we will leave it as… more »