Ashton Eaton crossed the line in familiar fashion Friday night as he finished second at the Oregon Twilight meet in the men’s 400 meters to former Duck Mike Berry. Eaton was a runner-up last year when he lost to Nike’s Bryshon Nellum by .01 second.
Eaton, the decathlon world-record holder, competed in two of 10 decathlon events at the Oregon Twilight Meet to prepare for the Olympic Games. He also finished eighth in the high jump.
Berry won the 400 in 45.56 seconds followed by Eaton’s 45.78, which was .49 seconds faster than what he ran at last year’s meet.
This was Eaton’s first 400 of the season.
“It was awesome,” he said. “(Berry) ran some great times already, so I thought, ‘Stick close to this guy and it’s going to be OK.’”
While Eaton has improved on his 400 time, the high jump has still proven to be one of Eaton’s frustrations. He cleared the bar at 6-5 but could not get over it at 6-7, finishing eighth.
Eaton’s coach, Harry Marra, said that for right now Eaton is just working on the feel and approach of the event.
“I don’t want to limit him by giving him a height to jump,” Marra said. “I just want him to get a good feel for high jump.”
For Eaton, competing in an individual event is different from competing in the decathlon.
“Individual competitions are treated like glorified practices,” Eaton said, “and they don’t have as much meaning as a multi-event because that’s what we do.”
“The thing about decathletes is that they always do better in the decathlon,” Marra said. “You can be a miler running the 10,000 and you won’t be fired up – it’s the same with decathletes.”
Even though Eaton does not view individual events as important, they are necessary when it comes to preparing for the full decathlon.
“I need this competition to find stuff out and I did,” Eaton said. “Your percentage of output is less in practice, and in an event like the high jump you need to be excited and have more energy in order to highlight the mistakes.”
Eaton’s wife, Brianne Theisen-Eaton, was scheduled to run the 100 hurdles but scratched. “She (Brianne) did something at world indoor that was like a foot thing and came out of nowhere, and she dealt with it and did the meet,” said Eaton. “For some reason today in the warmup, she kind of felt the same thing.”
While Theisen-Eaton could have run the race, she chose not to do it because when looking toward the Olympics there is no need to risk injury in the early season. Theisen-Eaton will continue to work with her team physiologist, Don Butzner, to recover from the injury.
