Northern Arizona student-athletes, coaches and staff will be blogging from London over the course of the next two weeks. This is the fifth in a series of blogs about the 2012 London Olympics. Today: NAU Director of Track and Field/Cross Country Eric Heins.

On Saturday night, August 4, 2012 I had one of the most amazing nights of my life. The London 2012 organizing committee dubbed this "Super Saturday" at the Olympic Stadium, as there would be five finals that night, three of which had British athletes competing, including the men's Long Jump, women's Heptathlon and the men's 10,000 meter run. There were very few empty seats in the stadium that holds 80,000 plus. By far the largest group of fans at a track and field competition I have ever seen. The place was electric and the British athletes responded for the home crowd. They won the long jump, heptathlon and 10,000 meters. At the end of the meet, nobody wanted to go home.

There is no doubt in my mind that the fans in that stadium gave the athletes from Great Britain a little extra boost that night. Each time their long jumper, Rutherford, stepped on the runway, all eyes were on that runway. Everybody in the stadium started clapping and he came through with a big jump to win the gold. The poster child for the 2012 Olympics, Jessica Ennis, won the 800 meter race of the heptathlon to solidify her gold medal, so the crowd was already amped heading into the 10,000 meter run. During the last lap, when Mo Farah took off with 400 meters to go, the crowd was deafening. The 10,000 meter run that night was historic as Great Britain and USA took Gold and Silver respectively. This marks the first time in many years that the top two spots were not won by African countries, which have dominated distance running as of late.

While I soaked up every minute of being a fan of track and field that night, I was there in support of Diego Estrada and I briefly saw him outside of the Olympic Village. Because I was not part of the official Mexican delegation, I could not spend any time with him in the village. We had a chance to see him before he went to the stadium and he seemed focused, but I could sense he knew that he was about to embark on something very special.

As with many championship distance races, the early pace was extremely slow and there was a lot of jostling and pushing. Diego ran right in the middle of the pack for that first 2000 meters and then the pace went from dawdling to flying in one lap. The pack strung out and Diego hung on for a few laps before finding himself in "no man's land".

He then had to run the majority of the race along with one other athlete from Australia and they were unable to regain contact with the main pack. Diego ran hard and finished 21^st overall. He was not pleased with his performance, but we both can take a lot of things away from this experience. We will evaluate his preparations, how long he should be away from altitude and what we can do better to prepare for these championship races.