oliviarazzano

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It’s been a busy January (2024). Olivia will have 3 track meets, tryout’s for the North Atlanta high school track and field team, she also has an IEA horse show. She actually got her 1st blue ribbon as a member of the high school team at this show. This video was from a meet in Birmingham. The competition is super tough at these indoor meets. This is one of the few indoor tracks here in the southeast and it’s my feeling that only the top runners come out for the indoor season. This was a solid performance for Olivia. And, she did make the high school varsity team. In the time trials, she was barely nudged out by one other girl on the team in the 100m. Olivia’s time was 12.90. In the 200m, Olivia was first with a 27 flat. The time keeping didn’t appear to be the most accurate. Olivia is heading back to Birmingham tomorrow for her 1st meet with North Atlanta. She’ll compete in 60m and 4x200. She is at a riding lesson right now and we will try to get connected with Coach O this afternoon to work on blocks.

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Time Trials (November 2023): We were excited with her performance in the 60m with a time of 7.95. Her PR last indoor season was 8.57. We are still new to track & field and we feel this solid year over year progress is reason to be optimistic. All the training and hard work is paying off. Go Olivia!

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Day after Thanksgiving and back training with Life University. She actually trained all week with Life as she was off from school for the holiday. Resistance training today.

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Olivia had the day off from school yesterday. She elected to spend it a Life University training for 2+ hours with their sprinters. The workout included hill repeats and the sled. I’d say that’s commitment!

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The last few weeks have been hectic on the sports front with horse shows and flag football games. It’s been difficult getting in all the track training sessions. She has roughly 4 training sessions a week. We had to hit the track this Sunday morning to get in her plyo workout. Her training here in the preseason has included, plyos, hills, track work and they even started weight training. Here’s a video from her plyo workout this morning. Tomorrow is 300s on the track. Last Monday she notched :52, :52, :51, :50, :52 and :49 for the workout. She was super happy with the results.

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It’s been awhile since last post. That’s not due to lack of activity. There were many first this summer. Olivia competed in her first US national meet, her first international meet and her first Swedish national meet. She competed in the AAU Club Championships in Orlando, Fl. She competed in the Varldsungdomsspelen (translation: World Youth Games) in Gothenburg, Sweden. I’ll attach a video with her winning her first heat in the 80m. She competed in the Sweden national championships in Stockholm, Sweden. She competed in both the 80m and 300m. She competed in U16 division. She finished in Top 10 in both making the finals in the 300m and missing the finals in the 80m by .02 of a second. It was a great meet with 6th place in 300m and 9th best time in 80m. She already excited for next years nationals. Her goal is to make the Swedish national team in the future. The first step towards this was joining a club team in Sweden. She joined LGIF Linkoping Friidrott. The team and coach welcomed her with open arms. She got to train with them a few weeks this summer

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This was from the AAU district qualifier in June. The was her last chance to qualify for regionals. She hasn’t competed in the 400m much this season. This video demonstrates Olivia’s drive and commitment. You can see that at roughly the 180m mark something needed to change. After the race, we talked about things. Olivia said “a little doubt creeped in”. She told herself “f*** no, it ain’t going down like this”. You can see that she turns it on and goes from last to first. All the effort was needed and Olivia secured a place at regionals with this effort.

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April 2023: The competition is brutal in Georgia. Will pay off in the long run. Olivia had a great meet and placed twice.

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Olivia has been working hard on her starts and her reaction time getting ready for the state championship here later in April. She works mostly with Coach O. This is a training session on her own. She recorded herself and studied the video during her recovery.

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Sutton Middle School won the City Championship here in Atlanta. It’s super competitive. Olivia contributed a 1st place in 4X100, 2nd in the 200m and 3rd in the 100m. She learned that she established new school records in the 100m and 200m with a 12.88 and 26:21. With school records, she still finished 2nd and 3rd. Olivia was not disappointed at all. She had never been more excited. The 12s in the 100m was a season goal.

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The regular season has wrapped up for Olivia’s middle school track season. It was challenging balancing her school team and club team. There were many highlights including PRs in both the 100m and 200m at the city championship with a 12.88 in the 100m and an even more impressive 26:21 in the 200m. We learned both these are now school records. However, the favorite event of the year has to be the 4X100 in this video. We actually found this video on Instagram. Olivia is the 2nd leg…”Suttons gone crazy”.

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Some records are meant to be broken. Olivia was training today on her own at the high school she will attend next year. She was doing 150 repeats and had a few in the 18s (18:74, 18:89, 18:96).

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Working on starts with Life University team during 2022 holiday break.

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Training intensity has picked up and the cold weather has not been a hurdle. We are now understanding what coach meant by needing to get in shape for in season training. Additionally, there was no dip in training over the holidays actually the mentioned increase in intensity. As Olivia was out of school during the holidays, she was able to join the Life University team and train with them for a few weeks. The practices were between 2-3 hours in duration. Olivia loved it. In December, she had her first Indoor meet. She traveled to Birmingham, AL for the Galleria Games. There was strong compeitiion with teams from all over the southeast. Simply put, the learning continues. Indoor was a completely different experience than outdoors. She got through it and had a much better meet this past weekend. She participated in the Clemson Track & Field Invitational at Clemson, SC. Her 60m still needs some work and we were all happy with 200m resulting in a PR of 27.81. To compete at the event, we had to get a membership with the AAU. With her birthday, she was in 15/16 age group and she is only 14. Needless to say, the competition was tough as the 8 grader was competing against mostly 9th and 10th graders She finished 2nd in her 200m heat and was super close to winning the heat. The coach give her great feedback and the message from this past meet was that Olivia needs to just focus on going fast, focus on going all out, during the meets. They can work on technique, etc during practice.

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It was Thanksgiving week (2022) and no letup in training. Super impressed with the commitment of the Life University track team especially considering off season. Maybe there is no off season in track:-) Olivia got in 4 training sessions and three of those were fully integrated with the track team. Olivia is not timid nor intimidated and she jumps right in there and does her best. She seems welcomed by the team even though most are 6-8 years older than her. It appears they appreciate her passion and hard work. These are photos from the training sesssions. Two of these photos are from their 150 repeats. My favorite is seeing the tanked athletes after the 150s.

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Recent training video. She does train a bunch on the turf.

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Recent training video. I asked her if she knew she was throwing to the side. She said “yes” as she just finished throwing to the other side. It was intentional:)