re: SEC Track & Field Championships Men's 4x400 Final

I was impressed with how big some of those guys are. The Florida guy on the second to last leg and the Georgia guy on the last leg both looked like they should be playing TE or low post.

The 800 was my race. Everyone hates it but I excelled at it. It is hard to train for.

If your a sprinter it is to long. If your a distance runner it is to short and you get tired quick because it requires more burst.

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Ran both but back then it was the "880" and "2 mile" 'cause everything was in yards before went to the metric system in track and field.

880 much tougher than the 2 mile. Only the last 200 meters or so of the 3200 is a sprint. Nearly the entire 800 is.

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LOL. You must of been what we distance runners called a "sandbagger". "Sprinting" the last 200 meters of a two mile.

A well run two mile requires you to suffer big time for about the last half mile. It's not the ball squeezing pain of the last ten seconds of a 400 or the slightly less painful last 30 seconds of an 800 or the slightly less painful last lap of a mile.

But all this is a moot point since easily the most painful event in track and field is the 400 hurdles.

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Can't tell you how many arguments I've had with kids trying to convince me that a 3200 is worse than an 800.

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at a high level absolutely. The 800 is pretty insane. Those athletes are essentially gazelles at that point..

for a High school kid, the 3200 sucks because its so repetitive. When id run both (and the 1600) the 800 was always so much fun, the 3200 was dreadful. That said I played the rabbit in both. I seemed to do better in both and my kick wasnt too great

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I kind of floundered at the 5,000 and 10,000. Then we got an assistant coach who ran the steeple at Auburn. He talked me into giving it a try. LIke I say, no one else wanted to do it. Only the nut cases ran the steeplechase. It's easier to win when there's less competition!! (Not that I won that often.)

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Steeple is tough but I don't think it is so much a pain issue compared to other events but rather how hard it is to jump over a solid barrier when you are dog tired and hurting. You have to back off a bit to be able to do that. The other thing that people don't appreciate about steeple is that you have all those other people around you. Sometimes you don't even really get to see the barrier because somebody is right in front of you.

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Steeple is tough but I don't think it is so much a pain issue compared to other events but rather how hard it is to jump over a solid barrier when you are dog tired and hurting.

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With each lap it gets harder to clear the barriers. And don't forget about the water. I've seen many races end face down in the pond.