Go Where the Hurdles Take You

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”
–from A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean

Introduction

The ancient Egyptians had the Nile. Mark Twain had the Mississippi. Siddhartha had the Ganges. I have the hurdles. A river. That serves as a path, a source.

We like to believe that life is all about making choices, and that we have the power to make the choices that will ensure a happy, prosperous life. But I don’t feel that life is about making choices. I feel that life is about going with the flow. It’s not about asserting your will, but surrendering your will to the larger life force that you are a part of. For me, that life force has taken the shape of the hurdles. I’m a hurdler, and I don’t know why. I never chose to be. It just happened.

My personal bests were 14.9 hand-timed over the 39’s in high school, 41.5 hand-timed over the 300’s, 15.63 FAT over the 42’s in college, and 58.0 hand-timed in the 400h. On several occasions I have made the “choice” to move on from the hurdles. On a strictly practical level, I should’ve been done with the hurdles after high school, and at the very latest after college. But I have always returned, and the hurdles have always welcomed me back.

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Being a hurdler, and what that means, is a hard thing to explain. But it goes much deeper than running races and winning medals. It goes into the core. The core of what? I don’t really know.

But I do know that my identity as a hurdler has survived my death as a competitive hurdler. When I look at 42-inch hurdles nowadays I can’t imagine how I ever got over those things. The only time I ever clear hurdles these days is to demonstrate basic drills at very low heights. But I still think like a hurdler, I still dream about hurdles, I still approach life with the mindset of a hurdler. And coaching serves as a means to continue on the journey, to stay on the path…. Yes I’d like to say that coaching is about helping others, about passing on the wisdom and the knowledge I’ve gained over the years. But really, it’s about me. It’s about doing what I love to do, being my natural self.

At the age of 47, I can say that I have played a role in coaching some of the greatest hurdlers in high school history. Yet I’m not really sure what that means, or why it matters. Does it mean that I’m a great coach? Or does it mean that I was fortunate to have coached such talented athletes? If it’s true that I’m a great coach, so what? If it’s true that I’ve just been lucky, so what? What matters is the hurdles. This rhythm, this dance, this river that flows through my life.

This article is my story – the story of my relationship with the hurdles, the story of my journey down this hurdling river, from back in the day to the here and now.

Part One: Through the Storm and After the Rain

“It knows everything, the river, everything can be learned from it.”
–from Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

When I first started hurdling, my knowledge of track and field was quite limited. The year was 1982. I was a sophomore at a private school in suburban Philadelphia, had played basketball all my life, had two older brothers and an older sister who had played basketball, and looked upon track as “something to do in the spring” to stay in shape for basketball. I had been running track in this manner since the seventh grade, competing in the 100 and 200, with moderate success.

So sophomore year, a whole lot of new kids came out for the team who had not come out the previous year. Most of them were upperclassmen, and it seemed like every one of them was a sprinter, and every one of them was faster than me. I was feeling like maybe this track thing wasn’t for me. Having people blast past you on a regular basis can do serious damage to your confidence.

Then one day in early March my coach suggested I try the hurdles. I was tall (6-0), he rationalized, and would presumably get taller (I didn’t), and the team needed hurdlers a whole lot more than sprinters. With nothing to lose, I decided to give it a shot.

Though I wasn’t all that good and my form was terrible, I felt encouraged by the fact that I had found an event that required more than just raw speed. In the hurdles, you had to be agile, flexible, and there were many ways to drop your time. With hurdles in the way, you could run faster by improving your technique.

I was also thrilled by the fact that I was immediately the number two hurdler on the team. We only had one senior ahead of me, and he would be graduating at the end of the year. So if I worked hard to master the technical part, I could be the best hurdler on the team the following year and maybe make some noise in our league championships.

In comparing track to basketball, I liked the fact that there was no bench in track. I would always get a chance to prove myself, even if in a slow heat. Times don’t lie. In basketball, it was becoming increasingly clear to me that I might never get a chance to shine. I played point guard, and we had four guards who were older and better than me. I couldn’t get in a game.

I was also discovering that, as basketball was becoming more and more structured, my love for it was decreasing. I don’t consider myself someone who lacks intelligence, but the language of organized basketball was way over my head, and it prevented me from playing instinctively. For me, the fun of playing basketball was the basics of our five against your five, let’s go. In middle school I played that way. In summer league games and pick-up games it was the same thing. But in high school basketball there were so many plays. Half-court offense, sideline out-of-bounds plays, baseline out-of-bounds plays, fast-break plays. And so many defenses. 2-3 zone, 1-3-1 zone, 1-3-1 zone trap, 3-2 zone, box-and-one, man-to-man. I remember wondering, When did basketball get so complicated?

