By Neto Baptiste
Apart from hitting the qualifying mark for the major track and field events this year, national sprinter Cejhae Greene said one of his main goals is to remain injury free this season.
Speaking on the Good Morning Jojo sports show, Greene said he’s aware that the end game is to compete and excel at major meets like this year’s World Athletics Championships, but is mindful that he must first be healthy and able to do so.
“The main goal this season is to stay healthy and if we can stay healthy then we know we can run faster and be able to recover really well. But to do that is a hefty cost and it’s the part that most people don’t pay a lot of attention to. They would see you run 10:3 or 10:2 this year and not really know what’s going on and by right, that’s hard to pay attention to because how else would you know unless I tell you? But if I show up to a race it makes no sense I make the excuse that I am hurting or I don’t feel well, so for us, it’s always to stay healthy but staying healthy comes with a cost,” he said.
In April, Greene opened his outdoor season with a 10:01 seconds performance at the UNF East Coast Relays to take the gold medal before clocking 10:23 to win gold at the Track Night NYC held in New York on May 19.
Although yet to achieve the new qualifying standard of 10:00 seconds recently set by Word Athletics, Greene is confident hit the mark.
“I’ve had some really good races this year, but I’ve been unfortunate with the wind. I ran 10:01 this year but the wind was 2.3 or 2.4, and I’ve also ran 10:08 this year but again, the same instance with the wind; so I’ve been a little bit unlucky with the wind this year. Again, we’ve ran these times before, we’ve ran 10 flat and 10:0s for the past six or seven years, so we know we’re capable of doing it,” the athlete said.
Greene assured that he has been putting in the work and expects things to start falling into place as the season progresses.
“We changed up a few things this year in terms of our approach to the season. Coach seems to be pretty happy with where we’re at and right now we are just focused on executing the race and putting it together because the work has already been done. We’ve been doing a good job at gauging each phase, so right now I am pleased with the preparation in terms of where we at,” he said.
This year’s World Athletics Championships are slated for August 19-27 in Budapest, Hungary.