Welcome!! This blog will showcase the professional
experiences, both good and bad, of me, Mike Rutt! I will be blogging here about training,
competition, and travel associated with running professionally, as well as life
experiences, a few goofy things, and anything else that YOU, the readers, want
to hear about!
Let’s kick things off with a recap of the most recent USA
Championships as well as my summer of racing thus far. My training group, the New Jersey- New York
Track Club (remember it’s ALWAYS NJ before NY…commonly confused) flew out to
Des Moines, Iowa for the USA Championships in the middle of June with one goal,
to prove ourselves against the best athletes in the country. Everybody was training well, and we knew that
we were all ready for some big performances. Coach Frank Gagliano (Gags) and I
were confident in my abilities and knew that if I raced the way my training had
showed, qualifying for the World Championships in Moscow, Russia was by no means
out of the question.
NOTE: The qualification process is tricky and there is a
lengthy document explaining the rules, but basically the top three athletes in
each event qualify for the World Championships as long as they have reached a
certain standard of performance during the qualifying dates.
The first two rounds of the meet went according to plan and
I qualified for the final, comprised of the top 8 athletes in the event (Oh! I
haven’t mentioned that I primarily run the 800 meters, that’s an important
piece!) The final was….fast. That’s all I can really say about it. It was one of the fastest final rounds ever
for the 800 at USA’s. I ended up placing
7th and running a time of 1:45.7.
I felt great through most of the race but I just didn’t have the wheels
during the last 200 meters to place in the top 3. Overall, it was a great experience and I
learned a lot, as I do from just about every race that I run.
Although I didn’t qualify for the World Championships, my
season was far from over. Since then I
have raced in Edmonton and Vancouver, Canada; Budapest, Hungary; Kortrijk,
Belgium; and Lignano, Italy. The goal
for all of those meets was to run fast and make some money in the process. I didn’t quite achieve the success I had
hoped, but I must say traveling to all of these places is definitely one of the
perks of this sport!! They were all
great experiences both from an athletic and “stereotypical American” tourist
standpoint
 |
| Ferenc Puskas Stadium - Budapest, Hungary |
 | |||
| Wembley Urban Sports Center - Kortrijk, Belgium |
 |
| Municipal Stadium - Lignano, Italy |
I returned home from Europe a little over a week ago. It was great to get back in the States and
spend time with my wife, who made sure to remind me that she was at home
working full-time and doing graduate school while I was off traveling the globe
(I love you Katie). There was little
interruption between my racing and returning to training though. I plan on racing into the month of
September. I don’t really know where I
will be going yet or what distances I will be racing, but I’m excited for what
there is in store for me. I still think
that there is a PB, personal best, in my legs and I hope that I get another
chance to run fast.
And who knows, maybe within the next few months I’ll even
get sponsored. Yes that’s right, I’m not
sponsored by any shoe company, as many of the top athletes in the country
are. I will save that rant for another
post, though.
Before closing out this post, I would like to give a big
thank you to Starting Line Designs (@YourRaceDesign) for helping me start this
blog. They have done a lot of work in a
little amount of time to help me create a platform in which I can build my name
in the running community!
Thank you to everyone for taking the time to read this
post. If you have any questions or
comments feel free to put them below!
Also, you can follow me on Twitter at @Mike_Rutt!
