March 31, 2015

After a few failed attempts, I finally caught up with my former athlete Keni Harrison last night for a phone conversation. Harrison recently won the NCAA 60m hurdle national championship for the University of Kentucky, even though it was only her second meet of the year after coming back from a hamstring injury. We talked about her national championship victory, her Southeastern Conference championship victory the week prior, and her thoughts as she looks forward to the outdoor season, which starts this coming Saturday. She will be competing in the 400 hurdles at the Florida Relays.

McGill: When did you first injure your hamstring?

Harrison: Coming back from Christmas break. That Saturday, I came back early to start training. I probably did half the workout, then we had some sprints to do at the end, and I  started feeling a little pain in my right hamstring. Thought it was just an ache, but it didn’t go away. A week later I was doing 150’s and it was hurting.

McGill: Had you competed in any meets prior to then? read more

January 19, 2015

In a couple hours from now, I’ll be driving from my home in Knightdale, NC (just outside of Raleigh) to the small college town of Davidson, NC, where I will be beginning my new job as English teacher at Davidson Day School. I was hired mid-year to replace a teacher who is leaving to pursue a career as a professional writer.

Throughout my adult life, beginning at age 28, when I moved to Raleigh from Southeastern Pennsylvania, I have lived in the Raleigh area. In my coaching life over the past twenty years, I have had the privilege of coaching many athletes who have had a profound influence on my life. While the big names include hurdlers like Johnny Dutch, Wayne Davis II, and Kendra Harrison, there have been dozens others whose names the public has never heard, but whom I am equally grateful to for having allowed me to play a role in their development as athletes and as human beings.

The school where I will now be working has a very small track team – so small, in fact, that they may not even need the help of another coach. It’s funny because teaching English has always been my primary means of making a living, but people in the track community see me only as a track coach, and many – including some who are personal friends – aren’t even aware that I teach English. read more

December 23, 2014

We did another version of the hurdle cycle drill with Hector Cotto this past Sunday. This time, instead of keeping the hurdles at the same spacing the whole way, we did some experimenting with the spacing and also with the heights of the hurdles.

The rep in the video is one of the last (and best) reps of the day. Earlier we had started with the first hurdle at 36”, but found that it was too hard to get into the rhythm of the drill with the hurdle that high with Hector having no momentum going into it, so we lowered that one to 33”. We kept the rest of the hurdles at 36” for most of the workout, then raised the last one (and then the last two) to 39” when he was successfully cycling without kicking out the lead leg over the 36’s.

As for spacing, we had started with the hurdles six and seven 17” and 19” apart respectively, but found that it was impossible to maintain the cadence. We found that 15” was a good distance to maintain the level of challenge but to give him valid opportunity for success. read more

December 14, 2014

If you’re not already, please be sure to keep up with the blog of professional 110 hurdler Hector Cotto at his sprinthurdles website. He and I have been doing collaborative blog posts on his site, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. We’ve done two so far,  both focused on a drill we call the hurdle-cycle drill, designed to help him keep his legs in the sprint position while clearing hurdles. Here’s the link to the first blog on this drill from two weeks ago. Here’s the link the second one from last week. Another post on this drill will be coming up soon. Do yourself a favor and bookmark Cotto’s site and check regularly for updates, as we’ll be posting blog posts other drills, workouts, and hurdling-related discussions there.

December 4, 2014

For today’s blog, I’m gonna share what I’ll call smh Moments. Moments that just made me shake my head. All coaches have them. Here are some highlights from my career:

1. Back in my early days, I had a new hurdler, really fast and athletic, with lots of potential. On the first day of introducing her to blocks, she had trouble, as all beginners do, with angles, pushing out, driving, etc. But I thought she made decent progress. The next time practicing blocks, maybe two days later, she saw me bringing the block cart to the track and said, “Do I have to use those?” “Of course,” I said, “why wouldn’t you?” “I don’t like using blocks,” she answered, “they slow me down.”

2. With the youth track team I coach for in the summer, I like to have practice with the hurdlers at 5 so we can get started before the rest of the team comes at 6. That gives us more space and makes it easier to focus. One day last summer, one of my hurdlers texted me at 5:30 talkin’ ‘bout, “I’m gonna be a little late to practice.” read more

December 2, 2014

Just wanted to make everybody aware of the website of Hector Cotto, www.sprinthurdles.com. The 29-year-old Cotto competes internationally for Puerto Rico, and has raced in two Olympic Games and four World Championships. Originally from Rochester, NY, Cotto spent his later high school years in the Raleigh, NC area, then went on to compete at East Carolina University, where he holds multiple school records in the sprint hurdles, indoors and out.

