A weighty transition for Lolo Jones

DES MOINES - Bread? Loads of pasta? Chocolate cake?

Anything and everything was on the 9,000 calories-a-day menu for Lolo Jones as she muscled up to nearly 160 pounds to compete in the bobsled event in February's Winter Olympics at Sochi, Russia.

But when it concluded, a different diet loomed. She's on a far more restrictive one now as the three-time Olympian prepares to compete in today's 7:05 p.m. elite shuttle hurdle relay in the Drake Relays at Drake Stadium.

'The original (plan) was to lose 30-plus pounds,” said Jones, who will compete on a team that includes 2013 world champion Bri Rollins, and 2013 Relays champion Queen Harrison. 'I lost 10 right away - within a few weeks. The next 10 pounds was a little bit harder, but just with a stricter diet I was able to get that. The last 5 to 7, that's really been tough.”

So Jones is thinking strictly about splits nowadays - and not banana splits.

The former Des Moines Roosevelt standout called the transition back to track physically and mentally taxing, in part because there was virtually no break between the seasons.

'The first time I went over hurdles (again) I thought my form was pretty much equivalent to how I ran in high school,” said Jones, who competed in the past two Summer Olympics. 'I was carrying the extra weight so when I was coming off the hurdles the first day my ankles were just killing me. So just getting that all back into coordination was pretty tough.”

She's mostly there now and needs to be given who she and her TEAM USA 1 teammates will be facing.

A top Jamaican group also will be chasing the win, as will Dawn Harper-Nelson-led Team USA 2.

'Let's do this for the fans,” Harper-Nelson, who won silver at the 2012 London Summer Olympics, said of her team's mindset. 'Making sure that the Drake Relays is really pumped up.”

ISU SHAKES UP SECOND

Iowa State's 6,400-meter relay women's team didn't set its lineup until an hour before Thursday's race.

The four the Cyclones settled on - Bethanie Brown, Katy Moen, Ejiro Okoro and Crystal Nelson - finished in a school record 19:13.62, but were four seconds behind Katie Flood-led Washington.

'I knew she was a great runner,” Nelson said of Flood, a former West Des Moines Dowling runner she challenged on the anchor leg. 'I knew she would be tough to beat.”

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