RealGM

Ok, so it's clear this forum is going to take a while to catch on

For those who are interested, I'll be competing as part of the Australian Track & Field team at the 2008 Oceania Championships held in the Northern Mariana Islands next week.

http://www.athletics.com.au/fanzone/380 ... in_oceania
(I'm Jay Stone, listed in the Open Men, in the 200m, 400m and Long Jump)

The oceania athletics website lists me as a 'likely finalst' in the 200m.
http://www.athletics-oceania.com/index. ... 1787&sID=2

This is my 3rd selection to this team, where I competed in 2004 and then won a silver medal in the Long Jump at the 2006 games.

The championships pit the 19 Oceania nations against one another, with Australia and New Zealand sending developmental teams, while the other 17 nations (Fiji, Vanuatu, Paupua New Guniea, Samoa, Guam etc) send their Olympians, who will be using the meet as a warm up to the Beijing Olympics.

The Northern Mariana Islands, are situated in tha pacific between Japan and Papua New Guniea:


The largest island is just 20km long and 9km wide, so it should be a great place to visit while competing


Anyway, I know it's not quite up to the standard of Usain Bolt, but I thought the 3 or 4 people who view this forum may find it interesting

Cool. good luck, bro. I want to hear about your training at some point.

good luck Glyde

Well I'm back from the champs, with a Silver and two Bronze medals.

Very happy.

I started with the 400m and I narrowly missed the medals, the 35degrees and 90% humidity was a little too much for me and I faded toward the line and couldn't hold onto a top 3 spot.

I missed the Bronze by 0.2, Silver by 0.3 and Gold by 0.7 of a second

Later on that night I was in the long jump. Entering the final round I was in the bronze medal position, until the jumper before me from Fiji knocked me back to 4th... I basically said to myself 'I'm not coming 4th again' and fired up and popped out a 23ft 4inch jump to steal the silver medal.

The following day I was in the 200m, and by this time I had accrued a nice set of injuries, an achillies injury I had coming into the games, damaged ligaments in my foot, and very tight and sore hamstrings... spent alot of time on the massage table.

The 200m heats I ran 21.96 into a -1.9 headwind, I was pretty happy with that, but the final was shortly after and I hadn't really recovered with the injuries and the heat, so I ran a whisker slower in the final but it was enough for bronze.

The final event of the games was the 4x100m relay final, and I nursed my injuries through and the Aussie team took Bronze. One of my relay partners wasn't as lucky, he tore his hamstring handing the baton over in the 2nd change and was carted off to hospital, so we were pretty lucky to get a medal.

Very cool.

thats cool man, congrats on the medals