Despite my frustrations, and the fact that I didn’t like the coaches, I still felt that basketball was my main sport, that I would have to find a way onto the court. I had to work on my left hand, I had to work on my jump-shot. I had to get better. My sophomore year, I ended the outdoor track season with personal bests of 17.2 in the 110’s and 45.3 in the 300’s. The reality was, track was fun, but I wasn’t going anywhere with it.

Then in the fall of my junior year, I happened to walk into the office of Mr. McAlpin, my track coach. He also taught Spanish, which meant his office was located in one of the classroom buildings, so I was just stopping in to catch up. Unlike the basketball coaches, he was very easy to talk to, so a random “what’s up” visit wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary.

When I walked in, he was watching video footage of a race. His eyes were glued to the television. I didn’t think he’d realized I had even entered the room. But then he said, “You need to watch this, Steve.” He rewound the tape, and I sat down to watch it with him.

The footage was of Renaldo Nehemiah from a couple years earlier, 1981, when he set the world record in the 110 hurdles at the Weltklasse meet in Zurich, Switzerland in 12.93, the first-ever sub-13 race.

I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t know who Renaldo Nehemiah was. I didn’t follow track. All I knew was that this race I was watching, with this dude stepping over those hurdles like they weren’t even there, utterly astounded me.

I found myself thinking two thoughts: 1) How does anyone get that good at what they do? and 2) I want to learn how to do that.

Looking back, I can say (although I didn’t realize it until years later) that that was the specific moment when I fell in love with the hurdles.

The idea of running track as my main sport suddenly seemed real, like something I wanted to do, and could do. What that guy was doing in that video looked nothing like what I was doing in track practice. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before in any sport. I just couldn’t believe it. It was like he was a sorcerer, a magician, like he was making the crossbars disappear and just running through them. I don’t remember what I said to Mr. McAlpin, or if he said anything to me. But something had happened inside of me, something I was not yet able to articulate.

Youtube footage of Nehemiah’s world record 12.93 race.

Later that fall I quit the basketball team. But it wasn’t just because of the video. Practical matters made an impact too. It was becoming clear that I was running out of time to prove myself, that the coaches didn’t believe in me, and that I didn’t believe in myself. As a junior, it wouldn’t make sense to struggle all year as a scrub at the end of the bench holding out hope that once all the seniors ahead of me graduated, I would get my chance. In the hurdles, I could get my chance right now.

And it just so happened that Mr. McAlpin had hired a new assistant, Mr. Keeley, who would be starting up an indoor program at our school that year. I figured running indoors would give me time to work on my technique, to get stronger, and to build up my stamina so that I could hit the ground running when the outdoor season started.

My decision was not a popular one. Even Mr. McAlpin asked if I was sure I knew what I was doing. My mom told me straight up that I was making the wrong decision, that she was disappointed with me, that I was throwing away all the time my dad had spent coaching me in middle school and working with me and my brother in the backyard. My dad felt I was making a mistake, but that it was my mistake to make. My friends were just confused. The basketball coach, when I met with him to give him the news, called me a quitter once he realized I wasn’t going to change my mind.

But I look back on that decision and realize it wasn’t a decision at all. It marked the beginning of me following this hurdle path, of going with the flow of this hurdle river. If the track team had had as many good hurdlers as the basketball team had point guards, I would’ve stuck with basketball. If the basketball coaches had been as easy to talk to as Mr. McAlpin and Mr. Keeley, I would’ve stuck with basketball. If I had never seen that video of Nehemiah, I would’ve stuck with basketball. Who voluntarily leaves the known to face the unknown? I didn’t want to quit basketball. I didn’t want to face upheaval and uncertainty. I didn’t know if two years would be enough to get really good in the hurdles, even with an indoor program.

But the hurdles had found me. The hurdles were calling me. So I answered the call.

My personal best in the 110’s that year was 15.9, making me the best of the four hurdlers on our team, and good enough for fourth in the league championship meet. I had been stuck on 16.6-16.5 for three meets in a row until I finally dipped under 16.0 in that last race. The winner had run 14.5, second place was 14.7, third was 15.3, then me in 15.9. All three guys ahead of me were seniors. I’d have a legit shot at being league champion the next year.

I didn’t run the 300’s at the league championships. I had stopped running it after the third or fourth meet in the year because of fatigue issues that only grew worse as the season wore on. For some reason, I kept hitting the wall in that race. First I was hitting it at the sixth hurdle. By the time I stopped competing in the event, I was hitting the wall by the third hurdle. I didn’t understand what was going on, but convinced myself that I because I had been focusing on the short hurdles indoors, I just lacked the conditioning needed for the longer race.

What I didn’t know, and what my coaches didn’t know, was that I was very, very sick. But I wouldn’t find out for another six months, in the last week of October of my senior year.

