And the winner is?

On Saturday, Matt competed in the Potomac Valley Track Club open meet at Edison High School in Alexandria.  It was a bigger meet than we were expecting, with lots of local adult and youth clubs. My mom, the kids, and I all came to cheer Matt on.  I have some photos below of the race and cheering section.  The temps were good for both Matt and his fans.  The kids were very enthusiastic about cheering and yelled "Go Dad, Go" even when Matt wasn't racing.  Matt ended up not racing in the 800.  The kids were out of steam by the end of Matt's race and there is no way that they would have been able to sit there for several more hours.

The first track event was the mile.  There were three heats of the mile followed by one heat of the 1500. The mile was won in 4:39 so it is too bad some of them didn't run in the 1500 meet to push Matt. Before the race Matt ran into one of the runners from Catholic University that he competed against at the Gallaudet meet.  He decided to race in the 1500 with Matt.  There were a few other adults and about 10 kids prepping for the Junior Olympics that ran the 1500.  Matt had to hold back in the last 300-400 meters because he had lapped the kids and he didn't want to run into anyone.  That would not have been good!  In order to qualify to complete in the 1500 at Nationals, Matt needed to run at least a 5:04.  He ran a 4:40 and came in first.  Woohoo!  He didn't run all out so there is room for improvement when he races at Hamline University in a few weeks at Nationals.  The 5000 and 1500 are on different days so he has a good shot in both events.  I cashed in airline miles to buy his plane ticket last night and he has his hotel reservations so it is all starting to feel real.  The only downside of Nationals is that he'll miss Father's Day.  We'll have to have a rain day the following weekend. :-)

Here are the standards for Matt's vision classification in order to make the US team and compete in either the Pan American Games or Worlds this year

1500:
National Team A standard: 4:00:30
National Team B standard:  4:04
Parapan Am Games minimum:  4:30
World Championships A standard:  4:20
World Championships B standard:  4:27

5000:
National Team A standard: 14:45:03
National Team B standard:  15:16
Parapan Am Games minimum:  17:20
World Championships A standard:  16:15
World Championships B standard:  16:40

Don't forget about Sunday's StarKids 5k in Fairfax!  Hope to see you there!