I was back in Sewanee, Tennessee this weekend for the Mountain Laurel Invitational. Last year, I set my 200m personal best at this meet, so I was excited to see what I could do here.

My back has been feeling much better since the Stanford Invite. All that’s left is occasional stiffness, weakness especially when loaded up in the weight room (I’m still not over ~50% of my old maxes when deadlifting and squatting), and seemingly worse hip proprioception at max speed—my hips have been a lot more anteriorly tilted after the injury.

I didn’t have a great week of training leading up to meet day—I’m back to working out extremely early, which definitely takes adjustment, and I had just completed the ~25 hour drive from Montana to Tennessee the previous week. Meet day, on the other hand, was pretty much ideal: mid-60s, sunny, and with a slight tailwind.

Last weekend, I opened my outdoor season in the 2023 Stanford Invitational. I have a lot of personal history with this meet and with the Stanford track—I competed there in high school, and trained on the Stanford track through most of COVID.

I was doubly lucky to be able to compete in this meet: I had a friend on the inside who was able to get me a spot in the meet despite not coming close to the entry standards. I’ve also been dealing with a couple injuries over the past month, most recently a facet joint sprain in my lower back. In fact, my first full-speed workout was the day before the meet.

My last meet of the indoor season was the Big Sky Preview, once more in Bozeman. As usual, I signed up for the 60 and 200.

MSU has been a fantastic host—I’m grateful to the team for allowing me to compete with them, and just as grateful to all of the event staff.

At some point in our lives, as the story goes, the years start to blur together. As we get more settled in the rhythm of life, as our milestone events recede behind us, the distinction between any two years becomes less and less clear. And one day, we blink, and realize we’ve spent decades on cruise control.

I’m staving off this future as long as I can—and I did so successfully in 2022. Here’s some of my highlights of the year:

I was back in Bozeman last Friday for the Bobcat Performance meet, the third of four indoor meets hosted by MSU this year. This meet was exciting for me because there were two rounds of the 60, which is usually a great way to set a good mark.

I had an abbreviated but strong training week leading up to the meet, continuing to build on my newfound power out of the blocks. My coach had me especially focused on being aggressive from 10-30m to maximize my time spent sprinting upright in the 60.

Inspired by Noah Lyles, I’ve been experimenting with some self-activation drills before maximal efforts. For now, I’ve focused on my glutes, calves, and lats. It actually makes a tangible difference in how prepared I feel.

The meet was pretty late for me—the 200m wasn’t until 7:15pm, which is usually about an hour before I go to bed. Although I tried to shift my circadian rhythm slightly back, I was still up at 5:30am the day of the meet.

As usual, I raced the 60 and 200 at this meet. This time, I was the fastest seed time in both races.