Running fast was a huge part of this weekend’s sporting events, so I wanted to discuss a few of those items with you. College football started this weekend and everybody seemed excited for that, especially watching the incredible speed of LSU turn the tables on an incredibly fast Oregon team. There were a couple high school football games on ESPNU, as well as the U.S. Open tennis.

But, let’s start with the Track and Field World Championships over in South Korea. If you really want to improve your speed, you have to watch Usain Bolt run. It is really something special to watch this guy in the prime of his career and we get to witness it. He has smashed world records in the 100, 200, and 4×100 relay, constantly raising the bar AGAIN by continuing to run faster than any human before him. Just when you thought humans couldn’t run any faster, Bolt takes it to another level.

What a perfect name for a sprinter don’t you think?? Bolt. I mean the guy was destined to run fast. He certainly wasn’t going to throw the shot put with that name. Bolt!!

Usain Bolt first got disqualified in the 100M which I think is a crock. You get one stinking false start and you’re done. What is up with that? I know, I know. I understand why it is there, but because of it, we didn’t get to see the fastest human in the world run one of the glamour track events. Track has a hard time translating over to the U.S. The only real times people recognize are the 100M dash and Bolt gets a dq. People don’t care about how fast you run the 800M, but they certainly turn their head with the 100M.

So, it was a shame he didn’t get to run it. Watching him run that straight away is picture perfect. His running form is unreal. The guy is 6’3″ or 6’4″ and makes great use of his stride. His arms are pumping hard and real smooth when he runs. He generates so much power with his legs, it is amazing to watch the turnover as he is accelerating down the straightaway.

He did make up for it in the 200M dash. He ended up winning it getting the 4th fastest time in history with a time of 19.40 seconds. Nice!! Then I watched him yesterday anchor the Jamaican 4×100 relay team to a world record time of 37.04 seconds. Wow!! That is flying.
Mark it down. Next year is the 2012 Olympics in London. He will definitely be one of the top athletes to watch.

I also happened to watch the women’s 4×100 relay. Top level sprinters regardless of gender just look awesome when they run. The fluidity, form, legs pumping, it really is a sight to see. The anchors to the American and Jamaican team (which got first and second respectively) were really cruising down that straightaway. The thing I noticed, and maybe it is because these female track athletes wear such small bikini bottoms as uniforms and are constantly picking them out of their butt crack, is the glute action of these two females. Their glutes were really big (in a muscular way) and just churning them down the track.

With college football starting, I of course watched my Buckeyes with eager anticipation to see how they would perform. They got the job done and played well. One down, a bunch more to go. The game most of America was watching was the LSU and Oregon game. I’m not the biggest SEC fan so I was hoping they would lose. That didn’t happen. They lived up to their billing despite having a suspended quarterback practicing on locals for his next UFC match.

Going in, every analyst was talking about Oregon’s speed and if LSU’s speed could match it. LSU was just fine in that category. One of their defensive ends came from behind and tracked down Oregon’s Heisman trophy candidate running back before he got to the line of scrimmage. That was pure speed.

The biggest difference wasn’t necessarily the speed, but the size of LSU’s line. Every guy was over 300 pounds and no one was shorter than 6’3″. I tell you I’d feel pretty safe if I was that quarterback.

There were also a couple of high school football games on ESPNU yesterday playing in the Kirk Herbstreit Classic right here in Columbus. Two local teams were playing. One was Pickerington Central and the other was Upper Arlington. I’ve worked with two players (one on each team), so it was kind of cool seeing them play. Admittedly, I didn’t watch all of the games because of repeated delays due to lightning.

Jake Raymond is a senior wide receiver for Pickerington Central. I did see him catch a 28 yard pass for a first down and the very next play Central scored on a touchdown pass to take a 21-17 lead. Then they had a delay and I never went back to see if they scored. Jake worked with me over the winter (he had worked with us a few years back) and got his 40 time down to the 4.5’s. He was pretty happy.

Grayson Fisher is a tight end/defensive end for Upper Arlington. He worked with me to get prepped for some college combines. He felt he had the potential to play at the next level and he was right. This past week in the paper, I saw that he had committed to play football at Princeton. I guess our work helped out to get the notice that he needed.

At the time of writing this, Arlington was still playing tied at 0-0, so I don’t know who won. Hopefully, you saw my tweets early on Sunday to watch these two games. I’m sure it was fun for the kids. How often do you get to play in OSU stadium? Hope you enjoyed the newsletter today, to get some insight on a few of the sporting events that happened this weekend. Enjoy your Labor Day. I hope it is relaxing for you and we’ll talk soon.