April 17, 2014
“You can’t make a living running track.” That’s what one of my friends said to me one fall night in my sophomore year of college. He was laughing. I had just gotten back to the dorm after doing a set of 10×150 on the track by the light of the moon. We were a small DIII school; official practice wouldn’t start until after first semester exams. So in the fall I did much of my training on my own. That time of year I preferred to run at night because I could pretty much have the track all to myself. I was the only fool who liked to train in the dark.
That night I had a particularly exhilarating workout. I had been able to hit my target time for all ten reps without adding a longer recovery period in the last few reps. I felt like I was really rounding into shape and that I was on pace to reach my goals.
So I walked into the dorm on a runner’s high, feeling like I could run another ten 150’s. But as soon as I hit the door, my friend – a pre-med student – grimaced when he saw my sweaty frame. And I’m sure I didn’t smell all that great either.
“What’ve you been doing?” he asked.
“Running!” I said, oblivious to the fact that I was about to get dissed. “Did some 150’s on the track. Felt great. Gonna be a great year this year.”
He shook his head and smiled as if he felt sorry for me. “Get real dude,” he said. Then he made the comment that began this post.
Hurt and deflated, I just walked to my room.
That’s a moment I often look back upon. My friend was right, and I knew he was. Here I was a sophomore in college, putting more time into studying hurdling than I was putting into my classes. Here I was taking two hours out of my night to train for a race that was still three months away when I had two tests the next day.
But hurdling captured my imagination in a way that none of my classes did. Even the classes in my major (English) did not inspire me like hurdling. I loved writing, and I loved reading, but I didn’t love memorizing historical information or being compelled to write to a rubric.
Studying the hurdles was thrilling. Every day there was something new to discover. I’d think of an idea for a new workout and then try it out the next day. Or an idea for how to fix a technical flaw would come to me, and I’d experiment with it in practice. There was no YouTube back then, so I’d inhale the hurdler-related articles in Track & Field News and study the styles of the hurdlers pictured in the still photos. I bought a copy of The Track & Field Omnibook by Ken Doherty and soaked up the section on the hurdles. There I found a treasure trove of ideas for workouts and drills.
I loved the hurdles. And despite all logic, I felt like that was where my true education was taking place. Not in the classroom, but on the track.
Ultimately, I was able to strike a balance between my academic and athletic lives, but it took a while. Ironically, I became a teacher myself, but hurdling has remained at the center of my life. Coaching hurdlers and writing about the hurdles are not my primary sources of income, but as a musician friend of mine (who taught middle school math to make ends meet) said to me a few years ago, “Art is the thing that makes life livable.”
Yes it is. For me, coaching is an art form. Writing is another. Being a hurdler is the purest art form of all. Even if I can’t make a living running track.
