Carrie Strickland's "A" Standard

Carrie Strickland is a jumper. She's also a runner. Shortly after this issue of Competitor hits the stands, she'll be in Eugene, Oregon, doing both as part of the Northwest contingent at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in track and field.

Strickland's event is the 3,000-meter steeplechase, which is making its first Olympic appearance (for women) this year in Beijing. Derived from British horseracing, it's a tough event, with 35 jumps over 30-inch barriers. Seven of the jumps (one per lap after the first lap) cross a 12-foot-wide pit filled with water. And unlike hurdles, the barriers are solid. Hit one wrong, and it's you that goes down, not it.

It's not a sport for the timid, nor for the weak. "It takes a stronger athlete than your typical distance runner," says Brett Holts, another steeplechaser on Strickland's Nike employees' team, Bowerman AC. (At press time, his best performance was within three seconds of earning him his own trip to Eugene.)

"It looks scary, but that's what makes it exciting – there's this sense of danger," says Strickland. "People wait at the water pit for someone to fall… but I think more people fall in the 1500."
   
Of course, more people run the 1500. When Strickland made her first post-collegiate go at the steeplechase last summer at Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham, Oregon, there were so few other competitors that the women's Olympic version of the event wasn't even offered. She had to choose between running the full distance with the men, over 36-inch barriers (not appealing to the 5'2" Strickland) or doing a truncated, 2,000-meter version aimed more at masters' women.

"It's been a challenge finding meets," she says. "Hopefully that will change with it becoming an Olympic event."

Strickland grew up breathing track and field, but it's only recently, at age 25, that she's discovered her full talent.

"My parents were runners," she says. "My mom started running after she had me, probably to lose weight from her pregnancy. My dad was a pole-vaulter in high school and a huge track and field fan."

She spent her youth in Connecticut, where her first sports were downhill ski racing, which helped teach the daring needed for the steeplechase, and softball, which gave her a strong dislike for sports requiring mountains of equipment. "You've got bats and balls and pads and helmets," she says, "and you're dragging heavy bags everywhere. I'd watch the runners go to practice with just their shorts and shoes and think, now that's the sport for me."

From the first, she found herself running hurdles. "I was moderately successful at the 300," she says, "which is what we ran in Connecticut." For non-hurdlers, she adds, that's about equivalent to running an 800. "It takes a lot of stamina to go over the hurdles."

During her best year, she was fifth in the state. Then the made the Princeton University track team as a walk-on, initially doing 400-meter hurdles, but gradually moving to the 800 and then the 1500.
   
It wasn't until her junior year that she tried the steeplechase. Women hadn't been running the event much at that time, and briefly she held the school record with 10:37:44. Unfortunately, her collegiate experience with the steeplechase was also brief. "Both my junior and senior years, I broke my foot," she says. The injuries came from practicing the water jump over and over in lightweight track spikes. Landing hard again and again on the same heel, she eventually stress-fractured it.

Many collegiate runners burn out by graduation. Strickland came west, to a job in footwear development with Nike. "I imagined I'd pursue running as a hobby," she says, "but I couldn't let go of the competitive bug." And she points out, "I work in the running group for Nike. How could I not be excited about running?"

It may also have helped that she started her running career slowly. In high school she generally ran only three months of the year, and kept her mileage low. "Ten miles a week?" she says. "Fifteen? I can't imagine what it would have been like to have run 45 miles a week in high school. Maybe I'd be stronger. Maybe I'd have burned out and been injured."

Even now, she's a relatively low-mileage runner, peaking at about 45 miles a week, preferring the intensity of speed work over volume.

Whatever the reason, when she got to Portland, she promptly burned up the road-racing scene, notching about 20 races, many of them victories, in her first year. "They all sounded really fun," she says of the races. "And the idea that you could actually get money or a prize – that was totally novel."

Still, while she logged respectable times, they weren't Olympic Trials caliber. "Nothing that would say, 'elite athlete coming through,'" she says.