Between the end of junior year track season and my diagnosis, I was bombarded with warning signs that something was seriously wrong, but I basically ignored them or waited for them to go away. Not until I couldn’t jog a warm-up lap around the track without stopping, and almost fainted on the way to a class on the second floor, did I ask my mom to schedule an appointment so I could find out what the heck was going on.

Before then, I just assumed I needed to improve my conditioning. After track season ended, I vowed I’d spend the summer building up my cardio by running three miles every day in my neighborhood. I never made it three miles. The farthest I ever made it was two, which quickly became one and a half, which quickly became one, which quickly became a half before I stopped trying altogether. Instead, I hurdled all the time. Mr. McAlpin had let me take home two hurdles that summer, so I set them up in the backyard and ran over them again and again and again. Two hurdles meant 25 yards of running, so fatigue never became a factor, as I could always take as much rest as needed between reps. And I loved hurdling so much that dropping the distance stuff didn’t feel like much of a sacrifice at all.

There were other symptoms. Unexplainable bruises on my arms and feet that would go away the next day. My gums would bleed a little bit when I brushed my teeth. I’d get this constant whirring sound in my left ear, then my right ear, then my left ear again. I’d walk around all day trying to tilt my head in such a way to make the sound go away.

When school started up again in September I tried to run cross country, rationalizing that running distance with teammates would allow me to forget about my fatigue. But I didn’t even make it through the warm-up of the first workout.

I tried training by myself on the track, but quickly reached the point where one warm-up lap was too much. Finally came that day when I barely made it up the steps to class. I had to stop in the middle of the stairwell to catch my breath before continuing to the second floor. And when I got to the top, I had to rest on a window ledge to catch my breath again before entering the classroom. My heart was pounding, my pulse was throbbing in my temples. I felt like I’d just run a 400 full blast. That’s when I knew, I can’t be this out of shape. Ain’t no way.

My mom made an appointment with my dad’s doctor at Riddle Memorial Hospital in Media, PA. The blood test revealed that my blood counts were very low, so they wanted to keep me for a few days. Instead of feeling alarmed, I felt relieved, and validated. I was sick enough that I needed to stay in the hospital for the weekend, which meant there was, in fact, something medically wrong with me. A couple weeks earlier, Mr. McAlpin had fussed at me for hurdling so much when I should’ve been building my base. A short hospital stay would prove to him that I wasn’t just being lazy.

But a couple days later, the doctor entered the room while my parents were visiting and told us I would have to be transferred to another hospital. They couldn’t treat what I had. Say what?

I was transferred to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. At 17, I was two years under the legal limit to be a patient at a pediatric hospital. I did not want to go to Children’s Hospital with a bunch of little kids. I’d had my weekend off and I wanted to get back to school. I wanted some pills that would keep me from feeling so tired all the time so I could get back to training.

At CHOP, Dr. Schwartz, the head of hematology, sat me down with my parents in his office and told us that I had a rare blood disease, aplastic anemia, characterized by bone marrow failure.

Maybe if he had said something like leukemia – a more well-known disease with similar symptoms – I would’ve feared for my life. But I’d never heard of aplastic anemia. When I heard the word “anemia,” I figured I would just need to take some vitamins.

But when he said that a bone marrow transplant was the most common treatment option, I got a little fidgety in my chair. He went on to explain that because my bone marrow had ceased functioning, I was slowly running out of blood cells. My red cell count, my white cell count, and my platelet cell count were all dangerously low. He said he couldn’t believe I was still going to school every day with my blood counts so low. If I had waited another two weeks before entering the hospital, he said, I would’ve dropped dead from a lack of blood.

When my mom asked what causes aplastic anemia, Dr. Schwartz said that it’s usually caused by exposure to chemicals or toxins. He said that it’s a modern-era disease, that it didn’t even exist until the dawn of the Industrial Age. I couldn’t identify any chemicals or toxins I may have been exposed to. To this day we don’t know what caused my illness.

And so began my three-week stay at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in November of 1983. Three weeks that changed my life forever, three weeks that concretized a lifelong passion for the hurdles.

The whole time I was in CHOP, all I could think about was getting back on the track. I’d close my eyes while lying in bed and clear imaginary hurdles. One-two-three lead with the knee, one-two-three lead with the knee. Before the treatment started, I’d do push-ups and sit-ups on a daily basis. I’d walk around the hall of the oncology unity mimicking the hurdle motion.

Because I had no compatible bone marrow donors in my family, Dr. Schwartz decided to go with a fairly new, radical treatment called anti-thymocyte globulin (ATG). What it is, basically, is serum extracted from the blood of a horse. I was to be administered the ATG twice a day for eight days, for four hours at a time. The ATG would hopefully reactivate the bone marrow so that it would once again produce new blood cells of its own.

