Athletics Carnival
Ouch. I knew I was asking for it. My second toe on my right foot is pretty much shredded. Anyway, today I had my last ever school athletics carnival. They held it at the place that’s going to be used for the Sydney 2000 Olympics Warm-Up Track, so it was one of those rough red rubbery surfaces. I ran the 200m (non-c’ships) and the 100m championships. Now I run barefooted as I don’t have spikes (never saw the need to shell out $70-100 for something you’re gonna use so little). The 200m was sort of alright. I came first, but since I hadn’t run since last year, I was really buggered. In addition to this, running barefoot is a killer on these surfaces, and in the space of around 25 seconds (I didn’t get my time), one of my toes had already developed a fairly large blister. The 100, was much much worse. I had pre-qualified for the championship event from last year (I didn’t even know until about 1 week beforehand), and unlike the rest of the guys, I had done absolutely no training. I hadn’t even run a 100m since last year. Worse still, they all had spikes, and I was, like, the only one without spikes. Yeah – a little el cheapo Asian kid running in the c’ships? Worse yet, although I’m in Year 12, I’m only 16, so running in the Under 17 event meant that everyone else was a year below. I was gonna get kicked for sure.
It turned out that I came 6th out of 8th which is in my mind pretty good, seeing the no training, no spikes and cut up toe. As soon as I came out of the blocks, I felt the blister split open. Rip. Not a nice feeling, so I sort of grimaced and kept running. I think I ran 12 point something seconds (again I didn’t bother to get the time). The winning time was a friggin 11.11s or something – a school record. Fast? Bloody lightning! I inspected my injury and a whole chunk of skin had ripped off, not completely, but a three-quarter circle patch. Painful and really inconvenient. I’m gonna be hobbling around school tomorrow :). Never again barefoot like that. It’s alright if you’re only running one race, but two? Nope. Apparently, someone else got all his toes cut up worse than mine by running barefoot, so I really can’t complain too much.
10:35pm (GMT +10.00) 