I coached Cotto briefly in the summer after his senior year of high school, then again for a year in 2010, when he ran what was then a personal best of 13.54. His current personal best is 13.49. Cotto, who possesses one of the most astute hurdling minds I have ever encountered, has contributed articles and his expertise to www.hurdlesfirst.com and to The Hurdle Magazine.

With www.sprinthurdles.com, Cotto is seeking to share the wealth of knowledge he has gained over an 8-year professional career in which he has competed against some of the best 110m hurdlers in history. His site is still in its nascent stages, but already has plenty of useful information and blog posts. Moving forward, he and I will be partnering on many blog posts, videos, and other projects. read more

November 15, 2014

As we enter the Thanksgiving season, I felt it would be appropriate to talk some about this special holiday – perhaps the only major holiday that has yet to be tainted by commercialism and consumerism. Somehow, Thanksgiving has managed to retain its innocence and its dignity, which is why it is my favorite of all holidays. It is what it claims to be – a time to reflect, to take note of all there is to be grateful for.

For me, this time of year always brings me back to November of 1983, when I spent almost the entire month at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, receiving treatment for a rare and potentially fatal blood disease, aplastic anemia. The treatment was highly experimental at the time. My doctor, who was head of hematology, said it had only been in existence for three years.

I was fed horse serum intravenously twice a day for eight days. Somehow, the horse serum was supposed to reactivate my bone marrow, so that it would once again produce new blood cells on its own. read more

October 19, 2014

So I’ve finally posted all chapters of the biography I wrote on 1972 Olympic high hurdle champion Rodney Milburn. I’ve had several chapters of the biography buried for years in the “Stories” section of this site, but had lost a later chapter a few years ago when my computer died. Recently a friend of mine was able to retrieve a copy to send to me, allowing me to put all the chapters up here now.

I initially began the project in 2004, conducted dozens of interviews and did tons of research between 2004 and 2006, and visited Milburn’s hometown of Opelousas, LA on two separate occasions.

To read the bio, check out the menu bar above: Rodney Milburn: The Quiet Champion. All chapters are there, in order. For more info on the process I went through in completing this project, read the intro.

September 9, 2014

For today’s blog post, we’re back with another round of “You know you’re a hurdler if…” Came up with ten for this set. Got a bit of a football theme going on in honor of the beginning of the NFL season. Hope you can relate!

You know you’re a hurdler if:

July 29, 2014

Masters hurdler Francis X. Shen, who splits time between Minnesota and Boston, recently contacted me about his hurdling endeavors. Shen, who ran for the University of Chicago in the late ’90’s, has continued to train and compete into his mid-thirties. Seven years ago he wrote an article entitled “Still Hurdling after all These Years,” and he recently updated it to reflect his current status. It’s a long article about his hurdling journey, and it’s well worth the time to read the whole thing.

What you realize in reading Shen’s article is that all of us who dedicate ourselves to the hurdles share a special bond, that there are commonalities in our stories that unite us in ways that are unspoken and invisible, yet very, very real. To read the article in full, click on this link: Still Hurdling after all These Years.

Here’s a snippet from the article that really rang true for me:

This is the difference between competitive sports and “going to the gym.” In the gym, you can’t lose. The Boston Sports Club, like so many others, markets themselves by telling customers, “We want to make the experience easy for you.” They have televisions so you can forget about the running; trainers with you at every step so you don’t have to think for yourself; and guarantees that you’ll leave feeling great. Hurdling does something else entirely. It humbles you. Hurdling isn’t a way to forget about the reality of life. Hurdling brings that reality front and center. Like other serious track and field athletes, hurdlers feel anxiety as they realize that everything hinges on one, short race. Hurdlers feel disappointment and experience failure when they don’t perform up to expectations (especially their own). Hurdlers don’t always walk off the track feeling great about themselves. Sometimes they walk off the track so disgusted and deflated they don’t know why they ever started doing it to begin with. Hurdlers get knocked down. But the great lesson of hurdling, the great lesson of competitive athletics, is that you fight back. You feel the pain, but you work through it. You acknowledge defeat, but you don’t accept it. read more