and everything starts today

Hurdles

"Let me explain...no, there is too much. Let me sum-up." We just watched The Princess Bride on TV last night. There's some of that randomness for you. Anyway, this post was spurred by Amber's comment on my last entry. She didn't understand what I meant by "3-step." Which is completely understandable, since that is a term only used by hurdlers.

So I'll have to explain. In a 100 meter hurdle race, there are 10 hurdles. Each hurdler has one leg designated as a lead leg and the other as a trail leg. (Some can switch lead legs, but I won't get into that.) So to jump a hurdle, you have to put one leg over first, and the other follows. If you've ever seen a race, you'll know that there is a lot of form to hurdles. You don't have to run a fast 100 meter dash to run a fast 100 meter hurdles. To get up to the first hurdle, I take 8 steps. If I take 9, I will come up to the hurdle with the wrong leg forward. The space in between each hurdle is the same as the way through. I take 5 steps in between so that I reach the next hurdle with the correct leg each time. And I only run in the 19 second range. The girls who run in the 16's and 17's are 3-stepping. The fewer steps you take between the hurdles, the faster you are. So if I could 3-step the space between the hurdles, I would be running them a lot faster and be placing in more meets. Also, the closer you are to the hurdle as you go over it, the faster you are. I almost drag my leg over the hurdle. That means I have pretty good form. But if I get just a little lower, I tend to hit my knee and ankle on my trail leg, which slows me down not only on that hurdle, but on the ones after because I'm trying not to hurt myself any more than I already had. You don't want to glide over the hurdles in the 100, you want to snap your lead and trail legs down to the ground as fast as possible. Gliding will lose time. (That is different from the 300 hurdles, where you want to glide to cover more space since the hurdles are placed farther apart.) That is mostly what it takes to run a 100 meter hurdle race.

posted by Caity @ 3:36 PM