The success rate of ATG, at the time, was 40-60. There was a very good chance I would not survive. I remember lying in my bed one night wondering how this had happened. I had hardly ever been sick before. I was known for setting perfect attendance records throughout elementary school and middle school. Now I get a life-threatening blood disease from out of nowhere?

I cried often. Usually, when I felt the tears coming on, I’d go into the bathroom for privacy. I wasn’t embarrassed by my tears, but knew that if my family or friends saw me crying, it would make them even more distraught than they already were. Especially my mom.

But despite the emotional tumult, something else was happening during this hospital stay, especially once the treatment began and the side effects left me too sick to continue exercising. I began to like the hospital. The doctors were thoughtful and informative, and they really cared. Dr. Schwartz visited me every day on his rounds for at least a few minutes even though he had to be super-busy as head of hematology. He engaged me in light conversation about school and track that helped to quell my fears and keep my mind off the gravity of my illness. My nurses proved to be people I could talk to about my anxieties. The hospital was a world apart from the “real” world, and I liked the hospital better. It was a world free of expectations, pressures, demands. Nobody here measured me by what I had accomplished. It was just so easy to be myself.

The longer I stayed there, the less inclined I felt to leave. The only reason I wanted to leave was to hurdle again.

And as weird as this sounds, although I knew my illness was potentially fatal, I was more afraid of never hurdling again than I was of dying. The only time I cried openly – in my bed, without caring who came in and saw me – was the morning after the treatment ended. It had finally hit home that my hurdling career was over. I wouldn’t be able to return in time for the outdoor season. I wouldn’t get a chance to contend for the league championship. I wouldn’t hurdle in college. I would never find out if I could’ve been as good as Nehemiah. It was all dead now. The hurdler’s dream was dead.

But at that moment, Meg, my favorite nurse, came in, saw me, held my hand, and asked what was wrong. Long story short, I told her I was never going to hurdle again, she told me I would, and I believed her. Hearing her say it gave me a strength and courage I didn’t know I had. We cried together, and finally I didn’t feel so alone in the darkness.

The hospital was a magical place. A dreamworld. I’ve never stopped missing it.

I made a miraculous recovery. I first tried to jog again about a week after I returned home. I went down the road a piece and back, and was able to go a half-mile without stopping. When I finished I ran inside and called Mr. McAlpin. “Coach!” I said, “I just ran a half mile without getting tired! I’m back, Coach! I’m back!”

My blood counts continued to rise with each weekly check-up. By mid-January – less than two months after being discharged – Dr. Schwartz cleared me to start training again with my teammates. Within another month my blood counts were back to normal.

Anybody who knows anything about aplastic anemia knows that that sort of thing just doesn’t happen. Dr. Schwartz later told me that most patients diagnosed with severe aplastic anemia don’t survive. Of those who do, a very small percentage makes a full recovery, to the point where they don’t need any outpatient treatments. For those who do make a full recovery, it usually takes about three years from the time of diagnosis. The best-case scenario he had ever heard of was a full recovery within a year of diagnosis. So for me to make a full recovery within three months, I still don’t understand it. Those are the two great mysteries of my life: how did I contract aplastic anemia, and how did I recover from it so quickly?

It was a miracle of kindness, a miracle of love, a miracle of the hurdles. Because I’m telling you, if I didn’t have the hurdles in my life at that point in time, I wouldn’t have had the willpower to want to get better. Not with the damage the side effects of the treatment were doing to my body and to my psyche. I would’ve been very content to live the life of a beloved hospital patient until I just faded away.

I trained through the remainder of the indoor season and got myself fit to compete at the start of the outdoor season. Now that I no longer had a life-threatening blood disease, I was able to return to form in the 300 hurdles. I pr’ed in my first meet back on a freezing cold day in March, running 44.5. In the 110’s I was stagnating at the 15.9-16.0 range until I finally broke through with a 15.3 the week before the league championships.

At the league championships, I won the 110’s in 14.9, and finished third in the 300’s in 41.5. The 110 race felt awesome. I thought the time should’ve been faster, as I had run 14.9 in the prelims without feeling nearly as fast. But hand-timing is what it is. But yeah, that final felt fluid, smooth, and effortless. I remember wishing Dr. Schwartz, Meg, and the rest of the people at CHOP who had helped pull me out of the gutter could’ve been there to see me run.

After that race, I knew what it meant to be a hurdler. I knew what it meant to fall to the bottom, then rise to the top. I knew what it meant to face death, then return to new life. I knew what it meant to lose everything, then gain it all back. The hurdles had taught me. The hurdles had taught me everything.

***

In Part Two of the four-part series, “Go Where the Hurdles Take You,” I will discuss my years as a collegiate hurdler. Part Two will appear in next month’s issue of The Hurdle Magazine.

Note: The title of Part One – “Through the Storm and after the Rain” – is borrowed from the liner notes of John Coltrane’s 1964 album, A Love Supreme.

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