This is Why We Hurdle
June 13, 2015 (8am)
So I woke up this morning thinking about my life as I enter into a period of transition. This past January I started at a new teaching job in Davidson, NC, three hours away from my home in Knightdale, NC, just east of Raleigh. After renting a room for the semester and coming home for the weekends, now I am preparing to sell my house and move to the Davidson area.
Yesterday afternoon, I was watching the ESPN3 broadcast of the NCAA Division I National Championships, where former athlete of mine Keni Harrison of the University of Kentucky was competing in the semi-finals of the 100 and 400 meter hurdles. She won both of her races easily, didn’t crack a smile after crossing the finish line, and seemed primed to win both titles, which will be contested later this afternoon.
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Last night Keni called me and talked some about her races, asked a few questions about her trail leg, which still isn’t coming to the front the way she wants it to. She sounded very light-hearted and very sure of herself and her abilities. While lamenting the fact that she’ll only have 45 minutes between the 100h final and the 400h final, I heard nothing in her voice indicating a fear that she wasn’t prepared for the challenge.
Two days ago I had practice at a nearby high school with a handful of athletes that I remain loyal to even though I’m not in town as often as I used to be. One of them, Monica, just finished her sophomore year of high school a couple weeks ago. In her freshman year, she severely sprained her ankle at one of my hurdle practices and missed the entire outdoor season. Since her return this past fall, she has been very tentative in hurdle practices, constantly stopping at hurdles, fearing she can’t get there in three steps. It doesn’t help that there are some very fast sprinters on her school and club teams, and training with them always intimidates her. She sees herself as a scrub.
So last night I worked with her for the first time in about a month. I had her clear the first two hurdles, working on sprinting between 1 and 2 instead of puddle-hopping. At first she did her usual – drive aggressively to hurdle one and then put on the brakes and approach the second hurdle tentatively before running around it. “Just keep running,” I said. “If you keep running you’ll make it easily.” The next rep went well, the one after that went even better. She ended up having a very good workout, and I was very impressed with her overall speed and athleticism, not to mention her very efficient technique. This girl, I thought to myself, can really run.
After she cooled down, I pulled her aside and told her, “Monica, you’re a talented athlete. If you come out here and train the way you did today, on a consistent basis, who knows how good you can be? The key is, stop comparing yourself to your teammates, stop worrying about whether or not belong. Just come out here and practice. And enjoy it. Stop stressing yourself out about it. There’s nothing more fun than being young and being able to hurdle for as long as you want. So enjoy the time you spend out here.”
A little later, while I was heading to my car to leave, Monica’s mom approached me to ask for my advice. With the club team, she explained, Monica was basically being ignored by the coaches and was losing hope of ever getting better and was thinking about quitting track altogether. “What should I do?” her mom asked.
I told her I’d coach Monica for the rest of the summer. Whatever I gotta do to be here, I’ll be here.
Earlier in the week I had received a text from another former athlete, Johnny Dutch, who is having an outstanding season thus far in the 400 hurdles. The text contained a link to an article. In the article, he was asked to identify his best friend. He responded that the hurdle is his best friend, that his old hurdle coach had told him to “be one with the hurdle.”
Johnny is training with Bershawn Jackson, among others, in Raleigh now. He says that training with Batman has given him the motivation he needs to get to the next level that he has only caught glimpses of in his career thus far. They push each other and bring out the best in each other. After reading the article I mentioned to Johnny that it’s cool that he’s starting to get some recognition as a potential world champion, and that he has found a training environment that is enabling him to build confidence.
What people don’t know is that the reason Johnny is living in Raleigh now is because he got dropped from his contract last year and didn’t have any money. He moved back not knowing if he was going to continue his career or not. In the summer of 2014, he was telling me that track was getting in the way of his ability to get going with his goals of being a film-maker. He expressed frustration that he wasn’t moving forward with making use of his college major, that other film studies majors were making movies while he was running around on the track, broke.
I had lunch with him about four weekends ago, at a Whole Foods market. This was the day before he ran 48-low at an off-the-grid meet in Greensboro, NC, and before he would go on to run 48-low in Diamond League meets in Oregon and Rome. He was talking about how well training was going, but also about all the sacrifices he was making. Moving back in with his mom, eating oranges and spinach, was not the good life. He mentioned teammates who don’t watch their diet hardly at all but still run blazing times. “I don’t know if this stuff makes any difference or not,” he said. “Oranges and Spinach.”
Another athlete that I coach, Lamar Brewer, is a recent high school grad currently attending massage therapy school instead of a traditional four-year college because he wants to prove that the traditional way is not the only way. He doesn’t trust the collegiate system. He’s heard too many horror stories of athletes who go to college and hate the program and get worse instead of better. During most of the spring, I was giving him workouts to do on his own, and we’d get together whenever I was in town. Before I got the new job in January, the plan had been for me to coach him full-time. Once I left, I suggested that he look into attending a four-year college, because the life of the unattached athlete is not the good life, and I wouldn’t be there to coach him like we initially thought I would be when we had made our plans. On a college team, he’d have a full season of meets, he wouldn’t have to pay entry fees and travel expenses, and there are plenty of schools interested in him.
But Lamar says this is a long-term journey, that it’s not just about this year. He trusts that I can get him to where he needs to be.
Last weekend Lamar had a practice in which he successfully attempted to 14-step hurdles two and three in the 400m hurdles. He’d explained that he’d been getting too crowded at hurdle two in races and it was throwing off his whole race. I’d told him to wait until I’m in town before trying to switch from 15 to 14. And on the first time trying it, he did it easily. It’s just weird the connection we have. After practice, he and I went to a nearby coffee shop along with another out of town athlete who’d come down for the weekend. As the three of us sat there with our smoothies, talking about hurdles and talking about life as it relates to hurdles, I felt a deep peace wash over me. A thought rose to my consciousness, something along the lines of, this is what it means to be a hurdler, or this is why we hurdle.
As I sit here writing, not knowing whether or not Keni Harrison will win two NCAA titles later today, or whether she will win just one, or whether she will win none, as I sit here writing, thinking about how far back I go with Johnny Dutch and how much joy it brings me to see him rising to the top after experiencing life at the bottom just one short year ago, as I sit here thinking of Monica’s mom and Lamar placing their trust in me, I see my life as being one that is defined by hurdles. The hurdles I have cleared, the hurdles I have helped others to clear.
There are so many other hurdlers not mentioned in this article, so many other stories, so many other lives I am connected to through the hurdles. For those of us who call ourselves hurdlers, for those of us who make sacrifices for the sake of the hurdles, for those of us who dedicate our lives to the hurdles, the hurdles are not merely a metaphor for life; the hurdles are life. That is something worth celebrating.
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