March 27, 2019
In my three days in Maryland at the home of Renaldo Nehemiah to begin work on a biography of him, I kept a journal of my thoughts at the beginning of each day. My notes are below.
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March 25, 2019 (morning)
I was 14 years old when Renaldo Nehemiah became the first hurdler ever to break the 13.00 barrier in the 110m high hurdles. I didn’t see the race when it happened, as I didn’t follow track closely at the time. Not until the following year – my sophomore year of high school – did I start hurdling, and I saw the race on tape when my coach showed it to me one day. I was so in awe that I fell in love with the hurdles instantly. Now here I am at the age of 52, about to board a plane to meet Mr. Nehemiah himself in our beginning stages of collaborating on a book about his life.
I’ve never met Nehemiah in person. I never watched him run in person. In the second year of my website’s existence (2005), I interviewed him for a profile piece I wrote on him. Prior to that profile piece, I had written one on his high school coach, Jean Poquette, who shortly after contacted Renaldo for me, and the connection was made. That interview was a whole lot of fun to conduct, and the subsequent article – some 5,000 words long – turned out really well. I often found myself involuntarily thinking that it was the best writing I had ever done, even though at the time I had let any aspirations of pursuing a professional writing career fade into the background of my mind.